Beht had used that massive power to redesign the prison. Could I use the same trick to show me the key? Better yet, could I make the prison bring it to me? It was a long shot, but—blame it on the demons’ magic—I’d never been so confident in my life.
I didn’t bother to explain what I was about to do because I wasn’t sure if I could. I just dropped to a crouch and pressed my palms against the ground. Focusing on the magic coursing through me, I gathered what I could in my stomach then pushed it out through my palms. Above me, Lucen asked what I was up to, but I needed all my concentration and couldn’t respond. The threads connecting me with the demons pulled taut as more power rushed into me.
The key. Bring me the key. Since I had no idea what it looked like, I pictured an old-fashioned one in my head. Something big, tarnished and heavy. The prison wavered around me, and one of the men gasped. I was doing something, whatever it was.
Come on! The ground swayed and dipped between where I squatted and the demons, creating a bowl. A couple demons stirred, and I swore silently. I must have been channeling enough magic for them to notice.
The brief distraction almost ruined any progress I’d been making. Against my will, everything shifted back to normal. I cursed again and squeezed my eyes shut, shoving away the errant thoughts. Key. Give me the key.
Reality buckled under me. I opened my eyes in time to see a giant brass key be burped up from the rock. It was in every way the thing I’d imagined—poorly formed and hazy on the details. Yet it radiated a power that could only be described as similar to the power generated by its magical cousins, the Vessels of Making. This had to be it. It was the real thing, its form shaped by my thoughts.
I snatched it, reveling in the heft of its weight against my hand and the tingles it shot up my arm. It was amazing, and yet I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with it.
Lucen gaped at me and ran his fingers through his hair. “You shaped the prison. How?”
“Long story. I’ll explain later.” Like when we were safe, if such a thing was possible.
“So that’s it?” Mitch regarded the key dubiously.
“That’s it.”
Mitch reached for it, but the curiosity in his eyes was replaced once more by fear as he focused on something over my shoulder. “They’re waking up.”
I spun around, the pride at what I’d done fading as reality set in. Shadows changed among the sprawling masses as limbs and heads shifted position. Several pairs of red and golden eyes blinked. Damn it, I’d known I was waking them. I’d marveled over my accomplishment for too long.
I stuffed the key in my inner jacket pocket and grabbed the men’s hands. “Time to run, I think.”
Fueled by magic, I bounded across the void faster than any speed charm could have propelled me, dragging Lucen and Mitch along. Through the threads connecting me to the demons, I could sense their unrest and rage. Worse, I could sense their movement. They were underpowered but not helpless. Far in the distance, the thin white line of the gate hung in the air like a ghostly apparition. With no cliffs to block it, no cavern of basilisks to navigate, it appeared far closer than I remembered it being, and yet I feared it was still too far to reach.
The air rumbled behind us, and I tried not to think about thousands of pairs of feet stepping closer or wings taking flight. I tried not to think at all because when I did, I slowed. If I worried or wondered how I was drawing on this power, my ability to just use it faltered.
I recalled something Lucen had tried explaining to me when he was teaching me about charm-breaking. Trust the magic, he’d said. Don’t try to second-guess it.
It was as true in this case as it was in choosing the right anti-magic.
So I didn’t run, I flew. My feet scarcely touched the ground, and holding on to Mitch and Lucen was like dragging two balloons behind me. I didn’t know how they kept up, if I was feeding them power or if their feet simply didn’t touch the ground either. But I didn’t dare pause to find out. The noise at our backs grew thunderous. The void shook.
Then all at once the nothing disappeared and we were back in the prison room. A low ceiling replaced the endless sky, and flickering torches provided the light. My pace continued unbroken, the sandy stone floor as meaningless to me as the void’s black nothing. Open cells whizzed past in a blur of gray iron. I could hear Lucen hollering my name and an inhuman cry of rage following. Triumph rose in my blood, and a yell of my own burst from my lips as I jumped through the gate. Instantly, all sound vanished. My insides compressed, and my voice was swallowed with no air to carry it.
I popped out the other side, yelling still. Either Lucen or Mitch fell on top of me, and I let go of their hands. Stumbling across the stones, I couldn’t stop my momentum until I crashed into an object that turned out to be a very large Gryphon. He stepped away, and I fell to the ground.
“I have it! We’re safe, I have it!” I gasped to get the words out, but no one was listening. When I fell silent, it was obvious why. The pounding feet I’d heard in the Pit continued to pound. Scrambling upright, I watched in horror as demons spilled out of the gate. They were slow and sluggish, but they were very much here. And without Behty hogging all the negativity, they’d be juiced in no time too.
Strong hands yanked me out of the way as a lumbering demon crashed into the floor where I’d been standing. Though I buzzed with my stolen power, my thoughts hovered somewhere above my head. Using that power to find the key was one thing. Processing mundane reality was another. I couldn’t focus, and it was Lucen’s turn to lead me to safety. I followed him to a sheltered alcove near the ruins’ doorway and glanced around.
All hell was breaking loose, and it looked like it had been for a while. The ruins were more, well, ruined than they had been before. Walls were down, and the enormous glyph on the floor no longer glowed red but green. A few bodies lay scattered along the sides, and Gryphons, magi and goblins alike were covered in blood. I searched for Gi, anxious about his welfare, but he was nowhere in sight. For that matter, neither was the purple demon. But more Gryphons were here than I remembered there being when I left. Helicopters too. Stealth had clearly been overridden by the need for reinforcements.
Belatedly I looked beyond the helicopters into a sky turning pale pink in the east. Sunrise. My body didn’t feel it, but it sure appeared that we’d been gone for an entire night. No wonder more Gryphons had been called.
“You have the key?” Ingrid’s voice knocked me out of my daze. She darted through an opening in the chaos and knelt among the rubble with us.
I retrieved the key from my pocket, hoping Ingrid had a clue what to do with it.
You are the one, Beht had said. But the other like you is necessary.
Before Ingrid could take the key, I closed my fist around it. I could be making up stuff in desperation, but once again, I didn’t think so. My blood still flowed with Beht’s power, and it told me she’d inadvertently given me a hint about what to do. “I need Mitch.”
Ingrid sat back on her heels. “What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to imitate what the furies did to us to open the Pit. Only instead of draining addicts for their power, I’m going to charge this thing by draining the demons themselves.” How Mitch was going to help with that, I wasn’t sure. But Beht had said he was necessary, and I was certain she—and I—was correct.
While Ingrid ran to make that happen, Lucen grabbed my hands. “Do you know what you’re doing? Are you sure? Because, Jess, there’s power inside you—”
“It’s the demons, and I need it to do this.”
“It’s evil. I can feel it through the bond. It’s a cold darkness surrounding your heart.”
I did my best to sense the energy the way Lucen described it, but I couldn’t. It was simply there, stronger than any other pred power I’d fed on, but ultimately the same. “It’s… Don’t worry about it. I just need to use
it to charge the key. Then it’ll be gone.”
Lucen started to say something else, but a curse grenade exploded nearby, and we shrank back. A second later, Mitch appeared, escorted by an unfamiliar Gryphon.
I let go of Lucen’s hands and grabbed Mitch’s, placing the key between my right palm and his left. Although I was unsure what he needed to do or how to explain my intentions, it didn’t matter. Pressed between our hands, the key reacted on its own. I gasped, and Mitch swore, and in the time it took for that to happen, a circuit of magic formed among the three of us.
Instinct took over as the threads connecting me to the demons appeared before my eyes. I sucked in a breath, pulling on the collective power contained on their ends. Electricity shot through my body. Though I’d been prepared, the rush was dizzying nonetheless, and Mitch yelled an agonized and ecstatic cry as I forced the power out through me and into him.
His body exploded in light as threads appeared on him too. Now he was breathing in their power, and we were both pouring it into the key. It began to glow, the edges sharpening into focus and the color brightening. Heat seared my palm, but I couldn’t let go, and I clenched my jaw. My vision blurred as hazy black shapes gathered nearby. Gryphons coming to protect us, I realized. The demons were aware of what was going on. They were trying to stop it.
But they’d been weakened by what Mitch and I were doing. We just had to last a little longer. The key felt full but not full enough. I yanked harder on the threads, and a fresh wave of dizziness wracked my head. Then the power hit a wall. My attempt to channel more into the key failed, and the backlash knocked me to the ground.
Mitch collapsed too, and the key dropped between us, glowing a dazzling golden white. He moaned, seeming to have taken the hit harder than I had, perhaps since he’d had less time to adjust. The threads that had once surrounded him vanished.
“Cover me!” I shouted to anyone nearby. Climbing to my feet, I grasped the key and charged toward the gateway, heedless of what I was running into. My threads remained, and I felt their tug on my limbs. They beckoned me toward the gate, toward the majority of the demons who were still inside.
Claws swiped at me, and wings beat down overhead. My ears rang with the sounds of gunshots and so many cries, human and not. I gasped for breath, tasting metal and not knowing whether it was my blood or the magic in the air. With my every step on the glyph, the green glow changed to white and the smoke took on an acrid scent.
Now, I yelled at myself. Just let go.
The glowing line hovered in front of me, and I hurled the key into it. My aim was less than perfect, but sharp strands of light shot out from the gateway, snatching the key and sucking it inside. I had a second to revel in the idea that we’d won then my ears popped. The air pressure changed, and a horrific screech reverberated off the walls.
A wing slammed me in the back, and I tumbled to the ground. As I flipped onto my back to see what hit me, my jaw dropped. The gateway hadn’t merely sucked the key in. It was now sucking the demons in with it.
Afraid of another inadvertent beating, I stayed low as the furious and flailing monsters were dragged back to prison. Whoops of triumph and glee rose from the Gryphons, and I grinned. As the last of the demons disappeared into the void and the sky drained of its unnatural color, I jumped up, ready to throw my arms around Lucen.
Instead of moving forward though, I was jerked backward. The threads connecting me to the demons hadn’t broken, and I was being yanked toward the Pit with them. Panic constricted my chest. I reached out, but no one and nothing solid was nearby to grab. Frantically, I struggled to run forward, but the ground slipped out from under me. Back I went, soles scraping the stone. My emotional and magical highs were gone, and I flailed helplessly.
“Lucen!”
Everywhere I turned, Gryphons were hugging and high-fiving or collapsing to the floor and weeping in relief. Everyone was too busy celebrating our victory to notice me. Everyone but him. Lucen must have noticed my distress through the bond, and he sprinted toward me.
I held out my hands as I skidded, fearing that even if he reached me, it wouldn’t be enough. How could he hold me back? The magic was way too strong.
Inches separated me from the gate. His fingers grasped mine, then a hand closed around my wrist. I held on to him, my sweaty skin gliding through his grip. My throat closed, sensing this was the end. This touch would be the last I knew of him. The gate’s pull was making me double over. Another second and I’d be lost, condemned to die in the void at the hands of creatures who’d kill me in nasty ways.
“I have you.” Lucen’s face clenched, and the bond between us flared. I’d lost track of it amidst the threads tying me to the demons, but I’d been channeling his power all this time. He hadn’t been fighting me over it before since the intent had been to steal his magic, but he did now. I could sense him fighting the flow of energy between us, holding back everything he could.
Understanding that he was attempting to fight magically as well as physically, I stopped channeling his power. Pain flashed through my body as I did, but Lucen took it away. Slowly, the pressure on my back released and my feet stopped sliding, but I was being torn in two, magically yanked in both directions.
Lucen muttered under his breath, and sweat beaded on his forehead. Then one of the threads snapped. Grunting in frustration, I dared another step toward Lucen. My chest heaved, and I could smell the cinnamon of his pheromones. More, I needed more.
Another thread snapped, then another. Lucen stretched forward and took a stronger hold on my arms. All at once, the rest of the threads broke. I toppled into him, shoved forward by a burst of magic at my back. It blew through me, through the bond with Lucen, and into him too.
Together, we tumbled to the ground. I remembered my head landing on his chest, then I blacked out.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Two weeks later I gazed out the window in my new office at Boston’s Gryphon headquarters. My office. My office with a freaking window. It was surreal.
From this vantage point, downtown appeared back to normal. The sky was blue, and the rush-hour traffic was a nightmare, but this normality was all a trick of perspective. What I couldn’t see from my window was that the world was scarred. For many people, life would never be the same. My life certainly wouldn’t be, but it wasn’t just the many who had died or the cities and towns picking through the pieces of their devastation that had changed.
The anti-mager protests had died down, but the sentiment behind them—the fear of the unknown—had increased. Human opinions on the Gryphons, which had once been overwhelmingly and irrationally positive, had only become more split and extreme on both sides. They were saviors and threats, and no one embodied that dichotomy in the public imagination more than I did. When the story of what happened had been told, my name had been prominently featured in it despite my best efforts to prevent it. I didn’t know who was responsible for the leak this time, but my role in the events had been portrayed too positively for it to have been Xander.
On the good-news end however, the Gryphon-pred-magi alliance had sparked a grudging acknowledgment that maybe, just maybe, we would all be safer if we were willing to communicate more and in a less hostile manner. The city magical councils of the past had grown dysfunctional when they bothered to function at all. It was time for a change, and naturally heads had turned to me to implement it. The woman who didn’t fit in anywhere could therefore walk among everyone as an equal. Who else had a chance to make all sides listen?
I didn’t have an answer to that, but I sure did have my doubts about success. After some hard contemplation though, I’d decided taking the job the Gryphons had offered was worth a shot. They’d asked Mitch too, but he had declined. Although he was staying with the Gryphons, he was taking the opportunity to focus on becoming one of their healers. But he was doing so back in Phoenix. He’d left for home last week.
My la
ptop finished shutting down, and I stuffed it into my backpack. Without it, my office was pretty barren because I’d moved in just yesterday. Besides the laptop, my desk and a mostly empty bookshelf, the only items it contained were a little red pin and a ceremonial dagger bearing the marks of Le Confrérie de l’Aile. They’d been Tom’s, and I’d accepted them from Ingrid at his funeral.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and lugged on my pack. I’d attended too many funerals these past weeks. Yet for all my differences with Tom, his had been the hardest emotionally.
One last time, I checked my pockets for my keys and shut the office door. Not next week, but the week after when I got back from World Headquarters, I’d have to decorate so I wasn’t staring at blank walls. I did enough of that at home, and since I’d negotiated to be based out of Boston instead of Grenoble, it was time to indulge in some decorating there too. Maybe even some furniture.
After stopping by Bridget’s and Andre’s offices to wave goodbye for the weekend, I fought the crowds on the subway to get home. I received a few funny looks as I got off at the Shadowtown T stop. Not many people in Gryphon uniforms did that sort of thing, and I felt horribly conspicuous as I hurried to Lucen’s apartment. I was being silly since most people around here already knew who and what I was, but some habits were as hard to shake as some memories.
The eighteen-year-old Academy flunky chasing after a purpose, and the twenty-eight-year-old woman who’d been framed for murder chasing after unlikely help, lingered close to the surface of my thoughts these days. I was still struck dumb sometimes by how I started there and ended up here.
The Lair was back to its usual crowded self, as were most businesses, and music poured onto the street. I cast a quick glance at the people hanging out on the patio as I climbed the steps to Lucen’s apartment and let myself in. I recognized most of the faces but didn’t see any friends, which wasn’t too surprising. Friday was a busy night for everyone. Lucen would be working the bar, Devon would be at Purgatory, and Angelia probably would be too. I wasn’t sure I’d call Gi or Melissa friends, though I’d certainly spent enough time with them over the past month, but I assumed they’d be returning to whatever they usually did when they weren’t babysitting me.
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