Severed (22 page)
Evie, in case you choose tonight to come home, I’m at Joe’s. I’ll be home in the morning. Mum x
Evie stared at the note. What the hell? Joe? And her mum? She reread the note. Joe? Evie’s old boss, Joe? She blinked a few times trying to clear her head and the visions now occupying it. Since when had her mum been sleeping over at Joe’s? Was this a recent occurrence?
Cyrus put his hand on her shoulder, ‘So your mum’s getting some, huh?’ he asked.
Evie crumbled the note into a ball and spun around, her cheeks blazing but words choking in her throat.
‘Look, call her later,’ Cyrus said, his smile fading. ‘Send her and this Joe guy on a mission to get you from Alaska.’ He grabbed her by the elbow once more. ‘Come on, we need to find this book.’
Evie yanked her arm out of his grip and walked through into the hallway. She ran up the stairs, Cyrus following right behind. She opened the door to her bedroom slowly and stepped inside, switching on the light. Her mum had tidied her room. She almost didn’t recognise it. The closet doors were visible for once, not buried under an avalanche of clothes. All her books had been piled on her desk neatly alongside a half-written paper. She felt a momentary stab of guilt as she realised that school was due to start back in a few days – about the same time that the army of unhumans was due to come by looking for her. How was that for timing? But at least she would have an excuse as to why she hadn’t finished the paper.
She felt Cyrus nudge her and dropped to her knees in front of her bed, sticking her hands under the mattress and rummaging. She spread her arms wide, sweeping the bed slats. Then, when she found nothing, she dropped to the ground and peered beneath the bed to see if the book had fallen to the floor.
‘Did you find it?’ Cyrus asked impatiently.
She wriggled out from under the bed. ‘It’s not there,’ she said, jumping to her feet.
Cyrus pulled the mattress off the bed and upended it against the wall.
‘Hey,’ she yelled, but her voice died away in the face of the dust and the obvious lack of book.
‘Damn it,’ Cyrus shouted, taking the words out of her mouth. ‘Are you sure it was there? You didn’t hide it in your underwear drawer or somewhere else?’
Evie shook her head, at the same time turning to the dresser and pulling the drawers open. She started rifling desperately through her clothes. ‘No, no, it’s not here. I put it under the mattress. I know I did. If it’s not here, then someone’s taken it.’ Had her mum moved it when she tidied the room? That had to be the only explanation. She turned to the desk and knocked over the pile of books stacked there, looking for the familiar leather-bound cover among them – but nothing. Cyrus had moved to the dresser and was rooting through her underwear drawer. She shoved him roughly aside and his cry of protest almost drowned out the squeak of floorboards.
The two of them spun towards the door. The bottom stair creaked again as someone shifted their weight. Evie’s senses went into overdrive. It was a Hunter. That feeling she had whenever she was near Cyrus or any of the others was getting more obvious to her now. It wasn’t exactly the magnetic attraction that Cyrus had claimed it was; it was more like someone was pulling an invisible string attached to her sternum. There was a tug that made her want to draw nearer, to find out who was tugging at her.
‘It’s just my mum,’ Cyrus said, pushing Evie aside and starting to tip the contents of her drawers onto the floor.
Evie stayed staring at the door, her hand instinctively reaching behind her, her fingers closing around the hilt of Lucas’s blade. The door opened and she drew the knife with a speed that caused blue sparks to shower over her and make Cyrus swear and leap around.
A man stood towering in the doorway. Evie took one glance at him before bringing the blade up with a snarl.
‘Looking for something?’ Victor asked.
Evie stared at him – at the familiar purple cravat he was wearing and at the smug smile on his broad face. She saw him glance at the blade she was holding in front of her and hesitate for a moment on the brink of the doorway. He was clutching the book they were looking for in his right hand, holding it against his chest as though it was a bible and he was about to preach the word.
Evie’s feet were rooted to the spot. She did a quick calculation. Victor was armed. There was a knife sheathed on his belt and he was probably carrying a gun too, despite his preference for the medieval. His frame entirely filled the doorway, eclipsing the light from the hall. There’d be no way around him. She weighed the knife in her hand. On the upside he made a big target. She could try throwing it and hope it hit home. But she remembered when she’d thrown a knife at him once before he’d actually caught the damn thing in midair and she didn’t want to risk losing the blade – given it wasn’t hers to begin with. Her only option then was to get past him somehow and to run.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Cyrus demanded, stepping suddenly in front of her and squaring up to Victor.
‘Victor,’ Evie said hoarsely. ‘It’s Victor.’
‘Victor?’ Cyrus asked, tipping his head to one side, taking in the bulk of the man in front of him. Evie caught the flash of metal in his hand and knew Cyrus had pulled his knife from his belt.
‘Cyrus!’ Margaret’s voice came as a warning yell. She appeared behind Victor’s shoulder and Evie watched in dawning horror as Victor shifted slightly to let her pass into the room. Her eyes darted between them both. What was going on? Hadn’t Margaret been running from Victor? Hadn’t he been trying to kill her? So what was she doing now treating him like he wasn’t standing right there in the room next to her, clutching the book they’d driven halfway across the state to find?
‘So this is why you ran?’ Victor asked, his eyes flashing to Margaret before returning to Cyrus. He studied him for several seconds. ‘He looks a lot like his father, don’t you think?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows in a smirk.
Cyrus’s head flew up. ‘What’s he talking about?’ he asked through a clenched jaw.
Evie stared at Margaret. What was going on? But Margaret was glaring at Victor, her face turning pale.
‘Where’s Lucas?’ Victor asked.
‘He’s not here. I got him out of the picture,’ Margaret answered.
‘What?’ Evie heard herself ask. She closed her eyes and then opened them again, shaking her head at Margaret in disbelief. ‘You planned this? You knew Victor would be here?’
‘What’s going on?’ Cyrus asked, sounding every bit as confused as she was.
Victor reached out an arm. ‘Evie, come with me,’ he demanded.
She burst out laughing and took a step backwards, thrusting the blade out before her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Are you kidding me? I’m not going anywhere with you. I wish I’d let Lucas kill you. I wish I’d killed you myself.’
Faster than Evie had anticipated, Victor lunged, his fingers closing around her left wrist. She pulled backwards, her right hand swiping with the blade, slashing the top of his arm. The Shadow Blade sliced easily through his suit, drawing blood. Victor instantly let her go, staring at his arm in surprise as the blood started to drip to the carpet. He tugged at his silk cravat, pulling it free from his neck before wrapping it around his arm, the whole time keeping his eyes trained on her. Evie’s own gaze fell instantly to the thin red line against the front of his throat that had been hidden up until now. That was the scar from where Lucas had pressed his knife to Victor’s throat. As she stared at it, and Victor was momentarily distracted with tying a tourniquet, she took two small steps sideways, closing the space between her and the now-empty doorway.
‘She’s not going with you,’ Cyrus said, raising his voice. ‘She’s not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.’
‘Cyrus, it’s for the best,’ whispered Margaret.
Cyrus shook his head. ‘For
whose
best?’ he asked. ‘No one’s going anywhere, least of all Evie, until you tell me what’s going on. Why did you bring us back here? I’m guessing it wasn’t for the book, was it?’
Margaret shook her head. ‘No,’ she admitted.
‘There’s nothing about the prophecy in it, is there?’ Cyrus grimaced.
‘Give it to me,’ Victor demanded, turning to Margaret now and holding out his hand.
‘Give him what, Mum?’ Cyrus shouted.
Margaret glanced at Cyrus. ‘This,’ she said, pulling something out of her back pocket. She held it up. It was a piece of torn, crumpled, yellowing paper.
Evie stared at it, her heart starting to leap in broken rhythms.
‘What? What is it?’ Cyrus asked, shooting them both confused looks.
‘It’s the prophecy,’ Evie answered him, her eyes tracking back to the piece of paper in Margaret’s hand. ‘That’s what you’ve been researching, isn’t it?’ she asked, her gaze flying now to Margaret’s face. Evie wanted to snatch the piece of paper from Margaret’s hand, but she was rooted to the spot, a feeling of terror inching through her body.
‘Give it to me!’ Victor shouted, snatching the piece of paper out of Margaret’s hand.
‘What does it say?’ Cyrus demanded.
A slow smile seeped across Victor’s face as he read whatever was written on it. He glanced up quickly at Cyrus then began reading out loud, his eyes flaming.
Of two who remain a child will be born,
A purebred warrior, the fated White Light
Standing alone in the eventual fight
Severing the realms and closing the way
Passing through the light and into the dark
Memories will rise, shadows fade on this day
Confronting an army drawn from the realms,
The sun, the giver of life and the light
Together will stand and together fight
One sacrificing all to close the way
Passing through the light and into the dark
Memories will fade, shadows fall on this day
He stopped, raising his eyes from the page and fixing Evie with a look that burnt the breath clean out of her body.
‘That’s it?’ Cyrus burst out. ‘That bad pretence at poetry is what we’ve been running around looking for?
Sacrificing all?
What the hell does that mean?’ He looked at his mother and Victor for an answer. The two of them stood staring at Evie; Margaret with an expression of pity, possibly guilt, on her face, and Victor wearing the smug smile that his name suggested.
Evie took a trembling step backwards. Her breathing was coming fast and shallow now, and sweat had started prickling along her spine. She wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Her lips were starting to tingle. Her feet felt leaden.
‘To fulfil the prophecy Evie has to walk through the Gateway. Through the light and into the dark – that’s what it means.’ Victor answered Cyrus without taking his eyes off Evie. And before Evie could move or talk or process anything further, Victor made a move, taking a blindingly fast leap towards her. She held up her hands automatically to deflect him but Cyrus was quicker, sidestepping between the two of them, blocking Victor.
‘Sacrificing all …’ Cyrus mumbled to the ground. Then he looked up sharply, staring over his shoulder at Evie as if she was a ghost. ‘You mean that …’ he stammered, ‘that Evie has to die. To close it?’
There was just the word
die
. It was all she heard and then sounds became muffled as if she was entombed in a coffin, listening to voices seep through the soil at her graveside. Victor’s face grew blurry and indistinct. Evie was only half-aware of Cyrus turning to her in slow motion, his mouth stretching, forming words she couldn’t make out. Blocking all the noise, cancelling out the yelling was the sound of the river rushing loudly outside the window as if it had suddenly changed course and was raining down on the house. But then she realised with a start that it wasn’t the river at all – it was the sound of her own blood pounding in her ears. As if on cue, her senses spun like a tuning dial and noise rushed back in, in full stereo. The blurred faces in the room flew sharply into focus.
‘… this all along?’ Cyrus was yelling at his mum. ‘When we came to see you? You knew what Evie would have to do?’
Margaret nodded, ‘Yes.’
He shook his head, ‘You didn’t say anything …’
‘Of course she didn’t say anything, Cyrus …’ Victor interrupted.
‘It’s why you brought me here though, isn’t it?’ Evie spoke up, addressing Margaret. Her voice sounded normal, without even a trace of anger or surprise in it, and she was amazed at that. It shouldn’t sound normal given the voice inside her head was screaming hysterically. ‘It’s why you called Victor to meet us – even though you hate him.’
Margaret fixed her with a defiant stare, throwing her shoulders back and tipping her chin up. ‘Yes,’ she answered.
‘I don’t get it,’ Cyrus shouted. ‘Can someone enlighten me? Why bring him into this?’ He jerked his knife in Victor’s direction.
‘He’ll see that it’s done,’ Evie whispered.
‘How did you even find him?’ Cyrus asked, turning to Margaret.
‘I looked up Jocelyn’s number after Evie told me she lived in Riverview,’ Margaret answered. ‘I convinced her to help me find Victor.’
‘Did Jocelyn know?’ Evie demanded, feeling a sudden spurt of anger. ‘Did she know all along about the prophecy too? About this suicide mission?’
‘No, of course she didn’t,’ Victor laughed. ‘Even I didn’t know the full meaning until now. I only suspected.’
Evie turned to look at him. There was that smug smile again. She wanted to swipe it off his face. Her fingers, which had loosened on the knife, suddenly tightened, gripping the hilt with force. She raised it to chest height and saw the fleeting look of surprise pass across Victor’s face before the smirk returned. Evie’s head was still whirling, trying to process everything, the word
die
beating like a drum against the inside of her skull.
