by Jessica Gunn
“Clearly,” I snapped.
“I can’t hold her,” Nate said, his voice shaking. “Whatever Kinder did, Krystin’s too strong now.”
Shawn gazed dully at the stone’s remains. In a dead voice he said, “That was one of the stones Krystin and I needed to get to Alzan. It’s been here all along.”
Krystin banged her fists against the shield again. A splinter formed in the ether.
Nate’s body went rigid as he pulsed more power into the shield. “Ben, you need to tell me what to do. I’m not strong enough to hold Krystin for long. And all the destruction downstairs… Jaffrin…”
“Dacher’s gone, too,” Rachel called from the floor by Jaffrin’s side. “Evacuated. You’re in charge, Ben. There’s no one left alive at Headquarters.”
The horrors we’d witnessed on the way upstairs. The blood and burns. The hallways on fire and our fallen fellow Hunters. There was no way Krystin wasn’t a willing party to this. You didn’t go and kill that many people, didn’t utterly destroy Fire Circle Headquarters, under some spell. That wasn’t how magik like this worked, that much I did know.
So only one question remained. “Why?” I looked up at Krystin and found wild, thinking eyes meeting mine. Even when captured, she was still trying to find a way to get out. To run. “Why did you do this?”
Krystin’s gaze was colder than any winter I’d ever experienced, even the first one without Riley. “Because this war is a joke and the only real danger is the Fire Circle. Every decision they make places its Hunters and Alzan in the crossfire. All that matters is Cianza Alzan.”
She formed flames inside the shield, sent them swirling around her like a tornado, growing them in size and intensity until Nate cried out.
“Can’t hold it,” he grunted. “Shit.”
The flames inside the ball turned white before sliding into that almost-rainbow pattern. A mix of fire and magik.
“She’s tapping into what Alzanian magik she can,” Shawn said. “I can feel it snapping taut between us. Ah!” He cried out as he dropped to the ground.
The shield fell with him as Nate bent to one knee, wincing.
“It’s here,” Krystin laughed. “There’s that Alzanian magik.”
The remaining shield splintered, cracks crawling across its surface. Nate’s eyes squeezed shut.
I threw lightning out around the shield, hoping it would help. Anything to keep Krystin contained. But as soon as my lightning touched the ether shield, it exploded and sent us all airborne.
Chapter 27
KRYSTIN
The explosion knocked me backward through a wall and out into the hallway. All breath whooshed from my lungs as pain ricocheted my body. A coppery liquid coated my tongue, and my skin burned.
I looked down. My clothes were on fire. I patted out the flames but couldn’t save my sheared-off pants and sleeves. The tattoo on my ankle showed freely for the first time in years. But now the tattoo burned, searing my skin as it began to glow.
God. Make it stop! I bent down and lit a fire in my hand, burning away the top layer of the tattoo, crying out as the flames… burned away magik? As soon as the tattoo was damaged, so was the pain. Just like Shawn had done to his magik-binding tattoo when Kinder had first attacked us.
Maybe I was just numb to the world.
I forced myself to stand amongst the wreckage. Wood paneling had been blown out with me, small fires littered across every surface. An ironic way for Fire Circle Headquarters to finally be destroyed. Just as Kinder had wanted.
“Stop!” Shawn stood before me, his Fire Circle knife held out in one hand. “Please, Krystin. Whatever this is, you’ve gone too far. Let us help you. Let me help you. I understand what you’re feeling right now.”
I smiled but felt no happiness. “You wouldn’t hurt me.” Even if Shawn knew what it was like to have demon magik inside of him, he’d never know the sting of this betrayal by the Circles. By the team.
Shawn held his ground. “You’re not exactly giving me a choice.” Blood seeped down the side of his face. His left eyebrow had been split open, giving him a look that almost mirrored Giyano’s scar.
“Then get out of the way,” I said. “The Fire Circle deserves this. They knew, Shawn. And they’re going to take out more than just Shadow Crest with our magik. Jaffrin had that stone the entire time we failed to unlock our powers on our own. Kinder was right.”
He stepped toward me. “No, she wasn’t. Why don’t you see that? You’re not stupid, Krystin.”
I fell into a battle-ready stance, fire in my palm. “Neither are you. There’s still time, Shawn. Come with me.”
He shook his head slowly. Took another step. “You and Kinder killed dozens of Hunters tonight. Might have killed the Leader of the Fire Circle. I don’t even know if Ben and Nate are even alive in there. If Jaffrin’s died yet. Whatever your plan was, Krystin, you’ve won. You did it. Congratulations.”
I blinked. My plan?
My vision blurred, body shaking. None of this was my plan. I’d only wanted to escape the Fire Circle, not destroy it. But Kinder…
Kinder.
My legs turned to jelly, sending me stumbling until confusion and exhaustion slammed me to my knees. My mind reeled back, as though its control had been restored to me. What the hell had Kinder done?
Oh, god. I looked through the hole in the wall I’d flown through, at Jaffrin on the ground. At Rachel bent over him, trying to stem the flow of blood from his… missing hand?
A flash of Kinder slicing it off crossed my mind’s eye. Of me attacking my team. Of Shawn and Nate trying to hold me, to get through to me.
Of Kinder leaving me behind to answer for all of this.
“Sh-Shawn, I…” I shook my head. “Oh, fuck.”
“Enough of this, Krystin,” he said, his voice even. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not going to fall for your tricks anymore. Back down now or I’ll attack.”
As soon as he said the word ‘attack,’ a sharp clarity returned to my mind. My vision cleared, free from my own thoughts, as Kinder took over again and turned my mind into a blank slate. That need to please Kinder, to follow her orders, to become her puppet—and I recognized it as much this time—overcame me. I watched from the inside as my body disobeyed my direct commands and shot fire at Shawn. He dodged, rolling out of the way and up into my space. He lunged upward with his Fire Circle knife too quick for my body to react.
Pain sliced up my arm as he arched upward and disengaged. Blood poured out of my arm.
“Shawn,” I croaked as my arm turned red with blood. Please. See that this isn’t me. See past this to Kinder’s magik. The power she stole from Zanka.
But Shawn only watched, waiting for my next move.
My body revolted. I swung my palm up, whipping up a current of air that slammed into Shawn’s gut and pinned him up against the ceiling. Blood dripped from his chin onto the floor.
“Stop this,” he pleaded. “You’re going to cost us Alzan. This war. The world.”
Alzan. I stumbled again, the clarity in my mind faltering along with Kinder’s control. Alzan. Maybe that was the key. That was what Kinder had wanted all along, right?
I forced my body to stop moving, to stop listening to Kinder’s orders uttered only minutes ago, and focus on Shawn. On our shared destiny. On the power Kinder was trying to steal.
On Alzan. The city no one had seen in thousands of years. The city with a Cianza at its center that was so powerful, it could destroy entire planes of existence.
A white spark of magik flickered to life in my chest, warm and reassuring. It felt comforting, like coming home after college. Like finding the source of Shawn’s and my connection.
I gripped it, pulling the magik forward. Slowly, Shawn dropped from the ceiling as the wind currents holding him dissipated under my control. The Alzanian magik would draw me back. It had to.
It was my only option left.
But then Ben’s roar sounded from Jaffrin’s office and awoke Kinder’s com
mand all over again: Kill them all.
I shoved Shawn up into the ceiling with my magik but didn’t hold him there. He fell with an impact so hard, it knocked him out. Ben ran down the hall, his entire body surrounded in lightning. I matched him, growing flames around me until they smacked against each wall of the hallway.
“Requirem!”
I heard it but couldn’t tell where it had come from. Only when someone’s hand slapped against my back did I realize another Hunter had been behind me the entire time. Avery’s face swam into view, a hard look on his face.
My entire body felt as though it’d been cleaved in two. The rush of Kinder’s and my magik, the whiplash of all of it being gone in an instant.
I fell to the ground, knocking my knees against the hardwood floor beneath me as I gasped for air. My lungs seized, unable to bring in new oxygen. All around me, my flames died out. My magik shorted.
And so did Kinder’s hold on me. Her borrowed persuasion magik wore off with Avery’s word-magik.
Only then did the full weight of everything that’d occurred—all the destruction and death and pain—infiltrate my mind. I wheezed, the memories sliding past like a slideshow of hell. Every attack I’d made, every kill I’d committed against my will. A magik so strong that Zanka had been able to persuade even Giyano to do things he hadn’t wanted to do.
A magik only amplified tenfold in Kinder.
I looked up at Ben. My body shook harder as I met his wild, cold glare. “Ben, please.”
His jaw set hard, sliding into an everlasting look of disgust. “I knew you were bad news. For this team and for the Fire Circle as a whole. You’re a demon, a monster, just like the rest of them.”
Ben will never believe you. He’d never see past this to the truth, to Kinder’s ultimate plan: destroying the Fire Circle and all of its Hunters by killing it all from the inside out. Her plan was to save Alzan from her daughter on her own and to use me as a pawn to take out the Fire Circle in the meantime. She’d played us all and gotten her ultimate revenge. Now, she was probably laughing the entire way to Alzan.
And I would be killed or imprisoned for her revenge. For everything she’d forced me to do when all I’d ever wanted was to escape from this. All of this.
I forced one leg beneath me, then the other. Ben watched as I stood but didn’t move to attack. He was waiting for something. Not hesitating like he usually did but… waiting.
There was nothing left to say. If I didn’t leave now, give some space for things to settle down and for me to prepare any defense I might have, he’d kill me right here. Right now. For hurting Rachel. For nearly killing my entire team and the Leader of the Fire Circle. For everything.
Ben seethed, the curtain of red drawn down over his eyes. Toro toro. Nothing would stop him now, not even a patrol of Ether Head Circle Hunters.
I was a dead woman.
So, I just shook my head and said, “Teleportante.” It was the only magik, the only escape, I had left.
Chapter 28
BEN
Fog. Everything around me, inside of me, everything that made me me, was foggy. Confused. Blurred. As if the entire world had just been flipped upside down. I couldn’t breathe—my lungs refused to function. And the pain inching its way up my leg didn’t promise anything happy, either.
“Ben!”
Rachel’s keening broke through the blur, a startling clarity in a world that’d darkened. I spun, my vision clearing, as my feet carried me toward her without any conscious thought.
“Ben!” she cried again as I made my way to her. She’d been trapped by a fallen bookcase, her legs pinned beneath it. She had both hands in the air, holding it up with water to keep the rest of it from falling on a barely conscious Jaffrin. His shirt had soaked through with dark red blood. Smoke rose around them as small fires continued to burn throughout the room.
“Ben, please.”
I hurried to her side and helped her push the bookshelf upright once more. “Can you feel your legs?”
She nodded, tears streaming down her face. She tried to speak, but only a hiccup came out. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close. “You’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”
Rachel shook her head and pushed me away. “Shawn. Nate. The others.” She looked beneath her at Jaffrin.
Footsteps sounded in the room. I looked up as Avery hurried inside. He must have been the one to stop Krystin. “You need to call this in. I’ll help what wounded I can downstairs.”
“You’re the leader of the flagship team,” I said.
“Just call,” Avery snapped, then ran back into the hallway. His team must not have been in the fight, and now they were all helping the survivors.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
I reached into my pocket to call the Ether Head Circle, but my phone wasn’t there. I stood, frantically looking for anyone’s phone. Jaffrin’s sat on top of his desk. I rushed for it and dialed the Ether Head Circle for help. I looked across the room to Jaffrin as I told their Command everything, but every word I spoke saw him getting that much closer to death. There wasn’t time for healers.
“Just get here as fast as possible, you bastards. People are dead and dying.”
I hung up the desktop phone with a loud slam and rushed back to Rachel’s side. “You need to teleportante him and you to the hospital. Right into the alleyway outside. Go to the emergency room.”
“B-But Shawn. N-Nate.” Rachel’s shocked stare jumped from me to the hallway where Shawn had fought with Krystin, and to the hole leading that way where Nate now lay sprawled across debris. “I can’t leave you with them.”
I shook my head. “I’ll be right behind you. Go. Jaffrin’s about to bleed out.” I laid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I’ve got this, Rachel. Go.”
She nodded once, then disappeared with Jaffrin deeper into the city.
I forced myself onto shaky feet and stumbled over to where Nate lay unconscious. His torso was so bloody that I couldn’t tell where the original wound had come from or how… until I saw the slab of plywood frame peeking out from the area just above his left hip.
“Shit,” I hissed, reaching for his neck to find a pulse. There had to still be a pulse. I wouldn’t lose two members of my team tonight. I couldn’t. My fingers searched and searched until finally, a soft, steady rhythm pulsed beneath them. “Stay alive, buddy. I need to check on Shawn.”
Actually, I was scared to move Nate from the plywood sticking out of him. Would that make the wound worse?
A sharp groan emanated from the hallway—from Shawn. I looked up and watched him try to roll over, but halfway through the motion, he slid back to the ground and groaned again.
I climbed over Nate and through the hole in the wall. “Shawn?”
He made an unintelligible sound in reply.
“I’m coming. Hold on.”
Electrical wiring, nails, and other debris were in the way, and making my way over them proved harder than it should have. Pain spliced up my leg with each step, and it was only once I’d gotten into the hallway through the hole in the wall that I realized I must have broken something.
Still, I pushed onward to Shawn’s side and collapsed beside him. I put a hand on his shoulder and Shawn rolled, using me for help. When at last he lay face up, I almost wished he hadn’t.
“Oh, god. Are you okay, man?”
Shawn squeezed his eyes shut and stared at the ceiling, unmoving. His now crooked nose was dripping blood.
“Shawn?” I shook his shoulder. “Hey, stay with me. You were just here.” But I, of all people, knew how quickly one could shift in and out of the abyss of unconsciousness. “Shawn?”
“Everything… hurts…”
I nodded and glanced up at the ceiling. Krystin had thrown him up into it just to let him fall. There was no way he’d gotten out of that without broken bones. “We need to get you out of here and to a hospital. Nate too. He’s unconscious and in a bad way. Can you walk with me over t
o him?”
Shawn shook his head. “No… fucking… way.”
Fuck. I looked back to Nate’s limp body. If I moved him without having a plan to get him to help, he’d probably die. But if I tried to carry Shawn back into the office, I’d hurt him even more than he already was. Shawn might survive it. Nate wouldn’t.
I stood and bent down, grabbing hold of Shawn. “This is gonna hurt, man. I’m sorry.” And then I lifted him over my shoulders in a fireman carry.
Shawn shouted in pain, but it stopped abruptly as if he’d passed out. My leg screamed with every step back into Jaffrin’s office. The bones in my knee felt as though they’d been knocked loose, jiggling around in ways they shouldn’t be. I ignored it, swallowing down every inch of pain and any other emotions. I was alive. Alive. Which was more than I could say for everyone else inside of Headquarters right now.
So many people had died today.
Too many.
When I finally reached Nate’s side, I dropped to my good knee and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Stay with me, you guys. Teleportante.”
Blood spurted out of Nate’s gut the moment the three of us landed in the alleyway next to the emergency entrance to the hospital. I dropped Shawn unceremoniously to the ground. He grunted, but I ignored him and pressed both of my hands down against Nate’s wound. Blood crept out between my unhelpful hands.
“Shit,” I said. “Shit! Help! Anyone, someone! Please!”
I couldn’t leave Nate to get help. He’d bleed out faster than he already was. But Shawn needed help too. I looked over my shoulder at him. His eyes were closed, his face swelling like nobody’s business. Maybe it wasn’t just his nose, but his jaw or cheekbone or—I didn’t know. Krystin had fucked him up good.
“Help!” I screamed again, pressing harder down on Nate’s abdomen. “Shit.” With one hand, I pulled off my shirt as best I could and shoved it underneath my hands, hoping it’d help stop the flow of blood.
“Is everything okay?” someone shouted from the mouth of the alleyway.