‘I've never seen it. I've never been through it. Tristan explained it to me once as a break in the fabric of the universe.'
Her eyebrows rose another inch.
He laughed gently. ‘Imagine it like a rip in a blanket.'
‘And what's on the other side of that rip?'
‘The Shifter realm. And from there, there are other Gateways through to the other realms.'
‘How were they made – these rips?'
Lucas drew his shoulders up and then let them drop, shaking his head, ‘No one knows. They've just always been there.'
‘What are the Shadowlands like?' Evie asked next.
Lucas frowned, his gaze dropping to the floor. ‘They're wastelands – barren, wild. It's a place where the sun never seems to rise or set. Permanent dusk. It's nothing like here. There are no cities or houses to speak of. It feels like waking up on the dark side of the moon – everything's in shadow, freezing cold.' He shuddered, then looked up at her, ‘It's the most lonely I've ever felt.'
Evie took a long, slow breath. ‘You've been there?' She shook her head. ‘When?'
‘The accident that killed my mother.'
Evie stared at Lucas's hands gripping the edge of the bed. She reached out and placed her own hand over his.
‘I was thrown clear when the car flipped. I don't remember it clearly – I was in the car one second and then I was gone. I think I must have passed out because the world wasn't spinning and I wasn't in the car anymore, I was somewhere else. And I knew, it was funny, I knew straight away that it was the Shadowlands, as if a part of me deep inside recognised it as home.'
He was staring straight ahead at the door, his eyes glazed. Evie's hand tightened around his. ‘You must have been terrified.'
A small frown line appeared between his eyes. ‘Yes, I was scared. It was just a desert as far as the eye could see, and so cold and so grey, and I was completely alone. But I wasn't afraid of that. The only thing I was scared of was not being able to find a way back. I was only there a minute – maybe less – but it was the most scared I've ever been.' He broke off again, his jaw tensing. ‘And then I was back. Just like that, without any warning. I was lying on the ground – in some wet leaves, the taste of earth in my mouth.' He closed his eyes. ‘The car tyres were still spinning, which is how I knew I hadn't been gone long. I crawled. I couldn't walk, I couldn't get up, so I crawled. And my mum was … ' He broke off and swallowed and Evie realised she'd been holding her breath. ‘I sat there and I held her hand and I watched her die.'
Evie squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again Lucas was staring at the door opposite. She reached a hand up and brushed her fingers softly along his jaw. ‘You came back,' she whispered. ‘You didn't stay there. You're meant to be here, in this world. This is where you belong.'
He looked puzzled for a moment. Then he lifted his hand and pushed a loose strand of hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. With a sigh he pressed his forehead against hers. ‘We have to find a way of closing the way through,' he said. ‘Mending the tear so to speak. I can't imagine what else it means when it says severing the realms.'
They fell into silence.
‘It's not going to be as simple as stitching it shut is it?' Evie eventually asked, trying to break the tension.
He didn't answer her. He didn't need to.
‘Do you think Issa will find anything useful out?'
He shrugged, ‘I hope so.'
‘Was she your girlfriend?' The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it.
Lucas tensed beside her. ‘If you want to call it that,' he said. ‘We were briefly involved. It was never serious. It never is with a Sybll. When they can foresee your every move, your every word before you've even thought it, it kind of kills the romance. But for a time, yes, we were together.'
‘So you broke up with her?' she asked, swallowing.
‘Not exactly. She saw it coming. That's why she left me first.'
‘She saw what coming?'
Lucas paused for a long time before speaking. ‘You,' he finally said. ‘I think she saw you coming.'
Chapter 6
For a long time he watched her sleep. Watched the rise and fall of her breathing. She was quiet now. Earlier she'd been dreaming, calling out Risper's name, calling out for him too. He'd held her tighter, reassuring her with words whispered in her ear and his arms wrapped tight around her, that he was still there, until her body had relaxed and she'd fallen back into a deeper sleep.
He lay in the bed beside her, one arm wrapped around her and the other hand wrapped tight around the hilt of his blade. He couldn't sleep. His mind kept turning over the events of the last day and night, running through them again and again, trying to figure out how he could have played things differently, thinking of what Evie had told him about Neena and how she had died. He couldn't stop picturing the scene, trying to fathom why Neena had sacrificed herself so that he and Evie could escape.
The dawn had come and gone, the sun had arced across the sky and fallen low once more. Long mauve shadows were stretching themselves across the room, like fingers trying to enfold Evie in their grasp. Lucas moved, positioning himself so that they fell on him instead of her. She moaned lightly in her sleep. Her hair was falling in a dark tumble over her face. It reminded him of the picture he'd first seen of her, with a strand of hair caught like a spider's web over her eye.
He brushed it away. She looked like a normal teenage girl sleeping peacefully before waking up to a world where the only horror might be a looming exam. Well, not normal, he thought, she was far too unusual – too striking looking – for an adjective like normal to describe her, and even if she wasn't a Hunter there would still be something marking her as different, something that stood her apart from her peers. It was partly her eyes, Lucas thought. The flare of challenge within the blue. The defiant way she always stood with one hip jutting forward and her chin slightly lifted. The way she took on the world expecting it to back down and not the other way around. He smiled to himself. Then slowly eased himself out of the bed and, checking once more that she was still sleeping soundly, he crossed to the door and left the room.
Issa was back. He'd felt her return a few minutes before. She'd been gone an entire day. He hoped she'd managed to find something out in that time because they needed to move soon. The Elders were probably right this minute sat in a meeting in the Shadowlands discussing how to retaliate, lining up Shadow Warriors and sending them through the Gateway to find him and Evie and to kill anyone who stood in their way.
Lucas walked into the living room. Jamieson and Issa were sitting on the sofa. Flic was standing with her hands on her hips, tapping her foot impatiently.
‘Finally,' she said, when she saw him. ‘Did you sleep well?'
The inference in the word sleep didn't pass him by. He ignored it. ‘Yes. Evie's still sleeping.'
Flic's mouth was set in a grimace. ‘Well, you need to wake Sleeping Beauty. It's time to go.'
He ignored her again and instead turned to Issa. ‘Did you manage to find anything out?' he asked.
She looked up at him from the sofa, her long blonde hair hanging in a twisted rope over one shoulder. ‘I couldn't find anything out about the prophecy. No one knows where the other fragments are.'
Lucas studied her, trying to tell if she was lying. After all, the Sybll had no interest in the fragments being found. They were content to let fate play out while they sat and watched from the sidelines. Was Issa playing him?
‘Tell him what you did find out though,' Flic urged Issa.
He saw the wary look pass across Issa's face. She cleared her throat. ‘The Sybll are all seeing one thing,' she said softly.
A static charge leapt through Lucas's body. He knew from the way Issa was looking at him, with her lips pressed together so tightly that they were bleached as white as her skin, that whatever the Sybll were seeing wasn't something good.
‘What?' he asked Issa, his body tensing in apprehension. ‘What are you seeing?'
‘An army. We're all seeing an army, Lucas. Coming through into this realm. To find her.'
It took him a while to find his voice. ‘An army?' As he said the words, he suddenly remembered what Tristan had told him the last time he'd seen him – that the Elders had wanted to send an army to hunt down Evie.
‘Yes. They're not recruiting a new Brotherhood,' Issa said. ‘This time they're recruiting an army.'
Lucas shook his head. An army? That was impossible. The Elders had trouble recruiting one member from every realm to even make up the Brotherhood. That explained the barrel scrapings like Joshua whom he'd had to train alongside. There was no way an army was coming through. He narrowed his eyes at Issa, wondering whether she was lying in order to scare him, put up to it by Flic, who had fallen strangely silent. At the very least, Issa had to be exaggerating. An army? When had the last army been raised by the Elders? Five hundred years ago maybe? During the Shapeshifter rebellion? A thousand years ago when the Originals were culled?