by Jessica Gunn
Nate’s brow knitted together. “What are you talking about?”
“We’ve never run into Shadow Crest here,” I said.
“Not you guys,” Ben said, watching Rachel with careful eyes. “Before. Four years ago.”
Before Riley was taken? No, before Riley was even born.
“He has to know something,” she ground out through clenched teeth.
“Give me a break,” the Cassano witch lamented. She sighed heavily, then struck a cedo match she’d drawn from somewhere. She threw it at the demon.
Rachel balked, backing up so as not to get hit by the magik match, and cried out. “What the hell?”
The demon lit up slowly, indicating a low level of magik. He hadn’t been Shadow Crest or any Old One’s lackey. He’d been a no one.
Rachel spun on the witch. “If it was that easy, why didn’t you finish him sooner?”
The witch lifted an eyebrow. “I was getting there before your superhero team showed up.” She rolled her eyes, then started walking back down the path toward the parking lot and the city. “Try pausing to understand a situation before jumping in headfirst next time.” She threw a wave over her shoulder as she walked.
“We can’t even get your name?” Nate asked. “Who you’re working for?”
“The Fire Circle, probably,” I said. Most Cassano witches in this area did.
“Lilly,” she called. “I work for no one. Not anymore.”
“Great,” Ben muttered under his breath. “Another deserter.”
“That many people are leaving?” I asked. Maybe that’s what Dacher had Ben doing at Headquarters. A lot of Hunters didn’t take the news about Jaffrin well. And while there wasn’t anything keeping a Hunter tied to the Fire Circle, it was implied you’d stay until retirement at forty years of age.
Ben nodded in Lilly’s direction, watching her walk away. “Mostly the freelancers.”
“As long as we have teams still, it’ll be fine,” I said.
Ben’s lips thinned with words unsaid. “I don’t know about that.”
A shower of blue ether rushed behind Ben’s head, so out of place and abnormal that we all jumped back. Raw ether energy slid up my arms. It sent a feeling of a spider crawling up my back as the energy crept up into my mind.
Shawn’s hand found mine and squeezed, a white light swallowing our clenched fingers. Just in case.
“What the hell?” Ben exclaimed as, while he was backing up toward us, a woman appeared inside the shower of ether.
She stood tall and confident before us, as if her entrance had been completely normal. But after the moment of shock passed, my mind registered the aura whipping around her. The same cobalt color Jaffrin had had as we’d brought him to Alzan. Her eyes were the same bright blue beneath a head of short blonde hair. She stood before us in a tunic and pants, both a mix of gray and blue.
The shower of ether ended and then it was only us and her. A Neuian.
I gulped, squeezing Shawn’s hand tighter. Areus had been upset about us showing up with Jaffrin unannounced. But if we had to banish this Neuian from our plane of existence, too, I wasn’t sure what he’d do.
“Stop,” Ben said, his hand surrounded in lightning. It was like it’d just manifested without him calling it. “Don’t move.”
The woman’s lips slid into an easy smile as she focused in on Ben. “That’s no way to greet family.”
Chapter 2
Ben
I narrowed my eyes as an unsettling sensation rolled in my stomach. “Family?”
The woman didn’t give an inch. “Yes. Many generations removed from you, perhaps, but family all the same.” Her gaze swept from me to Rachel. “You two are direct descendants of mine, some of my last. And I can already feel our family line’s magik dwindling.”
“What are you going on about?” Krystin asked, stepping in between us and the Neuian woman. Part of me wanted her and Shawn to jump in and drag her off to Alzan like they had Jaffrin. But the other half was nursing the queasiness in my gut and suddenly hoping it wasn’t a prelude to something much worse.
The woman spared Krystin a quick glance. “Worry not, Daughter of Alzan. I’m not here to hurt anyone.” She turned her gaze back to me and Rachel. “Only to begin claiming them.” She stepped toward me and I grabbed Rachel’s arm. Not out of fear but to force her behind me as I glared at the woman. “My name is Karen Reiner, and the two of you are Neuians. The last of our family line other than your son.”
My teeth ground together. “Leave him out of this.” First Lady Azar wanted Riley and now this Karen woman? A Neuian? What good would Riley do any of them?
Probably none at all.
Karen grinned, an evil expression twisting her features. “Unfortunately, Ben, the reason I’m here now after centuries is Riley.”
Because of the Power. But how had the Neuians discovered Riley wielded it?
“I said to leave him out of this,” I growled at her. “My parents don’t have magik. Whatever family line you’re talking about doesn’t exist.”
Rachel pried my fingers off her arm. “We got our magik by mistake.”
Karen chuckled and paced toward us again. “That was no accident. Those who can see the future knew what was to come and placed things into motion. Riley isn’t the final piece of that puzzle, but he, and the both of you, are part of it.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Krystin and Shawn’s joined hands start to glow. Good. Neuians hadn’t walked our world for centuries. There was no reason they should be allowed to do it now, regardless of whether or not Karen was telling the truth.
Lightning zapped around my fists. I met Karen’s gaze with a hard stare. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but this conversation is over. On me.”
Krystin and Shawn leaped at Karen in sync, their hands now barely touching. But as they separated, a glowing string of energy grew between their fingers.
They followed me in as I grabbed for Karen, hoping to shock her long enough for Krystin and Shawn to get there. At the last moment, Karen lifted a hand, opened her palm, and a wave of dark blue energy engulfed my lightning. She laughed again before waving that hand at me.
I threw up my hands over my face, expecting a painful shock of ether magik, but Krystin cried out instead. Dropping my hands, I turned to my teammates to see Krystin, Nate, and Shawn all suspended two feet above the ground. Rachel stood beside them, untouched and confused.
“That’s better,” Karen said. “Now we can speak freely.”
“Don’t hurt them,” I warned her. “We have no fight with you or your people.” Except for holding Jaffrin hostage at Alzan. Shit. Was that why she’d come here?
“You are Neuians,” she said again.
I shook my head. This was the first I’d heard that, and until a few months ago, we didn’t even know these Neuians existed. I wasn’t sure who did. It’d taken Krystin and Shawn going to Alzan and learning about them from their mentor, Areus, for the Hunter Circles to even acknowledge their existence. Which meant there was a decent shot not many Circle Leaders knew.
Except for Jaffrin, a now ex-Fire Circle Leader—and a Neuian.
“What did Jaffrin want, then?” I asked. “Is he part of this family, too? Is that why he settled in Boston?”
Karen’s mouth thinned. “I won’t presume to know. But I assume that he, along with others like us, knows your Hunter team houses the Son and Daughter of Alzan. And given the connection between cianzas and the Neuians, I do not think it is a stretch to assume he wanted their power for himself.”
“He can get a number and stand in line,” Krystin said through gritted teeth. At least that meant they weren’t totally immobile or hurt.
“Still pretty ballsy to come out here by yourself.” I had to think. Fast too. Did we run and let Karen roam free, or do something about this?
Karen lifted an eyebrow. “Why, because of them? She isn’t the first Daughter of Alzan I’ve encountered. My magik is much older and stronger
. Besides, it’s you I’ve come to collect. But first…” Karen flicked her fingers at the three of my teammates currently suspended in the air. They flew a hundred feet away, sliding against the dirt and sand. I spun, keeping myself between Rachel and Karen, and watched as waves rose up over my shocked team.
“No!” Rachel shouted. But before she could move to stop the water with her own water-elemental magik, she froze.
With a creeping, icy feeling, so did I. My muscles locked, my thoughts slowing until all I could do was stare Karen down as she stalked toward me and Rachel.
“Now,” she said, her voice slithering around my awareness like a snake. “Let us begin.”
Begin what? I wanted to ask, but my lips had frozen right along with the rest of my body.
She stood in front of me and Rachel and lifted a palm to both our cheeks. A blue ethereal cloud formed around each of her hands. I braced myself for whatever pain was coming.
But it wasn’t pain that starburst across my cheek, flowing up my temple and into my mind. The blue ether of Karen’s magik calmed my raging blood, soothed the pulse pounding in my throat. Within seconds, peace had descended upon me, an overwhelming sense of relief. A fight over. Like I’d just thrown a Hail Mary pass at the Super Bowl to win the whole damn thing and watched it be caught in the end zone.
My eyes shut as Karen’s magik seemed to fill the dread-ridden places inside me, the holes that’d developed in the wake of Riley’s constant absence, the fights with Sandra, the parts of my life that Krystin had tried and failed to put back together. Karen’s magik filled them all, and in that calm and easy darkness, only a single spark of lightning remained inside the storm that usually raged within me.
That spark danced, spiraling and reaching out for Karen’s magik. And when her magik met mine, a tendril of lightning greeting a tendril of ether, the lightning turned cobalt blue.
The pressure of Karen’s hand on my cheek suddenly disappeared. The world crashed back down around me—Krystin shouting my name, city sounds in the distance, a fog horn.
I blinked, my vision clearing. Karen stood before me, blue tattoos appearing on her face in a spiral outward, beginning in the corners of her eyes and reaching up to her temple. They glowed blue.
She watched me carefully. “For now, continue as you always have. I will return when the time is right.” And then, in a blink of blue and something that only vaguely felt like a teleportante trail, Karen was gone.
My knees shook, my legs collapsing beneath me. I caught myself, fists full of sand, as my chest heaved.
“Ben?” someone shouted. “Ben!” Krystin appeared beside me and pressed a hand against my back. “Ben, are you okay? What happened?”
“What’d she do?” Shawn asked.
“Don’t,” Nate said, sounding desperate. “Don’t touch them for a second.”
“Why?” Krystin asked. “She just did something to them! We need to get both Rachel and Ben to Fire Circle Headquarters.”
I licked my dry lips. “She reached for our magik.”
“Yeah,” said Nate, now looking down at me with wide eyes. “And now your magik is twisted.”
My eyes narrowed, then widened again with the realization of what’d happened. “She gave us ether magik.” I looked to Rachel. “We were both elementals before.”
Nate’s voice and eyes were serious when he said, “Yeah. And now you should both be dead.”
Chapter 3
KRYSTIN
My grip on Ben tightened as if Karen was still here and in the process of trying to drag him away. I wasn’t going to let this happen to him—or Rachel. Not now, not ever. I’d had my magik type flipped before, twice now, from ether to elemental and back again. And although the ala-ether hadn’t burned its way into me like the fire-elemental magik had, I had no way to guarantee it’d be the same for Ben and Rachel.
“We need to get you to Headquarters,” I spoke quietly into Ben’s ear. “In case your magik backfires.” And in case anyone had seen this little show and had called the human authorities. I’d already been party to enough almost-reveals of the Fire Circle. The last thing any of us needed was for that to happen again while the Neuians were in town.
Because they were, weren’t they? First Jaffrin, and now this Karen woman? How many others were out there hiding in plain sight while the rest of the world didn’t even know they existed in the first place?
Ben shook his head. “Dacher can’t know.”
“What?” I sputtered, looking from him to Rachel. “Why not? Dacher’s always been on our side.”
“Because,” he ground out through clenched teeth.
“Ben,” I hissed. “Believe me, the last place you want to be when your magik backfires is somewhere where the people around you can’t help you. At Headquarters you’ll—”
“She said we’re Neuians,” he grunted, peering up at me. “I get it now, why you didn’t trust Jaffrin.”
My eyes narrowed, trying to see past whatever Ben must be feeling right now to the truth. “Dacher isn’t a Neuian.”
“But we are,” Rachel said.
I glanced over my shoulder at her. “You don’t know that. That’s just what she said.”
“Karen was right. It makes sense.”
“Why?” Shawn asked, looking between them, then to me with questioning eyes. Why, I had no idea. Sure, I knew plenty about magik, but I wasn’t a living encyclopedia of it. Especially not when it came to a civilization we hadn’t even known existed until a few days ago.
Rachel shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. It just…”
“Feels like it should be right,” Ben said. “Her magik was welcoming.”
I bit my tongue to keep from saying that so had Giyano’s magik for me at one point. “So what? Just because you guys share the same hair and eye color and she knows Riley’s name, all of a sudden she must be family? Do you hear yourself?”
Ben pinned me with a hard stare. “Krystin.”
I arched an eyebrow, daring him to give me an explanation that made sense. Which, unfortunately for Ben, didn’t happen often when coming from his lips.
His jaw stiffened. “She did something to our magik much the same way it sounds like Areus turned yours and Shawn’s magik into something Alzanian-based. If that’s true, then we are Neuians now—whether we were before today or not.”
“Why, though?” Nate asked, arms crossed at his chest. A pensive look furrowed his brows. “Why go through all of that, attacking us, singling you out, to change your magik type? Seems very random.”
“I’m more interested in why she said she’s met the first Daughter of Alzan,” Shawn said, his words heavy and echoing in my head as though my telepathy was back, but only for him.
I peered at him. “What do you mean?”
“Areus said the first Daughter was called and died during the siege on Alzan,” Shawn said. “Which means that if that Karen woman is telling the truth, she’s—”
My eyes widened. “As old as Areus. Thousands of years old at least. How is that possible?” We knew demons lived for a good deal longer than humans, but even the Old Ones died of natural causes eventually. This meant that both the Alzanians and Neuians were capable of the same, thanks to their magik. Areus had told Shawn and I his case was different though; that he’d been awarded a long life to be here for us when our power was called for the final conflict.
“There’s no way to know,” Nate said. “Areus and those at Alzan seem to be the only people who know anything about the Neuians. Either way, we need to get Ben and Rachel to Headquarters.”
“No,” Ben snapped, forcing himself to stand. Rachel did the same. “Dacher can’t know. We imprisoned Jaffrin for being Neuian. What do you think he’ll do to us?”
“But you haven’t done anything bad, Ben,” I said. “And hell, if I’m still walking around free as a Hunter, you’re sure as hell going to be fine with twisted magik.”
He offered me a hard stare. “That doesn’t comfort me at all.”
He swallowed hard, his dark blue eyes settling on mine. I wish he’d felt the strength I saw reflected there, even when he was scared and confused. Because it still resided inside his eyes—that same strength and determination that had kept him fighting for Riley for the past three and a half years.
“Fine,” Ben finally said. The I’m trusting you part of his sentence was almost louder than his spoken words.
For the first time since losing my telepathy, I wished I could hear Ben’s thoughts right now. Because for the first time in the year that I’d known him, Ben’s face, his emotions, were an unreadable mask of conflicting expressions. Like a gulf had opened up between us right when we most needed to work in harmony.
We landed in the lobby of Fire Circle Headquarters and were almost mowed down by Hunters and witches swarming the space. Nothing big was happening; this had been the new normal at Headquarters ever since Jaffrin had been forcibly removed from office. Between losing their Leader and half of the Command, in addition to now having to deal with Hydron in the wake of the more public demonic attacks, the Fire Circle was more than a hot mess.
Dacher could only do so much on his own while vetting a temporary Command until a new one could be sworn in to take over. And until Dacher named his heir, the one who’d become Leader after him. Normally, this sort of succession was planned long in advance, with the second-in-command usually becoming Leader, but with Jaffrin’s betrayal and the Command’s dissolution, everything was up in the air.