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.
Chapter 52
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.’
Chapter 53
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.
Chapter 54
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.