by Jessica Gunn
Dacher looked up too, his face that same grim mask Ben’s held. “Ava. Thank you for coming down. This was a most unexpected visit by Hydron for a variety of reasons.”
It wasn’t really unexpected. They knew Hydron would be sending agents. Maybe they weren’t supposed to show up today? He’s stalling. “What the hell happened?”
The remaining four Hydron agents turned around to see what was happening. Three continued to blend in together, cookie-cutter soldiers. But the fourth agent…
My stomach dropped as our eyes met. Pain tore through my chest, reaching into my heart and grabbing for my soul. Shredding it. Dancing in the remaining ribbons. Heat flashed across my cheeks as my hands began to shake. I squeezed them into fists.
Slowly, my breath returned to me; first as thin gasps, then as giant heaves as my lungs tried to pull in enough air to clear this hallucination standing before me.
Hallucination was the only possible reason for this to be happening.
“Hi, Christine,” the last Hydron agent said. His eyes narrowed in careful consideration. Probably of my state of mind, which was apparently rooted firmly in crazy-town for any of this to be real.
The last Hydron agent, dressed in a baggy jacket, was Brian. My ex-boyfriend.
The man who’d saved me from a demon on the night we’d first met. Had trained me to fight them. The man who’d changed my life forever.
The last agent was a man who was supposed to be dead.
Chapter 6
“H-How?”
This singular word was the only sound that made it past my dry mouth and onto my lips. Blackness danced on the edges of my vision, teasing me with a blissful unconsciousness where I wasn’t living a nightmare that never seemed to end.
Brian lifted a hand in front of him. “It’s a long story, Christine. But I promise I’ll tell you everything.”
My eyes narrowed and my brow furrowed as I stared at him. Flashes of that night plowed through my mind’s eye. The car swerving. Brian’s vise-grip on my arm. The squeal of the brakes as we flew off the road. The car tumbling end over end. Metal screeching against metal. My magik saving me but no one else. Brian’s twisted body being pulled from the wreckage. Veynix plunging his venom-tipped blade into Brian’s side.
Brian’s blood pooling everywhere. The overwhelming scent of blood and pain.
Brian’s scream as it tore from his throat, ripping it raw.
Tears stung my eyes. I blinked them away. Some fell anyway. A hand wrapped around my forearm lightly—a call for sanity.
“Ava.” Kian’s words were whispered, but it was loud enough that he could have been right in my ear. I turned my head just enough to see him standing there by my side, a concerned look warping his features in a way I didn’t expect to see after last night.
“Ava?” Brian asked. Finally, his gaze broke from me to turn back to Ben. “What?”
Ben took careful steps past Brian, inching along until he stood between Brian and me. “She had to be placed into our protection program after what happened with Veynix and Talon. Because of what your team found out.”
Every part of me started shaking. I left him behind to die. I ran without checking. He’d still been alive.
Ben and me, the others… we’d assumed he’d died with my other teammates after the car exploded due to taking damage near the fuel line.
“We buried a body,” I said, my voice weak. “Me. Your family. I was there at all four funerals.”
Brian’s face fell. “I’m sorry about that.”
A bitter, half-sobbed laugh escaped my mouth. “You’re sorry? Are the others alive too? Are they hiding somewhere around Headquarters?”
“Ava,” Ben said, his voice low. “I didn’t know, I swear. None of us did. We don’t have to do this here or now. We can—”
“Explain why someone I thought I watched die is standing here in front of me!” I laughed again. More tears welled in my eyes. After Veynix coming back and the whole magik reveal, after six months in the protection program and starting over, after everything, now this?
Kian’s body went rigid beside me. He let go of my arm but inched forward, closer to being in front of me than at my side. Enough to give Brian the exact right impression. “Maybe Ben’s right. Let’s not do this now.”
Brian’s eyes narrowed on Kian. “It’s all related to why we’re here now.”
“Veynix is dead.” My words came out despite the confusion warping my mind. “Nothing else you’re here for could be related. Not after all this time.”
Brian’s gaze dropped for a moment. A couple inches at least, but not all the way to the floor. “He was toying with us. Keeping us distracted from digging deeper into what our team found out that night at the Talon hideout.”
“Obviously.” The venom in my tone was thick enough that even Kian flinched.
Ben looked to Dacher over the heads of the other Hydron agents. “Sir?”
Dacher just shook his head.
Brian glanced their way. “Is there a possibility that I can speak to you, Ben, and Christine alone?”
“Ava,” I corrected.
Brian frowned.
“That might be best,” Dacher said. “The rest of you are dismissed. Including you, Kian.”
Kian turned to me, pleading. His jaw was as tightly locked as his fists at his sides.
“It’s fine,” I said, still shaking from head to toe. With shock or rage, I wasn’t sure. It was anyone’s guess at this point. “I’m fine.”
We both knew it was a lie.
“We won’t be long,” Ben said, his voice hard. He looked as pissed as Kian, possibly even more considering the glares he was firing at Brian. And Max, his cousin’s boyfriend. “Did you know?”
Max met Ben’s eyes without hesitation. “No. Rachel and I try to keep work and our personal lives as separate as possible. I knew Ava lost her team in a crash, and that Brian was once a Hunter. He neglected to tell us which Circle. I never made the connection.”
Ben’s lips formed a thin line. He didn’t need to say a word for anyone in the room to know what he’d been thinking.
“I said you’re all dismissed,” Dacher repeated.
Max, Jeremiah, and the other Hydron agents left first, Jeremiah leading the way. Kian lingered, a concerned look wrinkling his features.
He stayed beside me, looking into my eyes. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. I didn’t need him to fight my battles for me. But he didn’t need that reminder right now. “Go. I’ll meet up with you after. This won’t take long.”
Either Brian had a hell of a good excuse, in which case I’d forgive him but nothing else would change, or everyone at the Fire Circle had been lying to me, and I’d be gone from Boston by nightfall.
Kian nodded and trailed up the stairs to the exit.
Once Dacher, Ben, Brian, and I were alone, Dacher gestured for Brian to begin his story.
Brian leaned his back against the dais, his body looking exhausted with all the weight he was forcing against the structure. “I was hurt in that crash. Badly. I remember careening off the side of the road, past the guard rail, and sliding down the ravine on our side.”
Then he must have remembered everyone’s screams. Everyone except Jeremy, who’d already died on impact with the other car. Veynix’s car.
Brian lifted his gaze to mine, but I looked away. Nothing about his story would sway me to be anything other than angry. I’d spent the last nine months thinking he was dead like the rest of our team. That I was alone. While had Veynix returned to finish the job.
I didn’t have any pity for someone that cowardly.
“Veynix stabbed me with his venom-tipped knife,” Brian continued. “I’m only now getting over the after-effects of that.”
“Join the damn club,” I spat.
Brian frowned. “I must have blacked out because I remember watching Veynix approach you. But when I woke up next, you and he were both gone. The sirens were closing in. I wasn’t sure what to do.
I was scared, Christine.”
“Ava.”
He nodded. “Sorry. Ava.”
“You left,” Ben said, watching him with narrowed eyes. “But the coroner found four bodies that night.”
We buried all four of my teammates. Although only Liz’s had been open casket. But why would Brian’s family lie about burying their own son?
Unless… My stomach dropped. Churned. Then dropped again. I looked to Brian. “You have family in Hydron.”
Brian dropped his gaze to the ground. “I used teleportante to bring myself to my cousin Tim, who quickly assessed what had happened. Hydron was already monitoring police scanners across the Fire Circle, so they knew about the crash’s call. Tim had my body replaced. I have no idea how, nor do I ever want to know. But they did it to keep Veynix or Talon from chasing me or my family down. To hide me.”
“Like the Fire Circle did for me,” I said. “But if Hydron has the surveillance ability to track police scanners all across New England, wouldn’t they have figured out I was still alive?”
“Eventually, yes,” Brian said. “They also discovered that you were in your own protection program of sorts. And given the state I was in for a while, poisoned and injured, Hydron decided for me that I wasn’t allowed to make contact. You wouldn’t have been allowed on their base anyway and if I’d suddenly shown up in your life…”
“What?” I asked. “We were together, Brian. As teammates and as a couple. I loved you. Why would you keep up that charade just for Hydron’s sake?”
“Because I didn’t want you to get hurt more than you already had,” Brian said.
“Hurt?” My voice was sharp and low. “You know what hurts, Brian? Thinking your entire team died and then having to face Veynix alone. Thinking you’d survived because maybe the rumors were right: maybe I did make a deal with him. Or maybe I ran. But it was you who ran, Brian. You left me behind.”
“I was practically dead,” he shot back. “I should have died there in the woods.” He shrugged off the baggy jacket around his shoulders. I gasped. His right arm was twisted, bent in the wrong direction at the elbow. And without the collar of his jacket hiding his neck, I saw scars running along it. “I couldn’t have helped you fight him even if I’d stayed.”
My jaw locked in place. I shot Ben a look, but he shook his head. He hadn’t known about Brian’s survival. None of us had.
I turned to Brian and gave him a withering look. “That’s okay. Turns out I didn’t need your help anyway. I don’t accept the help of cowards.” I closed my eyes. “Teleportante.”
Chapter 7
I didn’t teleportante far. It was childish, but I wanted Brian to worry about me for a fraction of a second. Because it was pretty damn clear he hadn’t so much as thought about me since his cousin and Hydron had helped him recover.
Nine months. Nine whole months I’d thought he was dead. That I was the sole survivor. That I’d left each and every one of my teammates—my best friends—to die. I didn’t know how to begin processing all of this.
Instead, I brought myself up to the lobby of Fire Circle Headquarters, then across to the set of stairs leading down into the basement training rooms and attached library. A pressure rose in my chest with every step I took, growing and pressing against my ribs until I was sure they’d all burst. At the last moment as I stepped off the staircase, that pressure transformed into a warm, comforting sensation.
My magik. Begging to be used, for sure, but mostly reassuring me it was there. That in a way, I wasn’t alone or incapable of dealing with this.
I opened and closed my fists. Maybe if I flexed them, gave the illusion of using my magik, the power inside me would calm down.
“Ava?”
I froze at the door to the training rooms and spun around. Krystin was coming down the stairs behind me, a worried look on her face.
“Ava, wait,” Krystin said.
“I’m fine,” I said and lifted my hands. “It’s my magik. I think it might act on its own accord if I don’t find an outlet for it soon.”
Krystin gestured past me toward the training rooms. “Then by all means, let’s go. I can hear the turmoil in your head.”
My eyes narrowed. “You can?”
She paused before me. “You’re not exactly quiet right now. Which I don’t blame you for. Ben caught me on the way over here and briefly told me what happened.”
Cringing, I entered the training rooms and went straight for the mat Krystin and I had basically claimed as our own throughout the last few months. The only difference was now I could sort of use my magik, where before it had been nothing but a shadow, haunting and untouchable.
“I don’t mean to be loud,” I said as I pulled over our heavy bucket of dirt. Things like dirt and sand were easier to manipulate than metals, but they weren’t as useful in close combat. Sure, shooting up a pillar of earth was a favored move of demons with earth-elemental magik, but a pillar wouldn’t do you much good if the enemy was right on top of you. I’d much rather be able to call a solid weapon to me, or through the demon themselves.
“I know,” Krystin said. “It’s fine. I can block most people out even when they’re mentally yelling. For some reason, you’re not a part of that block.”
“Is that normal?” I asked her as I stood in front of the bucket and lifted my hands in front of me.
“Sometimes,” she said. “Some people break through, like Ben. Pull up a sphere of dirt.”
It wasn’t necessary for Krystin to walk me through the exercises, but right now I was thankful for the direction. It kept me out of my own head.
I collected a ball of dirt and raised it into the air, churning it into a smooth sphere.
“Good,” Krystin said. “Now keep spinning it while we talk. It’ll drain your magik from wanting to take over.”
I nodded, concentrating. Already, my magik poured out of me and into the sphere, relieving the pressure like turning on a faucet all the way. “I just don’t know how someone can hide like that for so long, you know? It wasn’t like he and I were some fling. We were together almost as long as I was on the team. Even if he was injured, you’d think Brian would have at least tried to find a way to contact me.”
Krystin’s expression grew grim. She crossed her arms. “Hydron might have prevented it.”
“But there’s no way they didn’t know who I was,” I said. “Especially Brian’s cousin. He had to know Brian was a Fire Circle Hunter. And what we were up against. He said Hydron was trying to keep his survival a secret. Meanwhile, with the Fire Circle doing the same for me, Veynix thrived. Who knows what they’ve accomplished because Brian decided to stay hidden.”
Krystin formed her own ball of dirt using her telekinesis. But instead of something baseball-sized, her sphere was no bigger than a marble. It wasn’t any harder to do, so I wasn’t sure why she make it bigger. In fact, despite the rumors of how much of a powerhouse Krystin had been a year ago when everything inside the Fire Circle had changed, I hadn’t once actually seen Krystin use magik more than she was now. Not since Dacher had taken over as Leader of the Fire Circle.
“I get why you’re pissed,” Krystin said. “I really do. I mean… you know what happened with Ben and me and our team, right?”
I glanced away from her. Was that a trick question? “Everyone does.”
Krystin nodded. “Exactly. Toward the end, when I really was gone for a while, even I risked it all to get Ben the information that his son had been turned into a demon. And I didn’t love Ben, not then. And the team and I… we’d all been at, uh, odds shall we say, for a while before that. Either Brian has become a coward in his recovery, or there’s more to the story than what he’s saying.”
“I’m going with coward,” I said as I spun my dirt-sphere faster and faster. “It’s honestly easier to swallow.”
Krystin lifted an eyebrow. “Sometimes it is.”
Silence fell between us as we both focused on our magik. Krystin didn’t need to be here to babysit this,
or me, but I was starting to think she didn’t want to be anywhere near what might be happening in the great hall. Despite being on Ben’s team and dating him, and her status with the Powers’ city of Alzan, she’d never seemed like the type to get involved with politics. And ever since Dacher had been given command of the Fire Circle, it felt like playing with politics was all that ever went on around here.
“I guess what really gets me is the lie,” I said after a while. Krystin lifted an eyebrow to signal she was still listening. “I’m wondering now how much of any of it was real, you know? We never talked about marriage, we were way too into the Hunter Circles for that, but… I guess I just always sort of saw Brian and me together for good.”
Or, you know, until one or both of us died running missions for the Hunter Circles. Which, as dark as the words were, wasn’t something Hunters never spoke of. We all knew the very real possibility that we would become victims to this war. Especially Hunters without magik to defend themselves with. In that way, I supposed maybe Brian and I should have seen the attack on our team coming and not have been surprised by it.
But no one ever expected to accidentally run into Talon, least of all survive that initial encounter. Our team had lived longer in that circumstance than most normally did.
“I’m sure he did care for you, Ava,” Krystin said. “This life… it’s not easy, especially when organizations like Hydron get in the way. I’d be willing to bet they ordered him into silence. And maybe Brian did realize the threat you were under. Maybe he didn’t see contacting you as worth the risk. He probably thought he was keeping you safe.”
I looked away and the sphere of dirt dropped back into the bucket. “He was keeping me alone. I’m not saying that running into Veynix again would have been any easier or avoidable with him at my side, but at least I’d have known he was alive, you know? Considering everything.”
Like that we’d been in love, for instance. I didn’t want to keep coming back to that, but that seemed like all my mind wanted to do. To focus in on what hurt the most and blame that hurtful thing for the rest.