Embers in the Blood: Deadly Trades Series: Book Two

by Jessica Gunn

  I wet my suddenly dry lips, but when that didn’t seem to do anything, I sipped at my drink again. “I wish I had as noble an excuse, but all I saw were escape and money signs when Riker said one million dollars. That and a hell of a good time fighting you again.”

  A ghost of a smile grew on Kian’s face. “It was pretty fun.”

  The lights above the audience ring dimmed for a long moment before going dark completely.

  Showtime.

  A bright spotlight lit the center of Crimson’s fighting ring, revealing a woman in an expensive red suit. Even her uniform was fancier than most things worn in Midnight. She pulled down the edges of her jacket once before tapping the tiny microphone on her collar.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the referee said, her voice deep and commanding. “We have a show for you tonight! Crimson has found a new combatant to try taking on our newest champion, and this one might be the first to beat him out.”

  A surge of cheers soared out from the audience, sailing over the center of the space and down into the ring below. The referee grinned, but something about the curve of that grin, twisting in an almost super-villain way, had me scooting to the edge of my seat.

  “Do you want to meet our newest contender?” the referee asked over the roar of the crowd. It only got louder with her question. “Then let’s bring them out! First up: our champion, the Ember.”

  The cage door located behind the referee slid opened and out from the darkness walked a man in loose handcuffs. A long chain connected them to another pair of silver cuffs at his feet. My eyes narrowed. He’s bound?

  “What?” Kian hissed.

  I glanced back at him. “That’s barbaric. We were never cuffed.”

  Kian’s eyes went wide, seeing something I hadn’t because I’d turned from the ring. He touched a hand to my arm and squeezed hard once. “Look, Ava.”

  I did, and only then did it register why Crimson might have wanted to keep their champion bound like this. Ember.

  Sure enough, the Ember’s hands had a glowing, red-orange energy swirling around them. Ether-flames whipped around his arms and spiraled up to his shoulders.

  Crimson’s new champion was an Ember witch. One that had been infected by Talon’s new favorite poison.

  “I don’t get it,” Kian whispered, even though there was no one close enough to hear, not over the hollering of the crowd. “Why risk word getting out about this poison, knowing we’re working to get rid of it, and show it off in Crimson?”

  “Because they don’t care that we know,” I said. “Mason didn’t care. He confronted us, Kian.”

  Kian’s grip on my arm tightened, but the anger—or fear—wasn’t directed at me. He let go almost immediately. “They’re testing something.”

  My brow furrowed. “Testing what?”

  He nodded to the ring, where the referee woman had backed up a few paces, toward a side exit that the referees often entered and exited the ring from. Kian grimaced, and even in the dim lighting, his face seemed too pale. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  I looked back to the ring. “You’re not the only one.” Except I’d been feeling shitty about all of this from day one, way back when my team had first discovered Talon’s poison to turn Ember witches fully demonic.

  It was like that had been phase one, the forced transformation. Now, phase two was to create Ember witches from normal magik-users. Combined, they’d be able to make an army.

  An army to fight the Neuians.

  My stomach rolled over itself as the referee announced the entrance of the underdog in tonight’s fight.

  “And now, our contender: The Old One.” She nearly clapped, but her fake excitement was betrayed by the fast steps she took toward the side exit. Before the contender had even entered the ring, she was out the door and had disappeared.

  A shadow-cloaked figure stepped out from the darkness of the cage door. He, too, was bound, but much more tightly. Only once he was fully in the center of the ring, beneath the spotlight, was it possible to see the amount of bindings on him. Three sets of handcuffs, all linked to cuffs around his legs.

  Both fighters in tonight’s matched were bound. Both unable to truly defend themselves, much less fight.

  “What the hell sort of dishonorable crap goes on in Crimson?” I hissed at Kian.

  “It was never like this before.” And from the equal parts wonder and disgust in his voice, he had to be telling the truth. “The Ember witch makes sense. Those bonds are loose, and they’re impossible to control. But why the demon?”

  Unless… “What if it’s not a demon?” My words came out low, quiet. So quiet that for a long moment, I wasn’t sure Kian had even heard me. But then he slowly turned his head to me.

  “You don’t mean…”

  Kian didn’t even have to finish his sentence. We were probably two of the small handful of people in this building right now who knew the truth of this fight. Of who this contender was, and what had been done to this Ember witch.

  Suddenly, as the fighters circled each other, waiting for the match to officially start, a wall of ether came down around the ring, seemingly from nowhere. It washed down from the ceiling, sealing the center of the audience’s level and the ring itself in an ether shield that looked a whole lot like the one Veynix’s ether-shaper had set up around Midnight when Kian and I had gone to end him. At the same time, the bindings around both the Ember witch and the contender cracked with an audible snap and slid to the ground.

  The contender, whose back was to Kian and me, looked down first, then backed up a few steps. “What’s going on?”

  The Ember grinned evilly. “It will be done.”

  Then he launched himself right for the other man, his red-orange ether crackling around him as though it were a real fire. One, two, three shots of ether flew from each of the Ember witch’s hands, but the contender deftly avoided them. He bounced back and forth on what had to be his own sort of magik, which in and of itself was strange. But from this angle, I couldn’t see what that magik was. The lip of the center ring blocked the few.

  “You couldn’t use magik in Midnight,” I said.

  “Here either,” Kian said. “It’s like all the rules have changed. All for this test.”

  I wasn’t so sure this was a test of anything. Everything about tonight had so far been a production.

  “Enough!” the Ember witch roared. “Your kind will perish! Your time is over!” Red-orange ether blazed around him, growing until the ether-flames bounced against the shield surrounding the ring. His magik soared upward, rising all the way to the ceiling of the shield.

  But then a cobalt blue ether, striking and in stark contrast to the Ember witch’s magik, split the space, dousing the flames in what looked like water.

  “You know not of which you speak!” the contender called out. He was circling the ring again now, waiting for his moment to strike. He walked to the opposite side, now facing where Kian and I were sitting. His magik flowed around him like a fountain. On his face were tattoos, twisting around his eyes. Lit up with cobalt blue magik.

  Neuian magik.

  My stomach roiled. Bile slicked the back of my throat as the realization set in that this match was indeed a show. One intended to show off how Talon’s new Ember witch army would fare against Neuians.

  Chapter 16

  This time, it was me who reached out for Kian. This couldn’t be happening. Talon could not be using Crimson’s ring as a way to make sure their plans for ordering an army of volatile Ember witches on the Neuians was something that was going to work. At least they’d thought of using the ether shield to protect the audience.

  My breaths came in quick gasps, increasing in tandem with the pressure on Kian’s arm. His warm fingers covered mine and pried me from him.

  “We should go,” he said.

  I shook my head. In a sick way, I almost wanted to see how this played out. Right now, the Neuian and the Ember witch were exchanging blows, but the Ember witch was gaining g
round, pushing the Neuian back against one wall of the ring.

  “Let’s explore,” Kian added. “While they’re busy with this match and the clean-up.”

  I swallowed hard, my throat dry. Kian was right. “And if the match ends before we even reach the stairs?”

  Kian’s expression tightened. “Better hope it doesn’t.”

  We stood and made our way toward a side exit from the audience level. The security guard at the door gave us a weird look, but since it wasn’t against the rules to leave mid-fight, he must have assumed we’d seen our pick losing and wanted to leave before the match ended.

  Kian and I hurried down the steps and moved toward a corridor blocked by a locked door. A keypad was set on one side.

  “Hang on,” Kian said as he went on ahead.

  Of course he knew the code. He’d been Crimson’s champion for months.

  “Know where we’re going?” I asked.

  Kian nodded as he input a seven-digit code. “Vaguely. Basing it off of our experience below Midnight.” The door swung open, but Kian didn’t move from the keypad. Instead, he input another string of numbers, then waved me over once a beep sounded.

  “What was that?” I asked as he ushered us through the door.

  “Insurance.” Kian paused for only a moment to shut and lock the door behind us before continuing down this side of the corridor. “I’ve disabled part of the security system, but we’re going to have to be quick. The cameras will only be down for a few minutes.”

  “Only a few minutes? That’s hardly time to find much of anything.”

  “It’s all Syd could buy us,” Kian said.

  I gave him a sidelong glance. “Syd?”

  He nodded. “I spoke with her briefly before we left. She’s good with computers and told me how to get into Crimson’s systems. But it won’t work for long. Come on.”

  Despite the fact that neither of us had seen this part of Crimson before, much of the bland white walls looked the same as the building beneath Midnight. There were storerooms of poisons and venoms dotted along the corridors. A quick look revealed some of the contents, many of which I recognized: dharksa, the hallucinatory drug, elin, which disabled magik, Demon’s Blood, which Kian made a point of ignoring as we passed, and, of course, a few vials of Veynix’s mutated platypus venom. Seeing caches of that intact here sent shudders down my spine. But I forced my feet to keep moving, to take me past these rooms and deeper into Crimson.

  Deeper into Talon’s plans.

  Surprisingly, there weren’t any guards. Either Talon had never suspected someone would come down here or they were all busy watching the match.

  Kian hissed and pulled me back around a corner as we rounded it. Maybe I’d thought too soon. “Security.”

  “Fantastic. How many?” I asked.

  “Two,” Kian said. “I’ll take the one on the left.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Kian nodded, then reached for the knife hidden in a sheath on his back. I did the same, and we both jumped out and launched ourselves at the guards. They yelped in surprise but met us without hesitation, one of them slamming a fist into my gut. I sputtered but managed to hold myself long enough to slash my blade across his throat.

  So much for being stealthy and not leaving a trail.

  Kian dispatched the other demonic guard before he could use his magik on either of us. “That was too easy.”

  I glanced down the long hallway. “Just a little.”

  The guards had been stationed outside of a single room, the only one on this stretch of corridor. The double doors were locked by another keypad.

  “Wonder what’s behind door number one,” Kian said as he stopped in front of the keypad.

  “Whatever it is, maybe it’s not that good if this was the only security they have down here.”

  Kian tapped a few number keys, entering the same code as before. The keypad shrieked an awful, high-pitched tone. Above the number pad a light flashed red. “Shit.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The code doesn’t work,” Kian said. “That’s the only one Syd gave me.”

  “Makes sense that they’d hide something important behind another code,” I said. Not that that was at all helpful for us.

  Kian frowned and sheathed his knife again just so—it appeared—he could shove his hands into his pockets. “We only have another minute or so left before the cameras turn back on, assuming they don’t already know we’re here.”

  I swallowed hard and stared at the door. Just beyond it, the echoes of sound sifted through. “We need to see what’s behind this door.”

  “Judging from the match happening in the ring right now, I think it’s pretty clear.”

  “Five minutes ago, you were all for exploring,” I said. “You want to back out now?”

  Kian sucked in a shallow breath. “Fine. But you’re going to have to take down this door. I don’t know another way in.”

  “Me?” I asked. “How do you expect me to do that?”

  Kian lifted his hands and balled them into fists, knocking them together. “Your magik.”

  I glanced back at the door and planted my hands on my hips. “You’re assuming it’s metal.”

  “It probably is.”

  Even if the rest of it weren’t made from metal, the handles sure were. I reached out and brushed my fingers along the door handles, getting a feel for it. Reaching out with my magik, I focused in on the minerals and earth, how they were combined to create this door.

  “You got this, Ava,” Kian said, watching intently from over my shoulder.

  I set my jaw and grabbed each door handle. And pulled.

  In my mind’s eye, my magik snaked around my arms, down to my fingers, and imbued them with the power to pull metal apart. In reality, my fingers wrapped around each door handle and yanked them open. The sounds of metal scraping on metal echoed down the hall. The shrill shriek of it sent goosebumps down both arms and a chill down my spine. Beneath my magikal hold, the metal crumbled and I pushed the doors open.

  Kian clapped my back. “Good job.”

  My breath came in heavy gasps from the exertion of it, but I was grinning. I did do a good job, didn’t I?

  Maybe I’d get used to this power after all.

  I shoved the door the rest of the way open with my shoulder. Kian and I hurried through, not bothering to even attempt to make it look like we’d been here. I didn’t make it more than a few steps before what I saw on the other side froze my feet to the floor. A wave of desperate, heart-wrenching groans and cries filled my ears. My jaw fell to the floor, and my limbs immediately felt weighted down as if cement had incased my hands and feet.

  The large, semi-circle room stood at least seventy-five feet across and smelled of both sterile sanitization and human suffering. To the left and right were cages. Cells with ether snapping and crackling between the bars. Dozens of people had been stuffed into each cell, and almost all had sallow, worn faces and exhausted eyes. Along the back wall were hospital beds, each with a person hooked up to several machines and IVs.

  Bile slicked the back of my throat when my eyes found the courage to focus on what lay in the middle of the room: four large machines with piping. A lot of piping. And each had a chamber flowing with a deep red liquid.

  Blood. Lots of it. With tiny little flecks of something glowing orange, like embers in the ashes of a fire.

  Like Ember witch blood churning in machines.

  My heart stopped, but my breath didn’t, now coming in short, desperate gasps that were sure to have me hyperventilating within seconds.

  I reached out beside me, looking for Kian, needing him. The room started to tilt, black dots danced along the edges of my vision. Finally, my hand clasped around his still, cold one. I glanced back to find him pale as snow and just as frozen.

  Mason and Talon weren’t just creating Ember witches for their army, they were farming them and their blood. Their magik, their power, their very being.

  “H
elp us!” several of the imprisoned witches cried. “Help!”

  Their pathetic, mournful pleas snapped what was left of my resolve. I started shaking my head in fast, short motions. What could we do for them? Was there anything we could do for these witches? Taking them back to Headquarters would be a start, but Fire Circle Headquarters could barely hold the witches they currently had under protection. And any life at Ether Circle Prison would still mean imprisonment.

  My focus zeroed in on the arm of one prisoner. The crease of their elbow was red, the skin angry and abused from all the blood that’d been taken out of them.

  But at least they won’t be farmed like they are here.

  I sucked several deep breaths and swallowed hard. “We need to keep moving.”

  Kian thawed beside me, the initial shock wearing off. We’d known there might be an operation down here, and if not here, absolutely Talon had another one elsewhere. We’d known.

  But knowing and seeing were two very different things. And surely neither of us thought Mason would be doing this.

  “We can’t leave them behind,” Kian said, looking at me like I’d kicked a kitten.

  I locked my jaw. “We don’t know if this is a trap.”

  “My teammates left me in a similar situation years ago,” Kian said. “I’m not walking away. I can’t.”

  “Then tell me how we’re going to get all of these people out of their cells and then teleportante them all to Headquarters,” I said. “Even if some have been there before and can therefore assist with the teleportante, there’s no time. You said so yourself.”

  As much as I hated to say the words, they were true. But at the very least, by coming down here, we’d confirmed our suspicions about more Talon bases.

  “We can’t stay here and risk it, Kian,” I said, eyeing him down now.

  He gave me that same hard stare back.

  Kian wasn’t wavering. Not on this.

  “Don’t worry,” said a voice from behind us.