Chapter Twenty
S
ophia held her breath as if waiting on the cusp of a joke. But the punch line never came.
‘What are you talking about?’ was all she could utter quietly. ‘What do you mean,
dead
?’
‘We’ve been ambushed. They know about us. And they’ve been killing us off. Abby called an emergency meeting the night after you disappeared. She warned us to go underground. She said we were to sever all ties with each other – that The Alliance was broken. I’ve never seen her so scared.’
‘Who?’ she asked. ‘Who’s responsible for this?’
‘We don’t know.’
Marid?
Or maybe even Caleb himself.
The latter made perfect sense. If Marid knew, others knew. And if anyone knew everything that was going on in Blackthorn, it was Caleb Dehain.
And
he had Alisha. Alisha knew about The Alliance – she’d forced a confession out of Sophia months before with the threat of going to Leila.
Caleb could have found out from her. Or Alisha could have let it slip to Jake if there was something going on between them.
Her heart pounded. ‘Dehain,’ she said. ‘The Dehains have come after us. They worked out we were responsible.’
‘No. No, this is bigger than that.’
He stepped over to the dining table where the laptop was, Sophia following behind.
As she perched on one of the chairs, he turned the screen to face her.
‘I’m keeping a close eye on every report, not that there’s much being disclosed,’ he said. ‘But the VCU are involved now.’
Her gaze shot to Daniel’s. ‘Do
they
know about The Alliance?’
‘Nothing has been said publicly. But even if they did know, there
is
no Alliance anymore.’
She flicked through the images that had been plastered over news reports. There were no images of the bodies, but there were plenty of accounts and images of the aftermaths left behind.
‘We’ve lost at least eight in the past three days. There could be more. Like I said, we’ve all lost contact. Hannah, Simon, Tyrone, Cass, even Zach – they’re all gone. And now Lola too. Whoever this is, they’re fast. And they’re meticulous. And they’re covering their tracks. They pick one off, they torture them for more names and then they move on to the next.’
Sophia stared back at the screen, at the blood-splattered apartment she had known well. She’d had one or two celebratory drinks there. One or two discussions putting the world to rights through to dawn. Lola had been a quirky little thing – tiny but lethal. And Sophia had always had a soft spot for her.
Originally from Midtown, Lola’s parents had been forced to move from Midtown into Lowtown after her father failed on his employment scores. A bout of severe ill health for his wife had had him exhausted and underperforming. Instead of looking to support him, he’d become an inconvenience to his employers. They’d turned up the pressure and he’d been destined to fail. Her mother’s ill health and inability to go out had subsequently lowered all their social contribution scores. The worry meant Lola had started to struggle in school.
Their move to Lowtown meant they didn’t have enough credits to be entitled to free health care anymore. And there was no way they could afford the long-term payments for the medical care her mother needed. Her father looked for work but failed to find anything legitimate. All the decent jobs went to those with the right cohorts. But being in with the right cohorts meant you didn’t own yourself anymore – let alone your house or your family. When they’d offered to take Lola as payment, it had been the final straw.
Her father’s visits to Blackthorn had become more regular – his only source of income becoming a feeder. One night, he never came home. Less than two months later, Lola’s mother passed away in her arms – the two of them alone in the dingy, damp, run-down bedsit Sophia now stared at on the screen.
Lola was one of the first to join The Alliance. She was determined, feisty and efficient in their cause. She wouldn’t have gone down without a fight.
Sophia felt her throat clog with suppressed tears, pleading that they wouldn’t surface.
‘I thought they’d got to you too, Phia. What happened? How are you still alive? Where have you been?’
Even now her heart pounded with a mixture of anger and fear. If it hadn’t been for the serryn line jumping, she would have been dead just like her Alliance colleagues. That was the simple fact: her serrynity had been the only thing to save her. Her sister, Leila, knowingly or unknowingly, had saved her again. ‘Marid took me. I didn’t even get inside the club.’
‘Marid?’
‘He knows about us. He found out that I was after him.’ She hesitated. ‘He kept me for a couple of days before selling me on to two vampires. They were planning to question me about The Alliance. They must have been a part of this.’ Rone had said the two vampires had been working for someone else. Someone who clearly intended to make The Alliance suffer as much as possible. She looked back up at him. ‘But some of these have happened in the last twelve hours. I killed the ones who came after me, Dan, so how many are involved in this?’
‘You killed them?’
She nodded. She couldn’t tell him about her serrynity. Not yet. She had too many things she needed to get her own head around first.
‘Did you get their names?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t get the chance.’
‘But why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you warn us? If you got away, where have you been?’
Awkwardness coiled through her – a new sense of guilt, though why, she wasn’t sure. ‘The compound.’
Wide-eyed, it was his turn to stare at her for a moment. ‘The compound?’
‘A couple of lycans found me. They took me back there.’
The shock emanated from his face. ‘You’ve been with
lycans
?’ His frown deepened with concern. ‘You’ve been in the compound all this time?’
‘The last twenty-four hours.’
‘How the hell did you get out?’
‘By doing what we’re trained to do – making the most of what opportunities I had.’
‘Do they know about us too?’
‘One did – but he’s saying nothing. He’s the one who got me out.’
‘A lycan acting against the pack? Against Jask Tao’s pack? This doesn’t sound right.’
‘It’s complicated. What matters is I’m out.’
‘Did you meet him? Jask Tao?’
She looked away at that point, resolving it was time she did get herself a coffee. ‘We had one or two encounters.’
Daniel followed her to the kitchen.
She flicked on the kettle and grabbed a mug from the cupboard. She scooped two spoonfuls of coffee from the oversized tub before resolving to scoop in another. She rested her palms on the worktop as she waited for the water to boil.
Daniel pulled away from the doorway where he’d been watching her and placed his stained mug next to hers.
‘Sorry,’ she said quietly for not thinking of him. She scooped a couple of spoonfuls into his mug too.
‘It’s okay. I know this must be a shock. Are you all right?’
She shrugged, sending him a sideways glance before staring back down at the mugs.
But she wasn’t okay. She was far from okay. The plan to take down the Dehains had failed because of her. And if this
was
down to Caleb, the fact he was still alive to wreak that retribution was down to her. Just as if Caleb had somehow got the information from Alisha – Alisha who, she was sure, wouldn’t have been in Blackthorn if it wasn’t for her – was also down to her. One way or another, The Alliance was dead because of her. Those were the facts.
‘Did he hurt you?’ Daniel asked with the irritatingly soft tone of a therapist.
Sophia exhaled tersely. The very prospect of it seemed ludicrous, and that’s what shocked her the most. Her instinctive response was to defend Jask, like being asked if a lifelong faithful partner was capable of infidelity. ‘No, he didn’t,’ she said, lifting the boiled kettle and pouring its contents into the mugs.
Daniel moved closer and slid the powdered milk towards her. ‘You can talk to me.’
She looked Daniel in the eye. ‘Trust me, Jask Tao has more to worry about than a scrag like me.’
She scooped in the milk powder and stirred.
But he
would
be looking for her.
More than ever she was sat on a ticking bomb surrounded by landmines. Now it was whether she could be quick enough and efficient enough to get to her sisters before everything went off.
‘I need a phone,’ she said, remembering herself. ‘I need to call home.’
‘There aren’t any. I destroyed mine in case they caught up with me and traced the others. It was the first thing Abby told us to do.’
‘Then I need to get back out there,’ she said. She swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of hot coffee, burning her tongue, on her way back through to the lounge. ‘Are spare clothes still kept here?’
‘In the women’s dorm. Phia, we need to lie low for a few days. We’ll be okay here for a while. We can’t risk going out there.’
It was a question she hadn’t thought to ask. ‘Why are you still here, Dan?’ she asked, heading down the hallway, taking a left. ‘Why haven’t you tried to get into Lowtown for yourself?’
‘Why do you think?’ He leaned against the doorframe as she flung open the wardrobe doors. ‘I wasn’t going to leave without you. Leave you here alone.’
She looked back at him. ‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to be, Dan. No attachments, remember?’
‘I’m still your friend, Phia. As little as you want them. As little as you think you need them. Besides, someone had to warn you in case you did reappear. I knew you’d come here if you failed to contact anyone.’
‘Yeah, well I’m not lying low anywhere.’ She rooted through the bags at the bottom and picked out underwear, checking the labels for the right sizes before tearing the price-tags off. ‘I need to get to a phone, then I’ll get back here and we’ll talk about what we’re going to do. We need to find out who’s responsible for this.’
‘What does it matter? It’s too late anyway.’
‘It’s never too late,’ she said. She slipped the knickers on under her tunic before tearing the fabric over her head to pull on and fasten the bra.
‘Phia…’
‘We can sort this. Whoever is responsible, be it Marid, Caleb or whoever, this doesn’t end here.’
‘Phia…’ Daniel said again, but he may as well have been white noise for all she tuned in.
‘They need to know who they’re dealing with…’
‘Phia, it was a vampire.’
She reached for the combats. ‘That’s what I’m saying. And they’re not getting away with it.’
‘Phia…’ She’d barely registered his hesitation. ‘It was a vampire who paid us. A vampire
paid
us to do the Dehain job.’
Her gaze snapped to his. She clutched the waistband of her combats, barely mid-hip. ‘What?’
Daniel slumped onto the edge of the nearest bed. He lowered his head for a moment, his forearms on his thighs.
She fastened the top button and took a step towards him, the sweater loose in her hand. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘After you disappeared, Abby came to see me. She was in a really bad way.’ He looked back up at her. ‘The new equipment – all the stuff we used that night for the Dehains – it came via a sponsor, a sponsor who paid us a lot of money to go after them. That’s how they got to the top of the hit list so quick instead of being our crescendo along with Malloy. We were paid to take them out – by a vampire.’
‘No,’ she said. She yanked on the sweater and stormed into the bathroom.
He followed behind her. ‘I knew how you’d feel about it. I didn’t want to say anything.’
She brushed past the hospital-style mint green shower curtain, the mould on its base betraying the years it had been there. She opened the cupboard beside it and grabbed a new toothbrush, ripping open the packet as she marched across to the sink, the bitterness in her mouth, the dryness, too much to bear. She turned the creaking chrome tap, the spray spluttering before letting out an inconsistent flow of water.
‘Phia…’
Toothbrush loaded with paste, she brushed too vigorously for her gums. She spat out blood before continuing.
‘Phia, Abby told me. That’s why she was so stressed that night when she knew it had gone wrong.’
She spat out another mouthful. ‘No. There is no way,’ she said, pointing the toothbrush at him before resuming brushing again. ‘That’s fucking absurd. We hunt them. We don’t fucking work for them.’
‘They made Abby an offer she couldn’t refuse. We kill vampires, but it doesn’t mean we can’t take funding from them. The end result is the same–’
‘No!’ Sophia snapped, chucking her toothbrush aside in the sink, rubbing the back of her hand across her mouth as she turned to face him. ‘I do
not
work for vampires. I did not sign up to work for vampires. They do not pull my strings. I do
not
do their dirty work for them.’
She grabbed the threadbare towel and wiped her mouth properly before marching past him back into the dorm.
‘We did. And we failed,’ Daniel said. ‘And they know it. And now they know
us
. And they’re hunting and tracking us down like wild animals. I’m only telling you this because I cannot let you step outside those doors. We don’t know what kind of influence they have, only that they don’t want to risk even one of us leaking word back to Caleb Dehain that this was an inside assassination. They will be hunting every corner of Blackthorn and Lowtown for us to make sure that doesn’t happen. So we
have
to stay here.’
‘And what if the vampire was Caleb himself, huh? Maybe Caleb was the sponsor. Maybe there wasn’t a third party in all this. Maybe he set us up – one giant double bluff. It would be perfect: using his own brother as a honeytrap to bring us out into the open. That’s why he turned the girl down that night – he already knew. And maybe he had someone on hand to cure Jake–’
Discomfort wrenched through her.
A witch skilful enough to do it. The most powerful witch there was. A serryn.
But she pushed the thought out of her head – the ramblings of a panicked mind.
There was no way Leila was in Blackthorn too. No way
both
of her sisters were with the Dehains.