Severed (16 page)

‘How did you even get recruited?’ Evie asked.

‘Oh, I was born into it,’ Margaret said, giving her a quick smile. ‘My parents had been Hunters. All our parents were, apart from Victor’s. He wasn’t pure Hunter like the rest of us. They died when I was fifteen in a big battle with the Brotherhood.’ Her eyes flew to Lucas briefly. ‘And then it was my turn. In the old days being a Hunter was a family profession. An honour,’ she added, answering Evie’s frown, ‘like generations of families going to the same college or all becoming doctors. I broke a twenty-five-generation trend by escaping.’

Evie pounced. ‘Why? Why did you escape?’

She smiled again softly. ‘The same reason your parents tried to, Evie. I was trying to protect my son, my unborn son.’

Evie glanced at Cyrus who was leaning back in his chair, one ankle crossed over the other knee. He blew air out of his mouth loudly.

‘How old are you?’ Margaret asked.

‘Seventeen,’ Evie answered, turning back to her.

‘That’s how old I was when I ran. I was pregnant. Can you even imagine what it was like? First discovering that I was pregnant? Then knowing that if I had a child I’d be bringing them into the world to be this? A Hunter?’ she practically spat the last word.

Evie gulped. She couldn’t imagine getting pregnant at seventeen. But she could imagine the fear of bringing a child into this world to become a Hunter because she’d already spent hours thinking about it back in Riverview, before vowing she would never do anything so stupid or selfish. She shook her head.

‘No. Me neither,’ Margaret said, ‘so I ran. I wanted more for my child. I wanted to protect him. It’s funny – you won’t know what it’s like to be a mother – but there is nothing you wouldn’t do to protect your child.
Nothing
. Your parents helped me get away. They were the only ones I trusted – the only ones who knew why I was running. I wouldn’t have been able to escape without them. I ran, first to Europe and then, finally, when I thought it was safe, we came back here.’

‘Victor told me you were dead. He told me he’d killed you for trying to escape.’

Margaret shrugged. ‘Let me guess, was he threatening you at the time?’

Evie nodded.

Margaret began again. ‘When Cyrus was about eight I let him stick a pin in a map of the world to decide where we’d go next. He chose here. By then I thought it would be safe. I hadn’t heard from Victor or any other Hunter in years. I thought I had left all that behind. I had a new life, a new name.’ She snorted air out through her nose. ‘But then Cyrus chose this life.’

Cyrus groaned loudly next to her, his head banging the back of the seat.

Margaret ignored him. ‘Cyrus doesn’t seem to realise what I risked to get him away, to protect him from all this. To him it’s just a game. I’m just some silly woman worrying about nothing.’

‘Mum, would you just drop it already?’ Cyrus huffed loudly.

‘Drop it?’ Margaret shouted. ‘You could be anything you wanted to be, Cyrus, and yet you choose this? After everything I did. After everything I risked for you.’

‘Seriously? Here? Can’t we save this for therapy?’

Evie interrupted. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs …?’

Margaret turned to look at her. ‘Locke,’ she said. ‘I changed my name. I’m Margaret Locke. I’ve not been Margaret Hunter for twenty years.’

‘Mrs Locke,’ Evie continued, trying to shake the thought that she was related in some way to this woman, ‘we thought you might be able to help us. We need to find out more about the prophecy.’

‘We need to know what we’re supposed to do to make it happen, sooner rather than later,’ Lucas added.

Margaret’s gaze flew to Lucas. ‘We? You mean her?’

‘No. I mean
we
,’ he replied pleasantly.

Margaret’s mouth pursed. ‘I don’t know what you’re supposed to do.’

Evie felt every particle of energy in her body dissolve. That was not the answer she’d been hoping for. Everything hinged on this – on this woman being able to help them. If she couldn’t, what were they going to do?

‘We only know one part of the prophecy,’ Lucas pressed. ‘We know the Sybll broke it into fragments but we thought maybe you might know where we could find the rest of it?’

Margaret’s face seemed to freeze for a moment. Evie could feel the older woman’s nervousness like a pungent waft of air. ‘No,’ Margaret said finally, holding Lucas’s gaze.

‘But what about all the books you’ve got? All the research you’ve been doing for the last twenty years?’ Cyrus interrupted.

‘What research?’ Lucas asked. Evie heard the note of panic in his voice too.

Margaret gave a faint shrug. ‘It’s just family tree stuff. Genealogy. I was interested in discovering the roots to the Hunter family.’

‘Why?’ Evie asked, finding her voice.

‘It doesn’t interest you to know where you come from?’

‘But you ran away from it,’ Evie said, shaking her head, not understanding.

‘Well,’ Margaret answered, ‘I wanted to know what I was running from.’

‘There’s a family tree. I saw it – in the same book the prophecy was in,’ Evie said quietly, thinking of the convoluted diagram in the back of the book Victor had given her. It had detailed every Hunter that had ever been, right down to her. That’s where she’d first heard of Margaret – her name had been scratched through.

‘So you know then that you’re the last one?’ Margaret said, ‘You’re the last full-blood Hunter. Your parents were from the old line. Most of us were. David our trainer, Jocelyn and Victor too. But I doubt either of them had children.’

‘Hang on, does that mean we’re related?’

Evie turned her head. Cyrus was pointing his bloodied thumb at her with an expression of undisguised horror on his face.

‘Only distantly,’ Margaret said, shaking her head. ‘Third cousins removed or something.’

Cyrus exhaled loudly. ‘OK, that’s good. I can work with that.’ He grinned at Evie, ‘Had me worried for a moment there.’

Evie couldn’t see Lucas but she could guess at the look he was giving Cyrus. Margaret too was glaring at him. He seemed oblivious to it all, however.

‘The generations thinned through the years,’ Margaret continued. ‘The concept of sending your children off to do battle in the name of a higher good disintegrated after the First and Second World Wars. People were questioning the sense of bringing children into the world just to have them sacrifice themselves in a war without end.’

‘But you had me. You got pregnant,’ Cyrus pointed out.

‘Look,’ Margaret snapped, staring at Evie, ‘there’s nothing I can tell you about the prophecy. I’m sorry. I wish there was. There’s nothing I’d like more than for this to end. You’ve no idea how long I’ve waited. But,’ she said, her eyes coming to rest on Lucas, ‘you need a Sybll to tell you more. They’re the ones the prophecy came from in the first place.’

‘We’ve tried that,’ Lucas answered. ‘They don’t know anything. Or at least nothing they’re willing to share. But maybe …’

Evie whipped around in her seat to look up at Lucas, a question forming on her lips.
Maybe what?

‘Maybe I can try again. Grace might know something,’ he explained with a faint shrug of his shoulders. ‘She was in the Brotherhood.’

‘You were in the Brotherhood?’ Margaret exclaimed, staring at Lucas horror-struck.

‘Yes,’ Lucas answered, his tone flat.

‘You broke your oath?’ she whispered, her eyes wide.

Lucas nodded. ‘Yes.’

Margaret drew in a long breath. ‘Can you find this Grace?’ she finally asked, an unmistakably eager tone in her voice.

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure she wants to be found,’ Lucas answered.

Evie was out of her chair, sending it flying. Lucas caught it in his left hand as it tumbled and righted it. ‘She’s a Sybll. If she doesn’t want to be found, Lucas, you won’t find her. You can’t go. It’s pointless, and … and I won’t let you.’

Margaret had stood too, both hands resting on the desk in front of her. ‘It might be the only chance you have of finding out more,’ she said.

‘Evie,’ Lucas said softly, ‘she’s right. We’re hitting brick walls. We have to find a way forward. If anyone knows anything it will be Grace. And she helped me once before. I think, if I can find her, she’ll help again. But she won’t come near a group of Hunters.’ He paused. ‘I should have gone with Issa, but I didn’t want to leave you then.’

‘Well, why can you leave me
now
?’ Evie couldn’t help the shriek in her voice.

He smiled softly at her, his thumb briefly coming to rest on her wrist against her pulse, as if he could bring it under control just by his touch. ‘Because now I won’t be leaving you alone.’ He jerked his head in Cyrus’s direction, and she saw the shadow of a grimace pass across his face at the idea of leaving her with him. ‘I’ll come back, I promise,’ he added.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Evie announced, trying to get around the chair that was blocking her path. There was no way he was going to turn invisible and get out of that door. No way. It wasn’t happening.

‘No,’ he said, moving to stand in her way, his hand coming around her waist.

She opened her mouth to protest, aware that Cyrus and his mother were both staring at them, but she didn’t care. Lucas wasn’t going anywhere. Or, at least, not without her.

‘You should stay here. He’s right. You have to stay here.’ It was Margaret talking. Evie turned and glared at her.

‘If you come it’ll be more dangerous for me, Evie,’ Lucas said quietly, pulling her towards him and holding her by the arms. ‘On my own I can hide. I can be invisible.’

Evie tried to think of another argument but before she could Cyrus appeared at her side. ‘I’ll take care of her, don’t worry,’ he said to Lucas with a grin.

Evie’s stomach immediately tensed. Lucas raised his eyes slowly from Evie’s face to meet Cyrus’s stare. ‘If you let anything happen to her,’ he said in a voice that sounded like it could draw blood, ‘if she even so much as scrapes her knee or gets a paper cut, I will kill you.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Cyrus answered. ‘But don’t worry, I won’t let any unhumans near her.’

‘So what are you waiting for?’ Margaret spoke up, breaking the tension. ‘No time like the present.’

‘Evie,’ Lucas pulled her back around to face him.

‘Lucas,’ she whispered, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. How was she supposed to let him go?

Cyrus made a loud groaning sound behind her.

‘Don’t do anything crazy. Promise me?’ Lucas whispered into her ear.

‘What if …?’ she began.

He cut her off, raising her chin with his hand and staring into her eyes. ‘No. No
what ifs
. I’m going to be fine. I promise. I’ll see you soon.’

She swallowed, but her throat had constricted and it felt like she was choking. ‘OK,’ she finally whispered.

‘I love you,’ Lucas said.

A big snorting exhalation from Cyrus.

‘OK, OK, you’d best be going.’ Margaret had walked around the table and was standing by the door, one hand on the handle, her body pressed against the bookshelf, as far away from Lucas as she could physically get.

‘Here, I want you to take this,’ Lucas said, pressing something into Evie’s hand.

She looked down. ‘No. No way,’ she said, shoving her hands behind her back. ‘That’s yours. You might need it.’

He pressed his shadow blade towards her. ‘I want you to have it.’

She shook her head more firmly.

‘Just until I get back,’ he pleaded. ‘Please. I’d feel better knowing you had it.’

She took a deep breath and then slid her fingers around the hilt. It was so light it could have been a mote of dust she was holding in her palm. She felt that if she let it go it would float away or disappear – just like its owner.

‘Bye,’ Lucas said, his fingers slipping from hers. He paused briefly to press his lips against hers and then he was gone, leaving just the faintest pressure, a pulse against her lips, that was echoed by her heartbeat.

She stared at the open doorway he’d disappeared through and at Margaret, who was staring at her with a mixture of incredulity and what strangely seemed like fear. And then she looked at Cyrus, who was grinning at her like a fool.

‘Cupcake?’ he asked, pushing the door firmly shut with his foot.

Chapter 24

Evie was counting the notches on the bedpost, trying not to think about what they represented – just trying to keep her head occupied with anything other than thoughts of Lucas. Because each time he flashed into her mind, in the space between numbers, it was as if someone was stabbing her in the heart with a pitchfork. And if it took until she’d counted to infinity to keep that pain at bay, then that’s what she would do. But at fifty-six she stopped counting and rolled over, pressing her face into the pillow, taking a deep shuddering breath in. Infinity was hopeless.

There was just the faintest smell of him – the smoke from the fire last night, a trace of warm leather and cool air that made her think of late summer dusks. She felt her stomach contract, seeding an ache that spread quickly into her limbs, lighting fires in her joints. Why had she let him go? She hadn’t argued enough. If she’d managed to hold onto him then maybe he wouldn’t have left. She kicked her foot against the bedpost and heard a crack as the wood splintered.

She sat up and examined the deep rent that had opened up in the post holding up the bunk above her. Then she looked at her foot. She was getting stronger. She’d thought that was just a tap. She wondered idly what damage she could do if she really put some force behind it. It surprised her. When Jocelyn and Victor had talked about her making her first kill and the changes that would happen as a result she’d assumed they were talking metaphorically. That murdering something, even if that thing was already as cold and dead as a Thirster, would take something from you – a large chunk of your humanity say – leaving you more able to kill the next time. Like eating ice cream when you’re on a diet. After that first tortured, guilt-ridden mouthful the rest of the tub went down pretty easily.

She flopped back onto the bed and resumed counting, trying to empty her mind of sex and death. The twin obsessions of adolescence. She was such a cliché.