Page 113 of Burn Like An Angel

One look in his direction silences him. I’m kneeling next to my friend’s corpse, covered in her blood. Death and defeat are scattered all around us. We’ve fled. Schemed. Bargained. Killed.

Enough.

No more cheap hotels or breaking and entering. No more stealing cash to buy enough food to keep us alive. No more hiding our faces and praying death doesn’t come knocking. I’m done being scared.

“Make the call.” My words come out steadier than I feel. “That’s final.”

Xander pats his pockets, searching for the stolen phone kept on his person at all times. A startling ringtone erupts before he can find it, only the noise isn’t coming from him. We all glance around in shock.

Our captive moans weakly. Eyebrows knitted, Lennox reaches into his bulletproof vest, pulling out a clunky-looking burner phone. He frowns down at the lit screen.

“Boss,” he reads.

The ringtone halts, leaving us in crushing silence. It quickly starts up again with a second call.

I lift a trembling hand. “Here.”

Lennox pauses, clutching the device. “Sure you want to do this?”

“Yes.”

His mouth pursed, he tosses the phone underhand towards me. I numbly catch it, stabbing down on the green button before holding it to my ear.

“Why is no one else answering their phones?”

My hand tightens into a vice, creaking the cheap plastic.

“Hello? Is it done? Do you have her?”

Summoning my voice, it sounds alien to my own ears.

“Hello, Uncle Jonathan.”

CHAPTER 17

XANDER

JERK – OLIVER TREE

PRESENT DAY

The shininglights of Central London blur all around me in the drizzly morning rainfall. It paints a saturated, kaleidoscopic world, busy with suit-clad workers, dawdling taxis and bright-red tourist buses whizzing past.

Normality is a thin veneer painted over the truth I know lies within. A transparent film, invisible to the naked eye, concealing the reality that few are unlucky enough to ever uncover and live to tell the tale.

London—the heart of power and corruption in a lawless land.

I hate this fucking city.

It’s not so much the people. I’ve learned to tolerate them. And I only truly pay attention to those I care about. Like always, everyone else is irrelevant. Inconsequential. Undeserving of my limited empathy.

No, my qualms with this dirty, sweaty hellhole are far more pertinent. It’s the secrets this city holds so dear. So much exploitation, hiding in plain sight behind glittering tourist attractions and gilded palaces.

What if those in power cared?

Would we still have suffered back then?

Even if the bigwigs behind the corporation that stole our lives from us harboured a mere speck of humanity, we earned our places in Harrowdean Manor. Perhaps it’s only fair that we bore the brunt of their scientific curiosity.

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