by Sadie Moss
These must be the last few who truly believe that Unpredictables are the scourge of the earth, a stain on the magical community. Or people who are just so sure Agustin will win that they’ve decided to support him no matter what they believe. I wonder how many of them have free will, and if some are under his control.
I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Roman makes a small gesture with one hand, and the wards around campus come down. Hardwick is controlling the original wards, and Liam is handling the boosted protections he added yesterday.
Two demons surge forward, grabbing the gate and ripping it open, and then Agustin and his army move toward us, marching across the quad in a slow procession.
Agustin’s dressed nicely, in a suit, like he thinks this is a televised event or something. He even has his hair done. I’m in a damn t-shirt and jeans, my hair’s pulled back out of my face in a messy ponytail, and I haven’t showered in two days. But whatever. I’m actually here to get shit done, and I’ve been working through most of the night. I didn’t just show up this morning to do some kind of victory lap.
Of course, that’s what he thinks this is. He thinks he’s got this shit in the bag.
As they near us, I tear my gaze away from the massive army of demons and mages and focus in on Agustin—and it feels like my heart stops.
Maddy.
She was obscured by his minions before, but as they fan out around him, I see her. He’s got her by the arm, and she’s staring straight ahead with a blank expression. He must have her under mind control to keep her docile.
Rage boils in me, a kind I’ve never known before. I want to kill Agustin, I want to run across the quad and hug Maddy to me, I want to make sure nothing ever touches her or hurts her again.
Behind me, I can hear angry muttering from the men, and somehow, their fury eases some of mine—enough that I can breathe and think clearly anyway.
Dmitri puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes.
I’m not alone in this. They’re with me.
I take a deep breath and blow it out. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
We walk out to the middle of the quad.
Roman, Dmitri, Asher, and Cam all flank me as Agustin steps forward to meet us with Maddy trailing listlessly along beside him.
As he walks over, I can see the haze lifting from her eyes. She blinks a few times, looks around, and then tries to jerk away from Agustin in a panic. Agustin keeps too tight of a hold on her, and a look of pure terror crosses her face as she realizes what’s going on and where she is.
“It’s okay, Mads!” I call to her, my heart thundering so hard I can barely hear my own voice. “It’ll be okay!”
Agustin smirks at me, self-satisfaction dripping from his words. “Did you really think I wouldn’t know what was going on here, Miss Sinclair?”
I glare at him and gesture around us. “What? You mean the incomplete redecorating job after you dropped three towers and an army of demons on us last year?”
Agustin tsks his teeth. “As stupidly quippy as ever.”
“I mean, it’s kind of my brand by now, right? I’d hate to disappoint you after you came all this way.”
Agustin’s expression goes tight, his jaw clenching and his gaze lowering to glare at me. “I still have your precious baby sister here.”
Maddy’s expression has shifted from panic to looking like she’s ready to spit at him. That’s my girl.
“You might have been shielding your mind, Miss Sinclair,” Agustin says in the patient tones of one explaining two plus two for the hundredth time to a very stupid child, “but your companions weren’t. And I don’t mean those ridiculous boy toys of yours.”
“I prefer the term sugar baby, myself,” Cam says.
I don’t see it, but I can hear Roman elbow him.
“All of the other people hidden within those walls,” Agustin goes on. “All of the dozens of Unpredictables that you recruited to try to fight me. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice the activity? Or that I would come alone? Did you think I wouldn’t try to get into their minds? That I’m so focused on you that I wouldn’t be trying to learn about and control any other Unpredictables out there?” He chuckles. “I must thank you, Miss Sinclair, truly. You did me a favor by gathering all of you into one place. I know not all of the Unpredictables in the country are here, but thanks to your efforts, most of them are. So loyal. So ready to fight. So… inspired by you.”
A grin spreads across his face, and for the first time, I see it. The insanity, the burning hatred, the pure evil that exists inside this man. His bland, pleasant features usually hide it, making it hard to believe that a man like this could be capable of the things I know he’s done.
But I believe it now.
And I know he’ll do so much worse if given the chance.
“You truly are a hero to them,” he purrs, his lip curling. “Although I’m sure that will be of little comfort to you once I destroy them. Knowing that it was you and your work that gave them the courage to try to stand up to me. I never would have agreed to meet you here otherwise, you must know that. I knew it would be my chance to end Unpredictables, to cast you all out of the way, finally, once and for all. The raw power here…” Agustin sniffs the air, as if he can actually smell it. “It’s intoxicating, almost.”
“Yeah. I know you wouldn’t have come otherwise,” I tell him. “I know I’m not the strategic genius of the year, but I figured out that much, at least. That’s why it was the perfect bait.” I shrug. “Who could resist all of their enemies in one place, right?”
Agustin narrows his eyes, his jaw twitching. His arrogance wouldn’t let him believe that I could possibly guess what he was doing, what he would have planned. As if controlling people’s minds and messing with them hasn’t been his M.O. since day one.
“You’ve invited your friends to their doom, Miss Sinclair,” he snarls.
My stomach clenches into a hard knot, but I keep my voice even and my head held high.
“Maybe. But at least now we get to fight you on our turf, on our terms, instead of having to try to break into the High Circuit to get to you. And every single person here knew you’d come. They knew what they were signing up for. You brought your army? Well, I brought mine.”
Agustin looks positively livid now, and he opens his mouth to speak again. But I don’t let him.
I raise my voice to a yell, throwing my hand out. “Sic ’em!”
Confession: I’ve always wanted to say that.
The doors to the school burst open, and Unpredictables come pouring out. Tamlin, Brodie, and a few of our most powerful professors are right behind us, running across the quad, but more Unpredictables are hidden using Liam’s wards and invisibility spells in other places around the grounds. Agustin and his army walked right past some of them without even knowing it, huddled groups hiding in plain sight only inches from the demons and mages.
Now, we’ve got Agustin surrounded.
It’s time to kick some ass.
Chapter 23
Maddy dives to the side as I unleash a sonic boom at Agustin.
Everyone is leaping out of their hiding places and erupting from the school buildings, firing off the magic they’ve prepared. The mages and demons with Agustin aren’t taken completely by surprise, but our attack was sudden enough that we can all get in a few hits before they really start fighting back.
“Get out of the way!” I yell to Mads.
She scrambles backward as Agustin raises up the ground around him, twisting it, turning it into huge lumps of earth that he can lob like great stones, trying to crush us.
Maddy gets to her feet and immediately starts drawing water from the air and earth. I want to tell her to get out of the fight, to run to safety and stay there until this is all over—but I know I wouldn’t do that if I were her, so I just race to her side and quickly grab her arm, squeezing it. “You okay?”
She nods, still concentrating on the water she’s manipulating. There’
s something hard and determined in her blue eyes, alongside a lingering hollowness from having her mind overtaken by Agustin.
“Yeah, I’m good. I mean, not great, but I’m okay. Promise.”
“You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
She drops a wave of water onto the head of a nearby mage. “I promise. I just want to kick some ass.”
Pride swells in my chest. “Hell yeah, you do.”
Sticking close by Mads for now, I focus back in on Agustin, using my sonic boom to knock his chunks of earth out of the way and shatter them so that small, harmless clumps of dirt rain down on us.
The battle kicks into high gear, demons, mages, and Unpredictables spreading across the quad. And that means it’s time to put phase two of our plan into action.
Here’s the thing—I didn’t tell Agustin all of the reasons we brought an army here to meet him.
Sure, a big part of it was because it’s easier to fight him here than at the High Circuit headquarters, which I’m sure he’s secured with dozens of wards and protective enchantments.
But the other reason is, we needed to make Agustin fight. We needed to confront him with a big enough threat that he had to engage us. We need him distracted, because it will obscure what I’m doing.
See, I’m not going to be fighting Agustin. While he’s busy going after all the Unpredictables who have bravely offered themselves up as bait, I’m going to do the same thing I did with the demon bird—mirror his powers to undo all the shit that he’s done.
And I’m going to start by waking up all of the government officials he put to sleep.
I catch Cam’s gaze and nod, and the men rush Agustin while I step back, keeping just within range enough that I can mirror him but not close enough that I present an easy target. I try to sift through his powers, to find the one that I need—the one that will undo that particular spell.
It’s not easy. Demons and mages are everywhere, and I have to fight them back from time to time, and then there are all my friends around me just adding to the chaos. Magic is flying, and it reminds me of when Raul undid all our cuffs in the dining room during my first semester and everyone went berserk with their magic. I’m going to get hit with a stray fireball or God knows what else if I’m not careful.
My men don’t have it easy either. They don’t just have to fight Agustin, they have to make sure they don’t kill him. I can’t mirror his power and use it to undo his shit if he’s dead. Unlike him, I don’t steal powers. They aren’t mine once the person’s out of range or once they’re gone from the earth.
And that’s what this is all for. To keep Agustin distracted but alive long enough for me to take care of what I need to. It’s what all the traps and backups are for, to keep him from killing me while I try to mirror his magic.
It’s… somewhat successful.
Even an all-out battle isn’t quite enough to make Agustin forget how much he hates me and wants to use me. The guys launch a series of attacks at Agustin, but he refuses to be distracted from me.
I’m trying to sift through all the powers around me to get to him, and then sift through all of his powers to find the right one, and also trying to look busy and not like I’m just standing in the middle of the quad staring at him like an obvious idiot—and he’s gunning right for me. He wants to use me, and I can tell by the crazy light in his eyes that he’s going to stop at nothing to get what he wants.
Agustin conjures up his super strength and his lightning whip and rips his way through the men. He’s literally yanking Dmitri’s doubles off of him as they launch themselves at him to keep him from me. Cam teleports and Agustin uses some kind of super speed and grabs him by the throat, flinging him backward and sending him flying into Asher, sending the two of them crashing to the ground. Cam’s head glances off a large chunk of stone, and his eyes roll back, his body going limp.
I wince, my stomach dropping. Shit, is he okay?
Roman tries to intervene, but Agustin sends two demons after him, and now he’s got his hands full dealing with them. Fuck!
The necromancer could possibly kill Agustin right now with his death touch, but that wouldn’t help us since I need him alive. And even if Roman brought him back to life, it’s not like he’d be Agustin’s master or something. He couldn’t control him, and so we’d be back at square one.
I stumble back as Agustin, his path clear, advances on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a watery snake lifting up into the air.
No! No way.
Mirroring Maddy’s water power, I use it to sweep her up, sending her crashing and slipping and sliding out of the way. I know I’m supposed to be letting her make her own choices and shit, but I’m not letting her intervene in this and get herself hurt. I just can’t.
Agustin quirks his eyebrows at me, like he saw me do that and is amused by it but isn’t going to bother going after Maddy—not just yet anyway. He’s focused on me, and me alone.
I guess I should be flattered?
I keep backing away, maintaining my mental shield while struggling to mirror him. There are so many powers to sort through, and I don’t necessarily recognize what each one is before I mirror it. Each type of magic feels a little different, but most of these are Unpredictable powers. How am I supposed to know instinctively what each one does? There’s no fucking way.
Agustin’s face transforms like melted wax as he snarls, bits of madness leaking through, showing just how drunk on power, on himself, he really is.
“I will have you,” he snaps at me, his face red and sweaty, his eyes gleaming. “Your attempts to resist are pathetic! A child throwing a tantrum!”
“I’m the child?” I yell. Jesus. He’s the one throwing a tantrum because the world didn’t automatically bow down to him and treat him like a damn god.
I dodge a fireball and then try to mirror him, managing instead to mirror some kind of—shield? A shield of air?
Well, hey, it keeps me from dying as he lobs all four elements at me, trying to blast me off my feet. I move backward and collide with the front doors of the main school building.
Shit. That fucking hurt.
Okay, okay, okay—this is my school, my turf, not his. I know more about this place than he does. I can make this work. And at least I know he can’t use his mind control powers in a fight, since I’m way out of range of Asher.
I manage to mirror his lightning whip and crack it at him, causing Agustin to stumble back a little as he dodges it. He regains his equilibrium and comes after me with a vengeance, and I yank the heavy door open and dart inside the building, then run down a hallway.
The ground beneath me rumbles, and I instinctively scale the walls to the ceiling using my spider climb. It’s a damn good thing I’m fast too, because the floor is now lava.
Wait. Did he just—transform the ground into lava?! What the fuck?!
I skitter along the ceiling, dodging blasts of magic. I’m pretty sure one of them is a disintegration blast, judging by the hole that opens up in the ceiling.
“If you want to use me as a weapon, you idiot,” I yell over my shoulder, “you might want to actually keep me alive!”
A few of the traps we laid out inside the school go off, slowing Agustin down. But it’s not enough. He’s too powerful, and he’s right on my tail.
Up ahead, I spot the door to the tower we climbed when we fought the demon bird, and I put on an extra burst of speed, gunning for it. As soon as I reach it, I drop down onto a spot where the floor is still solid stone, sending a sonic boom back behind me before yanking open the door. Stairs rise up in a tight spiral within the tower, leading all the way to the roof.
Maybe fighting your enemy on the roof isn’t the greatest idea, although it sure is the most dramatic one, but I don’t have any better options right now. He boxed me in and forced me inside the school, and now he could too easily trap me at the end of a hallway with no one around, and nobody would know which corridor or room we went into.
Agusti
n snarls behind me as I dash up the stairs, my heart pounding. He’s still in range of my mirroring powers, so I keep trying to sort through them as I run.
I haven’t been up on the roof since I fought with that demon bird that Agustin was so kind as to send us, and it was terrifying enough when we were in the middle of the roof. Now I’m scrambling onto it from the tower window and running across the uneven surface way too close to the edge for my liking.
Agustin doesn’t scramble through the window.
He just blasts a hole in the tower.
I dive for cover—not that there really is any—as rocks and stone go flying everywhere. Dust fills the air, and Agustin sends another blast. Crackling, rumbling sounds fill the air as the tower falls. Shit, shit, shit.
That’s the only way I know of to get onto the roof. I mean, there have to be other ways, but the way this building is designed, there’s no logical roof access point.
Which means Agustin has just cut me off from my backup.
At least everyone now knows where we are now though. There’s a swell of voices yelling from the ground, and when I raise my head to look, I can see people pointing up at us. I landed roughly on the roof, scraping up my elbows and palms in the process, and I’m covered in dust. It chokes my lungs as I try to get my breath back, and I hack and cough as I struggle to my feet.
I stand on shaky legs and turn around just in time for Agustin to catch me around the ankle with his lightning whip, sending me flying up into the air and then crashing to the ground. I claw at the roof, trying to find some purchase, something to grab onto so that I can wrench my ankle free. My skin burns, and my body is wracked with painful electricity, and before I can break the whip’s hold on me, I’m thrown again.
Goddammit. No! I am not dying up here.
I reach out desperately with my magic to mirror a power, any power, it doesn’t matter what—and suddenly—