The Blood Bracelets #3: Soul Scarred

Chapter Sixteen

If Envy was targeting Drake, Kael decided, then all they had to do was organise a trap.

Drake, naturally, was against the idea.

Taryn, naturally, wanted to come with them.

Neither got their way.

But Kael did, because if he was going to save the damn world from Lucifer by killing all his incarnations - without a decent night's sleep - then he was going to do it his way. 

After devising a plan, Drake had contacted the last of his pack and asked them to rendezvous where Kael had determined would be a good location to ambush Envy. There was every possibility that Envy was watching Drake's pack somehow, so each shifter was instructed to travel separately, discreetly, to avoid rousing suspicion. Kael wasn't concerned that Envy would attack them individually, especially since the incarnation seemed to enjoy the theatrics of attacking them in a group. 

So Kael had left Taryn with Zed, ensuring she promised not to switch with Fury while he wasn't there, and made his way with Drake to Coode Island. 

Considering Drake's state, they had hailed a taxi instead of bearing the torture of the tram network, but had the taxi stop a little ways from their destination so they could inconspicuously walk the rest. Even though Taryn had cleaned the blood off Drake and found him a fresh set of clothes, Kael had expected the taxi driver to notice the three large gashes decorating Drake's face. Kael had been watching the driver for exactly that, but he was either incredibly unobservant or had seen worse things because his eyes didn't even linger on them as they slid into the taxi.

It wasn't until they had left the taxi and Kael saw the injured side of Drake's face again that he realised why.

Drake's face had healed. 

'I didn't realise shifters could heal that quickly,' said Kael, and Drake pressed a hand to his face in response, feeling only the fresh scars of his wound.

'Neither did I,' Drake admitted, bewildered.

They made their way toward the brightly lit shipping container yard of Coode Island, but Kael's focus lingered a moment longer on Drake, on the fact that the rest of his injuries had not recovered as quickly as his face given the stiffness of how he walked. The image of Taryn tending to Drake's wound flashed through his mind and he remembered how intensely Taryn had focused on Drake's facial wound, how she had brushed her thumb across the ragged edges of skin. Kael had thought she was merely concerned, lost in her observation of the brutal claw marks, but now he wondered...

Was it even possible?

Kael pushed the thought aside, filing it away for later, and focused on the tall wire fencing that barricaded the container yard.

Coode Island wasn't an island, exactly. It was a huge shipping container yard surrounded on three sides by the Yarra River, and had been the site of the Coode Island Fire in 1991. The Coode Island Fire had occurred when a strange weather phenomenon the mortals called St Elmo's Fire had ignited a chemical storage tank, but that was merely what the mortals had been made to believe.

The Immortals had done a fine job covering up the truth.

'Why Coode Island?' Drake asked then, pausing before the wire fencing. On the opposite side was a barren area of gravel where trucks and trailers were left idle during operation hours, but they had all been stored away now.

'It's a good place for an ambush,' said Kael.

Drake's brow quirked. 'You've ambushed a bounty here before?'