Shadowed (Fated) (33 page)

‘Precognition, Lucas. Remember. Sometimes it
actually works.’

‘Did you see Tristan? He was there. He was guarding
the gateway. He almost didn’t let me pass.’ Lucas shook his head, still
confused by why Tristan had stood aside in the end and let him pass through the
gateway unharmed.

‘No,’ said Issa. ‘He’s gone. Back to the
Shadowlands.’

A shuffling noise made them all turn towards the
hallway. Jamieson appeared a moment later in the doorway. His face was drawn
and his eyes were hollow and red-rimmed. One arm was wrapped in a cast and
bound in a sling. From his expression, Lucas guessed that Flic had told him
what had gone down in the Shifter realm.

‘Jamieson,’ Lucas said, crossing straight to him
and pulling him into a one-armed embrace.

Jamieson hugged him back. ‘Good to see you’re
alive,’ he said in a husky voice. ‘How are you doing? You look like hell.’

‘You should have seen me when Issa found me,’ Lucas
smiled. ‘And you can’t talk.’

‘He only needs a shower and a shave,’ Flic
interrupted. ‘You know where the bathroom is, right, Lucas?’ The hint was heavy
in her voice.

‘First things first,’ Lucas said, dropping to his
knees and rummaging in his bag. He pulled out the few items of clothing that he
and Issa had worn for two months, the spare bandages and dressings that Issa
had brought with her and stolen along the way from looted stores. At the bottom
of the bag was
 
a package. Lucas
pulled it out and laid it on the table. It was a bundle of cloth bound tight
with string. He cut through the knots with his blade and unfurled the cloth,
laying out the contents on the table before them. Twelve arrow tips made from
shadow blade.

‘Five spare,’ he said grinning up at the others.

‘Where did you get these?’ Flic asked, dropping to
her knees and picking one up to admire it.

‘The fight at the Bradbury. I took out a Shadow
Warrior on the roof. She was carrying these in a sheath on her back. I had them
on me when …’ He broke off.

Flic threw her arms around his neck. ‘You may have
just saved the day, Lucas.’

Lucas stood in front of the mirror holding onto the
basin. Jamieson’s assessment was on point. He looked like hell. He ran his hand
over his jaw, feeling the roughness of week-old stubble. His hair needed a cut
too, was hanging over his collar. His cheekbones were more pronounced, his eyes
a dark charcoal grey, ringed with shadows. He pulled off his shirt.

He was still in shape. He’d forced himself to start
exercising when they were on the run, knowing that one day it all might come
down to how fit he was, how able he was to fight.

He looked more muscled than he had been before,
though perhaps it just appeared that way because he was leaner. He pressed his
hand to the coarse home-made stitches that Issa had given him using a ball of
twine and an embroidery needle. They seemed to have finally done the trick. The
skin had finally closed over, leaving a silver scar as thick as his finger. He
pressed his fingertips against his side. It wasn’t so tender anymore. The ache
was buried much deeper inside him instead.

She
loves you.

That’s what Flic had told him. Except it didn’t
look that way.

Flic had tried to force Issa to tell him that Cyrus
wasn’t in Evie’s future, that
he
was
instead. But judging from the stuttering reply Issa had given him, she’d seen
no such thing. He’d left the room at that point.

Once he would have fought and died for Evie –
and, despite everything, he knew he still would. Without hesitation. She wasn’t
his anymore, but he was still hers.

As he stared at himself in the mirror, deep down,
where the ache resided, right in the heart of him, he knew that it was better
this way, that Cyrus was better for her. He could protect her – that much
he’d proved. He seemed to love her, though he wasn’t sure if love and lust were
the same thing for Cyrus. And if he hurt her in any way he might just have to
kill him. But most of all, Cyrus was fully human. He wouldn’t ever fade and
abandon her.

Despite his feelings about Cyrus – despite
the anger he could feel like a horse kick to the stomach every time he thought
of Cyrus laying his hands on her and kissing her – he also recognised
that Cyrus was the only man other than himself who could protect Evie from
Victor. Yes, she was stronger now, but she was also wounded. The need he had to
protect her was part of his DNA, buried deeper even than the ache he felt every
time he thought of her.

When he came out of the bathroom Flic did a double
take, grinning at him. ‘Hot stuff, my brother,’ she said. ‘How can any woman,
unhuman or otherwise, resist that face?’

He scowled at her.

‘Even that face,’ she pouted. ‘It’s pure lady lust
material.’

‘Listen,’ he said, ignoring Flic. ‘I’ll stay. I’ll
fight with you guys. I’m going to kill Victor. But then I’m gone. And Evie
won’t ever need to know. Understood?’

Flic squinted up at him, her jaw pulsing and a hurt
expression on her face. ‘Where will you go?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know – I guess now the Elders are no
more I’m no longer being hunted. Which means I’m free to go wherever I want.’
The truth of that made his head spin. Where was home? It had been a place once.
Now it was a person. He shook off that thought. It didn’t help matters.

‘First things first,’ he said, ‘let’s focus on
getting through tonight.’

Cyrus was huddled over the kitchen counter with Victor, Ash and Vero,
drawing up the plan for that evening. The sight of Victor and Cyrus standing so
close together made Evie’s skin crawl. They’d come back to Victor’s to regroup
before the attack and sort out the weapon situation. It didn’t seem like a
great idea to Evie, but Issa had told them it was safe for the moment.

In the background a television played on mute. Evie
watched a blonde CNN reporter with a sombre expression reporting to camera. She
was standing on a street somewhere. There was yellow tape in the background,
and several chalk outlines were drawn over the blood-spattered sidewalk. The
picture switched to another reporter, on another street corner. This time in
the background Evie could make out a gathering of people in front of a
makeshift shrine. Statistics ticker-taped across the bottom of the screen.
iPhone footage of some Mixen filled the top right-hand corner. Evie stared in
horror. How was this happening? How was any of this real?

The screen went suddenly blank. Issa had pulled the
plug. Evie looked hurriedly away, back towards the others. Over Cyrus’s
shoulder she counted the arrowheads he’d spread out on the counter. There were
twelve, made from shadow steel, strong enough to cut through thousand-year old
Original skin. Strong enough to cut through anything in fact. They required
delicate handling unless you wanted to lose a finger. Issa had just turned up
with them. She wouldn’t say how she’d come across them but ultimately, who
cared?

Evie watched Vero pick up one of the arrows with a
pair of pliers and fix it carefully onto a thin shaft, before sliding it into
the sheaf she usually carried with her on hunts. She did this with eight of the
arrow heads, then she took the crossbow Victor handed her without a word and
hefted it against her shoulder, looking down the sights and squinting. Vero was
the best shooter they had. Evie felt better knowing that she would be armed
with arrows that wouldn’t just bounce right off Original flesh.

Vero placed the crossbow down carefully on the side
and asked Ash for his sword. He handed over the curved blade and watched as she
started binding the arrow to its tip with some electrical tape.

When she was done Ash picked up his sword and
weighed it in his hand. He slashed the air around him, leaving light trails
hanging like the ghosts of fireworks in the air and Evie grinned along with him.

She hadn’t wanted to point out the obvious before
– that going out there with a normal sword was a little like trying to
fight these things with plastic cutlery. But now, with a minor adjustment, Ash
and the others would each be armed with something lethal.

‘Shame we can’t melt this down and make bullets out
of it,’ Selena said, picking up one of the remaining arrows.

‘Impossible to melt. Nothing in this realm will
make a dent in this thing,’ Victor murmured, fixing an arrowhead to his own
shorter dagger.

‘Other than an Original’s head we hope,’ Vero
muttered.

Evie took a moment to watch Vero as she worked on
attaching the arrowhead in her hand to Selena’s stubby broadsword.

A hand on her shoulder made her jump.

‘You ready?’ Cyrus asked. ‘Jamieson’s going to go
ahead. You clear on the rest?’

Evie nodded. ‘Yes.’

She looked over at the others strapping on their
weapons.

‘I called my mum earlier,’ Evie suddenly said.

Cyrus frowned at her. ‘What did you tell her?’

‘That the end of the world was nigh and that I was
about to do battle with some ancient bad guys armed only with a knife, but not
to worry.’

A smile twitched at the edge of his mouth.

‘OK, I’m kidding, I told her that everything was
cool and that I’d see her tomorrow. She’s been reading about all these murders
and all the sightings. She’s paranoid I’m going to get killed if I stay in LA.’
She paused. ‘What could I tell her? That she was right to worry?’

Truthfully, her mother had been hysterical on the
other end of the phone. She was now convinced that Evie was, in the best-case
scenario a drug addict, in the worst-case scenario a pregnant drug addict, and
Evie hadn’t had the energy to refute either scenario with any conviction. She
was almost dreading her return to Riverview more than she was dreading tonight.
Maybe she would never have to return though. The odds, despite the new weapons,
weren’t exactly in their favour.

‘You will see her tomorrow. I guarantee it,’ Cyrus
said softly as though he’d read her mind.

‘Don’t make guarantees you can’t keep.’

The smile died on his lips. ‘I’m not. I know it.
And I will look after you out there. I won’t let anyone hurt you.’

She sucked in a breath and tried not to show how
much his words stung. She’d heard the exact same thing from Lucas once. And
look how that had ended.

‘It’s not getting hurt that I’m scared about,’ she
whispered. ‘It’s everyone else. It’s losing even more people that I care about
that frightens me.’

His eyes narrowed and he took a minuscule step
towards her, ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said gently.

‘Who said I was talking about you?’ she fired back,
trying and failing not to smile.

Behind her, someone cleared their throat. Evie
whipped around. Victor stood over them.

‘You should have this,’ he said, offering her the
shadow blade he’d taken from her the day before.

Evie glanced down at it. The hilt was facing
towards her. The point of it, glowing eerily, was pointed directly at Victor’s
stomach. Evie reached for it with trembling fingers. It would only take one
quick motion – a simple thrust of the wrist. She could do it now, right
now, and it would all be over. She would have her revenge and she wouldn’t have
to look over her shoulder any longer either.

She glanced up at Victor.

His eyes were blazing with the challenge and she
realised with a start that that was why he was giving her the blade, here, now,
in full view of everyone.

He was giving her the chance for revenge, daring
her to exact it here, with all of them as witnesses. Or was he simply taunting
her? Believing that she wouldn’t do it? Whichever it was, her hand froze, the
blade stiff and poised between them.

Evie could feel all eyes glued to her, the
atmosphere in the room buzzing. After ten long seconds Victor slowly backed
away, smiling victoriously.

She felt completely undone. The blade fell limply
to her side. She had betrayed Lucas – let him down. She hadn’t been able
to do it. Tears welled behind her eyes. Why hadn’t she been able to do it? What
had stopped her? The only thing she was grateful for was that Flic wasn’t there
and hadn’t seen. What would she say? What would she think?

She suddenly wished Lucas was there. She wished she
could speak to him and explain – beg for his forgiveness. She was losing
him and it felt like a punishment. He was fading from her memory. The way he
felt and the way he smelt, the huskiness of his voice – everything about
him was turning indistinct, disintegrating into ashes and dust. She hadn’t dreamt
of him last night either. She hadn’t dreamt of him since Cyrus had kissed her.

She ground her teeth at the memory of all that
she’d let happen. Cyrus’s kiss had completely erased the memory of Lucas.
That’s what had done it. And that was the biggest betrayal of all.

‘Evie.’

It was Cyrus. His hand brushed the nape of her
neck. It was an intimate gesture, one of ownership, even if she knew he hadn’t
really meant it that way. She pulled harshly away, jerking out of his reach,
then she squared her shoulders and walked out of the kitchen, heading towards
the door.