by Jessica Gunn
A light film of smoke coated the bar but stopped as if magikally contained to that area. And that was where I found her. Krystin sat perched on a stool, elbows on the bar counter as she leaned over and talked in earnest to the bartender. Like whatever they were speaking about had to be done quickly and discreetly. Too bad this was a public place. Why’d she even come here after we’d just decided our game plan, no matter how vague that game plan was?
I nodded to the man—demon, I realized too late—acting as a bouncer at the door and marched up to the bar. The wall of smoke parted to let me through, then swam back into place as if I’d never displaced it to begin with.
Coughing my lungs clear, I slid onto the stool next to Krystin and leaned over. “You really have to stop going off on your own. That’s not very team player-like.” I flagged down the bartender in the time it took her to register my presence. “Jack please.”
Krystin stiffened beside me. “Only planned to be gone an hour or two.”
I shrugged as the bartender returned with my drink. “Me too.”
“Stop following me,” she said.
“Then stop disappearing. I thought we had a plan.”
“We do.”
My grip on my drink tightened and I threw it back. The whiskey burned my throat, made me want more, but I squelched the desire. The last thing I needed was to backtrack too far. A drink, maybe two. That’d be fine. But if I fell all the way back to the amount I’d drunk after Riley had been taken… Not even Krystin would be able to drag me out.
“I’m allowed to leave the house, Ben,” Krystin said. She tipped her glass toward the bartender. “I needed a drink and I wanted to speak to Drew. Sometimes he gets information regarding… movements of certain individuals, shall we say.”
I lifted my gaze to the bartender. “Dangerous use of your occupation, don’t you think?”
Drew’s dark eyes narrowed. “I might bartend at the Guild, but it’s no secret my ties are with the Circles. Reluctantly, but they’re there.” In the corner of his right eye was a tiny birthmark. It looked familiar, just like how Alzan had rung a bell—things I should know from my training days at Headquarters but couldn’t recall offhand.
“Right,” I said and lifted my empty glass. Drew pulled out a bottle and refilled it.
“Drew’s my cousin,” Krystin offered finally.
“I’m a Cassano witch,” Drew said.
“Who happens to hear a lot of things, including possibly where Shadow Crest is hiding these days,” Krystin added.
“Or what Giyano’s been up to,” Drew said. “Which, as it turns out, is a lot. He might be the busiest most-wanted criminal in the Fire Circle.”
And yet, still not number one on said most-wanted list. That belonged to someone else. Someone whose resume was a lot scarier: Kinder, once wife to Aloysius, the creator of Darkness himself. Lady Azar’s mother.
Krystin sipped her beer. “See? I was being productive after all.”
“That’s not the point. Did you come out here trying to find Giyano himself?”
“I wish,” she said. “He’s one heck of an asshole. He’s killed too many times for my tastes.”
Which implied she had a certain number that was okay? What?
“Oh, don’t give me that look,” she said. “You know what I mean. Besides, he’s got some personal grudge against our team and I want to know why. Figured it was best to track him down. At least then we’ll have some semblance of surprise.”
I closed my eyes against the onslaught of frustration working its way through me. “As much as I hate him and would love nothing more to see him dead, Jaffrin’s right. We need to hold off on going after him. And believe me, that hurts like hell to admit.”
“Jaffrin’s an idiot,” Krystin said.
Drew snorted. “Maybe you should take this to a booth where people can’t hear you talk shit about our Leader, eh? Dissent in the ranks and whatnot?” He gestured over my shoulder to some demons. My fingers itched toward the knife at my side. Except I couldn’t do anything about them listening in other than moving my seat.
I nodded and waved Krystin away from the bar. We resettled opposite each other into a booth on the far wall. After the beat down she’d given the team during training the other day, I was grateful for the distance. It wasn’t that Krystin was menacing—because she wasn’t. In fact, she was beautiful, but in a fierce, intimidating way. Like her beauty acted as another weapon in her arsenal, even if she didn’t have the personality to match that kind of duplicity.
“So,” Krystin said. “Are you here to put me in timeout or something? We’re not kids, Ben.”
I relaxed against the back of the booth. “Obviously not. But we are, for lack of a better word, soldiers. For Good. For the Circles. We take out demons so the balance stays—”
“Balanced?” she offered, a wry smile twisting her features. “I’m aware.”
“Then why go baiting Giyano?” I asked. “If Jaffrin said to wait, there has to be a reason and I’d say All Hallows’ Eve is a pretty damn good one.”
It wouldn’t mean a significant rise in demonic power, but it was a respected day for a reason. Something about the balance between Good and Evil opening up and leaking power. Oozing it and giving it away without regard for which side the receivers stood on.
Many a coup attempt had been made on Aloysius on All Hallows’ Eve, and many Hunters had fought or died trying to stop it from happening elsewhere. If Lady Azar or Giyano, or both of them, was waiting for that day to do whatever it is they needed Riley for, I didn’t want to make things worse.
But then, by that logic, maybe going after Giyano now before next week was smart.
Krystin’s grin widened. “Now you get it.”
My gaze met her icy blue one. “Are you psychic or something? Or am I just that easy to read?”
“Both,” she laughed, the sound of it like pure sunshine after days stuck in fog and rain. “You’re an open book, Ben. I appreciate that about you. And while I’m not psychic—I don’t usually see the future or anything—I do have telepathy. It’s clamped down most of the time.” She leaned over the table. “Unfortunately for you, your open book status makes you really hard to block out.”
I cleared my throat. “Fantastic.” Exactly how much of my thoughts had she already heard?
She waved it off. “Don’t worry. I’m trying with everything in me not to pry.”
“Good. My secrets are my own.”
An eyebrow raised, her eyes blazing blue. “But you do have some?”
“Everybody does, Krystin. It’s part of life.” And if she’d be kind enough to let this conversation go, I’d be able to keep this part of my life secret for as long as possible. Which didn’t fill me with hope now that Giyano had turned up again.
Krystin shrugged. “Not me. The Fire Circle has made it impossible for me to have enough free time to even think about doing something secret-worthy.”
I stopped myself from telling her how lucky she was that she didn’t have time to think of everything we’d both lost, but I bit my tongue. She hadn’t been lucky. None of us had been. She might not have been missing a son, but she’d been dragged into this war, kicking and screaming.
Because I didn’t kid myself anymore—war wasn’t coming. It was already here. It’d been here since the beginning of time.
I nodded toward the bar. “A Cassano witch?”
“My mother and his are cousins by marriage,” Krystin said. “Drew and I trained together when we were kids. He’s been like the little brother I never had, only he gets into more shit than I do and he likes to get deeper into all of it.”
“Like bartending at Hunter’s Guild,” I said. Seriously, who volunteered for that? Protection magiks or not, you couldn’t pay me enough to work here.
“Yeah,” she said, smacking the table once. “Like that. He said he’d keep an ear out for us. Maybe he’ll uncover something.”
A flash of misplaced anger scorched through me. “You’d let
your family put themselves in danger like that?”
“Not like I can stop him, Ben. He’s his own man, family or not. And with the way this war’s tilting… we’re all going to end up doing things we don’t want to do. Someday, somehow. Drew believes in what he’s doing, and he’s using it to help the Fire Circle. I can’t ask much else of him.” She glanced down at the table. “Do you have family, Ben? Besides Rachel and this guy that Shadow Crest has, I mean. I’m assuming he’s family if Giyano’s using him to bait you.”
“‘This guy,’” I echoed, a bitter chuckle on my lips. “He’s not just some guy, Krystin. Riley’s a kid.”
Her eyes widened, her face flushing. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask.” Not that I’d given her a chance to do so.
She frowned. “I’m sorry, Ben.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head slowly. “He’s also mine. Riley is my son.”
Her gaze snapped to mine as her body stiffened. “Shit.”
“Yeah. Shit.” I ran a hand through my hair, pausing to rub my neck. “He’s two years old now. His mother and I don’t talk anymore because of what happened.”
Horror seeped its way into her eyes. “Giyano kidnapped him?”
I nodded as my throat closed around all the words I hadn’t yet said. The story I hadn’t wanted to tell Krystin. But somehow it felt like it might settle whatever this was between us. “We were out at the park a few weeks after he was born. As we were walking back, Giyano and three other demons attacked. I had my powers by then, but I wasn’t trained. I couldn’t do much before he used requirem on me.” In a millisecond, I’d been powerless. Useless in the one moment I’d actually needed my powers the most.
Her eyes searched mine. For what, I wasn’t sure. Finally, she said, “You’re a lightning elemental user.”
“Yep.”
“That’s it,” she said. “Nothing… special, not power-wise?”
Her words cut through me straight to my inferiority complex, but I shoved them down. She didn’t mean it to offend, but rather as an observation. A correct one.
“Exactly,” I said. “To this day, I don’t know why Giyano and Lady Azar kidnapped him. Why, of all the other potential lightning elemental users out there, they picked Riley.” My whole body clenched, revolting against my every thought about that night. “The only thing I can think of is because he was so relatively unprotected. I didn’t know about the Circles back then. I could barely make a spark on command.”
Krystin’s forehead creased with thought as she chewed on her cheek.
“Think you might have an answer to that question?” I asked her. She did appear to know a lot more about magik than I did. But Jaffrin should have known just as much, if not more. Which meant if Krystin knew the answer, Jaffrin did too. And he’d been lying.
My fists clenched. Calm down. Stop jumping to conclusions.
Krystin shook her head slowly, eyes narrowing. “Not… really. I mean, even if Riley turned out to one day be this massively powerful lightning wielder—or whatever magik shows up—he wouldn’t be now. That’s not how it works. You grow into your powers the older you are.”
That was exactly what Jaffrin had said. So now we were back to ground zero. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out.” Eventually. Even if I had to fight all of Shadow Crest by myself.
“Giyano’s done us all damage. Nate’s parents. My father. Your son. There’s something he wants with us.” Her eyes weren’t focused on any one thing, but rather on something in the distance only she saw. “Dunno what yet. But when I do, you’ll be the first person I tell.”
“Maybe he had massive family issues,” I offered. “You know, before he was a demon.”
Krystin smirked, though none of this was funny at all. She stood from the booth. “Maybe. Either way, we should get out of here.” She paid our tab and we headed for the Guild’s front door. “I was serious when I said I’d be quick.”
“Lead the way, then.”
Chapter 11
KRYSTIN
I had a hunch about Ben’s son. Really, it was more like a mini-hunch. And not a good one. The Power. Problem was: that didn’t make sense. The Power hasn’t been seen in thousands of years. Supposedly, anyway. And because of the rarity of that magik, Hunters wouldn’t have been exposed to knowledge of it during training. The only reason the witch lines knew was because some of them, thousands of years ago, had that same rare type of power—a magik that could rival mine. And because magik types tended to run in family lines…
Crap. I’d have to do a ton more research—real research, not go-get-a-drink-with-demons research—to be sure. But if I was right, if that’s why Lady Azar had had Giyano kidnap Riley…
All of Boston was in big, big trouble. Because when a cianza blew, as they did from time to time, they didn’t go quietly. They made atomic blasts look like children’s sparklers on the Fourth of July. And that was without the Power being involved, that ancient force of nature only a handful of individuals had ever claimed to tame since the beginning of time itself. And if Riley had that ability to wield both elemental and ether magik at the same time, Lady Azar was absolutely going to abuse it for something big. Like tipping a cianza’s natural balance.
But I wouldn’t tell Ben any of this. Not until I knew for sure. Jaffrin would laugh me all the way back to the first day of training if I came forward with my hunch—especially if I turned out to be wrong. That was the likely scenario after all. Even if it was the best explanation.
The late fall air bit into my cheeks and lips as we left Hunter’s Guild. We walked into the woods, aiming to be on the other side of the magik wall as quickly as possible. I’d made enough enemies to never stick around too long outside of the Guild, and too many had heard Ben’s remarks about Jaffrin’s idiocy.
“We should train more right away,” I said, filling the silence as we walked. “I’m fairly certain we’ll be asked to go up to Salem on All Hallows’ Eve. Not sure what his flagship team’s capable of doing, but Jaffrin knows he can count on the four of us for magik.”
“Oh,” Ben said, turning to me with a smirk. “Now you trust our magikal capabilities?”
I punched him in the shoulder. “Not a chance, sparky.”
“Good to know,” Ben said, grinning. “Sparky?”
Shrugging, I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Fits, don’t you think?” Something akin to butterflies flitted about my stomach, but I pushed them aside. I’d meant the nickname as nothing more than a joke, but the way Ben’s face lit up made me almost consider it something more.
Thing was, Ben wasn’t as idiotic as I’d accused him of being. He was smart and calculating, but all of that seemed to disappear the one time we’d fought demons or when some sort of emotional squall brewed up. That’s when Ben became a storm of his own. Still, I admired his courage, no matter what that got him into or how easily it turned into blind arrogance. I knew I wasn’t all that different.
No matter how volatile our tenuous friendship, if you could call it that, got, we were of the same spirit. That much was obvious.
And maybe that’s why I let the butterflies fly around a bit longer than I should have. Ben was the first man I’d met who could not only handle me, but volley the challenges back. And it felt downright amazing, like I was finally able to be… not entirely myself, but something close enough.
Rustling sounded behind us, branches snapping, crunching underweight. I darted my gaze to the surrounding woods. “Hear that?”
Ben nodded, his hand already moving to the knife sheath I knew he kept on his waist. “Yeah. Are we past the wall?”
I nodded. “It let me punch you, so I’d say so.” I looked around, but peering into the darkness of a forest at night was pointless. Ben’s form right next to me was barely visible, forget anything far off.
“Think we should leave?” Ben asked.
“And let whoever’s here chase us away?” I reached for my own knife and pulled it out of
its sheath. “I think I’d rather find out why they’re stalking us.”
A mighty roar sounded, a human voice but amplified somehow, and two figures charged out of the darkness. I ducked past the first one, leaving him for Ben to deal with, and knocked my shoulder into the other figure’s gut. Lightning sparked behind me, lighting the area from Ben’s palm, and a flash of burgundy eyes appeared in front of me before the demon disappeared into darkness. Not as if blending into it because it was dark again, but he literally shifted into shadow.
“Uh—that’s new!” I shouted, turning to help Ben.
He traded blows with the other demon and slammed a ball of lightning into him with a hiss, then dropped to the forest floor to knock his feet out from under him. Ben brought his knife up fast, slashing the demon’s chest and arm, knocking him into a nearby tree. Before the demon reacted, Ben charged and plunged his knife into the demon’s heart and twisted. The heart—home of all magik inside of a person.
An easy mark. Too easy sometimes.
The demon’s skin turned ashen grey, dried up like a mummy. Ben had the demon lit up with a cedo match seconds later, just in case.
I peered into the darkness again, trying to sense where the second demon had gone. I’d never seen any magik user—demon or not—do that. It was like he’d turned into darkness itself. But that didn’t make sense. Darkness wasn’t an element, and ether magik typically imitated the elements and included mental tricks. But just because I didn’t know something didn’t mean it wasn’t true. I’d learned that the hard way far too many times.
I reached out with my mind, though it was pointless. My Blackwood line traits didn’t do what I needed them to do. I read minds and got the occasional vision, but I couldn’t search for something out of nothing. There didn’t even appear to be a mind to read.
“Where did the other one go?” Ben asked, whipping around as he searched for the demon.
I shook my head. “Don’t know. He vanished.”
An evil laugh permeated the air next to my ear. I turned just in time to see the demon reform, a wisp of dark grey smoke against the night, and strike out. I blocked his uppercut and jabbed him three times in return, but he held his ground, latching on to me with too-big hands and throwing me up into the air.