Shadowed (Fated) (23 page)

RJ and Selena stared at her as if she’d slapped
them.

‘What are you even doing here?’ Evie asked them,
exasperation causing her to snap. If they couldn’t feel the gnawing buzz in the
pit of their stomachs that signalled trouble, if they couldn’t sense the danger
that was so thick in the air it was making it hard to breathe, then they were
going to be picked off as easily as cherries from an overhanging branch.

‘We’re here to fight,’ Selena answered back coolly.

‘We’re Hunters,’ RJ said quietly. ‘Same as you. We
read the papers, you know. We can see what’s coming. Someone’s got to try to
stop them.’

When Evie didn’t respond he carried on. ‘You think
I’m just going to walk away, hang out with my buddies, order a pizza and get
baked, now I know what’s really going on out here?’

Evie clenched her jaw. She didn’t know what to say.
Yes? Yes, do that. Pretend its not
happening. Hide. Get baked.
But she couldn’t because she knew he was right.
At some point this had become a fight that she too had no choice but to get
involved in because, just as RJ said, the alternative – doing nothing
– was even more terrifying to contemplate.

‘What’s your beef with Victor anyway?’

Evie pondered her answer but RJ was clearly
oblivious to the look she was giving him because he carried on. ‘He seems like
a cool guy.’

‘What’s my
beef
with him?’ she spat. ‘Try
he killed my
parents and my boyfriend
.’

RJ’s mouth flapped open and then shut.

‘And you’re like partners with him now?’ Selena
asked, incredulous.

Heat rushed up Evie’s neck and bloomed across her
cheeks. ‘It’s none of your business,’ she growled, turning away.

‘Someone did that to my man, to my family, you best
believe I’d be putting a bullet in him. What you waiting for?’

Evie took a deep breath, bristling dangerously,
trying to rein in her anger and guilt and self-loathing before she took it out
on Selena, when a loud shot shattered the heavy silence on the street.

‘What the hell was that?’ asked RJ, alarmed,
spinning around.

‘It was Ash,’ said Evie, fully focused now. ‘That’s
the diversion.’

‘I think we should follow Cyrus. What if he’s in
trouble?’ Selena piped up.

‘I think we should do what the guy said and stay
put,’ RJ said, looking to Evie for backup.

‘He’s not in charge. Victor didn’t tell us to stay
put,’ Selena argued. ‘So I’m going to find out what’s going on.’ And before
Evie could stop her she was off, jogging up the street.

By the time Evie caught up with her, Selena was
standing in front of the wall Cyrus, Flic and Jamieson had just climbed.

‘Give me a boost,’ Selena said without even looking
in Evie’s direction.

Evie swore under her breath, glancing back at RJ
who was still standing on the sidewalk looking terrified. The wailing rise and
fall of sirens could be heard in the distance.

‘If you don’t, we’re gonna get arrested,’ Selena
taunted, dangling her gun in Evie’s face.

Evie frowned at the weapon. Victor had armed them
with guns? Oh, dear god. She glanced once more over her shoulder. RJ was now
jogging towards them. The sirens were getting closer, and Selena was right. The
police would take one look at the three of them and pull them over for
questioning, and then they’d find the guns and Evie would be screwed.

Swearing some more, she put her hands together and
boosted Selena up and over the wall. Then she pushed RJ to the ground and stood
on his knee to pull herself up and over.

‘Hide in those bushes,’ she hissed down to RJ,
pointing to some rhododendron bushes further down the street, ‘and if you see
an unhuman, run and don’t look back.’

RJ nodded, looking only too pleased to obey.

Evie dropped to a crouch on the other side of the
wall beside Selena. They were in the grounds of some mega-mansion that seemed
abandoned judging by the toppled garden furniture, overgrown grass and dirty
windows. Could be the recession had forced the owners into foreclosure. Could
be they’d been eaten. She didn’t want to think about it.

‘Stay behind me,’ she ordered Selena as they began
skirting the perimeter wall. Her pulse was racing, every sound amplified,
including her own breathing. She felt dizzy and nauseous. The fresh injection
of adrenaline pounding through her bloodstream was making her body shake.

There were unhumans – lots of them –
close by. She could feel them. That’s what her body was reacting to.

She wiped the sweat from her palms as she ducked
through undergrowth and came up on the side wall that divided the property from
the house where the Originals were hiding out. Footprints in the soil showed
her where Cyrus and Flic had stopped to climb the wall.

Selena took hold of a thick low-hanging branch and
hoisted herself up into a tree that brushed against the wall. Evie followed
behind, not wanting Selena to get too far ahead. She was just swinging her way
onto a second, higher branch when she heard Selena draw in a breath and gasp ‘
Carajo
!’

White noise roared in Lucas’s ears. Static shocks needled his skin. He
swayed on the edge of the gateway beneath a shower of light. One step was all
it had taken to walk from one realm into the next but it felt like he’d just
taken a plunge off a thousand-foot cliff.

He blinked, squinting against the light,
registering two things simultaneously: that he was standing in a garden and
that a wolf was baring its teeth not fifty metres away from where he stood.

Behind the wolf he saw Flic, blade out, in a
fighting stance. The wolf was Jamieson, no doubt about it. He was slunk low to
the ground in a defensive posture, ears flat to his head and teeth bared,
growling at three figures standing unmoving as statues before them. They had
their backs to him, but Lucas knew what they were.

From behind they looked like humans. Two men and a
girl. All tall, powerfully built, wearing clothes that wouldn’t have been out
of place on any street in LA – the girl in a pair of cut-off denim shorts
and a cropped T-shirt, the one on her left wearing jeans and a shirt, and the
one on her right looking only slightly strange in a suit. The three of them
were unnaturally still, not even the breeze seemed to ruffle a hair on their
heads. They seemed to be waiting for some kind of signal to move.

Lucas took a silent step forward. Flic hadn’t seen
him. Her focus was locked on the Originals, her hand shaking slightly as she
readied her blade and raised it to chest height. Lucas could see the fierce
determination on her face barely masking the fear. He forced himself to bite
his tongue, keep quiet, when all he wanted to do was yell at her to get the
hell out of there. What was she thinking trying to fight these things? He felt
suddenly furious at her for being there. For putting herself in so much danger.

Just then the girl in the shorts – the
Original
in the shorts – twitched.
Her chin jerked upwards and her head turned fractionally in his direction.
She’d sensed him. Damn. He needed to distract them and draw them away before it
was too late – give Flic and Jamieson a chance to get out but there
wasn’t time to figure out a plan. He opened his mouth to yell, to distract
them, but Jamieson moved at exactly that moment – lunging at the one in
the suit with snapping jaws.

Everything blurred. Lucas registered only the sound
– a deadening thump, a crack of bones; and then he saw Jamieson flying
through the air – a ball of fur. He smacked into the far fence and it
splintered under the force. With a whimper the wolf dissolved in a ball of
shimmer and Jamieson appeared – his body crumpled at an odd angle, his
face pressed to the dirt. A trickle of blood oozed down his temple.

Flic let out a guttural scream – not of fear
but of anger and rage – and threw herself forward, her blade dicing and
swinging, her face a snarl.

Lucas sprinted towards her letting out a yell of
his own. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the girl in the shorts spin
around, see him and throw herself towards him, but at the last moment she
faltered, spun, turned away from him and launched herself at someone else.
Lucas kept moving towards Flic, only conscious that there was someone else in
the fight but with no time to figure out who.

Lucas launched himself at the one stalking his
sister – the one in the suit – his blade hacking through the stone
hard flesh of the Original’s shoulder. The Original paused, glanced over his shoulder
at the tear in his suit and then, with a furious bellow, swung his fist at
Lucas.

Lucas darted out of range, but the thing was on him
instantly – a blur, teeth sharp as hypodermic needles smashing and
gnashing in his face, driving him backwards. Lucas stumbled and the thing launched
himself at him - a tonne weight, as heavy as a marble statue crashing down on
top of him. In the split second before he was crushed beneath it, Lucas rolled,
drawing his blade in a wide arc above him, feeling it slide through flesh.

The thing paused for just a moment, a hand pressed
to its neck, buying Lucas enough time to scoot backwards out of reach. But then
it was on him again, stalking towards him across the lawn. Lucas kicked his way
backwards, willing himself to time things right. He would have only one shot.

The thing stopped, looming over him and Lucas
forced himself to hold steady, to not panic. But then the thing suddenly
pitched forward and a waterfall of cold blood cascaded over Lucas, drenching
him from head to toe.

He was on his feet in the next instant, gripping
the hilt of his blade in both hands, ignoring the blood dripping into his eyes
and mouth. He spun and with one blow slashed his knife across the Original’s
throat.

The severed head rolled halfway across the lawn
even as the body sagged in a heap to the ground.

Lucas leapt over the body and started sprinting
towards Flic. His brain registered that someone else was fighting alongside her
at just the same moment that he saw a flash of pink flying at him.

The one in shorts came at him from nowhere –
blindsiding him. Lucas barely managed to somersault out of the way before she
was on him again, snarling and panting. The two of them circled each other
warily, her gaze falling to his blood-slicked blade then to the body of her
friend lying headless on the lawn. She showed barely a trace of emotion. She
didn’t look much older than twenty, though Lucas knew he shouldn’t let that
fool him. She had a good thousand years on him.

There was only one way to play this, Lucas thought.
He stopped circling and tilted his head to the side, exposing the length of his
neck, feeling his pulse jerking frantically beneath the skin.

It worked. The Original’s focus snapped straight to
his neck. Her lips parted, her gaze clouded over and she lunged, coming at him
with the speed of a freight train. Lucas waited until the split second before
she was on him before he brought his hand up, holding the blade in his fist
like a dagger. She hurled herself onto him. Lucas staggered backwards under her
weight, feeling his blade pierce the granite-hard surface of her skin before
sliding slick and smooth into her heart.

She gave out a small gasp of surprise, and then looked
down at the hilt of the knife embedded in her chest. She collapsed to the
ground, her hands tugging at the blade, trying to pull it free. Lucas drove his
boot into her chest, pinning her to the ground and yanked the blade out. With
his spare hand he reached for the paraffin in his bag, pulling off the lid with
his teeth and dousing the girl even as she struggled beneath his boot. She
spluttered and screamed as he sprayed the rest of the contents across the lawn,
tossing the bottle towards the body of the other Original.

Then he took off, running, throwing his lighter
over his shoulder and watching the blue flame ripple out with a whoosh,
igniting the girl in a ball of shrieking flame, before snaking across the
grass, sending great black clouds of smoke into the air.

Lucas dodged the wall of flame and dived towards
Flic.

A scream from the street made Evie freeze. She was halfway up the
tree, scrambling up to see what it was Selena had seen on the other side of the
wall. But at the sound of the scream her attention flew back to the street.

‘RJ,’ Selena whispered from the branch above before
jumping to the mulchy ground and instantly breaking into a sprint.

Evie caught up with her, grabbing her by the arm
and yanking her backwards into the undergrowth.

‘No,’ she hissed, ‘it could be a trap.’

Something didn’t feel right.

And just then the howling wail of sirens suddenly
cut off with an almighty screech of brakes followed by the rip of metal and
smashing glass. From the other side of the wall, Evie could now hear the roar
of flames and someone – or
something
– shrieking.
Oh please, dear god,
don’t let it be any of them
, was all she could think.

She turned back in the direction of the house,
fighting every instinct in her body to go and join the fight. She needed to
make a decision. If she was on her own she wouldn’t be standing here, she’d be
over the wall already. But she had Selena with her, and RJ might be in trouble,
and for good or bad she couldn’t just leave them, no matter how tempting it might
be.