Across the road teams of workmen in hard hats were walking in and out of the Bradbury building, carrying ladders and buckets. The fact that the workmen were coming and going and the place had no security around it pretty much told them the gateway wasn’t open. If it were open, then there would be a media circus surrounding the building, or men in dark suits with ear pieces standing around trying to look inconspicuous in a Roswell type of way. Still, they were here now, so they ought to check.
‘How are we going to get inside?’ Vero asked.
‘Time-honoured diversion tactics?’ Ash suggested. ‘I don’t mind doing the honours but what if it is still open? Wouldn’t it be better if all of us went in?’
‘We can’t exactly breeze in there with arrows and swords,’ Evie pointed out. ‘It’s broad daylight.’
‘There can’t be anyone in there – unhumans, I mean. I’m not feeling anything. Are you?’ Vero asked.
They all shook their heads. Cyrus looked puzzled as he studied the outside of the building.
‘So it’s probably safe for three of us to go in and take a look – check that it is actually shut while one of us stays outside and creates a diversion, and acts as a lookout. Agreed?’
They all nodded.
‘OK, then,’ said Ash. ‘Good luck!’ And with that, he strolled off towards the entrance. As he approached the first of the workmen’s vans parked just outside he spun and kicked the side of it with the heel of his shoe. An alarm started shrieking. Ash kept walking, doing the same to the second van and then to the two cars parked behind.
‘Come on,’ Vero said, pulling Evie by the hand across the street as a dozen workmen came dashing out of the building. Everyone on the street was standing and staring at the blaring vans and cars. Ash meanwhile had vanished.
The three of them raced up the steps and into the cool atrium of the building, jumping over sacks of concrete mix and leaping over the power cords trailing across the floor. Evie shivered despite the sunlight streaming through the tall glass ceiling, remembering the last time they’d been there.
‘Let’s just hurry up,’ she said, running towards the curving staircase that led down into the basement, avoiding even looking in the direction of the elevators where the bodies of the cops had been found.
Cyrus was hot on her heels. She could feel him breathing down her neck. If the gateway was open then did that mean it was her after all? No. She stopped herself from even thinking it, concentrating instead on not losing her footing as she skidded off the bottom step.
They hit the basement room where they’d fought off a group of Thirsters, a Mixen and a Scorpio. And there straight ahead of them lay the gap in the wall where once a doorway had stood shielding the gateway from public view.
‘You did that,’ Evie told Cyrus, pointing.
He appraised his handiwork as they stepped through.
‘Grenade?’ he asked, admiring the twisted metal remains of the door.
‘Kind of,’ she answered, thinking of the Mixen he’d propped against the door and then blown up.
She was holding her breath, she realised. But there was no need to worry. Just as she’d thought, the way through was shut. There was no streaming wall of light. There was only a brick wall standing in front of them.
‘That’s where it was,’ Vero said to Cyrus, pointing. ‘That’s the last place we saw you.’
They stared at the wall. Then Cyrus walked over, placed his hands flat against it and pushed.
‘It wasn’t like a door,’ Vero added, seeing the confusion on his face. ‘It was like a really bright light.’
Cyrus stepped back. ‘Well, I’d say it was closed, right?’ he asked with a half-smile.
Evie smiled back, relief making her feel light-headed. ‘Yeah, I’d say so.’
They walked back up the stairs into the atrium, all of them grinning with relief.
‘Hey!’ someone yelled.
Evie froze. A man in a hard hat was marching towards them. ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ he demanded, his moustache bristling. ‘This is a construction site. Get the hell out!’
‘No hablo Inglés,’ Cyrus said, stepping quickly in front of Evie. ‘Estamos turistas. Estamos perdidas.’
He took Evie by the hand and they made a run for it towards the door, Vero sprinting behind them. The man was still yelling after them as they ducked down the steps and ran across the street towards Ash.
‘So?’ he asked, coming to meet them.
‘Closed,’ Vero answered, throwing her arms around his neck.
A rare smile cracked on Ash’s face.
‘What was that? Spanish? How do you speak Spanish?’ Evie asked Cyrus, letting her hand slide from his.
‘I don’t know,’ Cyrus shrugged, his gaze dropping to her hand for an instant. ‘Guess I’m just a linguistic genius.’
Evie arched an eyebrow and bit back a smile. The old Cyrus was making a comeback. She wasn’t sure she wanted to encourage it though.
Chapter 20
‘Oh. My. God.’
Evie should have prepared herself. Should have prepared Cyrus for this.
The waitress Darcy – the tall, skinny one with the braids – was standing in the middle of the café, with a heavily laden tray balanced precariously on one hand, staring at Cyrus as if, well, as if he was Lazarus risen from the dead.
‘Cyrus!’ the waitress screeched, launching herself towards them, the coffee on her tray splashing all over the floor and a customer’s lap.
‘Do I know her?’ Cyrus murmured under his breath.
‘Yes,’ Evie said.
‘What’s her name?’ Cyrus asked, masking the question behind a cough.
‘Darcy. But don’t worry, you never remembered it anyway.’
‘Oh my god, you’re alive! You’re alive!’ Darcy said, dropping her tray on the nearest table and throwing herself on Cyrus.
Evie glanced around at the customers who were all now staring at them.
‘Your mother said that you’d been in an accident,’ Darcy spluttered.
Evie stepped quickly between them, breaking Darcy’s grip on Cyrus. ‘Yeah, well, it was all a mistake. He’s actually alive as you can see,’ she said.
Darcy looked between them, the cogs turning slowly, ever so slowly. ‘Does she know?’ she suddenly gasped. ‘Your mum? Oh my god, you so have to tell her!’
Vero rolled her eyes. ‘Good idea, we hadn’t thought of that.’
Darcy frowned at her, and Evie took the opportunity to tug Cyrus towards the door at the back of the store.
‘So, um, do you like, maybe want to get together later?’ Darcy shouted after them.
Cyrus stopped and turned to the girl. He looked awkward, like he didn’t know what he was supposed to say, ‘Er, he began, shooting a nervous, pleading glance Evie’s way.
Evie shrugged as nonchalantly as possible.
‘Maybe?’ Cyrus said. ‘I’ll call you? I have your number, right?’
‘Yeah, like I messaged you maybe a thousand times.’
‘Great,’ Cyrus said through a fixed grin. ‘Speak to you later then.’
He turned back to Evie. ‘Did I date her?’ he asked under his breath.
‘If you want to call it that,’ Evie answered, holding the door to the stairwell open for him.
They climbed the stairs and knocked. And waited. It was the same as the day before. They heard a slow, shuffling gait on the other side. The door cracked open an inch and Margaret’s tired face appeared in the gap. She stared at them vacantly, her eyes passing over Cyrus and fixing on Evie before she did a double take and tracked back to Cyrus. Her jaw dropped and the door fell open.
‘Mum?’ Cyrus asked, cutting his eyes in Evie’s direction to check that this was indeed his mother.
Evie nodded. Margaret gaped at Cyrus, her bottom lip trembling. She looked like she was on the verge of collapsing and Evie inched forward just in case she needed to catch her.
‘Mum,’ Cyrus said again, taking a step tow
ards her, ‘it’s me.’
Margaret stared at him as if she wasn’t sure she wasn’t dreaming or imagining it and was too scared to move in case she shattered the illusion and he vanished.
‘Cyrus?’ she finally croaked.
He nodded.
Her face crumpled and she threw her arms around his neck with a sob, hugging him so fiercely that Cyrus looked in danger of toppling on top of her. Before he could right himself, she grabbed his face in her hands and started smothering him in kisses. Evie noticed Cyrus stiffen, his hands splayed at his side. He lifted one and gently patted Margaret on the back. Evie watched with a mixture of amusement and pity.
It had to be weird having a strange woman act hysterical over him. Someone needed to tell Margaret about his memory loss. She cleared her throat but Margaret didn’t notice. She was gazing rapt at Cyrus now, still clutching him, tears streaming down her face.
‘You’re alive,’ she kept repeating.
Evie cleared her throat again. ‘Mrs Locke,’ she said.
Margaret looked up startled. ‘Mrs Locke,’ Evie continued, ‘Cyrus has kind of lost his memory.’
Margaret blinked, confusion dulling her smile. The tears dried up. She switched her attention to Cyrus.
‘You don’t know who I am?’ she asked in a shaking voice.
Cyrus shook his head at her slowly. ‘I know you’re my mother. They told me you were.’
Margaret shot a glance over his shoulder at Evie. ‘Where did you find him? Where? How? Where’s he been all this time?’
‘We found him wandering near the Bradbury building. He’s been in hospital. But we’ve no idea what actually happened to him.’
Margaret’s hands slowly slipped from Cyrus’s arms.
‘You came back,’ she said in a whisper. ‘How did you come back?’
He shrugged in answer.
‘We thought you might have an idea,’ Ash said from his position leaning against the wall. ‘We’re getting nothing from him.’
Margaret stared at Ash blankly for a few seconds but then her gaze swept towards the pile of books on her desk. It was only a brief glance before she turned back to Ash.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Is the way through still shut? Did you check?’
‘Yes, we just went to the Bradbury building. It’s definitely closed.’
‘So maybe the prophecy was wrong?’ Vero added, her voice bright with hope. ‘Maybe it never meant that the White Light was going to die. Maybe it was just interpreted wrong?’
Margaret shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe?’ Evie asked, her eyes narrowing. ‘That suggests you have an alternative theory.’
Margaret looked up at her, suddenly flustered. ‘No, I don’t. I can’t think why. But I’m not going to question it either. My son’s back. That’s all I care about.’ Her attention returned to Cyrus.
‘Er, mum?’ Cyrus said, obviously finding the word strange to use on this woman he’d just met. ‘It’s not exactly over. There are more of these monsters – I mean unhumans – out there. These guys are trying to fight them.’
Margaret slumped against the desk, the happiness draining out of her like an arterial bleed. ‘Please no,’ she said simply.
Cyrus scanned the room. ‘But isn’t that what we are? Isn’t that what I was? A Hunter? Didn’t I do that? I don’t get what …’
‘I lost you once,’ Margaret said, taking hold of his hand, her voice breaking. ‘I can’t go through that again. I won’t.’
Cyrus stopped talking and bit his lip instead.
Evie stared between them. She hadn’t foreseen this and felt suddenly stupid. She wondered if she should intervene and say something but then she felt Vero nudging her in the ribs.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ she said.
Evie frowned at her. What? She looked back at Cyrus, who was busy scowling at the floor and at Margaret who was stroking his hair off his forehead and gazing at him in adoration, and she realised with a shock that Vero was right. Of course they needed to leave Cyrus here. What had she been thinking? They had no right to ask Cyrus to join them. Cyrus had given his life – or as good as. He couldn’t be expected to join them again in the fight. And neither did Margaret deserve to lose him for a second time. Not now she’d just got him back.
Evie nodded to Vero and the two of them backed off towards the door where Ash was already waiting. At the top of the stairs, Evie cast one quick glance back over her shoulder. Margaret had pulled Cyrus into another fierce hug and this time he was hugging her back.
‘Bye,’ Evie whispered, her throat burning.
They were in the car, pulling into traffic when a fist landed hard on the hood. Vero slammed on the brakes. A car behind them honked.
Cyrus stood panting, hunched over the front of the car, glaring at them. He raced around to the back passenger side, yanked the door open and piled in beside Evie.
‘I’m coming with you,’ he told them, breathlessly.
The three of them exchanged a glance and then, without a word but with a big grin on her face, Vero stepped on the gas and sped off.
Chapter 21
Evie slunk out of the living room and made her way to the room she’d shared for a night with Lucas. She’d been trying to avoid it, but she really didn’t want to sleep on the sofa again.
She stood a while in the doorway trying to conjure the ghost of Lucas – squinting through her lashes to see if she could picture him lying on the bed, one leg bent sideways, the scars on his chest catching silver in the moonlight. But no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t make him appear. The images in her head were fragmenting, fading away.
She trudged to the bed and lay down, recalling for just one perfect second how it had felt when she had lain there with her head on Lucas’s chest and listened as he told her all about his family. She wondered idly how Flic was doing before pushing the thought away. Thinking about Flic and what she must be going through only made her feel even worse. It sapped all her strength, and she needed whatever strength she could summon in order to get through the coming days.
Without being aware of it she had started counting the notches on the bedpost. Cyrus, the old Cyrus, had made them. It made her squirm on the sheets, hoping he’d washed them. Though she hated to admit it, and she was trying not to think of how Margaret must be feeling, she was secretly glad that Cyrus had come back with them.
It was strange. Cyrus seemed different in so many ways. His conversation was no longer ninety percent sexual innuendo, and he wasn’t constantly trying to get her to sleep with him – but the one thing that was the same was his obsession with being a Hunter. For him it had always been about something other than revenge. And Evie had never fully understood it until he’d explained to them that he was just following his instincts. They’d led him to the Bradbury building, so who was she to argue? Maybe, Evie puzzled, instinct was just another word for describing the tug and pull of fate. And following your instincts merely meant taking the path that fate had plotted out for you. But that brought her full circle. She no longer believed in fate – did she?
With a sigh she rolled over and pressed her face into the pillow. For as long as she lived she’d remember Lucas telling her that life took you down a path, and that sometimes it took you past bad stuff, but that it always took you to exactly the place you were supposed to be.
She wished he was here right now so that she could punch him. It was such a load of crap. This place she was in right now, lying in this bed, alone and lonely, with her heart torn in two, was not where she was supposed to be. And if it was, then she hated fate.
There was a cough from the doorway. She rolled over. Cyrus was leaning against the door jamb.
‘Can I come in?’ he asked.
She frowned at him. She’d had to barricade the door to stop the old Cyrus from waltzing in whenever he felt like it. Now he was asking her permission? He’d evidently lost his memory and found some manners. Small blessings. As she sat up she wondered if the s
ofter, less in-your-face version of Cyrus was going to be permanent or whether it would vanish the moment his memory returned. If it returned.
‘Sure,’ she told him, sitting up.
Cyrus entered the room and looked around, taking in the bunk beds with a sceptical, slightly perplexed expression on his face.
‘Did I make those?’ he asked, pointing at the notches in the bedpost.
Evie twisted her head to look and then nodded at him. ‘Yeah.’
He walked closer, obviously trying to count them, but after a few seconds surrendering to defeat. He shook his head in what seemed like amazement, though she couldn’t tell if it was that or something more like awe.
‘But you made that, didn’t you?’ he said, pointing at the massive crack running up one of the posts and frowning. ‘You were pissed at something.’
Evie nodded. ‘You’re starting to remember things.’
Cyrus dropped down onto the bed beside her. ‘Yeah, though not anything useful,’ he sighed.
Evie drew her knees up to her chest and leant her chin on them, watching him, wondering why he was really in her room.
Cyrus turned to her then, drawing a short breath, a flare of embarrassment heating his face. He looked down at his hands. Evie stared at him, trying not to smile. Seeing Cyrus blush and lost for words was a first.
He swallowed loudly. ‘Did we ever … er …’ He broke off, the blush growing deeper.
‘Did we ever what?’ Evie asked, confused.
‘You know,’ he said, jerking his head towards the notches.
Evie took a second to process. ‘No!’ she half-blurted, half-yelled.
‘Really?’ he asked, frowning hard at her as if he thought she might be lying, ‘because I …’
‘Really,’ she repeated more emphatically, jumping up off the bed.
He looked up at her, frowning still, his turquoise eyes darkening.
‘You didn’t like me much, did you?’ he asked.
She opened her mouth and then shut it again. ‘I didn’t not like you,’ she said with a sigh, sitting back down. ‘It’s just your ego kind of had its own solar system.’