Severed by Sarah Alderson

should have learnt that by now.
    ‘We know the prophecy is going to happen,’ she said squaring up to him. ‘So we know that I must survive whatever happens tonight. Theoretically, therefore, I should be the one going and you should be the one staying.’
    He raised one eyebrow.
    ‘But I know that’s not going to happen,’ she conceded. ‘So I’m coming. Besides,’ she said, her tone becoming more wheedling, ‘you said you’d never leave me alone again. You promised.’ She took a step closer towards him, sidling up to him, until she was so close her stomach was brushing the hilt of his knife. He let out a long sigh and pulled her close, feeling her smiling victory against his shoulder.

Chapter 8
    ‘Where are we going?’ Evie whispered to Lucas as they hurried down the block.
    Jamieson looked over his shoulder and answered her, ‘The Tipping Point. It’s an unhuman club.’
    ‘Where is it?’ she asked. She was still having to do a double take every few seconds, sneaking peaks out of the corner of her eye at him.
    ‘It’s downtown. It moves every night to a new location so that the humans can’t find out about it and claim it for their own enjoyment.’
    ‘You shouldn’t be bringing her,’ Flic muttered as she strode past them. She was wearing a see-through leopard print top and dark jeans. In heeled boots she was almost Lucas’s height. Under the glow of the orange streetlights, with her geometric cheekbones, she looked like some mutant wildcat escaped from a lab and prowling the streets for dinner. Tonight her eyes were violet coloured. Last night they’d been brown, but Evie was fairly sure that both colours had been achieved by contact lenses. She had a sneaking suspicion that Flic’s actual eyes were yellow. Maybe it was some Shadow Warrior gene that had skipped Lucas by. Thankfully.
    Evie pressed herself closer against Lucas’s side, her hip rubbing comfortingly against the hilt of his blade. She was distracted. In her mind she was still playing over the phone call she’d just had with her mother. It had contained a lot of disappointed s, a dozen what about school s ? And had finished up with a cheek-flayingly cringetastic Please, dear Lord, don’t come back pregnant.
    Evie sneaked a glance at Lucas. He was walking fast, his arm tight around her, his eyes focused on the street ahead. She mentally added pregnancy to the list of things they were trying to avoid, along with being killed by demons. Her mother would be better off praying to the Lord for her to come back alive – never mind the pregnant part. And besides, it wasn’t as if she and Lucas had actually done anything beyond kissing anyway. The only time they’d even properly kissed had been in the basement of her house, just after Lucas had killed Caleb. Now that the whole world seemed to be after them, trying to kill them, kissing seemed like frivolous behaviour. Having said that, now she was thinking about it, remembering what his lips had tasted like, what his hands had felt like against her skin, and what Lucas had looked like without his shirt on, maybe it wasn’t so frivolous after all. Maybe kissing was exactly what they should be doing right now, rather than going out to start a fight with some unhumans. But from the looks of it, Lucas wasn’t contemplating frivolity. Judging by the expression on his face and the tension running in taut lines across his shoulders, it looked as if he was contemplating a fight.
    Every slight tensing of a muscle in Lucas’s body she felt too, as if transmitted to her by electric current, and every step was making her feel more and more jittery, as if she was being charged with static and at any moment lightning was going to strike through the top of her skull. Sensing her unease, Lucas slowed his pace and pulled her closer, his fingers curling around the nape of her neck. A vague memory jostled in her mind of the last time she’d felt the pressure of his fingers on her neck. That time he’d