by Kat Adams
Using my ward as a beacon and having it guide us through the void like the north star, we weaved through men and women, young and old, but still no Bryan. Rob slowed, forcing me to turn to him. He’d lost all expression and stared straight ahead. Oh no. He was slipping. I jerked his hand, hard. It snapped him out of the trance. I tapped my temple as Clay had done. Rob nodded and began to mouth the lyrics to what looked like an old Nickelback song about wanting to be a rock star.
I switched to Bright, Sunshiny Day, realized I didn’t know any of the words other than those three, and jumped back to my original choice. I could certainly use a pocket full of sunshine right about now.
My ward glowed brighter the farther to the right we moved, so we picked up the pace. When one of us slowed, we’d collectively snap them out of it. I had to admit, Clay’s plan to have all of us teleport in together had been the right move. If I’d done this alone, I don’t know if I would have been able to stay focused and not slip into a catatonic state. All three of us had faded at least once. Thank God we had someone to snap us out of it before we slipped too far.
The glowing increased to the point I had to squint. It was so bright in comparison to the blackness of the void that it hurt my eyes and made it impossible to see anything else.
Open your eyes.
Well, hell. My brain chose now of all times to make that connection? Thanks, brain. As if I didn’t have enough going on in my head. I slid my lids closed and listened to my insight, feeling for Bryan instead of looking. Nothing happened. I tried again, concentrating harder. I pictured his beautiful face, those dazzling hazel eyes dancing as he flashed that crooked grin, showing off his cute dimple. I imagined his arms around me, holding me in his strong embrace as he whispered words of encouragement in my ear. I felt his lips on mine, kissing me tenderly as he weaved his fingers into my hair.
Rob squeezing my hand pulled my attention. I blinked my eyes open and followed his gaze, silently sobbing in relief. Bryan, my giant earth elemental, stood directly in front of us. Only, he wasn’t in a catatonic state. He looked right at me and even smiled when our gazes snagged. I ran into his arms, dragging Rob and Clay with me. Bryan rested his mouth against my ear, and I swear on all things holy, I heard him say I love you. He kissed me as he brushed his hand over my hair.
Clay pulled us together into a tight huddle. He looked to Rob, then to me. We all nodded and combined our air call to teleport back out.
We landed in the center of the cabin’s living room. Leo hurried over. “Did you find him?”
What did he mean, did we find him? He teleported back with us. Didn’t he?
Didn’t he?
I rushed to Bryan still sitting on the couch, no expression, staring straight ahead. No. No! He was fine. He had complete control over his mind. I grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Bryan? Bryan, wake up. Wake up!”
“I don’t understand.” Rob joined me on the couch. “He was right there. He was right in the middle of our hug when we teleported out. Why the fuck is he not back?” He punched Bryan’s arm. “Wake the fuck up, bro.” He punched him again.
“Stop it!” I pushed him away and threw myself over Bryan to protect him. Tears stung my eyes and streamed down my cheeks. He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t. I buried my face against his chest. “Come back to me. Please don’t leave me. I love you.”
His chest rose suddenly as he gasped for air. I pushed off him and blinked back more tears when I spotted that gorgeous smile. He looked around before holding his gaze on me. “I said it first.”
I laughed through my tears and hugged him as the guys all erupted in cheers and more laughter.
Rob punched his arm again. “Don’t you dare do something like that again. You scared the shit out of everyone.”
“Ow.” He rubbed his arm. “It’s not like I had a choice. Stace sent me to the void.”
“Why the hell would she do that?” Rob punched his arm a third time. This time, Bryan punched him back. They stared each other down before lowering their fists.
Men.
“So he couldn’t tell the Council where we found Renee,” I answered, pissed she’d risked Bryan’s mental state to protect her coven.
“Bry wouldn’t give them up.” Clay gave a single nod at him. “Would you?”
He hid his gaze by dropping his head. His shoulders sagged as he leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “They were threatening to send my mom to Carcerem. If it came down to giving up their location or her going to prison, you’re damn right I’d give them up.”
No one said anything. No one had to. It was an impossible choice.
9
Being a fugitive and on the run wasn’t nearly as glamourous as the movies made it out to be.
It’d been one full week since I told off the Council, and it still felt great to no longer have to deal with Virgil Graves and his merry band of dark elementals that’d taken over the governing body.
But it totally and completely sucked not being able to see my guys every day. After bringing Bryan back from the void, I had no choice but to leave them before the invisibility spell wore off and the Council found them with me. It was me they wanted, not them. If we all went on the run, there’d be no one left to fight the dark elementals closing in.
So, reluctantly, we’d agreed to break up.
At least that was the rumor.
No way would I ever be able to truly break up with my guys. Not only were we bonded by more than the wards, we were connected mind, body, and soul. I couldn’t separate from them any more than I could separate from my own self.
We had to make the Council believe we were no longer together, or they’d never trust any of the guys. As it was, they probably didn’t trust them now. At least with us breaking up, that just might give them an in. Exes, especially bitter exes, were usually the first to sling shit over the fence to clean their own yard. They’d give up intel on their exes in a heartbeat to make them suffer.
That was exactly what we counted on.
Clay needed to remain at the academy and cozy up to Alec to get the dark elemental to reveal his end game to him. It had to be more than becoming the new headmaster at Clearwater. That wasn’t nearly important enough for Alec. He believed himself to be the supreme elemental, which meant he’d be after something supreme. The headmaster position was small potatoes. He had to be planning something bigger, and it was Clay’s job to find out what.
Rob and Leo would stay with the Council, patrol the academy grounds and protect the students, and do whatever they could to buddy up with those closest to Graves. Rob, as much as he didn’t want to, had agreed to make nice with Vanessa. Just not too nice.
Bryan refused to leave my side, despite how much I’d tried to convince him otherwise. Syd wouldn’t let anything happen to Rose, and we both knew that. If Bryan had stayed behind, the Council would never leave them alone. The best way to protect her was to go on the run with me.
Now here we were, staying in a dive motel under fake names as we contemplated our next move. Each day, we tried finding Renee’s coven again. Stace had to be with them. If we could just convince them to join us in our fight against the Council, we might stand a chance. After seeing what they’d done to Stace, surely Renee would have a change of heart. And each day, we came back to the motel emptyhanded.
It was time to come up with a plan B.
If only I could talk to Cressida. She’d know what to do. But, alas, she was back at the academy—correction, she was the academy—which made her off-limits. In the course of a week, I’d lost my mentor, my confidante, my title, my employment, and my place on the school’s roster. To say I felt defeated would be an understatement.
“Hungry?” Bryan held up the box of day-old pizza. I shook my head and went back to feeling sorry for myself. “Yeah, I don’t think I can take another day of stale pizza either.”
We sat at the small table, staring at the fake wood surface. I’d missed posting this week’s webisode with no sketch pad, no com
puter, and no internet. Would I ever be able to post another? Would my webcomic die now that I was on the run? If I posted, the Council would be able to trace the IP address back to my location. I’d have to piggyback on hotspots across the island to stay hidden. Was it worth it? Was posting Amethyst and Onyx’s latest battle worth the risk of getting caught? Maybe it was time to hang up my sketch pad.
I’d already been forced to carry a burner since I had to destroy my phone, which was wildly inconvenient. Who memorized all the contacts in their phone? Then again, who actually contacted all the contacts in their phone?
“Maybe we should try to find the coven again,” Bryan offered, his voice full of hope. He was just as bored as I was.
“It’s better than sitting around here waiting for the Council to raid the room. You do realize being on the run with me makes you a fugitive too, right? All those years walking the line, never stepping one foot out of place, avoiding all things dark… All that was for nothing. Siding with me blew that right out of the water. I’ve been labeled dark, an enemy of the Council, which makes you guilty by association.” And it weighed on me every second of every minute of every hour. “You know, there’s still time for you to go back. You can tell them I took you against your will, that you were my hostage.”
He reached across the table and took my hand. “I wouldn’t want to be held hostage by anyone else. But you and I both know I’m not going anywhere. And it wasn’t for nothing. This will all be over soon, and things will go back to normal.”
“Normal? Us?” I laughed and squeezed his hand, staring into his handsome eyes and so happy not to be doing this alone. “Who wants normal? That’s boring. I mean, I wouldn’t mind being able to show my face in public again, but minor details.”
“Come on. Lace up.”
I grabbed my new boots we’d picked up and pushed my feet into them. They were heavy, clunky, but they had awesome traction. I walked the woods like a boss with these babies on. Once I had them secured, I slapped my legs and stood. “Let’s do this.”
We grabbed our coats, packed up all our stuff and shoved it into backpacks, and headed out. If the Council found our hideout, we didn’t want to leave behind anything they’d use to track us.
After teleporting back to the spot we’d last seen Renee and the coven, we started our search. I’d tried silently pleading with Renee. When that had gotten us nowhere, I’d turned to Stace. Still nothing. For seven days. Nothing.
“Cressida,” I whispered into the air, hoping above all hope she heard me. “Our world is in trouble. Dark elementals have taken over the Council. They’ve taken over the school, which means they could destroy you. Our side is going to lose if we don’t find the coven and get Renee to agree to join us in the fight. We need their support. I’ve tried opening my eyes, but it’s not working this time. I can’t find them.”
“That’s because they don’t want to be found.”
I whipped around at the sound of the very distinctive lisp. Stace stood there in her long brown dress, her hair down, a warm smile ready to greet me. I was so glad to see her, to know she was okay, that I ran up and threw my arms around her. “Oh my God. Stace. You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”
“I’m beginning to get an idea,” she replied in a muffled, strangled voice. “You’re going to break my ribs if you don’t loosen your hold. I can’t breathe.”
“Sorry.” I retreated, giving her space. “Where’ve you been? We’ve been searching these woods for a week looking for you.”
“We’ve been here. We’ve seen you.”
“Then why didn’t you let us find you until now?”
“It took me this long to convince Renee to let me bring you in front of the coven for an audience. More and more witches are being pushed into exile, so our circle is growing. We went from thirteen to sixty overnight when the Council outlawed witchcraft. Our numbers continue to grow by the day.”
“That’s terrible.” And grossly unfair they had to go into hiding all because of one man’s ignorance and fear.
Stace slowly shook her head. “No, Katy. It’s wonderful. That’s over sixty witches, some of them almost as powerful as Renee, all willing to listen to what you have to say. This is your chance to build your army.”
Whoa. I’d expected to come here and convince Renee to join us, not start a revolution. But the Council had to be stopped by any means necessary. If that meant starting an uprising to take them down, that was exactly what I’d do. I might no longer be the prophecy in the Council’s eyes, but I would still do whatever it took to protect my world.
Bring it on.
Bryan and I followed Stace to a grove of trees. When she stopped, so did we and looked around. There was nothing here. No signs of life at all. “What are we doing here? Where are we?”
“We’re here.” She lifted a crystal she wore around her neck and made a single downstroke, and a shimmering silver streak appeared in midair. It was as if the crystal had carved a slice in the universe, tearing a hole. “This way.” She walked directly into the tear and disappeared.
“Very cool.” I followed, stepping into an entirely different world. The sun shone bright, and it was warm, two things that weren’t happening outside this bubble of awesome. There must have been some sort of magic barrier keeping this place entirely invisible. Green grass spread as far as the eye could see. Trees surrounded a gorgeous meadow of flowers, each one with a house built into its branches. They were the fanciest treehouses I’d ever seen.
“Wow,” Bryan said next to me. “This place is awesome.”
“Thank you.” Renee walked up, her smile not quite as warm as the last time we’d spoken. She wasn’t exactly happy to see me. “I wanted to give them a place to live so much nicer than where they’d come from. Maybe then they wouldn’t miss the homes they’d been driven from so much.”
“It’s beautiful.” I lifted my gaze to the treehouses. “Is there enough housing for everyone?”
“As long as we double up. We’ll need to expand again if we get many more joining us. If the coven as a whole agrees to side with you, I expect we’ll see more wanting to join the fight. What do you call yourselves?”
“Uh…” Was that a trick question? She knew my name.
“Your side,” she explained further. “If you’re going to start an uprising and lead a revolution, you need to give your followers a name to chant, remind them why they’re fighting.”
“Order of the phoenix,” Bryan volunteered.
I looked at him. “That one’s already taken.” But I didn’t hate it and played around with names in my head out loud. “The phoenix rises from the ashes stronger than ever, but it doesn’t really fit. We won’t go down in flames, so there won’t be any ashes to rise from. No, we need to be guardians of our world, protect it from the dark side taking over.”
“Fight club.”
I gave him another look. “Again, taken. Besides, we need to be more than fighters. We need to be on constant alert and keep an eye out for the sneaky dark elemental bastards.”
“Like sentries.”
I was about to shoot him another look when the name sank in. “Order of the Sentry.”
He grinned and nodded. “Sentry. That’s what we’ll call it for short.”
For the first time in days, I truly felt like smiling. “Come on, let’s go recruit our first members.”
“I WANT to thank you all for gathering here today.” God, I never thought I’d start a speech with that line.
I stood on the stage in front of the entire coven and glanced across the crowd of women of every shape and size, every ethnicity, hair color, eye color. Some wore glasses. Others had piercings. Most of these women would have never run in the same circle, let alone found themselves living together. They’d come from all walks of life, now exiled and forced here because they had nowhere else to go. Few smiled. Most just looked so, so defeated.
They needed something to believe in. They needed hope. I knew exactly what I needed to
say.
“One year ago, I was just some dumb kid wishing something would happen before I died of boredom. Then Alec von Leer found me and tried to kill me. Be careful what you wish for, I guess is the lesson I learned from that. The Council declared me the prophecy, the one destined to save our world, if you can believe it. Barely a day into my life as an elemental, and they deem me powerful enough to go up against the darkest elemental in the world. It took four different handlers to train me. Four. Alec was hell-bent on destroying our world by destroying the prophecy. But we had other plans. Despite all the odds stacked against us, we beat Alec. I questioned the Council then why they’d decreed a twenty-two-year-old with no experience, no knowledge of the world they’d asked her to save, as their best line of defense. You know what they told me?”
I looked across the crowd. They looked back, captivated by my story. “They said questioning the Council could label me as dark. That’s it. No real explanation, only a threat to stay in line and keep my mouth shut or else.”
I moved to the other side of the stage. “Fast forward to the next year. They import in a new handler for me, Spencer Dalton from the UK, a quad with the innate ability to beat any opponent he’d ever come up against. How could that possibly go bad, right? Well, it did go bad. Turns out Spencer is a leecher.” I paused as the crowd gasped. “Sounds like I don’t have to tell you how he gets his powers by leeching them from others, draining them dry before leaving them to die. That’s who the Council brought in to train me. As if dealing with a handler trying to steal my powers wasn’t enough, come to find out Spencer and Alec had teamed up to—guess what?—destroy our world by destroying the prophecy. But wait, there’s more. There was a third partner, one no one saw coming.”
Drawing in a shaky breath to hold it together, I continued. Bryan moved up behind me and rested his hands on my shoulders. I leaned back, gaining strength through the control he pushed to me through our contact. “My mother, Samantha Reed. The prophecy before me, assumed to have died fulfilling it, returned from the dead to—what else?—destroy our world by destroying the prophecy. Unfortunately, this time, they succeeded.”