The Blood Source

By Ann Michaels

Agent Cleo Carras suddenly becomes aware that she is being pinned down by a heavy weight, and that she is holding a gun. This undercover assignment has gone terribly wrong, and Agent Carras is on the run from an Ndrangheta crime family. She finds herself wearing various disguises and traveling from the bush, to the city, in her bid to resume her normal life and career, and hopefully, bring down one organised crime cell in the process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ann Michaels
• Release date: Jan 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310490347

Ann Michaels

“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. ... It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.” —Enid Bagnold “It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.” —PD James Samuel Beckett was the poet laureate of the comma splice. He closed his novel “The Unnamable” with a long sentence that ends: ... perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. Which goes to show, I suppose, that rules are made to be broken.

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The Blood Source

Smashwords Edition

copyright 2015, Ann Michaels

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Contents:

Chapter 1 -Into Night

Chapter 2 -Deadset

Chapter 3 - Hiding Out

Chapter 4 – By Blood

Chapter 5 - Dress-ups

Chapter 6 – Loneliness and Oceans

Chapter 7 – Cliff Hanger

Chapter 8 - Che palle!

Chapter 9 - Biker Man

Chapter 10 – A taxing Time

Chapter 11 – Just a Little Crush

Chapter 12 – Work and Play

Chapter 13 – Knife in the Draw

Chapter 14 – family Matters

Chapter 1.

Into Night

I felt wet and there was a crushing weight upon me. I could hardly breathe and the metallic aroma of blood filled my nostrils. I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see. Then the whole brutal scene began to flow back through my mind and I realised that the man who had forced me into his car at gun point, was pinning me down upon the rough grass. He wasn’t moving.

Slowly I began to push his body off me. He weighed a ton. Then, I saw the great carpet of stars rolled out in the bottomless night sky and I became aware of the smell of damp earth, and the growl of cars on the highway. I felt like I had returned to earth, and that by degrees, my mind was filling back up with memories, and meaning.

I felt for the man’s pulse. Nothing. I looked down; I was still holding the gun. A Glock pistol with an extended 30-round magazine. I looked about: it was night and I seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. I pressed my fingers onto my damp, black t-shirt, and the glittering sheen of moonlight showed me that my fingers were stained red. It was not my blood.

I then remembered traveling out along a dark road, passing the old Blacktown Drive-in movie place; the gun aimed at me the whole time. Was that ten minutes ago? Or two hours ago?

I bent over the body, and pushed the man over. Hell! He was heavy. A mass of muscle and bone: useless now, and already breaking down. I searched the front pockets of his cargo pants, as he lay half on his side, like a slab of meat. Nothing. I opened his leather jacket; I saw a white t-shirt emblazoned with a skull, flowers, and snakes; saturated with blood, and a bullet sized hole in the middle of the chest. I slipped my hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, it was lined with slick, red silk and I pulled out a leather wallet, and mobile phone.

There was a thick wad of money in the wallet; all hundred dollar bills. Must be about at least ten thousand bucks here, I thought. I pulled out a few cards: American Express, Diners Club, Mastercard. And more. I held them up to catch the moonlight and saw that some were in the name, Pasquale Scamardo, and others, Dino Fuda.

I pushed the heavy body, the back of the jacket a mess - a crater of blood. I checked the back pocket of the trousers and found keys. I scooped them up, and considered what I should do next. I took my own phone from the back pocket of my jeans, and called the Organised Crime Squad; Sargent Tiernan answered. Did that man ever go home?

‘Sarg, its Agent Carras…..I’ve got a problem’.

‘You’re alive! What the hell happened? We heard someone ordering you to ‘get in’, on the mobile microphone, but then, it seems that a disabling device was used. We had no idea where you were until a few minutes ago, when your phone came back online. A car should be out there soon.’

‘The guys dead’, I said flatly. ‘I jumped him before he got me, and managed to turn the gun around’. I paused, ‘straight through the heart’.

‘You’ll need to go into protection’, Sargent Tiernan said urgently. ‘The Sciarra Outfit are ruthless and stop at nothing. This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were just supposed to collect information, Agent Carras’.

‘I know, I know’, I muttered as I moved away toward the parked vehicle. I could hear the sirens wailing now, and there was no way I was going into protection. That would be the end of me, I’d likely be rubbed out by the Sciarra Outfit, and I’d never return to the job I loved.

I opened the door of the Mercedes, jammed the key in, and the engine roared to life. I floored the accelerator, and fired out of there with no lights. I took a hard left, and ripped along the dark, unlit and deserted road.

A few seconds later, the squad cars must have reached the place where my mobile phone lay on the bloodstained grass, next to the gradually stiffening body. Meanwhile, I had passed what appeared to be a giant, skeletal monster ready to pounce; although the sign proclaimed a mere water park; a place of sun and fun in daylight hours. Then I was out on the highway, heading west.

The Mercedes, in which I was bulleting down the highway, was a high-top cargo van. This vehicle, had delivered what appeared to be cans of tomatoes, to the pizza shop, where I was working under cover. Except, instead of tomatoes, these cans actually contained, ecstasy tablets. This, I had only learned about an hour ago, as I was taking a ciggy break out the back of the pizza parlour, at just past ten o clock on a Monday night. The slow time.

I had been hunched in behind the evil-smelling, old, boarded-up, outdoor dunny, when the oaf who had kidnapped me, drove in from a back alleyway, and unloaded a few boxes,