Shadowed (Fated) (18 page)

Evie jumped to her feet and walked over to him,
smiling ruefully. He pulled her instantly into a bear hug.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘Evie’s in trouble,’ Flic sighed. ‘Again.’

‘And there I was thinking this was a personal
call,’ Jamieson laughed, giving her shoulders a squeeze. ‘You’re looking thin.
I’m going to have to update my shift.’

Evie grinned back at him, the muscles in her cheeks
feeling tight and unused to the action. Seeing Jamieson shift into a replica of
herself had been one of the weirder moments of her life. And that was saying
something.

‘What’s going on?’ Jamieson asked, looking at Flic.

‘We’re just discussing how we’re going to kill a
group of Originals who are slaying half the population. And,’ she paused,
glancing sideways at Evie, ‘after that, how we’re going to kill Victor.’

Evie’s head flew up.
We?
She narrowed her eyes at Flic, a smile slowly forming on her
lips.

Flic huffed loudly, and got to her feet. ‘You gotta
stand and fight, right?’

He was
crouched down in the abandoned shop, wedged between two narrow bookcases. The sunlight
streaming through the slatted windows was dissecting the floor, casting prison
bar shadows. He lifted his arm up slowly and extended it, letting his hand fall
into a shaft of light. He drew it back quickly, as if he’d been burnt and
rested his head back against the wall, shutting his eyes – and seeing her,
as always. 

Why was he still here? It didn’t make sense. Why
couldn’t he fade back? As a child he’d been knocked unconscious and found
himself in the Shadowlands for the longest minute of his life before he’d
returned to the human realm. Why couldn’t he do that now? Maybe he’d been
unconscious too long. Or maybe as a kid he’d only dreamt it. Or maybe this was
all a dream. He didn’t know. He couldn’t fathom it.

The door, boarded over and pushed just to, was
kicked ajar from the outside. His eyes flew open and he faded back into the gap
between the bookcases, his hand reaching silently for his blade, which lay on
the floor by his feet.

But it was only Issa. She ducked inside and quickly
closed the door behind her, then stood letting her eyes adjust to the gloom.
She stepped forward into a ribbon of light and pulled back her hood, sending
the dust motes into a blizzard-like fury around her.

‘Lucas?’ she whispered, her eyes on the bookcases
and their piles of forgotten, mould-coated books.

He rose from his silent crouch and stood, then
stepped gingerly forward into the light. She smiled as soon as she saw him, the
relief palpable on her face.

‘What did you find?’ Lucas asked.

‘I brought some food.’

‘But did you find anything – anyone? Are
there any Shifters left?’ he asked, unable to keep the edge out of his voice.

Issa studied him, her disc-like eyes seeming to
illuminate the whole room. ‘No,’ she answered finally.

Lucas drew in a breath, pressing back against the
bookshelf. They were in the Shifter realm but so far they’d not seen a single
Shifter. Only Mixen, Thirsters and Scorpio. And he’d felt a few Shadow
Warriors, though not seen them. The realms had all, with the exception of the
Sybll realm and the Shadowlands, been overrun. The Elders were no longer in
control. The Originals had risen up, and with their army of Mixen and Scorpio
had decided to take things into their own hands, starting with controlling the
gateways between realms.

‘Were there many out there?’ Lucas asked.

‘Enough to make it difficult to avoid them.’ Issa
said, dropping to her knees and opening her bag. She took out some supplies
– food that she’d managed to pilfer from somewhere.

‘What are they still doing here?’ Lucas asked.
There was no more food source, for the Thirsters at least. That’s why most were
heading through to the human realm.

‘Moving in?’ Issa shrugged. ‘Looting –
partying by the sounds of it.’

Lucas exhaled loudly, running a hand through his
hair. He began pacing. ‘I can’t keep hiding in here like a fugitive. I need to
get back.’ The frustration was killing him. ‘We need to find a way through,
Issa.’

‘You
are
a fugitive, Lucas, or had you
forgotten?’ Issa asked, standing and thrusting something towards him. It was a
hunk of bread. It felt like a lump of volcanic rock in his hand. He was tempted
to lob it at the wall.

‘
You
managed to make it through,’ he grunted.

Issa glared at him. ‘That was before they knew the
gateway had opened up again, before they started guarding it. Now there’s no
way back. We’re stuck here.’

Lucas grimaced, gesturing at the damp and dusty
bookstore. ‘We can’t stay here, Issa, living like rats in the wreckage, waiting
for a group of Thirsters to slip through your visions and finish us off.’

‘I’ve already told you,’ Issa answered, her head
down, still rummaging through her bag. ‘We should head to the Sybll lands.
They’re the only safe place to be right now.’

Lucas took a deep breath in, trying to stay calm.
They’d already argued over Issa’s inexact visions. She claimed she couldn’t see
all that was going to happen, but she had also been adamant about one thing
– that the human realm was done for and that pretty soon it was going to
be a desolate wasteland much like the Shifter realm, with a rampant Thirster
population running wild.

Lucas twisted away, angry and frustrated. He bent
to pick up his bag.

‘Ow!’ he sucked air in sharply and winced, his hand
flying to his wounded side, pressing against the bandage that covered his stab
wound.

‘Careful.’ Issa was right there, in front of him,
her hair falling in front of her face like a shield, her hands moving straight
to his side, lifting his shirt.

‘I’m OK. I’m OK,’ Lucas said, backing away from
her, holding his hand to the light to see if there was any blood on the palm.

‘If it tears open again,’ Issa said, flicking her
hair out of her face, ‘I’m not sure I can fix it.’ She didn’t mention the
obvious, that the Thirsters out there would smell it and come running. ‘You
need to rest, give it time to heal,’ she said.

Lucas sighed. The stitches had torn twice already,
both times when he’d tried to wield a sword before Issa had claimed he was
ready to even get back on his feet. But he was back on his feet now, the
stitches seemed to be holding, and he’d finally fought off the infection. He
couldn’t wait any longer. ‘I need to get back.’

Issa stared at him defiantly. ‘You’re not going to
be able to fight all of them, Lucas. There are too many, even for you.’

Lucas tried to stand straight, to ignore the flames
shooting through his abdomen. ‘Issa, don’t start this again. I’m always being
told what I can and can’t do by Sybll and you’ve been wrong on every count. I’m
still alive. Evie’s still alive.’

At the mention of Evie’s name Issa’s mouth puckered
tightly. ‘I didn't come back to find you, to save you, just to watch you throw
your life away again, Lucas,’ Issa snapped.

They stared at each other, her expression fierce
and uncompromising, his own guilt ridden. What could he say? She had found him.
In the midst of the Shadowlands. Which, given the vague nature of her visions,
was something of a miracle. And she had saved him. The truth was, he wouldn’t
have lasted even one more night, maybe not even another hour, if Issa hadn’t
found him when she had. 

He was rotten meat, his wound festering, infected,
thick with pus, the skin around it puckered and shiny, when Issa had reached
him. His brow was so hot to the touch she’d whipped her hand away as if he was
a Mixen. He was long past sweating at that stage, past shivering too. He had
been a corpse, hanging by the slenderest thread, half-flesh, half-ghost, waxing
and waning.

For what felt like weeks, but Issa had told him had
only been days, he’d lain, feverish, curled in a makeshift shelter of rocks,
where he’d managed to drag himself. He had thought he was going to die out
there in the wastelands. No water. No food. No way back. Fever-spiked dreams
the only thing keeping him tethered to any realm – dreams of Evie, dreams
where he could touch her and taste her, where his naked body wasn’t lying
against rocks, coated in dirt and sweat but was lying against her warm, soft
skin, melting into her.

He still had those dreams, but now they were stolen
moments where he shut his eyes and tried to picture her. Occasionally they came
at night – she would be there, flesh and blood, as real as his own hand
in front of his face. And he would be reaching out to her, trying to make her
understand that he was still alive, that he was coming back to her. Though her
eyes – those dark ocean eyes – were always blank with sadness. She
thought he was dead. And he couldn’t make her see otherwise.

Thousands of times a day, with every single breath
he took, he tried to imagine where she was. What she was doing. Praying like
hell that she was in Riverview and that she was safe. Praying even harder that
she hadn’t got it into her head to hunt down Victor and kill him. Whatever Evie
might think, whatever dark place she was in right now, he knew she would never
be what he was – a cold-blooded killer.

He pressed a fist against the shuttered window and
peered through a small gap. Outside it was early evening. The time when they
started to come – those that hadn’t crossed through yet into the human
realm. At night they scavenged in this realm, looking for fresh meat, though
the last of the Shifters had long ago been killed or had crossed through the
gateway seeking safety in the human realm.

‘How long will it take them, do you think’ he asked
Issa quietly, ‘to overrun the human realm, just as they’ve done with this
place? A week? A month? A year?’ He turned away from the window. Issa was
glaring at him. ‘I’m not going to sit here or in the Sybll lands, and let it
happen. That’s my sister on the other side, and Evie. That’s my family we’re
talking about. I won’t just give up on them. I’m going back tonight. The way
through is open. We don’t know why. But I do know that my life is on the other
side.’

‘We do know why the way through is open,’ Issa said
softly, holding his gaze. ‘It’s open because the White Light didn’t shut it.
Cyrus did.’

Lucas turned his back on Issa so that she wouldn’t
see the stricken look on his face. What she’d said had struck a note of fear in
him. It was the real reason he was pushing so hard for them to make it through
the gateway. Soon enough the Originals would figure out that Evie hadn’t died
– that the White Light was still alive and the prophecy wasn’t fulfilled,
and they would try to find her.

The only thing that frightened him more was that
Evie would discover that the way through was open as well, and that she would
try once again to close it.

Evie was still on Cyrus’s mind in the morning as he rode his bike over
to his mum’s store. She was weighing on him like a hangover, except without the
fun memories from the night before that would make it all worthwhile. He had a
headache and was feeling groggy but he tried to tell himself that it was due to
going cold turkey on his meds and nothing whatsoever to do with the fact he’d
been awake all night worrying about her.

She’d told him she was still in love with Lucas.
That she would always love him. But really? Would she always? Wouldn’t she at
some point need her needs met, so to speak, and in a way that a dead man
couldn’t manage? He paused for a couple of minutes, his imagination getting the
better of him.

Man, he needed to get a grip. He’d obviously had
his pick of women if the notches in the bedpost were anything to go by, so why
was he fixating on this one? If he wanted to check all his parts were still in
working order – that the amnesia hadn’t spread to the furthest reaches of
his body – then he could call Darcy or whatever her name was and ask her
if she fancied taking him for a road test.

He thought about the waitress. She was pretty, he
supposed. And he’d tasted that cupcake before. But he had no desire to taste it
again. Damn it. He thought about it some more. Nope. No desire. Because he was
fixated on someone else. He had to be in love with a girl with armour-plated
emotions who was obsessed with a ghost and likely would be for the foreseeable
future.
Whoa.
He slowed up on the
bike, almost swerving into the kerb. Where had the
L
-word come from? He tried it out in his head again, testing it on
the tip of his tongue, and this time almost swerved into oncoming traffic.

Crap. No. That wasn’t possible. Or was it? Maybe he
had been in love with her. Why else had he chosen to die in her place? Had he
been that kind of guy though? Even now, still not knowing who the hell he
really was or had been, he knew he wasn’t the kind of guy who tossed the
love
word around. Just as he would have
known straight off the bat if someone had tried to dress him in a button-down
shirt and chinos, or take him to Chariots Roman Spa, that he wasn’t that kind
of guy either.

He parked outside his mum’s store. Yeah, it still
felt weird using that word too.
Mum
.
She was young to be a mum. But Vero had told him she’d been a kid, younger than
he was now, when she got pregnant and ran from that guy Victor and the rest of
the Hunters. The thought made him kick the bike stand harder than he’d
intended, tearing a chunk out of the asphalt.