Savage Wings: Book Three of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 17

The burden of their suspicious stares weighed heavily down upon me.

Every surreptitious sideways glance through narrowed eyes. Every blatant, bold glare filled with revulsion and mistrust. Every cold scowl that followed me wherever I went. I felt them all. And I certainly didn't need any powers of telepathy to know what they were thinking.

Traitor, they accused silently. Traitor, traitor, traitor.

Eventually the uncomfortable silence beat so loudly against my skull that I went in search of Harper, although I wasn't sure whether I was leaping from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. He had hardly spoken a word to me himself since I had left Le Loup Rouge and filled them all in on what had occurred while inside.

I found him, laying down on our make-shift bed in the school hall, which had been appropriated into a dormitory of sorts with the old gym mats used as beds. The scent of blood still hung in the air after the survivors of Oxleas and the Second Cleansing had fled here, many with wounds and injuries still fresh from battle. A few of the more seriously injured were here too, dotted about the room, recovering under blankets that smelt of damp.

Against the wall by the boarded-up windows a girl who looked barely out of her teens in human years, lay curled up on one of the beds, her head resting on the lap of a boy who couldn't have been much older than her when he was made. I remembered her from the battle, a brief but vivid memory of her charging across the field, red hair flying about a face that was twisted into a ferocious scowl as she howled her war-cry. Now her face was twisted with pain, ravaged by two deep claw marks that still scarred her flesh from her eye down to her throat. It was a deep wound but would heal soon, of course, but I knew the fear she was devastated by would take far longer to fade, if it ever would at all. Her companion stared into space with wide haunted eyes as he stroked her hair, humming a tune under his breath, whether to calm her or himself, I wasn't sure. The girl's eyes followed me across the room as I walked over to where Harper lay with his hands linked behind his head and his legs crossed casually at the ankles. Turning my back on her, I crouched down at his side and desperately tried to muster up some moisture in a throat which had gone suddenly dry in my struggle to know what to say.

"Seeking sanctuary, angel?" His face was impassive and bore no hint of a smile but I tried to take heart from the fact he had called me angel and not traitor. There was of course a chance he was screaming it at me inside his head, but I knew Cain wasn't one to suppress his rage – in fact, after killing Varúlfur and screwing women, venting his anger was probably his next favourite thing to do.

"That depends," I replied, keeping my voice low so not to disturb those resting here. "On whether I'm welcome. You haven't said much since we got back."

He arched a brow. "And what would you like me to say? That I think you were a fool to go in there in the first place? You knew that already. That I think you should have pulled that trigger and put a bullet in his skull? You know damn well that's a given. If I haven't said much, it's because I don't have to. What's the point of me telling you something you already know? And more importantly, what's the point of me telling you anything when you know that I'm right? You know you shouldn't have gone in there and you know you should have killed him when you had the chance. You want sanctuary with me? You got it. Now that's something you should know. But don't blame them for hating on you."

Sitting up, he stretched out his limbs and exhaled a long drawn-out yawn. "Anyway, I kind of like the fact they're not hating me so much right now," he said with a smirk and a mischievous glint in his eyes. "It seems in their opinion that being Vanagandr's wife is worse than being an assassin. Vampires are an unforgiving kind, Megan. We can bear a grudge for an eternity."