Dark Heart Surrender Read Online Free PDF Page A

Polly.
    ‘He’s …’
    ‘Beautiful,’ she replied, snatching back the phone and pressing a button so that the picture disappeared. ‘Shame you don’t want him.’
    Ignoring that, I reached over the desk for a pen and scribbled down some digits on a piece of paper, which I held out to her.
    ‘My number. Text me that picture and I’ll see what I can do.’
    ‘I’ve picked out the classes I want to take,’ Polly said calmly, taking my number and plumbing it into her phone. ‘But if it’s boring here, or if anyone gets on my case, I’m going. I don’t need qualifications to do what I want to do.’ Giving me a cryptic look she waltzed past me and out of the room.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    L uca was getting used to Anna Jonas’s cooking. He was bemused by the frozen peas and the oven chips: grainy and synthetic in texture but curiously pleasant once they were doused in the bright-red tangy sauce she put on the table at every meal.
    But this evening even a king’s banquet would have left him cold. He couldn’t get the sight of that delicate necklace, sticky with blood, out of his mind.
    ‘You’re very quiet, Luca,’ said Anna, flicking a look at Jane, who seemed similarly distracted. ‘Bad day at the office?’
    Luca was bewildered by her words. He turned to Jane.
    ‘It’s an expression that middle-aged people use,’ she said, rolling her eyes at her mother. She took Luca’s hand under the table and squeezed it. In return he pressed his thigh against hers.
    ‘Are you OK?’ she whispered.
    Luca mustered a weak smile. He realized that the whole family was looking at him in concern now.
    ‘I’m just tired. I think I underestimated how exhausting clearance work can be.’ He smiled. ‘Or how draining.’
    ‘You’re out at the old army training ground aren’t you?’ Jack Jonas dropped his serviette on his empty plate. ‘A lot of grisly equipment out there. Place has been deserted for a decade at least.’
    ‘It’s haunted, that place,’ Dot put in matter-of-factly. As usual the last to finish her meal, she speared a chip with her fork, dipping it daintily in tomato sauce. ‘That’s what Danny in my class said anyhow. His dad was in the army.’
    ‘It’s not haunted,’ Anna said sharply, rising from the table. ‘That’s silly nonsense.’ Neither Dot nor my father had any memory of the danger we had been in at the training ground all that time ago. The time Evan – or Raphael as he really was – had tried to kill the Jonas family to avenge his father’s death. There was a pointed silence, though Dot was oblivious.
    ‘His dad said they used to think they saw these weird foxes, only they were bigger, like giant foxes, and they had weird-coloured eyes and sometimes they turned human, or something …’ Dot trailed off a little doubtfully.
    But Luca felt a stir of recognition. He had heard of this creature in Nissilum mythology. A large and malevolent animal, half fox, half human. Like a werewolf, its metamorphosis from fox to human was dependent on environment. Not on the full moon, but on temperature. This fox thrived on heat. As the climate grew warmer it kept its human form. In the dead of night, when the temperature dropped, it was an animal once more. Vicious, hungry, and craving not just human blood, but the human soul too. Ulfred, Luca’s father, used to speak of these creatures’ particular rivalry with werewolves. Their sense of superiority. They considered themselves more agile, more intelligent, less vulnerable to human weakness. The species had a bent to evil that could not be diluted. There were none on Nissilum. They didn’t pass the test, as it were.
    ‘Giant foxes?’ Beside him Jane snorted, though she was still holding on to his hand. ‘Whoever heard of giant evil foxes?’
    Luca kept his grip on her hand steady, careful not to betray his creeping sense of unease. The necklace in blood. And now Dot’s innocent reminder of what still lurked out there.
    ‘Want to go and hang