Fated (31 page)

'Yes.'

Her breath caught in her chest again. And the pond?'

'Yes,' he answered, in the same steady, low voice.

'Why did you save me? Why didn't you let me drown?'

He seemed caught off guard. He paused, a frown line appearing between his eyes, a questioning smile forming on his lips. 'Don't you get it?' he asked.

'Get what?' she answered.

He laughed under his breath but kept gazing at her with those slate eyes of his. She tried to shake it off - the way he was looking at her. The same person had just shoved her against a wall and looked at her with hatred in his eyes. She couldn't make sense of it.

'How can you not see?' he asked quietly, shaking his head.

'See what?' she asked, unable to mask the irritation in her voice.

'Who you are.
What
you are.'

Her mouth dropped open, but then she recovered and pulled a face at him. 'But you came back to kill me.'

'No,' he said, his voice rising. 'I came here so
you
could kill
me.
If I'd come back to kill you, believe me, you'd be dead.'

She pursed her lips. 'Why? Why did you want me to kill you?'

'Because it was the only thing I thought I could do to save you.'

She snorted out loud. 'How would that have saved me?'

'Betrayal makes you angry,' he said, 'I saw that with Tom.' He stopped and his eyes dropped to the floor, his foot nudged Victor's hand. 'I didn't plan the other night,' he said finally, looking up. 'I never intended for you to . . . feel anything for me.'

He dropped his gaze and she felt her own cheeks start to burn. Oh God, hadn't she admitted something earlier, during their fight, about loving him? Where had that come from?

'I just wanted to make you think I'd betrayed you. I wanted you to have an easy fight. If you were angry enough I thought you could be provoked into killing me. Then you'd get your power.'

She said nothing, her heart still busy pumping all the blood in her body to her cheeks. Her mouth had run dry, her tongue was paralysed.

She looked up at him, something finally dawning. 'You would have died?' she asked, forming the words carefully. 'For me?'

He held her gaze. 'Yes.'

She could barely get the word out. 'Why?'

'Because I believe in you.' He shrugged.

She rolled her eyes. 'Please don't start with this whole White Light crap again. Even my parents didn't believe it.'

'Well, I do. You don't see yourself as I do, Evie. You are it.'

She continued to stand there, hands on hips, staring at him defiantly. She didn't want to be it. Did he still not see that?

He took a step nearer. 'I've been saving your ass since the beginning.'

'What--'

He carried on. 'And back then I didn't even know why. I was acting purely on instinct. I had no choice in the matter. I kept telling myself I was coming back here so I could get close to you in order to kill you but it was a lie. This whole time, from the minute I saw you, I've been more interested in keeping you alive than in killing you.'

She stared at him. There wasn't much to say to that.

He took another step towards her, his voice husky. 'And now it seems you've decided not to fight,' he said, sounding both weary and faintly amused at the same time, 'so someone's got to do it for you.'

He took a step towards her and the ground seemed to tilt.

'I will fight anyone who tries to hurt you - human or Unhuman. Monster or demon. I'll do the killing. If that's what it takes to keep you alive.'

She finally opened her mouth and discovered she hadn't lost the power of speech. 'No,' she said.

He paused. 'Look, I'm as good as dead anyway. So I may as well spend whatever time I do have left protecting you. Making sure the prophecy comes true.'

That was the sticking point. She pounced on it. 'Why do you want it to come true so much?'

Lucas shrugged. 'If the prophecy comes true you'll be safe. No Unhumans will be able to hurt you. You can be Evie, like your parents wanted. You don't need to be a Hunter.'

She took that in. He had a point.

'And besides, the war needs to end, Ev. Don't you think it's about time?' She smiled despite herself at the familiar use of her name, but then the smile faded and was replaced by a frown. What he was saying wasn't what she wanted to hear. She'd already decided. She wasn't having anything to do with the Hunters any more, or their stupid prophecy. She'd chosen. That's what the big speech to Victor had been all about. She wasn't a Hunter. And now here Lucas was, undoing it all - making her question once more who she was and what she was doing.

'I have no home any more,' Lucas continued, interrupting her thoughts, 'I'm banished from the realms. I have a blood price on my head.'

'You broke it for me,' Evie whispered, almost to herself.

His voice was suddenly close, sending a shiver down her spine. In the gap between words he'd moved so he was standing just a few inches from her. She could see the individual spikes of his lashes.

'I broke it long before today,' he said softly. 'I broke it the moment I first saw you. When I saved you from Shula outside the diner.'

She tipped her head back in surprise, trying to see into his eyes. He was looking down at her and she could see herself reflected - a crimson slash across his iris.

The word never made it to her lips. But he heard it anyway.

'Because I love you. Even then I think. Not because you're beautiful and wear crazy ball gowns to kill Unhumans, not because your cheerleading moves make for an interesting fight scene, not because you'll jump into frozen water to hunt for a ring, nor because you're the White Light.'

She couldn't help herself. She groaned.

He kept talking, brushing over her protest. 'I love you, Evie, because you make me a better person. For the first time in my life I'm fighting for something other than revenge.'

She felt her ribs expanding and contracting, squeezing her heart tight then tighter still. He put his hand under her chin and tipped her head up so she was looking at him again.

'I'm not sure I fully understand it myself but I know that I love you and that something is pulling me towards you. Fate, destiny, whatever you want to call it.'

She swallowed, staring into his eyes. That was exactly how she felt. And she hadn't even realised it properly until now. How was it possible that he felt the same way?

'It was you that taught me I could choose,' he said softly, so softly she had to lean into him to hear better. 'That I could choose who I was and who I wanted to be. I would die for you, Evie Tremain, because I love you.'

Her stomach lurched into her mouth. Her legs became elastic. She tried to tell herself it was a natural reaction, just a natural reaction. He was an Unhuman.

'Why should I trust you?' she asked in a breathless rush.

His hand dropped away from her chin and she felt untethered by its loss, as if she might fall over.

'You said you trusted yourself,' he said. 'You trusted your instincts. What are they telling you now?' He stepped back, giving her space.

She looked at him - tore her eyes from his and studied his face. That curve of a smile, the straight dark eyebrows drawing together as he waited for her answer. His dark brown hair falling forwards over his brow which she had a sudden urge to brush back. Her eyes skipped down to his chest. She drew in a sharp breath as she saw the bloom of red against the white cotton, where her knife had pierced the skin.

She swallowed again at the understanding of all that had happened, shook her head a little to try to unscramble her thoughts. Her eyes traced his hands, one still holding Victor's blade loosely at his side. Then she looked back at his face.

Could she trust him?

No.

No more trusting anyone. That was the deal. Trusting people just led to situations like this one.

His lips parted softly.

OK, maybe this situation wasn't all bad.

He frowned more, starting to worry at her silence.

She chewed her bottom lip. How could she tell if the dizziness she felt around him, the stomach-pounding, adrenaline-rushing feeling was actually love and not her body telling her to run away fast? How could she decipher her heart? And, she thought, more worryingly, if she trusted him then didn't that mean she would have to believe what he had said about her being the White Light? And then what? Where would that lead her? Lead
both
of them?

Her eyes went to the knife again. Lucas followed her gaze, realised what she was looking at and dropped it to the floor. He held his palms up towards her in a gesture of surrender.

'So?' he asked.

She closed the distance between them in two strides and took in the surprise that flashed across his face before she closed her eyes and kissed him.

The whole world - all the realms included - fell away to nothing. There was just her and him and she was safe. She felt his arms come around her waist as he drew her against him, his lips scorching against hers, lighting a fire deep inside her. And it could have been her instincts but it could just as well have been fear that made her clutch him tight, scared he would disappear.

She finally pulled back; his arms stayed tight around her waist. She rested the palm of her hand against his chest and felt the beat of his heart, hard and fast against it. His amulet was gone.

She said the words before she could think them. 'I trust you.'

His hands found her face, his lips were a tantalising fraction away from her own, when he stopped and pulled back. She froze. Had he tricked her after all? One of his hands dropped from her waist. She started to struggle against the other one, but then she saw he had pulled something out of his pocket and was holding it in front of her face.

She blinked and tried to focus. He was holding a thin gold wedding band.

'I think this belongs to you,' he said.

She stared at him in amazement. 'You went back for it?' she asked, her fingers shaking as she took the ring.

'Yes,' he murmured. 'I wanted you to find it.'

'But how would I have found it?'

'If you'd have killed me my body would have returned to the Shadowlands - at least I think it would have - being half human I'm not sure, some of the lore doesn't seem to hold true - but if my body had vanished, the ring would have stayed here, everything from this realm stays behind - clothing, weapons, rings. You would have found it. And hopefully you would one day have understood.'

She looked at him, marvelling at the fact he'd gone back for it. For her. For a tiny piece of metal sunk into the mud and weeds.

She slipped the ring onto the fourth finger of her right hand. 'Thank you,' she said quietly. Would her parents think she was doing the right thing? She wondered. Would they think she was crazy for believing she could end this war? Or worse, that she was a traitor for allowing herself to fall for a shadow warrior?

Lucas drew a finger along her cheekbone and she involuntarily shuddered. She heard a groan and hoped to God it wasn't her.

But it wasn't. Lucas's hands dropped away and they both turned towards the groaning sound.

Victor was stirring at their feet. Evie stared at him. She felt nothing.

Wrong.

She felt numb towards him. Maybe later there would be anger, fury, hatred, murderous rage, but right now she felt nothing.

Lucas dropped down beside Victor's head and she wondered what he was doing and then she caught the glint of the knife blade in his hand.

'What are you doing?' she screeched, grabbing his shoulder.

'What I've been vowing to do every day since I was nine years old.'

'No,' Evie shouted. 'You can't kill him.'

'I have to. Did you forget what he did? He killed my parents. And yours too.'

She flinched. 'Yes, I know. He's a psycho. That doesn't make it right. I'm not going to let him make me into something I don't want to be. Or you for that matter. I already gave him too much of me. We let him go.'

Lucas stood up from his kneeling position. 'We let him go and he will come after you.'

'And you'll protect me if I need you to, but only until I can protect myself.'

Lucas's lips pressed together, his straight brows drawing together into one line.

She felt the distance between them as a physical thing, recognised the urge she had to close it. She reached out a hand and placed it on his arm. 'Lucas,' she said more softly, 'you just said that you loved me because I made you a better person.' She watched him frown. 'If this is the better you, what the hell were you like before?'

He pulled away, wincing.

She pressed on. 'You said that you believed in me. I don't know if you are right to or not. But if you think I can make this fighting and this killing stop, then I'll do it. I won't walk away. I'll stand and fight with you. By your side. I'll see it through to the end. But I won't kill in cold blood. And I won't kill for revenge and I won't let you either. Because I'm not going to become like him.'

36

Lucas knelt in front of Victor and pressed his face up against Victor's.

Victor's eyeballs were rolling wildly in his head as he struggled his way back to consciousness. He waited until Victor had focused enough, until he saw a spark of recognition, and then he pressed the knife tip against his throat where the line of blood had already clotted.

'This blade belonged to my father,' he said. 'I left it by the pond.' He paused and heard Evie make a sound behind him. 'Do you remember my father?'

Victor's nostrils flared. He tried to turn his head but the knife pressed down and he fell still.

'You killed him, just as you killed my mother. Do you even remember her? Do you remember the boy in the car with her?' He watched as Victor's eyes sprung open in surprise. 'Yeah, you probably should have made sure there were no witnesses left behind.'

He saw the fear drain into Victor's eyes as realisation finally dawned.

Lucas felt the weight of his father's knife in his hands, so delicately balanced it felt like holding a flower stem. The metal so iridescent it was almost see-through and so sharp that if he moved his fingers a fraction it would fall through Victor's jugular as easily as a raindrop through a cloud.