Shadowed (Fated) (16 page)

‘Is Victor going to be back any time soon?’ Cyrus
asked.

RJ shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Let’s just take his weapons,’ Evie said, moving
towards the two swords in the umbrella stand. ‘That’s what we came here for,
isn’t it? Let’s take everything and go. We don’t need him. And we certainly
don’t need these guys.’ She gestured at Selena and RJ.

‘But where are we going to go?’ Vero asked as Evie
passed her a sword.

‘That’s like totally not cool, dude,’ RJ said,
darting in front of the umbrella stand. ‘You can’t just come here and like
steal stuff. Victor’ll be really pissed.’

Evie ignored him, drawing out the second sword.

‘I think we should stay here tonight. It’s only a
few hours until morning anyway,’ Vero said with a shrug. ‘And we may as well
find out what Victor’s discovered about them.’ Seeing Evie’s death stare she
added, ‘Two swords aren’t going to get us very far. He must have another stash
of weapons somewhere.’

‘Well, you can stay,’ Evie said, suppressing the
surge of irritation, ‘but I’m leaving. Call me when you have a plan that
doesn’t involve working with Victor or these two.’

‘We shouldn’t split up. We need to stay together,’
Vero urged, dropping her voice. ‘They’re looking for us. We have more of a
chance if we stick together.’

Evie tried to step past her to the door, but Cyrus
was already there, blocking it. ‘Where are you going to go?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Evie mumbled, pushing right past
him and out of the door. She started striding down the path towards the street.

‘Evie!’ Vero called after her.

‘Pussy,’ Selena hissed.

Evie kept walking, trying to put as much distance
as she could between herself and the house, but Cyrus caught up with her before
she’d even gone fifty metres.

‘Hold up,’ he said, catching her by the arm and
pulling her around to face him. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

She couldn’t hide her surprise.

‘Why not?’ he responded, registering it. ‘Staying
in a house with thong girl and Butthead frankly scares the crap out of me.’

‘As if you’re scared of anyone,’ Evie said, with a
grudging smile.

‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ Cyrus smiled back.
‘She has talons. And a cruel line in put-downs. You pussy ass.’

Evie punched him playfully on the arm. ‘I think you
should stay. Vero and Ash need you.’

Hurt flickered across his face, though he hid it
quickly. Was he hurt that she hadn’t said that
she
needed him? Evie shrugged off the thought. This new–old
version of Cyrus was starting to confuse her.

‘Where are you going to go?’ he asked.

‘I know some people,’ she answered vaguely.

He glared at her, suspicion lighting his eyes.

‘I’ll be fine. Really,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you in
the morning. I just can’t stay here.’

He was scowling now but then he let out a loud
sigh. ‘Be careful, OK?’ he said. ‘And call me if you run into any trouble.’

He hesitated for a moment and she was convinced he
was about to pull her into his arms for a farewell hug. Something inside her
froze – whether in anticipation or fear she wasn’t sure and didn’t want
to analyse. But then he seemed to think better of it anyway and, turning, ran back
to the house.

He had had to force himself to let her go. For a split second he’d
wanted to pull her straight into his arms and … kiss her? Maybe. Well, hell,
yeah, he wanted to kiss her. That was pretty much all he wanted to do when he
was around her. Well, not
all
. But
just then he hadn’t wanted so much to kiss her as to just hold her and take
some of that damn hurt away. It was those eyes of hers, ocean deep, dangerous
rip tides running just beneath the surface, which he knew he could get swept
away in if he wasn’t careful.

She’s in love with another guy, he told himself for
the hundredth time.
A dead guy
, the
voice in his head piped up.
She’s in love
with the memory of a dead guy.

‘She’s gone?’ Ash asked as soon as he walked back
into the house.

‘Yeah,’ Cyrus nodded, feeling like he’d failed in
some way to prevent it. As if stopping Evie from doing what she wanted ever
seemed to be an option.

‘Where did she say she was going?’

‘She didn’t. She said she was going to stay with
some friends. Didn’t say who.’

‘Look, let’s just wait and see what Victor says,
make a plan and then call her,’ Vero said.

‘Speak of the devil,’ Ash murmured, glancing over
Cyrus’s shoulder.

Cyrus had already felt someone approaching. His gut
was pulling in a strange way, a shudder running up his spine as though a great
white shark was circling him from behind. He spun around.

Victor was standing in the doorway. Cyrus took him
in. He was enormous – broad shouldered, all muscle, not an ounce of fat
on him even though he had to be in his late thirties, maybe even early forties.
He had sharp, intelligent eyes and the corner of his mouth was curled up in a
snide smile. There was definitely something familiar about him, something that
pierced the layers of fog, and not in a pleasant way. The memory was sharp and
needling – acid tipped.

It was pretty damn satisfying to see the guy’s face
as he registered who was standing in his hallway. The smile crumpled instantly.

‘Surprise!’ Cyrus grinned, working it some more, enjoying
the look of astonishment on Victor’s face. He was frozen midstride, half in the
house, half out, and he was carrying a long sword, the tip of which scraped the
ground. A red silk cravat was wound around his neck and on first glance it
looked like his carotid artery had been severed and was spurting a geyser of
blood down his front.

Cyrus’s gaze flew quickly over the rest of him,
assessing him, weighing him as an opponent. He’d killed two Shadow Warriors
apparently. Cyrus pondered whether Evie could take him all by herself. She was
so slight in comparison. He mentally renewed his promise to be by her side when
she decided the time had come to exact her vengeance.

‘Wh… what are you doing here?’ Victor finally
managed to stutter.

‘It’s a good question and one we’re looking into,’
Cyrus answered as flippantly as he could muster.

Victor took a step towards him. Then, tentatively,
looking like he wanted to reach out and touch him but was restraining himself:
‘How’s this possible?’ he asked, his voice tinged with wonder.

‘Maybe I’m like a cat, maybe I’ve got nine lives.’

Victor shook his head. ‘That doesn’t make sense.
The prophecy …’ He broke off, still too shocked to form a complete sentence.

‘It was vague, wasn’t it? I mean it never actually
said anything about dying. You just interpreted it that way,’ Vero interrupted.

Victor glanced quickly at Vero before turning back
to Cyrus, still shaking his head. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

Yeah
, Cyrus thought,
and
what does make sense?
Since finding himself naked walking down a street holding a sword, not very
much had made any sense at all to him, but he was learning to go with the flow.

‘They turned up like about ten minutes ago,’ the
guy RJ suddenly interrupted. ‘You said to invite them in, so I did.’

Victor barely glanced at the kid.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, directing the
question at Vero and Ash.

‘A bunch of unhumans found us,’ Vero answered.
‘Came to our hideout. It’ll only be a matter of time before they find you guys
too.’

Cyrus noted snarly thong girl and Butthead giving
each other alarmed glances. Victor seemed less bothered by the news though, as
if he’d already factored it into his plans.

‘Where’s Evie?’ was all he asked.

Cyrus’s head shot up. ‘Not here,’ he answered
quickly. It earned him an interested glance.

‘The girl’s a pussy,’ the girl sneered.

Cyrus crossed the hallway, leapt the step and
backed her against the banister before she had time to finish her sentence. ‘I
hear you use that word one more time,’ he said, noting the gratifying bulge of
her eyeballs as he pressed close into her, ‘I’m going to …’

‘You’re going to what?’ she snapped, cocking one
pierced eyebrow at him.

He bit his bottom lip, considering ideas but
finding his memory disconcertingly short of them. ‘Well,’ he said after a beat,
‘let’s just say it’s not going to be pleasant.’

She pouted, ‘Mmm, sounds fun,’ she answered back,
her gaze lingering on his lips. ‘Any time, baby, you and me. I can take it.’

‘Just ignore her.’ It was Ash.

Cyrus gave the girl one last warning glare and spun
around. ‘Where are you finding these people?’ he demanded of Victor.

‘We need reserves,’ Victor said eying him
watchfully.

‘You mean cannon fodder?’

‘What are you talking about?’

It was the boy RJ. ‘What is he talking about?’ he
repeated, aiming the question at Victor.

‘You’re the forlorn hope,’ Cyrus told him,
simultaneously wondering how the hell he remembered random bits of military
history but was still drawing a blank on his own conquests.

‘What the hell does that mean? The forlorn hope?’
RJ asked, his voice high as a little girl’s.

‘That was the soldiers they threw ahead of the army
in the old days to take all the enemy fire. Can you guess why it was called
forlorn? Yeah,’ Cyrus continued, before RJ could even hazard a guess, ‘that’s
right, because none of them ever
survived
.’

‘Is he joking?’ The boy stared pleadingly up at
Victor for reassurance.

‘No, I’m not joking,’ Cyrus said, wanting to scare
the kid. Evie was right. There was no way these two were going to be of any
help when it came to fighting. They were only going to get in the way and get
themselves killed, or worse, get one of the others killed.

‘Yes, he’s joking,’ Victor told the kid. ‘He’s
trying to scare you.’

‘You
should
be scared,’ Cyrus spat through a clenched jaw.

‘It isn’t right, taking kids off the street,’ Vero
murmured, ‘getting them involved in this.’

‘I’m not a kid,’ RJ protested.

‘We’re outnumbered,’ Victor hissed. ‘I’ll take what
I can find. I took you and your sister off the street and you didn’t have a
problem with that.’

Vero scowled at him, eyes flashing venom.

‘What are you saying? That I can’t fight as good as
you?’ the mouthy girl suddenly asked, throwing herself towards Cyrus as if
angling to start something.

‘Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying,’ Cyrus
laughed.

RJ collapsed onto the bottom step. ‘I’m not sure I
want to do this anymore,’ he said, looking up nervously at Victor. ‘When you
said it was going to be like a video game I didn’t think you meant anyone would
actually get hurt for like real.’

Cyrus crouched down by his side. ‘These things are
not two-dimensional video game monsters.’ He pointed at Vero. ‘This girl’s
sister died fighting them. Ash’s best friend? Also dead.’ He rolled up his
sleeve. ‘You see these?’ he asked, thrusting his forearm in the kid’s face, showing
him the scars criss-crossing his arm. ‘These aren’t paper cuts, my friend.
They’re from
tails
, they’re from
acid, they’re from knives.’

‘Well, I’m in,’ the girl said from her position on
the stairs. ‘I’m not scared of nobody. I’ve been shot once already, and some
bitch did this to me with a knife.’ She pulled down the strap of her tank top,
showing an ugly fat worm of a scar coiling around her collarbone. ‘You best
believe she needed more stitches than me when I was done with her.’

Cyrus stood up slowly. He wanted to bang his head
against the wall. These two kids were Victor’s big plan to rid the world of
unhumans?

‘You’re a Hunter,’ Victor said to the kid on the
step in an evangelical, hellfire-and-brimstone voice. ‘You were born to do
this. It’s your destiny.’

‘Oh, quit it on the destiny stuff and just tell us
what you’ve found out,’ Cyrus cut in. He was done with hanging around here. He
just wanted whatever information the guy had so that he could then go and find
Evie. He was starting to side with her on the issue. Did they really need him?

Victor glared at him for a second but then strode
into the front room. Cyrus followed him, ready to lay into him with his fists
if necessary to get the guy to answer. He found Victor standing in front of a
giant map spread across the far wall of the room. Cyrus stepped closer and saw
that the map was covered in small red pins and then he reeled backwards as he
made out the detail in the photographs lining the map.

‘I found their lair,’ Victor said, pointing to a
place on the map. ‘It’s here.’

Evie ran. And as she ran she tried to wipe the image of Cyrus clean
from her mind. Why was he being so damn nice to her? She didn’t want niceness.
Or concern. She didn’t want to feel better. She didn’t deserve to.