by Jessica Gunn
Nate jumped and tried to maneuver away, but Kinder clocked him across the face and then tripped him by kicking up a piece of floor tile with her earth-elemental magik. The tile slammed into Nate’s chest. Kinder rammed her open palm against his back. Her hand glowed white, then red, the same color as Nate’s attack.
“Not cool,” Krystin yelled as she pounced, Fire Circle knife in hand.
Kinder shoved Nate out of reach, then moved her hands in a block-shaped pattern in the air, pushing outward on her last motion. “Zalenk,” she said as a glowing yellow shield formed around her.
Ether. Had she stolen Nate’s powers?
Krystin’s knife collided with the shield, then folded against itself when the shield didn’t give. She cried out as her wrist crumpled against it before she was thrown away, soaring across the bowling alley.
If Krystin or Nate couldn’t land an attack, we were well and truly fucked.
Kinder turned on me and formed a block of ether in her hand. She sent it my way with a yell. I threw out a lightning strike to meet her, but instead of dissolving the ether, the attacks collided, exploding in the air between us. It sent me soaring backward, though it left Kinder untouched because of her shield.
Kinder turned on Rachel and grinned again. “Come on, water-elemental. Don’t make me steal your powers, too.”
I looked over at Nate as I struggled to get a solid breath in. He lay crumpled on the floor, his back against the lane. Out cold. But his magik wasn’t gone forever. That couldn’t be how it worked. Right?
Kinder pounced, shooting two more ether attacks our way. A block of ether slammed into me, pushing me backward until the backs of my knees hit the tiny desk where the lane’s computer sat. Rachel hit the closest wall and slid down it, unmoving.
Shit. This was how it’d end. No. It can’t end here.
I tried to stand, but my knees gave out and I landed on the floor, watching as Kinder flicked Shawn aside with another block of ether. With no one in her path, Kinder stalked up to Krystin, who now had a ring of glowing red ether around her throat. Krystin reached up and tried pulling off the noose.
My head buzzed, my pulse throbbing in my ears too loudly to hear what was being said. Why was she so interested in Krystin?
I forced myself from my knees to my feet, using the mini desk to support me as I wound up to throw a pitch and instead threw a massive ball of lightning. It screeched through the air, standing the hairs on my arms on end. Kinder turned at the last moment and, hand on Krystin’s chest, she pushed the lightning ball right out of the air and out through the now-missing wall.
Kinder had Krystin’s telekinesis now. But that also meant no more ether-shaping, according to what Krystin had said about the Power. I looked down. Nate was still unconscious, though his chest rose and fell. He was alive at least.
“Krystin!” I screamed.
Kinder turned on me, eyes narrowed to tiny, rage-filled slits. “Stop interrupting me, lightning-wielder. Just because they don’t know what you’re capable of doesn’t mean I don’t.” She lifted her hand, drawing up a rebar pipe along with it, and flicked her fingers.
The pipe soared my way at top speed. With my head so foggy, the best I could do was jump out of the way and pray I had time. Pain sliced through my arm, a fire burning to the bone. But the loud clang of metal on linoleum didn’t settle my nerves. I looked down. Had the pipe only grazed me or gone straight through?
Blood poured from my shoulder, evidence of a combination of the two possibilities. Which had really happened, though, I couldn’t tell through the blinding pain and spattering blood.
“Enough!” someone roared, a deep voice that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. Not from my team, anyway. The voice seemed to reverberate through the room on nothing but the air itself, reaching into my mind and holding me still.
I opened my eyes, searching for the source and—Holy shit.
Shawn stood before Krystin, guarding her, with a chunk of cement in one hand, the tip of it bloody as hell. He’d torn up his shirt and had a slash down the side of his abdomen where—god, it looked like he’d cut a tattoo in half. What the hell?
His eyes glowed orange, softly at first, then turning into a raging orange storm that reached down his body with glowing veins, down into his hands, where an ethereal fire roared.
Kinder backed up a pace, glaring at him. “What’s this?” Her eyes widened and if I wasn’t seeing things, her hands actually shook. “What are you?”
“You must know,” said Shawn in that creepy voice again. “An Ember witch. The Son of Alzan.”
Kinder snarled, tilting her head like a wild animal. She sniffed the air, otherwise unmoving.
Shawn folded his hands together, twisting them in some pattern I couldn’t follow. Krystin knelt on the floor behind him, one hand holding her head and the other over her mouth in the same shock that must be reflected on my face.
Kinder backed up another step, then two. “You win, witch. I want no part of your tainted magik. And if Alzan knows what’s good for it, that city won’t either.” She spat on the floor and glared once more before disappearing in a teleportante.
I collapsed as soon as she was gone, folding over myself and listening as the wailing of sirens started.
“Oh, no,” Rachel said. “Oh, shit.” That was louder. More panicked.
I looked up, watching Rachel cross the room to the front desk that’d been victim to Kinder’s abrupt entrance. Both of the only two staff members on tonight were behind it, impaled by chunks of cement. Dead. More dead innocents in Kinder’s path.
“We need… to get out of here…” I said, though I doubted it was loud enough to hear.
“Ben!” Krystin shouted. She hurried over to my side with Shawn right behind her. He had replaced his hand on her arm again and the blood from her wound had seemed to stop flowing. The injury itself seemed to be shrinking, closing up. Like he was healing her. As soon as Krystin noticed his touch, she tore his arm from her grasp. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
“I can heal you,” Shawn protested. “Thanks to the prophecy. Let me.”
Krystin spun on him, her hand between them. “Back. The fuck. Off. You’re a liar and an Ember witch and I’m too pissed at you right now to give a damn about how you feel about that.” She turned to me, kneeling. “Ben, you’re bleeding.”
My head felt light, my vision spinning. “Yup. Think so.”
“Nate,” said Rachel, though from where, I wasn’t sure. “He’s still out cold.”
The sirens sounded louder now. Closer.
“You,” Krystin spat—at Shawn, I presumed. “Destroy the security tapes. Break down the office door if you have to. You have thirty seconds.” A pause. “Don’t give me that look. If you scared her off, you can break down a damn door.”
Cold fingers touched my face, sobering me some. Krystin’s eyes swam into view. “Stay with me, Ben. We just need to get you to Headquarters, where a healer can take a look at your arm. She must have nicked an artery or something. Hang in there.”
I swallowed hard, though my mouth felt like cotton. “Trying.”
Moments passed, long ones, where no one spoke or I couldn’t hear them. Unconsciousness swam around me like molasses and I—oh, god. No. No, no, no, no. Darkness closed in, the same darkness that’d once held me captive for three months in a coma.
“No!” I screamed as the dark waters flowed around me. I flailed, desperately trying to find something to hold on to. Anything that’d keep me above water. Safe.
But nothing came. Even Krystin’s touch on my face gave away, leaving me to fall like a feather through air, down into the very bottom of the abyss.
Chapter 14
Krystin
Blood and sirens, that was all that registered as Rachel used teleportante to bring us all to Fire Circle Headquarters for what was the latest of too many times in the last few days. I held on to Ben’s arm the entire time, refusing to let pressure off of his wound despite my own head spi
nning with confusion and concussion.
Shawn had lied. Shawn had fucking lied. And Jaffrin might have, too.
That damn tattoo. I’d known something fishy had been going on there. I should have trusted my gut. But it was because of Shawn that we were still living. He’d scared Kinder off for some reason. Although that reason had become pretty clear once it was just us in the lobby of Headquarters, waiting for Jaffrin and some healers to arrive.
Shawn’s magikal aura shone bright like a supernova, waving in flames like a bonfire in the wind. An Ember witch aura, one of the strongest I’d ever seen. And definitely the most out of control.
He was staring at me now, waiting for me to say something. Too bad I had both too many things and nothing at all to say in response to that stare.
“What happened?” Jaffrin asked as he jogged down the hallway with two healers in tow.
“Kinder,” Rachel informed him. “We were at a bowling alley—the staff are both dead. We barely got out alive. She stole use of Krystin’s and Nate’s powers, though I don’t think it’s permanent.”
“She would have known about the power of the Daughter of Alzan,” Shawn said. “And she backed off of me as soon as I told her I’m the Son.”
“No,” I snapped from the floor. “She backed off because you’re a fucking Ember witch.” A good witch, emissary of the Powers, but with tainted, demonic magik because one of his ancestors had the great idea of trying to take Aloysius down. Idiots, all of them.
Jaffrin’s eyes widened with shock, his mouth dropping open. “Excuse me?”
“Yes, I hid it,” Shawn said as he pointed to his shirt. “My parents tattooed a binding spell onto me when I was a kid. I haven’t known about the Ember magik for long and decided to keep the tattoo because I didn’t think I could control it.”
“You can’t.” If only he could see his aura right now. If only he could watch stars burn before him like I was being forced to witness. “Your power oozes from you like a waterfall. Untamed.” I had to look away, from his liar face and from his magik.
Jaffrin turned to his healers, shaking his head as though he couldn’t wrap his mind around what was happening. “Nate should be fine, according to what little we know about the Power. You too, Krystin.”
“It’s Ben,” Rachel said. “He’s bleeding out.”
The healers rushed to his side, pushing me away. I stared after them. That small strip of metal had punctured straight through his shoulder. Good thing he wasn’t after a football career anymore—I doubted he’d be throwing well after this. He’d be pissed when he realized that.
The healers went to work while the rest of us, minus Nate, who was still unconscious, waited with bated breath. Shawn and Jaffrin had some conversation I vaguely heard, but as I didn’t trust either of them right then, I ignored it and instead watched Ben be healed. Slowly, his shoulder wound closed up, the blood drying and dissolving away. But still he slept, eyes shut and unmoving.
“He mumbled something about the abyss,” I said to Rachel. “Before he went out. Know what he means?”
She nodded and swallowed hard. “Yes. God—he’s terrified.”
“Of?”
A sob escaped her closed lips. “He must have thought he was going into a coma again.”
I reached a hand out to hers. “He’ll be fine. He’s stubborn as hell.”
But the healers went on healing for far too long.
We’d returned, with a still-unconscious Ben, over an hour ago. The healers had checked him out and though the wound was mostly healed, they’d said he’d feel it tomorrow.
I spun on Shawn as he paced the length of our living room. “Please, go ahead. Tell me again why we should trust you after that lie?”
Nate had woken up and now sat next to Rachel on the couch, watching Shawn and me with a skeptical look on his face. Both his and my magik had returned, too. Which was a damn good thing because I hated to think the Alzan prophecy had been thwarted by one bitchy klepto-demon.
Shawn stopped pacing and turned to me. “Because we’re both halves of the same prophecy, for starters.”
“Oh,” I said, throwing up my hands. “That covers everything, doesn’t it? Yup, you’re totally fucking excused.” I shot him a glare. “You lied and that put us in jeopardy.”
“Actually, me revealing myself despite the fact that I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to control my magik was about the only reason we got out of that bowling alley alive,” Shawn spat back at me. “Never mind with Ben more or less intact.”
“Leave him out of this,” Rachel snapped. “He’ll speak for himself when he’s awake.”
And oh, I was certain he’d have a ton to say. I thought back to my first few days on this team and how well Ben had handled the revelation of the Alzan prophecy. Not well at all. But this—this was so much different.
Ember witches weren’t inherently evil. But their magik was. It often made them unhinged, not stable enough to live with others. That Tatiana Viynar had clustered a bunch of them so close a few nights ago, even if their magik had been restricted under a requirem, was dangerous.
Tatiana Viynar. “You knew that Landshaft bounty hunter,” I said to Shawn. “You called her by name. I should have known then.”
He shrugged, his signature reaction to anything and everything. Magik? Shrug. Death? Shrug. Betrayer of Darkness sneaking into a bowling alley to kill us all? Damn fucking shrug. “When I found out why my parents had given me the tattoo, about the magik within me, they warned me about her and what undoing the tattoo might mean.”
“Yeah, because you’re unstable.”
He lifted his hands in defense, as if I’d actually tried to hit him. “I’m not denying I might be. I haven’t used my magik since I was a kid and I don’t even remember doing it. My parents bound it because it’s apparently way worse for me than the others.”
“Because of the prophecy, probably,” Nate said. “Now that your tattoo binding is gone, I can feel the ether-magik inside of you. Damn, dude. How did you hide it for this long?”
“Stronger magik than mine,” he said, his voice low. “Much stronger.”
“Why did you hide it?” I demanded. “Especially from Jaffrin. He of all people should have known what he was getting into by assigning you to a team. By acknowledging you as part of the Alzan prophecy.”
Shawn shot me a pointed look. “For that exact reason—the prejudice against Ember witches. Didn’t you hear what Kinder said? My magik is tainted, all of ours is. I didn’t say anything because Jaffrin, my parents… everyone was so convinced I was the Son of Alzan. Who was I to say they were wrong when they knew more than me? But for my magik to be responsible for saving a city of the Powers? Forget about it.”
“You were scared,” Rachel said quietly.
Shawn turned to her. “Yeah. Wouldn’t you be? I thought the Fire Circle would lock me away somewhere, knowing my magik is only supposed to get more powerful.”
“If they haven’t locked me up, I think you’re fine,” I said dryly. Although my magik and skills were nowhere near his. Not with this revelation.
“Ben’s going to be so fucking pissed when we tell him,” Nate said.
Rachel shook her head. “Not it.”
“Me either,” Nate said, touching his nose.
I rolled my eyes and stalked over to the stairs. “Oh, for the love of god, I’ll do it.” Ben already disliked me a good seventy percent of the time anyway. “Just don’t go anywhere or do anything or use your magik at all until I’m back.”
Shawn threw me a fake salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, fuck off.” I climbed the stairs without looking back.
Ben’s bedroom light was on, but that didn’t give me any indication whether he was awake or not. We’d left it on after the healers had departed in case he woke up without one of us there. Waking up in the dark alone after a fight never ended well.
I knocked lightly on Ben’s door. “You awake in there?”
I rested my he
ad against the door as I waited. With Ben knocked out, it was hard for me to not slip into the leader role—especially with all that was weighing on us. And now Shawn.
“Yeah,” Ben called from inside, his voice thick with sleep.
My breath caught, and I leaned my forehead against the cool wood. “Thank god. Can I come in? It’s just me.”
“Sure.”
I pulled in a deep breath to settle my nerves—and my lingering anger—and turned the door handle. Ben sat almost upright in his bed, propped against a tower of pillows… shirtless. White bandages had been wrapped around his muscular shoulder.
I shut the door behind me and walked softly to his bedside. “How are you feeling?”
Ben looked down to his shoulder and cringed. “Like I’m never going to throw a football again.”
I shrugged. “I mean, college has been over for a while, right?”
“Ha ha.” He twisted his neck, working out a kink, and met my gaze like everything was fine and he wasn’t injured and half-naked in front of me.
My cheeks flushed as I tried not to look, but it was hard to not notice his well-built arms and chiseled chest when staring down at the man.
“What’s going on?” Ben asked.
“I, um—”
“With the team, with Kinder,” Ben clarified, a smirk on his face. His eyes laughed at me. I’d been caught red-handed.
I set my jaw, a slight grin working its way onto my lips. “Where did you want me to start?”
“That bad?”
“Oh yeah.” I nodded to the bed. “May I?” I could have sat on the floor, but that’d have been weirder.
Ben flashed a thumbs up, then pulled his body back so he sat fully straight. The bed covers slipped down to his waist, revealing his muscled abs. My cheeks flushed all over again.
“Kinder ran,” I said, ticking the item off on my finger. “We haven’t heard from Landshaft or Lady Azar since you’ve been out, so there’s that. And Giyano’s still missing. But you got knocked around pretty bad. The healers took care of the rest of us, but you’re still bandaged.”
