break you out of here.’ He pulled off his sweater. It was V-necked, navy, cashmere-soft. ‘Here, put this on,’ he said, throwing it at her.
‘What about your jeans?’ she asked, trying not to smile. It hurt to use too many facial muscles.
‘They won’t fit,’ he answered, grinning. ‘Otherwise they’d be off already. Chivalry, remember? That’s my thing.’
He was out of the door before she could say a word.
She watched his silhouette on the other side of the glass. He seemed to be stopping to talk to the policemen. She held her breath, praying he didn’t get himself arrested. But then the shadows melted and she heard footsteps running off down the corridor. The door yanked open again and Cyrus stuck his head around it, grinning.
‘Come on,’ he said, holding his hand out towards her. ‘It’s clear.’
She pulled the sweater on over her hospital gown. It barely reached the top of her thighs.
‘What did you tell them?’ she asked as Cyrus wrapped his arm around her and started half-carrying her down the corridor.
‘Never mind,’ he whispered, pulling her closer.
Chapter 38
She was going to be OK. Lucas shut his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the ache in his side expand and, instead of dissipating, spread further, taking up residence somewhere even deeper inside him.
He opened his eyes, but he still couldn’t strike the image of Evie lying there, whiter than the sheet they’d shrouded her in, her neck torn open and bandaged up, blood seeping like red moss through the gauze. She was criss-crossed with wires and IV tubes, an oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth. She had looked dead. Only the beeping of the machine and the wheeze of the oxygen pump had convinced him that she was actually alive. And then she’d stirred, her eyes flying open as if she had sensed him in the room.
But even though she’d stared right at him, she’d looked right through him and hadn’t seen him.
For so long Evie had been right there, in the forefront of his mind, a memory he’d fought with every ounce of strength to hold on to and now – now that he’d actually come face to face with her again, had touched her – she’d slipped from his grasp and was gone.
He’d feared it when he’d seen Cyrus gathering her in his arms and running with her towards the street. He hadn’t seen the attack, had been too busy fighting the one in the shorts, then making sure all of the Originals were burning, he had only surmised what had happened from the wound in her neck.
He’d seen the fear he himself was feeling – the agonising wrench of it –written clear on Cyrus’s face. He’d followed them all here to the hospital, had stood motionless in the corridor, frozen with terror, as the doctors worked on her, trying to stem the blood flow. He’d watched and urged Evie to live, though another man was holding her hand and willing it too.
He’d heard Cyrus telling the doctor that he was Evie’s boyfriend. But even then he might not have believed it. Even at that point he’d been fighting the urge to slam Cyrus against the wall and force his way to Evie’s side. But then, in her room, when he’d slipped inside, and his fingers had traced up her cheek, stroked back her hair, she’d called his name. Cyrus’s name. And at that point he finally recognised that he was too late.
For a second time he had failed her. For the second time Cyrus had been the one to save her.
At first Lucas couldn’t believe that the Hunter was alive. How was that even possible? He hadn’t been able to process it during the fight – that the person fighting alongside Flic had been Cyrus, because in his mind Cyrus had been dead. But now, here he was, back from the dead, very much alive – and with Evie.
Of course he was. He’d always wanted her, as if she was a possession he could own, another girl to add to his collection.
Lucas felt frozen cold all of a sudden, as if he was lying back in the Shadowlands, out in the open, far from shelter. A harsh laugh burst out of his chest. What had he expected? That he’d find a way back – back to Evie – and that it would be just as it had been? And how had that been exactly? It wasn’t like what they’d had was what you would term