Chapter 33
Lucas was sweating by the time they made it across the city. On foot it had taken them nearly three hours, Issa stopping every fifty metres or so to look ahead, her eyes filming over while Lucas stood guard. It was daylight, the Thirsters gone to ground, sleeping in the sewage tunnels beneath the city according to Issa, but groups of Mixen and Scorpio were out roaming the streets as if they owned the place – which he guessed they did now.
It made Lucas wonder if there were any resisters. Where had all the Shifters gone? Some must have escaped out of the city – surely? They couldn’t all be dead. He struggled, trying to remember what lay beyond the city limits. Wasn’t it just water? Weren’t all the realms just versions of the human world crossed with an environmental disaster? The Shadowlands a lunar wasteland, the Shifter realm covered ninety-nine percent in water, the Thirster world sunk in as much darkness and cloud as a nuclear winter, the Mixen and Scorpio realms competing for position of fewest natural resources. Only the Sybll had a realm worth living in. The only reason the Originals had chosen the human realm to move into next was the food source. It helped when your prey couldn’t see you coming. But that realm too would succumb eventually.
‘It’s just up ahead,’ Issa said as they rounded a street corner.
Things here were familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The sidewalks were almost identical to sidewalks in LA – cracked paving slabs, weeds sprouting in the gaps – but when you stopped to look more closely, you noticed something was off with the picture, like one of those spot-the-difference quizzes that appeared in trashy magazines and kid’s colouring books. It took a while before you saw it. The sidewalks were wider and the roads were narrower. There were no cars in this realm – people shifted into faster-moving animals or birds if they wanted to get somewhere. And there were signs everywhere along the street but not the usual traffic signs or pedestrian crossing signs. These signs had pictures of animals on them and were designed to show where shifting was permitted and where it wasn’t. All across the city were warning signs forbidding shifts into any animal deemed a danger to the public, or at least that’s what Lucas figured the picture of a lion with a red line bluntly crossed through it meant.
Issa ducked into the shadow of an apartment building, pulling him with her. They stared across a wide, empty plaza at a building that looked a little like a courthouse – sandstone-coloured bricks, Grecian-style columns and well-worn stone steps leading to an ornate double door. It was the only building on the street still in one piece, without boarded-up windows or broken glass or scorched patches of sidewalk outside it.
‘That’s where the gateway opens up?’ Lucas asked, frowning at the incongruity of it.
‘Yes,’ Issa answered.
‘How many inside?’ Lucas asked, his gaze taking in the windows and roof, trying to figure out the best way in.
Issa’s eyes whited over. Lucas waited.
‘Three Mixen and a Shadow Warrior.’
‘And on the other side of the gateway?’
He waited while Issa read the situation. A frown line deepened between her eyes and then they suddenly flashed open, filled with horror. She gasped as though surfacing from freezing water, her hands clawing desperately at his arm.
‘What is it? Issa? What?’ Lucas asked, grabbing her by the shoulders, feeling her panic invading his own body.
‘It’s Flic. And Jamieson,’ Issa choked, her voice a ragged whisper. ‘They’re right on the other side. You need to go. Now!’ Her face was a mask of terror.
Lucas didn’t stop for a moment to think. He just ran, leaving Issa standing there.
He faded as he sprinted across the open square in front of the building, drawing his blade as he ran, ignoring the sharp throbbing in his side from his stab wound and the blood pounding against his skull like an anvil. All his focus was on the building up ahead.
He leapt up the steps and threw his weight against the door, smashing through it with a splintering crash. Straight away he found himself in a high-ceilinged lobby. The three Mixen on sentry duty flew to their feet in panic, spinning in wild, confused circles as they tried to see him. They jabbed at the air in front of them with their blades.
Lucas moved fast. He slid on his knees beneath the whirling arms of the first Mixen and sliced him pelvis to throat, before leaping to his feet to finish off the second with a single slash across the jugular. She went down in a spray of red. Droplets landed on Lucas’s hands and he felt the sting as the acid burrowed through the flesh. He ignored it, kept going, his eyes on the third Mixen who was standing in front of a doorway, his head flying from left to right, a whimper bursting from his throat.
Lucas materialised in front of him without warning. The Mixen let out a yelp and cowered backwards against the door. ‘Please, don’t kill me,’ he cried.
‘You’re in the way,’ Lucas hissed through gritted teeth.
The Mixen squealed as Lucas touched the tip of the blade to his chest.
‘Move,’ Lucas said.
The Mixen blinked at Lucas in surprise, then gathered himself, sprinting for the front door and darting down the steps towards the plaza.
Lucas put his hand on the door. Already his gut was twisting in anticipation, his blood pulsing with the knowledge that a Shadow Warrior stood on the other side. He had only one shot at this. And he had to be fast. He threw open the door, readying himself for an attack. But it didn’t come.
Lucas stood on the threshold, his eyes adjusting to the scorching white light, blazing bright as a prison floodlight.
Suddenly his senses reeled sharply and he spun. A shadow flew across the light and came barrelling towards him at speed. Lucas threw up his blade reflexively. It caught and clanged against another shadow blade, showering him in blue sparks. The vibration shook him to the core. He grunted and strained against his attacker, trying to push him back and break his hold, and it was only then, with his face pressed so close to his attacker’s he could smell his sweat, that Lucas realised who it was that he was fighting.
‘Tristan,’ he stammered, staggering backwards, staring in shock at the man who had once upon a time led the Brotherhood. The man who had trained him to be a killer. The man he’d once respected, whose orders he’d followed without question.
The man he had ultimately betrayed.
Tristan seemed just as surprised to see him. He took a step back, panting heavily. The two of them eyed each other, their blades still half raised, poised and uncertain.
The blood drained instantly from Tristan’s face. ‘You’re alive,’ was all he said.
‘So are you,’ Lucas answered. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘What does it look like I’m doing here,’ Tristan spat, his expression dark as thunder. ‘I’m guarding the way through.’
Before Lucas could ask anything else, Tristan took a darting step forward, slashing his blade in a savage thrust at Lucas’s face. Lucas darted back but not quite fast enough. The edge of the blade nicked his chin and a warm trickle of blood ran down his neck.
Lucas swiped at the cut with his cuff as the two of them began circling each other.
‘You betrayed the Brotherhood, Lucas,’ Tristan spat. ‘For a Hunter.’ Lucas saw the rage rippling beneath the surface of his skin, contorting his face. There would be no point in trying to explain anything to Tristan, Lucas realised. And besides that, he was never going to apologise for choosing Evie over the Brotherhood.
Tristan stepped quickly forward, hissing through his teeth. ‘You should have stayed dead.’
Lucas locked eyes with him. He needed to make a move. Either way, he needed to do something and fast before something happened to Flic. The thought of his sister seeded another wave of panic through him. His gaze flickered towards the gateway. Tristan saw and stepped in front of it.
Lucas switched his attention back to Tristan. Could he kill him? Is that what he was going to have to do in order to get past him? Could he kill the man he’d already betrayed once? The answer was simple. Yes. If the choice was between Tristan and Flic, there was no choice. His eyes skipped over Tristan’s shoulder to the gateway once again. If only he could get past the man, it wouldn’t need to come to that. The wave of panic was rising. Flic was in trouble. He could feel it now.
‘Why are you fighting on their side?’ he asked Tristan.
‘Their side?’ Tristan sneered. ‘You think there are sides in this? There are no sides, Lucas, in this battle. It’s been decided. The Originals have won.’ Spittle had appeared at the corner of his mouth; he was so angry his whole body was shaking.
‘Nothing’s been decided,’ Lucas answered.
Tristan laughed, a harsh braying sound. ‘You think that Hunter you so willingly betrayed us for and what’s left of the rest of them stand any chance against what’s on the other side of this gateway?’
Lucas didn’t answer.
‘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.