by Jessica Gunn
“Need help with that?” I asked, one hand holding the back of my neck. My voice wavered despite my attempts at appearing fully confident. Sandra would not be happy to see me, but it didn’t really matter given the situation. We had to talk, whether she wanted to or not.
Sandra froze. Slowly, her eyes met mine, hers filled with contempt. “What the hell do you want?”
“To help you with that suitcase,” I said, unsure she’d even let me do that much. But at least she was talking to me. That was a start. “And to talk.”
Sandra finished locking up her door, adjusted the bag on her arm, and pulled up the handle of the suitcase. “The time for talking is over. Find someone else’s life to ruin.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I didn’t really deserve that, as most of the things that’d “ruined her life” weren’t my fault. But I could have at least told her about demons and Riley’s magik, the truth about this world, a whole hell of a lot sooner than after she’d been attacked. “Sandra, please—”
She huffed on past me, luggage and duffel in hand, all the way to her car. “No. I’m done.”
“What happened?” Her not wanting to talk to me made sense, but the suitcase and running wasn’t like her.
Sandra turned on me. “What happened? Are you kidding me?”
“You’re running somewhere.”
“Yeah,” she said, shooting me a glare. “Home. I’ve lost everything these last six months and I’m tired of being alone. If you’re going to save Riley, clearly, it’s not going to happen any time this century. So I’m going home to Connecticut.”
What was so damned special about Connecticut that made every woman I’d ever cared for run there to get away from me? “Can we talk before you go? A few minutes, tops.”
She put a hand on her hip. “Why, have you saved Riley from those demons?”
Dammit, Sandra. I took a quick look around to make sure no one had heard her, but we were alone. “No. Not yet.”
“Then there’s nothing to talk about.” Sandra spun back to her car and finished packing it up before slamming the trunk closed.
I closed the distance between me and her car on quick feet. “Let me ride with you. It’s a long drive and we have things to talk about.”
“No, not until Riley is home safe. I told you he wasn’t safe with you, Ben. I came all the way to Canada to protect him from something I didn’t know existed. Maybe if you’d told me sooner, I would have been more prepared.”
“Doubtful. I tried to tell you years ago and you didn’t believe me,” I said, then nearly ate my own foot. “I—sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Her glare renewed, delivered with the fire of a hundred suns. “Bye, Ben. For real this time. Don’t come back again.”
“You need to come with me. I know there wasn’t exactly an agreement made about you not saying anything publicly, but I thought we’d all decided you wouldn’t. Especially given what’s at stake.”
“What’s ‘at stake’?” she echoed. “Riley’s already gone, Ben. And the fact that you’re here empty-handed means he might very well be—”
“Don’t!” I shouted, swiping the air with my hand. “He’s not—I saw him not that long ago. But he’s still in danger, Sandra. And you posting about the Hunter Circles and demons on social media, exposing us, isn’t going to do anything but put a target on your head. It’ll impede our chances of getting him back.”
Sandra’s glare held fast, but she roughly pointed to her car. “Get the hell in, then. I’ll hear you out. But you can’t tell me what to do.”
“I can when it comes to this.”
She clenched her jaw and climbed into her car. I joined her. She pulled out of her driveway before I even had my seatbelt buckled.
Sandra tore down the main road, headed south. Which I only knew because I’d driven this way six months ago when Giyano and Shadow Crest had attacked her and Riley.
“Please, tell me why I shouldn’t be posting everywhere about Riley,” Sandra said, staring at the road ahead of us. “Most of the time they tell you to do that to increase the chances someone will call if they see him.”
“Except this isn’t a normal kidnapping, Sandra.” I gripped on to the handle above the passenger door. “Right now, you’re not a target for Shadow Crest, the demons who have Riley, because you don’t have magik. They know you can’t waltz into their lair and try to take Riley back.”
Sandra bit her lip, as if she had a whole swarm of words to say to that but held them back. I could just imagine what they were, mostly about how I’d not managed to rescue Riley either, even with magik.
“How’d anyone know about those posts?” she asked. “It’s not like we’re friends online anymore.”
Her words stung, but I’d gotten over that a long time ago. I’d never been into the social media scene. Besides, Sandra and I would be connected for at least the next fifteen-odd years no matter what.
Assuming we got Riley back. As a human.
I didn’t know if I could handle Riley being a demon for the rest of his—or at least my—life. But I knew Sandra definitely wouldn’t be able to.
I sighed and turned to Sandra. She had an eyebrow lifted as though waiting for my answer, but otherwise she seemed totally focused on the road. A good thing since Sandra’s house wasn’t far from the highway and we were now merging onto it. I hadn’t planned on actually driving Sandra back to Boston. I’d have much preferred a quick teleportante instead of sitting with my ex awkwardly for hours on end. But if that’s what got her back to Boston with me, I’d do it.
“The Fire Circle has been keeping tabs on you ever since Jaffrin helped move you to Canada,” I said, glancing over at her. “Honestly, in the interest of transparency, I actually don’t doubt that they’ve been keeping an eye on both of us ever since I took Jaffrin’s offer to join the Hunter Circles.”
“So years,” Sandra said, her voice suddenly calm.
I nodded. “Yes. Three years ago.”
“And you don’t think I’m a target, but you also do, so you don’t want me opening my mouth about it all?”
I leaned back against the passenger seat and stretched out my legs as far as I could. They’d become suddenly restless. “This is going to sound harsh, but the only thing I could see them using you for was bait—for me—or to use against Riley as collateral if he suddenly lost interest in what they’ve got him doing.” Assuming he remembered Sandra at all. But I kept that thought to myself.
“Collateral? Seriously, Ben? He’s three years old.”
I winced at the sharpness of her tone. “I know.”
The car suddenly slowed down and Sandra veered us off into a breakdown lane. When she’d finally gotten the car to a full stop, she put it in park and looked to me. “What the hell do you want me to do, then? What can I do?”
“Why did you post about it?”
She paused for a moment, thinking. “Because I was tired of feeling alone. My mom doesn’t believe me because obviously it’s an insane story. And Aunt Betty thinks the house was just burglarized and Riley was kidnapped. It’s not like she thinks of it as no big deal or anything, but it’s not the same as knowing—and believing—demons are at fault.”
“And you?” I asked her, an eyebrow raised.
She gave me a hard stare. “Demons attacked my home, stole our son, and burned me. I don’t know what to think of the whole demons and magik thing in general, Ben. I’ll be honest about that. But at this point, I’m willing to believe in all of it if it means there’s a chance of getting Riley back.”
“Good,” I said. “Then I need you to come back to Boston with me. Now. I’d rather teleport there instantaneously, but if you’d rather drive, I’d totally understand.”
Her eyes bugged wide. “Teleport?”
Oops. “Uh, yeah. Maybe we’ll just drive instead.” She bit the inside of her cheek, her eyes searching mine. Likely for my sanity. Luckily for her, I still had that. Marginally. “Yes, teleport. It’s part of the m
agik thing. But like I said, if you’d—”
“What do we get for being there right this second?” she asked.
“Um.” She caught me off guard and I didn’t know how to respond. “We don’t have to sit in a car and pretend nothing’s changed for the next seven hours? Also, we’ll be safe at my team’s house.”
“House?”
I nodded. “I live with my team, Rachel included. You’ll at least know her.”
Sandra’s lips thinned. “I’m not living with you, Ben.”
My stomach tightened. I didn’t think she would, but she had to stay with us for the next few days at the very least. Not that people who stayed with us tended to be safe. A flash of the Ether Head Circle twins burning alive sped across my mind.
No. That wouldn’t happen to Sandra. That’d been a completely different circumstance.
“You don’t need to live with me forever,” I said, my tone even. “Just the next eight to nine days. Maybe a few after that.” Nothing else might matter two weeks from now, anyway.
Her eyes narrowed down her nose again, but in curiosity, not anger. I knew that because her ears went red when she was mad, and that color had subsided there minutes ago. “Why only nine days? What’s going on?”
The end of the world? Our son being used as a power conduit?
Did she really expect me to tell her those things?
It’s the truth. And not telling her the truth was what had gotten me in trouble with her in the first place.
“Sandra, it’s a lot to take in. I’m not going to lie.”
“Tell me what’s going on,” she said, her hard stare unforgiving.
With a deep, anchoring breath, I told her everything I’d left out six months ago.
Chapter 17
KRYSTIN
Something tickled my legs. That and the sunlight beating against my eyelids forced me quickly from slumber to a fully awake state. I jerked and that same something that tickled my leg then flapped away. A bird.
“What?” I asked, watching it fly like a speedy bullet into a set of nearby trees. Other bird songs filled the air around me, an unhelpful answer to my question.
My tank top and shorts clung to me, moist from some recent rainfall. Not enough to make the ground muddy, thank god. I ran my hand through the greenest grass I’d ever seen. Slowly, I sat up, taking in the blue sky and white clouds. Where am I?
A slow, creeping sensation broke out on my arms, crawling up to my shoulders like a spider. It fogged my head, undoing all the work the bright sunlight had done, and burned my cheeks as if I had a fever.
“Krystin?”
I spun and found Shawn lying not far from me. He’d propped himself up against a tree trunk, bags underneath his eyes. His cheeks were rosy too.
I rushed to his side and placed a palm against his forehead. “What’s wrong?”
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know.” He was hot to the touch, burning up. His brow was slick with sweat. I wiped my hand on my shorts and stood again, the action causing the world to sway. “Whoa.”
“Yeah,” Shawn said. “Whoa.”
I glanced around at our surroundings once more, but nothing looked out of the ordinary. Except… “This isn’t the woods around Hunter’s Guild.”
Shawn shook his head. “No. And I didn’t recognize the bird using you as a perch, either.”
“How long have you been awake without me?”
He shrugged. “Twenty minutes, tops. Probably because I don’t have magik right now and you do.”
“Why would that matter?”
“Seriously?” he asked, pointing at me. “Nine months ago you were bugging me for not feeling Cianza Boston. Open your mind, Krystin. There’s one nearby.”
My stomach dropped. The fever. The shakes. The creepy, unnatural feeling. “Shit.”
Shawn nodded, closing his eyes at the same time. “It’s a big one.”
I gulped, looking back again to where the trees and grass seemed to stop. As if it were the edge of the world. “No way. No fucking way.”
“What?” he asked, but my mind was already moving a million miles a minute. He forced his way to standing and stumbled behind me as I made for the edge of the horizon. “Krystin?”
“Hold on.” Another twenty, thirty, forty feet in total brought me to—I shot out a hand and pressed it against Shawn’s chest. “Wait! Don’t!”
Shawn stumbled but held himself without tumbling us both off the edge of a massive cliff. The ground cut off without warning into a sheer drop of at least two hundred feet, possibly more, down into a luscious green valley. To our immediate right, sounds of water rushing met with the beginnings of a series of massive waterfalls that formed cliffside pools leading the water into the valley below. A river of clear blue water wound its way from the base of the waterfall into a small settlement or city in the distance.
My breath hitched as I took in the awe-inspiring sight. “It’s bigger than Niagara.”
Shawn nodded. He now stood beside me with a hand on my shoulder. “This doesn’t look real.”
But it had to be. The waterfall’s sounds pounded into my ears, directing my line of sight back to the large settlement at the bottom of the valley. Its buildings looked as if they’d been carved from white metal, each a squat circle with a rectangular roof. Some rose into the sky, stories high, and others appeared to be only one floor.
In the distance, harder to see as it was farther away, sat a giant pyramid. A thick fog hid all details except for its shape.
Shawn squeezed my shoulder, trying to get my attention. “Krystin, look right at the bottom.”
“What?” I asked, trying to see what he meant. And then I saw. How had I not noticed it the first time?
Between the pool at the bottom of the waterfall and the settlement in the distance sat a massive courtyard absolutely brimming with big, colorful trees and flowers in shades I’d never known existed. Stonework paths weaved around the trees and flower beds in an intricate design that led to a clearing made entirely of stone in the direct center of the courtyard. There sat an impossibly intricate design that, viewed from inside the courtyard, probably looked like a jumbled mess. But from up here, the intertwined “S” and “D” stood stark against the rest of the weaving design.
The entire courtyard seemed to be as large as the city. And circular.
“Oh, fuck,” Shawn exclaimed, reeling back from the edge of the cliff. “That explains it.”
I nodded, also backing off. “We’re in Alzan. We have to be.”
He was shaking his head, kneeling his way back to the ground. “How? How the hell did we—?”
“I don’t know.” But like Shawn, I was starting to really feel the effects of the cianza. It wasn’t as bad as that time in Boston when we’d fought Giyano and Kinder at a bar near the Commons. But that cianza was much smaller compared to this, if the size of the courtyard happened to be an indication.
Not much about cianzas was known, aside from the obvious. They were geological magik points where good and evil met neutrally until too much power from either side came in and disrupted it. We, being the magikal community at large, had long assumed these points themselves to be relatively small, but differing in size depending on the power of the cianza. But they were small in the ways that suns were “small” but massive, sometimes having enough mass to explode and make black holes.
In the same way, cianzas, like the one in Boston, might actually be only a few feet wide in diameter, but its effects and range of effected zone might be a mile across.
This cianza, Cianza Alzan, might actually be a few miles wide in diameter. Which was about the only reason we’d feel it all the way up here.
“No wonder everyone’s terrified of it,” I said, daring to step forward and look down upon the damn thing. “If it’s the size of the entire courtyard…”
“This city shouldn’t even exist,” Shawn said.
I turned to him. “What do you mean? You came and told me we had t
o find Alzan.”
He shook his head. “No, I said we had to unlock the Alzanian power. Until recently, no one but Lady Azar actually thought it existed, I think. They were all worried about something there isn’t archaeological evidence for.”
I looked back to the courtyard. To Cianza Alzan. “Well, I can see why the Powers went to the trouble of hiding it on its own plane of existence. Christ.”
Shawn didn’t respond to that. His silence wasn’t a good sign. “Krystin.”
I went to him this time and helped him stand. “Even without your magik, you feel it.”
“I think I feel it worse.” His words were shaky now, his breaths shallow. “How is that possible?”
I swallowed hard. “What if Giyano was right and our magik really is tied to these things?” I felt the cianza too, but it wasn’t totally debilitating. Although I wasn’t sure what’d happen when we got closer.
“Maybe.”
I looked one last time at the settlement city on the other side of the courtyard. It appeared to be farther away from the cianza than this cliff. But teleporting or using any sort of magik this close to a cianza was a terrible idea.
“Can you walk?” I asked, working an elbow underneath his shoulder.
He nodded weakly. “I think so.”
“Good. That city is farther away from the courtyard than we are now. If we skirt the edge of the cianza and get into the city, we should be fine. You’ll feel better. Then we can figure out what to do next.”
“And our magik?” he asked, looking down at me.
I shrugged. “The Powers let us get to Alzan for a reason.”
His eyes narrowed. “You hate the Powers. Why would you trust in them?”
“I don’t hate them. I think they’re lofty do-nothings who won’t lift a finger in this war until Darkness comes knocking on their door.”
He stared at me blankly.
“Oh, fine. Look, we’re here for a reason. A prophesied one. If you can walk, let’s go.”
He nodded, slowly at first, until he pulled in a deep breath and started walking. “Your lead, Krystin.”