Fated (20 page)

And why was it that the only thing he was ever thinking about was her? And her eyes, and the look in them from the photograph - pissed off, defensive, defiant - a look he knew well enough from his own reflection. Why was she the image burnt on his retina? When there were a million other ones to choose from if he wanted to stay focused on revenge?

It had taken seeing her on the back porch with Tom to fully realise the depths of what he'd fallen into. Because as soon as he rounded the corner of the house and saw her standing there, pale and bruised and looking as though she'd just faced down an army of Unhumans, he'd had to stop himself from running towards her and pulling her into his arms. When really, his first reaction on seeing a Hunter should have been to take his blade and slit her throat.

When Tom had thrown his name into the conversation - suggested she loved him - Lucas had been as thrown as Evie seemed to be.

And it didn't matter that she felt nothing for him. He didn't want her to. His only priority now - he saw that it had always been his priority, from the moment he'd pushed Shula out of her way - was to protect her from the Brotherhood. Because the thought of Evie being hurt, being wounded, dying, was suddenly inconceivable. From the second he'd seen her in the photograph it had been so, and he didn't fully understand where the feeling had sprung from. It didn't make sense, he hardly knew her.
And
she was a Hunter. It was absurd, he knew that. And he also knew that if he stopped to reason with himself he'd realise exactly what he was betraying. It was far bigger than him, far more dangerous than him, so he didn't. He couldn't.

In the car he'd decided that the only solution was to keep Evie safe and kill Victor. Evie had nothing to do with his parents' death. Victor would pay and whichever other Hunters stood in his way. But he made a vow to himself that Evie would not be harmed, by him or the others. His only priority now was keeping Evie safe.

And keeping her safe meant keeping her strong. He had to make her fight. Right now she didn't look like she had enough fight in her to handle a ten-year-old human. She looked more unhappy than he'd ever seen her and the defiance in her, the anger he'd seen in her from the off, had vanished. The girl who was standing on the porch slump-shouldered, staring into space, was not the girl who'd bashed open his door and come charging in waving a baseball bat. She was no longer the girl who'd fought Caleb and Shula and somehow won. No, for some reason which he couldn't yet fathom, she'd let the numbness back in, and he couldn't keep her alive that way. He needed her to be angry.

He took a deep breath, felt a quiet calm descend, pushed away the memory of his parents that clattered to the fore and turned his attention to the girl on the porch in front of him. Maybe Grace was right - maybe this was fate after all, it was the only way he could explain it, the feeling he had, the actions he was taking, all felt outside of his control. And if fate couldn't be changed then he had no choice but to step up to meet it.

He was on the porch in front of her before she even registered it. A look of confusion passed over her then she seemed to reel, her eyes widening in shock. He was right. With the numbness she'd lost her grip on her instincts. She hadn't felt or heard him. And what if he'd been Caleb? She'd already be dead.

'Where did you come from?' she half-whispered, her gaze stumbling over the back yard and orchard.

'I was out for a walk,' he answered.

She shifted her glance to the trees and back to him and nodded absently. Was she wondering if he had heard the conversation with Tom?

'Are you OK? You look upset,' he asked.

She shook her head, ran a hand through her hair. 'No. I'm fine,' she said.

Neither of them spoke. He studied her in the moth-blown light. She was so pale, her lips a bright point of contrast, her eyes luminous. Her hair was hanging down covering her ear. It reminded him it wasn't just Caleb he needed to keep her safe from.

'Tom was just here,' she said, frowning up at him. Was she remembering what Tom had said about the way he'd appeared in the wood, the way he'd looked at her?

'You and he?' he asked tentatively, not sure what he wanted to hear exactly.

Evie kept talking, absently, as if to herself. 'We've known each other since we were babies. We grew up together. He was the first person I ever loved.' She paused. 'And I just had to say goodbye to him.'

'Why?' he asked, swallowing hard.

She didn't answer for such a long time that he thought she hadn't heard his question, but then he heard her take a breath. 'Things change,' she said with a shrug.

He nodded silently.

'And you. Have you ever been in love?' she suddenly asked.

He looked up at her. Her blue eyes were scrutinising him closely.

He held her gaze. 'Once,' he answered, almost without thinking.

'What happened?'

He hesitated before answering. 'I had to leave her.'

'Why?' A small frown line had appeared between her eyes.

'Because she needed me to,' he said.

Evie continued to frown at him. But now it looked like she was about to cry and he had to stop himself from reaching out a hand to her, from resting it against her cheek.

But she didn't cry. She just sighed loudly and leant back against the wall post. He heard Lobo howling gently from just the other side of the screen door but he couldn't take his eyes off her.

'Have you ever had to make a choice?' she asked quietly. 'Only, it's not really a choice, it's a death sentence?'

He stared at her, completely thrown, his heart skipping a beat, and then he saw her close her eyes and lean her head back with a sigh, and a solitary tear rolled down her cheek and he understood that she wasn't talking about the choice he had just made, she was talking about a choice
she
had to make.

He lifted his hand and brushed away the tear.

21

The tip of the arrow whizzed past her damaged ear and she barely flinched. It thunked into the board behind her.

'OK, enough,' Victor yelled.

Risper lowered her bow, deliberately slowly, it seemed to Evie.

'Evie, I don't know what's got into you,' Victor said, 'but if you move that lazily you're going to get hurt.'

Evie raised an eyebrow at him. What did he care? If he was putting her up against a heavily armed Risper again then surely that was what he was hoping for.

'This is for your benefit, Evie. The Brotherhood will be back for you. And if you can't defend yourself, well, then . . .' He shrugged.

If he was trying to scare her into co-operating more fully with his weapons training course then he was failing. Right now she didn't care if the Brotherhood breezed into this room, picked up the crossbows leaning against the wall and pinned all three of them to the far wall.

'Evie? Are you even listening?' Victor yelled. 'You need to know this stuff.'

Evie sighed and finally lifted her eyes to meet Victor's. The frustration was all over his face. She caught sight of Risper behind him, smirking at her. She wished even harder for the Brotherhood to arrive.

Victor was standing in front of her smacking an arrow point into his palm for emphasis. 'We fight with arrows because they can pierce skin better than blades,' he was saying. 'They go deeper.'

He held the pointed steel up to her face to show her. She kept her eyes on his face instead.

'And we tip the arrow point with Mixen acid,' Risper said. 'Burns through Unhuman flesh. And human too, of course. Poisons them from the inside.'

Evie glanced over at Risper who had pulled the arrows out of the board and who was now leaning against the wall, one knee bent, the carved hilt of a large hunting knife poking out the top of one boot.

'Blades and arrows will only slow Thirsters, they won't kill them,' Victor continued, heading over to the war chest.

'I haven't tried a stone cutter yet, though,' Risper added.

'UV lamps bring them down,' Victor said over his shoulder, holding up a lamp similar to the one he'd had in the car park. 'Then you have to set them alight.'

'And make sure they burn.' Risper crossed over to the war chest too and got down on both knees, rifling through it like a kid in front of a Christmas stocking. She grabbed hold of something and heaved it out of the box - her mouth falling open in delight. 'Sweet!' she announced, standing up with it.

Evie had no clue what the metal tube was.

'When did you get a flame-thrower?' Risper asked Victor.

'After I saw that Thirster in the car park. If I'd had one on me then maybe we could have taken out half the Brotherhood in one go.'

'We need to get them now, while they're still young,' Risper said, twirling the flame-thrower like a baton over one shoulder. Evie was tempted to show her a trick or two - baton-twirling she knew.

'The Shadow Warrior's the one we need to go after,' Risper said, laying the flame-thrower down and grabbing hold of another weapon - this time a semi-automatic - which she locked against her shoulder and pointed at Evie.

Victor slammed the lid of the chest down and rounded on her, his face livid. 'Enough!' he shouted, grabbing the gun out of Risper's hands. Evie jumped. 'I told you to drop it.'

Evie looked between the two of them. Risper was scowling through narrowed eyes at Victor. After a few seconds of leaden silence she tossed her hair over her shoulder and with one last glance in Evie's direction - a glance that seemed both pitying and disgusted at the same time - she stormed out of the room.

They were in the back of the store, where the stock should have been kept. Victor had cleared the space of everything except for a table, which now held a selection of blades, knives and swords. The wall was covered in targets like something from a shooting range and a huge trunk - dubbed the war chest - blocked the emergency exit. She guessed it wasn't really the time to talk health and safety.

'Do you want to try with the crossbow now? Or hand-to-hand?' Victor asked, shrugging off his suit jacket and turning to face her.

Evie glanced at the bow. She didn't want to touch anything Risper had touched.

'Hand-to-hand,' she said.

Victor went over to the table and picked up two knives. Since when did hand to hand involve sharpened metal? He handed her the slightly less medieval-looking knife. It was long and light-handled. It reminded her of the knife her mother used to carve the Sunday joint.

She hesitated before taking it. Was this who she was going to be? A knife-wielding attacker? She tried to recall her father teaching her self-defence, back when she was a kid. If he knew the danger she was facing right now, wouldn't he be urging her to pick the biggest knife, the sharpest one, and do whatever it was she needed to do to in order to fight back and survive? Hadn't he taught her that if she fell seven times she needed to get up eight? She bit the inside of her cheek and then held out her hand and took the knife.

No sooner had she taken it than Victor started pacing around her in a circle. She felt her heart finally find its footing and start to gallop, the adrenaline flooding her system. She edged around the opposite way, keeping Victor at a distance. What was he expecting from her? Was he actually going to strike? Was she expected to try and stab him? Was that really what was going on here? Would he hurt her or was this for demonstration only? From his expression - challenging, wary, concentrated - she guessed this was for real. Or as real as the cornfield. She knew he wasn't about to kill her but she knew too that if she got cut he wouldn't care that much. And he wouldn't expect her to, either.

He darted forward, she skipped out of his way feeling the energy flowing through her arms. He was predictable. She kept her eyes on his, that was all she needed to do, she saw. His moves were easy to anticipate if she kept watching his face. She hardly broke a sweat, though with a slight smile she saw Victor already had beads forming on his forehead. She kept backtracking, feinting and dodging his every lunge.

'You can't keep defending, Evie. You have to attack too,' he said with a note of irritation, after she'd successfully avoided his twelfth strike.

She felt herself tense and her hand, the one holding the knife, shook slightly. She tried to steady herself. He would parry anything she threw at him, she was sure of it, but she still couldn't lift her arm, couldn't bring herself to attack.

But he was lunging again and again and again and every time he was getting closer and she knew he was backing her into the corner even as she felt her shoulder make contact with one of the target boards. She ducked and Victor's knife struck the board. She glared up at him - damn, how far was he willing to go? Would he be happy to make a point with the rest of her ear? Or was he thinking she could make do without her head?

Why did she have to learn how to use these stupid weapons - wouldn't a gun do? She could fire a gun. Besides, she didn't plan to find herself in a room with just a knife for protection and a Thirster for company. And she sure as hell knew she wasn't going to start walking around town with a crossbow slung over one shoulder and a hunting knife slid down the side of her boot Risper-style.

When Victor's arm came up she dived beneath it and hurled the knife to the floor. It clanged against the concrete. Victor lowered his hunting arm and sheathed his own weapon.

'What's wrong with you?' he asked. 'You need to be better than this if you want to stay alive.'

Evie ground her teeth and said nothing.

He exhaled loudly. 'If we could harness one of your looks, Evie, we could probably do away with weapons altogether. What's going on?'

'Nothing,' Evie answered flatly.

'Then why the attitude? Why the sullenness?'

It felt like the knife had finally pierced her. 'What?' she spat out. 'Am I supposed to be happy?'

Victor's face fell. He wiped a hand over his brow.

'I'm here, aren't I?' Evie shouted, throwing her arms around to indicate the makeshift training room. 'I'm going along with all this. I've done everything you've asked. I've given up everything and everyone I loved. I've accepted everything you've said and everything you've done to me.' She dropped her voice. 'But don't ask me to be happy. Because you never said that was part of the deal.'