Shadowed (Fated) (10 page)

He stepped out onto another street and scanned it.
The building over the way jarred something in his memory. It looked out of
place, like someone had transplanted it from another country, even from another
century. Its windows were blacked out, and yellow and black tape stretched
across the blackened doorway. It looked like it had been destroyed in a fire. A
car cruised past and he slunk backwards into the alley, sliding down a wall
behind a dumpster and resting on his haunches. Now he’d stopped running he had
started shivering. He wrapped his arms around his body and stared at the scars
marking his upper chest and arms. Most looked like knife injuries, though there
was one that looked like a burn on his right forearm. He had been in fights
– that much was obvious – but he couldn’t remember when or how or
against whom.

The doctors had checked his fingerprints against
some police database but he had never been arrested. And no one had reported
him missing. Which was strange, because somewhere in the fogged-up recesses of
his brain he could remember someone.

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes,
trying to stir up something, anything at all from the muddled images resembling
a Dali painting in his head. With the drugs still heavy in his system he was
having trouble trying to piece everything together. There was a tall blond guy
in his memory. And he was coming at him, attacking him, but a girl with long
dark hair and eyes the blue of a summer sky stepped between them. The girl
haunted his dreams – with her dark lashes and fierce gaze. He had no idea
who she was but he knew he had to find her.

Find her before the monsters did.

He didn’t know what they were but he knew they were
bad. Vampires. The doctors had called them that after he described them but he
had argued with them. That wasn’t what they were called. They weren’t the
black-caped, pale-faced creatures portrayed in films and in books – they
were something else entirely. They were something real. As were the things with
tails.

The scar on his back – it wasn’t a knife
wound as the nurse had guessed. It had been made by a tail. He was sure of it.
And the mark on his arm, where the skin was tanned darker, was a burn, though
from what he didn’t know. Creatures shifted into animals in his dreams, things
flew, hands burnt, voices whispered and none of it,
none of it
, made sense.

He leant out from behind the dumpster and peered
out into the street. There was something about that building. His feet, his
instinct, whatever you wanted to call it, had brought him here for a reason.
Did he know something about the fire? How many weeks ago had it been? How long
ago had he been brought into the hospital?

He slunk back against the wall suddenly, his
hearing pricking. He seemed to be able to hear more than other people. He knew
the doctors hadn’t meant for him to listen in on their whispered diagnoses in
the corridor outside his cell – all the heated debates about upping his
doses and scheduling him for shock therapy – but he had. He’d been able
to hear the nurses too, chatting at their station at the far end of the
corridor, giggling about the good-looking patient with no name and a body to
die for, pulling straws to see who got to bed bath him. Fortunately for him it
had always been the blonde one with the spectacular chest.

Right now he could hear footsteps heading towards
him and all of a sudden his heart was beating strong enough to burst clean
through his ribcage. He rested the flat of his hand over it, panicking that
maybe it was the result of missing his meds. His palms were sweating too. He
wiped them on his scrubs and tried to heave himself upright. The adrenaline
rushed through him, making him light-headed and spinning him out when he stood.

Over the street across from him he could make out
four shapes. He already knew that they weren’t people. He didn’t know how. He
just knew these were the monsters that haunted his dreams.

On automatic, without stopping to think about what
he was doing, he stepped out of his hiding place in the alley and into a patch
of light cast by a streetlamp.

Four heads flew up, four bloodshot sets of eyes
staring right back at him. And then, there – the glint of razor sharp
teeth.

Well,
what do you know
, he
thought triumphantly.
I was right.
Monsters do exist
.

Ash was piling weapons onto the coffee table and Vero was checking
their sharpness and firing mechanisms before packing each blade and gun into a
canvas duffel. Evie meanwhile was taking out her frustration on the punch bag,
imagining it was Victor’s face.

‘I told you we couldn’t trust him,’ she said,
whacking the bag so hard her fist almost tore a hole right through it. ‘He’s
probably halfway to Panama by now. No way he’s going to stick around now he
knows I’m out to kill him.’

‘Victor’s not going anywhere,’ Vero remarked. ‘He
might be a total mentalist, but at the end of the day he’s a Hunter all the
way. It’s his life. He’s going to stay around until the last unhuman is
dusted.’ She zipped up the duffel and walked over to Evie. ‘He said he’d get in
touch in a day or two, once he’s found the lair. And besides, we need to hit
the streets downtown and do some cleaning up.’

Evie cracked her knuckles. Her shoulders were
aching. Sleeping on the sofa hadn’t done her back much good. But punching the
bag had eased some of her frustrations.

‘Here,’ Vero said, tossing something at her.

Evie caught it left-handed. It was a bottle of
lighter fluid.

‘Let’s go have ourselves a little party,’ Vero said
to her with a grim smile.

They drove through the streets of downtown in
silence. Evie toyed with the shadow blade on her lap even as her thoughts
strayed to her mother back in Riverview. She reached into her pocket and
reluctantly pulled out her cell phone. She had had over a dozen messages from
her mum so far and several hundred missed calls. Guilt was starting to feel
very much like taking a bath in Mixen acid. She tapped out a perfunctory reply
saying she was fine and not to worry, hit send and then switched off her phone
and put it back in her pocket.

Through the gap in the front seats she watched Ash
lean across and kiss Vero’s neck, before resting his hand on her knee. Evie’s
stomach twisted and tears burnt hot and unwelcome behind her eyes. She turned
her head away and locked eyes with her reflection in the side window. How could
she be jealous of Vero? Vero, who had lost her sister and Cyrus? She should be
glad that Vero had Ash to take care of her – not jealous because it threw
her own loneliness into relief. But god, she missed Lucas in that moment.
Missed the feel of his hand curling around the nape of her neck. Missed his
lips, feverish and cool at the same time, sending every cell in her body into a
state of shock.

Lost in thought, she didn’t at first notice the
Bradbury building up ahead. When she did, her knee, which had been bouncing up
and down, stilled instantly and all thoughts of Lucas trailed away. She leant forward,
her senses buzzing as though she’d been tasered and her heart rate amplifying.

‘Mixen and Thirsters,’ she said, pointing towards
the sidewalk in front of the building, where a group of them stood.

‘And a half-naked homeless guy,’ Ash added,
pointing to the other side of the street.

Vero screeched to a stop, swerving halfway across
the road. Evie flung open her door, a rip tide of adrenaline cranking through
her system. She had assessed the entire scenario in the second it took for all
four unhumans on the sidewalk to turn their heads towards them.

There were two Mixen demons – obvious because
of the green colour of their skin – and two Thirsters. The half-naked
homeless guy seemed to have made the sensible decision to scram.

Evie felt Vero and Ash flanking her. She glanced
sideways quickly at Ash, who had a flame-thrower on his shoulder like a machine
gun, and then at Vero, who was wielding Victor’s shadow blade like an Olympic
torch. Evie felt the beautifully light heft of her own shadow blade and smiled.
This was going to be fun.

The three of them strode across the road. The
unhumans watched them, intrigued, and then moved – spacing themselves out
– grins spreading across their faces. Ash was right about the suspension
of the revelation law. These guys didn’t care who saw them. Evie caught the wet
glint of incisors, still dripping with blood, and a thrill ran through her. She
upped her pace till she was almost running to meet them.

On the bright side there was no traffic –
thanks to all the murders people were choosing to stay home at night. Which
meant no witnesses to the massacre that was about to take place. Evie shifted
her focus to the Mixen in front of her.

‘You guys take the Thirsters,’ she murmured to Ash
and Vero. ‘Let me handle the acid freaks.’

‘With pleasure,’ Ash answered, peeling away to the
right.

Evie stopped a few paces away from the Mixen,
rolled her neck to loosen up her muscles and readied herself. She expected them
to come straight for her, trying to get an early hit in – it’s what she
would do in their position. But as she got closer the one nearest to her
faltered, lost her confident stance and went hopping backwards, grabbing her
companion by the arm.

‘It’s her – it’s the girl,’ she hissed, her
eyes brightening with fear. ‘The White Light.’

Then, without a second’s warning, the Mixen took
off, running down the street, heels flapping. Evie paused mid-step. That was
unexpected to say the least.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the silver
light trail as Vero’s blade sliced through the air and then a high-powered roar
as Ash started raking the sidewalk with flames. A hissing pop followed by
high-pitched squealing told her all she needed to know about how that fight was
going.

Evie turned to focus on the remaining Mixen who was
still standing there, staring at her. Evie lunged fast, swinging the blade low,
aiming to cut his legs out from under him but the Mixen leapt backwards out of
reach just in time. She stalked him, forcing him into a stumbling retreat until
she had him boxed into the charred doorway of the Bradbury. He cowered low,
holding his hands up, begging for mercy.

Evie hesitated. She was used to unhumans fighting
back. What was the protocol when they tried to surrender? Should she just kill
it anyway?

In the split second she stood there pondering it,
the Mixen dived towards her. His hand closed around her wrist and she let out a
scream, feeling the acid sinking through the skin and muscle until it stripped
through the nerve.

Without thinking she raised the blade she was
holding in her hand and swiped blindly, hearing a yell and a hiss as the Mixen
released her wrist and went tumbling to a heap on the ground. His hand flew
straight to his shoulder where she’d slashed him through his sweater. Evie
stood over him, grimacing as she nursed her wrist. He whimpered up at her
pitifully.

‘Go on then,’ she growled. ‘Get out of here, and
tell your friends and whoever else that if they come out to play with any
humans, if they flout the revelation law, that the rogue Hunters are going to
finish them. If I see you again, I swear to God I will kill you.’

The Mixen stared at her wide-eyed and then,
gathering his wits, he got to his feet and started edging away from her with
his back to the wall.

Evie watched him run and then turned back to the
others. Vero had sliced the head clean off one Thirster and its body was now
lying in pieces in the middle of the road. The second one she’d backed into a
corner. He was limping, and his eyes were wide red oceans as Ash raked him with
fire. He went up as if he had gasoline in his veins. Evie staggered backwards,
throwing her arm over her face to block the heat.

‘Watch out!’ she heard someone yell right behind
her.

She spun around in confusion just as her blade was
whipped from her hand. She made out only a greenish blur in front of her face
and then in the next second there was a Mixen lying at her feet.

It was the same one she’d given a free pass to. He
had sneaked up behind her. Goddamn. What had she been thinking, letting him go?
As she watched, the body vanished, leaving only a pile of torn and dirty
clothes on the sidewalk.

Evie turned her head in shock towards the person
who’d snatched her blade from her hand and saved her life. He was standing with
his back to her, still clutching the shadow blade, which was dripping dark
spots of blood onto the white paper slippers he was wearing. It was the
homeless guy in the green scrub trousers she’d seen earlier.

What the hell? Evie pushed the hair out of her eyes
and stepped forward ready to thank him, but the words died instantly on her
lips at the sight of the long scar running up his back.

And then he turned slowly towards her and she
caught sight of his face, and her heart burst like a storm cloud in her chest.

It was the same girl. The girl from his dreams. The girl who looked
like she’d escaped from a Klimt painting and gone wandering into the Dali-esque
nightmare. Her skin was paler, her face thinner and her eyes duller than they
were in his dream, but it was her. He’d recognise those eyes anywhere. And from
the way she was staring at him now, with her jaw hanging slack, he took a wild
stab in the dark that she knew him too.