Severed (2 page)
There were others here. She could sense it. But more than that, the thing that had made her adrenaline start pumping, the thing that was causing her instincts to fire like rocket jets, wasn’t the fact that there were others here, it was the fact that those others were unhuman.
Evie turned instantly on her heel, heading straight for the door, fists raised, ready to fight her way out, but Lucas was blocking her way and she banged straight up against his chest. He caught her by the tops of her arms and the pressure of his hands instantly calmed her. She looked up into his eyes, saw the reassurance in them, and tried to steady her breathing. If Lucas had brought her here, she told herself again, then it was fine. There was absolutely nothing to panic about.
Just then the door slammed and Evie jumped. Lucas’s grip on her tightened. The girl rammed home a bolt and then spun around to face them, her whole body resonating with anger. Maybe it wasn’t so fine after all, Evie thought. She felt like a rat trapped in a tunnel and cursed herself silently for letting Lucas bring her here – for not listening to her instincts when she still had a chance. This girl was unhuman – she had to be.
Evie studied her in the gloom of the hallway. She looked human enough. There was nothing obvious to say that she wasn’t – she didn’t have a pale-green tinge to her skin like Shula, and Evie couldn’t see a tail. That ruled out Mixen and Scorpio demons. And she doubted Lucas would be friends with any Thirsters. But it didn’t look like he was friends with this girl either, from the way they were glaring at each other.
‘You brought her to my house?’ the girl yelled at Lucas. ‘You brought her here?’ She stepped towards them, her face blazing, and Evie felt herself shrink further against Lucas’s side. ‘What were you thinking?’ the girl demanded. She held up both hands. ‘No, don’t tell me. Clearly you weren’t thinking. Because if you had been, you wouldn’t be showing up here at four in the morning with a Hunter in tow.’
A hard lump of panic rose in Evie’s throat. She heard Lucas take a sharp breath. How did this girl know about her being a Hunter?
‘Flic, we had nowhere else to go,’ Lucas said, before adding more quietly, ‘There’s no one else I trust.’
Lucas trusted this girl? Evie twisted her head to look at him. The girl snorted under her breath as if she couldn’t believe it either.
‘I can explain, Flic,’ Lucas said, sighing.
‘I’m not interested in an explanation, Lucas,’ Flic spat. ‘I’m interested in how you lost your freaking mind. She’s a Hunter. There is no possible explanation for this. I thought you’d joined the Brotherhood to get revenge. Aren’t you supposed to be killing Hunters? Isn’t that kind of the job description? But no, instead you turn up at my house with Cinderfreakingella here, covered in blood and begging for my help.’
Evie cast a glance downwards at what she was wearing. At the time she’d thought the red Valentino cocktail dress was the perfect outfit to wear for facing down and killing Lucas. Or for dying in, because that had seemed like more of a possibility at the time. It turned out that, despite choosing it for its colour, it didn’t hide bloodstains so well. And now she felt ridiculous, standing barefoot, bloodied and bedraggled, being scrutinised by this girl. She ran a hand self-consciously through her knotted hair and then down her dress trying to straighten herself out.
Cinderfreakingella?
She ground her teeth.
‘Flic,’ Lucas said, his voice a knife wrapped in silk.
Flic ignored him. ‘Where are the Brotherhood?’ she yelled. ‘They won’t just kill
her
, Lucas – they’ll kill
you
. They’ll kill you for this – for running off with a Hunter. Do you realise that?’ She paused, her eyes widening, ‘Did they follow you here?’
There was a moment of silence, which reminded Evie of floating underwater tangled up in weeds, a silence so deep she thought she was going to drown in it. Then Lucas spoke up. ‘There is no Brotherhood,’ he said. ‘We got in a fight with them. They’re all dead.’
Flic’s mouth moved but no sound came out. Instead, she closed her eyes and tilted back her head to stare at the ceiling. She sighed loudly. ‘Great. This is great. No, really, that’s an awesome career move. Killing the Brotherhood. Nice work.’ She levelled her gaze at Lucas, her voice shaking with anger. ‘There are easier ways to commit suicide, Lucas.’
Evie looked down at her bare feet, staring at the dirt and blood caked all over them. She didn’t want to look up. She didn’t want to see Lucas’s reaction. Here was someone saying out loud what she was too scared to and what had hung between them in the stifling silence of the car. By protecting her, by betraying the Brotherhood, by fighting against them and killing one of his kind, Lucas had signed his own death warrant. She felt guilt beat an acid path through her veins.
‘Flic.’
Evie’s head flew up. Someone was standing in the shadows at the end of the hallway. He advanced towards Flic, glancing warily at Evie as he passed her, before laying a hand gently on Flic’s arm. This one was definitely unhuman. Evie’s heart had begun to pound as if someone was playing drum and bass in her head.
Flic nodded at the guy standing next to her. ‘This is Jamieson,’ she said through a clenched jaw. ‘He’s my boyfriend. Thanks to you he’s probably going to end up as my dead boyfriend.’ She took a breath. ‘Jamieson,’ she said, without taking her eyes off Lucas, ‘this is my stupid-moronic-going-to-get-us-all-killed-because-he-can’t-keep-his-trousers-on brother, Lucas.’
Brother? Evie tried to ram her mouth shut before anyone could register her shock. This girl was Lucas’s sister? She stared at Flic in amazement. But of course she was his sister. It was so obvious. The razor-sharp cheekbones and the ridiculously long eyelashes. The thick dark hair and straight eyebrows over those almond-shaped eyes. Except Flic’s eyes were a dark-brown colour while Lucas’s were every shade of grey. And Flic’s eyes were iridescent with rage and Lucas’s were right now so guarded she couldn’t tell what he was feeling and really didn’t want to imagine.
‘Flic, don’t be so melodramatic,’ Jamieson said, putting an arm around her shoulders. He gave Lucas an apologetic shrug
.
Flic threw off his arm and turned on him. ‘Melodramatic? Is that what I’m being?’ she shouted. ‘Did you hear this? Did you hear what he just said? My darling brother here has killed the entire Brotherhood. As in killed. As in DEAD!’
Jamieson’s face turned ashen. He turned slowly to look at Lucas. ‘You killed …?’
Lucas dropped his gaze to the floor.
‘It wasn’t really him,’ Evie burst out. ‘I mean Lucas didn’t actually kill anyone.’ ‘Tonight,’ she added under her breath, remembering Caleb. He
had
killed Caleb but that had been a couple of nights ago.
‘Well, who did kill them? You?’ Flic asked snidely. ‘You’re not even fully trained are you? Do you even have your full power?’
Evie bit her lip and took a deep breath. ‘No,’ she admitted in a whisper. Lucas’s sister seemed to know a hell of a lot about her. Evie threw a worried glance at Lucas to see whether he was thinking the same thing, but she was distracted by Flic suddenly taking a step towards her.
‘Because of you,’ Flic said, pushing right up into Evie’s face so that Evie could make out the yellowy-gold rim at the edge of her irises, ‘my brother is now being hunted down by every unhuman in a seven- realm radius.’
Evie’s gut tightened.
‘How did you know about Evie?’ interrupted Lucas. ‘How did you know that she’s a Hunter? How did you know about …,’ he paused, glancing briefly in Evie’s direction, ‘
us
?’
‘How do you think I knew, Lucas?’ Flic snarled.
Lucas’s eyes widened slightly. ‘She’s here?’ he asked, dropping his voice, his eyes darting over Flic’s shoulder.
Evie glanced between them, trying to work out who they were talking about. Who did Lucas think was here? And then, as if on cue, she heard a girl’s soft voice.
‘Hello Lucas.’
Evie spun around as Jamieson edged aside, revealing a girl with hair like sheet lightning falling over one shoulder, reaching almost to her waist. But it was her eyes that Evie was drawn to. They were huge – unhumanly huge – two pale-blue discs in the white oval of her face.
She was a Sybll. Evie knew it immediately. This girl in front of her could see the future. That’s how they knew all about her, and about Lucas being on the run with a Hunter. This girl standing in front of her had seen them coming.
‘Hi Issa,’ Lucas finally answered, his voice taking on an uneven tone.
The girl gazed at him for a few seconds, her face as blank as a corpse, but then her eyes flew to Evie, and Evie could have sworn she saw a shudder run through her before she quickly looked back at Lucas. Did Evie really look that bad? Or was it that she had seen something? Something coming? Was that how it worked? God, she realised she really didn’t know a lot about unhumans. So much for Victor’s training. She hadn’t even thought to bring the book with her which contained all the information the Hunters had gathered on unhumans over the years. It was still at her house, hidden under the bed. All she knew for certain was that she was standing in a narrow hallway surrounded on all sides by demons who she was theoretically supposed to kill.
And it looked as if they’d like to do the same to her, except without the theoretical part.
‘Flic, let them stay,’ Jamieson said. ‘Issa can warn us if anyone’s coming. Let’s find out what’s going on at least,’ he added when Flic made no sign of relenting.
Flic pressed her lips together in a gesture that reminded Evie of Lucas and then she exhaled loudly. Without a word she strode past all of them and into the room at the end of the hallway. Jamieson turned to them and with a shrug of his shoulders gestured for them to follow her.
Evie hesitated, convinced now that they’d be better off leaving, but Lucas’s hand was suddenly in hers and he was shooting her a pleading look and she was just too tired to argue. The last of her adrenaline had leached away and she didn’t think she would be able to even make it back to the car. So she trudged after Flic into the living room.
Jamieson crossed straight away to a beanbag in the corner of the room and flopped down onto it, his eyes darting from Lucas and his crimson-spattered clothing to Evie in her strapless cocktail attire. She watched his eyebrows rise as he took in the state of the dress and her bare legs and feet streaked with blood and mud. She shuffled uncomfortably, aware of how badly she wanted to shower and change into something clean.
There was a sofa against one wall covered in blankets and a small coffee table in front of it scattered with magazines and empty cans. The room was lit by several floor lamps and some candles sat on the windowsill. Flic moved straight to the window and pulled down the blind. Issa stood quietly in the centre of the room – a marble statue, dressed all in black, her gaze glued to Lucas.
Evie inched closer to Lucas. In the flickering glow of the lights he didn’t seem so pale but, standing this side of him, Evie could see the dried trickle of blood running down his neck and the two scabs where Joshua had sunk his fangs in. She shut her eyes trying to erase the image that flashed before her, but it remained there, as though seared with a branding iron onto her retina. She didn’t think she’d ever manage to successfully rid herself of that one.
‘You saw us coming?’ she heard Lucas ask.
‘Yes,’ Issa answered. ‘I’m still connected to you, Lucas.’
Evie’s eyes flew open.
‘And you’re sure no one followed them?’ Flic asked.
Issa frowned briefly before stepping around Flic and taking hold of Lucas’s hand. Evie tensed beside him, watching.
Issa’s eyes suddenly glazed over, the blue turning milky-white. Lucas stood stock-still, not breathing. After a few seconds Issa’s eyes flashed open. ‘You can relax,’ she said, turning her back and walking to the sofa. ‘You’re safe for the moment.’
‘But they’re coming?’ Lucas asked, his voice sounding strained. ‘You see them coming for us, don’t you?’
‘Yes, they’ll come,’ Issa answered, dropping down onto a cushion.
Evie stared at her, biting her lip. You didn’t need to be a psychic to know that.
Lucas saw Evie’s face pale. Her eyes, the colour of deep ocean, were locked on Issa. For a second his mind flew back to the Mission, remembering another Sybll standing in front of him, clutching his arm.
You die because of the choice you make
, Grace had told him.
Except he hadn’t died. He was still here. Even though he’d made the choice to turn his back on the Brotherhood and on his oath, he was still alive. Which made him wonder whether fate was so set in stone and whether Sybll always got it right.
‘Sybll predictions don’t always come true, Evie,’ he said to her softly, shooting Issa a warning look.
Evie turned to him. She looked fragile all of a sudden and unsteady on her feet. He fought the urge to pull her towards him. The last thing he needed to do was give Flic any more reason to lash out – she was already simmering dangerously. And he was acutely aware too of Issa, standing there, observing them both silently. He hadn’t expected to ever see her again, least of all here. The last time they’d been in each other’s company – the time he’d said goodbye – hadn’t exactly been one to store in the memory bank.
Evie was still staring up at him, her body tensed and her chin held high. She was trying to show she was unafraid. But he could hear her heart beating as rapidly as it had done back when they were cornered in the alley. The front of her dress was torn at the hem and there was a bloodied handprint stamped across her collarbone. He kept glancing at it, wanting to wipe it away. It was unsettling, as if an invisible demon was trying to strangle her.
‘Tristan told me that Sybll sometimes get it wrong. That things can change according to the choices we make,’ he said, trying to reassure her. ‘Think about it,’ he added. ‘Wouldn’t they have sent more than just the Brotherhood to kill you if they’d been able to foresee what was going to happen? We wouldn’t be standing here now if Sybll got it right all the time.’
