Chapter 10
It took Evie two minutes to pack her stuff. Once she’d gathered her things she threw her bag over her shoulder and scanned the room. She knew she should go and tell her mother she was leaving but, unable to face the disappointment in her mum’s face or yet another argument, she grabbed her notebook instead and scribbled a few lines:
Dear mum, I have to go and help a friend who’s in trouble. I’ll be away for a few days. I’m sorry. Evie x
She left the note on her bed and ran down the stairs. Her mum had switched the radio on in the kitchen and didn’t even hear her as she slipped out of the front door.
Ash and Vero were waiting in Cyrus’s car at the end of the driveway. As she slid into the back, Ash glanced over his shoulder. ‘All good?’ he asked.
Evie nodded and he pulled out onto the road.
They travelled in silence, taking back streets out of town until they made it to the freeway, at which point Evie turned her attention back to Ash and Vero. ‘So, how many are there?’ she asked, her body tensed for the answer.
She couldn’t stop thinking that the Originals were supposed to have been massacred a thousand years ago, and yet here they now were, alive and happy and multiplying in LA.
‘About a dozen we think,’ said Ash, glancing at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘Judging from what we’ve seen and the number of new Thirsters on the street.’
‘If only they were new Thirsters,’ Vero said under her breath.
‘What do you mean?’ Evie asked, leaning forward.
Vero shifted in her seat so that she was looking through the gap in the headrest at Evie. ‘You know how most Thirsters, especially new-born ones, are young, dumb and full of …’ She stopped abruptly, pulling a face. ‘Well, these ones are young and they’re blood-crazed and they’re ten times stronger than a normal newbie.’
‘And they’re way more intelligent than your average unhuman too,’ Ash added, grimacing as he drove. ‘The only thing they can’t do is daywalk like Originals.’
Well, at least that was something, Evie thought wryly.
‘What about the revelation law?’ she asked.
‘Revelation law?’ Ash laughed. ‘What revelation law? It doesn’t exist anymore.’
Evie slunk back in her seat and stared out of the window. The revelation law was the rule passed by the Elders forbidding unhumans to reveal themselves to humans in this realm. If there was no revelation law controlling them, then it wouldn’t be long before every unhuman in town – and there were still thousands – would start walking the streets, whether they were green or had a tail or could shift into wild animals. She didn’t want to imagine what kind of a bloodbath there would be.
She had thought that once the way through was closed it would all be over and the world would just go back to normal – that she could go back to being normal too. How much more naïve could she have been?
‘Why are the Originals making more Thirsters? I mean, what’s the point? Surely it just means more competition when it comes to meal times?’ Evie asked.
‘We think they’re creating an army to do their dirty work for them.’
The breath caught in Evie’s chest. ‘What dirty work?’
‘Bringing them food, hunting for us …’
‘What?’ Evie choked.
Ash glanced at her in the mirror. ‘They’re hunting us. Think about it. They’re here, in our realm. What are they going to do? Hide? Try to blend in?’ He shook his head, his eyes now back on the road. ‘No. They don’t care about blending in. They don’t need to blend in. Only animals that can get eaten need to learn how to camouflage themselves. These guys are at the top of the food chain. They don’t need to hide. They have nothing to fear from humans.’
He paused, as though to let Evie fully comprehend what he was saying. ‘We’re their only threat,’ he continued, ‘and when you colonise another realm you do that by first ridding yourself of any threats to your own dominance in that realm’s eco-system. That would be us. It’s Darwinism. The strongest species wins.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Evie asked, leaning forward between the two front seats. ‘They’re going to kill all the Hunters in this realm? That’s their big plan? So they can what? Hang out here at the all-you-can-eat-buffet for the rest of eternity?’
‘Yes,’ Ash nodded.
Fear wrapped itself around her insides, but Evie forced herself to ignore it. ‘So,’ she said, trying to sound a lot more confident than she felt, ‘I guess we had better find them first. Any ideas where they’re hanging out?’
‘No.’
‘But they feed right? Any patterns to the feeding?’
‘Up in the hills, along Mulholland and in Beverly Hills. That’s where most of the killings have taken place.’
‘Expensive tastes,’ Evie remarked. ‘You think they’re all hanging out together in some mansion feeding off the rich and famous?’
‘Do the rich taste better, do you think?’ Vero asked.
‘Must be all that organic food,’ Ash said, giving her a sly smile.
‘More like all that blow,’ Vero fired back. ‘Probably gives them a hit, like passive smoking.’
‘We need shadow blades,’ Evie said almost under her breath. The saw blade she’d thrown at the Original in the Bradbury building had bounced clean off him, as ineffectual as a rubber band. But the shadow blade had sliced through his throat as easy as a knife through butter frosting. ‘Do you have any?’ she asked half-jokingly.
‘Yeah, we went to Walmart and bought their entire stock of other-realm weapons,’ sneered Vero, twisting around to give Evie an exasperated look.
‘Hang on,’ Evie said, grabbing hold of a memory that had surfaced somewhere in the back of her hazed-out mind. ‘Margaret – didn’t she have one?’
‘What?’ both Vero and Ash exclaimed.
Evie nodded. ‘In her cabinet. I’m sure of it. When we went to her office that time, Cyrus was playing with it and she told him to put it back. I didn’t think about it when we were there but, yeah, I’m pretty sure it was a shadow blade.’
Vero glanced at Ash across the front seat. He turned to her and shrugged. ‘We may as well take a look,’ he said, and when she frowned he reached a hand over and patted her on the knee. ‘I promise if we can’t find a shadow blade you can try the grenade launcher.’