Shadowed (Fated) (32 page)

Evie stared at him, trying to take it all in. He’d
tried telling her before that she wasn’t the White Light. But what did he know
that she didn’t? How could he be so sure?

She closed her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to see
the expression on his face, the fear, the hope, the doubt all waging war there.
What if he was lying to her because he simply didn’t want it to be true?

‘How do you know for sure that it isn’t me?’ she
finally asked.

He drew in a long, unsteady breath. ‘Do you trust
me?’ he asked.

She opened her eyes and nodded. ‘Yes.’ Because the
truth was, she did. Somewhere along the way Cyrus had gone from being a really
annoying Hunter who was far too full of himself to being someone she would
trust with her life.

‘Really?’ he asked, looking surprised.

She nodded again. ‘Yes, I trust you.’

‘So, trust me,’ he said, his voice softer, tender
as a kiss, ‘when I tell you that it’s not you. It was never you. Nor me.’

‘Well, who is it then?’ she demanded, putting her
hands on her hips. ‘And how do you know all this all of a sudden?’

He took another deep breath. ‘Would you believe me
if I told you my mum seems to be quite the expert on Hunter lore?’

She considered it for a moment. ‘Yeah, I would. She
has all those books. She told me once she was doing research on us.’

‘Well, she figured out the prophecy.’

Evie blinked a few times in amazement. ‘Well, if
it’s not me, who is it then?’

Cyrus chewed his bottom lip for a few seconds
before speaking. ‘She didn’t say
who
it was, just that it’s definitely neither of us.’ He dropped his gaze to the
floor and started fidgeting. ‘They probably haven’t even been born yet.’

Evie frowned at him. If they hadn’t even been born
yet then how the hell were they ever going to end this war? Even though she
trusted him, what if Margaret was wrong? She’d been wrong before, after all.

‘Evie,’ Cyrus said quietly, his hands slipping
behind her neck, forcing her head up so that she was looking him in the eye. ‘I
swear it to you. On my life. On everything I hold dear.’ He paused. ‘I swear it
on your life. It isn’t you.’

The amber in his eye glinted. Something surged
electric and alive inside her as he held her. She wanted to live, she realised.
She wanted it with a desire and a desperation she had thought she’d lost. Lucas
might not be there with her but that didn’t mean she had to stop living. She
owed it to him to live enough for the both of them. It was time to stop holding
onto memories and start living again.

‘OK,’ she murmured after a long beat. ‘I believe
you.’

Cyrus led her back over to the others who were all
sitting in stony silence.

‘OK, let’s talk tactics,’ he said, staring straight
at Victor. ‘Firstly, no one’s getting it into their head to try to shut the way
through. Are we clear?’

Victor grunted non-committally, a slight smirk
playing on his lips. Evie narrowed her eyes at him. She wasn’t totally sure she
was buying what Cyrus was selling – she still needed more time to think
it all through. But the sight of Victor eyeing her like a crocodile, with
unblinking reptilian eyes, only made her dig her heels in. No way was she going
to let this man decide her fate.

 
‘How
are we going to fight them?’ asked Vero. ‘We don’t have enough blades. We’ve
got three at the last count. So only three of us can actually land any sort of
killing blow.’

‘You’re the Sybll,’ Cyrus said, turning to Issa.
‘Can’t you tell us how to win? Isn’t that what you people do? Predict things?’

Issa looked around the group and shrugged feebly.
‘I can’t help you on this one. The Originals are almost impossible to read in
terms of precognition. They move too fast, think too fast, act too fast. They’re
entirely unpredictable. I can’t see what will happen. There are seven of them.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s impossible to know.’

‘Fire works,’ Evie suggested.

‘But they’re fast,’ Cyrus sighed. ‘We can’t just
aim a flamethrower at them. They’re not going to stand still and allow us to
flame grill them to barbecued perfection.’

‘We need to draw them out,’ Selena interrupted.
‘Get them all in one place, focused on one thing.’

‘What though?’ Cyrus snapped. ‘A big juicy steak? A
bleeding cow? Five bare-throated virgins? And we don’t have the weapons to kill
them even if we could draw them out,’ he muttered.

‘He’s right,’ Vero said. ‘We need more weapons. We
don’t have any sort of plan until we find ourselves some more weapons. Ones
that actually work against them.’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Cyrus, ‘the only way of getting
more weapons is by sending a delegation to the Shadowlands and begging some friendly
Shadow Warriors to lend us their blades.’

Vero gave him a dark look. ‘Sarcasm is not helping
right now, Cyrus.’

They stared at one another in silence. Even Victor
wasn’t saying a word. He was just studying her in a way that made goosebumps
ride unpleasantly up her spine.

Suddenly Issa cleared her throat. ‘I think I might
know where we can find some more shadow blades,’ she said quietly, glancing in
Flic’s direction.

It hurt like hell but Cyrus wasn’t about to let on. He’d turned down
the offer of anaesthetic in case it took the edge off his instincts but now he
was having second thoughts as the needle poked like a Thirster fang through the
flesh.

The Scorpio tail had cut almost to the bone. He
could tell by Evie’s queasy expression that it wasn’t a pretty sight, so he
kept his eyes on her instead because she was. She noticed and gave him what he
guessed was aiming to be a reassuring smile.

‘How’d you do this to yourself?’ the nurse asked.

‘Accident with a hedge strimmer,’ he said through a
clenched jaw.

‘Well, next time you need to be more careful,’ the
nurse giggled.

Evie rolled her eyes. Hmm, was she jealous? Cyrus
smiled at the nurse, who got flustered and jabbed the needle into the open
wound, skewering what felt like a nerve.

He suppressed the scream just barely.

‘It looks like you and your girlfriend have been in
the wars,’ the nurse said, nodding at Evie whose bruised neck was clearly on
display, despite her attempts to camouflage it with her hair.

‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ Cyrus answered,
exchanging a glance with Evie as the nurse placed a gauze bandage over his arm.

When she was done, she picked up her tray of
bloodied cotton and implements and walked to the door. ‘If you pop your shirt
back on and come to the desk we’ll deal with the paperwork.’

Cyrus jumped down off the bed and crossed towards
Evie, leaning past her for his T-shirt, which was slung over the back of the
chair and taking care to brush against her. He felt the way she jumped and
smiled to himself. Even covered in blood, with a bandaged arm, he still had it.
And they still had a spark. There was definitely something between them. He
just needed her to focus on the present and the future and take her eyes off
the past.

He pulled the stupid Klimt T-shirt on awkwardly,
trying not to move his arm. He didn’t want Evie to guess how much it was
hurting nor see how worried he was about what this might mean for the odds. He
wasn’t going to be up to strength by tonight. Hell, he wouldn’t be up to
strength for at least a fortnight. But there was no point worrying the others
about it.

When he glanced at Evie he saw her eyes were fixed
on his other arm. He turned it around and stared at the tattoo on the inside of
his wrist. ‘An owl,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Yet another mystery. Of all
the scary badass creatures out there to choose from, I chose an owl. What was
that all about?’

Evie smiled. ‘It’s a night hunter. It portends
death. You told me that once.’

Cyrus looked up at her, his eyes dancing. ‘I did?
Huh, well there you go. That’s pretty badass I guess.’

They walked to the door. Evie moved to open it but,
before she could, Cyrus put his hand over hers, holding it in place on the door
handle. They were pressed chest to chest and her lips were dangerously,
tantalisingly, close.

She wasn’t trying to pull away, he thought with
relief. Her breathing had hitched a fraction and her gaze had slipped to his
lips.

‘I know you loved him,’ he said. ‘But I think you
have feelings for me too.’

She opened her mouth ready to protest. ‘I …’ she
stammered.

‘Shhh’, he put a finger against her lips, cutting
off whatever she was about to say.

‘I just want you to know that I’ll wait until
you’re ready.’

He paused, watching as his words hit home.

‘You’ll wait?’ she asked, frowning at him.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re worth waiting for.’

She swallowed, her gaze falling once again to his
lips. She was thinking about it. He knew she was and he held himself back. He
wasn’t going to kiss her, not until he knew she was his. Completely his.

Finally, after what felt like minutes, she spoke,
the words almost incoherent, mumbled to the floor. ‘I’m not promising anything,
Cyrus.’

He let go of her hand and gently stroked back a
strand of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes.

‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’m not asking you to, yet.’

Flic found him up on the roof of her apartment building. He knew she
would find him eventually. She’d seen him at Victor’s. In the midst of all that
fighting, she’d been the only one who had seen him or felt him. Even though
he’d been in touching distance of Evie she hadn’t sensed him. She’d been too
busy making sure Cyrus was OK to even notice he was standing right beside her
– admittedly invisible.

Whatever Flic thought about Evie and Cyrus, she was
clearly wrong.

Lucas had walked straight into the fight. He’d been
coming for Victor and it was just lucky for Victor that an army of unhumans had
chosen the very same moment to attack. Otherwise he’d be lying on a mortuary
slab right now in pieces.

Lucas still wasn’t sure why he’d saved Cyrus from
that Scorpio, except that no matter how much he didn’t want to be on Cyrus’s
side, he was.

As he pondered it all, he sensed Flic coming up
behind him.

‘You’re not about to jump, are you?’ she asked.
‘Because I’m not really a Samaritan kind of girl, so don’t expect me to talk
you down.’

He stepped away from the edge and turned to her
with a smile that didn’t make it past his lips.

‘Nice fighting by the way,’ Flic said. ‘I saw that
move you pulled on the Scorpio. You saved Cyrus’s life. Shame you can’t claim
the credit for it.’

Lucas said nothing.

‘Shame you missed your shot at Victor too.’

Still he said nothing.

‘You know, you need to take that shot,’ Flic said,
‘before he can try anything with Evie. He knows about the way through, Lucas.
You remember his strategy for closing the way through before, right? I don’t
think he’s revised it much.’

‘I’m more worried about Evie doing something. She’s
not going to try anything stupid, is she?’ he asked Flic.

Flic shook her head, surprising him. ‘No, I don’t
think so. Cyrus managed to convince her she wasn’t it …’ She stopped abruptly
realising she’d probably said the wrong thing.

Lucas laughed bitterly. So Cyrus had succeeded
where he had failed yet again. Evie had walked away from him, been prepared to
sacrifice herself despite his pleas. But for Cyrus she would stay.

‘You know, Lucas,’ Flic carried on, ‘you’re wrong
about her and Cyrus. I asked her and she doesn’t …’

‘Stop it!’ he shouted, surprising them both. ‘I
don’t want to hear it.’ He started off towards the fire exit.

‘You need to let her see you’re alive,’ Flic called
after him.

‘No,’ he said, opening the door. ‘It’s not up for
debate, Flic. I don’t want her to know. And I’ll deal with Victor before he
becomes a problem.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Flic answered under her breath.
She followed him down the stairs. ‘Listen, Issa’s downstairs,’ she told him. ‘I
guess you saw her at Victor’s. Anyway she has some idea that you might know
where we can find some shadow blades to slice and dice these Originals with.
Tell me she’s right.’

Lucas frowned at her. Then he smiled, realisation
dawning. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I have something that’ll work.’

Lucas crossed straight to Issa who was standing in
the centre of Flic’s living room, and pulled her against his chest. ‘I’m sorry
for leaving you,’ he murmured into her ear.

‘It’s OK,’ she whispered back, clutching onto him
tightly.

‘How did you get through?’ he asked, pulling away.