Читать книгу Blade's Lady - Фиона Бранд - Страница 10

Present day, Auckland, New Zealand

It was raining as Anna left the library, a slow drift of icy drizzle condensing out of darkness, swirling with a ghostly brilliance in the yellowish glare of sodium streetlamps.

She slipped on her raincoat as the heavy double doors were locked behind her and the tall, taciturn man who pulled late shift at the front desk flipped up the hood of his voluminous black coat and hunched into the night like a large, disgruntled bird searching for its roost.

Shoving long tendrils of hair back from her face, Anna strode down the shallow stone steps, gripped her briefcase and mentally prepared herself to be gently soaked before she reached the doubtful sanctuary of her flat.

Habit had her searching the shadows, checking the street, the cars. Nothing was out of the ordinary, but that wasn’t how she felt. Tonight she felt spooked, uneasy…haunted.

Despite her tension, a wry smile softened the line of her mouth. Haunted enough to consider that she might actually be cursed with some of the more spectacular preternatural talents of her Montague ancestors, which her grandmother had once regaled her with, along with the glories and history of her ancient, almost extinct family.

Extinct, that was, except for her.

The brief flicker of amusement disappeared. The stark fact that, since the death of her mother, Eloise, just months ago, Anna was the last of the Montague line, and almost the last of her father’s family—the Tarrants—also sat uneasily with her tonight, although she didn’t usually allow herself the luxury of dwelling on either her loneliness or her isolation.

But then, she didn’t often find a notice in the local newspaper declaring her to be legally dead.

A shudder swept her, part remnant of the fear that had shaken through her that morning when she’d read the neat black print, part winter chill. The dank coldness swirled and clung, threatening to penetrate her thin coat and sink in all the way to the bone.

She should have expected something like this. Her stepfather, Henry de Rocheford, had to be as aware as she was of her approaching birthday and what it would mean for both of them. They’d played a cat and mouse game for years, but now Henry had run out of time.

He wanted her dead.

Her stomach lurched. The knowledge still had the power to terrify her.

Henry hadn’t succeeded in killing her…yet, but he’d come close several times. The last attempt had been seven years ago, sending her into hiding. Now it seemed he had found a better way. He was trying to dispose of her, legally, before she reached her twenty-seventh birthday and qualified for control of her father’s massive mining interests—Tarrant Holdings—which had been held in trust for her.

The situation was tangled, frightening…potentially deadly. De Rocheford was a man of great intellect and power, a handsome, charismatic man with all the outward trappings of a gentleman and the resources of the Tarrant wealth at his fingertips. He was her father’s half-brother, and although he had no direct claim on his half-brother’s estate, he now controlled the company by virtue of his marriage to Anna’s mother shortly after Hugh Tarrant’s death.

A passing car sent cold mist pluming off the road, wreathing parked cars in a shimmering, ever-dissolving shroud as the drizzle intensified. Anna quickened her pace, her brisk step sounding oddly flattened, as if the mist and drizzle served to muffle even the sharpest sound. As she passed from the relative brightness of the library car park into the badly lit stretch of sidewalk that bordered Ambrose Park, she had the oddest notion that the night would swallow her whole.

She shouldn’t have delayed in the musty warmth of the library, huddling over her research materials, trying to lose herself in the medieval treasure trove of the Crusades, the beauty and the brutality, the rich splendour and intellect that rubbed cheek by jowl with ignorance and grinding poverty. It hadn’t worked. She hadn’t gotten any further along with the novel she was writing, all she had gained was a headache and gritty eyes that she would regret tomorrow, when she had to spend twelve hours solid on her feet at Joe’s Bar and Grill. Her mind had been consumed with that damned legal notice and her attempt to contact Tarrant’s lawyers earlier in the day.

An attempt that had failed.

Emerson Stevens, the partner who dealt with Tarrant business, most definitely hadn’t been able to see her. He had been killed in a hit-and-run accident just weeks before. The receptionist had been pleasant but officious. If Anna wanted to see anyone else, she would have to make an appointment. Not surprising, Anna thought, since she’d turned up in her waitressing uniform—Joe’s Bar and Grill emblazoned across her chest—and given her name as Johnson.

The shabby entrance sign to Ambrose Park loomed, lit by the solitary spotlight that hadn’t been broken or stolen. The park was pleasant enough to walk across during daylight hours, but at night it was devoid of all charm and more likely to hold vagrants than lovers.

A tingling of the nerves down her spine, a cold jab of awareness, presaged a whisper of sound, the scrape of a shoe on pavement.

Anna ducked, feinted, felt the rush of air as something passed close to her head. Instinctively, she lashed out with the briefcase; it connected solidly. There was a muffled curse, a grunt as whoever had tried to hit her slipped on the slick concrete and tumbled, almost taking her with him.

A booted foot caught her heavily on one knee. She flailed, grabbed for balance, almost dropping the briefcase. Her shoulder caught the edge of one of the unevenly plastered pillars that guarded the broad entrance to the park. She reeled, still off balance, and saw the cold gleam of light travel the length of a gun barrel as the man regained his feet.

Time seemed to slow, stop, freeze her in place while her mind groped past a paralysing blankness; then fear slammed through her, and with a gasping breath she plunged into the darkness.

In abrupt contrast to the blankness of just moments ago, thoughts and decisions now tumbled in a frantic cascade. The park was her best option; the trees were closer than any building, the undergrowth thick at the edges. And it was very dark. He couldn’t shoot her if he couldn’t see her.

Clutching the case to her chest, Anna lengthened her stride, but her sneakers kept losing their purchase, slipping on the wet grass.

She risked a glance over her shoulder. A burst of adrenaline punched hotly through her as she saw the man coming after her and knew this was no ordinary mugging. She stumbled, regained her balance. A sense of unreality gripped her as she passed by the darker outline of a set of swings and a slide—innocent reminders of a childhood that for her had ended brutally in a flooded river.

Oh God. She had allowed herself to become complacent, over-confident—lulled by the knowledge that her twenty-seventh birthday was only weeks away, and then she could end this madness. She had been wrong; she’d been found. Someone had been lying in wait for her.

If it hadn’t been for that burst of awareness, honed by years of running and hiding, she would be dead. She knew that as surely as she knew that Henry had set her up.

She had made a mistake. Stupid. Stupid.

The notice in the paper had served a purpose other than the obvious legal one; it had also been a ploy to flush her out of hiding. There had been someone watching the lawyer’s office; she had been followed from there.

She should have rung Emerson Stevens instead of showing up unannounced, only to be blocked. If she’d rung, she would have found out Emerson was dead, and that there was no point in approaching Stevens, Harrow and Cooper directly yet, because with Emerson gone, there was no-one there who knew her by sight. No-one who would believe that she hadn’t died when her car had plunged over a cliff into the sea almost seven years ago. No-one who would give her the time of day without irrefutable evidence of her identity.

It was a catch-22 situation. To establish her identity, she would have to reveal herself, turn herself into a target while the wheels of justice slowly ground their course. If she had to resort to DNA testing to prove her right to her own inheritance, that could take months, and money she didn’t have.

Panic grabbed at her insides as the ruthless simplicity of Henry’s strategy sank in and eroded her confidence. Henry was nothing if not thorough. Having her declared legally dead would finalise his claim on Tarrant Holdings, then he would make the legal fiction a physical fact by having her disposed of before she had time to establish her identity.

One way or another, the shadowed half life of Anna Johnson-Tarrant would cease.

She heard the pounding of footsteps above her own, caught the edge of a guttural phrase, and panic surged again. The man was gaining. She could hear the grunting rush of his breath as he strained to catch her, almost feel the brush of his fingers as he reached to grab her clothing, a shoulder, an arm. The trees loomed close, closer, then she was among them, branches whipping at her legs, tugging at her clothing as she weaved blindly, more by instinct than sight, because it was like running into a wall of darkness. She wavered, confused, slammed head first into a tree and fell to the ground, stunned.

She rolled and crawled on—the briefcase awkward—thankful that the thick layer of leaves was too sodden to rustle. A rough oath grated, low and harsh. Light dazzled her as the beam of a flashlight swept the trees, flooding the dense brush with an unholy radiance that backlit the short, stocky man who was after her. The beam scythed over her head. She dropped flat, damming her startled breath in her throat, hugging the cold, wet earth like a hungry lover.

After an eon, he moved on. She could hear the uneven thud of his tread—as if he was limping—feel the hot pulse of a lump forming on her forehead, taste blood in her mouth.

Her head spun as she regained her feet and started in the direction opposite from the one the man was taking, feeling her way from tree to tree, lifting and setting her feet down with care. The ground was uneven, an obstacle course of jutting tree roots and slippery vegetation.

The beam swung back, almost silhouetting her. She ducked and crouched behind a tree trunk, holding her breath for long, strained moments. When the beam swung away, she once more hugged her briefcase to her chest and headed for the only source of light she could see, a blue and red glow that she knew emanated from the towering neon Gamezone sign that garishly announced the presence of the video arcade near her flat.

Minutes later, she stumbled free of the trees and stepped into…darkness.

The fall was abrupt, shocking. For long moments she lay unmoving, facedown in what she dimly recognised as the deeply carved groove of a storm drain. The smell of mud and her own fear filled her nostrils; the sound of her racing heart jackhammered in her ears. She still had her briefcase; it was lodged beneath her, its hard edges digging into her stomach, her breasts. She was going to have bruises—lots of them.

Pushing herself onto her hands and knees, she gripped the case and fought to still the sickening spinning in her head. She fingered the tight, tender lump already forming there.

Clutching a fistful of icy grass, she began to climb out of the ditch. She was almost out, so close, when she lost her footing and, hampered by the awkward weight of the case, tumbled back. A sound broke from her throat. Pain flared, as if someone had just driven a thick spike through her skull, then dissolved into swirling shards of darkness.

Just before the blackness claimed her completely, the elusive threads of the old familiar fantasy she used to escape into when she was a child—and sometimes even now, when she dreamed—wound through her mind.

Her knight.

His face shimmered into vague focus: the long hair, black as midnight satin; fierce, dark eyes; the strong chiseled planes and angles of a face that was both grimly handsome and exotically sensual. Oh yeah, he was a fantasy, all right. Why couldn’t you be real? she thought hazily.

Right now, the fantasy, pretty as it was, just didn’t do the job.

Blade shoved free of the bed. And the dream.

His heart was pounding, his skin damp with sweat, his chest heaving like a bellows. He swore, a low, dark rumble of sound. Dragging unsteady fingers through his hair, he fought to banish the image of mist and rain and darkness. Trees, lots of trees, and a pulsing neon sign. The woman, lying crumpled on the ground, afraid…hunted. A dark bank rearing overhead.

The dream had been strong this time.

A shudder swept him, compliments of the disorientating aftermath of the dream—and other far more potent emotions: his powerful need to intervene, to protect and help her, to push back whatever darkness had hounded first the child, and now the woman with such ferocity that she was somehow propelled into his dreams, his thoughts.

Renewed tension coursed through him. He didn’t have a clear idea of what the woman looked like, or her name.

His jaw locked. How he longed to hang a name on her.

If she was real, he reminded himself grimly. Oh baby, if she was real.

Either way, like the other dreams he’d had, Blade had nothing to go on other than the belly punch of the woman’s emotions, her desperate thoughts, the stark images that haunted him.

The dreams weren’t always about her being attacked, helpless—sometimes they were entirely different.

His breath sifted from between clenched teeth as he pushed a set of bifold doors wide open and stepped naked onto the paved terrace of his penthouse suite at the Lombard Hotel.

A cold, fitful breeze swirled, disturbing the black mane of hair that tumbled to his big shoulders, evaporating the sweat from his skin. He welcomed the ensuing chill that roughened his flesh, made all his muscles tighten.

He stared blindly out at Auckland’s version of a winter night, eyes slitted, focused inward, his mind consumed with the woman who consistently invaded his dreams.

Sometimes he made to love to the shadowy woman.

Frustration burned, threatening to erupt into temper. He reined it in. Blade didn’t like losing control in any area of his life. This desperate, endless hunger for a woman who existed only in his dreams tormented him, made him helpless in a way he couldn’t—wouldn’t—tolerate.

Dammit, he didn’t even know what she looked like, beyond the fact that she was slim and delicately built, with a silky swath of dark hair that glowed copper in the light, and when he touched her…

A hoarse groan wrenched itself from deep in his throat. When he touched her, it was like touching fire—they both burned.

His jaw tightened. The raw need to possess the woman in his dreams, the flood of pleasure that swamped him at the simplest of touches, haunted him, mocked him. He had never felt anything remotely like it in real life.

Dispassionately, he considered the yawning gulf between the dreams and reality.

His libido was healthy, some might say too healthy, but he was no sexual predator. The primitive desire to possess the woman that permeated those sensual encounters was as alien to Blade as the dreams were. The fact was, he enjoyed women—plural—their friendship and the sex, but he had never needed any of his sexual partners beyond the act.

Broodingly, he paced the width of the terrace, gripped the cold iron of the railing, and faced the disturbing essence of his unease. He wanted the dreams to be real. More, he hungered for what he experienced in the dreams but had never found anywhere else. Every time he touched a woman, made love to her, he was aware that he was grasping for that exquisite, primitive intensity and not finding it.

The breeze kicked up, sending moist air whirling like a damp cloak about his shoulders. The deepening chill matched the bleakness of his thoughts. When he was buried deep inside a woman, he shouldn’t have to feel…alone.

Then there was the matter of control. If he made love to a woman, he retained control. All the way.

And he never made love with strange women. He had certain standards, a code of honour that was as simple and ruthlessly direct as a set of military orders. One of the rules of engagement was that he always insisted on an introduction first.

He began to notice the cold. His breath condensed in the air, mist wreathed the streetlamps below and hung in streamers across the road. It was also drizzling, a light, drifting drizzle.

Like the dream.

Traffic was sporadic, but still steady. He could see couples strolling, maybe catching a movie or supper at one of the street cafes.

It wasn’t that late. He had only been asleep for a short time. The dream must have taken hold of him the second his head had hit the pillow. There was an odd jolting sensation he’d come to recognise, as if some internal switch had been thrown. Then the dream unravelled. Images. Impressions. Sometimes nothing but a jumble, sometimes pictures that were startlingly clear. Like tonight.

He cursed as the images replayed themselves in his mind. He remembered the vivid blue and red of the neon sign. The sign had said…

Gamezone.

His head came up, nostrils flaring as if he’d caught an elusive scent, one he’d been seeking for more years than he cared to count. If only to disprove it.

“Gamezone.”

He said the name out loud, letting it linger on his tongue, as if testing the veracity of the syllables.

With a harsh exclamation, he strode inside, switched on a lamp and reached for the telephone book.

He was clutching at shadows. Maybe when he came up with another blank the stranglehold on his gut would ease up.

Despite reason and cold logic, his pulse hammered as he searched through the book, ran his finger down a page…and stopped.

“Son of a bitch.”

Blade’s heart slammed once, hard, against the wall of his chest. His gaze narrowed at the bold type advertising a games arcade in one of the seedier areas of town, but no matter how hard he looked at the address, it didn’t disappear.

Gamezone.

Blade stared at the garish blue and red sign. A sign he remembered but had never seen.

His gaze swept the surrounding area, noting the unmistakeable uniformity of state housing jammed cheek by jowl with clusters of badly built apartments. Definitely down at heel.

A darkened area caught his eye. A park.

He called himself crazy, but put the Jeep Cherokee in gear and cruised closer, noting the name of the park, the broken lights, the shabby plastered pillars guarding the entrance. Swinging the Jeep into a space, he pulled on a leather jacket, eased it over the fit of the Glock shoved snug in its shoulder holster, checked the knife in his boot and grabbed a torch, but didn’t turn it on.

Thunder rolled, giving a low-register warning of the incoming storm. The strengthening breeze scattered rain in his face, bringing with it scents that were city-tame, others that were earthy, wild. Something equally uncivilised unraveled inside Blade, and despite the fury and frustration that still ate at the edges of his temper, he bared his teeth in a cold grin. He stood by the Jeep for long seconds, his senses animal-sharp as he stared across the expanse of grass and trees with eyes peculiarly well-adjusted to the smothering blackness.

When he’d been with the Special Air Service he’d been called names—he’d been called lots of names—but he couldn’t completely deny the wolf’s blood that was purported to run in his veins. He felt like howling right now.

He should be tucked up in bed, getting his beauty sleep. Or, better still, tucked up in bed with a beauty and getting no sleep at all. Not hunting a…ghost.

A chill went through him, along with echoes of urgency and the compulsion that had driven him out into the night. He had to check. Gamezone had been real. For his own peace of mind, he had to check.

If she was real…

He rejected the thought. She couldn’t be real. Better to think about what he was going to do when he didn’t find a woman—like which psychiatrist he’d choose to oversee his therapy, and whether or not he should have himself committed.

He searched the area, coldly, efficiently, and found nothing.

Finally he walked the perimeter and found the storm water drain…and his ghost.