by Jessica Gunn
“Because we’ve decided to keep it quiet,” Dacher said. “Even the Ether Head Circle doesn’t want the truth of them out there yet.”
“It may be time to act,” Krystin said. “If Talon is planning to take on both the Hunter Circles and the Neuians, we’re heading for one hell of a battle.”
Dacher nodded solemnly. “I believe you’re right.”
Kian lifted his head. “Then let’s take the fight to them. If we can take out Talon, maybe even just Mason and Jerrick, then we can stop this program they’re running to poison magik-users into Ember witches.”
Ben shook his head. “That’d be ideal, but—”
“But what?” Kian shot back. “You’re too busy? Your team alone could make a huge dent in a fight with Talon. Add another couple teams of magik-users, and we’d be golden.”
“And if we lose?” Shawn asked. “There’d be no one left to defend Fire Circle Headquarters.”
“They don’t want Headquarters,” I chimed in. “They want us all dead. They don’t need to take the building to do it. All they need to do is tip and explode Cianza Boston.”
“We cannot penetrate Landshaft without a way to combat aura sickness,” Dacher said. And he had a good point. When the weight of too many demonic souls surrounded a human, they died. “That’s the main reason an attempt to take out the Trade has never been successful. As soon as they retreat into the demon city, there is little we can do.”
“It’s what Hydron plans to do.”
Everyone turned to the new voice. Brian stood in the doorway with Max. No one had even noticed they’d opened the door.
Jeremiah raised an eyebrow. He’d been silent this whole time, listening to our conversation. But now he was looking at Brian. “Please enlighten us on how exactly Hydron plans to do that.”
Max met Dacher’s eyes over Jeremiah’s shoulder, but the look was full of guilt. “I should have said something last year when people in the raid on Lady Azar’s lair were having problems. Hydron has a way to combat aura sickness.”
Dacher’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”
Ben clenched his fists at his sides, then shoved them behind his back to clasp them. “I knew we shouldn’t have ever trusted Hydron. That’s a key tool the Hunter Circles could have been using.”
Max raised his hands. “I know, Ben. But like you, I’m sworn to certain secrets and procedures.”
Ben shot him one hell of a glare. “Like you said, we could have used that last year.” Then, he added more quietly, “A way to combat aura sickness. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Look, this is part of the reason Hydron was okay letting me finally come back to Fire Circle Headquarters,” Brian said. “They agree Talon needs to be stopped.”
“Oh good.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Wouldn’t want it to be because you wanted to reunite with your teammate.”
Brian lifted his gaze to mine. “I didn’t have a choice, Ava.”
“You did,” I said simply. “And you made it.” If he’d really wanted to get in touch with me, there were ways. The Internet, for one. I would have done the same had I known he was alive. But his cousin and Hydron had clearly had other plans.
Dacher loudly cleared his throat. “No one is going to Landshaft. I’ll speak with Jolene, Leader of the Water Circle, as well as whoever is currently in charge at Hydron. Even with a way to counteract aura sickness, going into the demon city could incite a war if we’re not careful. This is not a direction to take lightly.”
“And Riley?” Ben asked.
There was more to that story. There had to be. My gut clenched watching the look Ben was giving Dacher, like no matter what might happen, his son would be in mortal danger. Why was his son so important to this conflict?
“Honestly?” Dacher asked. “I still want to send both of you and Rachel to Alzan. Your magik, and your heritage, will be discovered.”
My gut twisted. His heritage?
“Wait a second…” Kian said, his eyes narrowed and flitting between Ben and Dacher. “You said you got this hypothesis about Talon warring with the Neuians because the infected magik-users turned on Krystin and Ben. What do they have to do with the Neuians?”
Ben dropped his gaze to the floor for a moment before meeting Kian’s. Suddenly, the blue tinge around his eyes didn’t seem so weird. “I am one. So is Rachel, and Riley too. Although Riley is more powerful than even the Neuians want to admit.”
Something rattled in the back of my mind, a sign, like a tiny, dim yellow orb. Something I should have remembered but couldn’t.
Kian’s jaw locked. “You’re one of them?” He looked to Krystin. “You too? I thought you were a witch.”
“I am,” Krystin said. “It’s a long story, but my magik is now connected to Ben’s. We’re fated, and I’m no longer the witch I used to be. Which is fine. All my magik ever did was screw me over. Ben’s magik saved me.”
“Ironic,” Ben said, smirking at Krystin. “Yours saved us the night we met.”
She smiled back at him, but it was hallow with the day’s events.
“What does… Neuian magik look like?” Kian asked. His jaw had relaxed, but only because of the fear growing in his eyes—a look I’d never seen on him before.
“Blue ether,” Ben said. “Cobalt blue. And they all have tattoos around their eyes. I do too, but we were able to work out some magik to hide them.”
My stomach dropped. A magik now barely hidden after these realizations paled his face. Although he was starting to regain color after the shock, my mind couldn’t help filling in the details of what Ben was insinuating. “Tattoos around your eyes.”
That nagging came back again, only this time, I had a clear picture in my head. Three months ago, I’d had a dream with Ben in it. Our team had been reporting to the Fire Circle about what we’d found with Talon, and Ben had confronted me with strange… blue ether magik and tattoos.
Something, even back then, had been telling me about the Neuians. I just hadn’t known what they were.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Kian said as he paced away. “Stronger, with cobalt blue magik.” He stopped and turned on Dacher. “It—It wasn’t an Old One my team fought and was scared by years ago. It was a Neuian.”
“What?” Ben asked, his eyes lighting up. “They attacked you guys?”
Kian shook his head. “I think we interrupted something. But his magik was exactly as you described and… holy shit. No wonder my teammates quit. If I’d known the truth, I might have too.”
Dacher’s eyebrows lifted. “Well, that certainly explains a lot.”
Kian nodded. “Everything except why Talon was nearby enough to warrant kidnapping me.”
Brian stepped forward into the group. “What happened before doesn’t matter right now. We have an opening and we should take it to get into Landshaft.”
“What opening?” I spat, turning on him.
“They don’t know we’re coming,” Brian said. “They think we never will. If we get a small team for a surgical strike, take out only the high-value targets, then—”
“No one is going to Landshaft,” Dacher commanded. “I hope I’ve made myself clear about that. And let it be known that if you decided to go ahead on your own, I am not sending anyone in there to rescue you. This Circle has already been through enough. You are all dismissed.”
Chapter 14
Coffee to fight my morning fatigue in one hand and a small tray in the other, I sat down at one of the half-dozen tables in Headquarters’ excuse for a cafeteria. The space wasn’t large and neither did it contain more than a glorified continental breakfast, but then again, Headquarters had never been intended to be a hotel either. Not many Hunters stayed here for as long as Kian, Will, and I had, even during training.
At first, I’d thought that didn’t make much sense since the cost of putting Hunters up in the city during training probably cost more than I’d ever make in my lifetime. But then I thought about all the times Headquarters had co
me under attack in the last year and a half, both from outside forces and from within. It was only then that I saw the Fire Circle’s reasoning.
If every Hunter stayed here and died in one attack, Darkness would win a foothold in Boston and all of New England. And unless they were careful, that’d tip the balance in their favor. Good for war, not such a good thing for the cianza beneath Boston Commons.
I brought the hot cup of coffee to my lips and basked in the glory of its caffeine, the mere taste of it almost enough to erase the bags under my eyes and the fatigue from my limbs. I hadn’t slept well in what felt like days, but it was really more like months. The cot I had called a bed since May was little more than a pad raised from the floor. And with the veritable house arrest on top of it, I felt pent-up. Anxious. Claustrophobic.
“Morning.”
I glanced up as Kian approached the table and sat. “Hey.”
He placed his own small tray down and immediately dug into his oatmeal. “Some bullshit they told us yesterday, huh?”
I nodded and broke off a piece of my blueberry muffin. “I don’t understand how they’re keeping something as big as an entire civilization a secret from the entire Fire Circle.”
Kian shrugged and focused on his breakfast, not saying another word until we were both almost finished eating. The quiet company was nice, a change of otherwise chaotic pace.
I looked to Kian and watched him. He was too intent on other things to notice, allowing me to study him for a few moments. He had bags under his eyes, and his entire face seemed to be lined with the same exhaustion I felt. An exhaustion that couldn’t be gotten rid of simply by sleeping.
“Do you think Hydron will go to Landshaft anyway?” I asked.
He glanced up at me with his deep brown eyes. A shiver ran down my spine as our eyes met. “Probably. Why, are you going to join them?”
I pressed my lips together. “I don’t know. I think waiting too much longer is a bad idea. We know Talon’s based out of there and that they’ve got this program. It’s probably better to act now. Especially if they don’t know about Hydron’s supposed way around aura sickness. Landshaft thinks they’re safe from us.”
Kian straightened in his seat, his body tensing. He hadn’t been captured inside the city of Landshaft, but even the mention of aura sickness and Talon in the same moment seemed to send him mentally back to those days. “I think you’re right.”
“I figured as much if you were bringing it up. We can’t actually do it, though.”
Kian shook his head. “No. Not alone. I’d be essentially useless in there.” I shot him a look. “I’m not being self-deprecating for once, Ava. I don’t have magik and every single one of those demons does. I would never be able to defend myself against that many. Neither would you, even with magik.”
Kian was right. But something about the whole situation sat weird with me.
“Hydron must have something else up their sleeve,” I said. “How else would they deal with all those demons?”
“No idea.”
I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms, staring at the remnants of the breakfast I was suddenly too sick to drink. “Hydron is supposed to be equal with the Water Circle. If anything, we’re supposed to be keeping secrets from them, not the other way around.”
“Guess the Hunter Circles didn’t bank on many of their Hunters turning to work for the CIA instead,” Kian said.
No more than I had expected Brian to fake his own death and turn tail on the only thing that had mattered to us at one point in time.
“What do you want to do about it, then?” I asked. Kian had to have something in mind if he’d brought it up in the first place.
“Honestly?” Kian asked as he leaned over the table. A few other Hunters were scattered around, making themselves breakfast and eating in relative quiet. I hadn’t met a Hunter who was a morning person. “I almost want to investigate Crimson. See if Talon has another base of operations beneath that ring too.”
I gasped, my eyes going wide. “Kian.”
He lifted a hand. “Hear me out. They have to have a base somewhere.”
“Yeah. Landshaft.”
Kian shook his head. “Elsewhere, Ava. For the same reason the Hunter Circles have Headquarters all over the United States and other countries. If Landshaft was somehow taken out, they’d want to have another cache of their poisons and weapons elsewhere. And if you think about it, we’d never have discovered the cache beneath Midnight’s ring if we’d never gone after Veynix. It’s the perfect hiding place.”
I leaned in over the table too. Both so that no one else heard my next words and so that Kian did hear every single one of them with great clarity. “Say we go. Even if we get in the front door, they’ll know who we are. You were Crimson’s champion.”
“We’ll need disguises.”
I leveled him with yet another exasperated look. “And where do you expect to find those? Contact lenses are easy to come by, but magik that will fully change your appearance is not.”
A shudder rolled through me. Not unless you know an air-elemental.
Veynix imitating Brian had been the first time I’d come face-to-face with him. That night had haunted me ever since.
Kian’s eyebrows furrowed together as he thought something over. “I might be able to get us something. We may not need magik.”
I wasn’t convinced. Sneaking into Crimson was a shitty idea. “Well, when you figure out a way to do this that won’t result in our untimely deaths, let me know.” I downed the rest of my coffee. “I’m going to visit Will and let him know what’s been going on.”
Kian glanced up at me, a hard look still on his face. “They’re allowing him visitors?”
“Him, yes,” I said. “The others, not so much. I think Will either didn’t get a full dose like the magik-users or it wasn’t yet perfected. Maybe aiming for perfection is what Mason has been doing this whole time since Veynix’s demise.”
It was about the only reason I could think for Mason waiting three months before showing his face for revenge.
“I’ll meet you in a bit with a plan,” Kian said. “If I come up with something solid, think we can go tonight?”
I waved him off. “Sure. If you figure something out.”
Then I left.
The truth was: Kian would find a way. I knew that now. If he wanted something bad enough, he’d find a path to get it. And if there wasn’t a path, he’d make his own. All the freelance Hunters were like that. That’s how he’d done so well fighting demons alone. When he acknowledged that his lack of magik might have been a downside, he’d fallen into Demon’s Blood use despite possible addiction to the demonic drug.
So, if there really was a way to hide ourselves beyond contacts and a potion of sorts to give an imitation of demonic aura, Kian would find it.
Chapter 15
“This is crazy,” I muttered under my breath as we approached what Kian said was the entrance to Crimson. It was almost midnight back home in Boston, but the night’s festivities were just about to get started at this ring. “We shouldn’t be here.”
Kian leaned in to my ear. It looked like he was going to kiss me, I was sure of it, but instead, he said, “Of course we shouldn’t. We’ll be fine as long as we look the part. We already know about the entrance, which is as good an invitation as any for Crimson.”
“Secure,” I judged.
Kian straightened and held his hand out for mine. “Never said it was. Be thankful for that tonight.”
I took his hand and together we climbed up the front steps of Crimson’s entrance. Like Midnight, Crimson was built beneath a four-story office building in Los Angeles, which looked, for the most part, unassuming. “Why? This was your idea.”
“Hold on tight, sweetheart,” he said as he led me through the door. A pair of guards waited on the other side, but all they did was acknowledge us with a nod. Guess Kian had been right.
The sound of his old pet name for me, from back before we’d eve
n really known each other, sent shivers down my spine. When we’d first met in Midnight’s Ring, I’d thought he was nothing more than an arrogant fighter like everyone else. How wrong I’d been.
“Keep your head high,” Kian whispered as we ventured down a corridor with red carpeting, decorated walls adorned with gold-inlaid archways and paintings, and marble statues every few dozen feet.
“You sure we’re not in a museum?” I asked under my breath.
Kian gave my hand a squeeze. “Keep walking.”
I wondered how many times Kian had actually come this way to enter Crimson. The rules and protections here were probably different than at Midnight. But aside from the one time Kian and I had gone to fight Veynix alone, I’d never once entered Midnight through the front door—teleportante only.
Finally, we reached the end of the corridor and approached the lobby. I’d thought the previous hallway had been pretty wide, but it narrowed in comparison to the wide arching dome of Crimson’s lobby. The ceiling swept up another story or two and was covered in paintings and frescos, gold decorations, and a magnificent chandelier larger than any I had ever seen before.
Suddenly, I felt increasingly underdressed. Kian and I had snuck out to change from our casual day-to-day clothes. But the simple black dress I was wearing with a gold chain necklace no longer cut it. Midnight’s ring had always served a certain type of clientele, but that clientele must have been in a whole other socioeconomic level here in Los Angeles.
Kian squeezed my hand. “We’ll get a seat at the back.”
I nodded, too afraid of what words my mouth might speak. It was too busy hanging open anyway. A soft classical melody filled the air, betraying the grotesque acts to be committed tonight in the ring. I let the music carry me through the lobby, where Kian led us up to a bet-taker.
“Two on the underdog,” he told the woman behind the counter.
She nodded her head once and took the cash Kian offered her. I bit my lip to keep from gasping when I saw the bills.
Two thousand dollars. That was a whole lot of money to use in an investigation. Not that a decent freelance gig couldn’t replace that for him—assuming we were ever let out of confinement at Headquarters.
