Chapter 28
Evie was still on Cyrus’s mind in the morning as he rode his bike over to his mum’s store. She was weighing on him like a hangover, except without the fun memories from the night before that would make it all worthwhile. He had a headache and was feeling groggy but he tried to tell himself that it was due to going cold turkey on his meds and nothing whatsoever to do with the fact he’d been awake all night worrying about her.
She’d told him she was still in love with Lucas. That she would always love him. But really? Would she always? Wouldn’t she at some point need her needs met, so to speak, and in a way that a dead man couldn’t manage? He paused for a couple of minutes, his imagination getting the better of him.
Man, he needed to get a grip. He’d obviously had his pick of women if the notches in the bedpost were anything to go by, so why was he fixating on this one? If he wanted to check all his parts were still in working order – that the amnesia hadn’t spread to the furthest reaches of his body – then he could call Darcy or whatever her name was and ask her if she fancied taking him for a road test.
He thought about the waitress. She was pretty, he supposed. And he’d tasted that cupcake before. But he had no desire to taste it again. Damn it. He thought about it some more. Nope. No desire. Because he was fixated on someone else. He had to be in love with a girl with armour-plated emotions who was obsessed with a ghost and likely would be for the foreseeable future. Whoa. He slowed up on the bike, almost swerving into the kerb. Where had the L-word come from? He tried it out in his head again, testing it on the tip of his tongue, and this time almost swerved into oncoming traffic.
Crap. No. That wasn’t possible. Or was it? Maybe he had been in love with her. Why else had he chosen to die in her place? Had he been that kind of guy though? Even now, still not knowing who the hell he really was or had been, he knew he wasn’t the kind of guy who tossed the love word around. Just as he would have known straight off the bat if someone had tried to dress him in a button-down shirt and chinos, or take him to Chariots Roman Spa, that he wasn’t that kind of guy either.
He parked outside his mum’s store. Yeah, it still felt weird using that word too. Mum. She was young to be a mum. But Vero had told him she’d been a kid, younger than he was now, when she got pregnant and ran from that guy Victor and the rest of the Hunters. The thought made him kick the bike stand harder than he’d intended, tearing a chunk out of the asphalt.
He tried to peer through the glass and beyond, at the display of books in the window to see if Darcy was inside the store. He’d rather avoid her if he could. Making small talk when he could no longer remember topics to talk small about was problematic. And he didn’t want to have to make any more excuses about why he hadn’t called her. As if amnesia wasn’t enough of an excuse.
But it was early, the store was still shut, the lights dimmed. His mum had told him to come, so he guessed she must be inside in her office. When he tried the door, he saw it was only on the latch. He stepped inside, checking his surroundings, feeling the low voltage charge he felt around the other Hunters – it was dimmer around his mum, most amplified when he was around Evie.
His mum wasn’t in her office. She was sitting at a table by the counter with a tiny espresso cup by her elbow and a pile of books stacked neatly in front of her. She looked up at him and smiled wanly.
‘You need a shave,’ was the first thing she said.
Cyrus dropped into the chair opposite her with a sigh. ‘I’ve been kind of busy.’
It was only then that he noticed the slim silver blade leaning against the leg of her chair.
‘Expecting someone?’ he asked, nodding in its direction.
‘Something,’ his mother stated drily. ‘They’ll be coming.’ As she said it she took a sip of her coffee.
‘Is that what you wanted to see me about?’ he asked, eyeing the red and silver coffee maker behind her. Caffeine would be good right now, might help cut through the sludge of his mind and help him locate some clarity.
‘I need to tell you something,’ his mother said.
He switched his attention back to her, feeling his headache expand into his frontal lobe.
‘I think it’s open.’
He knew she wasn’t talking about the store. ‘You mean the way through?’ he asked, standing and heading behind the counter to the coffee machine. He flicked a switch. The levers and buttons looked familiar to him. ‘I told you, we checked it,’ he said, glancing over at his mother. ‘It was closed. I closed it.’
The coffee began to spring forth from the machine, dripping viscous into his cup. It was like driving a car. He knew what buttons to press to make coffee! It gave him hope for when he got together with Evie – he checked himself – with a girl – that he’d know what buttons to press then too.
His mum waited until he’d stopped frothing the milk for his macchiato. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think you did close it.’
He set the tiny cup down on the tiny saucer and looked up at her.
‘We went back to that Bradbury place and checked. It was shut.’
She shook her head. Her face looked grey. ‘I know. It did shut. It just opened up someplace else though. Like plugging a hole in a dam, the water burst through somewhere else. Another gateway opened up as soon as the one in the Bradbury building closed.’ She saw the look Cyrus was giving her and hurried on. ‘It would explain a few things’, she said. ‘How you’re here for one. And why there seem to be even more unhumans around than there were before. It can’t all be down to the Originals making more.’
Cyrus picked up his coffee and swallowed it in one gulp, feeling the bitter burn as the liquid hit the back of his throat. He walked back to the table.
‘OK, back up,’ he said, focusing on his mum, registering the instant burst of clarity as the caffeine hit his bloodstream. ‘You made me come all the way across town to ply me with conjecture? Do you have any proof? This whole dam theory doesn’t seem like it holds water. No pun intended.’
She pushed a sheet of paper towards him across the table, giving him an iron-clad stare. It was a print-out of an internet news piece.
NAKED MAN FOUND WANDERING IN BEVERLY HILLS
A man in his early twenties was found naked, wandering the streets in the early hours of the morning. The man, who was carrying no ID, was in possession of a two-foot long sword.
Nice euphemism, Cyrus mused, feeling a momentary stab of disappointment that there was no photo to accompany the piece.
‘I was naked. Where were they expecting me to carry ID?’ he asked, tossing the article back to his mum.
‘Check the date,’ his mother answered, her face serious.
‘What about it?’ he asked, glancing down again.
She stabbed the top of the page with her index finger. ‘That’s the morning after the fight, after you walked through the gateway and we thought you’d died. Just a few hours later.’
He studied the headline once more, trying to manage the thoughts flying around his newly fired-up brain. The fact he’d been found wandering brandishing a sword, or two swords to be precise, was irrelevant, wasn’t it? But she had him on the number of unhumans still on the streets.
He sighed, ‘OK, just say I’m going with you on this, for conjecture’s sake, why wouldn’t it close properly? Tell me that. The prophecy said the way through would be closed didn’t it? So why would it not be?’
Margaret’s voice was calm when she spoke. ‘That’s easy. The way through wasn’t closed, the realms weren’t severed – because you’re not the White Light. You never were.’
He frowned at her. Hard. ‘So what are you saying? That it was Evie all along? That I sacrificed myself for nothing?’ He couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice.
‘No,’ his mum answered quickly. ‘It’s not her either.’
An immediate rush of relief punctured Cyrus’s anger. He was glad. It wasn’t Evie. That’s all he could think. It wasn’t him either – which was annoying, given he’d gone through all that self-sacrifice and then spent eight weeks in a mental hospital wearing basically what amounted to a dress and paper slippers. But it wasn’t Evie either – that was good.
He took a deep breath. ‘So who is it, then?’ he demanded, standing suddenly. ‘Are we supposed to wait around for this White Light person to show up, and just hope they know that that’s who they are and hope they also come fully armed with an instruction manual on how to shut this thing?’ He took a few steps backwards. ‘We don’t have the time for that. There are unhumans walking around trying to kill us all off. How long’s it going to take for this White Light to show up? Because the clock’s ticking.’
‘A while.’
‘How do you know?’
His mother weighed him up for a second, and then she flipped open the book nearest to her. It fell open as if the page was well read. She turned it around so it was facing him.
The whole page was covered in what looked like ancient hieroglyphs.
‘What is this?’ Cyrus asked, peering closer. ‘It looks like a game of Pictionary.’
‘It’s not. It’s the prophecy. The original in its complete form. I only just found it. After you were … gone, I thought that maybe there would be a way to open the gateway again. I had this idea that maybe you were still alive, you see. That you were stuck on the other side. So I started researching. I re-read all the books I had collected over the years.’ She swallowed, her eyes darting nervously to the page.
Cyrus glanced down again at the squares and triangles and splots covering the paper.
‘Is there a CliffsNotes version? Or a translation?’
His mum thrust something across the table towards him. It was a piece of paper with writing scrawled on it. ‘The funny thing is that the Hunters had the prophecy in its entirety the whole time,’ she said. ‘It’s just the order of the verses that we had wrong.’
Cyrus frowned at her, not understanding. Then looked down and read.
Confronting an army drawn from the realms,
The sun, the giver of life and the light
Together will stand and together fight
One sacrificing all to close the way
Passing through the light and into the dark
Memories will fade, shadows fall on this day
Of two who remain a child will be born,
A purebred warrior, the fated White Light
Standing alone in the eventual fight
Severing the realms and closing the way
Passing through the light and into the dark
Memories will rise, shadows fade on this day
‘That’s you three,’ his mother said, pointing to the first verse, ‘You, Evie and Lucas. The sun, the giver of life and the light. This verse here,’ she pointed to the first verse, ‘we thought it came after the White Light was born. But it doesn’t. It comes before. Evie isn’t the White Light. The White Light is a child that will be born to the two that remain.’
Cyrus read it again. Then he read it once more just to be sure he was getting it. He looked up finally, meeting his mother’s eye. She was studying him, waiting for him to figure it out.
‘Her child. Evie’s child is going to be the White Light. Is that what you’re saying? Is that what it means?’
Margaret nodded.
Cyrus took a deep breath in and stared down at the piece of paper in his hand, the ground tilting beneath his feet.
‘Of two who remain?’ he asked, hearing the weird strain in his voice. ‘You’re saying …?’
‘Yes,’ his mother answered.
‘Evie’s the only girl. And Lucas is dead.’
‘Which leaves only you.’
Cyrus shook his head and pressed his hands to his temples, reading it once more.
Of two who remain a child will be born.
He sank down into his seat. ‘This is … I’m kind of ...’ He broke off, trying his hardest not to hyperventilate. ‘I need another coffee. Actually,’ he shook his head, ‘scratch that. I need something stronger.’