City of Magic: The Complete Series by Helen Harper (book club recommendations TXT) 📕

and let her go. She dropped to the ground and scarpered off, disappearing down the street with surprising speed. Shit.

‘Lucy!’ This was not the time to play bloody hide-and-seek. If Julian caught wind of the fact that she was loose within the enclave, he’d demand that I get rid of her for good. ‘Lucy!’

From further up in the gloom I heard another tiny squeak. I cursed and sprinted towards it. A small dark shape flitted across the road, barely twenty metres away. I gritted my teeth and ran towards it.

‘Lucy,’ I said, in my sternest voice. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but there will be no treats for you if you don’t get back here now.’

I’d barely finished speaking when a loud crack filled the air. I came to a sudden halt. What the fuck was that? A second later there was another one. And another.

‘Gun shots,’ I whispered. ‘Those were gun shots.’

The barricade alarm began to sound, its clang reverberating through the streets. This time I knew it wasn’t ringing because of any pigeons. This time it sounded a death knell.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Blood was roaring in my ears. Every single reason for the gun shots flooded through my head as my feet pounded the streets towards the barricade. Every single possibility apart from the right one.

When I reached Felicity and Theo, who were both pale faced and staring across at Fabian Barrett’s tent, I saw the splatter of blood on its white length. Then I saw the sprawled body lying in front of the tent with its hazmat visor half pulled off. The shock that reverberated through me had me gasping for breath.

I threw myself past Felicity and Theo and over the top of the barricade, then crouched down by Boyce’s side, desperately seeking a way to stem the blood flow, to check his wounds, to help him out in any damn way that I could. I was already too late. No pulse throbbed in his neck and, when I yanked the hazmat hood away, his eyes were fixed and staring.

Further away from the enclave, I could hear yelling. I rocked back on my haunches, nausea and disbelief mingling in my belly. Then I was up and stumbling away, as the contents of my stomach ejected themselves into a corner of the dusty street.

‘What the fuck happened?’ Monroe’s Scottish brogue was harsh, laced with both fury and fear. His demons from the first night of the apocalypse still haunted him; any death, even this one, was liable to bring them to the forefront of his mind again.

I swallowed hard and stood up, turning to Felicity and Theo, desperate for an answer that would make sense. Theo drew in a deep breath. He was trembling. Knowing the laid-back vampire, it was probably more because of shock than fear.

‘He came past us maybe ten minutes ago. He was alone.’ Theo shook his head, his eyes glowing a baleful green through the darkness. ‘I don’t know where he’d been. We opened the door for him and he went round the back of the tent.’

‘Did he go inside?’ I demanded. If Barrett had realised what Boyce had been saying to me moments earlier, he could well have done this himself. Icy fingers gripped at my heart. Despite my shocked stupor, I was already getting an idea of how Barrett would play things.

‘I…’ Theo stared at me. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’

‘No.’ Felicity’s voice was thin but the word still echoed round us with finality. ‘He took position outside with one of the other guys. There was a noise.’ She pointed down the street to where the yelling had come from. ‘Like a thud or something. He went to investigate it. He came back a few minutes later and said it was nothing. He was looking at us and then…’

‘Then the shot,’ Theo finished for her. ‘I don’t know where it came from.’

‘One shot?’ Monroe’s eyes narrowed. ‘I heard two.’

‘The second one hit the tent.’ Felicity pointed at a tear I’d not noticed. Boyce’s blood circled it, like a sickening bullseye.

‘And you stayed there? Behind the barricade?’ Fury coloured Monroe’s every word.

‘The other guard had already run off. Fab Barrett and the others came out and did the same.’

‘And you let them go off on their own?’

Felicity lifted her chin. ‘We were the only ones here and our job is to protect the enclave. Not them.’ She glanced at Boyce’s corpse and then away. ‘Not him.’

‘They chose to pitch their tent outside,’ Theo agreed. ‘We chose to stay here and protect our own from whatever else might be coming. That man was already dead. We couldn’t have done anything to help him.’ He paused and reached for Felicity’s hand. ‘And if we’d got involved, who knows what accusations we might have faced.’

Because of Fabian Barrett. My stomach lurched again but this time I managed to keep a lid on it. Barely. The pair of them had thought a lot more rationally and calmly than I could have done. No wonder they made such effective barricade guards. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’d done the right thing. If they’d abandoned their posts to go after the gunman – or woman – who knows what else might have happened.

‘You have no idea who did this?’ I asked quietly.

They shook their heads. ‘No.’

From behind me a single voice called out, ‘I know who did this.’

Barrett. I turned and watched him approach. ‘There’s only one person who could have been responsible for all of this,’ he said. From beneath the visor his expression was set and tense. ‘Only one person had access to the guns we brought in on our first visit.’

In a fluid movement, Monroe leapt from behind the barricade and planted himself in front of the billionaire. ‘Are you trying to suggest that Julian is behind all this?’ he snarled.

I had to give Barrett his due; despite the full force of Monroe’s fury, he stood his ground. ‘Where