Chapter 17
It was the same girl. The girl from his dreams. The girl who looked like she’d escaped from a Klimt painting and gone wandering into the Dali-esque nightmare. Her skin was paler, her face thinner and her eyes duller than they were in his dream, but it was her. He’d recognise those eyes anywhere. And from the way she was staring at him now, with her jaw hanging slack, he took a wild stab in the dark that she knew him too.
‘Cyrus?’ she said.
Her voice was hoarse. He shook his head slightly as if to say maybe?
‘Cyrus,’ she said again, louder this time, his name almost choking out of her.
And then the other two, the dark-haired guy with the flamethrower and the girl in the army-style boots, were shouting this name too while running towards him and suddenly he found himself buried under a hail of arms and hands and someone’s wet cheek was pressed against his shoulder. But the girl with the dark-brown hair and the bluer-than-blue eyes was standing apart from the others. And through the tangle of arms he was buried in, he saw her staring at him as if he was a ghost.
‘Jesus, man, what the hell are you doing here?’
It was the guy. He was gripping his shoulders and his eyes were shining brightly. Cyrus stared back at him blankly.
‘Cyrus, where have you been, man?’ he asked again, shaking him by the arms and grinning like a maniac. ‘We thought you were dead. How did you make it back?’
‘Back from where?’ he asked.
The three of them exchanged a brief look.
‘What’s with the outfit?’ the other girl, the one with the spiky short hair, asked, pulling back an inch to look at him, her expression wary.
He cleared his throat, not sure whether he should say anything about his recent escape. But these people seemed to know him and for some reason, which he couldn’t believe was just co-incidence, his instincts had brought him to this place, and these people seemed to be fighting the monsters too, so surely he could trust them?
‘I’ve been in hospital,’ he said simply.
‘Yeah, I can see that,’ the girl said, taking hold of his hand, her eyes still wide and marvelling. ‘Jesus, you’re freezing. Come on, let’s get you in the car. You can’t walk around the streets like that. You’re going to get arrested and taken to the funny farm.’
The girl with the blue eyes cleared her throat. ‘I think that might be where he’s come from,’ she said. Her voice was husky and tinged with an emotion he couldn’t quite guess – something more than sadness, greater than relief.
He turned. She was still standing on the sidewalk. The others looked to where she was pointing. He tried to crick his neck far enough to see. And there, stamped on the back of his scrub trousers in large stencilled letters, he read:
GATEWAYS MENTAL HEALTH CENTRE
The three of them looked at each other the way the doctors had looked at each other when he told them about the things with the tails.
‘Cyrus, dude, what were you doing in a mental hospital?’ the guy asked.
They were treating him as if he was dangerous now, edging away from him. The girl with the short dark hair narrowed her eyes and tipped her head in confusion. Then the other girl stepped between them all. She put her hand, the one that monster had hurt, on the guy’s arm.
‘Ash’, she said, ‘let’s forget the questions for the moment and just get out of here before more of them come.’
He stared at her, feeling grateful and something else too – something had stirred in him when he saw her put her hand on Ash’s arm. He wasn’t sure what it was. It didn’t feel like jealousy, but it certainly wasn’t happiness either, not that he was too sure he’d recognise either emotion. Ash nodded and started off towards the car, which was still parked haphazardly across the road with its doors flung open. The girl with short hair hovered by his side, shooting him nervous glances that were making him feel frustrated. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t remember who he was or who they were.
He turned back to the girl with blue eyes. ‘What happened to that thing?’ he asked, pointing to the pile of clothes on the ground. ‘Where did it go?’
The girl stared at him in silence, her lips parted slightly, and he wondered if she had heard him right. ‘It vanished,’ he added for clarity’s sake. ‘I saw it disappear right in front of my eyes. What was it? Where did it go?’
The girl swallowed nervously. ‘I think you need to get in the car,’ was all she said.
He glanced up the street. What if it was a trap? What if he wasn’t friends with these people at all? They were strangers. And a voice in his head was urging him not to trust strangers. Though, he reasoned, he wasn’t a stranger to them. They had seemed genuinely happy to see him. And there was something familiar about the way they had said his name and had thrown their arms around him. As familiar to him as the sword had felt when he took it in his hand and used it to kill that monster.
The girl was waiting. And the other girl just behind him was hopping from foot to foot. She felt her tug on his elbow. ‘Cyrus,’ she said in a soft voice, ‘come with us. We’ll explain everything on the way.’
‘The way to where?’ he asked, letting her pull him backwards towards the car, which the guy was revving.
‘To your apartment,’ she said, unable to keep the incredulous tone out of her voice.
His apartment? He had an apartment. And a name. And he knew how to wield a sword. And this girl was still looking at him as if he was a ghost but that’s because they’d thought he was dead. Which explained why no one had come looking for him or reported him missing. He was finally getting answers to some of the questions he’d had running around in his head the last few weeks. And, most importantly, he knew now he really wasn’t crazy. The doctors could stick that in their pipe and smoke it.
He gazed around the interior of the car. It felt familiar too. The girl with blue eyes was wedged into the corner of the back seat, beside him. She hadn’t stopped staring at him since they’d got in, though it felt like an invisible force field lay between them, a divide he couldn’t cross. He looked at her, feeling nervous all of a sudden. She was nursing her wounded arm, holding it against her chest as if she was a bird with a broken wing, though she hadn’t complained or said a word about it.
He felt an overwhelming urge to make it better somehow, but there was that barrier between them and a general wariness in her gaze, so he kept his distance. Were they just friends? Or were they something more? And what about the girl up front? The one with the spiky hair and the piercings? Was she with the guy?
The guy was driving in silence. There was a weird tension in the car as if they were all holding a collective breath. He stared between them, wondering if he should say something to break the ice.
‘Do you know who I am?’ the girl next to him asked before he could figure out what to say.
He frowned at her. He did know who she was. In some part of his brain he knew – he just couldn’t locate the information right now.
He shook his head. ‘I know I know you. I just don’t know who you are or why I know you. But I’ve seen you … in my dreams.’ He stopped abruptly, noting the look on her face. ‘I mean,’ he went on in a hurry, ‘I kept seeing you and some monsters, like the ones we just killed. But everything’s messed up – nothing’s clear.’
‘Do you know my name?’ she asked.
He noticed the very tip of her left ear was missing.
‘No,’ he admitted.
Up front the guy shifted gear noisily.
‘What is your name?’ he asked.
‘Evie,’ she answered.
Evie, he repeated silently. That made sense. It slotted into place, felt comfortable on the tip of his tongue as if he’d used it a lot. It felt as if another layer, gossamer thin, had floated off the top of the fog in his head.
‘And that’s Vero and Ash,’ she said, pointing to the two up front.
He nodded in greeting and tried to smile.
‘Do you know your name?’ E
vie asked.
He noticed that her tone was overly genial, forced almost, like the voices the nurses had used in the hospital when they’d first brought him in.
‘I’m guessing it’s Cyrus,’ he said, giving her a half-smile. ‘And I’m guessing that those things you were fighting back there are part of the reason why I can’t remember anything. Would that be right?’
The girl’s eyes suddenly filled up with tears. ‘Something like that,’ she whispered.
Chapter 18
He looked like Cyrus again now he was showered and wearing his old clothes. Only his hair looked different, lying wet and tousled. The old Cyrus had precision styled his hair with enough product to turn him into a walking fire hazard.
When Evie watched him saunter across the wooden floorboards of the warehouse towards them she thought she caught a glimmer of his old arrogance in the way his body moved and the confidence in his stride. But when her eyes tracked up his body to his face she felt her uncertainty return. The mocking smile Cyrus used to wear all the time was gone and the spark in his eyes had been replaced with a wariness and a seriousness she didn’t recognise. The only thing that was really familiar about this new Cyrus was the slice of dark amber cutting through the iris of his left pupil, marring the greeny-blue colour of his eyes. No, she corrected herself, not marring, more like defining.
Her gaze fell to his lips and she inhaled softly, remembering all of a sudden how he’d kissed her just before he walked through the gateway. She’d been surprised by how soft and gentle that kiss had been. If she’d stopped to think about it before – which she never had – she would have assumed Cyrus’s kisses would be rough and demanding, just like he was. But that kiss had felt like it had contained his entire soul. It had been the kiss of a dying man, filled with passion and remorse and pain and enough desire to burn up hell.
Evie felt herself flushing at the memory. She looked away, flustered, as Cyrus came to stand by her side. He kept glancing at her with this curious expression on his face, and it made her fidget with the bandage on her wrist that she’d put over the Mixen burn. She crossed to the sofa, as far away from him as possible and sat down, bringing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.
Ash sat opposite, his elbows resting on his knees, while Vero perched on the arm of the sofa beside him. They were both staring at Cyrus as if they couldn’t work out whether he was really Cyrus or in fact a cyborg.
‘This is my place?’ Cyrus asked, looking around, his eyes scanning the rafters. He seemed to be finding that part the hardest to get his head around.
‘Yeah,’ Ash answered, not taking his eyes off Cyrus.
‘And I was a Hunter. I – I mean we – fought these monsters?’
‘Unhumans,’ Vero cut in. ‘And we’re still fighting them.’
Cyrus frowned at her. ‘Unhumans,’ he said, testing the word out. ‘And they’re from other realms, you say?’
Vero and Ash nodded at him.
Cyrus chewed his lip for a bit. ‘There are ones with tails, aren’t there?’ he asked finally.
‘Yes,’ Ash nodded.
Cyrus snorted through his nose. ‘I told them. I kept telling them.’
‘Telling who?’ Evie asked.
‘The doctors. All the people who kept trying to keep me in that place.’
‘Yeah, that was probably not the best thing to tell the people doing your psych evaluation.’
‘What do you remember?’ Ash interrupted, leaning across the coffee table, a sense of urgency in his voice.
Cyrus shook his head. ‘Not much.’ He turned slowly to face Evie. ‘I remember you and I remember seeing this blinding white light and the next thing I can recall is walking naked down a street holding a knife or a sword or something – I barely remember. A cop car pulled me over. Then they took me to the hospital and locked me up – pumped me full of drugs. They kept asking me the same questions again and again until I thought they were actually trying to drive me crazy.’ He looked over at Ash. ‘How long have I been away?’ he asked.
‘The last time we saw you was almost nine weeks ago.’
Cyrus frowned, his gaze falling to his lap. He started pulling at a loose thread on his T-shirt.
‘Where did they pick you up? The police. Where were you?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was all a haze. There were big houses, though, huge lawns. I remember lying down on one – I thought it was a carpet. And gates – lots of gates. But that’s all.’
Evie exchanged a brief look with Vero and Ash. It sounded somewhere expensive – somewhere like Bel Air or Beverly Hills. Nowhere near downtown.
‘So let me get this straight,’ Cyrus said. ‘We were all Hunters and we were trying to close this way through gateway thing – to stop any more of these unhumans from getting here?’
Evie nodded.
‘And the way through was in that building – the one we were just outside?’
‘Yes. There was a big fight. We fought our way inside. I think that’s what you remember when you say you saw a blond guy and Evie stepping between you. It was an Original. They’re like Thirsters, only worse. Evie killed it.’
Cyrus turned towards her, his turquoise eyes piercing her as hard as any arrow. She felt herself squirm some more under his scrutiny.
‘And I closed the way through? How?’ he asked.
There was a heavy silence.
‘You walked through it,’ Vero eventually said.
‘Did I know what was going to happen to me? Did I know I was going to end up …’ he hesitated, ‘like this?’
‘No,’ Vero said. ‘You thought you were going to die. That’s what we all thought the prophecy meant. That’s what we were told. That the White Light would die closing the way through.’
Cyrus’s expression turned to one of stunned amazement and then a soft smile crept across his face as if he was secretly kind of impressed with himself.
‘It said something about memories fading,’ Evie suddenly said. ‘The prophecy.’ She shook her head, trying to remember the exact words. ‘And shadows falling.’ She couldn’t stop the catch in her voice.
Silence descended. She could feel the others watching her. She looked up. Cyrus was studying her intently.
‘I was supposed to be the one to walk through,’ she told him, lifting her chin, ‘but you stopped me. Right at the last moment. You pushed me out of the way.’ She avoided telling him the part about the kiss.
Confusion rode in waves over his face. The question in his eyes was one she didn’t know the answer to either. Why had he done that?
She shrugged silently and looked away.
They let Cyrus sleep. It seemed the drugs were still loaded in his system. Hopefully, when they cleared out, some of his memory might return and he might be able to remember more.
Evie was huddled on the sofa with Ash and Vero, talking softly in the half-light of dawn so that they wouldn’t wake him.
‘He seems different somehow,’ Vero said in a low voice.
‘He’s drugged to the eyeballs.’
‘No, I mean, there’s something different besides that. It’s like someone else is wearing his skin.’
‘No, it’s him,’ Evie said firmly. She’d seen the glimmer of the old Cyrus not just in the underlying swagger as he walked, but in the way he’d reacted so fast when he killed the Mixen. And in the smile that sometimes tugged at the corner of his mouth as if he was laughing at a private joke.
‘He’s just lost his memory, that’s all,’ Ash said.
‘Do you think he can still fight? Will he remember how?’
‘Did you see him kill that Mixen?’ Evie asked. ‘He’s not forgotten how to fight. And his instincts brought him right back there. To the Bradbury building.’
‘We have to take him to Margaret first thing in the morning,’ Vero said.
‘Shame she wasn’t answering her phone,’ Ash grinned. ‘That’s going to be one joyful reunion.’
Evie’s
fingers dug into the spaces between her ribs. She winced at herself. First she’d been jealous of what Ash and Vero had, and now she was jealous of Margaret being reunited with Cyrus. It was wrong to resent any of that. But she couldn’t help it. When she’d seen the long scar running up Cyrus’s back the wind had been knocked out of her, and when Cyrus had turned to face her, joy had blasted through her – a joy that she hadn’t felt in months. But then the happiness had been pricked by a needling disappointment that had slowly drained away the joy.
Disappointment that it was Cyrus and not Lucas.
She hated herself for feeling it, even more for admitting it, but it was true. Why couldn’t it have been Lucas to come back from the dead? To find her against the odds, like that?
‘Evie? What do you think?’
She tuned back in. Vero was looking at her expectantly.
‘About what?’ she asked.
‘Why didn’t Cyrus die? Didn’t the prophecy say the White Light had to die?’
‘Yeah,’ she shrugged. ‘I mean, it said something about sacrificing everything, I’m not sure how else you can read that.’
‘Well, he did sacrifice himself. It didn’t actual mention the word dying,’ Ash added. ‘Maybe we just all misunderstood what it really meant.’
‘What if Cyrus isn’t the White Light after all?’ Ash suddenly asked.
Evie felt her stomach squeeze into a fist-sized ball as she remembered the Mixen on the street who’d recognised her, called her the White Light and then run off.
There was a moment’s awful silence and then Vero looked at Evie, understanding and horror dawning on her face simultaneously.
‘But wouldn’t that mean the way through is still open?’ she asked.
Chapter 19
They were standing, all four of them, on the sidewalk where the night before the Thirsters had gone up in flames. The scorch marks on the ground were still evident.