by Holly Martin
I ran faster, but my legs were shaky, unwilling to perform as I wanted them to and as I got closer to the police Isaac’s hand was round my arm once more, pulling me firmly back to him.
‘Help me,’ I screamed and people stopped to stare. The staring I wanted to get away from had returned. The police looked over in my direction, saw the young girl struggling in the clutches of a man twice her size and ran towards me.
‘Ma’am?’ said one, young, keen, alert, blue eyes filled with concern.
‘Help me, please,’ I cried, fighting against Isaac’s hold, which was like fighting against an iron vice.
‘Sir step back please,’ said the other policeman.
Isaac didn’t even seem to hear them, his hold didn’t lessen any.
Lucas was at my side then. ‘Eve please, we’re not going to hurt you, let’s just go and talk somewhere quiet, we’ll explain everything,’
I fought against Isaac, kicking and struggling, but I might as well be kicking a statue with the difference I was making to him.
‘Isaac, let her go,’ Lucas hissed, angrily.
‘Lucas, this is stupid. She needs to come back to the fort, she can’t be running round New York in the middle of the night, it’s dangerous.’
‘Sirs, both of you step back now,’ said the young policeman, his hand hovering over his holster.
Lucas stepped forward calmly. ‘Officers, this is a complete misunderstanding, Eve is our friend. She has banged her head and is a bit confused…’
‘She’s petrified,’ said the older policeman, his hand now hovering over his gun as well. ‘Let her go.’
Isaac span me round to face him, holding both my arms now. ‘Eve stop this,’ he said, angrily.
‘Sir let her go now,’ shouted the young officer, his gun aiming at Isaac.
People started scurrying away, alarmed.
Isaac looked at the gun, and with a sigh released me. But instead of stepping away from me, he advanced towards the policeman, maddeningly stepping between me and the gun.
‘Do not point a gun at her,’ he said threateningly.
‘I was pointing it at you actually,’ said the young cop, almost cockily.
‘And it could go off and hit her,’ seethed Isaac, suddenly lunging forward in a blur and knocking the gun out of the officer’s hands.
The other one went for his gun, but in a blur, Lucas grabbed hold of it before the officer could even raise it in Isaac’s direction.
A shot rang out behind me. I was thrown through the air with the weight of a wrecking ball hitting me but as I crashed into the floor, with Lucas landing hard on top of me, I saw the bullet slice through Lucas’s flesh.
Chapter 2
Lucas winced but his gaze didn’t waver from me. ‘Are you ok?’
I tore my eyes away from him to see a third policeman pointing his gun at us. In an impossible move, Isaac leapt over me and Lucas. He landed in front of the policeman and knocked away the gun. Lucas was suddenly on his feet too as if the gunshot wound to his arm didn’t hurt at all.
I took advantage of this distraction, scrambled up and ran, blindly, not sure where I was running to. I saw a dark alley up ahead and ran down it, wanting somewhere dark that I could hide but as I ran down in to the darkness, the tall man from the bedroom, Eli, appeared out of nowhere, like the air had just spat him out. I screamed and ran on.
‘Eve, please…’ he called, but as I looked back I slammed straight into another body. I looked up into the fierce eyes of Isaac again. It was like those horror films, where there was no escape from the bad guy, no matter where you ran, he was always there, menacing, trying to kill you. Although Isaac hadn’t tried to hurt me yet, it was surely only a matter of time. He looked furious. His hands held me tight around my arms. And I struggled against him.
‘Eve, damn it, this is ridiculous.’
I fought as hard as I could to escape his clutches, and he clamped his arm round me, dragging me out the alley.
Eli ran to my side, his whole body rigid with a furious anger. ‘Isaac, let her go now.’
‘No Eli, we need to get her help,’ argued Isaac.
‘This is not helping, you’re scaring her,’ Eli grabbed Isaac’s shirt. ‘Let her go.’
‘We can get a Zeki to look at her, sedate her maybe until we can figure out how to solve the problem,’
I didn’t like the sound of that. Panic engulfed me, and I screamed and kicked and punched wildly, to no effect.
Suddenly the air spat out the man that tried to kiss me, Seth. I screamed even more. This was madness.
‘Get your hands off my wife,’ Seth growled.
Wife?!
Isaac just held me tighter, if that was at all possible. ‘Seth, there are times when we can’t just give in to what she wants, where we have to intervene for her best interests.’
‘And sedating me is in my best interests?’ I screamed.
Seth looked furious at this, he stepped forward. ‘Let me rephrase that, get your hands off my wife or I’ll break them.’
‘Seth…’
Seth grabbed hold of Isaac’s arm, the one that was clamped tightly round me, and twisted it backwards in a move that must have broken every bone in it. In my struggling to get away, I fell hard against the floor. Seth immediately threw Isaac into the wall. The wall caved in, leaving a crater behind Isaac as if a car had crashed into it.
Suddenly I noticed there were other men standing in the opening of the alley watching us.
‘Well, well, well,’ one of the men said, taking a draw from his cigarette before flicking it onto the ground. He was tall and very thin but the men surrounded him were as big in bulk as the men that had been chasing me, the same sinister green coloured eyes too. They were all dressed in black. Eli, Lucas, Seth and Isaac suddenly moved in front of me, I was no longer of interest to them, their attention wholly on the men at the entrance to the alley.
‘This is a welcome surprise,’ the man continued. ‘We have just come from a Putarian meeting about you and imagine my elation when I see you appear out of thin air right in front of me. There aren’t many Donum that have that kind of power but the appearance of your Guardians a few seconds later was a big giveaway. If I hadn’t already recognised your face from the many pictures we have of you doing the rounds.’
What was he talking about? Donum, Putarians, Guardians. It was a foreign language. And although he seemed happy to see me, I couldn’t escape the feeling that meeting this man was not a good thing.
I looked back over my shoulder towards the alley. It seemed to be a dead end, but maybe they’d be a door into a building I could escape into or a gap between the buildings.
The man addressed the men who had been chasing me. ‘If your precious Sentinel is causing you some problems, we’d be happy to take her off your hands.’
‘Not likely,’ Eli growled.
The tall thin man was joined by more large green eyed bodyguards, dressed in black. Suddenly the air spat out another group of men and women, joining Eli and Seth to make an impenetrable wall between me and the tall man.
‘Boys,’ the tall man said.
To my horror, a great fight broke out, Eli, Lucas, Isaac and the others charging towards the men at the opening to the alley. It was horrific and brutal, arms and necks being snapped, punches, kicks delivered so powerfully that it was quickly a blood bath. But at the same time that Eli and the others had charged towards the men, Seth had charged towards me, throwing me over his shoulder and running towards the back of the alley without breaking his stride.
I fought against him but one of the black clad bodyguards suddenly leapt over the fight some fifty foot in the air before landing mere metres away from me and Seth, but Lucas was on top of him a second after he hit the ground, smashing his head into the concrete. Seth didn’t even look back as he ran on to the end of the alley. He glanced around trying to find an escape route but we were trapped.
Suddenly he leapt straight up in the air, landing with apparent ease on the balcony of
a fire escape some thirty feet off the ground.
He put me down, pinning me to the wall with his weight.
‘Eve, we have to get out of here, we need to get back to the fort.’
I stared at him in horror, the man that was claiming to be my husband yet I had no memory of him at all. Over his shoulder the fight continued, presided over by the tall thin man who was seemingly watching the events with much amusement.
‘Can you slide back, you just need to imagine stepping through to the fort like you imagined coming here,’ Seth said, panic filling his eyes. ‘I’ll come with you, I promise I won’t do anything to hurt you.’
‘I don’t know you, why would I go anywhere with you.’
‘Because I really don’t think you want to stay there with them.’
I glanced down into the alley, there were more men dressed in black than the ones that had stood with Eli. Despite the obvious strength and skill of Eli and his friends it was very clear the men in black were winning because of the sheer volume of them.
Suddenly one of the men dressed in black broke free from the crowd and launched himself in the air, landing with precision on the balcony with us. Seth snatched himself away from me, yanking a knife from his belt and stabbing it into the other man’s heart and pushing him off the balcony within seconds.
Seth turned back towards me, the blood soaked knife in his hand and I recoiled away from him. This was a bad dream, a nightmare I just couldn’t wake up from.
‘Eve damn it, we have to go,’ Seth quickly shoved the knife back into his belt.
Shouts and screams of pain rung out in the alley beneath us.
Seth ran his hands through his hair in frustration, before he grabbed me by the chin hard.
‘I’m sorry about this.’
He ran his thumb gently over my lips. His touch made a jolt of recognition ride through me. I had been touched like this before, many, many times before.
But I had no more time to think about that as his mouth came down on mine hard. I shoved against him, fought and kicked to get away from him, but he held my face tight so I couldn’t get away.
A glorious woody smell, filled my nose and my lungs, a wonderful familiar smell.
Suddenly a memory slammed into my mind, the first time we had kissed in Seth’s bedroom after I had sent him away, quickly followed by another memory, my first kiss with him as husband and wife on the beach at sunset. Another memory joined that one, the first time we had made love. As I instinctively wrapped my arms round his neck and kissed him back, everything was coming through at once, every memory, every sight, every conversation, every dream, everything that had happened to me over the last seventeen years was rushing through my brain. It made me feel sick, like being on a rollercoaster and watching the horizon whizzing past in a blur of chaos.
I closed my eyes, my head spinning with dizziness. Everything came back, my destiny to save the world, my memories of the Donum, the Zeki, the Guardians, mine and my brother’s shape shifting abilities, the Reapers and the Putarians, how the Oraculum had created me and then ultimately turned against me and Adam and his absolute hatred for me.
A tiny part of me liked the ignorance that I had experienced. Caleb’s death, the death of Clementine, Persia’s uncle Edward who had tried to kill me, the helicopter crash, being kidnapped and thrown in the boot of a car, me murdering Sophia, kicking her over the cliff. All these things came back to haunt me now.
Aware of the danger we were suddenly in, the Putarians that were fighting against my Guardians below us, I suddenly reached out for their bond and slid us all back to the roof on top of the fort.
There was silence as the Guardians realised the fight was over, but they all looked worse for wear because of it.
I had put us all in danger tonight.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, moving out of Seth’s arms to heal them. None of them looked particularly impressed as I moved from one to the next, healing their broken bones and gashes to their body. I glanced at Isaac who was still glaring at me. ‘I’m sorry, but you guys chasing after me when I had no memory of who you were was terrifying.’
He didn’t say anything.
I finished healing everyone and they all walked off, muttering between them. With my almost daily brushes with death over the last week, I wasn’t exactly winning any popularity contests with my Guardians at the moment. Fortunately, Eli, Lucas, and Alexandria seemed to have endless patience for my little escapades.
‘Sorry, another fun day in the life of Eve,’ I said, sadly.
‘It’s not your fault you banged your head, give yourself a break,’ Lucas said.
Seth took my hand and escorted me back to my bedroom where Quinn and Persia were waiting for me.
They both hugged me, Quinn fiercely so.
‘Are you ok?’
‘Yes sorry for running off,’ I mumbled into his chest as he held me tightly.
He kissed me on the forehead and pulled back to survey me with a smile.
‘It’s never dull with you around. You need to get some rest Eve, you look exhausted.’
I nodded.
‘We’ll be right outside if you need anything,’ Lucas said.
‘Is it safe for us to stay here for a few days,’ I asked. ‘With the Oraculum still intent on killing me?’
‘Many of the Guardians that went to England to look for you after the dissolution of the Oraculum have returned. They will all be back by tomorrow. It means we can stay here for a while. If the the Oraculum’s Guardians, come back we’ll be ready for them.’
‘Well that’s good news.’
I watched them leave and flopped down on the bed. Quinn was right, I was exhausted. It had only been the day before when we had fled the fort because the Oraculum had ordered me to be killed. Adam had invaded my dreams, showing me the horrors of my friends dying and I had spent the last few days going through the torture of becoming a fully-fledged shape shifter, I felt like I needed to sleep for a week.
Seth lay down next to me and I cuddled against him. He kissed my forehead.
‘I missed you,’ I said, closing my eyes at the feel of his hot mouth on my skin.
‘Evie, I haven’t left you.’
‘Yes but I still missed you, all our memories, of you kissing me, holding me, of us getting married, they were the best memories to return, I missed them.’
I looked up to see him smiling, then closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, safe in my husband’s arms.
I sat on my beach for a while, the place my dreams always took me, but it soon shifted into something else.
I was suddenly standing on another beach, watching with horror as a great tidal wave rode its way to the coast. But I wasn’t alone, there was someone standing next to me, a man. As he put his hand out to stop the wave, I raised my hand to help him but my dream shifted again and I was standing in a city, with towering skyscrapers. The earth shook and a crack appeared beneath my feet, the crack ripped straight down the road and the buildings either side of me, simply tumbled like a pack of cards as they fell into the hole. The man was still standing next to me, though I couldn’t see his face. He put out his hand to stop the crack from spreading. My dream shifted again. I was standing at the foot of a mighty volcano as it spewed hot lava into the air. The man was still with me. I reached out for my powers and felt them course through me. I could stop this then. If this was the end of the world, I could stop it. I realised that the man was still with me, as he too put his hand out to the sky.
I turned to see who was helping me and realised it was Adam.
I woke with a jolt.
I felt Seth’s hand, stroking me soothingly and I groaned.
‘What’s up baby?’
‘Oh no,’ I mumbled. Another prophecy, I was sure of it. A prophecy of the end of the world. And the only way I was going to save it was with Adam’s help. I had to join forces with my brother, with a man that hated me and wanted me dead. Before the end, we would have to work together. I groaned agai
n.
‘Eve?’ I felt Seth’s hand on my forehead. ‘Are you not well?’
‘Just a dream, Seth,’ I muttered. It had to be a dream. Adam was sick, he hated me with so much venom. How could we ever work together?
‘Eve?’
‘Argh! Seth, why is it so hard? Why can’t I just save the world and live out the rest of my days on a beach, wrapped in your arms. Why is it so complicated, so many people dying, so many people wanting me dead, the Oraculum turning against me, and now this,’ I scrambled out of bed and started pacing the room. ‘They never told me, why didn’t they tell me?’ I asked no one in particular.
The bedside lamp clicked on, and I blinked against the bright lights. Seth was on his side, watching me.
I sat down heavily on the bed and Seth sat up behind me, kissing my shoulder, patiently waiting for me to pour my heart out.
I sighed. ‘Adam.’
I felt Seth stiffen behind me, frozen mid kiss.
‘We save the world together, apparently. I need him, the man that wants me dead, I need him to save the world.’
Seth was silent for a moment.
‘You’re kidding?’
I sighed. ‘No.’
‘But… you’re the Sentinel, they never mentioned that they would be two of you.’
They had never mentioned it. In the prophecies of the Oraculum, it had only been me. I was the one that must be protected at all costs, I was the one they held in such reverence, whilst Adam had been the unfortunate accident that had happened when they tried to create me. Maybe they hadn’t foreseen him, maybe things changed or maybe it really had just been a dream. I lay down again, tentatively. Seth lay down next to me.
We lay in silence for a while, on our backs, staring at the ceiling. I shook my head as I rolled over into Seth’s arms. ‘Just a dream.’ I waved my hand vaguely in the direction of the lamp and it went out. I closed my eyes, and went back to sleep.
Chapter 3
Seth shook me gently awake the next morning and as I blearily opened my eyes, I realised that we weren’t alone, that my personal guard, Quinn and Persia was waiting for me.