by Jessica Gunn
Will screamed, his voice tearing through the chaos and boring straight into my consciousness. I’d hear that scream anywhere, recognize his voice in the thickest of fogs.
I spun, ignoring Mason, and rose to my tiptoes to see over the fighting. Kian had backed Will up behind him, and Will’s eyes were no longer two glowing orbs of red-orange energy. But Will’s hands had been tied before him, bound from movement or attacks. Kian had gotten to him, saved him from hurting everyone.
But Will had also been hit in the neck and collarbone by Ember ether. An angry burn spread across his skin, flickering with ether energy.
Kian turned, his eyes wide, as though he hadn’t seen the attack even coming, and dropped to the ground with Will. He pressed his hands against the wound, trying to stem the bleeding. It wasn’t gushing out of him. I didn’t think it had hit anything vital. But vital was relative when regarding a wound on the neck.
Beside them, a pair of Ember witches charged them, ether still swirling in their palms. One of them had attacked Will.
A rage bubbled within me, rising to the surface on the heels of fear and guilt and desperation.
“Will!” I screamed and began running toward him. Sprinting. Leaping over bodies of the fallen and ignoring Mason’s wails. For the moment, he was as incapacitated as Will. “Will, no!”
My best friend’s eyes were losing their light, even with Kian’s help.
“Don’t do this!” Kian shouted at him. He even slapped Will across the face.
The two Ember witches were closing in fast. I kicked at the floor, shooting a slab of cement at them with minimal effort. As if something had clicked on when rage flourished inside me.
Another trio of witches, seeing what had happened to their brethren, turned on me. A flick of my wrist sent metal shards from the door’s explosion right into their hearts.
Something hot wrapped around my ankles as I sprinted. It pulled my ankles together and I lost my balance, falling through the air and slamming hard, face-first, on the ground. Darkness danced along my vision, but I held it off, staring straight ahead at Will. Always watching him. Watching out for him. Wishing he’d never gotten involved in this at all.
But Kian was still over him, pressing his hands against Will’s wound. Talking to him.
Will had to be still alive, right?
The warm ether ropes around my ankles dragged me along the floor, back in the direction I’d come from. I wiggled, rolling over onto my back to look at my captor. Mason towered over me, a furious look on his face. His chest was still smoking from Veres’s attack. But even she now seemed to be standing still, watching in horror as the battle continued. Her eyes flitted from Mason to the open wall behind him.
Would she run?
“You killed him!” I screamed at Mason. The floor beneath me trembled with my magik as Mason drew me in closer to him. I kicked up, commanding the cement near me to fly from the area of my feet up to Mason’s face.
Another Ember witch knocked the cement out of the way for him. He hadn’t lifted so much as a finger from the ether ropes around my ankles. The same ones that were now snaking up my torso and arms.
“Let me go!” I shouted.
“Not likely,” he literally spat at me. Wetness slicked my face. “You’ve ruined enough. You can’t tell me you honestly want the Neuians to win so badly as to not let me build my army?”
Was he serious?
“You’re a fucking monster!” I yelled. “Just like Veynix. Just like all of Talon. You demons aren’t worth shit.”
Tremors shook the ground beneath us. The ceiling and walls followed suit. Debris fell from above. My magik.
Mason smiled cruelly, but his expression turned giddy. “This is what my master wanted.”
My heart wrenched. I was over this talking. Over being unable to help Will. “Just kill me if that’s what you’re going to do, or let me go so we can keep fighting.”
So I can teleportante to Will and get out of here.
I wriggled, trying to break free of the ether ropes. Trying to send metal or cement through to slice them. But nothing cut through ether except for more ether. And if Veres’s last attack was any indication, and her hesitation for more, her control over Will’s power was gone. And Will was too far gone to use his.
I swallowed hard, watching Mason’s face as he realized what I had.
This was indeed over. But at least we’d put a sizable dent in his plan, a temporary hold, which the rest of the Hunter Circles could use to their advantage.
You know, if anyone survived this long enough to tell them about what had happened here.
A war cry sounded—feminine and raw. I looked to where Veres had been standing, but only a shimmer in the air remained.
She’d gone.
But then the air shimmered behind Mason and she reappeared from her teleportante, a shard of metal in her hands. Mason dropped the ropes around me to grab her wrist to stop the attack.
Veres grinned and Mason realized his mistake too late. Her eyes glowed a rainbow of colors and she began to siphon Mason’s magik from his system. I wriggled, hoping to loosen the ropes now that Mason wasn’t concentrating on them anymore. The ether ropes dissipated as soon as Veres started to gain some of Mason’s magik.
The lights above us, flickering as they were, caught a flash of metal. Mason drew another knife lightning quick.
“Veres!” I shouted.
But it was too late—he was quicker than any other demon I’d seen before. Whatever Talon had done to him as a kid, they’d made him a grade higher than the rest of their soldiers.
Mason slashed the long knife over Veres’s wrist. The sharp blade slid through skin and muscle, down to her bones and through it. Blood spurted from the wound and she screamed, grabbing her lobbed-off wrist with her other hand. Her eyes flashed again, and Mason brought up a glowing orb of Ember witch ether.
“Good try, you filthy excuse for a human,” he spat at her. “Your kind has always been and will always be monstrosities of magik. Nothing but remnants of the Neuians.”
Tears streamed down Veres’s red face. Blood seeped through her fingers as she clutched her wound to her chest. The sight of so much crimson pouring out of her churned my stomach, and the vomit I’d been holding back minutes before poured out of me. My stomach convulsed with each wave.
“Get it together, Ava!” Kian’s words soared through the air.
I spared him and Will a glance where they rested. Brian was there, assisting them, though Will’s face had paled considerably, but the witches around them had stopped altogether. None of their eyes glowed with Ember ether anymore.
Mason had lost control.
He was wearing out.
I stood and swung at Mason, not bothering to reach for my magik. The blow connected. He’d been so focused on Veres that he hadn’t seen it or the follow-up coming. The uppercut landed and set his head flying backward.
Veres backed up to Will and Kian, sidestepping the confused, scared Ember witches. I barely heard her say, “Go” to Kian as Mason turned again on me.
I straightened, my chin held high. “You’re not winning this.”
“Two of your friends will bleed out before you can test that hypothesis,” Mason said. His chest heaved and sweat slicked his brow. The burn on his chest had turned an angry shade of reddish-purple.
“Looks like you’re not going to be far behind,” I said.
Something akin to pure evil washed over his expression. A look so dark, I hadn’t even seen it on Veynix. “You’re right,” Mason said. “Then we let them all burn.”
A mass of red-orange ether grew in his palms, then bridged the space between them. Growing and growing, expanding to the size of a basketball, then bigger.
My brow furrowed. What the hell was he doing?
Then Mason turned and pointed it at the biggest collection of Ember witches in the room—where Will, Brian, and Veres happened to be.
I screamed, my body and magik reacting while my mind was
still panicking. I shifted my feet and stomped at the ground, channeling my fury at Mason into a single point beneath my feet. Just as he was about to shoot off the massive Ember ether attack, a pillar of earth sprung up from beneath him. A mass of cement and metal and dirt, all mixed together, launching him into the air and up against the ceiling. His attack dissipated as his focus was shifted from his ether to the floor when his back slammed against the cement.
He sucked in a ragged breath, sounding for all the world as if his ribs had broken and pierced several organs.
The air shimmered beside him and Kian appeared with something shiny in hand. He knelt, jabbing it against Mason’s burned chest.
The other syringe. Kian still had it!
Mason’s entire body convulsed, arching off the ground and back down again. His eyes rolled back into his head.
“Enjoy that, you fucker,” Kian said before punching him across the face. But with Kian’s strength magnified by the Demon’s Blood still in his system, Mason’s nose snapped with the hit. Now it was all jagged and crooked with blood pouring out of it.
“Kian! Leave him!” I said.
“He’ll be dead in a few minutes,” Brian called. “We need to get these people out of here.”
And by people, he definitely, absolutely meant Will, who was now shaking.
“Go,” I said to Brian. “Take Will and Veres with you. Kian and I can handle this.”
Brian glanced across Will’s body to Veres. “But you’re a demon.”
“She’s a friend. From Topaz,” I said. “Go!”
Brian was gone without another word, taking Veres and Will with him on his teleportante back to Headquarters. I didn’t even worry about leaving a trail this time. It was obvious who we were; Jerrick even knew we were here and who I was. If they were going to follow us, they’d do it with or without a teleportante trail to Headquarters.
“Everyone gather around!” I called to the witches. “We’re going to take you to safety, but you have to trust us.”
They looked at each other. Some seemed more convinced than others, nodding and hurrying to Kian and me. They didn’t even know how we’d be saving them.
“No.” Mason groaned from the floor. His usually well-kept black hair had now fallen into his face. Only now did he appear the young teen he should have been had Veynix and Talon not gotten in the way. Only now did he look like he could be one of the innocents on the Fire Circle’s missing children’s board.
Good thing I knew it was all a lie.
The ground rumbled beneath my feet, but I only vaguely recognized it as feeling the footfalls of a coming platoon of guards. “We need to go. Reinforcements are coming.”
Kian grabbed my arm. “We can end him.”
I shook my head. “We don’t have time. You and I can’t take this many people on a teleportante. It’s going to take several trips.”
“Ava,” Kian growled. “We came here to kill him.”
I glared at Kian. “No, we came here to stop him. He’ll be dead by the time they realize what’s happened to him. And we’ve saved a ton of his witches. Talon’s plan is halted and Mason will be dead.”
That was what Hydron’s version of the venom was meant to do, right? I’d felt it almost kill me inside a couple minutes. Mason would be dead before I got to the Infirmary to check on Will.
“Let’s go,” I ground out through clenched teeth. Turning to the witches, I said, “We’ll have to take you in smaller groups. Hang in there. Get to the back of the room.”
I touched hands with several witches and brought us to Headquarters. They all jumped back from me, scared, once we landed in the lobby. Lissandra stood from her desk, her mouth hanging open, but I just shook my head and returned to Mason’s lab in Landshaft.
Kian did the same, and on the second trip back, we found Veres, still bleeding, and Brian also ferrying the dozens of witches. All the while, Mason laid writhing and dying on the floor.
As we gathered the last of them, Kian approached me. “We should just end him.”
“No,” I said, watching his convulsing slowly stop until he was simply shaking, his eyes closed, face pale. “For everything he’s done, he deserves to suffer.”
And for everything he helped Veynix do, may he suffer for eternity.
Because for six months before I’d gotten my revenge on Veynix, it had felt like suffering for my own eternity.
I turned from Mason and joined hands with the remaining group of witches. “He deserves it.”
Chapter 30
I waded through the mass of people in the lobby of Fire Circle Headquarters. I’d never seen it so full of Hunters, let alone people who hadn’t any idea what was going on. Most of the forced-changed Ember witches that we’d rescued shied away from anyone who got too close. Surprisingly, no one seemed to be headed for the front door.
My eyes flitted over everyone, stopping only long enough to confirm they weren’t Will. My breath quickened the more people I passed who weren’t him. Brian found me in the middle of the crowd and pulled me aside.
“He’s upstairs already,” he said. “Bria, the healer, is working on him.” He dug something out of his pocket, producing a handful of tiny vials with a familiar liquid. The Ember witch poison. “Hopefully these will help. I took a few souvenirs when I went to rescue Kian. Hydron should be able to make a cure out of this.”
Relief rushed through me so fast, my head spun and I staggered against a wall. If he was with Bria, he’d be fine. She’d more than proved herself to be a fantastic healer, even under extreme circumstances.
Brian caught me with a hand under my elbow, his other on my waist. “Easy, Ava.”
I pushed Brian away from me. I knew he was trying to help, but his touch felt too familiar and wrong. “I want to see him. And Veres. She’s with him, right?”
Brian nodded, but his eyes were hard. “They’re not going to let you up there right now.”
Anger swelled within me again. The ground beneath Fire Circle Headquarters began to shake with my power. My control was slipping. And if Will died, I was sure it’d be gone for good.
Another hand touched the small of my back. Kian appeared at my side, a faint smile on his lips. “Calm down, Ava, or you’ll take all of Headquarters with you.”
Despite his calm demeanor, his hands were shaking. And I wasn’t convinced the Demon’s Blood was to blame.
“You’re scared of me,” I said.
He shook his head lightly. “No. I don’t want you to take down the building full of people we just saved.”
“What in the hell is going on?!”
All heads turned toward the staircase that lead up to the higher floors. Dacher stood at the bottom step, flanked by Ben, Avery, and Krystin. Dacher’s face was a mix of red anger and general confusion. And when his eyes settled on the three of us, they seemed to nearly light with actual fire.
Brian stepped up, lifting his hands in defense. “It was my idea.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed and he pushed past Dacher to come into the lobby. “I should have known.”
“Ben—”
He shot a pointed glare at me. “I don’t know how the hell you’re involved, but you should probably keep quiet.”
Kian seethed next to me, but his hand never left my back.
I turned to Krystin and pleaded with her, staring her right in the eyes. She had to know we’d only go if we thought we’d accomplish something meaningful. And from what I’d heard about her over the years, Krystin had done far worse on gut instinct.
“We did this together,” I mouthed.
Krystin’s brow lifted. She laid a hand on Dacher’s shoulder and whispered to him while Ben kept glaring at Brian.
“I knew you were trouble when you showed up here again,” Ben said.
“I’ll gladly leave first thing in the morning,” Brian said. The mission was over, the deed done. He could go back to Hydron and never return, especially now that we knew where the other stood.
Krystin walked pa
st Dacher. “Hey, Ben, why don’t you chill out for a second?”
Ben spun on his heel to girlfriend, only barely tempering his glare. At least until she raised an eyebrow at him and gave him that look.
Krystin nodded my way. “I think we need to listen to them.”
Ben returned his fiery glare to me, but said nothing.
“We took out Mason,” I said in their moment of silence.
Ben and Dacher exchanged a look before Dacher said, “That can’t be true because otherwise that would mean you found Mason. Last I heard, he was holed up in Landshaft.”
Krystin’s stare bore into me.
“Oh, please,” I said. “Like you and your team haven’t done something equally as stupid.”
Now it was me who received the look from her. “Not quite that stupid.”
Dacher looked at each of us in turn, an exasperated look on his face. “You four went to Landshaft. Now Will and a demon ally are up in my Infirmary. But supposedly one of our greatest threats is dead? What the hell have you four been doing?”
“It didn’t look like things here were going to clear up enough to attack Mason directly,” Kian said. “Not for a while. We decided a surgical attack might be better.”
I met Krystin’s unbelieving stare. “Veres isn’t only a demon ally, she’s a Blackwood witch.”
Krystin’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
I nodded. “From Topaz, to be exact. She was born with the Power.”
Ben’s eyes snapped to me at my mention of the Power. “Another person?”
“Why is she a demon then?” Krystin asked.
“Topaz decided to freeze the Power in its current state by making her a demon,” I said.
“Which means she’ll have it forever,” Ben said. “Like Kinder.”
“And Riley,” Krystin added, her voice barely a whisper.
Ben’s angry expression faltered. “Mason is dead?”
“And hopefully his program of turning Ember witches with him,” I said. “Although Jerrick is still alive. And he knows we were there, so…”
“They might come for us,” Ben said. “There might still be a war on the Hunter Circles.”