Severed (32 page)
‘Evie,’ he said, ‘come on, let’s go.’
He helped her to her feet, putting his arm around her waist and leading her past the others, past Margaret who was still collapsed and rocking back and forth on the floor. Evie hesitated. She looked like she was about to say something to Margaret but then she decided against it and let Lucas lead her through the hole where the door had once been and where the costume hire sign lay smoking and twisted on the ground. They crossed to the elevators.
‘No, not the elevator,’ Evie whispered.
Lucas led her up the stairs, halfway up pausing to look back, hearing Vero and Ash making their own way across the bomb-blasted basement towards the stairs. Vero was helping Margaret stagger up the stairs, while Ash was clinging to the banister, his face contorting into a tight grimace with every step.
When they reached the atrium with the sunlight bursting through, Evie shuddered.
‘It was never me,’ she said in a whisper. ‘The White Light, the prophecy. It wasn’t me.’ She shook her head. ‘It never was. All this time …’ She broke off.
Lucas didn’t say anything.
‘Everything I’ve done, every time I didn’t think I had a choice, that wasn’t true,’ Evie mumbled, her eyes scanning the lobby. ‘I always had a choice. My parents were right after all.’
She looked up at Lucas with a confused expression. He looked away. The whole time he’d believed the prophecy was about Evie. He’d believed it because he had needed a reason for why he was so compelled to save her, even before he really knew her. And the prophecy had given him that reason. He’d been the one to convince her she was it, even back when she was ready to quit. He was the reason she was here. And the realisation of that was almost worse than the feeling he’d had when he thought he’d never see her again. He could barely look at her, was too afraid that any second she’d figure it out and would wrench herself from his arms. A part of him almost wanted her to. But when he dared to look back at her she was smiling at him with such softness and hope in her expression that the fear backed off.
Evie walked across the atrium, past the piles of ash and blackened walls. The doors they were heading to were thrown open just as they reached them and a dozen firefighters rushed past them yelling.
‘Get out! Get out of the building! Can’t you hear the alarm going off?’ one of them shouted.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ Lucas said, urging Evie through the doors, and darting a nervous glance towards the elevators. It would only be minutes before they started finding body parts and scorched remains. It would be better if they were long gone before then.
They fell out into the sunlight, tripping down the steps, blinking in the glare and deafened by all the fire trucks and blasting sirens. His first instinct in sunlight was always to look for the shadows, to know where he could fade without being seen but Lucas didn’t do that this time. He didn’t want to fade ever again. He started to weave his way through the crowd, needing to step into where the sunlight was broadest, wanting to get Evie away from whatever else might still be lurking.
They were past the fire trucks, two blocks down, holding each other tight, still too stunned to really talk about what had just happened, when without warning, Evie was suddenly torn from his arms.
Lucas spun around, leaping without thinking at the man who had Evie by the arm and was dragging her across the sidewalk. It was Victor. He’d appeared out of nowhere and with his one good arm was holding Evie against his broad chest, a knife pressed to her heart.
Lucas was between them in the next instant, his elbow coming up and jabbing at Victor’s shoulder, over the wound he’d made earlier. Victor let go instantly grunting with pain, the knife clattering to the sidewalk. Evie danced out of his way.
‘It’s done. It’s done,’ Lucas shouted, glancing around to see if anyone was watching. The street was crowded but all the attention was on the burning building.
‘What do you mean?’ Victor asked, glancing at Evie.
‘Cyrus,’ Vero said, appearing behind Victor. ‘Cyrus closed it.’
Victor spun around. Seeing Vero, Margaret and Ash standing bloodied on the sidewalk, he faltered. ‘Cyrus?’ He looked at the Bradbury building and seemed for the first time to notice the firemen bustling in and out of the entrance and the fire trucks lining the street.
With a scream, Margaret launched herself without warning on Victor, pummelling his chest. ‘It’s your fault,’ she yelled. ‘You told him! You told him.’ She collapsed sobbing to the ground. ‘I could have saved him,’ she cried.
Lucas took Evie’s hand and pulled her backwards, glancing nervously at the crowd building up on the sidewalk and now starting to stare in their direction.
‘Evie, don’t turn your back on me. You can’t just walk away!’
Evie took a deep breath and, still clutching Lucas’s hand, turned to face Victor.
‘The fight’s over, Victor. The way through has closed. It’s done.’
Victor stared at her open-mouthed and then, quick as lightning, he strode towards her. ‘There are still unhumans in this realm to kill. We don’t stop until the last one is dead,’ Victor hissed, staring at Lucas.
‘It’s not my fight anymore,’ Evie growled. ‘I would have given my life, Victor. Now, I just want it back.’
Victor opened his mouth, then shut it once more.
Evie started walking backwards, tugging Lucas with her as she went. Lucas cast one last look back at Victor. It was strange. He no longer felt any kind of anger towards him. He didn’t need revenge and the loss of that feeling was unexpected. Revenge had been such a part of him and of his existence for so long that he’d feared its loss would change him irreversibly, would empty him of all feeling, but what it did do, which he’d never anticipated, was carve out a new space inside him, which filled all at once with hope as clear as glass and with a lightness that could have lifted him off the ground. The past didn’t matter any more. Not now he had a future – one that he could choose freely.
Through the crowd gathered on the sidewalk Evie thought she saw a familiar white head and behind it two more familiar figures, one dark-haired and moving furiously, shoving people aside, batting them like flies, the other shimmering wildly. They were sprinting towards them. It was Flic and, following just behind, Jamieson and Issa. Evie tugged on Lucas’s arm and pointed.
As they got nearer Evie could see they were yelling something, but from this distance, with the fire alarm still blaring, she couldn’t make out what. And then it dawned on her. They were screaming Lucas’s name. They were yelling a warning to Lucas. She turned at once towards Lucas and the whole world slowed. Lucas was half-turned towards Flic, his expression moving from surprise to a frown, and then his hand slid from hers suddenly and he staggered sideways. Evie grabbed for his arm.
‘NO!’
Lucas dropped his gaze to his chest and Evie followed it. Lucas’s black shirt was sticking to his chest. He pressed his hand against his abdomen and then lifted it away, palm outward.
Evie stared at the blood lacing his fingers. Lucas’s eyes flew up to meet hers and they gazed at each other for several beats before Lucas took a half-step towards her and then fell. She caught him, sobbing his name, her knees smashing into the sidewalk as she broke his fall.
‘You should have killed me back when you had the chance.’
Evie looked up. Victor was standing over them, his lip curled in a sneer. And then he vanished, backing off into the encroaching crowd.
Evie blinked, her breathing coming thick and fast and choking. She started to stand, her fingers closing around Lucas’s shadow blade, when she felt Lucas tugging at her arm. She dropped back to her knees, letting the blade fall from her fingers and clatter to the sidewalk.
The world was closing in on her. She ran her hands frantically over Lucas’s abdomen, pressing down hard, her fingers shaking, sticky and thick with his blood. She was sobbing, she realised, and she heard Lucas suck in a breath beneath her hands. She heard herself uttering prayers she’d never known she knew the words to, begging him to stay, pleading with him to hold on.
Because he was fading, she could feel it. He was slipping through her fingers. She was losing him.
‘Lucas,’ she said bending over him, her hair falling in a curtain over their faces, shielding them from the others who were pressing in – Flic, Jamieson, Issa, their voices screaming over the top of her head, their hands tugging and pulling. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she whispered. ‘I need you. I choose you.’
He reached a hand up and his fingers traced lightly over her lips. ‘Shhh,’ he whispered. His lips were bright red, the rest of him so pale. So, so pale, almost translucent. He stroked his finger along her eyelashes. She closed her eyes for an instant and felt his hand fell away.
Evie kept her eyes closed, squeezed them shut tight until she could see stars flying on the backs of her lids, until she thought her heart might burst out of her chest and explode into a million little pieces.
Because she knew that Lucas was gone and if she opened them there would be nothing more to see.
THE END
LOOK OUT FOR THE THIRD BOOK IN THE FATED SERIES –
SHADOWED –
COMING SOON. TURN THE PAGE FOR A TASTER.
‘Would he have become a murderer anyway? Evie?’
Someone poked her in the back and Evie turned her head reluctantly away from the fogged up window and back to the classroom, suddenly aware of two-dozen eyes burning into her. Behind her someone was sniggering. Her fingers tightened instinctively around her pencil, which, without realizing, she was gripping in her fist as if it was a sharpened knife.
Mr Fielder, her English teacher, was standing with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at her. ‘Evie, so nice of you to join us,’ he said with a tight, sarcastic smile.
The sniggering grew louder around her. Evie forced her hand to relax, laying it flat on the desk.
‘I was asking about the three witches,’ Mr Fielder went on. ‘Did they really foresee Macbeth becoming King? Or did they just plant the idea in his head? Was it fate, or did he have freewill? Would you care to share your thoughts on the matter with us, Ms. Tremain?’
Out of nowhere a laugh rose in Evie’s chest. She choked it down, feeling her stomach muscles tensing. She studied her hands, folded on the desk before her - noting how the Mixen acid burns had faded and now looked like freckles - and then, before Mr. Fielder could ask her another question about a subject he had no real understanding of, she was on her feet, knocking her chair over and sending the books on the desk behind flying.
She grabbed her bag from the empty seat beside her, ignoring the gasped mutterings from the rest of the class, and strode towards the door.
A hushed awe descended over the classroom as she threw it open. She caught sight of Mr Fielder staring at her in slack-jawed incredulity – and she noticed too her ex-boyfriend Tom out of the corner of her eye. He was sitting in the back row, frowning at her.
Nothing new there she thought to herself before she closed the door behind her.
Her pick up truck was parked in the far corner of the lot. She headed straight for it, tossing her bag onto the passenger seat and climbing in. Her hands closed around the wheel.
Fate?
Was he serious? Mr. Fielder, her senior year English teacher was asking her, of all people, about fate and freewill? If only he knew the truth about her life, and how concepts of fate and freewill had played a part in it, he could get her to write a paper on irony. Wherewould she start? With the fact that due to an accident of birth she wasn’t just a regular girl, but a Hunter? Or with the fact she’d been told she was the famed White Light, whose destiny was to end the war between humans and unhumans? Or perhaps with the fact that she’d believed it all, and it had turned out to be a lie? There was no such thing as fate. There was only life. And death. And, in between, only heartache and hurt.
She rested her forehead against the steering wheel and took a deep breath. That’s when it began, the sob erupting out of the centre of her, as if it had been there all along, poised like a vicious, cunning dog, waiting to get her alone. She should have expected it. It wasn’t as if it was the first time she had broken down since the battle at the Bradbury Building. She clenched her teeth and tried to fight it, but it tore free anyway. She thumped the dashboard and tried to get a grip, closing her eyes and instantly confronting the image branded on the back of her eyelids of Lucas - lying in her lap, grey eyes dilating black as the blood rushed out of him in warm sticky pulses, soaking her legs and her hands. Would it ever stop being the only thing she saw every time she closed her eyes?
When she finally lifted her head from the wheel she saw Tom standing in front of her car, his bag slung over his shoulder and his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans. She glared at him for a full twenty seconds hoping it would convince him to move out of the way. When he didn’t move she turned the key in the ignition and let the thrum of the engine as her foot hit the floor do the encouraging for her. Tom tipped his head to one side and raised his eyebrows in amusement. The engine started to whine. She took her foot off the gas and, sighing loudly, reached over and unlocked the passenger door. She caught the smile that Tom tried to hide as he strolled around to the passenger side and climbed in.
‘So,’ he said, pushing her bag to the floor and making himself comfortable, ‘that was an interesting reaction to Shakespeare. Care to share?’
Evie knotted her hands around the wheel and kept staring straight ahead. It had started to drizzle. She didn’t care to share. If she told anyone about what had happened, they’d commit her to the nearest mental institution. She could feel Tom looking at her and knew if she turned her head she’d find his brown eyes filled with a mix of three parts pity one part frustration. She started to wonder why she’d let him into the car. She should just have driven over him.