by Jessica Gunn
“Just the one demon, then?” Alexander asked. “We have ways of tracking you, Ms. Blackwood. We know where you were.”
Just not what I was doing. I gulped and glanced over at Ben. His expression was unreadable for once. “It’s not what it sounds like.”
Ben caught my gaze and rose from his chair, red blotches appearing in his cheeks. “You did, didn’t you? Are you serious?”
Fuck. What were the chances these twins were as telepathic as Ben appeared to be right now?
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Giyano? Hell no. I was out asking around about Zanka. I went to the places I used to go, like Hunter’s Guild. I figured someone out there might know where he is or what his story’s all about. I racked up a pretty decent bill if you want proof.” I searched my pockets for the whiskey shots receipt, then crumpled it up into a ball. I threw the ball at the Alexander, who caught it.
He opened the receipt and leaned over to show Iris.
“See?” I said. “That’s all the proof you’ll need.”
Someone’s phone went off before either of the twins responded. Ben nearly jumped out of his chair, pulling a new phone out of his pocket. One I hadn’t seen before. He fumbled it, letting it fall to the ground before picking it up and managing to get it to his ear before it stopped ringing.
“Sandra? Hello?” He paused, expression tight and worried. “What?” Another pause, during which my stomach twisted over itself. Ben wasn’t supposed to have Sandra’s new number. He wasn’t supposed to be in contact with them at all unless supervised by Jaffrin. “Wait—slow down, tell me—” Then she shouted, so loud that I heard it from where I stood, even though I couldn’t make out her actual words.
Ben’s face paled for a moment to a sheet of pure white. But he pulled himself together, a mask of pure calm sliding down over his expression. He shut down, closing out the rest of the world. Apathy on Ben was terrifying because whatever Ben was, it wasn’t unemotional. “I’ll be there in less than five minutes. No. I can’t explain. I mean, I will when I’m there.” A pause. “Yes, really five minutes. Bye.”
He hung up the phone and stared at me, wide-eyed. Then his stare moved to Rachel. “That was Sandra. There was an attack. She’s…”
My heart stopped.
“What, Ben?” Rachel asked as she crossed the room to her cousin. “What’s going on?”
“She’s in the hospital,” he said, eyes brimming with tears, his hands shaking. “She was hurt pretty bad.”
“In an attack?” I asked.
His gaze met mine, within it a sadness so great, I felt as though I’d been crushed beneath the weight of a mountain. “Riley is gone.”
Chapter 13
BEN
I’d been to Sandra’s aunt’s house before, so I started there, landing my teleportante in her backyard. Screw the daylight. If anyone was around to see my teleport, let them think what they wanted about it.
I ran around to the front of the house and knocked on Aunt Betty’s door, constantly moving my feet. My arms. Anything to make it feel like I was doing something. I hadn’t been there this time. Without me to protect them, Sandra and Riley had been attacked. Riley had been kidnapped. Again.
Sandra’s aunt opened the door not a minute later. She glanced me over as though I were a random passerby. But after a few seconds, her eyes shone with recognition. “Ben?”
“Hi, Aunt Betty.” She’d made me call her that from the very first moment I’d met her when I was eighteen. It’d been Sandra’s and my high school graduation party. “I heard about Sandra. Where is she? Which hospital?”
Aunt Betty’s eyes fell, a sob escaping her. “The general hospital.”
“Perfect.” I turned to start running. It couldn’t be that far.
“Not in this town,” Aunt Betty said.
I froze. “What?”
Aunt Betty’s eyes brimmed with tears. “A month ago she said she had to move because of work. So she packed up and left with Riley. They moved a few towns over, but it’s an hour drive or so.”
And way too far to run. “Oh.”
Aunt Betty frowned. “I thought she’d have told you.”
I shook my head. “We don’t talk much.” Shit. I’d never been to these towns in Canada before, so there was no way I could just teleportante over there either. Unless… “Can I borrow your car? I’ll bring it back tonight. I just want to go check on Sandra.”
Her brow furrowed. She leaned forward through the doorway and looked around. “How did you get here without a car?”
“A cab,” I lied. “It was expensive.”
“But the assault only happened a few hours ago…”
Crap. I already shouldn’t be here. I couldn’t go ahead and reveal the existence of magik and the Hunter Circles to Aunt Betty while I was at it. “I got on the first plane available. But I’m here now. Please? I’ll put gas in it and everything.”
Her forehead creased. Tears spilled down her cheeks, but finally she nodded. “Let me get you the keys.”
I ignored every speed limit sign along the way to the hospital Sandra had been admitted to, stopping barely long enough to put the car in park. I ran inside the emergency room and straight to the front desk. My palms had slicked with sweat somewhere along the forty-five minute drive, and that I had breathed at all was only evident by me still being alive.
My heart was in my throat as I asked to see Sandra. “Please let me back there to see her. She’s my ex, my kid’s mother.”
The nurse behind the desk considered me carefully. “Let me see your ID.”
I handed it over, thankful to every god out there that I’d had my wallet in my pocket when I’d left the team’s house an hour ago. Had it really only been an hour? An entire lifetime or two could have gone by and it would have felt the same.
The nurse looked over my ID and waved me on back. I was tired of meeting Sandra like this, with one of us in the hospital. From her after her car accident when we’d found out we were having a boy to the morning she’d been called to Boston General to pick up my broken ass after a demon fight gone bad.
I was tired of it all.
The nurse led me to Sandra’s room. She was sleeping, tucked beneath sheets on the hospital bed. Her face was peaceful in slumber despite the abrasions covering her cheeks and forehead. The IV line in her arm dripped steadily.
“Thank you,” I said to the nurse.
“You can stay with her until eleven. That’s when visitor hours stop until the afternoon.”
When the nurse left, I dragged over a chair to Sandra’s bedside and dropped into it, my head in my hands. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted Jaffrin. It wasn’t his fault Riley had been kidnapped again, but it sure as hell was his fault that the Hunters assigned to watch over Sandra and Riley hadn’t been good enough. Strong enough. Well-versed in their magik.
It should have been our team watching out for them. It should have been Sandra who’d moved into our living room, not our Ether Head Circle babysitters who did nothing but stalk us until they found something to reprimand us about. Who knew what they were doing now, having watched me lose my shit and just up and leave.
My stomach rolled over itself. They’d asked about this, about protecting Riley. And here we’d gone and lost him.
My eyes stung with tears as they built behind my closed eyelids. I blinked them away, wiping the tears from existence. No time for crying, Hallen.
They rolled on down my cheeks anyway.
“Ben?”
I looked up. Sandra watched me with red, puffy eyes. “Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you weren’t with Aunt Betty anymore. It was an hour drive and—”
Her face crumpled and she started crying, an awful keening sound. “He’s gone. They broke into the house, attacked me, and took him. They stole Riley!”
I scooted to the edge of my seat and reached for her hand. “Sandra, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to find him and bring him back.”
Her eyes narrowed through the tears st
reaming down her face. “That’s what you said last time.”
“And I brought him home.”
“To be kidnapped again. What’s going on? Why does this keep happening to us?” Her shoulders and hands shook with every word. It was only when she wiped away her tears that I saw the cast on her left hand. The bruises on her arm.
“Sandra…” God, she’d been beaten the hell up. All because of me. Because of that fucking lightning strike that’d flipped our entire world upside down. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” she cried. “Explain to me what’s happening for real this time. You said you had it handled. That the bad guys were taken care of. But clearly that was bullshit.”
I couldn’t help but look her over again, cataloging every abrasion and broken bone I saw. “Did they have red eyes?”
Her brow furrowed. “What?”
“Their eyes, the attackers’. Were they red?”
“Why the hell does that matter?” she spat.
“It’s important, Sandra.” I shifted in my chair and met her gaze. “Look, I promise I’ll tell you everything, but I need to know this first. Did they have red eyes?” Though it was doubtful anyone besides Shadow Crest’s demons were at fault, I wanted to be one hundred percent sure.
Sandra stared at me blankly for long moments before nodding slowly. “Yes. They all did, actually. That’s so weird, Ben. And there was fire, lots of it. But the house didn’t burn down.” She lifted up her left hand. “It’s not broken; it’s a burn. From when one of the men ripped Riley out of my arms. The one with a scar down his face.”
My blood went ice cold. “Fire?”
No. Not Giyano, not again. Not after everything.
She nodded. “Yes. It was the strangest, scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. Ben, you need to tell me what’s happened to my baby boy.”
I rubbed my jaw, my hands shaking with anger. With guilt. My fingers curled and uncurled into fists. “I’m going to kill him.”
Sandra’s eyes widened. “Kill?” Her tears fell harder now and she pressed a hand to her mouth. “What are you talking about?”
You have to tell her.
I’d kept her in the dark on purpose. This was supposed to be easy: send Sandra and Riley to Canada to keep them safe. Kill Lady Azar and every member of Shadow Crest. Save Alzan thanks to Krystin and Shawn. Take Riley and Sandra home.
But of course the world hated that plan. It hated me.
She had to know. She deserved to after this. But I had no reason to hope she’d believe me. Especially when she’d thrown me out of the house the first time.
“Sandra,” I said, leveling her with a glance, “I want to tell you what’s really going on. And I will. But you have to have an open mind. You need to listen this time, to believe me.”
Her brow only twisted more, confusion reigning. “This time?”
“Do you remember right after Riley was taken as a baby, I came home and told you a man had said a demon had taken him? That he’d help me find him?”
She stared at me, mouth agape. “Vaguely.”
How much was too much information? What would make her believe the truth?
“Demons are responsible this time, too,” I said. “After Riley was taken, I joined an organization that fights those demons. And I know how crazy that sounds, believe me. I didn’t think it was real either. But I knew magik was.”
Sandra shook her head in quick motions. “No. This is insane.”
“I asked you about the color of their eyes because unless the demons show their magik, their eye color is the only indication. Although it sounds like the demon who attacked you this morning showed you his magik.”
“There wasn’t any magic, Ben,” she said. “It was a fire. A fire had started somehow and the man caught on fire and that’s how I got burned.”
I smiled sadly. “He was controlling it, Sandra. He started the fire because he willed it to his hands. The demon’s name is Giyano. He’s known for having fire magik.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You know the name of my son’s kidnapper?”
I held her gaze even as my guts roiled, twisting around themselves. “He’s the same demon that stole Riley right from his stroller three years ago. The one I sent you to Canada to escape. The demon who is tormenting my fellow demon-hunting friends.”
Slowly, Sandra’s eyes lowered, as if she actually believed me. Maybe she was just humoring me instead. “Ben, this is crazy.”
“It’s not, I promise,” I said. “I can prove it to you right now if you want.”
She looked up at me. “About the demons?”
“All of it. Every part of this started with me.”
“You? How?”
I shifted in my seat as memories of the dark abyss I’d been stuck in for three months surfaced in my mind. “Do you remember when I was struck by lightning out on Grandpa’s lake?”
Sandra’s eyes wrinkled. “Yes. That was horrible.”
“Yeah. More happened that night than me being struck by lightning, though. I, uh… I gained the ability to control lightning itself.” Before she could question it, I lifted my open palm and willed tiny lightning sparks to crackle around my fingers. Not a full-blown ball of lightning, just a few showers of sparks to get the point across.
Sandra’s eyes widened, her mouth falling open as she sat up in her hospital bed. “Ben!”
“I gained magik. And because of me, because of how Rachel and I went about investigating this magik, I drew the attention of some pretty bad demons. And then they kidnapped Riley because of his magik.”
She looked at me for a few empty seconds before reaching for her “call nurse” button.
I grabbed her hand, lightning gone, and leveled her with a look. “You said you’d have an open mind about this.”
“This is crazy,” she snapped. “My son does not have some ridiculous ability or power or whatever superhero thing is going on here. He’s just a kid!”
“Who has a power so rare that no one has seen it for centuries. Only one other person alive has the Power, and unless she shows up and decides to save Riley from Shadow Crest on a whim, it’s me alone against all of them.” I shook my head. “But I’ll save him. I promise you that.”
Sandra dropped her hand away from the “call nurse” button and she stared at me, face blank. “You’re serious about this. Everything you said is true.”
“Yes. Look, you trusted me once. Loved me, even. We dated for almost eight years, Sandra. And yes, I’ve lied to you in the past. Mostly to cover up all this demon-fighting shit. But this, our son’s life, I’d never lie to you about. And I’m so sorry that you got caught up in this. That Canada wasn’t safe enough. That I wasn’t there.” Tears tumbled down my face, but I didn’t bother wiping them away. Nothing would make any of this pain stop until Riley was in my arms again. “I just wanted to be there.”
I held my face in my hands as my shoulders shook. The tears didn’t stop flowing. Minutes passed by that felt like hours. And then, all of a sudden, a warm hand rested on my shoulder. I looked up and found Sandra staring at me.
“You find him,” she said. “You bring him back to me.”
“I will. I promise you. I just don’t know when, or how, or where to begin looking.”
I shouldn’t have said those things. A brave front was the best answer. But I was so tired of lying to Sandra, so tired of promising things to people I couldn’t fulfill.
I was just tired.
Sandra’s eyes hardened. “You will find him. And when this is all over, you will leave him with me. Where he’s safe.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that in her care, Riley was the most vulnerable he’d ever be.
Chapter 14
KRYSTIN
The last half of my whiskey bottle had called to me all day, but I’d successfully ignored it. Sort of. Ben had been gone almost all morning, while the team and I sat in the living room with the Ether Head Circle twins, praying they hadn’t already told Chairman
Otto about Ben’s son being missing. But I’d kept an eye on them the entire time. No phones. No computer. So unless they were telepathic, I doubted they’d told anyone yet.
My eyes narrowed as I watched them watch the television. They seemed innocuous, sitting there like normal people. But something was off about them, and it wasn’t their connection to the Ether Head Circle. Were they really witches and just good at hiding their auras? Maybe. I’d hidden mine plenty of times.
The front door slammed open and Ben charged through, stopping only to swing the door shut again. Rachel rose from where she sat on the couch and met her cousin halfway into the living room.
“What happened?” she asked, her face a mask of worry. “Talk to me.”
Ben’s eyes were wild, scanning the room for something and coming up apparently short because his glare cut to Rachel. “They took him. Shadow Crest found Riley and took him straight from Sandra’s arms.”
“Is she okay?” Rachel asked.
He shook his head. “No. They attacked her. She’s got a bunch of cuts and bruises and a burned arm. Second degree. She’ll be at the hospital until her aunt’s allowed to take her home. But honestly, she’s probably safer in public.” Ben scrubbed his face with the palms of his hands. “It wouldn’t be the first time Shadow Crest’s sent demons to the hospital to intimidate her.”
Rachel’s face fell. “Ben…”
“No. I’ve already thought about bringing her here, but I doubt Jaffrin will green-light it.” His glare moved from Rachel to Alexander and Iris, who’d stood and were watching the exchange. “I’m sure you two would report it, anyway.”
“Your son is missing?” Iris asked, one eyebrow lifted.
“Yes. Are you happy now?” Ben shot back.
Alexander exchanged a look with his sister, then turned back to Ben. “We were right to think Riley’s protection wasn’t enough.”
Ben’s fists curled. Lightning crackled around them. “Then why the fuck didn’t you do something?” he roared. “You all sit there in your fucking bunker watching the world burn to the ground. The Ether Head Circle knew about Riley, about the Power, and still you let him be guarded by Hunters who weren’t powerful enough? If you knew, why didn’t you act? Why didn’t you do your goddamn jobs?”