CHAPTER ONE
“Scarlett, you have to hide, okay?”
I stared up at my mummy, my bottom lip trembling.
“It’ll be okay, I promise,” she said glancing over her shoulder. “Stay very quiet, and I’ll be back soon.” She smoothed her hand through my hair and smiled. “You’re so brave, sweetie.”
I whimpered as she closed the lid of the big black metal box I was sitting in. I curled up in the dark, thrust my thumb into my mouth, and started to suck. Mummy looked scared, I thought. But Daddy is with her. Daddy is a hero. Everyone says so.
The sound of banging and muffled voices echoed from outside the box, and I began to cry as my hiding place shuddered, then lay still.
“Mummy?” I called out, my voice barely a whisper. When she didn’t answer, I tried again. “Mummy?”
The lid of the box opened, and I cowered in the corner as a man appeared. He stood over me, smiling. I didn’t know who he was, but he looked mean.
“Here she is,” he said to someone I couldn’t see. “C’mon, sweetheart.” He reached out and grasped me under my arms, then plucked me from my hiding place.
As I was lifted out of the box, I saw Mummy and Daddy lying on the ground. They were covered in red stuff, and their eyes were open like they were staring at the sky. They didn’t blink, not even once.
“Mummy!” I shrieked, fear rising in my belly. “Daddy!”
“Shut up, you little brat,” the man growled, his eyes rolling into the back of his head until only the whites showed. “They’re dead, and you will be too if you don’t be quiet.”
“No!” I screamed, not understanding how my four-year-old mind knew dead meant forever.
The man’s hands dug painfully into my sides as he shook me. “Shut up, you little shit!”
I screamed in terror and squirmed in his arms, trying to get away from the scary man.
“Stop it,” he said, his voice sounding strange. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
I thrashed harder, and he dropped me, my backside landed painfully on the ground. The man towered over me, his eyes glowing red and his jaw opened wide, exposing rows upon rows of scary, sharp teeth.
“I warned you,” he said, reaching out with his clawed hand.
I screamed as a flash of purple light enveloped everything.
* * *
I blinked, shaking off the unwanted memory that I’d always assumed was of my parents’ death. I don’t know what had happened after the man had dropped me—the recollection always stopped there.
Steadying myself against the bar, I took a deep breath and glanced around the pub. Twenty years later, and I still didn’t know what any of it meant, let alone whether any of it was real.
It was quiet today, and my shift had been agonisingly slow, which probably accounted for the daydreaming. More like day-nightmaring, I thought.
Arcade games were flashing and beeping in the back, retro tabletop games lit up a bank of tables in front of the bar, and the wall behind me was bright with LED pixelated video game characters. A graffiti-style mural of the pub’s logo was on the opposite side, surrounded by more characters, though I recognised these—Mario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and that mushroom guy, Toad.
8-bit was a gamer pub—a place grownups went to pretend to be adults while really they wanted to relive their days in front of their Commodore 64s. Video games upon video games, alcohol, the entire city’s nerd population, and a constant stream of tourists. What could go wrong?
Nestled deep within the markets in Camden Town, London, 8-bit was a part of the alternative mecca of the city. You could find anything at the markets. Black-lit raver shops with furry day-glo leg warmers, poufy rockabilly dresses with cherries and swallows on them, Asian food by the wok-ful, leather handicrafts, vintage markets, goth and cyberpunk fashion, and punks. Lots of punks with scarily big mohawks. With my unnatural purple-tinged locks, scarred mentality, and love for tight black jeans and combat boots, I fit right in.
I slumped against the counter, my chest constricting. Luckily for me, only a few people were in the pub and they were all engrossed in a tabletop game and hadn’t seen my mini-meltdown.
I tried to fight it, but I inevitably broke out in a cold sweat. Striding down the bar, I dodged a worried-looking Shannon in my desperation to get outside while not looking like a freak in the process.
“Hey, Shannon,” I called out on my way past, “I’m going outside for some air. Can you watch the bar for a sec?”
“Scarlett, are you okay?” she asked. “You look a little sick.”
“I just need some air.”
Not waiting for her reply, I wove past the kitchen and pushed out the rear door and into the lane. Cool air brushed against my face and I breathed deeply, doing my best to calm the wave of terror that haunted my every step.
I wasn’t surprised to find that it’d darkened pretty quickly out here. Winter was like that in this part of the world. Four in the afternoon, and the sun was already well behind the row of buildings across the street, and the lane at the rear of the pub was cast in inky shadow, apart from the orb of light I was standing in.
Pressing my palms against my flushed cheeks, I leaned against the wall inside the little alcove that sheltered the door. I hadn’t had an episode like that in a long time. Dreams where I woke up gasping for air, alone in my bed, yes; but while I was awake and at work, in public? Never. Panic attacks were the worst, and once people knew, they always wanted to know why. It was a revolving door of awkward questions I couldn’t answer. I never knew what any of the things I saw meant, anyway.
The little bulb above my head flickered, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. It was that uncomfortable feeling people get when someone’s watching them, or maybe it was just the thought of someone lurking in the shadows. Probably just the after-effects of my panic attack. They got so bad that sometimes I puked. Shit, I hoped I wasn’t going to projectile into the gutter.
Glancing up and down the lane, I expected to see someone lingering—because being stalked was way better than throwing up, not—but no one was there. The light bulb flickered again, and I shivered. Should’ve picked up my coat on my way out.
Taking one more look, I hesitated when the shadowy figure of a man appeared halfway between me and the mouth of the lane. What the…? He hadn’t been there a second ago. The man stepped closer, and my heart twisted. Edging backwards, I peered at him as his boots scraped against the cobblestones.
Another figure appeared on High Street, silhouetted by the streetlights and the over-lit tattoo and body piercing shop across the road. He turned down the lane and approached the other man from behind, his steps purposeful. He was wearing a leather biker jacket and big boots, and the other guy looked normal enough—apart from the ugly blond colour of his hair.
Maybe this was one of those ‘wrong place, wrong time’ scenarios. Luck had never been my strong suit.
Leather Jacket Guy shook out his right arm as he gained on the other guy. A knife slid down his sleeve and dropped into his hand. Striding forward, he grasped the guy by the shoulder and swung him around.
“No!” I shrieked as he plunged his knife into the other guy’s chest.
A rush of adrenaline surged through my body, and before I knew what I was doing, I rushed out of the alcove and into the lane. Icy air blew through my hair.
Leather Jacket Guy was startled by my cry, and he let go of the body, rising to his full height with the grace of a predator. Our gazes met, and I almost shit myself. He turned towards me, his lips curving into a grin. He had short-cropped, almost black hair, and a thick coating of stubble on his hard jaw, and his eyes… His eyes almost looked silver.
I swallowed hard and took a step backwards. He’d killed a guy in the middle of the street, and now he was looking at me with a creepy smirk on his face. This was bad. Everyone knew you were supposed to run away from danger, not right at it, but I had to be the irreverent, quirky one, didn’t I? Rush right into the gaping maw of Hell, Scarlett. You’ll be just fine. Not!
I stood transfixed as Leather Jacket Guy grunted at me, and then dragged the body of his victim farther into the lane. No one passing by on High Street was even looking at them—like they weren’t even there.
I stared at the two men with my mouth hanging open. The knife was sticking out of the man’s chest, buried right to the hilt. When Leather Jacket dumped him, the man groaned, a puff of black smoke trailing from between his parted lips. My eyes widened as the inky cloud continued to whoosh out before it escaped into the darkening sky.
“What. The. Fu—”
“Well, this is a predicament,” Leather Jacket said, his accent very thick and very northern English, acting like this was an everyday occurrence for him. “What are you supposed to be, Purples?”
“P-purples?” My mouth was flapping uselessly. This was so not happening.
“Yeah, Purples. Your hair is purple, right?”
I glanced around and shied away when a group of women who stopped on the street and stared at me like I was mad.
“You’d better come farther into this dark alley where no one can see you, lovely,” Leather Jacket said, pulling the knife from the dead body. “You see me, but they don’t.”
“Y-you… you’re invisible?”
He flipped the knife in his hand and smirked. “He marked you, Purples. You’re welcome.”
“M-marked me?”
“I just saved your life.” He mock-bowed with a flourish. “You’re welcome.”
“No,” I said, wishing I’d had the good sense to run back into 8-bit, “you killed him.”
Leather Jacket rolled his eyes and grasped my wrist, then yanked me into the darkness. Oh, God, this was it. I was about to be murdered. Happy birthday, Scarlett.
I almost fell on my arse as he grasped my face and tilted my head to the side.
“Get your hands off me!” I shoved him away and stumbled back against the wall.
He curled his lip and grabbed my face again. “Where’d you get that lovely scar?” he asked, rubbing his thumb over the puckered line that split through my hairline, down the side of my face directly in front of my right ear, and ended at my jawline.
“None of your business.”
“Oh, I think it is,” he said, stepping forward and trapping me with his sheer size. “You can see through my Light, and if I’m not mistaken, you saw the parasite fleeing that man’s body. You’re either playing dumb or you’re manifesting. I’m going to take a stab at playing dumb, because no one manifests at your age.”
“My age?” I exclaimed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Leather Jacket laughed and tilted his face towards the sky. “She sees me excise a demon, and she’s worried that I know about her age? Women.”
“I don’t understand,” I wailed. “Just… just let me go. I won’t say anything. I—” You’re rambling.
He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes shining silver in the darkness, almost like a cat…
“You really don’t know anything, do you?” he murmured.
“I… I just… I don’t know why I came out here.”
Leather Jacket sighed, his gaze lowering. He seemed to silently deliberate for a minute before he raised his head.
“Are you going to kill me?” I blurted.
He laughed, looking more and more like a psychopathic underwear model the longer our encounter dragged on.
“Let’s give this a try,” he mused, combing his hand through my hair.
I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me, or if he was referring to what he planned to do with the blood-stained knife in his hand, but he grasped my face again, locking his gaze with mine. “Go back inside and forget what you saw out here,” he murmured, his voice washing over me in soothing waves. “This never happened, got it?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, “nothing happened.”
“Good girl,” Leather Jacket purred, letting me go. “Now, go back inside. It’s cold out.”
Slightly dazed, I turned and opened the door.
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