Shadowed (Fated) (36 page)

Her hands fell at once to her sides.

‘You’re alive,’ she said, feeling tears start to
roll down her cheeks. ‘You’re alive.’

She was crying.

‘You’re alive,’ she repeated, her voice hoarse and
broken.

Lucas nodded.

‘You came back.’

Her bottom lip was trembling and he wanted to reach
out and still it. He wanted to. But he couldn’t. Instead he just nodded. She
looked like she might collapse. She was staring at him in amazement but now he
saw confusion at his silence. He didn’t know what to do. Her fingers just then,
tracing his lips, had lit a fragile hope in him that she did still feel
something for him.

But he couldn’t forget the image of her lying on
top of Cyrus.

‘I came back,’ he whispered softly, raising his
hand and wiping away the tears that were sliding down her cheek without
stopping to think about what he was doing.

She caught his hand in her own and brought it
against her lips, kissing the palm so softly that he took a sharp breath in, as
the ache in his chest sprang upwards and released. She looked up at him then
and he felt the electricity coursing in currents between them.

He closed the distance, taking her face in his
hands, and kissed her as he’d imagined kissing her every second of every day
he’d been apart from her. He kissed her as if he’d once been a dead man and she
had brought him back to life. He kissed her until he felt her legs give way and
he had to pull her even tighter against his chest, until the air around them
was sparking with static. And he kept kissing her even when Flic coughed loudly
beside him.

And when he finally opened his eyes and looked into
the deep, blazing blue of Evie’s he smiled, already knowing the answer, the
truth of what she was feeling, of what he still was to her, seeing it reflected
in her eyes.

There was no loss. There was only belonging.

‘Screw fate.’

Cyrus felt the sword hanging heavy in his hand.
Around him were piles of chargrilled Original. And Victor. Blood was still
flowing down his arm and he thought he might be swaying still. Either that or
the world was spinning extremely fast.

But he barely noticed. All he saw was her. Evie.
Kissing the guy who needed a hair cut.

Lucas.

He knew it was Lucas, even though he couldn’t
recall seeing him before. He looked like Flic. And Evie was kissing him as if
…, well, as if he was someone who she’d thought was dead but who’d just waltzed
back into her life.

‘It has to be fate. Because no matter what other people
throw at them they always end up back with each other.’

He turned to Issa, ready to push her backwards into
a steaming pile of Original. Only the look of sadness on her face pulled him up
short.

He looked back at Evie and Lucas still kissing, as
if the rest of them weren’t standing there picking up the pieces and wondering
what to do about Victor’s body, and felt a shard of hot metal stab him in the
heart. It made the pain in his arm fade away to almost nothing.

She’d almost been his. She would have been his if
Mister Shadow Warrior with the haunted expression and the cheekbones you could
sharpen knives on hadn’t shown up. And Evie was falling for this? He kicked the
ground.

‘You’re going to be fine.’

It was Issa. Again.

Fine? He was going to be fine? He didn’t want to
feel fine. He wanted to take this raging anger that was building inside him and
go and project it onto something. He wanted to tear up the streets, finding
every unhuman he could and project it onto them. That might do it. Might, just
maybe, make him feel less angry.

Though probably not.

It was him she should be kissing. He had been so
close. She had been considering it. It would have taken a few more months
maybe, but she would have been his. They would have worked on creating prophecy
babies. Practising till they had it perfect.

He watched as they finally broke apart for air.
Flic and Jamieson stood by them, grinning. Not that the two of them noticed.
They were oblivious to anything but each other.

And Lucas was stroking her cheek, tipping up her
chin. And Cyrus had to look away. He had never experienced loss before. Never,
he realised. Because this hollowing out, this rage and this sadness were
completely new to him. Even with his amnesia, he knew he would have recognised
this feeling. He guessed that’s what love did to you. And it sucked. Love
sucked balls.

‘What are you going to do?’ Issa asked.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be the one telling me
that?’ he snapped.

Issa fell silent at his side.

He took a deep breath. What was he going to do now?
He didn’t know. How was he supposed to let her go? Forget about her? Maybe he
should jump through the gateway again and take a second round of amnesia.

He glanced to his left where Vero and Ash were
locked in a tight embrace. Her arm was bandaged up with a scrap of cloth. He
guessed that those two were done with all this. Vero wanted out. She deserved
out. Behind them Flic had her tongue shoved half way down that Shifter’s
throat. For god’s sake, what was this, junior prom?

He stared up at the white-porticoed mansion fifty
or so metres behind him. Then he frowned, looking down at the sword in his
hand. What was he going to do?

He turned to Issa. ‘I guess I’m going to do the
only thing I know how to do,’ he said. ‘Fight these things. There’s a whole
city to clean up.’

‘Well, if it makes you feel any better,’ Issa said
with a sly smile, ‘I can see you living in luxury while you do it.’ She nodded
her head at the house behind them.

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. ‘This
place?’

‘Mmm,’ Issa said, grinning now. ‘The owners are
somewhat dead.’

He shrugged at her, turning and considering the
house, checking with her that she wasn’t pulling some kind of Sybll idea of a
joke. She could really see that?

‘Well, someone does need to guard the gateway until
the White Light decides to be born,’ he said, admiring the three floors of
windows and the turquoise glint of a pool through the trees.

‘To be born?’ Issa asked, her voice hitching in
surprise.

Cyrus gave her a wry smile. ‘You really need to get
your vision tested, Issa. Maybe you need glasses or something.’

She frowned at him, her clear blue eyes widening to
the size of dinner plates. Then her head whipped around and she stared at Evie
and Lucas, her eyes turning the colour of slushy snow. When they cleared, after
just a few seconds, he could see she had seen it. Her mouth was gaping open
almost as wide as her eyes. The Sybll hadn’t seen that one coming. Surprise,
surprise.

So his mother had been right, then. He couldn’t
wait to tell her. He could just imagine how relieved she’d be when he told her
she wasn’t going to be a grandma.

‘You’re going to need help.’

He looked over his shoulder. Selena was standing
there, bandana freshly tied, smears of dirt smudging her cheek, eyes ablaze,
looking a little like Rambo, only less ladylike.

Cyrus rolled his eyes. This day was just getting
better and better. ‘No way,’ he answered flatly.

‘Yes way,
pendejo
,’
Selena answered, flashing a grin at him and revealing several gold-capped teeth
in the process.

With a grimace, Cyrus recognised the rush she was
having – the newbie, brain-blowing high of having dealt some serious
punishment to some serious unhuman ass.

‘Did you see what I did to Victor?’ Selena asked,
her voice brightening. ‘I popped his ass. You want me to do the same to you?’

Cyrus ran through several answers in his head.

‘Nah,’ she cut in before he could select the best
one. ‘I think you’re best off with me on your side.’ She laughed. ‘If you like,
I’ll let you take a turn on the flamethrower once in a while.’

He sighed inwardly.

‘I call dibs on the master bedroom,’ she said,
sashaying across the lawn towards the house.

‘Hey,’ he called to her back. ‘Just so you know,
I’m the boss.’

‘Yeah, you keep telling yourself that,’ she shouted
back.

Evie rolled over in the bed, letting her hand trail over Lucas’s
chest. She traced the edges of the knife scar cutting across his stomach,
before placing her palm over his heart. She couldn’t tear her eyes off his
face, or stop her hands from tracing every inch of him.

He was the same with her, his gaze hungry, his
hands more so, yet so full of tenderness at the same time that she ached to lie
with him all night and through into the next day and the next. She didn’t ever
want to sleep again just in case he disappeared. She couldn’t quite believe he
was still there, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

‘I love you,’ she murmured, her lips pressed to his
scar.

‘I love you too.’

His hands traced the livid purple bruise on her rib
cage where Victor had kicked her. A small frown line creased between his eyes.

She cleared her throat. She’d been waiting for the
right time. The memory of Cyrus – of both the kiss she’d shared with him
and the expression on his face when he’d seen her with Lucas a few hours ago
– had been nudging at her. The guilt she was feeling for him –
about him – was sliding like a knife under the surface of her happiness,
threatening to puncture it. Cyrus she would need to confront eventually face to
face, but Lucas she had to deal with right now. She had to come clean.

She took a deep breath. ‘Lucas,’ she said, ‘I need
to tell you something.’

He paused, his hand on her stomach. ‘No. It’s OK,’
he said softly, shaking his head. ‘You don’t need to tell me. I know.’ And
then, after a beat, ‘I understand.’

She tensed. He knew? He’d seen? Of course he had,
that’s why he’d been so cold with her at first, so distant.

‘I missed you so much,’ she began, her voice
faltering as the excuses started tumbling desperately from her lips. ‘I thought
that I would never be the same again. I lost a part of myself the day you died.
Or the day I thought you’d died.’

‘You have me back,’ he said, taking her face in his
hands, holding her there until she raised her eyes to meet his. ‘I’m yours now
for ever,’ he said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Unless my mum kills you,’ Evie said, swiping at a
tear. ‘She thinks you abandoned me in New Mexico. And now she thinks I’m a drug
addict. A pregnant one. And that you’re to blame.’

‘Well, maybe one day I’ll be to blame for the last
part.’

Evie felt her cheeks blazing red.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lucas said, smoothing a strand of
hair out of her eyes. ‘Enough people have tried to kill me. And I’m still here.
I’ll take my chances with your mum. I’m not leaving your side ever again.’

She kissed him and then, laughing, fell back
against the pillow.

He leant up on one elbow to look at her. ‘What?
What is it?’ he asked.

‘Just that you were right.’

‘About what?’

‘You said once that life takes us down a path, that
it leads us places that sometimes we don’t want to go.’

He smiled, his fingers stroking along her
cheekbone. ‘But it always, always brings us to exactly the point where we’re
supposed to be,’ he murmured, leaning down and kissing her.

Thank you:

As always to John, my love, words can’t express my gratitude for your
continual reassurance along this trajectory we’re on.

To Alula, who’s still too young to read any of my books but whose
imagination. creativity and songs inspire me daily. I love you a billion and a
hundred. And you can’t plus one.

My friends Vic and Nichola who are my daily inspiration.

Laurie, because I want to be your screensaver again.

All the lovely bloggers and reviewers who take the time to read and
review my books. I am honoured and grateful.

Jill Alger for the edit.

Leila, for the laughter and the many wonderful expressions I’ve
borrowed, including the sucking balls one.

Hannah, for your helpful editing advice early on.

Jamieson, Vero and Lobo the dog, for allowing me to use your names (I
did ask, right?). I hope you like your namesakes and that they do you proud.

Asa and Kiana, for the playdate provision which proved a lifeline.
Thank you so much.

Liesel, for the final proofing (and for loving Lucas!)