Severed (12 page)

‘Kind of. I mean not in any sense of the word that you understand. The rules are things like: don’t eat other unhumans, don’t kill without justification, don’t let a human see you shift, Sybll aren’t allowed to interfere in others’ lives – that sort of thing. You break them, particularly the revelation law, and you have to answer to the Elders. The punishment is usually banishment to another realm. Normally the Thirster realm.’

‘What’s the revelation law?’

‘No unhuman is allowed to reveal himself to a human.’

Evie grinned. ‘Who are the Elders?’

‘The Elders are a council of older unhumans,’ Lucas continued, choosing to ignore her grin. ‘One representative from every realm. They preside over all the realms. They have done ever since the massacre of the Originals.’

‘The what?’

‘Roughly a millennium ago the Originals tried to gain control of all the realms, including this one.’

‘They exist? Originals? I thought they were just a myth.’

‘No, they exist, but only a few of them are left. It took a whole army of Shadow Warriors and Shapeshifters to put them down. The Originals are like Thirsters, only ten times stronger. It was the first time that the realms all had to unite to fight one common enemy. After, what was left of the Originals were banished to the Thirster realm and the Elders were elected to oversee the Brotherhood, which was created to put down any threats to unhumans or to the realms – namely Hunters. Now they’re …’ he stopped suddenly.

‘They’re what?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he answered quickly. ‘Just that they’re going to be looking for us.’

Evie studied him carefully, suddenly unsure. Was he hiding something from her? She looked into his eyes, searching, but all she could see was herself reflected in the grey. She put both hands on his shoulders and leaning against him pushed him backwards onto the bed. He resisted at first, shooting her a puzzled look. But she ignored it and kept pushing until he eventually gave in and lay down. She scooted over and lay down next to him, feeling his arm come automatically around her. She was struck by just how quickly and how easily they’d fallen into being with each other – completely comfortable in each other’s arms, with no inhibition or embarrassment. It was like she belonged there.

‘Tell me about when you were younger,’ she whispered. ‘What were you like?’

He laughed under his breath. ‘What was I like? A loner. I mean, my mum and dad moved us to Iowa to live with my grandmother when I was about five.’

‘Why?’

‘Flic didn’t get on so well in school. We were living here in LA at the time. She’s a year older than me. She started school first and she’s a little hot headed – in case you hadn’t noticed. Her first week at school she managed to give another kid concussion and disappear a few times. It was a hard one for the teachers to overlook, so my parents decided to homeschool us both from that point on.’

‘Oh,’ Evie said, not knowing what else to say.

‘And homeschooling for my dad meant teaching us how to fight. My mum was all about the Shakespeare but my dad was all about the kickboxing.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I guess he saw that one day we’d need it. Your dad did the same, right? Taught you self-defence?’

‘Yes, but not because he thought one day I might need to protect myself from unhumans.’

‘No, just from boys with less than honourable intentions.’

Evie smiled against his shoulder, ‘You better watch out then,’ she whispered.

Lucas laughed under his breath. ‘My intentions are fully honourable,’ he answered, his lips pressed to the top of her ear.

‘And your mum? How did she feel about it?’ Evie asked, trying to suppress the shivers riding up her spine. Now was really not the time.

Lucas sighed, ‘She wasn’t happy. I mean, who would be? We were kids and he was teaching us how to fight. But I think she understood that he was just trying to keep us safe. You see, he’d broken the rules by marrying a human. And by having us they broke another rule. No cross-breeding with humans. It’s absolutely forbidden.’

‘Wow,’ Evie said, ‘that’s a liberal and progressive bunch of Elders you’ve got there.’

She felt Lucas shrug. ‘It’s not just the Elders. The Hunters too forbid it.’

Evie took a deep breath in. Lucky she was no longer a Hunter then.

‘I think my father knew that one day the Elders would catch up with him,’ Lucas continued, ‘but in the end it was the Hunters who found us first. Victor. And he didn’t kill my father – not then, at least. He killed my mother.’

Evie tried to keep her breathing steady. ‘Is that why your father joined the Brotherhood?’ she asked. ‘To get revenge?’

‘Yes. And no. I think he was torn between going off and trying to hunt Victor down and staying with us and trying to protect us. But then the Elders found out about us …’ Lucas paused.

‘What happened?’ Evie asked after a few moments of silence.

‘Instead of punishing my dad for breaking the rules – which would have been banishment for him and God knows what for us – they gave him the choice to join the Brotherhood. They needed a Shadow Warrior and with him they had a Shadow Warrior with a cause. He left Flic and me in Iowa with my grandmother and he went off to fight. Then he got killed too.’ Evie heard the catch in his voice but he moved quickly on. ‘Flic and I moved to LA as soon as we could. She wanted to come here and I didn’t want her to be by herself. I finished High School here.’

Evie smiled to herself at the thought of Lucas in High School. She could just imagine the stir he must have caused among the entire female student body.

‘When I was eighteen, I joined the Brotherhood,’ Lucas continued. ‘And then I met you.’

There was a long pause before Evie spoke. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. It was the only thing she could think to say.

‘There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,’ Lucas said, clasping her fingers in his own. ‘Sometimes in life you have to choose one path over another. The hard path over the easy one. And the hard one leads us past places we don’t necessarily want to go. But at the end, you realise that if you hadn’t taken that path, past the bad stuff, you’d never have got to the point you’re at. To the place where you’re supposed to be.’ He took a breath, rolling onto his side to look at her. ‘And right here, with you, is exactly where I’m supposed to be.’

Evie pressed her lips together and took in the expression on his face, the sadness buried deep in his eyes, but the layers of warmth on the surface. Then her gaze tracked to his lips and lingered there. She let out a long, slow breath. ‘So, who’s on top?’ she asked.

Chapter 19

Evie padded her way down the hallway towards the kitchen, stepping between the squares of sunlight thrown onto the floor. Judging from the shortness of the shadows and the white glare of the light it was late morning already. She’d left Lucas sleeping, had uncurled herself from his arms and prised herself off the bed. She’d never before seen him sleep. Watching him unobserved felt like she was stealing something from him. There was an innocence about Lucas when he slept. He seemed like a child – his brow smooth, his breathing regular, his lips parted ever so slightly. Though when she swept her eyes over the rest of him, Evie decided that there was also something languorous and fully adult about him as well. The way his body lay when fully relaxed, one arm flung across his chest, the other dangling over the side of the bed, his legs kicked out, one bent at the knee. When he was awake he was always so fully alert, the lines of his body locked rigid and taut, his eyes always darting this way and that, watchful and suspicious.

In sleep she caught a glimpse of another Lucas. It made her stomach stretch and tie itself into knots to contemplate him this way. A sadness weighed her down – that there was this other Lucas buried beneath the surface who she’d never get to meet. Who he’d never get to be.

As soon as she rolled away and inched herself out of his arms she felt the loss, not just of him but of whatever peace she felt when she was close to him. In its place came a rush of adrenaline and a storm of worry and fear. She was tempted to lie straight back down again and let the peace enfold her, go back to pretending that they were both something else, that they weren’t lying in the bottom bunk in a stranger’s house, being hunted by demons. But she didn’t. She got up and walked to the door and headed to the kitchen, intending to make some coffee and wait until Cyrus woke up, at which point she was going to demand that he took them straight to see Margaret. She couldn’t wait any longer. Every minute, every second in fact, that they waited to figure this out, was another minute or another second in which someone else might get hurt.

She walked into the kitchen area and stood transfixed by all the chrome shininess. She could see her own reflection stretched balloon-like across the surface of the toaster and shied quickly away from it, heading instead to the fridge and pulling open the gigantic door.

‘Looking for something?’

Evie spun around, her heart flying into her mouth. Cyrus was standing in the centre of the room by the sofas. He was wearing only a pair of sweatpants and boxing gloves. Her gaze dropped straight away to his chest but only for a fraction of a second before she realised what she was doing and hauled her gaze northwards. It was a long enough glimpse, however, for her to have noticed the corrugated six-pack of muscle running across his torso and long enough also for him to have noticed she’d noticed and to start smirking.

‘Just getting something to drink, if that’s OK?’ she answered, turning back to the fridge and cursing herself silently. Encouraging Cyrus’s ego in any way was tantamount to flaying oneself alive. She straightened her face and turned back, throwing him a bored look. ‘When are we going to see your mother?’ she asked.

He rolled his eyes at her, ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Want to work up a sweat with me first?’

She threw him one of her dirtiest looks. He grinned in response and pointed with his gloved hand towards a punch bag slung from one of the beams across the ceiling. ‘Training. Boxing. What did you think I meant?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows innocently. ‘You should train – it’ll be different now. You’ll enjoy it. It’ll be pretty intense.’

‘I’m not sure there’s much point,’ Evie muttered as she filled a glass to the brim with milk.

‘Why not?’

She slopped some milk onto the counter as she looked up at him in surprise that he’d heard. Damn. She’d forgotten. Supersonic hearing. She would have to watch that. She set the glass down on the counter and started wiping the milk up, not sure how to answer.

‘You’re a Hunter,’ he said, using his teeth to loosen the laces of his gloves, ‘and last time I checked you were the most sought-after object in all the realms. If I were you I’d be training. Or is it that you think you’re too important for that and expect us to protect you instead?’ He dropped the gloves to the floor.

Evie stared at him for one second before slamming her glass down on the side and marching straight over to him. His goading expression transformed into a bemused smile as she headed towards him but she also caught the spark of uncertainty flash across his face as she got nearer. Just before she reached him she sidestepped, bringing her arm back and punching the bag in a fast one-two movement that forced Cyrus to jerk sharply out of its path. He swore loudly, catching the bag as it swung towards him on the rebound.

She waited until he was looking straight at her again, with a gratifyingly wary expression. ‘I don’t need protection,’ she told him. ‘I’m fine. That’s the one thing I am sure of.’ She gave him a terse smile. ‘
I’m
going to be fine.’ And with that she walked away, hearing the angry slap of her bare feet against the wooden floorboards.

‘Ooh, sure of yourself,’ Cyrus called to her back.

She paused mid-step, reeled around and then strode back towards him. ‘That would be a little ironic coming from you, wouldn’t it?’ she asked, smacking the punch bag again. God, it was good to hit something. Her body felt amped. She was fairly sure she could punch the bag into orbit without even trying. Cyrus ducked in time and caught the bag, twisting it high and holding it up out of her reach, as though he was dangling a bone above a starving dog.

‘I’m not sure of myself,’ she said, glowering at him. ‘I just know because the prophecy is marked.’ She saw his eyebrows draw together in a frown and a question form on his lips. ‘You know what?’ she said quickly, before he could get the question out. ‘I’m so bored of hearing about this damn prophecy. Can we talk about something else instead?’

He frowned at her some more, his lips pursing, but then he released the punch bag. ‘Sure,’ he answered with a shrug.

She took another swipe – this time a cobra strike that Victor had taught her. Cyrus grunted and steadied the bag against his shoulder, leaning into it as she punched it another dozen times. She liked hearing the smack as her fist made contact with the leather and she liked the fact that Cyrus had to dig his heels into the ground to keep his balance.

‘So, what are you doing here?’ she asked, when she had finally stopped to catch her breath.

‘I’m getting my butt kicked,’ he laughed, rubbing his shoulder and trying to hide the wince.

‘Yeah, other than that,’ she said, deciding to try a jump kick without warning him. ‘You know what I mean,’ she said, spinning with her leg outstretched so the sole of her foot slammed into the bag sending Cyrus flying backwards, his arms flailing.

Getting his balance, he stared at her for a few seconds, his eyes narrowing slightly, before he turned and walked to the sofa to pick up a towel he’d flung over the arm. Evie watched him wipe the sweat off the back of his neck, and whipped around quickly before he could catch her looking. If she had to see him smirk just one more time she’d do away with the punch bag and start using his face instead. ‘Why are you hanging out in a loft space slash playboy den?’ she asked between punches.

‘I need somewhere to bring the ladies,’ he answered with no trace of irony.

‘Ladies, plural?’ Evie asked. Cyrus was running the towel across his chest now, watching her the whole time. Feeling suddenly self-conscious, she stopped punching and crossed her hands over her chest, aware of the sweat that had started to run down her collarbone and trickle towards her navel. She was still wearing Flic’s black camisole top and jeans from the night before. Neither left much to the imagination in the cold light of day.