by Jessica Gunn
Watching me do it, Will ran to the next closest cage and did the same. People from all over the room began calling out, asking for their freedom first before the others. For help. For a way to end the nightmares.
I blocked them all out, focusing on rescuing everyone in this first cage before moving on to the next.
“Please,” said a woman pressed against the bars closest to me. “You have to hurry.”
“The ether shield is down,” I said. “If you have magik, you can teleportante home.”
She stared back at me with empty, confused eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on. None of us do.”
“You can’t mean…” I looked her over. Then the other people, too. With the ether shield down, they could all teleportante to safety. Requirem didn’t affect word-magiks.
None of these people were doing that.
The woman reached through the bars, the gap barely wide enough for her arms. Her fingers dug into my forearms. “What is happening?”
Veres shot a bolt of Ember energy that collided with the lock mechanism keeping the cage door shut. It burst apart, sending ether smoke rising around me. The woman let go of me and jumped backward, shocked by the magik. She wailed as others clambered over her, pressing over each other to escape.
On foot. Not by magik.
None of these prisoners were Hunters or witches. They were all innocent people. Civilians. The same magik-users the Rebel Darkness Faction nurse kept bringing to the Fire Circle. People like me who hadn’t known they’d had magik until a demon had attacked them.
My stomach dropped. The people pushed me out of the way as they flooded the room at large. Veres alternated between attempting to fire magik at the poison machine at the center of the room and opening the cages with her magik. But I stood there, dumbfounded, as the weight of it all sunk in. At the lengths at which Talon and Mason were going to forge this army to fight their crusade.
Of the impending war dancing giddily along the horizon.
That was when a new voice slithered in past the rest of the ruckus, louder than every other one in the room. “I see you’ve found part of my army.”
I spun on my heel, though I didn’t need to see the person to recognize him.
Mason stood in the doorway, flanked by an entourage of fully-armored Talon soldiers. He wore a grin that stretched across his face. “Shall we see what they can do?”
He lifted his left hand. His fingers were curled around a crystal of some sort, although I was too far away to get a good look at it. It began to glow the same red-orange as a tainted Ember witch’s magik. So did the eyes of every Ember witch in the room. They all turned toward me, Will, and Veres.
And lunged.
Chapter 28
I raised my elbow and shoved it into the jaw of the first Ember witch within reach. Their head snapped backward, any further attacks from them thwarted for now. But more closed in around me, swinging wildly with their fists and their magik. Flashes of red-orange zipped across the room, preludes to ether attacks capable of burning the skin right off your body.
It became a dance, as fighting sometimes did. I twisted out of the way of one wave of Ember ether only to nearly come face-to-face with another. At the last second, I jerked my head out of the way. Ether singed the ends of my hair.
“Will!” I shouted as I swerved between waves of fire-like ether.
One of the witches, still controlled by Mason and that damn gemstone, planted themselves in front of me. He swung, his bulging bicep rippling with the force behind the attack. I grabbed his arm and twisted, throwing it above my head and then pulling back down around, holding his arm behind his back. Then I kicked behind his knees and he crumpled to the ground. A blow to the back of the head had him knocked out in seconds—and my fingers aching from it.
“Will, where are you?” I screamed.
“Right here,” he said. I spun, relief starting to bloom in my chest, but red-orange eyes greeted me, along with an evil grin that had no place on my best friend’s face.
“Will?”
He reached out and wrapped his fingers around my throat, squeezing tight. I gripped his fingers, trying to pry them away with my own. But dammit, when did Will get this strong?
The poison. It must be. In addition to drawing out his magik, it must have drawn out the demonic attributes that made Ember witches almost demonic—their dark magik and strength.
Air caught in my throat. Black dots danced on the edges of my vision.
“Please,” I croaked out, staring into my best friend’s eyes. Pleading with any part of him that might still be Will and not some deranged, mindless soldier for Mason and Jerrick.
“Look out!” Veres shouted.
I glanced over just in time to see her shoot a blast of Ember ether our way, aimed directly for Will. No!
With all the strength I had left—which wasn’t much—I twisted my body, pulling Will along with me. The ether blast collided with my shoulder, burning the skin and possibly some muscle too. Smoke rose from the wound as my nervous system went into panic mode. Pain seared my shoulder from my elbow to my neck as if I’d been branded with a hot iron—or worse. I cried, but my throat seized, unable to draw in enough air, and instead I gripped Will’s hands for misguided comfort rather than to save myself from strangulation.
Another set of Ember witches grabbed Veres from behind, restraining her.
“That’s enough!” someone bellowed. Mason.
The Ember witches stopped immediately. Will pulled his hands away from my throat and dropped them to his sides. I gasped, air finally making its way into my lungs. I dropped to my knees, trying to pull in as much air as I could before Mason ordered Will to attack me again.
Footsteps echoed closer, black boots that appeared on the periphery of my vision. Mason stood above me, a weird mixture of confusion and amusement on his face.
Pain throbbed in my shoulder beneath an overwhelming sense of burning. As if Veres’s attack had scorched past my skin and muscle right to my soul.
Mason dropped down to one knee and stared me straight in the eyes. “Why are you here?”
Good. If he was close, maybe I could still get this fucking syringe into him. “Why do you think, you asshole?” I spat.
He clicked his tongue and stood. “You came into Landshaft of all places to try stopping me again?” Mason asked as he paced away from me. “I thought you learned your lesson beneath Crimson.”
“Anyone from the Fire Circle will tell you I’m stubborn as hell,” I said. “Takes me a while to learn lessons like that.”
Beside me, Will snickered quietly. He snickered.
Hope flashed inside me. Will was still there, underneath it all. Mason couldn’t control every part of him.
Mason turned suddenly and charged me. I backpedaled until my back hit a wall.
“You’re ruining everything!” he screamed in my face, spittle flying onto my lips and cheeks.
A fresh wave of pain burst through my injured shoulder. I shifted, leaving behind a trail of blood on the white-painted wall.
“That’s kind of the point,” I said dryly. Even I was surprised by how weak my voice was. Something warm trickled down my arm from my injured shoulder. Not good.
Rage flashed across Mason’s eyes. He sent his fist flying into the wall, enveloping it in red-orange ether magik at the last second. The magik protected his fist from damage, but it still sailed into the wall and found a home there.
I shook beneath him, although I wasn’t sure if that was from fear or the burning wound frying my shoulder like a grill. I’d never been hit by ether magik from a demon before, never mind tainted Ember ether.
“We are this close to finishing this program and putting an end to global war before it begins,” Mason yelled. “And you insist on stopping it every step of the damn way!”
I gathered what strength I had left and lifted my chin defiantly. “Because what you’re doing is already starting the war.”
He squinted his eyes and thr
ough them, I saw the gears working in his head. Piecing together what I knew with what I might not.
“Your plan to make war with the Neuians by using Ember witches is flawed, Mason,” I said. “I don’t care what Veynix’s initial ideas were. What Jerrick promised would happen. You can’t fight ancient civilizations with the same magik from which the rest of ours is derived. I know you know the truth about them, how the Entity was theirs.”
Mason’s jaw slid left and right, his teeth grinding together. “That’s what they want you to think. That the Neuians are impossible to fight. But everyone falls if you know where to hit them.”
Like straight into your throat with the syringe.
Not yet, though. I needed Mason to be a little closer and a lot more distracted.
“And you know how to attack the Neuians and succeed?” I asked. “Seems rather ambitious to me.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’d know a lot more if you’d stop interrupting my attempts to fix my army.”
“Oh?” I asked. “Something wrong?”
Mason blinked, but it was enough of a tell to know I was right.
“Sorry about that. What’s missing?” I asked. “Wonder if it has to do with me. I mean, this all started with Veynix right? He was obsessed with my ability to handle his mutated platypus venom—”
Mason struck me across the face with his open palm. “Enough. Even you aren’t that special.”
“But you sure are insecure as hell, aren’t you?” I asked. “Is Jerrick going to kick you out if you fail or something? Worried the Hunter Circles won’t take you back?”
Mason lifted his hand to hit me again, but the blow never came.
“You want to know what’s wrong, Mason? Using one type of magik-user against another.” He had to know that. So why was he acting like he was so sure this would work? “The balance of the world will never let it happen. And Veres alone is not going to be enough to keep cianzas from tilting. I have to believe there’re so many more cianzas on the Neuians’ plane of existence.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed as he studied me, listened to my words. “You honestly believe in all that balance talk?”
“Do you?” I shot back. “Because that’s really what matters, isn’t it? If you’re right, then nothing matters beyond raising an army and getting them to the Neuian plane of existence. But if I’m right, you’ll all die trying to enact your crusade—and you might take the whole world with it.”
He continued staring at me. Not a single word in response. Too bad his silence spoke louder than any word he’d ever said to me before.
“But I guess you don’t care,” I said. “Not like you have anything for you here anyway. Just a couple hundred slaves and fodder for Autumn Fire. A few dozen force-changed Ember witches that could turn on you at any moment if you lose or break that gemstone.” I shrugged, biting back the pain from my shoulder. “If you fail, the Neuians will come for us anyway. Either way you look at this, there’s a good chance you’ll be dead.”
Mason withdrew his fist from the wall and backed up a step. He paced away while he spoke. “The only thing I believe is that the Hunter Circles hate Ember witches. They’d rather see us imprisoned or powerless than on their side in this war.”
As he was talking, I turned into the wall, pretending to use it for support when really I was digging out the syringe from my bra. I’d only have this one shot.
“Me?” Mason asked. “I’m leading my people to glory and strength. And when we take out the Neuians and the Hunter Circles, our line will be vindicated and no longer prejudiced against.”
My stomach churned. He thought he was doing this to redeem Ember witches? They had nothing to redeem themselves for! It wasn’t like it was Mason’s fault or any other witch’s that long ago, one of their line had made a shit deal with a demon.
Anger renewed, I pinned Mason with a glare. “That’s because the only people who survive a crusade like that are unknowing humans, innocents caught in the middle, and demons. Which, for the record, you are right now, Mason. You’re not an Ember witch any more than I am.”
“That may be true,” Mason said as he nodded. “But that’s fine. Demons are the only people who’ve ever accepted me for who I am. And demons have been the only ones who went to any length to save or care for me after I was taken as a child.”
“Yeah, and then they turned you into a demon and pumped you full with god only knows what kind of poison, aging you, turning you into their own weapon,” I spat. “Don’t you see they’ve used you? Talon were the demons who kidnapped you in the first place.”
Mason turned back to me. “Veynix helped me see my potential. Without him and his vision, I would have died.”
I rested my hands at my sides. My fingers curled around the syringe, hiding it. “Too bad you didn’t die with him. He, too, was a coward in the end.”
Mason’s body went rigid. “Don’t talk about him like that.”
“Why not? It’s true. He blew himself up rather than live to fight another day. He was a coward through and through. And all the while he was using you as a means to an end.”
“No!” he said, charging toward me, his arms outstretched and glowing with red-orange ether.
I lifted my hands in defense and righted the syringe. Mason’s hands closed in on my head, but I ducked out of the way and came up, aiming the needle at his throat. He reached up and caught it at the last second. His grip was strong and he forced my hand back at an unnatural angle, on the verge of breaking any number of bones.
“What is this?” he demanded.
I gulped. My one shot was gone.
“No answer?” He scoffed and took it out of my hand with his free one. “Then let’s see what it does, shall we?”
My eyes widened as Mason aimed the syringe full of poison strong enough to kill a demon in ten minutes right for my neck. A sharp pinch pricked my skin.
I felt every milliliter of the liquid as it was forced into my artery and pumped throughout my system.
Chapter 29
The burning was instant, clawing at my nervous system in a sudden burst of white-hot pain. I was used to Veynix’s venom by now, but this was indeed different. Tenfold the reaction, a hundredfold the paralyzing pain. Already my skin grew hot, as if I were actually on fire.
I fell to my knees, gasping through the agony, only one thought on my mind: If this was designed to kill Mason in under ten minutes, how fast would it kill me?
“No!” Will screamed. His familiar voice was the only thing that made it through the haze of pain fully enveloping my being. “Ava!”
A massive wave of red-orange ether shot past me, momentarily taking my focus from the venom working its way through my body and putting it on something else. Veres stood a few feet from me, fully immersed in Ember ether flames that whipped around her body like a cloak. She’d fired a shot at Mason, who’d dodged it.
“Move!” Veres shouted.
I tried, sliding along the floor because my legs felt too weak to bother standing, but every single movement sent another tidal wave of agony ripping through me. My skin felt clammy despite burning up. Breathing was getting harder, as if a large object was sitting on my chest, constricting it. Maybe one was. For all I knew, nothing was real anymore. My vision swam, nausea rolling around. I gasped for air.
This is it.
The floor began to shake. The wall with the double metal doors burst inward. I ducked to escape shrapnel from the explosion as bits of steel, cement, and drywall rained down on us. Dust mixed with smoke, making it impossible to see farther than a few feet.
“What is this?” Mason shouted into the mess.
Warm hands grabbed my shoulders, hauling me up and sending my stomach roiling. Bile slicked my throat, but I swallowed it down. I wouldn’t give Mason that satisfaction. Not even while dying.
“Hang in there,” someone said in my ear. Familiar. Close.
I looked up, peering through the smoke at the person dragging me over to a wall. He propped me up agains
t it and dug around in his jacket with a twisted arm.
“Brian,” I croaked.
He nodded. “I know. Shit—I was afraid this was going to happen. Here.”
There was another sharp pinch in my neck. But instead of more of that fiery, searing venom, a coolness washed over me. Sobering. It cleared my mind and eased my breathing.
“It’s an antidote,” Brian said as fighting began around us once more. “It should be rather instantaneous. But stay here until you’re confident you can move.”
I blinked, staring at him as the antidote worked its way across my body. Lightness and relief replaced pain at every turn. Though I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least if I had long-lasting nerve damage after all the hits from this fucking venom I’d taken over the last year.
“How are you here?” I asked him.
Brian had been ordered to leave Landshaft by Jerrick. The last time I saw him, he’d been walking out of Talon’s Drum and onto the street outside.
Brian’s eyes met mine. “I tracked Kian. I knew it’d be too dangerous to follow you and Will by myself. So I went after Kian first and saved him.”
An insane yell sounded from behind us. I looked over Brian’s shoulder to watch Kian and Veres attacking the Ember witches and Mason. Somehow, I’d missed Mason ordering them to attack again. Kian blindly attacked them, screaming with every hit. His face was red, his eyes bulging, and on his arms were newer cuts etched into patterns running up his rippling muscles.
No, not cuts.
Words.
I frowned and placed my palms on the floor beside me, forcing myself to stand. My knees wavered. I leaned back against the wall for support. “He did it, didn’t he? He found some here.”
Brian looked at me with a confused look. “Did what?”
I nodded at Kian. “Demon’s Blood.”
His eyes went wide. “That’s what he injected himself with? He didn’t find that here. He said he brought it as insurance.”
