by Jessica Gunn
“That’s not the only problem,” I said as we stood and again followed Areus, this time amongst his collection of bookshelves. “My magik isn’t ether-based anymore. I know that has to be a problem because the witch lines are the next most direct connection to the Powers, and their magik is all ether-based. I can only assume the magik meant to be wielded by Shawn and I must be too.”
Areus nodded but otherwise ignored us as he searched for something on a shelf filled with vials, powders, and other knickknacks. Spell items and ingredients, I realized. “It is meant to be ether-based magik, so that might prove difficult. However, I’m convinced we can work around it.”
Shawn stepped forward, a hand cupping his mouth and chin. He pulled it away and said, “But if we get our magik back, won’t that tilt Cianza Alzan? That’s what everyone’s worried about, right? Once Lady Azar lands here, the cianza will explode. Our magik nearly took out the one in Boston.”
“We weren’t the only high-powered people there, Shawn,” I said.
“Maybe not, but it was enough.”
Areus paused for a brief moment to look both of us in the eye. “Going back to your original question of why we don’t worry about the balance tipping on a normal occasion: Alzanian magik is neutral to cianzas. Now, that power can be corrupted, as we’ve discovered with both of your magiks. Even the first Daughter alone could barely manage to keep her magik neutral without the balance of the Son.”
How was our magik neutral to cianzas once we unlocked the Alzan side of things? By nature, cianzas always reacted to magik. Which meant that… Oh, god. “Giyano was right,” I said, glancing over at Shawn. “Kinder too. The Hunter Circles knew that when we found the magik of Alzan within ourselves we’d become neutral to cianzas. They were going to make us into the weapons Kinder feared.”
“They wanted to use us in their war on Darkness,” Shawn said. “To possibly destroy them by having us blow up one of their cianzas.”
Areus’s eyes narrowed. “Darkness controls cianzas?”
“Not the points themselves,” I said. “The spaces around them. Not many, but enough. And they have throughout our history. That’s why the Great Pyramid of Giza is so damn big. It’s sitting on one.”
Shawn’s eyes lit up. “Wait—seriously?”
“You didn’t know?”
He shook his head. “No. Damn. Even more reason to go there now.”
“You aren’t getting enough pyramid time inside this thing?”
Shawn leveled me with a look. “Ha ha.”
Whatever. I turned back to Areus. “So our magik will be neutral against cianzas. We had someone try to balance out my magik, like how Shawn’s an Ember witch with both witch and demonic blood in him. That explains why he did that.”
Areus eyed us carefully. “He must know, then. Same as your Fire Circle Leader.”
“Funny,” I said. “That’s what Ben said about Jaffrin, too.”
“What is it that they must know?” Shawn asked.
Areus shifted his stance and looked between the both of us. “There’s another civilization, one much older than the Entity. You know of the Split, yes? The creation of Good and Evil when Aloysius broke off from the Entity?” We nodded. “They were called the Neuians. Mostly, they warred amongst themselves, so not much is known about them, especially outside of the Powers. Your Circle Leaders and most of Darkness do not even know they existed. But in their warfare, they created cianzas as weapons, which is why they are located everywhere. They think of the post-Split magik war as below them and those that fight it, like you and me, as vermin. The Son and Daughter of Alzan magik was derived from Cianza Alzan, which is why you shouldn’t be affected by it, but you will be by other cianzas. After your magik is changed to fulfill the prophecy, of course. I assume your Fire Circle Leader must know all of this as well.”
Which meant so did Giyano.
Areus pulled two vials off the shelf of oddities and held them out to Shawn and me. “I will explain more later. But first, before I bring you in front of the Council, let’s begin the process of transforming and regaining your magik. Drink this.”
Shawn’s gaze met mine, equally filled with questions. “No offense or anything, but this is all happening kind of fast. A lot’s happened in the last couple days, not to mention months.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” I said under my breath.
Areus held Shawn’s stare and lifted the vials in his hand. “You said Lady Azar will be here within days, yes?”
“Yeah.”
He pushed the vials closer to us. “Then drink. We are already wasting time.”
Chapter 20
Ben
With Krystin and Shawn missing, patrolling Boston felt like it had before this mess had started. Back when it’d been only Rachel, Nate, and me bumbling our way through demon fights. What difference nine months had made—for better and for worse. Normally, we wouldn’t have done this anymore, go out with only half the team. But the demons of Boston didn’t wait for anyone, and this close to Autumn Fire, they’d be out feeding in droves.
“Still no word from either of them?” Rachel asked.
I shook my head and slid my phone back into my pocket. “None.”
“Hopefully, that means they’re working on the prophecy,” said Nate, walking beside me.
“To not answer, though?” I’d sent Shawn a text a few hours ago, after Max had finally left. It was unlike him to not respond at all. And as far as I knew, Krystin no longer had a cell phone. Not one I had the number to, anyway.
Nate shrugged. “I don’t know, Ben. The most we could do is try a locator spell with Krystin’s mother’s help to see where they are.”
I shook my head. “No. We don’t need to do that. They’ll come back.”
“You hope,” Rachel said, staring straight ahead at the city streets. “There’s only a week before Lady Azar goes to Alzan. For all we know, Krystin’s still working with Giyano. Maybe she fed Shawn right to the Lady of Darkness herself.”
I glanced over at her, my eyes narrowing. “You don’t really believe that.”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
A scream sounded down an alleyway to the right, our version of a bat signal. Wordlessly, my half-team and I took off in a run toward the attack. I prayed it was only a mugger, someone human the three of us could take down without a problem. But as soon as we rounded the corner and dove into the long alleyway lit by only the city lights above, I realized we wouldn’t be that lucky.
A pair of demons stood above a man quaking on the ground beneath them. They both had fire lit in their palms, magik like Krystin’s.
“Stop!” I yelled as lightning formed around my hands.
The two demons looked up and light from their fires and my lightning bounced off medallions hanging around their necks.
“Shadow Crest,” Nate said, his eyes narrowing to see better in the dark.
“Again?” I asked.
The man on the ground beneath them took advantage of their distraction to leap up and slam a palm against both of them. “Requirem!” he shouted.
Both demons’ eyes glowed for a moment as their magik faded from their bodies. But not their weapons.
One demon turned, a blade moving fast in his hand, and stabbed the man in the chest.
“No!” I shouted and launched lightning at the demons.
Rachel and Nate followed up, water and ether wrapping around their bodies and bringing them to the ground.
I ran over to the man, but blood poured out of him too quickly. He was already gone. “We need to call this in.”
“Hunter?” Nate asked, not moving from where he held one of the demons.
I searched the man’s body for a Hunter Circle knife but didn’t find one. “Witch, maybe. We should call this in.”
“To Jaffrin?” Rachel asked.
I shook my head and pulled out my phone. “No. Regular human authorities. It’ll look like a mugging gone wrong.” I also di
dn’t want to deal with Jaffrin or the Fire Circle right now. And on the off chance this was a witch any of them knew, I didn’t want to burn the body with a cedo match.
“I have a message for you, Ben Hallen,” said one of the demons.
I turned to him before I could place the 9-1-1 call. “Excuse me?”
“From Lady Azar,” he continued, his burgundy eyes shining with demonic magik. “She want to extend to you an offer of peace.”
I snorted a laugh. “Now that I wasn’t expecting. Peace? From her?”
“I would not be so quick to dismiss this, Hunter,” the other demon said. “Lady Azar will return your son to you, but you must in return hand over the Daughter and Son of Alzan.”
“Krystin and Shawn?” Rachel asked as she reached into her pocket. “Why would she give up Riley for them?”
The demon she held in her water ropes only grinned. “I don’t pretend to know Darkness’s rightful heir’s wishes.”
“I believe that heir you’re talking about is her brother.” Ammon, Lady Azar’s twin, was the first born. So unless some major shakeup had happened without the Hunter Circles’ knowledge, that thousands-of-years-long line of succession began with Ammon.
The demon’s grin only widened. “So much in motion. So little you know.”
“Okay, I’m over this.” Rachel tugged out a cedo match, lit it, and tossed it onto the demon she was restraining. He burnt up like a purple Christmas tree. When the purple flames died down, she turned to the other demon. “You’re next. Better explain the reasons for this offer.”
I stared at Rachel. When had she become so aggressive? “Hey. Don’t get trigger-happy. We might need any information he has.”
“Yeah,” she said, glaring at the demon. “Like why the hell my nephew is now a bargaining chip.”
The demon glared back at her. “I don’t know. We’re only the messengers. Do as you will. Otherwise, the Son and Daughter for the boy.”
Nate squeezed the ether tighter around the demon. “Riley is the only way she’s getting to Alzan and will stay alive long enough to see her plan through. She needs him.”
Unless something’s happened to Riley, too. My stomach dropped at the thought. A lightheaded feeling swept through me.
The demon’s gaze met mine. “Lady Azar does not need the siphon boy if she has another way to Alzan through its Son and Daughter.”
“Siphon boy?” I growled at him. “What the—”
Another lit cedo match flew through the air at the demon before I’d even finished my sentence. His purple flames were bigger and brighter.
“Rachel,” Nate hissed. “We were getting somewhere.”
“No,” I said. “She got to him before I did. I was about to do the same thing.” Riley was just a pawn to them. A siphon. A filter for magik that needed to move from one plane of existence to another.
“We can’t give up Shawn and Krystin to Lady Azar,” Nate said. “Riley, we can save. But not the two of them if they somehow fall under demonic control again.”
I turned on Nate, anger flashing hot beneath my skin. “We don’t even know where they are. We couldn’t trade them for Riley if we wanted to.” Although I was pretty sure both Krystin and Shawn would gladly take his place if it meant returning Riley to Sandra and me safely.
That didn’t make me feel better about any of it.
“It still doesn’t make sense,” Nate said.
“I’m a little more worried about the demon implying Lady Azar plans to take throne,” Rachel said. “Ammon’s a known quantity. If Aloysius falls and Lady Azar takes his place…”
“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that for a while,” I said. “Even if she takes the throne from Ammon, she’ll never be able to remove her father.” Aloysius had been in power since the Split, since the day he chose a path different from the Powers. Not even his daughter would take that away from him.
I looked down to the witch’s body again. “We need to call 9-1-1 and then get out of here.”
“Right,” Nate said, nodding. He kicked the two piles of demon ash, scattering them.
Then I called the human authorities and we walked away, even as thoughts of trading my teammates for my son came roaring back to me. It was one hell of a tempting way out of a situation we currently had no solutions for. But as tempting as it was, I knew I could never do it.
Still, it didn’t stop me from wondering what had made Lady Azar so desperate—or confident—to bargain away the key part of her plan.
Chapter 21
KRYSTIN
I landed on my knees surrounded in darkness. In a flash, a scene appeared: a warehouse, sunlight streaming in through large windows to either side of me. It kissed my skin, warming it despite the glass barrier between us. Musty, moldy smells sifted through the air with metallic undertones. And although I was pretty sure this was some massive hallucination induced by whatever Areus had given Shawn and me, the ground beneath my feet felt as solid as the marble on which I’d previously stood.
I glanced down. I still wore the same shorts and tank top I’d been wearing when Shawn had found me at Hunter’s Guild. Which meant I was also still unarmed.
My eyes narrowed as I took in as many details as I could. Areus hadn’t explained how this would help unlock Shawn’s and my powers. But it must somehow. Normally, I wouldn’t have trusted someone so fast, but Areus’s story about the first Son and Daughter hit home. The Powers had had a plan and, for the first time in my entire life, Areus had confirmed the Powers were flawed. Their plan had failed or had at least been derailed. Which meant they weren’t saints and that they did need us Hunters to help them win this war. They weren’t all-powerful or all-knowing, only really good at positioning themselves that way.
A crash sounded, the splintering of glass into a thousand pieces, and Shawn came flying through a window on the second floor. A filing cabinet followed, quickly making up the distance between it and Shawn.
“Shawn!” I raced toward where he was doomed to be crushed by the filing cabinet. I reached out and swiped at the air, an old instinct. But I didn’t have telekinesis anymore and nothing happened.
I moved again, swiping slower this time, thinking of the air currents around Shawn instead of Shawn himself. Out of my two new abilities, I’d definitely relied on and used the fire-elemental magik more often. But I managed to collect enough of a wind current to slide Shawn out of the way of the filing cabinet and float him to the ground.
I ran over and helped him up, balking as a shock of red ran down his face. “Shawn?”
His eyes rolled, sweat flooding his brow. Blood dripped down to his lips from a gash in his eyebrow. “I’m fine.”
I held on to his shoulders, as much to support him as myself. “What happened? Is this really you?”
His eyes lit up and he glared at me. “Are you really you?”
“What?”
Someone jumped out of the window Shawn had been shoved out of and landed on the floor, a knee to the ground like a freaking supervillain. Me. Or more accurately, a mockery of me. She stood, fire in one hand and a twisting ball of air in the other. “So nice of you to join us.”
My heart leapt into my throat. Her voice—it wasn’t mine. It was low, deep, threatening. Male.
She shot a hand out and launched the ball of fire directly for us. I pushed Shawn out of the way and caught it as the ball turned into a firestorm. Hands up, I pushed the wave of fire up and over where we stood, then swung it around me back at her.
My evil twin jumped impossibly high into the air, swinging down with a lance made of fire. She slammed it into the ground. The impact sent Shawn and me flying. I landed hard, sliding against the ground and into a metal support beam. My body folded under the force of the slide, pain searing from my legs up to my neck.
“The pain sure feels real,” Shawn said. Blood still poured down his face from his eyebrow. The same one I’d scarred six months ago. “What’s going on?”
“Hell if I know,” I s
aid, picking myself up off the ground. “Areus said it was some training or something right? To unlock our magik?”
“How the hell does fighting you accomplish that?” Shawn hissed, cradling his right arm. “What Kinder did to you is the reason we lost so much time in the first place.”
My double stalked toward us, another fire lance in her hands.
“I don’t know, Shawn.” An idea hit me then, a hunch so strong that it wiped away the pain splicing through my body. “But I do know I’ve never used that move before.”
“The fire sword?”
“Yeah. I don’t have that much control.”
Shawn’s features darkened. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
My eyes narrowed on my double. Only I was starting to think it wasn’t actually me in there. “Only one way to find out.”
I took off running, climbing up onto some boxes stacked nearby. Shawn ran interference as I made my way. He launched himself toward my double, ignoring the fire lance. Odds were it’d hurt, but we wouldn’t die here. Not for real. And I highly doubted Areus, keeper of the Son and Daughter of Alzan, would actually let us die before we saved the city.
The fire lance soared toward Shawn, but he kept moving, pushing through it with a howl as he tackled my double to the ground.
I produced my own fire as I leapt from the boxes, just as my double threw Shawn off of her yet again.
With Shawn out of the way, I let my fire loose, the waves pulsing around my hands. I swarmed her in fire, melting away the exterior—or aiming to. The fire moved against me, building so I couldn’t see through it as the flames conformed to my body, then shot me across the room, too.
I landed next to Shawn again, him catching me as I slid.
“That didn’t work.”
Shawn’s eyes widened as he stood. “No. It definitely did.” He offered me a hand.
