Hunting Lila (25 page)

Alex caught me by my arm and spun me around to face him.

‘Lila, please don’t walk away. It isn’t that I don’t
want
to come with you.’

I stayed looking at the ground. ‘Then why aren’t you? You told me you would.’

‘I told you I wouldn’t let you go alone.’

I shook my head at him. It was a shallow deceit. He had known all along. He had planned everything, I realised, even this conversation, no doubt. It explained his comment last night about things ending badly. It was only prophetic because he’d already written the script. I looked down at the bracelet on my wrist. It explained why he’d given it back to me. It had been a goodbye present five years ago and so it was again. I bit my lip, cursing my stupidity, that I hadn’t seen it coming.

‘I’m sorry, Lila. One of us has to stay. One of us has to stop them.’

And he thought he could stop them on his own? It had taken five years and a whole unit and they’d still only managed to catch a few. Alex himself had admitted how impossible they were to hunt or to catch. He’d spend his life trying. And now I’d never see him again.

‘Lila,’ he carried on, ‘we need to find out what’s really going on with the Unit, find out the truth. And, more than that, we need to stop either them or Demos finding you.’ Alex was still talking, shaking my shoulders softly, ‘Which is why you need to go now.’

I felt myself stumble against him, trying to hold on to him.

He turned to Jack. ‘You need to get her out of here. Now. Far away, where the Unit and Demos can’t find her. Because you know what they’re capable of if they do.’

Shivers ran up my spine, like I was suffering a heavy bout of flu. Was he talking about Demos or the Unit? I looked over at Jack. A dark shadow rippled across his face. His whole body seemed to adjust in its wake. That’s when he looked at me and I saw the anxiety pass across his face. Alex had pressed him on his Achilles heel – his guilt over what had happened to our mum. Despite everything he might feel about what I was, he’d never let the people who did that to our mum have a chance to do the same to me. He hated them more than he hated me.

I looked back at Alex. ‘I won’t go. I won’t go without you.’

Jack fired a glance in my direction, his green eyes burning with suspicion. Then he looked at Alex, a scowl starting to form on his face.

‘Lila—’ Alex’s face was so torn that I knew if I pressed him I had a chance of keeping him here with me.

‘You don’t need to find out what’s going on at the Unit. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.’ Except us, I wanted to say, but Jack was right there and I couldn’t. ‘I don’t want you to leave me. Please.’

‘It does matter, Lila. If I don’t stay, if I come with you, we’ll spend our whole lives being hunted. If I stay I can make sure that doesn’t happen to Jack and you.’

‘How? You’re one person.’

‘I can do my best. At least I can cover for you two until you disappear. Try to keep the Unit from finding out about you. Listen to me, I promised you I’d keep you safe and this is the only way I know how to. Let me do it. One of us has to stay and it has to be me.

‘Jack, you need to go now.’ Alex said it while still looking at me.

Jack took a step towards us. He was pulling his rucksack onto his back.

‘No!’ I grabbed for Alex’s wrist.

I felt his other hand sear hot against my cheek. He bent his head, and in a voice that Jack couldn’t hear, said, ‘When you came down the stairs and fell into me, that was the moment.’ Then his lips pressed against mine.

I heard an intake of breath from Jack.

Alex stepped back, his eyes on me the whole time. ‘Take care of her,’ he said.

‘She’s my sister,’ Jack growled at him. His fists were curled tight at his side.

Alex glanced at Jack and nodded once. Then he turned around and started jogging back towards the park entrance.

My legs stumbled forward, automatically trying to follow him, and I felt Jack’s hand on my arm like a clamp.

‘No, Lila,’ he said.

Then I realised there was no hand on my arm. My whole body was frozen. I tried to move my legs, but it was like trying to wade through wet concrete. Nothing happened. I couldn’t even turn my head.

‘Don’t move.’ The voice came from behind and shocked the hell out of me. It wasn’t Jack. It was a girl.

‘They can’t,’ someone answered. It was a man’s voice and it caused a spasm of shudders to ride up my spine.

‘I know – I just like saying it.’ Suki danced in front of me, giggling delightedly like I was an eagerly anticipated birthday present. ‘Hi, Lila,’ she said.

I opened my mouth to scream but it was as though someone had hit a delete button in my brain. My mind went blank.

‘Oh, Demos, don’t do that – it’s no fun. It’s just Lila. Let her talk. Go on, last time I learnt so much. I didn’t even need to read her mind.’

I heard someone expel a laugh. Demos. He was so close I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. Adrenaline cascaded through my body but just as it reached the part of my brain that controls reflexes it stopped. Like the tap had turned off. I was suddenly so calm I felt like I’d had a bottle of Valium injected straight into my cerebral cortex.

A thought poked through the fog of my brain. Where was Jack? Was he still behind me? Then I remembered Alex. I tried to swivel my neck to see where he was. He’d been leaving me. I couldn’t remember why, though. Where was he now? Was he safe?

‘Ahh, how sweet, she’s looking for Alex. She’s worrying about him.’ Suki skipped into my field of vision again, pouting.

I frowned at her. How dare she read my thoughts?

‘Oh come on, you would too, if you could.’ Suki shrugged at me and cocked her head to one side.

I noticed she was wearing another pair of unfeasibly high, totally impractical shoes for being up a mountain and a dress that clung so tightly to her body it was a wonder she could move.

I narrowed my eyes, willing her to go to hell.

She flinched back, her eyebrows pulling together into one neat line.

I heard Demos’s footsteps crunching on pine needles before I saw him. He meandered into view, smiling, and stopped dead in front of me. He was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt with an open-neck collar and looked like he was on his way from, or to, a funeral. He studied me for a few long seconds then he laughed a little laugh, as though I’d cracked a joke, and nodded his head.

My first instinct was to lash out. When my limbs wouldn’t obey I looked around for something, anything, to throw at him. There was nothing. Just trees. I chose the smallest and focused on it, willing it to uproot so I could use it like a battering ram through his skull. I saw the leaves tremble but it stayed firmly gripped by the ground.

‘Uh-oh, Demos. She doesn’t like you very much.’

I brought my eyes back to the two of them. Suki had linked her arm through Demos’s and was leaning into him.

‘Hardly a surprise.’ Demos was fixing me with eyes as flat and blue as a November sky. ‘I’m going to let you go, but don’t try anything, Lila. There’s no point. I think you see that now. And besides, Jack’s right behind you. And I know you wouldn’t want anything to happen to him, would you?’

It felt like being untethered from iron bindings. My limbs were suddenly free, my voice back. I turned my head slowly to see behind me. Jack was on his knees, his hands by his side, frozen like he’d been set in carbon. Though from Jack’s expression, Demos wasn’t cutting off any of his thoughts. His face was a picture of agony.

I dropped straight to his side, wrapping my arms around him. ‘Stop hurting him!’ I screamed.

‘I’m not hurting him,’ Demos said, laughing.

‘Then let him go.’

‘No, not yet.’

I looked up at him standing over us and willed him to die. I tried to imagine his head parting company with his body, his limbs detaching from his torso. But nothing happened. My mother’s killer was standing a few metres in front of me, threatening my brother, and I could do nothing about it. A feeling of helplessness started to overwhelm me, then receded, ebbing away as suddenly as it had come.

‘He’s not in pain. Well, not physical pain.’ Suki had moved forward, closer to Jack, and I twisted my body to shield him.

She skipped back a few steps towards Demos. ‘Wow, he’s properly furious. About a lot of things. He can’t believe he led us here. He’s blaming himself.’

She came forward again, bending down to speak to Jack face to face. ‘Don’t blame yourself, Jack. It’s not your fault. We would have found you anyway. Eventually.’

‘No. He didn’t. Sorry.’ She was answering an unspoken question. I saw Jack’s eyes fill like acid was burning them.

‘See, here he is.’ Suki moved aside and pointed past Demos.

I looked up, following her outstretched hand, and saw Alex walking towards us. My heart leapt at the sight of him. At first I thought maybe he was coming back to rescue us and hope rocketed through me. Then I noticed the two men on either side of him and the gun hanging in mid-air, resting against his head as he walked.

I was on my feet and tearing off towards him before they could stop me, but as I got close to Alex, my feet suddenly jammed into the earth like I’d been lassoed around the ankles. I would have fallen to the ground but my body slammed into thin air like I’d been thrown against a concrete block and I was frozen there, at an acute angle, only a few metres away from Alex’s arms.

A trickle of blood was running down his cheek and his eyes, locked onto mine, were kaleidoscopic with anger. They had hurt him. Fury filled my head. I saw the gun resting just above his temple and in a heartbeat it was hurtling through the clearing like a boomerang. A split second before it hit the branch I was aiming at, it jolted to a stop, spun around and came bombing back in our direction. I didn’t have time to figure out how. My mind went blank again and I looked back at Alex – how had he got that cut on his cheek?

The man next to him was holding the gun again – aiming it at Alex’s head but scowling in my direction as though he wished it was pointed at mine. I recognised him. He was one of the men from the file on Jack’s computer. The one who looked like a bulldog. What was his name again?

‘Bill, try to keep a grip. You know who we’re dealing with.’ It was Demos. He was at my side.

Bill, that was it. He was telekinetic, like me.

‘Sorry, boss.’ He scowled at me some more.

The sound of a mobile ringing made me jump. I realised I could move my arms and legs once more.

‘Get that, would you?’ Demos said to the man on Alex’s other side, a man in his mid-twenties with longish hair and a rakish look about him. I knew him, too. He was called Ryder. I remembered the list of crimes under his name, as long as
War and Peace
, and the fact he was a sifter.

Ryder reached into Alex’s back pocket and pulled out his mobile which was trilling away innocently. He handed it to Demos, who took it and hit the speaker button.

‘Hello?’

Key’s voice echoed around the clearing. ‘Alex, it’s me. Go. You gotta go! They’re on their way. They’re coming for you – at the cable car. They’ve found you.’

‘Whoever you are, thank you. But you’re a little late.’ Demos flipped the phone shut. He turned to Alex. ‘So, it looks like we’d better hurry up and do business, then.’

From behind, I heard Jack’s raised voice. ‘Get your hands off me!’

I turned around. He was being manhandled to a standing position by someone. My mind raced through the photos I’d memorised from Jack’s computer. I knew this one. Harvey James. As he came closer I saw he even had a cigarette dangling from his lip like he did in the photo. Jack was walking a few paces ahead and Harvey and Suki were sauntering along behind him. I noticed that Jack was holding his hands up with the palms forward, the international sign for surrender.

When they reached us, the gun hovering against Jack’s back, right between the shoulder blades, became visible. Harvey was telekinetic too. I wondered if I could get the gun off him.

‘Uh-uh. I can’t read minds, Lila, but you’re pretty obvious.’

I whipped around. Demos was looking at me from under heavy lids, his eyebrows raised in a lazy threat.

I turned back to Jack. I could see the effort it was taking for him to stand there and not lose control.

‘Sorry,’ he said, looking at me, his eyes glistening green.

I shook my head at him, my eyes filling too. ‘No, it’s not your fault.’

‘Take me. Don’t hurt her.’ It was Alex.

I drew in a breath and turned back towards him. No way was he giving himself up for me. Not that I thought any of us was going to have a chance to walk away from this. It was bad. Demos and his people had formed a rough circle around the three of us and at the edges, by the trees, I spotted a couple of others. There was no way we were getting out of this one.

‘While I appreciate the offer, I don’t want you. I want her. I know what you two will do for her. But don’t worry, I’m not planning on hurting her. Unless, of course, you mess up. So I guess you’d better not mess up.’

‘You want us to swop Lila for Alicia?’ Alex said.

‘Very good, Alex. Never underestimate you – that’s what I’ve learnt over the years.’

‘No need to swear.’

We all looked at Suki. Alex shot her a look that was colder than liquid nitrogen.

Demos leant a little down towards her and said quietly, ‘He didn’t, Suki.’

She looked at Demos. ‘Oh, sorry.’ She turned to Alex. ‘Sometimes I can’t tell what’s internal and what’s not. But still, no need to swear.’

Demos carried on. He took a pace so he was standing between Jack and Alex, like a football coach prepping his team at half-time. ‘So, at least I don’t need to spell it out. You boys head on back to the base. I’m sure between you you can figure out a way of breaking and entering. I’m confident in you both and it’s amazing how something like this can force the mind to focus.’

He wandered to my side and put an arm around my back. It was meant to be proprietary. I felt my spine arch away from his touch and saw Jack start to bubble with rage, the tendons in his neck beginning to bulge. Alex raised his arm a fraction to hold Jack back.