Fated
Authors: Sarah Alderson
Also by Sarah Alderson
HUNTING LILA
And, coming soon . . .
LOSING LILA
For Tom Arnold,
an amazing writer as well as an amazing brother
Simon Pulse and its colophon are registered
trademarks of Simon and Schuster UK Ltd
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd, a CBS company.
Copyright (c) 2012 Sarah Alderson
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Sarah Alderson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1
st
Floor, 222 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
PB ISBN: 978-0-85707-434-8
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85707-435-5
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
"
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves
."
William Shakespeare,
Julius Caesar
(Act I, scene ii)
Contents
Prologue
'Her name is Evie Tremain. She's seventeen years old. She lives in Riverview, California. Now go and kill her.'
The stillness in the room erupted as chairs scraped the floor. There were a few hushed whispers, a stifled laugh and then the door slammed shut, cutting the noise off like a guillotine.
Lucas stood slowly, taking his time. He didn't notice that the others had left the room, or that Tristan was standing by the window watching him. All his attention was focused on the photograph he was holding in his hand.
It showed a girl - dark-haired, blue-eyed - looking straight at the camera. It was a close-up. He could make out the shadows her lashes were making down her cheeks. A strand of hair was caught like a web over one eye and in the corner of the shot he could see her hand, reaching up to brush it away. Her lips were slightly parted, like she'd been sighing just at the moment the lens snapped shut. Her expression was . . . Lucas paused. He wasn't sure what her expression was. She looked unhappy, or maybe just pissed off.
She was a Hunter, though, so what did he expect? And this one had a history that would make anyone unhappy. Or pissed off.
'Is something wrong?' Tristan asked.
Lucas looked up from the photograph, then glanced over towards the door, realising that he was the only one left in the room. He looked back at the older man.
'No, nothing's wrong,' he answered quietly.
'Well, you'd best get going then,' Tristan said, his eyes not leaving Lucas's face. 'You don't want to miss out on all the fun.'
Lucas looked down once more at the picture of Evie Tremain, feeling momentarily ambivalent towards her. Then he scrunched the photograph up into a ball and dropped it on the floor. It didn't matter what lay behind that expression because soon nothing would. She was just another Hunter to be dealt with. Next week or next month there would be another. And then another. And dealing with Hunters was what the Brotherhood did.
Lucas didn't look back at Tristan but he could sense his eyes burning into his back as he left the room.
Moving away fast down the corridor, Lucas realised he could no longer hear the others. He was faster than any human - he knew because he'd had to outrun them many times - so it didn't take him long to reach the basement garage.
There was just one ride waiting for him. Caleb and Shula were sitting in the front seats, the engine revving, the back door flung open.
'Come on!' Shula yelled. 'What's keeping you? There's a Hunter to kill and the others are going to beat us to it!'
Lucas smiled and shook his head, ducking into the back seat and slamming the door shut.
He let his head relax back into the seat and watched the speedometer climb as Caleb slammed the Mercedes out of the underground garage and onto the highway. Lucas stared out of the window. This stretch of highway was always quiet, but at night it was more so - there were only a few factories and gas stations for at least twenty miles in each direction. The Mission was a good base for the moment. Tristan had chosen well.
'She's pretty.'
Lucas turned his head. Shula was leaning across from the front seat, waving the photograph of Evie in his face. He grunted and went back to looking out of the window.
'Think she'll put up a fight?'
Lucas looked back at Shula. She was studying the photo intently, as though she could will it to life. Her raven-black hair was spilling over her shoulders, her skin glowing freakishly in the green dashboard lights. He almost smirked. Shula tried so hard to fit in and yet here she was looking as unhuman as a Shapeshifter midshift.
He smiled softly. 'Let's hope so.'
Shula grinned back, then kicked her legs up onto the dash and spun the volume dial on the radio to high.
1
Evie Tremain was so busy inspecting the minuscule amount of change that had been deposited on the table, in the midst of a lake of ketchup next to the pile of dribbling plates, that she didn't immediately notice the man who had taken a seat at the table behind her.
'Ev,' Joe called.
She looked up at the sound of her boss calling and saw him indicate the table behind. She pocketed the change and spun around, remembering to plaster a smile onto her face as she did so.
'Good evening, what can I get you?'
The words died on her lips. The man at the table was staring right at her, evaluating her like she was discounted meat in the freezer section, his gaze travelling up and down her body. Evie shifted her weight onto one hip, resting her hand on it and waited for some eye contact.
Not another one.
She sighed to herself. And he was old enough to be her dad, which was really quite gross. She raised an eyebrow and waited until the man lifted his gaze to meet her own.
'Can I get you something?' she asked, offering him a tight smile.
He sank back into the booth, seemingly unembarrassed at having been caught checking her out.
'Yes, please, I'll have a soya decaff grande latte,' the man replied, without taking his eyes off her face to read the menu.
Evie paused, hand still on hip, wondering whether she should bother pointing out that the menu had just one option for coffee.
Filter.
Always caffeinated. She didn't. She bit her lip, took the pencil from behind her ear and scribbled on the pad:
1 x coffee
.
'Coming right up,' she said brightly, and turned on her heel.
She flipped the order down on the counter and Joe took it, peering at her scrawl. Then he reached for the coffee pot sitting on the hot plate behind him.
'Was he giving you any trouble?' he asked, tipping his head in the soya latte customer's direction.
Evie glanced over her shoulder. The man was looking out of the window now. He was about forty she figured, maybe older. Black, with a goatee. He was wearing a solid chunk of gold on the little finger of his right hand. Evie noticed only now she looked at him again that he was dressed kind of weirdly for round here. She looked closer.
The last time anyone had worn a suit in town had been at her dad's funeral, almost a year ago. And this man was actually wearing a three-piece suit, complete with a cherry-red cravat that frothed at the neck, making it look like someone had stabbed him in the jugular. Apart from that, though, the suit kind of worked on the man. Or, rather, the man worked on the suit. She wasn't sure how.