‘The human realm is as finished as this one. It’s over, Lucas.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘I’m not going to let you walk through there.’
‘Why not?’ Lucas shrugged, circling Tristan, inching himself closer to the light. ‘According to you it’s instant death anyway. There’s no hope. So why not let me go?’ He took another step, dropping his voice to an intimate whisper. ‘Or is it that you want to make me pay for what happened to the others? For what happened to you?’
Tristan’s yellow eyes darkened.
Lucas took another step towards Tristan. ‘Or do you want to let me go through there and try to put a stop to this?’
‘You can’t put a stop to it,’ said Tristan, sidestepping and blocking Lucas’s path one more time.
‘I’m going to try,’ Lucas said softly, squaring his shoulders.
And if it meant killing Tristan, then so be it.
He lifted his blade and swung.
Chapter 34
Evie watched Cyrus, Flic and Jamieson climb the wall into the adjacent garden. For several endless seconds fear completely paralysed her. She couldn’t seem to move or breathe or even hold a thought in her head. She just kept staring at the wall.
Behind her she could hear Selena and RJ bickering. She tried to block them out so that she could focus and think. All her senses were screaming. Her nerves felt raw and exposed as though the skin had been stripped clean off her body. She glanced up the street. Everything was so quiet but there was an undercurrent, a low-level humming that felt like someone strumming chords on her bloodied nerves.
Cyrus had told her to stay put, but she couldn’t just stand here and wait, not knowing what was going on. Should she ditch these two and follow him? What if he needed her help?
‘Goddamn it, shut up. I’m trying to think,’ she hissed.
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.