and he’d finally fought off the infection. He couldn’t wait any longer. ‘I need to get back.’
Issa stared at him defiantly. ‘You’re not going to be able to fight all of them, Lucas. There are too many, even for you.’
Lucas tried to stand straight, to ignore the flames shooting through his abdomen. ‘Issa, don’t start this again. I’m always being told what I can and can’t do by Sybll and you’ve been wrong on every count. I’m still alive. Evie’s still alive.’
At the mention of Evie’s name Issa’s mouth puckered tightly. ‘I didn't come back to find you, to save you, just to watch you throw your life away again, Lucas,’ Issa snapped.
They stared at each other, her expression fierce and uncompromising, his own guilt ridden. What could he say? She had found him. In the midst of the Shadowlands. Which, given the vague nature of her visions, was something of a miracle. And she had saved him. The truth was, he wouldn’t have lasted even one more night, maybe not even another hour, if Issa hadn’t found him when she had.
He was rotten meat, his wound festering, infected, thick with pus, the skin around it puckered and shiny, when Issa had reached him. His brow was so hot to the touch she’d whipped her hand away as if he was a Mixen. He was long past sweating at that stage, past shivering too. He had been a corpse, hanging by the slenderest thread, half-flesh, half-ghost, waxing and waning.
For what felt like weeks, but Issa had told him had only been days, he’d lain, feverish, curled in a makeshift shelter of rocks, where he’d managed to drag himself. He had thought he was going to die out there in the wastelands. No water. No food. No way back. Fever-spiked dreams the only thing keeping him tethered to any realm – dreams of Evie, dreams where he could touch her and taste her, where his naked body wasn’t lying against rocks, coated in dirt and sweat but was lying against her warm, soft skin, melting into her.
He still had those dreams, but now they were stolen moments where he shut his eyes and tried to picture her. Occasionally they came at night – she would be there, flesh and blood, as real as his own hand in front of his face. And he would be reaching out to her, trying to make her understand that he was still alive, that he was coming back to her. Though her eyes – those dark ocean eyes – were always blank with sadness. She thought he was dead. And he couldn’t make her see otherwise.
Thousands of times a day, with every single breath he took, he tried to imagine where she was. What she was doing. Praying like hell that she was in Riverview and that she was safe. Praying even harder that she hadn’t got it into her head to hunt down Victor and kill him. Whatever Evie might think, whatever dark place she was in right now, he knew she would never be what he was – a cold-blooded killer.
He pressed a fist against the shuttered window and peered through a small gap. Outside it was early evening. The time when they started to come – those that hadn’t crossed through yet into the human realm. At night they scavenged in this realm, looking for fresh meat, though the last of the Shifters had long ago been killed or had crossed through the gateway seeking safety in the human realm.
‘How long will it take them, do you think’ he asked Issa quietly, ‘to overrun the human realm, just as they’ve done with this place? A week? A month? A year?’ He turned away from the window. Issa was glaring at him. ‘I’m not going to sit here or in the Sybll lands, and let it happen. That’s my sister on the other side, and Evie. That’s my family we’re talking about. I won’t just give up on them. I’m going back tonight. The way through is open. We don’t know why. But I do know that my life is on the other side.’
‘We do know why the way through is open,’ Issa said softly, holding his gaze. ‘It’s open because the White Light didn’t shut it. Cyrus did.’
Lucas turned his back on Issa so that she wouldn’t see the stricken look on his face. What she’d said had struck a note of fear in him. It was the real reason he was