Severed (18 page)

Cyrus had turned back to the closet and was rummaging for more weapons. Evie took a breath. ‘Who’s your father?’ she asked.

Cyrus turned around with a bemused smile on his face. ‘Wow, straight to the point, aren’t you? What’s it to you anyway? Are you worried my mum might have done the deed with another Hunter? Say, your dad? Is that what you’re worrying about? That we’re related? Because we can get a blood test if that’s the only thing holding you back. Third cousins once removed works for me though.’

She bit her lip. ‘Listen, let’s get something straight right now,’ she said, holding his gaze firmly. ‘I will never – not in a million years, not until hell freezes over, not until your ego shrinks to the size of the Buddha’s, not until the day I die – ever sleep with you. Or kiss you. Or even like you. Are we clear now? Just answer yes or no.’

Cyrus licked his lips, then walked past her, ‘We’ll see.’

Her mouth fell open as she stared at his back. ‘God, do you ever stop?’

‘Nope,’ he answered with his back still to her, ‘just ask Marcy.’

‘Darcy! Her name was Darcy! Oh my God. I am going to kill you. I am seriously going to kill you.’

He turned around, smirking. ‘You could try. But I think you’ll find it’s easier to kill an unhuman – a Shadow Warrior even – than it is to kill me.’

She drew in a deep breath and then another. ‘So, who is he then?’ she demanded, determined not to let him throw her off track again.

‘Who?’ Cyrus asked.

‘Your father.’

He sighed loudly. ‘I don’t know who my father is. My mum told me it was someone outside the Hunters. Some random guy she met one night. Shocking, right? Under age and illegal in the state of California. Tut tut, mum. But hell, at least she chose someone with superlative genes.’

Evie frowned.

‘Why the face?’ Cyrus asked. ‘Were you hoping that I might be another pure-blood like you? Sorry to disappoint. But your dad was already with your mum by then and I think you’ll find Victor’s black and I’m not, so no need to do a DNA test there. I’m sorry. I bet you were thinking that would get you off the hook, but no. Hook.’ He drew the shape of a hook in the air and then pointed at her. ‘You. Still on it.’

They were standing like that, Cyrus pointing at her, when Vero and Ash walked in. Evie blinked. She hadn’t felt them or heard them approaching. She was too easily distracted these days. She needed to focus.

‘Hey Ash’, Cyrus said, ‘these are for you.’ He threw the nunchuckers towards him. They cut through the air making a whirring noise. Ash caught them in his left hand and tucked them into his pocket.

‘Vero, how are you doing?’ Cyrus asked.

Vero glared at him, her dark eyes liquid poison. ‘I’m fine,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘What have you got for me tonight?’

‘Well, tonight, Vero,’ Cyrus answered, ignoring her glare, ‘I thought maybe you’d want to vent some of your anger on a Thirster or six, so I have thoughtfully coated these arrow tips in Mixen acid for you to use with your crossbow and I am packing a litre and a half of lighter fluid with which we can have ourselves a nice flame-grilled Thirster barbecue.’

A cold smile appeared on Vero’s face as she leant forward to inspect the arrows, which were lined up on the kitchen counter in a plastic container of sorts. Acid-proof obviously, Evie figured. Vero was wearing a black lace dress accessorised with several studded leather cuffs. A black onyx necklace made up the ensemble. So far she’d avoided looking in Evie’s direction, which suited Evie just fine. Vero looked so like Risper that it was unsettling to stare at her for long.

‘You sure you want to do this, Vero?’ Ash suddenly asked.

She spun around to face him. ‘Am I sure I want to go out and kill some bloodsucking piece of …’

He held up both hands in a defensive gesture. ‘OK, point taken.’

‘See how we’re all driven by revenge, Evie?’ Cyrus butted in.

She turned to look at him. He was slinging a crossbow over one shoulder. ‘It’s quite the motivator. Ash getting revenge for his friend. Vero for her sister.’ He let out a satisfied sigh. ‘Revenge makes the world go round.’

‘I thought that was supposed to be love,’ Evie replied dully.

‘No, you heard wrong. It’s revenge. It’s what keeps us going when we’ve given up on love.’

‘What do
you
have to revenge?’ she asked angrily.

He frowned for a moment and then he looked up at her as if he’d just had a revelation. ‘Good point. Nothing I guess. Not yet anyway. Maybe I’m just getting revenge now for a future wrong, in case I can’t get it later.’

‘Sound reasoning.’

‘Where are we going?’ Ash asked, opening the grille to the elevator.

‘The Tipping Point’s closed for the foreseeable future while the under-realm gangsters in charge try to find more doormen. Apparently the last two were total failures.’ Cyrus pressed Evie and Vero ahead of him into the elevator. ‘I thought we could hang out near to the way through. Pick on some unsuspecting newbie.’

‘Where is the way through?’ Evie asked, turning around to face him.

A broad smile crossed Cyrus’s face. ‘Ahhh, you’ll see. It’s too good.’

They stocked the Prius’s trunk with all their weapons and climbed silently into the car, Vero and Ash sliding into the back before Evie could get in. She weighed up the options and decided that lying in the trunk next to the crossbow and poison-tipped arrows was preferable to sitting next to Cyrus in the front. But he was holding the door open for her expectantly. She eyed the trunk longingly before climbing with an audible groan into the passenger seat.

Cyrus jumped into the driver’s seat beside her and rammed the car into reverse, spinning them out of the warehouse and onto the street. Evie glanced down at his wrist, seeing the tattoo on the inside of his forearm clearly for the first time. It was an owl. She smiled in amusement. An owl? That was deeply hardcore.

‘What’s the tattoo for?’ she asked, trying to suppress the smirk.

He glanced quickly at her before his eyes flew back to the road. ‘The owl’s a silent hunter. It hunts by night and it sees everything.’

‘Why’d you not just get a tattoo of a Sybll then?’ she asked.

He turned to look at her and she gripped the dashboard as they weaved dangerously into oncoming traffic. Cyrus righted the car’s trajectory, shaking his head. ‘Among most cultures, the owl is considered a bad omen, portending death,’ he said, after a moment’s pause. ‘And I am portending the death of many unhumans tonight.’

The smile disappeared from Evie’s face.

‘Bring it on,’ she heard Ash mutter from behind her.

Chapter 25

Cyrus took a sudden turn and drew the car into a parking lot next to a burger drive-thru. Evie glanced out of the window in confusion and then looked back at Cyrus.

‘What are we doing here? Is this where the way through is?’

‘No,’ he grinned back at her, ‘it’s where the Double Cheese & Bacon burger and chocolate milkshake are. Want something?’

‘No, thank you,’ she said, shooting him a look which she hoped conveyed both disdain and boredom.

‘You need to eat something,’ he said.

‘That’s not food. That’s reclaimed cow testicles.’

Cyrus threw open his door, ‘Cows don’t have testicles. Someone needs a biology lesson.’ He got out and slammed the door shut. Vero jumped out after him, enclosing Evie in the gloom of the car with a silent, brooding Ash for company.

Evie cleared her throat, trying to break the silence that had descended. Cyrus had taken the keys, so she couldn’t switch on the radio. ‘Is he always like this?’ she asked.

‘Like what?’ Ash answered, sounding uninterested.

‘So annoying.’

‘Most girls seem to like it.’

Evie undid her seat belt and twisted in her seat. The bright lights from inside the burger place were shining through onto the back seat, making Ash’s face gleam. His expression was stony as a rock face.

‘How long have you known him?’ Evie asked, determined to put a crack in it.

‘Two years,’ Ash answered, staring out of the window.

Evie did a quick mental calculation. ‘How many do you need to kill before you’ve got your revenge?’

Ash’s dark eyes flew to her, narrowing enough to make her shrink back against the dashboard. ‘Every single one of them,’ he said without any emotion.

A few seconds passed. Evie tapped her fingers against the headrest. She thought about turning back in her seat and just sinking into uncomfortable silence but for some unfathomable reason she didn’t want to turn her back on him. ‘You’re a martial artist?’ she asked instead.

‘Let Wei,’ he answered, his focus still on something way more interesting outside the car. ‘Burmese kick-boxing.’

She studied his profile. His nose looked like it had been broken a few times and he had a jagged scar running across his forehead up into his hair, which was thick and dark and cut short. ‘Where’d you learn that?’ she asked.

He turned to face her. ‘My father.’

‘Must come in useful.’

He didn’t answer. He stared at her blankly for a few seconds and then went back to looking out of the window. Evie thought about getting out of the car and going to see about that burger. Eating reconstituted cow parts seemed preferable suddenly to trying to make conversation with the Dark Knight here.

She decided to give it one last shot. ‘So, have you thought about what you’re going to do when this is all over?’ she asked. She cringed even as she said it, realising that she sounded like a school guidance counsellor talking to the kid who’s flunking out and has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a job cleaning toilets, let alone of getting into college.

‘I don’t think that far ahead,’ Ash answered. ‘The Buddha teaches right mindfulness. Staying alert to the present. If you miss the moment, you miss life.’

Evie choked on a laugh before quickly swallowing it down in the face of Ash’s unamused expression and the sight of his biceps. ‘You’re Buddhist?’ she asked.

Ash’s eyes narrowed to thin slits, his mouth pursing into a tight knot, as though daring her to say just one more word.

‘Didn’t the Buddha teach non-violence?’ Evie asked quickly. ‘I’m pretty certain he said something about killing equalling bad karma. You might come back in your next life as a snail or something.’

‘They’re not people,’ Ash fired back. ‘They’re not human. They’re not even animals. They’re monsters. Killing them creates good karma.’

Evie fell back on her haunches, the small of her back banging against the dashboard. Ash stared at her through the square hole of the headrest. She eyed him warily, mulling over her response. She knew he was daring her to answer him back. The words were swirling and gathering in her head but before she could get them out he spoke again. ‘It wasn’t humans who killed my friend,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t humans who killed Vero’s sister.’

Evie pressed her lips together and clamped them shut. He was talking about Thirsters. But just because one type of unhuman happened to like murdering people that didn’t make them all monsters. That was like saying because some humans committed murder everyone on the planet deserved to die. And, OK, she couldn’t care less about wiping out all the Thirsters in the realms because it wasn’t like any of the ones she’d met so far were the vegan, meditating kind, and maybe she wouldn’t be shedding tears over any Mixen or Scorpio that got killed either. But what about Lucas? And Jamieson? They weren’t monsters. She had a moment’s pause as she considered which side of the divide she’d place Flic, before she shook her head. It wasn’t so easy to just dump them all into the same category and pull a metaphorical switch.

‘It wasn’t far from here, you know,’ Ash said, interrupting her internal rationalisations. ‘We’d been to a party. Got talking to these two girls. I thought they were some emo kids. Next thing my friend’s making out with one, except he’s not making out with her – she’s eating him. You hear me?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Evie whispered.

‘That night I found out that it takes a lot to kill a Thirster. I wasn’t armed. Just had these.’ He indicated his hands and his legs. ‘I got away but that was about it. The next night I went back with a handmade flamethrower and a stake. I found them. Found out stakes don’t work, neither does garlic or holy water. But flames do. I killed them. It got easier after the first one. You know? I was stronger, faster. That was unexpected but useful. I kept going out every night. Discovered the acid skin ones and the ones with the tails. Killed a few of them too. One night I met Cyrus doing the same.’

And you’ve never looked back
. Evie filled in the blank.

‘And you had no idea you were – um – one of us?’ she asked instead. ‘A Hunter I mean? Before you met Cyrus?’

Ash laughed a bitter laugh. ‘No. Freaky co-incidence. right?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe in co-incidence anymore.’

The door on Evie’s side suddenly flew open, making her jump. Cyrus thrust a greasy brown-paper bag in her face. ‘Here you are – one bacon double cheese and large fries. Got you full-fat Coke too, figured you’re not one of those girls who needs to watch her weight.’

She took the bag gingerly between her fingers before it could spill in her lap and twisted back around so she was facing forwards.

Cyrus walked around the car and got in beside her. He paused to put his chocolate milkshake in the cup holder and to take a bite out of his burger, then he turned the key in the ignition and spun them out of the lot and back onto the street. They only drove a couple of blocks before he hung another right and pulled into a deserted lot opposite a fried-chicken joint.

‘Are we doing a fast-food crawl or something?’ Evie asked.

‘Nope. We’re staking out that building over there.’ Cyrus nodded with his chin towards a building on the corner that looked vaguely familiar. It stood about five stories high and looked like it had been modelled on a Renaissance palazzo. It had a brown-brick façade with lots of square windows, which were all dark at this time of night. The ground floor was a row of shop fronts and on the corner, beneath a high stone arch, stood the main door.