Shadowed (Fated) (6 page)

‘I take it by your silence that you have. So you
know what’s happening, then?’

Evie paused a moment before nodding.

‘You know that it’s not a serial killer, right? You
know it’s unhumans?’

Evie nodded again.

‘It’s the ones that got here before we closed the
way through,’ added Vero.

‘It’s not just Thirsters. We can handle those,’ Ash
carried on. ‘And the Mixen and Scorpio that came through seem to have gone to
ground.’ He held Evie’s gaze. ‘We think it must be Originals.’

A shiver of goosebumps ran up Evie’s arms.

‘There must have been others, besides the one you
killed in the Bradbury. It’s more than we can handle alone,’ said Ash, fixing
her with a pointed stare.

‘You don’t say,’ Evie replied tersely. It had taken
five fully trained, heavily armed Hunters to stop just one Original. There was
no way on earth the two of them could stop one, let alone more than that.

‘That’s not the only problem,’ Vero added. ‘We
think they’re making more.’

Evie stared at her, the blood running cold in her
veins.

‘It would account for the number of people going
missing,’ Ash continued. ‘The police are keeping it all quiet. But the homicide
rate is up three hundred percent.’

‘The police couldn’t handle a stray dog,’ Vero
spat, ‘let alone this. It’s a good job there are still some Hunters around to
handle it for them.’

‘You’re still hunting, then?’ Evie asked.

Vero frowned at her as if she was stupid. ‘What
else are we going to do?’ she snapped.

Evie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I just figured
that … I mean …’ She hesitated. ‘You wanted out, didn’t you?’

‘After it was over,’ Vero said. ‘And does it look
like it’s over to you?’

She strode towards Evie, her teeth flashing in the
darkness. She looked a little like a rabid Thirster, Evie thought, taking a
minute step backwards and gripping the gun tighter. She had learnt to be wary
of both Vero and her sister, Risper. Though Risper had turned out to be an ally
in the end, for a time Evie had been her target practice. And Vero and she had
never exactly bonded either.

‘There are still unhumans out there,’ Vero said
‘and we’re Hunters, unless you forgot. We can’t just stand by and let it
happen. This is
our
realm.’

‘We came here to see if you’d help,’ Ash
interrupted, stepping in front of Vero. ‘We figured you might join us.’

Evie saw the doubt flickering across his face as he
waited for her response.

‘There are no other Hunters?’ she asked, her voice
uneven. ‘No one else who can help?’

‘No,’ Ash said. ‘There are no other Hunters who can
help. Don’t you think we’ve already thought of that? We’ve exhausted all other
options. That’s why we’re here.’

His words landed as hard as a slap. Evie didn’t say
anything.

Vero took Ash by the elbow. ‘I told you we
shouldn’t have bothered with her,’ she said, tugging him backwards. ‘Come on,
let’s go.’

‘No,’ Evie said, reaching out and grabbing Ash’s
arm.

He turned back to her impatiently.

‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I want to help.’ She
paused. ‘But …’

‘But what?’ he asked.

She hesitated, wondering what to tell him. ‘I need
to deal with something first.’

‘Listen,’ hissed Vero, rounding on Evie, ‘we gave
you time.
And
space. We kept away
these last eight weeks even though things were getting out of hand and we could
have used you. But we’re all dealing with stuff, you know. Not just you. We
need to end this,’ she growled. ‘We owe Risper that. We owe Cyrus that.’ A
pause. ‘
You
owe him that.’

Evie staggered back a step, reeling at her words.

‘Is it Victor?’ Ash suddenly asked. ‘Is that the
thing you need to deal with?’

‘Yes,’ Evie admitted.

‘OK,’ Ash said, nodding. ‘How about this? Come back
with us. We have weapons.’ He glanced at the hunting rifle in Evie’s hand.
‘You’re not going to get very far against Victor with that. You know how well
armed he is.’

Evie scowled at him.

‘You help us get the situation under control
– help us wipe out all the Originals. And we’ll help you find Victor in
return. Is it a deal?’

Evie didn’t say anything. She just chewed it over
in her mind. She wasn’t going to be able to find Victor and kill him if she was
dead, which was what was most likely going to happen to her if she agreed to
this deal to hunt Originals.

‘Are you a Hunter or not?’ Vero asked, interrupting
her thoughts.

Evie studied them both, her mind whirring. ‘You
think the three of us can deal with Originals? You think we have any chance
– at all?’

Ash held her gaze. ‘I don’t know. But I do know one
thing – we have to try.’

It took Evie two minutes to pack her stuff. Once she’d gathered her
things she threw her bag over her shoulder and scanned the room. She knew she
should go and tell her mother she was leaving but, unable to face the
disappointment in her mum’s face or yet another argument, she grabbed her
notebook instead and scribbled a few lines:

Dear mum, I have to go and help a friend
who’s in trouble. I’ll be away for a few days. I’m sorry. Evie x

She left the note on her bed and ran down the
stairs. Her mum had switched the radio on in the kitchen and didn’t even hear
her as she slipped out of the front door.

Ash and Vero were waiting in Cyrus’s car at the end
of the driveway. As she slid into the back, Ash glanced over his shoulder. ‘All
good?’ he asked.

Evie nodded and he pulled out onto the road.

They travelled in silence, taking back streets out
of town until they made it to the freeway, at which point Evie turned her
attention back to Ash and Vero. ‘So, how many are there?’ she asked, her body
tensed for the answer.

She couldn’t stop thinking that the Originals were
supposed to have been massacred a thousand years ago, and yet here they now
were, alive and happy and multiplying in LA.

‘About a dozen we think,’ said Ash, glancing at her
in the rear-view mirror. ‘Judging from what we’ve seen and the number of new
Thirsters on the street.’

‘If only they
were
new Thirsters,’ Vero said under her breath.

‘What do you mean?’ Evie asked, leaning forward.

Vero shifted in her seat so that she was looking
through the gap in the headrest at Evie. ‘You know how most Thirsters,
especially new-born ones, are young, dumb and full of …’ She stopped abruptly,
pulling a face. ‘Well, these ones are young and they’re blood-crazed and
they’re ten times stronger than a normal newbie.’

‘And they’re way more intelligent than your average
unhuman too,’ Ash added, grimacing as he drove. ‘The only thing they can’t do
is daywalk like Originals.’

Well, at least that was something, Evie thought
wryly.

‘What about the revelation law?’ she asked.

‘Revelation law?’ Ash laughed. ‘What revelation
law? It doesn’t exist anymore.’

Evie slunk back in her seat and stared out of the
window. The revelation law was the rule passed by the Elders forbidding
unhumans to reveal themselves to humans in this realm. If there was no
revelation law controlling them, then it wouldn’t be long before every unhuman
in town – and there were still thousands – would start walking the
streets, whether they were green or had a tail or could shift into wild animals.
She didn’t want to imagine what kind of a bloodbath there would be.

She had thought that once the way through was
closed it would all be over and the world would just go back to normal –
that she could go back to being normal too. How much more naïve could she have
been?

‘Why are the Originals making more Thirsters? I
mean, what’s the point? Surely it just means more competition when it comes to
meal times?’ Evie asked.

‘We think they’re creating an army to do their
dirty work for them.’

The breath caught in Evie’s chest. ‘What dirty
work?’

‘Bringing them food, hunting for us …’

‘What?’ Evie choked.

Ash glanced at her in the mirror. ‘They’re hunting
us. Think about it. They’re here, in
our
realm.
What are they going to do? Hide? Try to blend in?’ He shook his head, his eyes
now back on the road. ‘No. They don’t care about blending in. They don’t need
to blend in. Only animals that can get eaten need to learn how to camouflage
themselves. These guys are at the top of the food chain. They don’t need to
hide. They have nothing to fear from humans.’

He paused, as though to let Evie fully comprehend
what he was saying. ‘
We’re
their only
threat,’ he continued, ‘and when you colonise another realm you do that by
first ridding yourself of any threats to your own dominance in that realm’s
eco-system. That would be
us
. It’s
Darwinism. The strongest species wins.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Evie asked, leaning forward
between the two front seats. ‘They’re going to kill all the Hunters in this
realm? That’s their big plan? So they can what? Hang out here at the
all-you-can-eat-buffet for the rest of eternity?’

‘Yes,’ Ash nodded.

Fear wrapped itself around her insides, but Evie
forced herself to ignore it. ‘So,’ she said, trying to sound a lot more
confident than she felt, ‘I guess we had better find them first. Any ideas
where they’re hanging out?’

‘No.’

‘But they feed right? Any patterns to the feeding?’

‘Up in the hills, along Mulholland and in Beverly
Hills. That’s where most of the killings have taken place.’

‘Expensive tastes,’ Evie remarked. ‘You think
they’re all hanging out together in some mansion feeding off the rich and
famous?’

‘Do the rich taste better, do you think?’ Vero
asked.

‘Must be all that organic food,’ Ash said, giving
her a sly smile.

‘More like all that blow,’ Vero fired back.
‘Probably gives them a hit, like passive smoking.’

‘We need shadow blades,’ Evie said almost under her
breath. The saw blade she’d thrown at the Original in the Bradbury building had
bounced clean off him, as ineffectual as a rubber band. But the shadow blade
had sliced through his throat as easy as a knife through butter frosting. ‘Do
you have any?’ she asked half-jokingly.

‘Yeah, we went to Walmart and bought their entire
stock of other-realm weapons,’ sneered Vero, twisting around to give Evie an
exasperated look.

‘Hang on,’ Evie said, grabbing hold of a memory
that had surfaced somewhere in the back of her hazed-out mind. ‘Margaret
– didn’t she have one?’

‘What?’ both Vero and Ash exclaimed.

Evie nodded. ‘In her cabinet. I’m sure of it. When
we went to her office that time, Cyrus was playing with it and she told him to
put it back. I didn’t think about it when we were there but, yeah, I’m pretty
sure it was a shadow blade.’

Vero glanced at Ash across the front seat. He
turned to her and shrugged. ‘We may as well take a look,’ he said, and when she
frowned he reached a hand over and patted her on the knee. ‘I promise if we
can’t find a shadow blade you can try the grenade launcher.’

Evie fell silent in the back of the car, thinking through everything
she’d just discovered. A small voice in a far recess of her brain – a
voice that she was duly trying to ignore – was urging her to reorganise
her priorities. With so many new Thirsters on the streets and a coven of
Originals to find and destroy, she knew she should think about parking the
Victor issue.

But what if she focused on this and he slipped
through her fingers? What if it was then too late for revenge? She couldn’t
just put it to one side. Not now.

She turned it over in her mind and then figured
that there was no harm in trying to do two things at once. She was a female of
the species, after all. And they were in LA. It wouldn’t hurt for them to
detour and try to discover what they could about Victor’s whereabouts. It would
only take an hour or so. She pulled the map out with the address on and thrust
it under Ash’s nose.

He glared at her in the rear-view mirror then
exchanged a brief glance with Vero. Finally, barely suppressing the sigh, he
tapped the address into the GPS.

Carter Holdings, the address on the letter she’d
found in the store, turned out to be a squat brick building with metal shutters
clamped over the windows. It was situated in an area so deserted and derelict
that Evie half expected the building to be cordoned off with yellow tape. The
street stank of urine and dead animal.

Evie crunched across a sidewalk littered with old
syringes and dog mess until she was standing in front of the door. She tried
the handle. There was no give. It appeared to be double bolted.