Shadowed (Fated)

  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?’

  Chapter 27

  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 t
o 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.

  Chapter 28

  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.

  He tried to peer through the glass and beyond, at the display of books in the window to see if Darcy was inside the store. He’d rather avoid her if he could. Making small talk when he could no longer remember topics to talk small about was problematic. And he didn’t want to have to make any more excuses about why he hadn’t called her. As if amnesia wasn’t enough of an excuse.

  But it was early, the store was still shut, the lights dimmed. His mum had told him to come, so he guessed she must be inside in her office. When he tried the door, he saw it was only on the latch. He stepped inside, checking his surroundings, feeling the low voltage charge he felt around the other Hunters – it was dimmer around his mum, most amplified when he was around Evie.

  His mum wasn’t in her office. She was sitting at a table by the counter with a tiny espresso cup by her elbow and a pile of books stacked neatly in front of her. She looked up at him and smiled wanly.

  ‘You need a shave,’ was the first thing she said.

  Cyrus dropped into the chair opposite her with a sigh. ‘I’ve been kind of busy.’

  It was only then that he noticed the slim silver blade leaning against the leg of her chair.

  ‘Expecting someone?’ he asked, nodding in its direction.

  ‘Something,’ his mother stated drily. ‘They’ll be coming.’ As she said it she took a sip of her coffee.

  ‘Is that what you wanted to see me about?’ he asked, eyeing the red and silver coffee maker behind her. Caffeine would be good right now, might help cut through the sludge of his mind and help him locate some clarity.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ his mother said.

  He switched his attention back to her, feeling his headache expand into his frontal lobe.

  ‘I think it’s open.’

  He knew she wasn’t talking about the store. ‘You mean the way through?’ he asked, standing and heading behind the counter to the coffee machine. He flicked a switch. The levers and buttons looked familiar to him. ‘I told you, we checked it,’ he said, glancing over at his mother. ‘It was closed. I closed it.’

  The coffee began to spring forth from the machine, dripping viscous into his cup. It was like driving a car. He knew what buttons to press to make coffee! It gave him hope for when he got together with Evie – he checked himself – with a girl – that he’d know what buttons to press then too.

  His mum waited until he’d stopped frothing the milk for his macchiato. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think you did close it.’

  He set the tiny cup down on the tiny saucer and looked up at her.

  ‘We went back to that Bradbury place and checked. It was shut.’

  She shook her head. Her face looked grey. ‘I know. It did shut. It just opened up someplace else though. Like plugging a hole in a dam, the water burst through somewhere else. Another gateway opened up as soon as the one in the Bradbury building closed.’ She saw the look Cyrus was giving her and hurried on. ‘It would explain a few t
hings’, she said. ‘How you’re here for one. And why there seem to be even more unhumans around than there were before. It can’t all be down to the Originals making more.’

  Cyrus picked up his coffee and swallowed it in one gulp, feeling the bitter burn as the liquid hit the back of his throat. He walked back to the table.

  ‘OK, back up,’ he said, focusing on his mum, registering the instant burst of clarity as the caffeine hit his bloodstream. ‘You made me come all the way across town to ply me with conjecture? Do you have any proof? This whole dam theory doesn’t seem like it holds water. No pun intended.’

  She pushed a sheet of paper towards him across the table, giving him an iron-clad stare. It was a print-out of an internet news piece.

  NAKED MAN FOUND WANDERING IN BEVERLY HILLS

  A man in his early twenties was found naked, wandering the streets in the early hours of the morning. The man, who was carrying no ID, was in possession of a two-foot long sword.

  Nice euphemism, Cyrus mused, feeling a momentary stab of disappointment that there was no photo to accompany the piece.

  ‘I was naked. Where were they expecting me to carry ID?’ he asked, tossing the article back to his mum.

  ‘Check the date,’ his mother answered, her face serious.

  ‘What about it?’ he asked, glancing down again.

  She stabbed the top of the page with her index finger. ‘That’s the morning after the fight, after you walked through the gateway and we thought you’d died. Just a few hours later.’

  He studied the headline once more, trying to manage the thoughts flying around his newly fired-up brain. The fact he’d been found wandering brandishing a sword, or two swords to be precise, was irrelevant, wasn’t it? But she had him on the number of unhumans still on the streets.

  He sighed, ‘OK, just say I’m going with you on this, for conjecture’s sake, why wouldn’t it close properly? Tell me that. The prophecy said the way through would be closed didn’t it? So why would it not be?’