by Bella Klaus
It took every ounce of self-control not to grab his arm, but I pushed away my animosity and thought of Aunt Arianna, who was probably frightened out of her mind about the impending execution. And Valentine was probably pacing around the ritual room, wondering why it was taking so long to flicker into a room, grab the hostages, and flicker out.
A high-pitched whipping sound sliced through the air, turning my blood to sludge. Someone cried out, sounding like this wasn’t the first time they had been struck. My heart jolted into action, and I hurried after Jonathan toward the source of the sound. The tall man stood over a ventilation grill holding his fist to his mouth and staring down through the grate.
Dread roiled through my stomach, and I advanced toward Jonathan with shaky legs. He turned to me with watery eyes. “Don’t come closer.”
“What’s happening?” I whispered.
As he shook his head, another of those whips whistled through the air.
“Please,” Aunt Arianna’s voice gasped. “No!”
All the blood drained from my face, and I rushed to Jonathan’s side. In the room below, a naked woman knelt with her head tucked to the ground with a lattice of whip marks criss-crossing her back. Strawberry-blonde hair trailed over the ground, and beside her, a dark-skinned woman lay unconscious.
I gulped. Aunt Arianna, and my uncle’s wife, Tania.
A black-haired enforcer threaded his fingers into Aunt Arianna’s locks and pulled her head up to force eye contact. “Then you will tell us about your plan to turn King Valentine into a preternatural vampire.”
“For the hundredth time,” my aunt said through gasping sobs. “I don’t know anything.”
The man questioning her slammed his boot into her side, making us both flinch. “Bring the old woman!”
I placed a hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp, and someone out of sight threw down a gray-haired woman clad in a blood-streaked nightgown. Grandfather’s sister, Great-Aunt Laratte, lay next to Aunt Arianna’s trembling form. She tried shielding my aunt from the interrogator, but another enforcer yanked the old woman back.
Hatred burned through my veins. Great-Aunt Laratte knew nothing about my fire magic. How could our queen allow these enforcers to torture innocent people?
“This is unbearable.” Jonathan pulled me to one side. “We’ve got to make a move.”
I stared into his eyes and nodded. “How do we get them out?”
The dull smack of a fist hitting flesh made my stomach flip, and I turned back to the grating, only for Jonathan to pull me away.
“Clarence is only strong enough to pull one person out with his shadows, and anything the twins might try will be noticed by the enforcers as an illusion.”
“What do you suggest?”
Racon and Gail rushed toward us, beckoning us over. “They’ve got four naked men down here,” Gail whispered. “All strapped to the wall.”
He scratched his head and turned his gaze to the larger man. “We split into two groups. You, Gail, Coral, and Clarence will transport the men back, and the twins and I will take the women.”
Racon glanced from Gail to Jonathan. “But the High Priest—”
“Told me to save them all,” said Jonathan. “If we rescue one group first, the other might be dead before we reach them.”
Racon nodded. “I’ll get the others.”
Jonathan strode toward the twins, who were already making their way back from the rooms they had checked. He outlined the plan to rescue the three women, and they beckoned at him to follow them.
All eight of us walked in single file over the walkways, past ventilation holes that overlooked empty offices, and stopped at a darkened room.
“The hall is crawling with enforcers,” said one of the twins.
“How many?” I asked.
“Twenty-four,” his brother replied. “It looked like they came prepared for a rescue.”
Valentine was right. I pressed the heel of my hand into my aching chest and turned to Jonathan. “Can you choke them with your smoke?”
“Then we’d risk hurting the members of your coven,” he said.
“And nobody can see through smoke,” added one of the twins.
“Can you use your illusions?” I asked.
“Mera.” Jonathan’s sharp voice cut through my misery, making me snap to full attention. “How far will you go to save those innocent witches and wizards?”
My throat thickened as I thought about how much they’d suffered because of me. “I’d do anything.”
“Would you object to the large-scale slaughter of those who kill our kind at birth?”
I parted my lips, but no sound came out. Racon, Clarence, Gail, and Coral crowded around me at the back, and I glanced at the twins flanking Jonathan on the front. Great-Aunt Laratte’s howls drifted up from the air vents, making my ears ring. One of the wizards in the other room roared with agony.
“Do whatever it takes to save them,” I said, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.
Jonathan nodded. “It’s decided. We’ll burn every single enforcer guarding the hallway. The ones torturing the Griffin coven will boil.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I followed after Jonathan and the twins through the intermediary space, with the light from the level below streaming through the ventilation grates on our left. Someone’s pained grunt reverberated through my gut, adding to the boulders of dread rolling through my insides.
By authorizing Jonathan to do whatever it took to save the coven, I would condemn thirty enforcers to death. Thirty enforcers to save Aunt Arianna, Great-Aunt Laratte, a distant uncle who never bothered with me, his wife, and their three sons who spent their lives pretending I didn’t exist. My gaze dropped to the rough stone floor, and I wrapped an arm around my roiling belly in an attempt to stay calm.
A whimper traveled up through the grate, and one of the fire mages behind me gasped at something they had seen below. I forced back the trepidation and focussed on the facts. The Supernatural Council had sentenced me to death without investigating what really happened to Valentine. They wanted to condemn my soul to Hell because I had developed an affinity with fire magic. Fire magic, which was no less deadly than any other kind of power, but because it was the magical affinity of one tyrant, they decided that everyone else with that power must die.
Up ahead, Jonathan and the twins stopped by a large grate with inch-square holes. He raised a hand, beckoning at us to hurry.
I quickened my pace, trying to untangle the dilemma writhing through my mind. Enforcers might not have decided to kill fire users or persecute their extended families, but they took on the job knowing the policies. They implemented these unfair commands, and now Aunt Arianna was suffering when all she had ever done was bring up her sister’s child and try to give her a happy life. The enforcers were just as bad as the Council.
All traces of guilt plaguing my insides evaporated into the ether. I inhaled a deep, cleansing breath and joined Clarence and the twins where Jonathan had crouched.
“Here’s the plan,” Jonathan whispered.
“Roman and Leman will weave tracks of light through the hallway, branching them off to snake into each enforcer's pants. Everyone else except Clarence will channel their power down those lights.”
The twins exchanged nods.
“What will I do?” asked the dark-skinned boy.
Jonathan grinned. “We want to make sure that the enforcers torturing those witches and wizards don’t know we’re coming. You’re going to create sound-and-smoke-proof seams around the doors with your shadows.”
I glanced at Jonathan’s profile, trying to calm my breathing. This wasn’t the awkward man who chattered through sound bath sessions. He appeared to be a confident leader when it came to weaving together deadly attacks.
As the twins joined hands and threaded streams of light down the ventilation shaft, Clarence’s shadows expanded from his fingers and also slipped down the shaft.
Gail placed a hand on my s
houlder. “Try not to worry. We’ve done this kind of thing before.”
“You have?” I asked.
“The High Priest’s spies are always on the lookout for kids on the cusp of developing their fire magic,” said Racon. “Sometimes, he convinces the parents that they should smuggle them out of Logris, other times, we have to rescue them before the enforcers destroy their bodies and condemn their souls to Hell.”
“Why Hell?” I whispered.
“Shhhh.” Jonathan placed a finger over his mouth. “Concentrate.”
I winced. “Sorry.”
Over the next few minutes, Clarence and the twins focussed on the activity below, each man staring down the grate with furrowed brows. Each time someone below us screamed or moaned or an enforcer barked out a question they couldn’t answer, a dagger of outrage pierced my heart.
By the time Clarence raised his head and said he had placed enough shadows over the seams of the doors to block out the smoke, any doubts about killing the enforcers had disappeared.
These people would pay for what they were doing to my coven.
“Join hands, everyone,” whispered Jonathan.
Gail grabbed my hand, and offered me a determined nod. I nodded back, knowing that this was something I needed to do. Jonathan lowered himself to my side and offered me his hand. Right now, any animosity I held against the guy receded to the background. All that mattered was stopping those men from torturing Aunt Arianna, which was worth the temporary truce. I slipped my hand into his, and he curled his fingers around mine so tightly that my breath caught.
“I will save your coven or die trying,” he said in a voice full of steel.
A warning skittered up my spine, accompanied by a tiny voice whispering that Jonathan would try to leverage the rescue of Aunt Arianna and the others into a romantic moment. I pushed those concerns aside and focused on the task ahead.
Turning my back to the twins’ streams of light, I said, “Let’s do this.”
As Gail’s warm magic pulsed against mine, I pushed my magic into my arms and glanced down at our glowing hands. All the warmth and familiarity I had felt while we had travelled from the ritual room filled my chest. Even Jonathan, who usually made me cringe, felt like a brother. Every fiber of my body warmed and flickered, sending streams of magic out of our joined hands and into the twins’ strings of light.
My brows furrowed, and I wondered how it worked.
“Think of it like dynamite,” Jonathan whispered. “We’re channeling our fire power through the twin’s magic, which can both direct and amplify the flames.”
I jerked back. Had he just heard my thoughts? When Jonathan didn’t reply to my silent question, I stared down at the burning lattice of light, following its progression through the hallway to the first set of guards.
He nudged me in the side. “As soon as I add my black flames, it will set off a chain reaction that will burn these enforcers from the inside out.”
My stomach lurched. Was he trying to impress me with the details or torture me with what I was about to become? I swallowed back my disgust and nodded.
Jonathan leaned into me and murmured, “Brilliant, isn’t it?”
“Let’s congratulate ourselves when everyone’s safe and back in the ritual room.”
He turned back to the twins’ burning streams of light, and black flames erupted from our joined hands. I expected them to hurt, but they only tickled and rendered all our flames invisible.
A moment later, and the enforcer standing below the grill collapsed against the wall and fell onto his back. Streams of smoke drifted out of his mouth, and he stared out toward us with empty eyes also streaming with smoke.
His companion rushed over to him, but she tripped and fell.
Brimstone filled my nostrils, burning my sinuses and mingling with the stench of burning flesh. My muscles stiffened, and I forced myself not to react to the confirmation that Jonathan was probably a demon. It was probably why he identified Macavity as a hellcat, when others would have said he was an overgrown leopard.
The stench became worse as more and more enforcers dropped to the ground. I glanced around at the other fire mages kneeling around us but none of them seemed to show any surprise at the mass carnage or at Jonathan’s dark power.
I bowed my head and exhaled a long breath. This was what I had decided: the lives of corrupt enforcers in exchange for saving my coven. Jonathan breathed hard, with wracking sobs heaving in and out of his lungs. I was about to ask if he was alright but the sobs turned into harsh, maniacal chuckles.
“Calm down,” Coral muttered. “No girl’s going to get with someone who laughs like a drunk hyena while he boils the blood of their enemies.”
“Coral,” Jonathan whined. “Your magic killed them as much as I did.”
The older woman rolled her eyes. “Go on, keep whining. I’m sure every woman standing here is wringing wet at your display of emotional maturity.”
Racon choked back a laugh, and the twins stared at each other with frozen expressions of mirth. Clarence bowed his head, trying to make himself invisible, but his shoulders trembled.
Jonathan turned to me with his mouth gaping open. Damp hair clung to his pale face, which glistened with sweat. “Mera, I—”
“What’s phase two?” I said in a louder voice.
“We drop down to the hallway.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Clarence unseals the doors, and we kill the enforcers.”
“What are we waiting for, then?” I asked.
As the twins pulled back their light magic, Gail leaned across the grate and warmed its metal with her glowing hands. Racon punched through the molten metal, creating a hole wide enough for his large body. He was the first to slide through and landed on top of the two fallen enforcers. After glancing from side to side, he raised a hand and beckoned us over.
Racon’s team went first and disappeared into the hallway, leaving me alone with Jonathan and the twins.
“How many enforcers are guarding the women?” I asked.
“Four.” Jonathan slipped through the hole Racon made and landed on his hands and knees. He stood beneath the opening with his head tilted up. “I’ll catch you.”
One of the twins snickered.
My skin tightened with annoyance, and a void of loneliness spread across my heart. It had only been a few hours since we parted, but I already missed Valentine’s strong and calming presence. Even the corpse-like version of him that rose from the dead and followed me to the bathroom was less disconcerting than Jonathan.
I wrapped my fingers around the base of the cloak’s hood, taking comfort in Valentine’s woodsmoke scent. As soon as we completed this mission, I would never need to communicate with Jonathan again. I slipped through the hole in the metal grill and drifted down to the next level. Jonathan positioned himself beneath me, and I gave his outstretched arm a hard kick.
He stepped back and stared at me with pained eyes. “What did you do that for?”
“Are you going to stand here complaining or rescue the women from those enforcers?” I said as my feet landed on the ground.
Black-clad bodies littered the ground. Most of them lay face-down emitting thin wisps of smoke, but the pair nearest to me looked even more gruesome up close. I stepped toward a female enforcer, whose skin seethed with darkened veins.
It looked like the mix of light magic, fire magic, and Jonathan’s demonic black flames really had burned them from the inside out. I wrapped an arm around my middle, drawing the reaper cloak around my body like a warm hug. What we had done to these people was terrible, and the only thing that stopped me from falling into a pit of grief was that they had died quickly. An image of Aunt Arianna’s bruised and bloodied and bared body filled my mind. Those enforcers had probably tortured my coven for days.
One of the twins dropped down to the floor beside me, then stepped aside to let his brother descend. Up ahead, Racon’s team gathered around a door, looking like they were waiting for Jonathan’s command to
storm the room.
All four of us jogged toward the other team, passing offices with nameplates I recognized as prominent witches and wizards in our community. Bitterness coated my tongue as I thought about the Witch Queen, who everyone had admired for her sense of fairness and justice. After trying her hardest to protect those who had hidden my magic from the Council, she had let these enforcers torture our coven in her own suite of offices.
Jonathan stopped at a wooden door with a nameplate marked Willa Grobe, which I recognized as the name of a witch who had been at the academy the same time as me. He turned to the other team and raised his hand. “Be careful, everyone. Don’t let a spark of your flames touch those hostages.”
Everyone in the other team nodded.
“Three…” Jonathan whispered. “Two… one… Clarence.”
The shadowy seals around the doors fell, and Jonathan blasted the door in front of us open with the force of his black flames. We rushed into the room to find Aunt Arianna, Great-Aunt Laratte, and Tania lying exactly where we had seen them before, but with an enforcer in black standing over their prone bodies with a whip.
Five other enforcers stood against the walls with their arms folded, staring at us with bored eyes as though we hadn’t just interrupted their torture session. They straightened but didn’t make a move to attack. My gaze darted to the enforcer holding the whip, whose face spread into a wide grin.
Jonathan and the twins threw out ropes of fire that wrapped around the necks of each enforcer. Instead of writhing in agony or reacting like the vampires had when Jonathan burned them, the enforcers continued lounging against the walls.
I gulped. This stealth attack wasn’t going as planned.
Aunt Arianna pulled herself up to her knees, and shot me the kind of impatient glower she’d use when I forgot to put my clothes in the hamper. My mouth dried. Of all the reactions I would have imagined to being rescued, none of them included annoyance.
“Auntie?” My voice trembled.
The doors behind us slammed shut, and magic fizzled in the air. I glanced over my shoulder to find the door melting into the wall. The window on our left shrank to the size of a human postage stamp.