Dark Vision Read Online Free PDF Page A

them – nothing. They’d gone AWOL. Bloody typical.
    My nan rubbed at her wrist, and I felt a pang of guilt, knowing there’d be finger-shaped bruises there later in the day. I might be screwed up, but that didn’t make me feel good about committing assault and battery on a pensioner.
    ‘There’s nothing I can tell you,’ she said. ‘Nothing you need to know. So shut up and drink your bloody tea. This is your life; this is who you are. Sorry if the surroundings aren’t grand enough for you, milady, but you’re Lily McCain. From Anfield. Live with it.’
    I shut up. I drank my tea. I tried to talk to her, about my life, about hers, all the time feeling the impenetrable barrier she’d always kept up still firmly in place. Coleen was the definition of the term ‘tough old bird’. I didn’t know why I’d even tried.
    Eventually, mug empty and heart saddened, I agreed to leave. She said she wanted me to. Said she had to get to Mass, had things to do. She always had things to do. And none of them were ever going to involve honesty, I knew.
    She was lying, had been lying for so long that maybe she’d lost sight of the truth. I paused in the doorway as I left, saying goodbye.
    ‘Take care of yourself,’ I said, recalling that image of her in the hospital bed. The tubes. The machines. Me having to make the decision to switch them off. She might be a bitch, but she was the only family I had.
    ‘I always do,’ she replied, a rare truth from cigarette-puckered lips. ‘Make sure you do the same, kiddo. No bugger else will, that’s for sure.’
    The Costa was full, as usual. The station was cold, as usual. And I was confused, as usual.
    I sat at a table for two, feeling the familiar melancholy I always get at train stations. I’ve never understood it, but think it’s something to do with the swirl of emotions that congregates there. People saying goodbye. People being reunited. People lost, or worried, or just waiting for a train that never comes.
    What can I say? I’m a sensitive flower.
    I gripped my mug, wondering how long my body could last sustained by nothing but hot beverages, and looked around me, also wondering if Gabriel would even show up. If it wasn’t all some sick practical joke, that is. The three calls I’d already missed from Carmel told me otherwise, but I lived in hope.
    He arrived exactly as the hands of Lime Street’s grand station clock clicked on to ten. He might be a raving insaniac, but at least he was punctual.
    And he was, still – I couldn’t help but notice – drop-dead gorgeous, his muscular torso encased in a snug-fitting black sweater, his dark hair falling in thick waves to touch his shoulders. In daylight, his skin was even paler, his eyes darker – still with that hint of violet, but less supernatural outside the confines of the nightclub. He smiled, sat down and placed what could only be described as a man bag on the floor next to him. It probably contained a laptop; maybe some back copies of
Psychic Weirdo Weekly
.
    ‘I’m glad you came,’ he said, eyeing my cup as though he was about to swipe it.
    ‘Get your own,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know you well enough to be sharing saliva.’
    ‘Don’t you? My mistake. Maybe you didn’t see what I thought you did, then …’
    His gaze travelled slowly across my face, resting on my lips, which I was now nervously biting. I felt a slow blush crawling up from my neck as I remembered the vision. All that skin. The curves and planes of his musculature. The throbbing need that engulfed my body as he explored it.
    The blush raced up to my cheeks, and I knew they were now as red as my hair.
    ‘That’s pretty,’ he said, his voice a sultry Irish whisper. ‘Does it go all the way down?’
    I shuffled the collar of my coat a little tighter around me, even though I was feeling suddenly very hot. His knees brushed against mine under the table, and I could tell from his laugh as I jumped back that he’d done it on purpose.
    ‘Why