Severed (11 page)

Cyrus glanced up at him. ‘They fell out over the White Light. Victor expected them both to protect you,’ he said, his eyes lingering on Evie. ‘To train you. But Vero didn’t think they should risk their lives protecting something – someone – who she didn’t believe in.’

Evie’s head flew up.

‘What evidence was there that it was you?’ Cyrus shrugged, taking a swig from his water bottle. ‘Vero thought it was a suicide mission. But Risper wanted it to be true. She wanted it to be true badly – she’d had enough – she wanted out and thought that if they’d found the White Light the end was in sight. So Vero walked away alone. She found us – joined us.’ He put the bottle down on the table. ‘For the last three years we’ve banded together in LA, trying to keep an eye on the way through, trying to limit the numbers of unhumans coming through. Waiting, I guess.’

‘Hold up,’ Evie said. ‘Vero walked away? She left? Just like that? And Victor didn’t come after her?’

‘No.’ Cyrus shook his head.

‘But Victor said no one ever left. He said no one ever got away.’ Her fingers were gripping the sides of the sofa. ‘People … people were killed trying to leave. He told me.’ She was talking about her parents but Cyrus didn’t need to know that.

Cyrus shrugged again. ‘Well, Vero got away. She was one of the lucky ones. My mum too. He never managed to find her either – not for want of trying.’

Evie’s voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘Your mum? She was a Hunter too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who is she?’ Lucas asked.

Cyrus looked up at him, an annoyed expression on his face as if he’d only just remembered that Lucas was in the room. ‘Her name’s Margaret,’ he answered.

‘Margaret?’ Evie said, her head flying up.

Cyrus nodded.

Evie turned to Lucas with a stricken look on her face and he dropped to her side, kneeling in front of the sofa.

‘I know her. I know the name,’ she said, reaching for him. ‘She was in the book. The book Victor gave me with the family tree in it. She was scratched out. He told me she was dead. He made out that he’d killed her.’

‘Well, she’s alive,’ Cyrus shrugged. ‘Last time I checked anyway.’

Lucas turned instantly to Cyrus, ‘Who’s your father?’

‘What’s it to you?’ Cyrus shot back, jumping abruptly to his feet so he was looming over Lucas.

Lucas stood slowly so he was standing taller than Cyrus. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

Cyrus turned away and started heading towards the door that Vero and Ash had disappeared through.

‘Are we going to see your mum?’ Evie called after him.

‘In the morning. First I think your boyfriend needs some beauty sleep. There’s a guest room you can use.’ He turned to Evie smirking, ‘Or you can bunk with me.’

Lucas lowered his head and fought the overwhelming urge to fade and reappear right in front of Cyrus brandishing the sword that Vero had dropped by the door on her way in. It was tempting. Seriously tempting. But Evie had a tight hold of his hand as though she’d guessed what he was thinking, and she was looking up at him wide-eyed and pleading – or maybe she was warning him not to react, so he ignored Cyrus and, leaning down, kissed Evie on the lips.

Chapter 18

Evie stared at the bunk beds. The phrase
who’s on top?
was on the tip of her tongue but she couldn’t bring herself to utter it. She stood there in silence instead. The whole night had been so surreal and now it was ending with them standing here in a room with kids’ bunk beds shoved against one wall and a Space Invaders arcade game pushed against the other, while Vero’s cries seeped through the thinly partitioned walls.

‘Do you ever have times when you just don’t want to deal with what’s in front of you?’ Evie whispered as they stood there, hand in hand, in the centre of the room.

‘Yes,’ Lucas answered, laughing softly.

She looked up at him, shaking her head slowly. ‘You’re so lucky. You can just disappear.’ She moved to face him. ‘I’m always scared that you’re never going to come back.’

He smiled sadly at her, tracing the back of his hand along her cheekbone. ‘I’m always going to come back,’ he said, before he kissed her, sending a shiver all the way through her body that almost lifted her off the ground.

She broke away after a minute and looked up at him again. ‘What’s it like when you fade?’

He thought about it for a few seconds before he answered. ‘It’s like sheltering from a storm.’

‘Do you prefer it – being invisible?’

He studied her, his eyes narrowing slightly. ‘I used to.’

‘What happens when you die?’ The question tumbled out of her before she could stop it. She instantly regretted it and her gaze fell to the floor.

‘Hey, hey.’ His hand was under her chin, forcing it back up. His eyes were the exact same colour as an early winter sky. ‘I’m not going to die. At least,’ he smiled at her, ‘not for a while.’

‘But when you – I mean unhumans – when you die, what happens?’

‘Our bodies cross back to the Shadowlands or whichever realm we come from.’ He shrugged slightly, ‘I’m not sure where I’ll go, being half human.’

It was her turn to frown.

‘Why are we talking about this?’ he asked quickly. ‘Let’s focus on staying alive, OK? Not on dying.’ He let go of her hand and started pacing the room. ‘Cyrus’s mother, Margaret,’ he said as he walked. ‘She must have known your parents – your real parents.’

Evie tipped her head to one side. ‘My parents?’

‘Yes, in the book,’ Lucas said, stopping in front of her. ‘I remember seeing it too.’

Evie shook her head, scrunching her eyes shut. When she opened them he had started pacing once more – moving so fast he was a blur. ‘You read the book? When?’ she demanded.

Lucas stopped pacing. He looked guiltily her way. ‘I was spying on you, remember?’ he answered, giving her a tentative smile.

‘You went through my stuff?’

He weighed his answer. ‘It wasn’t like I went through your underwear drawer.’ Colour slowly infused his face. He had
so
been through her underwear drawer, and she knew it. That was where she’d hidden the damn book before she’d moved it under her bed for safer keeping.

‘OK,’ he admitted, ‘I went through your underwear drawer but I wasn’t looking for your underwear, I didn’t even notice your underwear.’ His head was ducked and he was looking up at her through his lashes, giving her a cheeky half smile. He had
so
noticed her underwear.

‘Aha,’ she said nodding. ‘What else did you spy on?’

His face turned anxious but then he saw her amused smile and his shoulders visibly relaxed.

‘Nothing,’ he answered, holding her gaze. ‘I do have some notions of chivalry. I wasn’t about to follow you into the shower.’

She raised her eyebrows at him.

‘Anyway,’ he said, clearing his throat, ‘I think you should be glad I was spying on you; otherwise you might have lost more than the tip of your ear out in that cornfield. Not to mention the fact you would have drowned if I hadn’t been at the pond.’

Her gaze dropped instantly to her left hand, on the ring finger of which was a thin gold band. Her mother’s wedding ring, which Victor had tossed into the pond and made her dive for. The ring that Lucas had gone back for, risking hypothermia to retrieve.

A silence fell. Vero’s cries seemed to grow louder to fill it, making Evie wince and her stomach squeeze tight. Suddenly she was buried against Lucas’s chest, her mouth pressed against the warm skin at the base of his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, his lips brushing her hair.

She rocked back on her heels and looked up at him. ‘Sorry? About what?’

‘About Issa. About what happened. I’m sorry I couldn’t get to that Scorpio first.’

Evie took hold of Lucas’s forearms and pushed him backwards. His hands fell to his sides and a look passed across his face that made her want to kiss him or, at the very least, to press her fingers to his lips and make him stop talking. There was so much guilt and pain in his expression.

‘Lucas,’ she said with a sigh, wondering if he’d ever be free of all that pain, ‘you can’t stop any of this. It’s happening. There’s nothing you or I can do about it. I’m sorry too. I hate Issa for what she did. But maybe she was right.’ She let go of Lucas’s arms and walked away, towards the bed so he wouldn’t see her face.

‘About what?’ Lucas demanded, appearing in front of her again, blocking her path.

She stepped around him and sank down onto the bottom bunk, dropping her head into her hands.

‘Maybe she’s right about who I am,’ she murmured. ‘There I was thinking that my real parents were right, that I could choose who I was, that I could choose not to be a Hunter, that the whole White Light thing was just a load of crap.’ She looked up suddenly and saw he was frowning hard at her, his eyes almost black in the darkened room. ‘But who am I kidding? It
is
who I am. It’s exactly who I am.’ She paused.

Lucas didn’t say a word. He just continued to stare at her.

‘Anyway,’ she said, forcing lightness into her voice, ‘now you don’t have to worry about me so much. I can look after myself. I can fight.’ She pushed her hair back from her forehead where the cut had already faded to just a faint pink line. ‘Look, I’ve almost healed. Victor said I would be stronger, quicker, better able to heal.’

Lucas dropped to his knees, pulling her hand away from her forehead and taking it between both of his own. ‘Evie …’

She shook her head. ‘It’s done, Lucas. What’s the point in talking about it? I feel fine. I feel great in fact.’

She turned away so he wouldn’t see that actually she didn’t feel fine at all. She felt like she had a knife buried in her chest and that someone was slowly cranking it three sixty. She had killed someone. It didn’t matter that it was a Scorpio. She had killed someone. But having a breakdown or getting all existential about it wasn’t exactly tactful in front of someone who killed for a living. Who’d killed for her in fact – to protect her. And besides, it was better this way. She really believed that. If she was stronger, then Lucas would be safer. He wouldn’t have to watch her back all the time like he had been doing.

‘Evie, your first kill,’ Lucas said, his voice strange-sounding, ‘it does something to you.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ she said bouncing to her feet. ‘I feel amazing. It’s like I just got contacts or something after being short-sighted my whole life. And my body – it’s buzzing. I can hear everything – I can hear the fridge humming for Chrissake – I can hear the faucet dripping in the bathroom. Do you hear that?’ She left out the obvious sound of Vero’s sobs coming at them unevenly through the walls because you didn’t need supersonic hearing to hear those. ‘It’s amazing,’ she said, spinning around. ‘Victor was right. I wonder why? Why is that? Why does killing someone make you suddenly into this superhuman? That’s weird, right? Does that not strike you as a little odd? It shouldn’t endow you with power. It should take it away. It doesn’t seem right.’ She was aware she was pacing the room as she talked, could hear her voice getting shriller and shriller and wished she could shut up.

Lucas appeared in her way once more, causing her to pull up short. She trailed off, her head turning left and right as she unconsciously tried to figure out how to get around him so she could continue pacing. ‘Yeah, strange,’ she muttered to herself.

‘Evie, it’s OK,’ Lucas said gently.

‘I know it’s OK,’ she snapped at him.

His face fell.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I just … I …’ She stopped and looked up at him, unable to find the words.

‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I felt the same after my first kill.’

She tilted her head to study him better. They’d never really spoken about Lucas’s life before she met him. Now, looking up at him, she realised how completely self-centred she was being. Here she was yapping on about how her life sucked because, boohoo, she had killed something with a tail –
with a tail for God’s sake
– something that was only three steps away from using it to slice someone in half, when Lucas was standing right in front of her not exactly an advert for happy, well-adjusted youth.

She let Lucas pull her over to the bed and slumped down on it. He sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. His fingers began massaging the base of her neck, rubbing away the tension.

‘Tell me about you,’ she said after a minute or so had passed. ‘Tell me what it was like for you.’

He took a deep breath. She leant into him automatically, breathing in his smell, layered now and more complex; smoke and a faint metallic hint of blood rising over the normal, warmer summer scent of citrus. Through the thin cotton of his T-shirt she could feel the pulse of his blood beneath his ribs. Her fingertips stroked the inside of his wrist up to his elbow, feeling his skin contract in a shiver. There was a fine, almost invisible lattice of scars running over his arms that her fingers began tracing almost without thinking. She felt his heart rate increasing beneath her ear, his breath on her neck becoming shallower and faster.

‘I always knew I was half Shadow Warrior,’ he began quietly. ‘My father had to start training me young. And Flic. To make sure we didn’t make a mistake and give ourselves away. He wanted us to grow up in the human world – be human – or as human as we could be.’

‘How did he meet your mother?’ Evie asked, her head buried beneath his chin. She liked sitting like this, hearing his heart strong and loud beneath her ear and the rough texture of his voice in his chest.

‘He met her here in LA,’ he answered. ‘He was young. He was a bounty hunter at the time.’

She sat up. A bounty hunter? Images borrowed from apocalyptic films involving men with bushy beards, large motorcycles and semi-automatic weapons leapt into her mind. She didn’t think that was what he meant though. ‘What exactly is a bounty hunter?’ she asked.

He smiled at her. ‘They’re unhumans, operating outside the Brotherhood, kind of like policemen, but for our kind. They hunt down those unhumans who have broken the rules and they bring them back to face justice.’

‘There are rules? There’s a justice system where you come from?’