It took Ember a while to realise the consistent, nagging beep wasn’t related to the events of her dream. And when she finally did snap back to reality, she clamped her hand over her watch, muffling it from waking her stranger.
She half expected to see him sat on the steps, fully conscious, staring her down as she remained out of arm’s reach. But he remained face down and unflinching. Ember switched off her watch. She listened in the silence. During those few minutes, not once did he swallow – even vampires unable to fake that basic physiological response to being asleep.
Her behind numb from the cold floor despite the additional blanket she’d brought down for herself, her legs and neck aching from the position she’d fallen asleep in, she unsteadily forced herself to her feet as she struggled to come to her senses.
She needed to get moving straight away. She was only on the morning shift that day which meant she could get back home by half two. There was every chance he’d still be in recovery and not have a clue what had happened. She’d been tempted to leave him a note just in case, but it would be something to incriminate her.
Unlocking the outer door as quietly as she could, she stepped out into the grey hues of the pending morning light. Placing the two bin bags on the floor outside, she cast one more glance over him before closing and locking the door behind her.
It was a cold day but dry, the breeze whipping the loose strands of her hair against her cheeks as she looked down at where her baseball cap lay wet and dirty on the ground, having been trampled on during the scuffle the night before. A scuffle that felt as though it had occurred days ago, not hours.
What she’d done since felt even more surreal – that she had jeopardised everything, a decision from which there was now no turning back. Like that first shove from the top of the slide, she’d made her choice and now had no option but to go with it.
She looked down to the end of the alleyway. Everything lay silent beyond. The paring knife now having replaced her flick knife in her pocket, Ember carried the two bin bags down to the recess.
She lifted the metal industrial bin lid to drop the bags inside – one up one end and one up the other. She closed it quietly before turning towards the exit.
And flinched.
The one still had blood on his jeans from where she had stabbed him in the thigh. The other’s eyes looked red, swollen and irritated from the mace. Eyes that glowered at her; a face she then recognised from the café: the guy who had slipped Casey his number.
His companion was of a comparable age – maybe in his early twenties too. Any other details were a blur as her heart pummelled her ribcage, the rapid rush of blood from her head inciting a sense of disassociation from what was happening. Because it wasn’t real. That was what she wanted to tell herself: none of it was real. She was still asleep in the stairwell. Her watch alarm was yet to go off. It was nothing more than a nightmare off the back of the trauma.
But it was real. It was as real as the three ten-foot high walls that surrounded her.
Her throat constricted as inevitability struck its blow.
They were waiting for her to speak. That’s what made it even worse. That as well as the fact they’d laid in wait for that long. For them, this had become personal. The hatred in their eyes, as if somehow she had wronged them, emanated such, as if defending herself – and succeeding – had been a slight against them. And for succeeding, they intended to make her suffer – evident in their relishing in her panic, awaiting either her futile attempts to escape or to beg for her life.
Checking over their shoulders to confirm isolation, satisfied that she had been left to ponder her fate for long enough, they wasted no more time.
And neither did she.
Ember leapt up onto the industrial bin, the palms of her hands reaching the top of the wall five feet above. With the toe of her boot using the worn-away mortar between the brickwork for leverage, she hoisted herself up.
She knew the wall was narrow and most likely not safe enough to take her weight, but she also knew she was nimble and fast. Her only possible plan was to descend into the courtyard on the other side of the recess and make a break for it through the gate and out onto the street beyond. Her chances would be small before they figured out her plan, but it was the only chance she had.
But before she’d got her first foot up onto the top of the wall, she was dragged backwards off the bin and thrown onto the floor.
Seconds later, the blow to her head having left her too stunned to move, she felt herself leaving the ground. She was slammed over the industrial bin face-first, weight pressing down on her back to keep her there.
Her paring knife snagged in her jacket pocket as she tried to retrieve it, but her restrainer had predicted her that time. Her jacket was promptly tugged off her, wrenching her shoulders. Between them, her two attackers all but tore her sweater off too, nearly suffocating her in the process.
She tried to fight back but couldn’t find the leverage, her restrainer’s thighs lodged between hers, his one hand on the back of her neck to hold her down, the other clenching her right arm as he spread it out.
The removal of her sweater, the subsequent exposure of her short-sleeved tunic, then made sense as her second attacker took a hold of her wrist. He slammed a fist full of syringes on the top of the bin, no doubt not clean.
Her pulse turned frantic at the sight of the first needle in his hand.
She tried to wriggle but the strength of the men holding her down was too great. She hated herself for it, but the words slipped out regardless. ‘No. Please.’
But her primary restrainer’s breath was hot against her ear. ‘It’ll all be over soon enough. Sorry, sweetheart, but we can’t have you putting the prized goods off.’
The prized goods no doubt meaning Casey.
It also meant they weren’t going to let her walk away from it alive. Neither were they going to waste a profit. These were the worst kinds of gatherers. These were the ones who collected blood to sell it quick and cheap.
Her second attacker, the guy from the café, tapped the veins in the crook of her arm as if he’d done it countless times before.
As she saw her whole world, her entire future, any semblance of hope slipping away, she yelled out for help.
Her protests were instantly muffled by his hand over her mouth. They weren’t listening. They weren’t the remotest bit interested.
No one was interested.
She bit his hand as a last ditch attempt to break free.
The scuffle was brief though. Both her attackers resumed their position.
As the second one tightened his grip on her wrist, she gritted her teeth, watched the syringe approach her arm through blurry eyes.
Blood sprayed onto her face. Warm, wet blood that caused her to blink away the traces on her lashes.
Nate woke with his cheek resting on stone, his whole body aching.
With a groan and his ‘fuck’ muffled by the step, he tucked his right hand up under his jacket and T-shirt to reach the small of his back and the source of the pain.
His fingers brushed fabric; brushed what felt like gauze and tape.
He pressed his left palm down on the step to give him leverage to sit up but, finding his movement to be restricted, he turned his head to look at the metal cuff that clinked against the steel spindle. Instead of standing, he moved into a kneeling position.
Instantly detecting a feminine scent in the stairwell – her scent – he looked down over his right shoulder.
Ember.
She wasn’t there now but she had been very recently from the subtleties of her fragrance lingering in the air.
The backdrop of dark grey hue beyond the grate above the door told him dawn was almost on the horizon. He checked his watch. He’d been unconscious for at least nine hours.
Twisting his torso, he peeled back the gauze to examine the wound. The scent of hemlock and garlic beneath the alcohol reinforced what the state of the wound already told him. Only garlic caused that kind of damage, and only hemlock paralysed a vampire and knocked them out cold the way he had been.
He checked for the exit wound but his abdomen was clear, meaning the bullet had been angled to remain embedded inside him. Whoever was responsible had clearly wanted a slow but guaranteed death whilst he was unconscious, further confirming what he’d already suspected: it hadn’t been a random shooting – he’d been targeted.
He’d managed to tuck himself in a recess as he’d waited for the shooter to show up. A shot as good as that one had been meant it was a professional job – and professionals always checked their job was complete.
Nate had got an arm around his throat easily enough, but his shooter’s thrashing had, in light of his wound, weakened him quickly. Having realised that he wasn’t going to get information out of him soon enough and not willing to risk being the weaker of the two, he’d promptly tightened his chokehold as he’d fed to help give him the strength he’d needed to heal. After he’d finished, he’d tightened his chokehold even more until finally the shooter had stopped struggling. To be sure, Nate had snapped his neck.
But when his wound hadn’t started to heal despite his feed, Nate had known something was wrong. With his apartment too far away on other side of Lowtown, he’d headed to his backup apartment. He’d got through the door and as far as the stairwell before he’d felt something pop inside him, confirming that the only thing that had saved him to that point was the mechanism malfunctioning initially. As was no doubt originally intended, he’d lost consciousness immediately.
Now the fact he was not only still alive but also healing told him that Ember – or someone she knew – had removed the bullet. And not only had she removed the bullet, he’d been given human blood to kick-start the healing process that his body would have been too damaged to implement for itself. Ember, seemingly, somehow, had saved his life – before handcuffing him to the stairwell. Handcuffed him with his cuffs.
He looked around for any sign of the bullet. Any sign of anything. But the stairwell was empty. The keys to his apartment were gone from beneath his hand. His phone had been taken from inside his jacket pocket.
He sank back on his haunches. He could tell from the state of his T-shirt and the step that there would have been a lot of blood. There was no way she would have risked even a trace of it being revealed on her clothing or any other belonging. She would have cleaned up, no doubt. Wanted to dispose of any evidence – the bullet with it.
The bullet he needed.
He glanced up at her closed door before he reached for the cuff and flicked the self-release mechanism he’d had installed in it, freeing his wrist. He clutched his still-aching side and used the balustrade to help him to his feet.
The fact she’d felt the need to cuff him proved she would have had more sense than to risk trying to make her way back down past him once he was conscious again, adding to his gut feeling that Ember was no longer there. And if Ember was no longer there, there was every chance the bullet was no longer there either.
Reaching her door, he knocked anyway.
He waited.
When there was no answer, he knocked again.
Cursing under his breath, he stepped over to his own apartment. He kicked the door once and then twice, it splintering and swinging open on the third kick.
He crossed into the bedroom and grabbed his spare set of keys from his jeans he’d discarded over the back of the chair. He tore off his bloodstained T-shirt and reached for a fresh one from the holdall by his bed. He’d shower when he got back.
And then he caught it on the breeze, echoing down the alley through his partially open bedroom window: voices.
A scuffle.
Male voices that were thirty feet away, yet as clear as if they were directly below the window. And amongst them was the brief plea of a woman’s voice.
A voice he’d recognise anywhere.