Shadowed (Fated) (9 page)

Evie dropped her head into her hands and squeezed
her eyes shut. Vero was wrong about something, she thought to herself. She
didn’t want the pain to magically disappear, because if it did then it would be
as if she had forgotten Lucas ever existed. The pain was a part of her now,
just as much as he had been a part of her, and always would be. She didn’t know
who she would be without it – without him. And she didn’t want to find out.

They parked outside the bookshop that Cyrus’s mother, Margaret, owned.

‘How’s she doing? Do you know?’ Evie asked.

‘No,’ said Ash. ‘We’ve only seen her once. She came
to the warehouse a week or so after it happened and collected a few of Cyrus’s
things. Told us we were welcome to stay there for a while if we needed a place
to live. But we haven’t seen her or heard from her since.’

‘She didn’t look so good though,’ Vero added,
almost redundantly.

Margaret had lost her only child. Evie could
imagine that Margaret was probably doing worse than she was, given that Cyrus
was her only child and she had spent her life trying to protect him from the
thing that had eventually killed him.

Evie cast a glance in the direction of the bookshop
that Margaret owned. It was bustling this weekend morning with young couples
and arty-looking types, all reading their papers while sipping their lattes at
the tables inside. Everyone was so oblivious, so unaware of what was going on
around them, of the fact that three Hunters were sitting in a car a few metres
away and that the city was being overrun with demons.

‘So are we going in, then?’ asked Evie finally,
trying to ignore the thrumming headache crashing against her skull and her
overwhelming tiredness.

Ash twisted around to look at her over his
shoulder, his dark eyes hooded by lack of sleep and maybe something else
– something that seemed more like an apology.

‘Maybe it’s better if you wait out here,’ he said,
avoiding looking at her directly.

An uncomfortable silence filled the car. Vero
started fidgeting with the door handle.

‘I know why you’re saying that,’ Evie said in as
even a voice as she could summon, ‘but I want to come in.’

Ash studied her for a moment and then exhaled
loudly while mumbling something which sounded to Evie like,
It’s your funeral.

They strolled through the café part of the shop,
dodging and weaving around outstretched legs, and had almost made it to the
door at the back of the store that led up to Margaret’s office when a waitress
– a tall girl with dark hair in braids – stepped in front of Evie
and let out an ear-splitting squeal. Her name was Darcy. Evie remembered her
from before.

‘You! You’re one of Cyrus’s friends!’ the girl
screeched. ‘
Were
, I mean. Weren’t you
in his band?’

Evie’s gaze shifted to the muffin and coffee
sitting on the tray the girl was carrying. ‘Yeah, something like that,’ she
mumbled.

‘It’s terrible, isn’t it?’ Darcy said, her voice
cracking and her eyes beginning to shine with tears. ‘So hard to believe. There
one minute, gone the next. Just crossing a street. I mean it’s just – it
could have happened to anyone.’

Evie felt the scream building inside her. For an
instant she entertained the idea of kicking the tray out of the girl’s hands
and watching it fly across the store. Her rage was simmering dangerously and
she fought to bring it back under control. It couldn’t have just happened to
anyone. That was the thing – that was what she was mad about. Cyrus had
given his life to save the world and no one even knew about his sacrifice. It
was so damn unfair.

Suddenly she felt fingers squeezing her arm and
glancing down saw Vero’s hand circling her wrist, gripping it in warning. Evie
realised that her hands were fisted and her body tensed to spring. She took a
deep breath and forced a smile before walking around Darcy and pushing through
the door.

Even from a distance Evie could feel Margaret, that
familiar buzzing sensation hitting her right in the solar plexus. The three of
them hesitated for a moment in front of the door before Ash knocked
tentatively.

‘Mrs Locke?’ he called out. ‘It’s me, Ash. We’ve
come to talk to you. Can we come in?’ he asked.

They heard footsteps dragging towards the door, a
shuffling sound as the key was turned in the lock. Finally the door fell open
and Evie did an immediate double take.

The woman standing in the doorway was a spectre, as
hollow-eyed as a skeleton, unrecognisable from the woman she’d been just two
months before. Margaret’s clothes hung off jutting bones and her short,
honey-coloured hair was greasy and uncombed. She stared glassy-eyed at Ash
before her gaze roved over Evie. She blinked then and Evie saw a trace of the
old Margaret in the flare of anger that gripped her face in the second before
her fingers curled around the door and she slammed it in their faces.

Ash slid his foot into the crack just in time.

‘Mrs Locke,’ he said, wedging his shoulder against
the door and speaking through the gap, ‘we just came to ask you one thing and
then we’ll go. I promise. We’re not here to cause you any more grief.’

Margaret didn’t move her weight from the door.

‘Please?’ Ash tried again,. ‘It will only take a
moment.’

There was a pause and then the door flew suddenly
open, sending Ash stumbling into the room. Vero and Evie stepped gingerly over
the threshold.

Margaret had crossed to the window and was standing
there with her back to them. Her shoulders were stiff, her head held high. Evie
scanned the room quickly. Piles of books were spread across the desk and
stacked up on the surrounding floor area. She couldn’t read the titles from
where she was standing but they looked old and dusty, not exactly the latest Stephen
Kings and Jodi Picoults. The sight of all those books reminded Evie that
Margaret had once upon a time been researching the Hunter family tree. Evie
wondered what she was now studying and why she was even bothering.

‘What is it?’ Margaret asked in a hoarse voice as
if she’d spent the last two months crying. ‘What do you want?’

‘We think maybe you have something we could use,’
Vero said.

Evie watched Margaret’s shoulders tense as Vero
pressed on. ‘A shadow blade?’

Margaret whipped around, her eyes now bright and
alert. ‘Why do you want a shadow blade?’ she demanded.

‘Because we’re finishing what Cyrus started,’ Ash
answered calmly. ‘We’re going after the unhumans left in this realm. The ones
that came through before the gateway closed. There are more Originals than the
one we killed in the Bradbury and we can’t fight them with normal weapons. We
need shadow blades.’

Margaret’s expression darkened. ‘Why are you still
fighting them?’ she asked.

Ash shrugged. ‘Someone’s got to.’

‘And if we don’t, then won’t Cyrus have died for
nothing?’ Vero added. ‘He died to end this thing. The least we can do is make
sure it really has ended.’

At the mention of Cyrus’s name, Margaret collapsed
backwards against the desk, grief taking over, her shoulders slumping in
defeat. Evie fought the instinct to reach forward and place her hand on the
woman’s shoulder and … and she didn’t know what exactly. She just knew that she
felt something of this woman’s pain and wanted her to know that she understood
it.

She kept her hands glued to her sides though,
knowing that the last thing Margaret would want was her sympathy.

‘I know you wish it had been me,’ Evie said
quietly.

Margaret’s head instantly flew up.

‘I wish it had been me too,’ Evie continued,
faltering over the words. ‘And I want you to know that I’m going to kill Victor
once this is over. I promise you that.’

Margaret frowned at her for a moment before the
tension evaporated from her body. She hung her head. ‘I’m sorry I handed you
over to Victor,’ she said.

Evie blinked at her in astonishment. She hadn’t
expected that. ‘I understand,’ she said as the silence stretched on. ‘I would
have done the same.’

The two of them stared at each other for a few more
seconds, recognition and understanding passing between them, and Evie felt a
portion of the ache inside her ease a little. Margaret too seemed to pull
herself together. She strode to the cabinet on the wall and threw open the
doors, revealing an impressive display of weaponry – both antique and
modern. When she turned back towards them they could see that she was holding
something.

Evie stepped forward, her gaze dropping to the
slender blade lying across Margaret’s palms. It had a long hilt, and the blade
was shaped like a dagger. Evie tried to imagine an unknown warrior forging it
centuries ago in the dark desert of the Shadowlands. Margaret offered it to her
and her fingers closed greedily around the hilt. It was so light it practically
floated upwards out of Margaret’s hands as though normal laws of gravity didn’t
apply to it. The others pressed in on her for a look. The blade was as long as
Evie’s forearm and was glowing slightly, like a pearl under water.

‘Thank
you,’ Evie said, looking up, but Margaret had already turned away and was
standing with her back to them, staring out of the window at nothing.

The shoes he’d stolen were more like slippers. Paper ones. Flimsy. His
feet were cold. His torso too. He crouched down behind a bush and waited for
the guard to amble past on his midnight round.

He’d timed this from his window on the third floor.
He only had a few seconds before the people in white would notice he was gone
and sound the alarm. The seconds ticked by. Finally the guard appeared,
whistling as he walked. The moment the man was out of sight he darted towards
the wall and swung himself up into a tree that brushed up against it. He
scrambled along a branch until he was at the same height as the top of the wall
and then he hung over the side and jumped, landing in a crouch on the sidewalk
below.

He stood up quickly, scanning the street. It was
eerily quiet. The avenue of trees spreading their thick branches overhead
buried him in shadows. Headlights suddenly swept across him. He bowed his head
and started walking, trying to look inconspicuous – which was hard given
that he was wearing only a pair of bright-green scrub trousers.

He knew he needed to find out where he was. But,
more importantly, he needed to figure out
who
he was. Before the monsters with the fangs and the tails came after him.
Because, though he couldn’t remember much of anything else and didn’t even know
his own name, he did know that they were coming.

As he rounded the corner he saw the sign next to
the front gate of the place where he’d been locked up for what felt like years.
Gateways Hospital
, it said. And
underneath,
Community Mental Health
Centre
.

He paused for a moment, the word
Gateways
stirring something in his
subconscious, but then he shrugged to himself and kept walking. It was just one
more thing he couldn’t remember.

In the distance he heard a siren start to wail and
he upped his pace, breaking into a jog and then into a sprint, the green scrub
trousers he was wearing flapping uncomfortably. At the bottom of the hill he
turned onto a main thoroughfare, blinking in the sudden glare of shops and the
eye-shattering headlight beams of dozens of cars.

Nothing about this place looked familiar, but then
again it didn’t look
un
familiar
either. He wasn’t scared by the noise or the traffic or the cars weaving in and
out across four lanes. A sense settled over him that he belonged here. That
this had once upon a time been his city – his stomping ground. He knew
that if he gave in and trusted his instincts he’d figure it all out. In the
same way he knew that the monsters the doctors had dismissed as figments of his
psychotic mind were real.

He was aware that he was drawing stares. People
were openly gawping at his dirt-streaked feet, naked chest and hospital
trousers. He should have taken a doctor’s coat but, hell, knocking out the
orderly and managing to pull his pants off him had been all he could manage in
the timeframe.

He ran across the street, ignoring the angry honks
of oncoming traffic that had to swerve to avoid him. He kept moving, following
his gut instinct, letting it take him somewhere, though he didn’t know where.
He just kept running, dodging past late-night revellers, almost smacking into a
lamp post that he didn’t see coming, hearing the yells of people behind him and
a whistle blowing in the distance.

He couldn’t let them take him back there and lock
him up. He couldn’t let them keep sticking needles in his arm and pumping him
full of drugs that made him pass out and the days drift into one long vivid
streak of nightmares. If they weren’t going to listen to him about what was
coming – about the monsters – then he was going to have to take
matters into his own hands before it was too late.

He ducked down a narrow alley running between two
buildings. It looked familiar, as though his feet were following a well-trodden
path. The sound of sirens faded into the background and he slowed his pace,
coming to a halt at the far end of the alley.