Page 7 of Black Hand
I was ready to say, “You don’t want to hang around me,” but I simply couldn’t. There was so much hope in her eyes it was choking the life out of me. Even though I knew it was the worst decision along a string of bad choices I’d made recently, I found myself nodding at her. The smile that brightened her face turned it to something truly beautiful.
“That’s great, we can do it this week—”
A scream ripped the quiet night around us and I was on my feet guarding Alice with my body before she had time to move. Her whispered “What the fuck” was drowned by another terror-filled screech that pebbled my skin.
“Stay here.” When she didn’t answer, I turned to stare at her. “Alice!” Her eyes were thick with fear when they jerked to my face. “Stay here.”
When she started nodding like a bobblehead, I spun on my heel and almost threw myself down the fire escape. The scream came from nearby, so like a hound I lifted my nose and followed the stench of fear and terror not even half a block down the road. With dread weighing heavily in my stomach, I reached the lump on the corner and lowered next to it, my gaze darting around me in search of whoever was there. Because they were still near. I could feel their eyes burning a hole through my skin. What was confusing was the faint scent of a shifter lingering in the air, but it must’ve been from Alice being near me since it was there one second and gone the next.
My hand found no pulse on the already-cooling skin of the human’s wrist. When I finally looked down, the horror-filled eyes were wide and unseeing, while the mouth of the young woman was open in a silent scream. For just a moment I dared to hope something else had killed her. Until I saw that her neck was chewed up the same way my arms use to be. I was so careful, yet I’d made a crucial mistake. Someone must’ve followed me here, and this was a message that they had me in the palm of their hand.
“Is she dead?” The question made me squeeze my eyes shut and pray for any help the fates or gods would give me. Because I had a bigger problem than the dead woman at my feet.
The Syndicate knew about Alice.
4
“You are going to be late.”
Anger and relief mixed into one when I saw Johnathan leaning on one of the lounge chairs the moment I walked through the front doors. It couldn’t have been him at the city, not if I went by the way he was dressed and the leering look in his eyes. If he was the one who followed me, there would be victory written all over his dumb face.
“So I’ll be late.” Shrugging a shoulder, I kept my gaze pinned on the wide rounding staircase to keep up the pretense of the nonchalance I didn’t feel. “I’m used to punishment. You, on the other hand, might rethink hanging around me like you’re the narrator of my life. They might rearrange your pretty face.”
Taking the stairs two at a time and pretending I didn’t hear his snide remarks, I had just about enough energy to keep my heartbeat steady. After accompanying Alice back to her home and making sure no one followed us there, it took all of four minutes and twenty seconds for me to haul ass and get back to the mansion. That left no more than five to get ready and show up in the hall where the Council expected me to be right on the dot.
I was going to be late.
“One of these days you’ll have to give in, Brooklyn, and forgive me for everything because it was all for your own good.” Johnathan called out, and I stopped at the top of the staircase to look down at him. For a second there he even looked sincere, but then he opened his mouth. “You know as well as I do that we’d make the perfect match to take over parts of the Syndicate’s empire. The Council knows it, too.”
“The only match I’m thinking about is the one I’ll be lighting over your corpse if you get anywhere near me, Johnathan. Now that will be perfect.”
His furious expression made me feel a little better, and I couldn’t keep away the small smile that tilted my lips. I had a problem killing people for no given reason, but the Syndicate life is all I’d ever known. I’d have no problem at all killing him. I’d actually enjoy it, come to think of it. With that image firmly in place, I pushed the door of my room open and stepped inside.
“I have everything ready, just take those horrible clothes off.” Veronica turned away from my dresser holding a brush in one hand and what looked like a string in the other.
She heard at least half of the conversation at the staircase.
“Veronica …”
“Don’t worry about it, Bee. He is an idiot. I know it, you know it … Hell, the entire community knows it.” Waving me off, she wiggled the brush at me. “Come on, you don’t have to be late by much.”
“You will be late, too.” My words were muffled from the shirt I tugged over my head at the same time as I kicked my boots off. It had the same odor I smelled on the roof of the warehouse and my nose wrinkled. Shockingly, Johnathan didn’t say anything about that. “I’m not a child. I can dress myself.”
“Have you met you?” My friend’s face was twisted in horror, and I couldn’t stop the bark of laughter that escaped me. “They’ll kick us both out of there if I let you dress yourself.”
“We can hope?” Her tinkling laughter joined mine and we both sighed. “That’s a pipe dream.”
“Here.” She waved the string she had in her hand just as I kicked the pile my leather pants made around my ankles. “Put this on and hurry.”
“What the hell is that?” Taking it between two fingers, I lifted it closer to my face when she smacked my arm.
“Something you will be wearing, so put it on.”
“Is this underwear?” My eyes were bugging out as I flung the stupid thing at her chest. “That’s some shit you’d wear, not me. Pass. Next!” I was turning away to grab a pair of my boxer briefs when something shiny in her arms got my attention from the corner of my eye, so I did a double take. “Oh, hell no. Get that thing away from me.”
Veronica was dressed in skin-tight silk that pooled around her feet as she walked. The pale blue color of her dress made her look almost ethereal, like a dream come to life. The diamonds twinkled where they dangled from her ears and peeked through the smooth strands of her blonde hair, which was falling like a waterfall over her shoulders. No one would think much of it because that was how she always looked. Almost as if you had to reach out and touch her to assure yourself she was real.
What she had in her arms was also silk by the looks of it, the shiny emerald color almost the same shade as my eyes. My friend was cradling it like it was something precious, and I was waiting for the war inside me as I internally screamed in horror while wanting to laugh out loud at the absurdity.
