Chapter 25
He had had to force himself to let her go. For a split second he’d wanted to pull her straight into his arms and … kiss her? Maybe. Well, hell, yeah, he wanted to kiss her. That was pretty much all he wanted to do when he was around her. Well, not all. But just then he hadn’t wanted so much to kiss her as to just hold her and take some of that damn hurt away. It was those eyes of hers, ocean deep, dangerous rip tides running just beneath the surface, which he knew he could get swept away in if he wasn’t careful.
She’s in love with another guy, he told himself for the hundredth time. A dead guy, the voice in his head piped up. She’s in love with the memory of a dead guy.
‘She’s gone?’ Ash asked as soon as he walked back into the house.
‘Yeah,’ Cyrus nodded, feeling like he’d failed in some way to prevent it. As if stopping Evie from doing what she wanted ever seemed to be an option.
‘Where did she say she was going?’
‘She didn’t. She said she was going to stay with some friends. Didn’t say who.’
‘Look, let’s just wait and see what Victor says, make a plan and then call her,’ Vero said.
‘Speak of the devil,’ Ash murmured, glancing over Cyrus’s shoulder.
Cyrus had already felt someone approaching. His gut was pulling in a strange way, a shudder running up his spine as though a great white shark was circling him from behind. He spun around.
Victor was standing in the doorway. Cyrus took him in. He was enormous – broad shouldered, all muscle, not an ounce of fat on him even though he had to be in his late thirties, maybe even early forties. He had sharp, intelligent eyes and the corner of his mouth was curled up in a snide smile. There was definitely something familiar about him, something that pierced the layers of fog, and not in a pleasant way. The memory was sharp and needling – acid tipped.
It was pretty damn satisfying to see the guy’s face as he registered who was standing in his hallway. The smile crumpled instantly.
‘Surprise!’ Cyrus grinned, working it some more, enjoying the look of astonishment on Victor’s face. He was frozen midstride, half in the house, half out, and he was carrying a long sword, the tip of which scraped the ground. A red silk cravat was wound around his neck and on first glance it looked like his carotid artery had been severed and was spurting a geyser of blood down his front.
Cyrus’s gaze flew quickly over the rest of him, assessing him, weighing him as an opponent. He’d killed two Shadow Warriors apparently. Cyrus pondered whether Evie could take him all by herself. She was so slight in comparison. He mentally renewed his promise to be by her side when she decided the time had come to exact her vengeance.
‘Wh… what are you doing here?’ Victor finally managed to stutter.
‘It’s a good question and one we’re looking into,’ Cyrus answered as flippantly as he could muster.
Victor took a step towards him. Then, tentatively, looking like he wanted to reach out and touch him but was restraining himself: ‘How’s this possible?’ he asked, his voice tinged with wonder.
‘Maybe I’m like a cat, maybe I’ve got nine lives.’
Victor shook his head. ‘That doesn’t make sense. The prophecy …’ He broke off, still too shocked to form a complete sentence.
‘It was vague, wasn’t it? I mean it never actually said anything about dying. You just interpreted it that way,’ Vero interrupted.
Victor glanced quickly at Vero before turning back to Cyrus, still shaking his head. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
Yeah, Cyrus thought, and what does make sense? Since finding himself naked walking down a street holding a sword, not very much had made any sense at all to him, but he was learning to go with the flow.
‘They turned up like about ten minutes ago,’ the guy RJ suddenly interrupted. ‘You said to invite them in, so I did.’
Victor barely glanced at the kid.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, directing the question at Vero and Ash.
‘A bunch of unhumans found us,’ Vero answered. ‘Came to our hideout. It’ll only be a matter of time before they find you guys too.’
Cyrus noted snarly thong girl and Butthead giving each other alarmed glances. Victor seemed less bothered by the news though, as if he’d already factored it into his plans.
‘Where’s Evie?’ was all he asked.
Cyrus’s head shot up. ‘Not here,’ he answered quickly. It earned him an interested glance.
‘The girl’s a p-ssy,’ the girl sneered.
Cyrus crossed the hallway, leapt the step and backed her against the banister before she had time to finish her sentence. ‘I hear you use that word one more time,’ he said, noting the gratifying bulge of her eyeballs as he pressed close into her, ‘I’m going to …’
‘You’re going to what?’ she snapped, cocking one pierced eyebrow at him.
He bit his bottom lip, considering ideas but finding his memory disconcertingly short of them. ‘Well,’ he said after a beat, ‘let’s just say it’s not going to be pleasant.’
She pouted, ‘Mmm, sounds fun,’ she answered back, her gaze lingering on his lips. ‘Any time, baby, you and me. I can take it.’
‘Just ignore her.’ It was Ash.
Cyrus gave the girl one last warning glare and spun around. ‘Where are you finding these people?’ he demanded of Victor.
‘We need reserves,’ Victor said eying him watchfully.
‘You mean cannon fodder?’
‘What are you talking about?’
It was the boy RJ. ‘What is he talking about?’ he repeated, aiming the question at Victor.
‘You’re the forlorn hope,’ Cyrus told him, simultaneously wondering how the hell he remembered random bits of military history but was still drawing a blank on his own conquests.
‘What the hell does that mean? The forlorn hope?’ RJ asked, his voice high as a little girl’s.
‘That was the soldiers they threw ahead of the army in the old days to take all the enemy fire. Can you guess why it was called forlorn? Yeah,’ Cyrus continued, before RJ could even hazard a guess, ‘that’s right, because none of them ever survived.’
‘Is he joking?’ The boy stared pleadingly up at Victor for reassurance.
‘No, I’m not joking,’ Cyrus said, wanting to scare the kid. Evie was right. There was no way these two were going to be of any help when it came to fighting. They were only going to get in the way and get themselves killed, or worse, get one of the others killed.
‘Yes, he’s joking,’ Victor told the kid. ‘He’s trying to scare you.’
‘You should be scared,’ Cyrus spat through a clenched jaw.
‘It isn’t right, taking kids off the street,’ Vero murmured, ‘getting them involved in this.’
‘I’m not a kid,’ RJ protested.
‘We’re outnumbered,’ Victor hissed. ‘I’ll take what I can find. I took you and your sister off the street and you didn’t have a problem with that.’
Vero scowled at him, eyes flashing venom.
‘What are you saying? That I can’t fight as good as you?’ the mouthy girl suddenly asked, throwing herself towards Cyrus as if angling to start something.
‘Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying,’ Cyrus laughed.
RJ collapsed onto the bottom step. ‘I’m not sure I want to do this anymore,’ he said, looking up nervously at Victor. ‘When you said it was going to be like a video game I didn’t think you meant anyone would actually get hurt for like real.’
Cyrus crouched down by his side. ‘These things are not two-dimensional video game monsters.’ He pointed at Vero. ‘This girl’s sister died fighting them. Ash’s best friend? Also dead.’ He rolled up his sleeve. ‘You see these?’ he asked, thrusting his forearm in the kid’s face, showing him the scars criss-crossing his arm. ‘These aren’t paper cuts, my friend. They’re from tails, they’re from acid, they’re from knives.’
‘Well, I’m in,’ the girl said from her position on the stairs. ‘I’m not scared of nobody. I’ve been shot once already, and some bitch did this to me with a knife.’ She pulled down the strap of her tank top, showing an ugly fat worm of a scar coiling around her collarbone. ‘You best believe she needed more stitches than me when I was done with her.’
Cyrus stood up slowly. He wanted to bang his head against the wall. These two kids were Victor’s big plan to rid the world of unhumans?
‘You’re a Hunter,’ Victor said to the kid on the step in an evangelical, hellfire-and-brimstone voice. ‘You were born to do this. It’s your destiny.’
‘Oh, quit it on the destiny stuff and just tell us what you’ve found out,’ Cyrus cut in. He was done with hanging around here. He just wanted whatever information the guy had so that he could then go and find Evie. He was starting to side with her on the issue. Did they really need him?
Victor glared at him for a second but then strode into the front room. Cyrus followed him, ready to lay into him with his fists if necessary to get the guy to answer. He found Victor standing in front of a giant map spread across the far wall of the room. Cyrus stepped closer and saw that the map was covered in small red pins and then he reeled backwards as he made out the detail in the photographs lining the map.
‘I found their lair,’ Victor said, pointing to a place on the map. ‘It’s here.’