by Jessica Gunn
“Of course not. Why would they actually be helpful?” I turned to look at the scene before me. Krystin and Avery hurried down the stairs into the living room, carrying our mediocre first aid kit, some rubbing alcohol, and a bunch of towels they’d torn into strips.
“This is unprecedented, Ben,” Dacher said quietly, his head pointed toward me and away from the others. “To remove a Circle Leader… That hasn’t been done for many generations. And for a reason such as this, there are no procedures. We have no way of knowing what he’s capable of doing in retaliation. Or who might come looking for revenge on his behalf.”
The front door burst open beside me. Everyone, even Dacher, flinched. I fell into a defensive stance in front of Dacher as Jaffrin stalked into the room with two of his Command on either side of him. The only member missing was Dacher.
“What has happened here?” Jaffrin asked. “I got a call from Hydron stating the agents who were supposed to be at Headquarters were on a mission.” His gaze swung toward me and twisted into surprise when he saw Dacher. “Your mission, I presume?”
Dacher nodded. “They were needed.”
“They’re mine to command, Dacher, not yours,” Jaffrin spat. The four other Command members filled out around Jaffrin.
Krystin and Shawn rose from where they’d knelt next to injured Hunters. Nate and one of Cassie’s Hunters did the same. We were the only others with magik in this room. If he made a move, only we’d be able to stop him.
“Stand down,” Jaffrin ordered.
“Not a chance, asshole,” Krystin spat. “I knew you were shit from the beginning.”
Jaffrin’s Command bristled, except for Dacher. He stepped behind me and watched from afar.
“Excuse me?” Jaffrin asked.
“You’re Neuian,” Shawn accused. “An enemy of the Powers, of Alzan. You were going to let Alzan burn.”
Jaffrin’s angry face shifted to a calm confidence, settling right before his eyes turned from dark brown to cobalt blue. The sides of his face glowed as twisty, vine-like tattoos surfaced on the sides of his face, high on his cheekbones, and wrapped around his eyes. “I take it you made it to the city, then?”
The Command members around him jumped away, a look of horror on their faces.
One that slowly, methodically slipped into smiles.
They knew. His entire Command except for Dacher knew!
My breath stopped, pulse racing in my ears. No. We can’t handle another fight right now. Lightning lit in my hand anyway, preparing for the worst.
Krystin’s eyes darkened and she reached out for Shawn’s hand, making some sort of sawing motion. He nodded. “Yes,” she said. “We did. And boy did Areus have a lot to say. Especially about your role in all of this. Like how you brought the stolen stone of the Son to the origin plane to use as a weapon.”
Jaffrin laughed, a smile half-cocked on his face. “Guess there are no more secrets then.”
A burst of blue energy shot out of Jaffrin’s form, filling the entire room and knocking everyone over. I fell once again to my knees, looking up in time to watch Krystin and Shawn envelop themselves in white ala-ether and walk through Jaffrin’s magik to his side. They were holding hands, each drawing a knife with their free one. They slipped the tips of the blades across their hands then rejoined them, their blood touching.
Then they leapt for Jaffrin as all the remaining Hunters jumped on Jaffrin’s Command. They wrestled them to the ground easily—we had the bigger numbers, and they had no magik.
I jumped in too, tackling Jaffrin from behind and wrapping lightning around his body. We didn’t hold Jaffrin down so much as momentarily surprise and restrain him. But it was long enough for Krystin to get a hand around his arm. I grabbed out for her, too—just in case—and then in a moment of utter silence, the ala-ether encased us and the world went dark.
When it sprang back into existence, full of color and sound and being, we were inside a massive arched room made almost entirely of marble and stone.
“Ben!” Krystin exclaimed. “What—why did you—?”
“Areus!” Shawn bellowed. “Get Areus in here now!”
“I can’t hold him,” Krystin said, teeth gnashing together.
I struck Jaffrin again as he struggled, continually sending out pulses of blue energy as he seized. Neuian magik. Others rushed over to see what was happening, but almost all of them backed away in the same breath. Still, Jaffrin fought.
“What is—oh!” said a man as he skidded to a stop next to us. “Guards. Guards! Get the High Council. Take this man to the prison!”
“Don’t have time for that,” Krystin ground out.
“How did you—?”
“No time,” she said, cutting him off.
Areus’s face twisted with understanding. Then he looked up at me. “And you. Who are you?”
“Ben Hallen,” I said. “I’m with them.”
His jaw clenched. “Hmm.”
Guards appeared in the next breath, teleporting in only long enough to grab Jaffrin and teleport back out again.
“He’s Neuian,” Krystin shouted. “You can’t put him in a normal cell. He’ll escape.”
“He also might know things we need to find out,” Shawn said. “Take us to him.”
Areus touched a hand to both of their shoulders. “In time. We have spaces from the first war to handle Neuians.”
I watched the exchange, my heart in my throat. So little of this was easy to process, least of all that the Fire Circle had just lost its Leader and probably most of its Command. Dacher would be acting Leader until a replacement was found or he was officially voted in, but until then it was anyone’s guess.
All of that loss, and still more might follow if the healers couldn’t save Rachel or Tyler or any of the others.
And Riley was still in Lady Azar’s clutches.
My stomach roiled as bile slicked the back of my throat. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead.
“Ben?” Krystin asked, reaching out for me.
“I’m fine.”
“You look like you’re going to be sick.”
I shook my head. “How do we recover from this? What can our next move even be with this many casualties?” Not to mention this new threat, the Neuians. “This is pointless. When does it end?”
Krystin’s fingers dug into my shoulder, pulling me back to reality and setting me firmly inside of it. Her dark blue eyes found mine and stared me down until I was convinced I could at least pretend to be as strong as she was right now. “It ends when Lady Azar does. And thanks to Nate, thanks to Giyano, thanks to the Alzanian High Council imprisoning Jaffrin, we have a shot.”
My eyes narrowed, panic settling low in my stomach. “How? She still has Riley. She can still get here.”
“I don’t know, Ben,” she said. “But we’ll figure out. Because of them, we can figure it out.”
I pulled in a staggering breath and righted myself, lifting my chin. If Krystin still had faith, then so did I.
I had to.
“Let’s go home, Ben,” Shawn said. “Let the Council here do their thing. We have to check on everyone else first. Fix those messes. Then we can make a game plan.”
I nodded and inhaled deeply again. Both of them were right. “Like a team.”
Krystin smiled at me, though it was weighed down with everything that’d happened. “Like a team. We have to keep our heads in the game.”
But what if the game was already tied?
I had a feeling we’d just entered overtime.
The Power
Book Five
Chapter 1
KRYSTIN
I was really starting to like this new Alzan magik. Although we hadn’t yet reached Castle Island, the last location of our patrolling route, we’d already stopped three demon attacks and raided two dens on the way. Every time Shawn and I used our new magik, demons seemed to fold beneath our touch. Which was a good thing since Ben had been wound tighter than a spring for the last three days
.
Lady Azar hadn’t moved on Alzan yet and we didn’t know why. She had everything she’d need to do so—Riley, power, and likely a new seat as heir to the Empire of Darkness. But aside from a few rowdy instances at Hunter’s Guild and local demon hot spots in Boston, Lady Azar hadn’t made so much as a blip on our radar. Which meant the asanak Nate had landed on Riley must not have worn off yet.
Another good thing, since along with being wound up tight, Ben had also been stuck at Fire Circle Headquarters over the last three days, ever since the attack on her lair. Tonight is the first time he’s been out since then, except for one or two check-ins with the team.
I turned to him as we walked. Ben’s facial expression rarely lightened past a scowl these days. And tonight, the first time he’d been home in a day and a half, his eyes had grown even darker. “What do they have you doing?”
Ben blinked but didn’t look away from the road ahead of him. “What?”
“At Headquarters. I get Dacher probably wants you there while they decide how to handle Jaffrin and his entire Command being impeached, but you’ve been gone for over a day.”
Ben only shrugged. As if I didn’t get enough of that from Shawn, King of Shrugs. “Just things, Krystin. It’s only been a few days. I can’t talk about it.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Rachel asked.
Nate gave a slow whistle.
With Ben gone, Max, Rachel’s boyfriend, had been around much more often. Between my magik having backfired again and Rachel’s injury from the last big fight, we’d needed as much help as our team could get. And Rachel had not been happy about being out of the loop her cousin usually kept her in. At least a healer from Headquarters had stopped by to bring her back to almost normal. Still, she held one arm closer to her body than the other.
Ben paused and spared her a soft look. “I’m sorry, Rachel. Dacher has sworn me to secrecy. I’m sure I’ll be able to tell you all soon.”
Shawn’s eyes narrowed on Ben. “You’re not setting up some super-secret Neuian screening for all Hunters, are you?”
“That’s a bit much,” I said.
Nate shrugged. “For all the time Ben’s spent at Headquarters, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Ben started waking again, his stare straight ahead. “You guys think too much.”
Ironic, coming from you. Ben didn’t often think enough about things—his actions, their consequences. And neither did I, for the record.
Rachel paused again as we crested the parking lot for Castle Island. “Promise me it’s nothing that’s putting you in danger. Especially after all those extra missions you did for Jaffrin.”
Ben laid a hand on her shoulder. “I promise. Seventy percent of those missions were self-directed ones anyway. Jaffrin had nothing to do with it.”
“Unlike seventy percent of our lives,” I muttered. That traitorous asshole had been behind so many things, it was hard to see where Jaffrin’s motives stopped, Giyano’s had begun, and where anything any of us had actually chosen for ourselves lay as a result. So much of my own life had been directed by those two men—monsters. Even if Giyano had ended up saving us all in the end.
Too bad the battle wasn’t over yet.
Ben’s gaze flitted to mine. “It’s not going to be like that anymore.”
It was my turn to shrug. And it felt so good, I suddenly understood why Shawn and Ben loved the motion so much. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”
Ben’s jaw set hard. “I promise you, Krystin.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that. Nothing I wanted to voice, anyway. He hadn’t just been absent from the team, but from me too. Which was fine. I totally got that Dacher had him working on some project and that his kid had just been turned into a demon and piled full of demonic powers. But for those few quiet times between training my new ala-ether magik with Shawn and fixing things with Rachel and Nate, I really just wanted to spend time with Ben. Any amount of it.
Which is what made this patrol particularly annoying.
A scream split the night air, saving me from having to reply.
“Go,” Ben said as he sprinted down the path out to the beach, following the screams. The city noises died down out here, replaced by seagulls and the soft rush of water over sand. Not much of it though, since this wasn’t a real beach.
I darted after Ben, passing the restaurant. The rest of the team followed behind me, chasing Ben and the screams of a demon attack out to the farthest reaches of the land.
There, at the water, we found the attack.
A water-elemental demon had a woman twisted in water ropes, dangling her high above the sand. But with the bay so close, his power was potentially unlimited.
So too was Rachel’s. She jumped into the fray first, wincing as she brought her hands up. Water trailed behind them. With one hand, she pulled down the water ropes holding the woman, dragging her to the sand to safety. With the other, Rachel swung up and threw open her palm. Water rose and then darted for the demon in ice missiles the size of footballs.
Ben tapped me on the shoulder, the slight contact enough to, in the absence of any real contact lately, send butterflies somersaulting around my stomach. The moment was as fleeting as any eye contact I’d gotten from him lately, and then Ben was off.
I followed behind him, drawing my three-piece sword and snapping it into place. I hadn’t yet gotten a new Fire Circle knife. And given everything that’d happened, I doubted I ever would. I wasn’t sure I wanted one anyway after what the Fire Circle had become under Jaffrin’s command.
Ben lit his hands with lightning, but Rachel already had the water demon pressed into the sand, immobile.
“Run,” Shawn told the woman. “It isn’t safe here.”
Her eyes narrowed on me, green irises blazing. “And leave you with a traitor in your midst?” She spat on the ground. “I don’t think so.”
My stomach twisted at her words. It was only then I noticed the birthmark under her eye. “You’re a witch.” Cassano, no less.
She lifted her chin. “And I had this under control.”
“You screamed,” Nate said. “We heard it and—”
The Cassano witch rolled her eyes. “Worry less about those of us actually doing what we’re meant to in this war. Concern yourself more with the company you keep.”
I bit my tongue to keep from telling this witch where she could shove it. She hadn’t been there and she didn’t know all the demons responsible for her still being alive. “Whatever.”
Three battle cries sounded from the water ahead of us as three more demons appeared. Their teleportante trail shimmered for a moment above the water, looking for all the world like stardust, before disappearing into the night. The demons charged through the water, splashing loudly in every direction.
Shawn and I backed up a step, trying to gain our bearings. Three more demons, none pulling water with them as they went. Which meant the only real danger was that witch if she decided to pull a knife on me.
“Ready?” Shawn asked, dropping into an attack stance.
I nodded once and lunged for the closest of the newcomer demons. I put myself directly into his space and attacked with a barrage of fists and kicks. Anything to keep him from being able to use magik. I simply didn’t give him time to think about it.
After a few solid punches, I slammed my palm against his chest. Only instead of using a word-magik as instinct and habit told me to, I closed my eyes and thought of Alzan. A white light poured out of my palm, slithering around the demon’s torso. The ala-ether wrapped around his entire body one limb at a time until his skin grayed and exploded into a shock of ash.
I spun, ready for the other two, and found Shawn in a similar finishing position. The other two demons exploded, Shawn’s ala-ether with them.
He smirked, his scarred eyebrow lifting at me. “Two to one. Looks like I win this fight, too.”
“Oh, fuck off,” I said, huffing as I spun toward Rachel and the others. She still held the water de
mon, Nate at her side. Ben, however…
Ben stood, his mouth agape at me and Shawn. “How…?”
I waved it off like it was nothing. If Ben had been around more lately, he’d know that the same magik we used to kill the first wave of Lady Azar’s assault three days ago was the same magik we were using now. We’d figured out how to minimize it, to hone it down to something usable in a one-on-one fight with a demon. My gaze cut to Shawn. Or, I suppose, one-on-two.
Shawn smirked again before shoving his hands into his pockets and focusing on whatever Rachel was saying to the water demon.
“We’ve figured out how to work it,” I told Ben. “We’ve hopped back and forth between Alzan and here a lot for training.” And I had all the finger pricks and still-backfiring magik to prove it. I glanced down briefly at my bandaged fingers. There had to be a better way to get to Alzan besides blood magik. But all the walls of magik standing between this plane, the origin plane, and Alzan’s were too thick for any other path. At least until Lady Azar broke the walls down.
“Why are you out here?” Rachel demanded of the demon as she squeezed her fists. Her water ropes pulled tighter around him.
“Feeding,” he spat through clenched teeth.
“Obviously,” said the Cassano witch as she sauntered closer. “That’s all they ever do.”
Rachel peered down at him, her eyes narrowing. “They’re never just feeding. Not out here.”
“Rachel, end him. Get it over with,” I said.
“Not a chance. Where’s Riley?” she asked him.
I glanced over to Ben, who didn’t appear affected by hearing Riley’s name. That was a good sign. For the first few hours after our attack on Shadow Crest, Ben went nearly catatonic at the word. But it seemed that his time at Fire Circle Headquarters with Dacher had cured him of that.
“Rachel,” Ben warned, his fingers slipping into his pocket. Probably for a cedo match.
She shook her head. “No. Remember last time? This is probably a Shadow Crest hangout.”
