Fated (23 page)

She felt the burn score her face, forced her feet to unstick, and walked over to him holding the box across her chest. Her bruised heart was battering so hard she felt it might cause irreparable internal damage. She stood beside the tree looking up at him. He swung himself up easily so he was in the branch above her and then leant down and offered her his hand.

She stared at it for several seconds before she could bring herself to take it. He lifted her as if she weighed less than nothing, pulling her onto the branch where he was standing, and for a moment, with her hand locked in his, standing there, with her other hand thrown around his neck for balance, she felt the world fall away around them - felt completely and utterly safe for the first time in days, even though she was balanced precariously two metres up on some gnarled old tree branch.

Lucas's face was just inches from her own. He had light olive skin she noticed, he wasn't as pale as he had been a few days ago. There was the very finest trace of dark stubble along his jaw and his eyelashes were unfeasibly straight and long. His eyes were lighter today, less hard and metallic, more the colour of a winter dawn, and they were studying her as if she was the most unusual or breakable of objects. He wasn't sullen anymore. In fact, he was beautiful - striking - he reminded her of someone suddenly but she couldn't think who. Maybe a painting she'd seen once, she thought absently before his hand distracted her.

She could feel the heat of it pressed against the small of her back, between that and the hard, straight lines of muscle beneath his T-shirt she was struggling to breathe. Her heart was hammering away as though she was sprinting through a cornfield trying to avoid three knife-wielding maniacs.

He let her go suddenly without warning, reaching above him for a branch, and she felt the tree sway, the ground become the sky for an instant before levelling out and righting itself, and she found herself in his arms, pressed tight against his chest, her hands gripping around his waist.

'You OK?' he said quietly, his lips pressed to the top of her head.

'Yeah,' she whispered into the hollow of his neck, 'just lost my balance.'

'You got it now?' he asked. 'I don't want you breaking your neck.'

'I got it,' Evie said, dragging her hands off his waist and clutching onto the tree trunk.

What was with her? Normally she was far more balanced than this. And how had he managed to keep his balance with both arms locked around her? She slid away from him and watched as he hoisted himself deftly up into the branch overhead. He started handing her down peaches. She watched his arms, lean and flat-muscled, as he worked. Another dizzy spell hit. She clutched the tree and focused on the box and on wedging it in the fork of the tree.

'How are you feeling today?'

She frowned up at him.

'The other night you looked a little worse for wear.'

She looked away and started lining up the peaches he was handing her in the box.

'Yeah, sorry,' she murmured. 'I had a bad night - a bad week, actually.'

'And are things improving at all?' he asked.

She glanced up at him. He'd stopped what he was doing and was looking at her through the branches, the leaves throwing patterns across his face.

What could she say to that? If she didn't think about the past or imagine anything about the future, if she stayed right here in this second staring up at him gathering peaches then, yes, she was better. She would even go so far as to say she was happy and that was more than she'd ever expected to feel again.

'Yeah,' she said, offering him the shadow of a smile, 'things are better right now.'

He answered with a smile of his own. 'And Tom?' he asked, turning his back to her.

She paused, watching his shoulders tensing, the tendons rippling down his forearms, and felt a dip in her stomach.

'I don't know. I haven't seen him. I'm sorry about the other night,' she added, hearing the tremble in her voice and wanting to kick herself but knowing she'd probably fall out the tree if she tried to. She didn't know if Lucas had seen Tom kiss her. Had it looked like she'd kissed him back?

'Nothing to apologise for,' Lucas answered quickly.

They worked in silence for a few minutes, Evie's thoughts back on the night before last and on Tom and on kisses she might never feel again - either from him or someone else. Her attention wrapped itself around Lucas and his lips, in profile now, and she allowed herself a minute's fantasy of what they might feel like pressed against her throat, against her own lips, before she turned abruptly away, swearing at herself under her breath. What was with the self-flagellation? It wasn't enough that she got tortured by Victor and Risper and a display of medieval weapons, she had to go torturing herself with fantasies of what she couldn't have as well?

'How's the job going?' Lucas asked, interrupting her internal tirade.

'Oh, I quit it,' she said.

He turned around to face her, his arms resting over the branch in front, his brow darkening. 'Why'd you quit?' he asked.

'I got tired of working in the diner.'

His face visibly relaxed. 'But you're still working at that boutique in town?'

'Oh that, yeah,' Evie said. She didn't think of that as a job any more. A chore certainly, but not exactly employment. 'No, I'm still there.'

'How is it?' Lucas asked, studying the peach in his hand before handing it over to her.

'Well,' Evie said, 'it's not exactly what I expected.'

'Any more coat hanger incidents?'

'No, no more incidents with hangers,' she replied, thinking of Risper and the knives.

'Good. Well, there are perks, I see,' Lucas said, nodding at her clothes. His smile returned, lighting up his face.

'Yeah, guess so,' Evie answered, thinking how they weren't so much a perk as danger money.

'You're not working today, though?' Lucas asked, handing her more peaches.

She reached up for them, their fingers brushed and she almost overbalanced. 'Later, this evening. Some kind of stocktake or . . .' She trailed off. Actually she had no idea what Victor had planned but she knew that the only thing being taken stock of was her inability to throw a knife at a person. Her body heaved a sigh.

'What about you?' she asked Lucas, wanting to change the subject. 'Not working?'

'Later,' he said. 'Giving the horses a break,' he added with an amused smile.

She looked up at him curiously. There was so much she'd like to know about him. 'Janet Del Rey says you're some kind of horse whisperer,' she said.

He threw his head back and laughed and she realised how light it made her feel to hear him laugh, how it helped keep the fear at bay.

'No, not a horse whisperer,' he said. 'I guess I just know what scares people and animals and I know how to take away the fear. That's all.'

That's all.
She knew it was true as he said it. He did take away her fear but she doubted very much he knew what scared her. Never in all his imaginings would he believe the things scaring her had tails and fangs and could disappear into the darkness at will. It didn't matter, though - it was enough that he could make her
feel
fearless, even if only temporarily, and even if total fearlessness came only when he had his arms around her, which kind of made it an impractical state of affairs.

'Where did you learn? To ride, I mean. In Iowa?' she asked.

'Yes, on my grandma's farm. We moved there when I was five.'

'So that's where you're from.'

'Yes, there and around. I went to high school in LA for a bit. It was safer in Iowa.'

'Safer?' Evie looked up questioningly.

Lucas was busy, facing in the other direction 'Safer than downtown LA.'

She watched him swing gracefully from the branch he was perched on over to the next tree. High school. She could only imagine how many girls must have lusted after him. A stab of jealousy shot through her.

Just then he turned with a grin and threw something her way. She held up a hand to deflect it and felt the squish of a bruised peach slime through her fingers. She screamed out loud and he laughed, then she reached into the box and lobbed a peach straight back at him. He ducked and it flew past his head.

'You'll have to do better than that,' he said, his grey eyes daring her. There seemed to be a trace of sadness in them still, beneath the surface.

She tipped her head in his direction, her eyes flashing, a spark igniting in some deep part of her body. 'You want to fight?' she laughed. 'I can take you any day of the week.' She reached into the box, feeling for the squishiest peaches she could find.

When she looked back up he was smiling right at her.

24

'What are we doing out here?' Evie demanded to Victor's back.

He ignored her and kept walking, along the path she'd taken with Lucas a few days before, following the river. It was pitch dark, the moon still rising, far from full. There was the black static sky and then the solid black of the overhanging branches overlaying it. It was like walking through a collage entitled
Woods at Night.
She could hear only the occasional owl, a faint scuffling in the undergrowth which she supposed must be an animal and not a Scorpio demon or a Thirster because Victor didn't seem particularly on guard.

Or maybe it was just a test for her and it actually
was
an Unhuman and he was waiting for her to figure it out before she got sliced into pieces and served up on a plate.

'Where are the others?' she asked.

'They're not required today,' Victor answered.

Ever since their little showdown in the training room he'd been acting a little stiffly with her. She chewed on the news that it was just the two of them out here in the woods. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? She was relieved there would be no Risper but worried that Jocelyn wasn't going to be there. One friendly face was better than none.

'Where are we going?'

'Stop asking questions and start focusing, Evie,' he came back with. 'What do you hear? What do you feel?'

'I hear the voice in my head asking me whether I'm insane to be following you out here in the middle of the night and I feel tired and pissed off - how's that for focusing on my feelings?'

'Fine. Be pissed off. But listen to what I have to say and learn it, Evie, because time is running out. The Brotherhood will be back for you. They'll want you dead before you're fully trained. So you have weeks if you're lucky, days if you're not, to be able to defend yourself. And to learn how to attack. Are you ready?'

Evie swallowed. 'Ready for what? To kill someone?'

'Some
thing
, Evie. They're not human.'

'Yes,' she said, rolling her eyes. 'Whatever, yes. I'm ready.'

They had arrived by the swimming pond. It was a black mirror, reflecting the starless sky, a faint silver gleam the only sign that water lay in front of them.

'What are we doing here?' Evie asked, suddenly anxious.

'Endurance, Evie, and desire - those are your lessons tonight,' Victor said, looking at her calmly.

'Huh?' Evie looked up at him.

'There are going to be times in the future when you're going to be faced with things that you will feel are beyond your endurance - both physically and mentally. I think you've been dealing with the mental over the last week and you seem to be holding up OK, so now's the time to test you physically.'

Evie glanced at the water, suddenly seeing where this was going. 'You want me to swim?'

'Yes.' Victor nodded.

'And the desire part? Because I have no desire to swim.'

Victor laughed quickly and pulled something out of his pocket. He held it up to her. She peered closer. It was a gold ring. Her eyes flashed to his face.

'What is it?'

'It's your mother's wedding ring,' he said.

Evie reached out to take it but Victor just spun it out of his hand and skimmed it into the pond with a flick of his wrist.

'What the hell did you do that for?' she screamed at him.

'Desire. You need to remember, I think, what you need your endurance for. What you're fighting for.'

She felt her mouth drop open. She slammed it shut and ground her teeth, pulling her sweater off and ripping the belt of her jeans open. She kicked off her shoes, struggled out of her jeans and then waded straight into the water wearing only her underwear, without so much as a backwards glance in Victor's direction.

The shock of the water hit her hard, almost winding her, causing her muscles to lock and go into spasm. She kept wading deeper though, until the water came over her hips and her feet started to sink into the slime of the bank. She slammed her mouth shut to cut the urge to swear, refusing to give Victor the satisfaction. One more step then she took a deep breath and dived.

She swam down into the darkness, her hands outstretched. Down and down until she felt icy fingers stroking her arms. She brushed the pondweed aside, suppressing a shudder, her breath starting to burn in her lungs. Her fingers sank into the mud at the bottom and she kicked against the spongy feeling, making the water turn even murkier as the mud swirled like dust motes around her. She twisted around. How was she going to find it? It was pitch black here and so freezing she could feel her legs turning to lead.

She burst up to the surface, her teeth chattering violently, the air hitting her bare skin and making her gasp. 'I can't find it,' she yelled at Victor's silently indifferent form, leaning against a tree.

'Best keep looking then,' he answered.

She gritted her teeth. She knew she should get out of the water before she froze to death but she couldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing he'd beaten her, and she wanted that ring. She needed to find it. Goddamn Victor. She took a deep breath and then duck-dived down again, this time struggling to reach the bottom as her legs had started to seize up from the cold. She tried to still the panic and to focus - to follow her gut and let it hopefully lead her to the ring - but what if she couldn't find it? What if it lay buried beneath the sand and mud she'd kicked up on the bottom? She twisted around and around, kicking out at the icy fingers tangling in her hair, stroking her lips. She swiped at them but she just got more tangled. And now they were wrapping around her legs, gripping them tight, tugging her down, slowly but surely.