by Jessica Gunn
BEN
My head was still scrambled around dinner time. The world spun with every step toward my bedroom door, but I forced myself into a shirt and new pair of sweatpants anyway. There wasn’t time for me to sit and recuperate like I should. Like I would have back in my football days. But those times were long gone, and so too was that version of me.
Each step down the stairs sent a raw ache climbing up my spine. I ignored it as best I could and pressed my arm against my chest so as not to disturb my shoulder. I really wished the healers had been able to take care of the entire wound, but anything was better than the gaping, bloody hole that’d been there only hours ago.
My team sat in the living room, the TV turned up so high that it must have masked every one of my pained, heavy steps. Rachel caught me in the corner of her eye and rose off the recliner I usually sat in.
“Ben! Take it easy,” she said, rushing to meet me at the bottom of the staircase. I took her outstretched hand and she guided me into the living room.
“I am. I took it easy all day. What’s our next move?” Which was a pretty stupid question to ask because I was their leader. I should have known what the next move would be. But I’d come up with only one possibility. A shitty one.
“Our next move?” said Krystin as she looked me over, her eyes softening in concern. Nothing had changed since she’d left my bedroom, not with my physical condition at least. Mentally… she was all I’d been able to think about the past few hours. Krystin smirked. Wait—had she heard those thoughts? “Our next move is to wait for Jaffrin’s orders.”
“Assuming he’ll give any,” I said.
“He will,” Shawn said. He had his phone in one hand while his other held the TV remote.
I walked over to the coffee table and sat on top of it. I saw no point in relaxing on my recliner or the deep cushions of the couch when I was apt to never get up again. Not like this, with my shoulder and life a hectic mess. There was a part of me that wanted nothing more than to curl up in my bed or on the couch and never wake up and face reality.
“Look, I have an idea,” I said and the team glanced at me. “It’s not a great one, mind you, but at least it’s a plan.”
Krystin’s eyes narrowed as if she could sense the bullshit I was about to drop. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t accept my idea. “What is it?”
I looked at each of my teammates in turn, though I paused when my gaze fell on Shawn. He nodded, but slowly, like it was an apology or something. “I’m tired of us being attacked. I’m exhausted from it, honestly. I say we take the fight to Kinder. Enough of this cat and mouse game.”
Nate looked skeptical, his eyebrow raised in question. “And how do you plan to do that?”
That was the easy part. “We lure her to Cianza Boston. And when she falls for the bait, we kill her.”
Krystin gasped. “Are you insane? We can’t do that—I can’t do that. Neither can Shawn after he went and gave himself his powers back.”
Nate stood from his seat on the couch. “Agreed.”
“Same here,” said Shawn.
Rachel said nothing. Even if they’d been right and she knew it, Rachel would still pick my side. Usually.
Krystin’s gaze locked on mine. “Even if that was a sane plan—and it’s not, for many reasons—I can’t waltz across the cianza. It’ll explode and take all of New England with it, not just Boston.”
“Isn’t that her plan, though?” I asked. “I mean, destroying the Fire Circle at least. That’s what she wants—revenge. If we lure her to the cianza, she’ll think she’s about to get it.”
“And then die when the cianza immediately implodes.” Shawn stood and ran a hand through his long hair. “This is a shitty plan.”
“Then find me a new one,” I said. “I’m open to anything that takes Kinder off the playing field.”
“Yeah,” Krystin said. “Not like she’s an Old One or anything.”
Rachel bit her lip, then slowly lifted a finger. “Actually. Well—it might also be terrible, but how about this: We somehow find a way to safely offer Riley—”
Anger flashed across my mind, fists clenching. “Are you kidding me? We are not using my son as bait. I don’t care what the consequences of not doing so are.”
The room fell silent and I was thankful. At least until Krystin sighed loudly and looked at me. Studied me for a few long moments.
“Yes?” I asked her.
She looked me in the eyes. “What if… What if we spread the rumor that Riley is returning to Boston? No one has to know the truth and it only has to work long enough to lure Kinder out. She’ll want Riley because he has the Power and there’s some connection between them because of it. That’s the only reason I can think of that she knew about him beforehand. You were right on strategy, Ben, just not on the tactics of carrying said strategy out.”
I scratched the top of my head. My thoughts raced a hundred miles a minute. “That would work, yeah.”
Nate leaned forward. “Except for the fact that Jaffrin would have to know about an operation like this.”
“So let’s tell him,” Krystin said. “He can help us spread the rumor. We can head on over to a popular demon nest or bar and pass it along. Watch the rumor spread like wildfire.”
Well, it was a safer plan for Riley at least. “Okay. That works. Let me handle Jaffrin.”
ALL DEMON NESTS built beside or inside bars were the same: dimly lit and filled with lower-level demons armed to the max. Knives, daggers, swords—each had one or several strapped to their backs or legs while they sat around drinking and talking. The entire scene at this dive-bar-turned-demon-nest was so normal-looking—weapons aside—that had I not known to look for the deep burgundy eyes as dead giveaways of a demonic presence, I wouldn’t have known it was any different at all.
That was what they liked, though: to blend in. Not to be human, but to fit in so well that the humans didn’t know the magik and demon side of the world existed until it was time for them to feed on a human’s life energy, or to turn them into demons during Autumn Fire.
It worked well for them here, which made my nerves fray as we walked through the space to the bar at the back. Nate and Shawn broke off to find a table while I ordered drinks. If a fight broke out, if they figured out who we really were, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to teleportante out of here fast enough. And I doubly wasn’t sure we’d survive the ensuing fight against three dozen or more demons.
“Jaffrin knows we’re doing this, right?” Rachel asked.
I swallowed hard. “He knows we wanted to.”
Krystin peered up at me. “Wanted?”
“He might have said no,” I said, looking directly in front of me. “And I might have disagreed… but only after the healers finished taking care of my arm.”
The bartender reappeared from a doorway to the side of the bar. I leaned over and flagged him down. But even before our drink order left my mouth, the ground began to shake. The liquor bottles and glasses behind the bar rattled, then slipped off the shelves and mounted hooks. I grabbed on to the bar to anchor myself, then reached out for Rachel as the tremors grew into violent waves of shifting earth.
“What the hell?” Krystin shouted as the demons roused, standing as they looked up at the ceiling. Like they’d find answers there.
Doubt it.
Dust fell from the shaking ceiling. Some of the demons teleported out while still others either ran out the front door or dove beneath the tables. Earthquakes in Boston didn’t happen—not like this. So why now?
Krystin’s eyes met mine and her face paled. Sweat beaded along her brow as her eyes grew drawn. She swayed, letting go of the counter she’d pinned herself to, and started to fall. I let go of Rachel and dove to catch Krystin before she hit the trembling ground, cradling her head in my arm as my knees hit the wooden floor.
“Krystin?” I brushed hair out of her face and placed my palm on her forehead. She was burning up, sick all of a sudden.
My stomach dropped. No. Already
? I looked up. Shawn was bent over the table and Nate had his hand on Shawn’s back. Oh god. “The cianza. It’s reacting to them already.”
Rachel’s eyes widened as the tremors got worse. She white-knuckled the bar’s counter, but even that started to buckle. “We’re not on top of it.”
“No. But we’re damn close. A lot closer than we normally go.” Which meant we were way closer to Cianza Boston than Krystin should be. Shawn too, now that his powers were unbound.
“We need to get them out of here,” she said, bending down to help me with Krystin. We lifted her and threw each of her arms over our shoulders and made our way over to Nate and Shawn.
“There’s no way it’s just the demons,” Nate said as he propped Shawn up against him. Shawn didn’t look much better than Krystin, with his eyes closed and mouth hanging open slightly. Sweat dripped down the side of his head.
“What do you mean?” Rachel asked.
“We’re not affected,” Nate said. “We normally aren’t. And neither are the demons. Which means it’s something with the cianza and Shawn’s and Krystin’s Alzanian magik. But they’ve both been close to the cianza before and nothing’s happened. Someone else is here—a lot of someones.”
My eyes narrowed. “Kinder.”
The shadow of a figure fell into the bar next to us—a quick, errant teleportante. A man appeared it its place, taller than Nate and me and dressed in a long, burgundy coat that matched his eyes. He slammed his palm onto Krystin’s chest and a red glow emanated from it before he looked up at me with wide, genuine eyes.
“Put aside our differences if you expect any of us to survive this,” Giyano said.
My blood ran ice cold and my fists balled at my sides. Rachel held on to my swinging arm before I attacked. Lightning sparked along my fingertips, waiting for my command. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing to her?” Nate asked, his eyes wide too. “I can feel it—the ether inside of her. You’re turning her.”
Giyano grunted, his face a grimace. His footing slipped as the tremors stopped, as if he’d braced himself too well. “Your world is too black and white.”
I lunged, grabbing on to Giyano’s shoulders and ripping him from Krystin as the sounds of falling, breaking glass finally subsided.
Any demons that remained in the room now stopped, staring at Giyano and the presence he commanded, even as I threw him to the ground. He was either scared of me—unlikely—or suddenly too exhausted to fight, because all he did was stand and brush dust off his coat.
“Stay the hell away from her,” I shouted.
A wry, painful smile twisted across Giyano’s lips. “You need to get her out of here right now. Both of them.” He cast a wary glance at Shawn, his gaze lingering, though his expression was unreadable. I was a single breath away from making an unreadable face a permanent feature for him.
Shawn’s eyes fluttered opened and he looked around, eyes settling on Giyano. “What?”
“Go,” Giyano said.
Shawn’s jaw worked and it appeared as though some kind of silent conversation passed between him and Giyano, but then Shawn brushed off Nate’s hold on him. Shawn used the chair next to him as a crutch and forced steps toward Krystin. He turned to Rachel. “Give her to me.”
The demons inside the bar screamed as a wave of fire suddenly scorched the air, filling the space in a swarm of flames. Giyano jumped in front of us and threw up his hands, forming an invisible barrier shielding us from the wave of fire. He grunted with effort and closed his eyes.
Giyano… just saved us? What kind of upside-down world had we fallen into?
Krystin’s hand, still marked by Giyano from weeks ago, glowed red as Shawn propped her on his shoulder. The fire wave died down and Giyano dropped his hands.
“Who’s here?” Giyano asked.
With an entrance like that, I almost expected it to be Aloysius himself. But when the fire and smoke cleared, burned bodies and wooden furniture sizzling in the fire’s wake, it wasn’t Aloysius who stood there. It was Kinder.
Her eyes glowed red, her hands too, and she stood with them held out, like she was feeding off the very magik she’d thrown our way. A shiver ran down my spine all the way to my toes. If I couldn’t understand Kinder’s power, how could I help Riley with his?
The shiver unleashed a cold sweat as it hit me. Kinder was the only one who understood. And if we killed her…
“You cannot have them,” Giyano said, standing tall in the face of Kinder’s fury.
“Then get them off this cianza,” she spat back. “I’m not here for you, traitor.”
“Traitor, really?” Giyano nearly laughed. “At least I didn’t turn my back on everything I stood for.”
The ground began to shake again, as though each word these relative titans were saying spawned new tremors. Except they weren’t titans. And the more I ran into Giyano, the more I realized he was nothing but a normal man who’d been turned into a demon. He might be an Old One by definition, but his power wasn’t that much greater than mine or Krystin’s.
The glowing in Kinder’s eyes and hands grew alongside a fireball that appeared in the air before her. Shit, that was new. Even Giyano had never made fire in the air before—he’d always wielded it from his hands.
“I’m not after the girl,” Kinder spat. “You can rest assured your continued fascination with her remains safe.”
The walls buckled, ceiling shaking. The earthquake that had subsided returned with a vengeance even as sirens wailed outside the bar. I hadn’t been in enough earthquakes to know what kind of damage to expect outside, but that the building we were in still stood was reassuring.
The verbal sparring match going on inside the bar, however…
“Go,” Giyano said, his gaze never leaving Kinder. “Get Krystin out of here.”
I wasn’t sure who his words were for, but Shawn touched a hand to Krystin’s shoulder and used teleportante to move them elsewhere. The earthquake subsided the smallest bit in their absence.
I stepped forward. “Can we take this elsewhere?”
“The cianza won’t react to us alone,” Giyano said. “Kinder, however—”
Kinder laughed. “What do you know about—?”
Giyano threw up his hand, a trail of fire burning blue as it flew across the room directly at Kinder. She deflected easily enough, which Giyano must have expected because he followed it up with more waves of fire and the drawing of a sword that seemed to come from nowhere.
Lightning flickered to life in my palm and I forced it into a sword shape, too, and lunged for anyone who wasn’t a member of my team.
Kinder, Giyano, and I fought a three-way sword fight, ensconced by Rachel’s wall of water that kept Giyano’s and Kinder’s damaging flames from burning down the rest of the building even as the ground kept shaking. Nate jumped in, slamming ether block after ether block into Kinder between Rachel’s ice missile strikes.
All of a sudden, Kinder froze, then whipped her hand out and latched on to Giyano’s wrist without any effort at all. Her eyes flashed white—so did Giyano’s—then Giyano fell, landing on his knees.
I took the chance while she was distracted and slammed my open palm into her back. “Requirem!”
She turned to me, mirth lighting her face, and laughed. “That was funny. To think those words matter to me.” Kinder bent over and scooped Giyano up, then disappeared in a teleportante without another word.
The tremors waned and the walls stopped buckling as soon as Kinder left with Giyano in her hands. I didn’t have it in me to worry about him, not in the face of realizing that Kinder stepping nearly directly on top of the cianza… she was that powerful that her magik had tipped it.
The smell of burned meat filled my nostrils, roiling my stomach as I looked around at what remained: not much.
“Ben…” Rachel said, her voice quiet.
I turned to her and she was shaking. I was too. “It was just an earthquake.”
Nate sho
ok his head. “Not an earthquake, Ben. I felt the cianza swelling. Any longer… Krystin and Shawn, with Kinder, too… I had no idea they would be enough to tip the balance.”
“Me either.” My phone rang, the tone piercing the relative silence after the earthquakes. I slid it out of my pocket, my hands still shaking and my breath hitched. Please let it be Krystin saying where she and Shawn were.
No luck. It was a text message from Jaffrin: Headquarters. Now.
“Guess Jaffrin knows,” I told the group.
Rachel winced. “Fantastic.”
We teleported to Fire Circle Headquarters and landed in the lobby. Derek stood behind his admin desk, the phones ringing insanely.
“What happened?”
“Down the hall,” Derek said without bothering to look up from the phones. “Jaffrin wants you three present for the meeting, since you, and I quote, ‘deigned yourselves in charge of the place.’” Derek winced at his own words. “I’d get in there right now if I were you.”
Air whooshed out my lungs, my stomach churning. Shit.
Still, I led Nate and Rachel into the grand hall, the one part of Fire Circle Headquarters I could never figure out from the outside of the building. That was the magik hiding it from normal human eyes, the parts of the illusion that made the building look like a skyscraper instead of a few-stories-tall structure made from wood.
The grand hall, where Jaffrin held Circle-wide meetings on rare occasion, and where new Hunters were officially inducted into the Fire Circle, was a wide, half-circle amphitheater room with rows of seating made from marble benches, all leading down to a platform with a podium at the bottom.
It was there, at the other end of the room, that I saw Jaffrin standing with a group of people dressed in pale yellow robes. Ether Head Circle robes.
“Oh, shit,” I said under my breath.
Loud enough, I guessed, because Rachel smacked my shoulder. “Shut it before they hear you.”
“This isn’t good,” Nate said, slowing his steps down the stairs toward the platform. “What is the Ether Head Circle doing here?”
Jaffrin looked up, as if on cue, with a stern look on his stern face. He waved us over. “Here they are. Come.”