by Jessica Gunn
“I will return in a day’s time,” Jerrick said. “You have until then to reconsider your loyalties and make the choice that’s right for us—all of us—on this plane.”
And then he walked away, leaving all six us in caged in the middle of the road.
Chapter 12
“Well, then.” I touched a cautious finger to the bars of the cage. Nothing had shimmered or flashed on them when Jerrick had shut the door and walked away, so I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be shocked or something. But given what had happened the last time I’d been caged in Landshaft…
My finger brushed the cool metal. In the middle of August, these would be hot even in the nighttime if the cage had been here all day. No, this magik-less cage had been brought here just for us. We were nothing more than entertainment.
“We can’t sit here and swear loyalty to someone who has been and will continue to enslave witches,” Krystin said, cutting a hard glance at Jeremiah.
“I know,” Jeremiah said without moving.
“We also can’t let them go after the Neuians,” Ben said.
Kian shrugged. “So we find a way to end this before they try. Then no one tilts any cianzas or enslaves more witches, and the Neuians don’t get pissed and decide to kill us all.”
“And how do you suppose we do that from inside a cage?” Brian asked.
“We wait,” I said. “Like last time. The requirems are going to wear off eventually. As long as they don’t come and reset them every hour, we should have a gap where at least one of us can teleportante the rest out of here. Or all the way back to Fire Circle Headquarters.”
“Thus negating the purpose of this visit.” Jeremiah was looking out through the bars, watching as the crowd of demons grew. The sneers and insults had stopped. Now, it was more curiosity that shone in their eyes than anything else.
“I think we’re already screwed,” Krystin said. She had her eyes shut as though she were concentrating on something. “Jerrick either gets what he wants or we’re all going to die or be turned into demons.”
“Unless the Neuians find out they have us,” Ben said. “I’m pretty sure Karen is always watching me.”
Krystin opened an eye and looked to Ben. “Is she?”
Ben nodded. “Riley said he’s seen her once or twice.”
Krystin’s expression hardened. “Doesn’t help us here. Like Ava said, we’re going to have to hope one of our requirems wears off before the others or before Jerrick’s buddies reset them. Then we break out and escape Landshaft. There’s no chance of us fighting our way out of this one.”
I closed my eyes, my head shaking. “Unless we can somehow convince all these demons to fight with us instead of against us.”
“Unlikely, despite what we witnessed at Hunter’s Guild,” Kian said. “Not while we’re inside the city.”
We’d come all this way in good faith, to try actually coming to an agreement that wouldn’t result outright war. But Jerrick only cared about his army, not reason. A truce was a longshot, no doubt about that. Still, I had hoped we’d get further along with negotiations than this.
“So we wait,” Jeremiah said as he leaned an arm against the bars. “I see what you mean, by the way.”
“Huh?” I asked.
He nodded at the crowd gathering on the street. Some of the curious faces had turned wary. Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. “I’m beginning to wonder exactly how much control Jerrick and Talon actually have over Landshaft.”
“Enough to keep us in here no matter what those demons have in mind,” Ben said as he looked out too.
“Oh, they’ve got something in mind, all right. You won’t like it,” Krystin said. “You can tell. I can read their thoughts all over their faces even without my magik.” Then her eyes went wide. “Shit.”
I turned to follow her line of sight. The gathering of demons on her side of the cage had split, parting to admit someone through. Another demon, one with burgundy eyes and dark black hair that almost reached his shoulders. He looked young, but battle-worn. Angry, but also amused. But nothing about his appearance made this demon’s existence any more possible.
Mason Whitmore approached the cage with sure steps and stopped just short of the bars in front of me. “It’s been some time.”
My heartbeat thundered in my chest. For a moment, all sound seemed to fade away and the only thing I heard was the pounding of my own pulse in my ears. “How? How is this possible?”
Mason had been grievously injured when we’d left him. He shouldn’t have been alive.
A sly, dark smile slipped across his lips. “It pays to have friends in high places. Wouldn’t you agree?” His gaze moved from me to Ben. “I wonder what it would take yours, for instance, to show up here and rescue you.”
From what I’d heard and observed, the Neuians wouldn’t intervene. Not on our behalf. But that Karen woman, Ben’s something-or-other relative, she’d be here within seconds if she knew.
Maybe. I wasn’t willing to bet my life on it.
Ben’s jaw locked and he stepped between Jeremiah and Mason, keeping Jeremiah at his back. “We should have never saved you, Mason.”
Mason lifted an eyebrow, his smile turning into a grin. “What? From street robbers in Salem? Easy prey, even for a boy.”
“You’re not a boy, or a man. You’re a monster,” I said. I’d never forget what Mason had done to Veres. To all the Ember witches, force-changed or not. And there was zero chance in hell I’d ever forget what Veynix had done to my team.
Mason gestured widely behind him. “We’re all monsters in our own way.” He took a few steps around to the other side of the cage.
“Why are you here?” Kian spat. “To taunt us while we’re caged like the coward you are?”
So quick I barely caught the motion, Mason reached between the bars, past Ben, and wrapped a hand around Jeremiah’s forearm. “You know what my blood and the blood of my brothers and sisters does.”
We all moved, trying to step between Mason and Jeremiah, to stop his physical contact with him. There hadn’t been blood on his hand. I was pretty sure about that. This was a show of power, it had to be. But without magik, Mason’s hold on Jeremiah was too strong to break.
Ben and Brian tried prying Mason’s hand off Jeremiah’s forearm, but Mason set his fingers aglow with Ember ether.
“Enough,” Jeremiah said to them, then met Mason’s gaze. “Yes, we know.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed curiously. “You’ve found it then? Right inside Headquarters?”
“The journal?” I asked. “Yeah. Why? You’ve been looking for it?”
“It belonged to an ancestor of mine,” Mason said. “It would have helped move this process along much faster.”
“Reuben Crow is your ancestor?” Kian asked.
Mason nodded, still holding on to Jeremiah’s arm. “For many centuries, using the name ‘Whitmore’ would have gotten you killed. Others adopted alternative names. I need that journal back, if you don’t mind.”
I tapped the pockets of my jeans that were very clearly not big enough for a journal to fit into. “I’m afraid I don’t have it on me. We weren’t supposed to be running science experiments.”
“No matter. It appears most of your Headquarters’ most powerful guardians are here,” Mason said. “Suppose I could pop over and retrieve it without much issue.”
Jeremiah grabbed Mason’s arm with his free hand. “You will do no such thing. We’re here for peace.”
Mason’s eyes shone with amusement. He laughed and dug his fingers deep into Jeremiah’s arm. “Peace is for the weak.” His fingers glowed bright orange and seared into Jeremiah’s skin.
Jeremiah grunted with the pain, a sound that slowly turned into a cry as blood creeped out around Mason’s fingers. Mason’s own hand shook, his face twisted in pain.
“Stop!” I shouted.
Ben pulled on Mason’s arm. He didn’t let go, instead letting his magik extend up past his wrist and forearm and up to his shoulder. B
en pulled back with a hiss as the magik burned him.
“What… are you… doing?” Jeremiah ground out through clenched teeth.
Mason held on for a little longer before pulling back. A large handprint had been burned into Jeremiah’s forearm and… Mason’s hand. It was bleeding, too; the magik had burned both of them.
Oh no.
Mason grinned as Jeremiah’s eyes lit up and his magik flared. His legs buckled beneath him, dropping him to the ground. Ben tried to catch him but ended up kneeling beside him as his body convulsed.
“Krystin!” Ben shouted.
She came over to him as best she could in this small space. Her voice was soft when she said, “I can’t… There’s nothing…” Tears filled her eyes, though if her locked jaw was any indication, none would be shed.
I turned on Mason. “You bastard!”
Mason only shrugged. “See how easy it is? How simple? A single touch, some magik, and a magik-user falls. The Neuians await the same fate, as do the Hunter Circles if you do not take Jerrick’s offer.”
“Jeremiah,” Ben said as he pressed two fingers to his neck. “Jeremiah, please. Wake up. Dammit.”
It was no use. Jeremiah’s body stopped convulsing and he was dead.
Chapter 13
Mason left us there like that for hours. I wasn’t even sure how much time passed. The only surety was that by the time sun had begun rising in the distance, over the tops of Landshaft’s buildings, neither Mason nor Jerrick had returned.
My feet ached. There wasn’t enough room for all of us to sit down and not be on top of each other. As it was, with Jeremiah’s body lying across the ground, it was even more cramped.
I watched the roads, my face pressed against the bars of the cage. Every now and then more demons walked by. Some had new faces—some were recognizable as repeat watchers. Some even looked on in pity. Those were the demons who looked most human.
The ones that looked just as scared as the rest of us.
I turned away from them and glanced over my shoulder to where Krystin and Ben stood over Jeremiah, talking quietly about what to do from here on out. If all Mason had to do was reach in and burn one of us, there was nothing we could do to stop him from killing another. Not without magik.
I wrapped my fingers around the bars and closed my eyes. Fighting without magik was one thing. Breaking out of a steel cage without it was entirely something else. And no matter how much I tried, my magik didn’t come when I called to it. The initial requirem was still in effect.
Kian leaned against the bars beside me. “How are you holding up?”
I met his eyes, but words didn’t quite make it past my lips. Instead, I shook my head. He knew the answer, so Kian asking must have been some way to calm himself down. We were being held prisoner in the middle of Landshaft, without magik, trapped exactly like we had feared we’d be. It’d gone down as the other Command members had thought. As Veres had foreseen.
“You guys just need your magik back,” Kian said.
“We don’t need magik to fight,” Krystin said, her gaze still on Ben who’d had a hard look on his face for the last few hours. He hadn’t really made eye-contact with anyone but her in that time, though I recognized the concentration beneath the hardness. Ben was thinking of a plan. But I wasn’t sure it was a plan that would get us out of this cage.
“Mason is still going to bring half a dozen Talon soldiers when he returns,” Brian said. “Add those to the demons in the streets, and something tells me we’re not going to get far no matter how good we are at fighting.”
Kian nodded. “Brian is right. Say we get past the Talon soldiers surrounding this cage. What are the chances we’ll get far enough to escape the city?”
“We don’t even need to escape this cage,” Ben said without turning his gaze away from the street. “We just need the requirem to wear off one of us. Then we can teleportante out.”
Krystin shook her head. “I doubt they’re going to let us stay here for much longer without re-upping the requirem. They can’t afford to let us have our magik back. Not you and me at the very least.”
I pressed my lips together, reminding myself it wasn’t necessarily because I wasn’t as powerful a magik-user as Krystin and Ben. But rather, Krystin’s concern was because of her Alzanian magik and Ben’s Neuian power and connections.
“Assume they arrive within the next hour and our magik does not,” I said. “We have two options: fight them outright and fight our way out of the city the way we came in. Or we could try to hide and wait it out.”
Though I doubted we’d get far enough without drawing attention to hide. Not unless we had allies amongst the demons watching us from afar. I sensed a few potential allies, the ones who were clearly against not only killing a Fire Circle Leader, interim as it were, inside Landshaft’s walls, but also who weren’t fans of Talon and the control they were trying to exert and usurp from Darkness’s court.
“Those are not good options,” Kian said. His expression had grown tight. I frowned. At least we were all still together and not drawn away from each other like last time.
“But they’re choices, which is all we ever need,” Krystin said. “Let’s bank on requirem never wearing off. I say our best course of action is to get as far as we can and either escape or hide and lay low until escape is possible. What do you think, Ben?”
Ben’s blue-eyed gaze dropped to Jeremiah’s body. “I don’t think we’ll get far if we’re carrying him. It’ll be impossible to fight, too, without magik while doing so.”
Krystin’s expression remained careful, measured. “Ben, we might not have a choice.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t raise them to Krystin. “I’m not leaving him here. That’s not what we do. We don’t leave people behind.”
Krystin frowned slightly. “He’s dead, Ben.”
I swallowed hard and grabbed Kian’s hand. He squeezed it once.
“Don’t you think I know that?” Ben hissed. “I’m still not leaving him here. It’s not going to happen.”
Krystin locked her jaw and paced three small steps to me before turning back to Ben. Then she dug into her pockets and withdrew a book of matches. Cedo matches. “He wouldn’t want to stay here if we couldn’t get him back.”
Ben closed his eyes and pulled in a deep breath. “This is wrong.”
“Nothing about any of this is right, either,” Krystin said.
I looked to Brian and Kian. They were both watching the exchange with weary eyes. Cedo matches burned not only your body, but also the magik inside it. The Hunter Circles used them to get rid of demonic bodies during patrols, but the matches worked on anyone with magik.
If we couldn’t carry Jeremiah’s body with us without risking one or more of us dying because of it—something I knew Jeremiah wouldn’t want—then this was the only option.
Ben reached up and grabbed the book of matches from Krystin. He stood and ushered us all to one side of the cage before reaching down and grabbing Jeremiah’s wedding ring and the chain around his neck, tucked under his shirt, from which hung a tiny golden circle with a golden flame inside. The pendant was the Fire Circle’s symbol, and all Leaders and Command members were given one.
Finally, Ben stood and joined us on the other half of the tiny cage, carefully keeping everyone away from the flames about to erupt. He took out a match and lifted it along with the matchbook before him.
“It was an honor and a privilege,” Ben said.
The rest of us echoed the statement before Ben struck the match and threw it onto Jeremiah’s body.
The unnatural flames leapt across his clothes and skin, starting from where Mason had grabbed and burned him, and soon engulfing his body entirely. Jeremiah’s form was gone within seconds, with nothing left behind. He’d been a powerful water-elemental user indeed.
Ben turned to Krystin with tears in his eyes. Whether they were for Jeremiah or the generally heavy weight on all our shoulders, the same weight making my eyes fi
ll with tears, I wasn’t sure.
Maybe it was both.
“Perhaps we should have searched you all before putting you inside that cage.”
I turned, my head whipping around fast, toward Jerrick. He stood before the cage door with Mason and half a dozen Talon soldiers at his side. He wore an unamused expression and the same red and violet cloak from before.
Krystin shot him a glare. “Maybe you should have.”
Actually, now that I thought about it, maybe the matches were part of Krystin’s escape plan too. You didn’t need magik to use them. But there were only so many cedo matches in each pack, and I’d never once met a Hunter who carried more than one book of them at a time.
Jerrick shrugged, then stepped forward. “I need each of you to hang a hand outside the bars.”
“So you can requirem us again?” I snapped. “I don’t think so.”
“You would do well to listen,” Mason said, his focus falling to me. A wave of uneasy chills cascaded down my spine. I tried not to let it show, but Mason grinned evilly anyway.
“Yeah, and you’d do well to shut the fuck up,” I replied. “The whole lot of you are cowards.”
“Ava,” Ben warned.
I didn’t care. Not anymore. They’d killed Jeremiah. They refused to even open the door and talk to us. We were a show, mere playthings, and nothing more. Darkness had always considered us that: tools to be used and food to feed themselves.
Well, the next thing I’d be feeding was Mason’s temple, with my first. Preferably lined with steel.
Mason approached the cage, this time in front of Kian. Kian instantly backed up a step, rubbing shoulders with Brian.
“Just do it,” Ben said, sounding defeated.
“No. This is exactly what they want,” I said.
“And I can’t let someone else die on my watch,” Ben said. “Just do it, Ava.”
Brian looked to Ben. “And what’s to say they’re not just going to kill us all anyway instead of re-upping the requirem? It’s not like Mason had any qualms about attacking an imprisoned, powerless man before.”