Shadowed (Fated) (34 page)

Cyrus watched her walk away with her head held high. For a moment back
then he had thought she was going to kill Victor. And he wouldn’t have done a
thing to stop her.

Victor had a list of crimes against his name which
needed accounting for. And not in any court of law. And besides, he was still a
danger. Despite all the warnings he’d given Victor, he knew Victor still couldn’t
be trusted. It was a risk – a huge risk letting him come with them.

Cyrus turned to look at him now and found the man
staring straight back at him, testing him, studying him. There was a darkness
to Victor that frightened him. OK, maybe not frightened – that was too
strong – because nothing frightened him other than perhaps losing Evie. Maybe
a better word would be
disturbed
.
Victor’s absolutism to the Hunter cause – his complete lack of empathy or
guilt or anything remotely resembling a human emotion – was disturbing in
the extreme. He was a textbook sociopath, Cyrus thought, as the two locked
eyes. There were Mixens out there with more human traits than this man, and yet
Victor couldn’t see the irony of his wanting to destroy all unhumans.

It took all Cyrus’s will not to march over to him,
grab him by that ridiculous necktie he was wearing and shove him head first
through the back door. The thing that stopped Evie – that little thing
called a conscience – wasn’t something Cyrus was so bothered by. Victor
was no better than a Thirster or a Mixen. Unless Victor attacked Evie first,
came at her ready to kill her, then Evie would never do it. She would only ever
kill in defence of herself or people she cared about. So maybe, Cyrus mused, he
should do it for her. It was that amused look on Victor’s face that was
needling him. The smug smile he’d tossed at Evie as he’d walked away. Yes, they
probably did need Victor, but on the other hand now they had Shadowlands
weapons …

Cyrus slid his sword from its sheath almost without
thinking and took a step towards Victor. But suddenly Issa was in the way, standing
there with her hands on her hips, arching her eyebrows at him.

Cyrus tried to dodge around her, but she blocked
him easily. Damn Sybll. And now Victor had left the room and it was too late.
But then he did a double take and drew back. Had she seen what he was about to
do? Would he have killed Victor? He frowned at the slip of a Sybll in front of
him.

‘I’d have won though, right?’ he asked her.

‘We need him,’ Issa answered tiredly, but he could
tell by the very slight twitch at the corner of her mouth that, yes, he would
have won.

Cyrus suppressed the victory fist pump, reminding
himself it didn’t actually count if it was only in a Sybll vision that he’d
killed Victor and not in real life.

Issa frowned at him. She had lilac-coloured shadows
under her eyes and he remembered that Flic had mentioned that Issa had had some
kind of past with Lucas. What was it with him and hot girls falling at his
feet? She wore the same worn-down, hurt look that he saw in Evie and it rankled
him.

‘Do you believe in the prophecy?’ he suddenly asked
her.

Issa looked taken aback. ‘Yes,’ she stammered, ‘I
believe in the prophecy. Of course. It’s marked.’

‘But if you say things can swivel on a dime, that
suggests we have free will – that each and every moment is ours to
choose. You just stopped me from killing Victor. You saw it happening. Yet at
the same time you’re trying to tell me things are foretold.’

‘The Sybll believe that some things, not
everything, but
some
things are
fated, destined, meant to be. The marked prophecies are among those things that
are fated. They will happen,’ she said with a sigh, ‘no matter how hard we
fight against them.’

‘So you still think it’s Evie, then? That she’s the
White Light? That it won’t end until she closes the way through?’

Issa sighed more loudly. ‘I don’t know anymore,’
she admitted, shrugging her slender shoulders. ‘We did. We all did. It made
sense. She’s the last pureblood Hunter. Well, apart from you. And it wasn’t
you.’ She tipped her head to one side. ‘So who knows? Everything with Evie
tends to be a blur. Her future is never clear.’

‘Why?’ Cyrus asked.

‘Because she’s always making choices that change
things.’ Her tone seemed to suggest that she had issues with those choices.
‘She chose. She fell in love with Lucas and chose not to kill him. And she
chose just now not to kill Victor. She chose to leave Riverview and come back
here. She’s choosing to stand here and fight as you all are when she could have
just buried her head in the sand. Most people follow the path of least
resistance, do what’s expected of them – follow the crowd. That’s why
it’s easy to see their futures. But not Evie. She never chooses the easy path.
She constantly veers from it, and that makes it hard to see the destination
she’s headed in.’

Cyrus laughed under his breath. ‘She does what she
thinks is right. That’s why. Not what she thinks will be best for her but what
she thinks will be best for other people.’

Issa didn’t say anything. She just continued
staring at him with those freakishly big eyes of hers, which made it hard to
guess exactly what she was thinking. Was she shooting him a disbelieving look
or was that just her normal face?

He frowned at her, wondering. ‘So you can’t see her
future then? At all?’

‘No,’ she answered firmly.

‘Or mine?’ he asked hopefully, aware that he
probably looked pathetic and needy, and wondering whether he should just man up
and ask her straight out whether she saw him getting together with Evie and
whether any of her visions included a kid with his colour hair and Evie’s eyes.
He shook his head, trying to shake some sense back into it. No way was any of
that coming out of his mouth.

Issa arched a pale blonde eyebrow at him. She knew
exactly what he was getting at and he squirmed beneath her stare.

‘You want me to tell you whether there’s a happy
ever after?’ she asked drily, ‘whether she’ll get over Lucas and be yours one
day?’

She laughed – a harsh braying sound that made
a flush of anger scorch his cheeks.

‘I don’t know,’ she said over her shoulder as she
walked away. ‘Ask me again later tonight.’

They were ready, all of them lined up along the perimeter wall. The
Originals must have felt them from a mile away. They may as well have attached
sirens to themselves and blue flashing lights.

Evie glanced over at Cyrus. He hadn’t said a word
for several minutes, which had to be a record. The ribbons of muscle along his
shoulders and running up the nape of his neck were taut as steel cables, his
lips corpse-white. He was working hard to give an appearance of calm, but she
could hear his heart beating double time. Her own was keeping pace. Sweat was
snaking trails down her back and she was having to force herself to hold
steady. Crossing the wall felt like declaring war. A war she didn’t know if any
of them would survive.

Jamieson had shifted into a squirrel and climbed
the wall to provide a visual. On his cue, Cyrus boosted Evie up the wall. She
grabbed hold of the top and hauled herself up, dropping to the ground on the
other side, blade in her hand. Cyrus landed in a silent crouch beside her half
a second later. The others appeared spaced out at fifteen-metre intervals, all
except Vero, who was perched instead on top of the wall with her crossbow fixed
to her shoulder, and Jamieson, who sat beside her, shifted back now into human
form. Evie worried about him. He couldn’t shift into a bird any more to escape,
not with a broken arm, but he’d insisted on coming along anyway.

She didn’t stop to think about it for long. Her
gaze was drawn immediately to the way through. It stood as a solid curtain of
fire between the trees. She blinked at the brightness, at the strangeness of it
hanging there, as though a shooting star had fallen from the sky and embedded
itself into the lawn, its tail still blazing.

For a moment she considered Cyrus’s words to her,
his absolute conviction that she wasn’t the White Light. Should she ignore him
and try to close it anyway? What if … She didn’t have a chance to follow the
thought anywhere.

They’d appeared. As though magicked out of thin
air. Seven of them – three males and four females, striding across the lawn
to meet them. Their pace was measured, almost rehearsed. They didn’t come at
them in a whirling blaze of movement and rage. And in a way that made it more
sinister. Every hair on Evie’s body stood on end. It felt like the world had
just drawn a breath and was pausing before a final exhalation.

It wasn’t their clothes that Evie noticed – a
random selection of garments, most probably culled from the wardrobe of the
house they were squatting in, nor their absolute stillness. It was the lack of
any expression on their faces. They were as blank as runway models – the
hard glint of their eyes the only evidence that something was going on behind
the stone facades. And maybe she was imagining it but all their eyes seemed to
be focusing on just one thing – her.

The Originals stopped in a line, ranged across from
them,
 
though the strongest and
tallest of them seemed to have positioned themselves opposite her.

A couple stood back, posting themselves in front of
the way through, silhouetted against it. Was it that important to them to keep
it open? Why? Hadn’t they slaughtered everyone in all the other realms? Evie’s
mind skittered over these thoughts, unable to focus on anything now, other than
the unhumans standing opposite. What were they waiting for?

Evie locked eyes with the one opposite her. She
looked to be barely out of her teens, with a mop of curly blonde hair and big
blue eyes, and Evie had to remind herself that even though she looked like
Taylor Swift this
girl
would sooner
rip her head off than sing her a song about a broken heart.

She squeezed the hilt of her blade and said a
silent prayer as a whisper of wind shot past her ear.

The Original standing in front of Flic, a girl with
flaming red hair who looked like she belonged in a pre-Raphaelite painting,
flew backwards with a sickening scream, the tip of an arrow embedded in her
chest.

Thank
you, Vero
.

Vero let loose a second arrow, this time aiming at
the male standing opposite Ash.

The man’s hand flew up so fast it was a blur. Evie
blinked, trying to compute. He’d caught the arrow between his fingers and was
now studying it curiously, as though trying to figure out what it was made of.
Then, quicker than lightning he twirled it in his fingers and whipped it
straight back in Vero’s direction.

Evie heard Vero scream and turned in time to see
her fall in a tangle of limbs, landing with a thud on the ground. The arrow tip
was sticking out of her arm, near her shoulder. Evie paused, half-twisted
towards Vero, wanting to run to her, seeing Ash out of the corner of her eye
thinking the same. But they weren’t given the chance.

On some unspoken cue the Originals ran at them.

Before he knew what was happening the really tall one who’d been
standing opposite him was on top of him. It felt like he’d been floored by a
steamroller. Hands – or what felt like talons – were clawing at his
jaw, trying to twist his head to the side. Cyrus pushed with all his might
against the weight on his chest, feeling the stitches in his arm rip open. He
gritted his teeth against the pain, as blood began spurting down his arm and
soaking into his shirt.

The struggle stopped instantly. The Original let go
of his head and sat up, straddling him, her thighs gripping his waist. In any
other circumstance it might have been pleasurable. She looked a little like
Angelina Jolie, Cyrus thought randomly, and then cursed himself that his mind
was so one track even when facing death.

This close he could see the starbursts of red in
her eyes, could make out the pupils expanding like balloons, could see her
fangs, the needle points of them getting closer, and he knew what was coming
next. He didn’t have time to even lift his blade before her teeth bit straight
through his T-shirt, ripping aside what was left of the bandage, and then sank
into the torn flesh of his arm. The pain shot through him like a million shards
of acid-coated glass shredding his nerves. There was no way of containing it
– he let out an agonised scream, trying at the same time to roll out from
under her, to wrench his arm free from her teeth, but it was hopeless. It was
like being mauled by a lion.

He tried to focus even as his heart started to
burst supernova style and stars flew across his vision. He was giving up
without a fight. That was not how he was going to die. Hadn’t he promised Evie
he was going to protect her? Gritting his teeth, he forced his numb fingers to
grip hold of the blade, which was slipping from them. Then, grunting, he forced
his free arm to lift. His vision was darkening. Something was banging slowly
against his skull, loud and insistent, and he realised it was his heart
refusing to give up but slowing nonetheless as the blood flowed out of him.