‘So you want to ask some questions? Go ahead,' Cyrus said, pulling out the bottle of lighter fluid.
Evie stepped carefully around the two on the ground and headed towards the one dangling from the wall.
‘You might want to hurry it up,' Cyrus said calmly. ‘We have incoming pedestrians at twelve o'clock.'
Evie glanced up. Bearing down on them, about two hundred metres away, were two humans. Crap. She turned back to the Thirster pinned to the wall.
‘Um, what do you know about the White Light?' she asked.
The Thirster's eyes grew round and her mouth opened into a gaping hole, exposing black gums and dripping yellow fangs. She shut her mouth and tried again but no sound came out except for a gurgling hiss. Some bloody spittle landed on Evie's shoes and she stepped backwards.
‘I think you might want to try asking one that doesn't have an arrow through its neck,' Vero suggested. She was holding the crossbow vertical, pointing it downwards at the Thirster writhing on the ground by her feet.
Evie crouched down a safe distance away from the girl on the ground and tried again, struggling to be heard over the hissing. ‘What do you know about the White Light?' she asked.
A thin smile split the Thirster's lips, a trail of blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth and she paused to lick it. ‘The White Light is going to die,' the Thirster hissed, wincing as Vero's booted foot kicked the arrow shaft poking out of her chest. ‘There's an army coming – an army coming here to find it and destroy it. To destroy all the Hunters.'
Evie fell back on her haunches, the breath caught in her lungs, her head spinning. An army? As in battalions of unhumans, with weapons and some unhuman general in charge of them, coming here? To find her?
Cyrus was suddenly next to her, kneeling, his hands pressing the Thirster to the ground. ‘How many in this army?' he demanded.
‘Five thousand. More. You won't be able to stop them.' The Thirster laughed, her head lolling back on the sidewalk.
‘When are they coming?' Cyrus asked, his knee ramming her chest and knocking the arrow shaft, forcing her eyes to fly open and a scream to explode from her mouth.
‘Two days, maybe sooner,' she grimaced, her teeth breaking through the stretched skin of her lips, making a fresh stream of blood flow down her chin. ‘This realm no longer belongs to you. Once the Hunters are all finished there'll be no one left to stop us.'
‘Well,' Cyrus said, dropping his face until it was just a centimetre above hers. ‘Newsflash. We're not Hunters. We're something else entirely. And this army you think is going to take us is not even going to make it through because the Gateway is going to be closed for business.'
He flicked something over in his hand and Evie saw liquid cascading over the Thirster's face into her open mouth and dousing her clothes. The Thirster struggled, choking and coughing. Cyrus jumped to his feet, shaking the remains of the lighter fluid over the other two Thirsters. Cyrus stepped backwards, flicking open his Zippo lighter. ‘Thanks for the chat. Peace out,' he said, smiling grimly. Then he dropped the lighter.
Evie scrambled backwards as the blue flames licked towards her. The Thirsters ignited into balls of squealing flames, their screams cut off almost instantly, the flames dying down as the bodies burnt to nothing. Thick black smoke started billowing around them.
Evie felt a hand on her arm and then, without warning, she found herself being dragged along, the stench of burning flesh and acrid smoke scoring her throat.
They were suddenly back at the car and the others were flinging their weapons into the trunk, but Evie stood on the sidewalk staring back at the smoking piles of ash. The humans they'd seen walking towards them had stopped to gape, their feet kicking at the remains. One had drawn out a cell phone.
‘Come on, get in,' Cyrus yelled. Evie turned. The car was revving and Cyrus had flung open the passenger door.
She glanced back at the humans standing over the smouldering remains and then climbed in beside Cyrus. An army was coming in just two days, she thought numbly – an army of unhumans. They were coming for her. And they'd go through whoever stood in their way. Issa had never mentioned an army. Why hadn't she said something? She must have seen it coming. Evie stared out of the windshield unseeing, not registering the flashing blue and red lights that flew past them, thinking only of Lucas. Maybe Issa had told him. Maybe that's what she'd come to tell him the other day. It made sense. As did Lucas lying to her about it. He wouldn't have wanted to worry her.
Epic fail on that score.
Cyrus pulled into the warehouse's parking garage and killed the engine. No one had said a word since they'd set fire to the Thirsters. Cyrus hadn't cracked a single joke. Even now his face was set in a seriously dark expression that she'd never seen him wear before. It kind of made her miss his normal mocking one. Evie's stomach constricted, her ribs too, squeezing her heart in a tight embrace. Where was Lucas? She scanned the empty space of the warehouse, hoping that her instincts might be wrong and that he was there waiting for her to return.
She sucked in a breath. Someone was here. She could sense it. But it wasn't Lucas. Then she saw her, sitting on the ground by the elevator. The others turned their heads as the person got up and started walking quickly towards the car, dusting herself off as she went.
‘What's your mum doing here?' Ash asked.
Margaret stopped in front of the car, hands on her hips. Evie opened her door and followed the others out.
‘Where have you been?' Margaret demanded. ‘I've been waiting for you.'
Chapter 27
Lucas had stopped beside Cyrus's car outside the coffee shop, debating. To take it, or not to take it? It was tempting. Just imagining Cyrus's face if he found his car gone made him smile, but then he'd thought about Evie having to take public transport and had decided instead to jack the BMW two cars down. He didn't want to have to take public transport either.
It wasn't until he hit the freeway that Lucas realised he had been driving on automatic pilot and that he was heading towards the Mission. He almost pulled off at the next exit and doubled back, but then he figured it wasn't such a bad idea to head to the Mission. Grace might be more likely to come to a place she was familiar with. And if he was being honest, he had a desire to see the place one last time.
It was a four- to five-hour drive. He made it in three. He calculated how long he should wait and decided that if Grace wasn't there by midnight he'd leave. Whatever happened he'd be back with Evie before dawn broke.
The Mission was an old church and friary, built over two hundred years ago. It looked abandoned from the outside. It looked abandoned on the inside too, the hallways echoing mournfully, slanted squares of moonlight dousing the floors. Lucas paced the rooms, staying invisible, moving silently, wandering aimlessly. He didn't expect to find anything or anybody. His senses were alert but the only sounds were coming from a couple of bats nesting in the roof and a few spiders spinning webs on the ceiling of the old chapel.
The weapons room had been emptied and the training room was bare. Except for a few holes in the wall and the crater in the floor where Shula had shoved Joshua's head through the boards one time, it was unrecognisable. He remembered the hours they'd spent in that room with Tristan forcing them to run scenarios over and over, testing them, getting them to trust each other. Maybe that's where it had all gone wrong. Trying to forge trust between species – the fundamental flaw in a Brotherhood that included Thirsters, Mixen and Scorpio.
Lucas wandered back down the stairs and into Tristan's study. It had been ransacked. Books were lying splayed on the floor with their pages torn out. His desk had been wiped clear – everything tipped up and papers scattered. Tristan's chair lay on its side as if in the first throes of rigor mortis. Lucas half expected to see crime scene tape and a chalk outline around it. He wondered who the Elders had sent for Tristan, and whether Tristan had tried to resist. He was a Shadow Warrior, so he could have faded and tried to evade them that way, but no doubt the Elders had sent a Shadow Warrior to fetch him. Lucas drew in a deep breath, pressing his hands to the doorway to steady himself. Tristan was probably dead already.
They were all dead. Joshua, Shula, Caleb. Even Neena. He whispered their names out loud. It was hard to believe they were gone when their presence in the building was so strong. Eerie sounds were pushing their way indistinct and muted through the walls – Shula's dirty cackle sounding far away, then rising to the rafters and scaring the bats into flight; a sudden swish to Lucas's right that made him twist around expecting to see Caleb stalking past; from beneath him the clang of the cellar doors bursting open, and then, just as he startled backwards into the hallway wondering whether any of it was real or if he was hearing things, he felt a flutter of wings brush his ear.
Neena.
He called her name and tried to grasp at the shadow that flew past, his heart hammering wildly in his chest. He watched the shape settle in the rafters. It was just a bat. Lucas stared at it, holding his breath, praying for it to shimmer.
‘I'm sorry,' he whispered when it flew away. He sank down onto the bottom step in the great hallway. Coming back here had been a mistake. He closed his eyes. The past had gone. There was only the now. And there was no time for ghosts.