by Myers, AJ
“Up we go,” Ms. Cantrell said, her voice soft and yet hard at the same time. Only the Dragon Lady could have pulled that off.
Oh, please, no! I groaned, silently, as she put her arm around my shoulder and helped me stand up. Another vicious thud and another wave of nausea. I grabbed her arm and heard her gasp, reminding me that I had to be careful. I could hurt her. I would hurt her. Had to be careful. Very careful.
“You have to walk it off,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “We don’t have much time before they come back. You have to be alert before that happens. Come on, darling. You can do it.”
My first sign of brain damage: auditory hallucinations. Had Constance Cantrell really just called me darling?
We walked five steps—I counted every agonizing one—and then she turned me around slowly and we walked seven more excruciating, nauseating steps. Turn, seven steps. Turn, seven steps. After the fourth trip, the pounding in my head started to ease up. After the ninth, I could open my eyes a little. By the twelfth, I was standing up a little straighter. By the time we had traced the same path two dozen times, I was feeling more like me.
“That’s my girl,” Ms. Cantrell said proudly when I pulled away from her and attempted to make the trip on my own. Seven steps, turn.
Scream.
“No! No! No!” she cried softly, rushing forward to clap her hand over my mouth. “No, Ember! If you scream, they will come for you. Remain calm, child. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
I sincerely hoped she was right, because it looked really bad. Her lip was busted and there was another cut near her hairline that had bled quite a lot. Her left eye was swollen completely shut and her nose was broken. There were also bruises forming on her chest and arms and, judging by the way she winced when she moved, I kind of thought a few of her ribs might be broken. If that wasn’t bad, what was?
You could move mountains with the power they’ve given you, Dad whispered again in the back of my mind as I stared at Ms. Cantrell. When I saw the pentagram branded just above her mark, I knew my goals weren’t that high. I didn’t want to move anything. My only goal was to remove Hamilton and all of the sickos who followed him. Permanently.
Only, I wasn’t sure quite how I was going to do that. Hamilton wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t have kidnapped me without binding me first. He was afraid of me, and he should be. But Ms. Cantrell had been bound too, and she had managed to hex her guard. If she could do it, I could, too.
“How did you get out?” I asked Ms. Cantrell. “Did the chemical they gave you wear off?”
“No, as far as I know I’m still powerless,” she said sadly. “It was Amelia. She hexed my guard, untied me, and told me to run. She said you were planning to use me as an example, that you were going to…” She stopped, then closed her eyes and shook her head. “I should have known better. We connected, you and I. I felt it.”
I tried not to see the truth, but I couldn’t ignore it. Five Class A witches, one traitor. Not my Grams or Mrs. Val. Not the hermit. Not Ms. Cantrell, who was standing before me, beaten but still not broken. It had been Mrs. Amelia the whole time.
I vaguely remembered the figure I had seen when I’d been taken—a small figure in a hooded cloak. It was the exact figure that Blake had described to me the night Hamilton had burned Kim.
Oh, how she must have laughed when no one was looking. The girl she was trying to kill had defended her. I had even suggested we hide her with the rest of the injured. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
“How many others are here?” I asked, unable to hide the anger in my voice.
“There are only four,” Ms. Cantrell said with a sad shake of her head. “I saw them when they brought me in. They’re in pretty bad shape. Two of them won’t make it out of here, and the other two are so beaten they may never recover even if they do.”
I swallowed down my rage and tried to figure out a way to get those poor women out of those cells before they burned. Unfortunately, I came up blank. Without my powers, I couldn’t help them.
Before I could come up with a non-magical means of escape, we heard a door open in the distance and Mrs. Cantrell paled visibly, her hands beginning to shake even more.
“Lie down, Ember!” she whispered frantically. “They want you awake. It will buy us some more time! Hurry, child!”
She led me back to where I had been lying when I woke up and I lay down quickly. With shaking hands, she arranged my arms, one over my head and one across my stomach, and then her footsteps were hurrying away. I heard the slip of silk against the stone wall only seconds before heavy booted footsteps rounded the corner.
“Let me go, you dick!” a sneering, familiar voice hissed. “Just wait. You’re going to be sorry you touched me.”
I had to fight to remain still as I heard the sound of a fist hitting flesh and Ainsley’s soft groan. The door to our cell opened and a body hit the floor near me, hard, followed by a man’s soft laughter. Before I could decide if I wanted to blow my cover and kill him, a hand gripped my shirt and lifted me up, shaking me. I forced myself to remain limp, like I was still unconscious. I didn’t even flinch when he dropped me, causing my head to bounce against the cold concrete beneath me.
Prick.
“Damn, I guess we overdosed her,” he muttered, sounding disappointed. “Your brother is going to be pissed, Ainsley. Trey was really looking forward to burning this one…right after you and the other witches.”
“Keep dreaming, Harvey,” Ainsley spat acidly. “Do you honestly believe they won’t come looking for me? For them? Think again, asshole! It won’t take Zan long to find me again. And when he does…”
Her sentence died with another grunt of pain. From the sound of it, he had kicked her this time. Harvey and I were going to have a very unpleasant meeting soon. Unpleasant for him, that is. Personally, I was looking forward to it.
I waited, holding my breath, for him to grab Ms. Cantrell for another round of abuse. I wouldn’t be able to lie still for that. I was afraid for her as it was. With her broken ribs, another beating would probably kill her. I almost made the mistake of breathing a sigh of relief when I heard the door clang shut behind him and the rattle of a key in the lock.
I counted his footsteps, listening to them moving further away. Twenty-one steps, another lock turning, another door opening and closing. I stored the information for later use and then opened my eyes. To my surprise, Ainsley grinned at me and winked.
“You’re in about ten different kinds of shit, buddy,” she said cheerfully. “Nate is on the warpath. He said if you hadn’t decided to use your dead pals as a shield, he would have known you were gone long before he did. Of course, he didn’t say it like that. There were quite a lot of other descriptive words thrown in for effect when he said it. Personally, I still think it would have taken him a while. He’s been sticking to Mikhail like glue to make sure he stays away from you.
“Anyway,” she said, standing up and kicking her shoes off, “I’m here to bust you out. Well, me and a couple of friends.”
“You let them catch you?” I whispered, horrified, sitting up and watching with a wary look as she reached for the button on her jeans. “Are you on something, you idiot? They could have killed you on sight!”
“They wouldn’t dare,” she said, rolling her eyes. “My brother is a showman, Ember. He wants to burn me. If they had killed me on sight, he probably would have killed them. Besides, how else was I supposed to get in?”
Ms. Cantrell and I shared a look that clearly said we shared the same concerns about her sanity when Ainsley slipped her jeans off and started turning them inside out. When she started ripping the seam out of them, I wondered if the person I needed to be scared of was Ainsley, not her brother.
Seeing my worried look, she grinned and held up two syringes filled with bright gold fluid. She had sewn the antidote into her jeans? That was just…brilliant! Of course, if they had patted her down for weapons she would have been screwed, but it was still brilliant.
“Been drinking the crap for years in small doses to build up an immunity,” she said, shrugging and jabbing one of the syringes into her bare thigh. “It still binds my powers, but I don’t get the painful side effects.”
“Your turn, Em,” she said, tossing me the second syringe. She arched an eyebrow when I just held it, staring at her. “Oh, please! You give yourself injections of Nexus three times a day!”
Yeah, good point.
I started to jab the needle into my thigh, but stopped just as suddenly. Very slowly, I got up and walked toward Ms. Cantrell. She looked at me, confused, when I knelt down beside her and reached for the hem of her gown. Just before I plunged the syringe into her leg, she reached out and grabbed my hand, stopping me.
“No, child,” she said with a gentle smile. “You have to take it. Only you can get us out of here, Ember.”
“Well, not exactly,” Ainsley said, looking uncomfortable. “Actually, we already have an exit strategy in place. You still need to take the damn shot, though, Ember. And fast, because we need to get out of here now.”
Though it didn’t feel right to do it, I did as they asked. The second I depressed the plunger on the syringe, I felt an awesome wave of power crash through me in a rush so intense that I could hardly contain it.
“Better?” Ainsley asked with a smile.
“Loads,” I told her, returning her smile. “Thanks, Ainsley.”
“Anytime,” she chirped.
We helped Ms. Cantrell to her feet carefully. I offered to heal her and she thanked me for the offer but said she would rather wait for Grams. I could have sworn I heard her mutter the words ‘purple elephant’ when she turned away and couldn’t really blame her for not wanting to chance it.
“All right, boys!” Ainsley yelled out, making me and Ms. Cantrell jump about a foot. “Let’s go! Move your asses! We don’t have all night!”
I closed my eyes as a warm wind blew around us. I knew even before they materialized in front of me, wings tucked close to their bodies, who our rescue squad was. Lark grinned at me when his wings drew away and retracted behind him automatically. Ryan gave me a curt nod, but he looked a tad bit more respectful than he had before I had imprinted his cute little angel derriere in Skippy’s wall. The last to arrive wasn’t Erin, as I had thought it would be, but Tyler.
I felt a tightness in my chest when I realized I could have died and the last thing I had said to him was that I hated him. I ran to him and hugged him. He seemed to be on the same page, because he held me so tight I could barely breathe then gently pushed me back so he could look me over.
“You okay, beautiful?” he whispered, his eyes looking suspiciously bright. When I nodded, he scowled down at me and then tore into me with a vengeance. “You scared the bloody hell out of me! Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
“Yell at her later!” Ainsley snapped, her gaze flickering to the door at the end of the hall every few seconds. “We have to get out of here! Now!”
Lark wrapped Ms. Cantrell carefully in his arms, smiling down at her, and then his wings folded around them both and they were gone. Ainsley and Ryan were the next to disappear. But when Tyler reached for me, I backed away. He looked confused and took a step toward me, but I held up my hand for him to stop where he was.
“Tyler, do you believe in me?” I asked softly, never taking my eyes from his.
“Of course I do, beautiful,” he said, frowning. “What kind of question is that, Em? You know I have complete faith in you.”
“Then I want you to prove it,” I told him, taking a step closer to him. Not close enough for him to grab me, but close enough to be intimate. “Ms. Cantrell said there were four other witches here. I want you to help them…and I want you to leave me here.”
Tyler froze where he was, his face twisting in anger and something I could only describe as acute pain. For a long moment, neither of us moved. We didn’t speak. We just looked at each other.
I had just put him in a really hard place and I knew it, but I wasn’t going to apologize for it. If he really believed in me, like he said he did, he would do what I asked. I wouldn’t hate him if he didn’t, I would understand, but I would also know he didn’t think I was strong enough to do what had to be done. Tyler was smart enough to know what that would mean for us. I might forgive him, but things would never be the same between us.
“You can’t do this alone, Em,” he said softly, taking another step toward me. “You’re powerful, but they have the numbers. There has to be more than a hundred people out there, all wanting to kill you for one reason or another. You’ll take down some, maybe even most, but they’ll kill you in the end because they’ll overwhelm you. You’re not dealing with amateurs here.”
“I don’t plan on doing it alone.” He believed in me. He really did. That meant more to me than he would ever know. “You are going to bring me my army. In the meantime, I’m going to show Hamilton what a real witch looks like.”
He reached out to cup my cheek in his palm, looking deep into my eyes like he was searching for the answer to a question that was more important to him than any other. Then, taking me by surprise, he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to my lips. It wasn’t a ground shaking, firework-producing kind of kiss. It was sweet and warm and…kind of beautiful. I didn’t feel the passion or the overwhelming emotion I felt when Nathan kissed me, but I felt something. There was a connection between me and Tyler, like a thread that bound us together, thin and fragile as a spider’s web.
“I love you, Ember,” he whispered, his forehead pressed to mine. “I know you can’t return it, but I do. I thought distancing myself from you would make it easier, but it didn’t. The day you walked out of Grayson’s office and I saw the hurt in your eyes, hurt I had put there, I realized just being close to you, being a part of your life, would be enough. I just had to say it once out loud, and I won’t ever say it again. I only have one thing to ask of you.”
“What?” I whispered back, looking up to meet his eyes.
“Don’t die before I get back with your army, beautiful,” he said, smiling sadly. “I can’t bear the thought of a world without you in it.”
Lifting my hand to his lips, he pressed another soft kiss to my palm. He released it slowly as his wings closed around him. As I drew my hand away, my fingers brushed the silky-soft feathers. A pleasant tingle raced up my arm and seemed to coil around my heart with that one touch. Then he was gone, leaving me to wonder what the hell had just happened.
A few seconds later, I heard the rustle of wings again through the stone wall next to me. Each of the four angels in our group had come back for a witch. When Tyler reappeared at the bars of my cell, there was a young girl in his arms that couldn’t have been more than ten. I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath to contain the rage the sight of her sent spiraling through me.
“We’ll be back for you, beautiful,” Tyler said when I finally opened my eyes again.
“I know,” I murmured with a smile. “I’m counting on it.”
Winking, he wrapped his wings around the girl in his arms and disappeared. For a long moment, I stared at the place where he’d been. When even the scent of his essence had faded away, I finally sank onto the cot behind me.
And began to prepare myself for the battle to come.
Chapter 37: Little Chamber of Horrors
When Hamilton finally showed, I was sitting cross-legged on the cot, Indian style, with my hands resting lightly on my knees. My eyes were closed, but I smiled when I heard the door at the end of the hall open. I counted footsteps again and my smile widened when I heard them slow and falter as the empty cells started to register. When they reached my cell, I ope
ned my eyes and chuckled darkly at the shocked look on Hamilton’s face.
“Missing something, Trey?” I purred, still laughing at him. Judging by the furious glint in his eyes, he didn’t think much of me mocking him. Yeah, because I really cared. “Your father trained your baby sister very well, Hamilton. Sucks for me that she was only strong enough to take one of us out with her, though. I volunteered to be left behind.”
“That was a mistake, little firebird,” he growled, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at me. “I should have burned the other witches right away. Normally, I would have. But I thought my men deserved to have some fun after working so hard.”
I didn’t say a word. I didn’t really have to. I was pretty sure he could see the angry glow in my eyes all by himself. I refused to give into the rage pouring through me, not wanting to tip him off to the fact that I wasn’t bound anymore. I wanted to be outside, where I would have the most impact, before I blew my cover.
“Where’s your witchy godmother?” I sneered, looking behind him like I expected Amelia to pop out of the wall. “You two lovebirds having a quarrel? Let me guess. You both want to kill me and you’re fighting over who gets to do the honors?”
I could see I was throwing him off balance. I wasn’t like the other witches he had captured, tortured, and killed. I wasn’t afraid of him, and he could sense that. Even if Ainsley hadn’t shown up with her little gold potion, my reaction to him would have been the same. If I was afraid of him, that meant he won. My fear would give him power. I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction even if he tied me to a stake and roasted me alive.
“You’re a weird one, little firebird,” he said, narrowing his eyes and studying me. “Most witches facing the stake cry and beg. Not you, though. You’re sitting there smiling at me like I’m taking you out for a movie. Why do you think that is?”