by Jessica Gunn
Pain sliced up my arm and I cried out as a hot something collided with my shoulder. Wetness flowed down after it. A stray bullet.
“Dammit, Avery!” I shouted. This was why guns in a demon fight never ended well.
“Worry not,” Lady Azar purred, suddenly in front of my face. She lifted a finger in front of my weary, dizzy head and touched her fingertip to my lips. “It’s almost over. Requirem. Teleportante.”
The world went dark.
Chapter 15
KRYSTIN
The attack was over as soon as it began. In a flash, both of the Shadow Crest soldiers were gone from the room, followed by Lady Azar. But it was who was missing on our side that froze all the blood in my body.
“Ben,” I said, looking around. “And Rachel. She took them both!”
“Why?” Nate asked, spinning, searching the room as if he’d find them in the shadows.
“What the hell happened in here?” Avery asked as he holstered his gun. “Was that Lady Azar?”
“Yes,” Shawn snapped. His gaze fell to my hands, then up the rest of my body. “You didn’t?”
I shook my head. “And risk dying in front of Lady Azar like some lame tool? No.”
Avery’s team holstered their own weapons but wearily cast looks on the rest of us. He took one look at the door and frowned. “Did she do that?”
“Lady Azar wanted to ‘chat’ with us alone,” I said, air-quoting the word. “She didn’t get much time to, though.”
“Dacher is losing his mind out there,” Avery said, thumbing toward the door. “Chairman Otto too.”
My eyes narrowed on Avery. “If they were actually concerned, don’t you think they would have teleported themselves in here to take care of things?”
He paused, blinking. “I mean…”
“Exactly. I’m starting to think the Ether Head Circle isn’t as powerful as everyone thinks.”
“Lot of that going on around here,” he mumbled. Then, louder, he said, “I’m not turning on them too. Especially not without evidence.”
Shawn pushed by Avery and the others on his way to the door. “No one’s asking you to. Although if we could leave this hell hole and go rescue our friends, that’d be awesome.”
Avery cringed. “I really don’t think they’re going to let you.”
“I don’t think I care,” Krystin said. “No one’s helped this entire time. We had to take on Lady Azar on our own a few days ago. Then they locked us up in here like cattle waiting for the dragon to swoop in. Whatever war they’re claiming to fight for on the side of Good, it’s not this one. And it sure as hell isn’t the one involving saving Cianza Alzan.”
Avery glanced at the rest of his team, the whole group of them looking more like they belonged in a punk rock band than a team of demon Hunters. Avery’s fire-engine-red mohawk, pierced lip, and black pants alone made me feel like we were at a rock show instead of inside a quarantine chamber at Fire Circle Headquarters.
“What do you want me to do, then?” Avery asked, eyeing each of us in turn.
“Be on our side when we leave this room,” I said. “We’re going to need it.”
Avery nodded, his jaw locked hard, and held out his hand. “Then let’s go.”
We joined hands and used teleportante to get past the locked, melted door to the hallway. Dacher and Chairman Otto, along with half a dozen of his Ether Head Circle soldiers stood outside the room with impatient expressions on their faces.
“You could have jumped in at any time,” I spat as soon as the teleportante ended.
“Where are Ben and Rachel?” Dacher asked, moving to our side. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Shawn said. “Lady Azar has them. If she knows about the neutralizing effects Neuian magik has on cianzas, she might be collecting them to use during her march.”
Dacher’s face paled. “No.”
I nodded. “Yes. That’s the same reason Karen likely claimed the two of them now, turning their magik. I think she was hoping it’d be enough to keep Cianza Alzan stable while we stopped Lady Azar.”
“And Riley,” Nate added solemnly. “We can’t forget the fact that he’s a huge part of this now.”
“A three-year-old,” Shawn said. “This is so fucked up.”
“You must do what needs to be done,” Chairman Otto said, studying us carefully.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Now you want us involved? Make up your goddamn mind.”
“Krystin,” Dacher warned.
“No.” I swiped the air with my hand. “I’m done playing by your fucking rules and stupid values. The only thing that matters—the only thing at all—is saving Cianza Alzan. We’ll all die without it. And if that means that after saving the world, all five of us end up in your evil prison full of misfits, then so be it. But I’ll be damned if I let you call the shots when it comes to what happens next. You haven’t earned the damn right.”
I paused, looking at each of the Ether Head Circle reps in turn. Then at Dacher, who only nodded at me as though he agreed with every word but feared to do so aloud. “Only one person has earned that right in my eyes, and he was just taken by the enemy. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to assemble a raiding party to get to Shadow Crest’s lair and stop them before they go to Alzan.”
“If they’re even there,” Nate said.
I nodded. “If they’re there.”
“And if it’ll work any better than last time,” Avery chimed in.
I glared at him. For all the bullshit our “friendship” had entailed over the years, he wasn’t such a bad guy. “It has to,” I said. “We don’t have a choice.”
But I did: use my magik to stop Lady Azar on this plane of existence and lead the resistance march against her, and possibly die here doing so, or reserve my magik and strength for a final fight at Alzan.
I didn’t know which was the better option, only that my time was running short. Especially if the Powers were coming to collect after this battle was over.
I’d neglected to tell Ben that while we were talking. Now, I regretted that. It might have been the last time I’d ever talk to him.
My stomach clenched and I swallowed hard as nausea rolled through it. Other than that potion Areus had made me drink, I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in twelve or so hours.
“You have my permission,” Dacher said.
Chairman Otto glared at him and scoffed. “You are not in charge of this.”
Dacher returned the hard stare. “Actually, inside Fire Circle Headquarters, I am in charge. And until I’m removed by official order from the Leaders of the Ether Head Circle, not yourself, I’ll remain in charge. Now get the hell out of my Headquarters.”
I grinned, though I really shouldn’t have. I’d always liked Dacher, and now I liked him even more. “Thank you.”
“Take who you need,” Dacher said, not moving his eyes from Chairman Otto. “Report back to me before you go to Alzan, if it comes to that.”
“Will do,” I said, then turned to Avery. “Are you up for one more fight?”
Avery swallowed hard and looked at his team. They all gave him nods of varying confidence, though each glance was laced with uncertainty. We were going against direct orders after all. Even if they weren’t Dacher’s. “Sure thing,” said Avery. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Then go,” Dacher said. “Save us all, since these nitwits won’t bother intervening. The Ether Head Circle and the Powers both. You’d assume figures of Good such as these would actually want to do the dirty work of fighting for their ‘goodness.’”
Oh, shit. Dacher wasn’t holding back at all.
“That’s what I’ve been saying for years,” I spat as the group of us Hunters gathered together. “Good luck, Dacher.”
“Godspeed,” he said, nodding solemnly.
“Teleportante.”
We were gone in the next second.
Chapter 16
Ben
My knees collided with the stone floor. A harsh pain
shot up my legs into my hips and I teetered forward. I shifted to catch myself, but my bound hands, restrained behind my back, barely moved. All I could do was turn my face so I landed on my cheekbone instead of flat on my nose. I grunted as the pain radiated out from the point of impact.
One of the Shadow Crest demons gripped on to my shoulder, dug their fingers in roughly, narrowly missing my gunshot wound, and hauled me off the floor.
“Idiot,” he grumbled as he tossed me back against a hard stone wall.
Blood seeped from my lips. I spat it out on the floor next to me. “Fuck you.” I hated him as much as I hated Lady Azar and every other demon in this place. As much as I hated this fucking cave in these fucking woods.
“Ben, stop,” Rachel whispered beside me. She hadn’t gotten hurt in the fight back at Headquarters, but her eyes rounded and filled with tears anyway. “It’s not going to help.”
“They’re not going to kill us,” I said. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure out a way to escape.”
“That’s not what has me worried.” She nodded toward the same dais where, not days earlier, we’d all almost died.
We’re in Lady Azar’s Vermont lair.
There, standing before a line of demons just like a few days ago, Riley stood, taking in their powers one by one. Making himself more powerful each time he cycled through their magik.
“I don’t think we have very long,” Rachel said. “Ben, he looks… He doesn’t look okay.”
I squinted, trying to see what she saw. Riley’s hands shook with every new demon that approached him, offering up their power. He had bags under his eyes, though his eyes were wild and alert. Even if they were demonic.
My heart sank straight through to my stomach. “I’m going to kill her. Rip her head right off.”
Rachel’s tears streamed down her cheeks faster now. “We need to get over there first.”
“Wait. We’ll get an opening. Is your magik back?”
She paused for a moment, then shook her head. “No. She got us both with another requirem back there.”
“Shit.”
“Pretty much.”
“Don’t panic; we’ll figure this out.” But we shouldn’t have had to figure it out in the first place. I looked over at her. “I’m so sorry, Rachel. I got us all mixed up in this so long ago. I’m sorry.”
“Seriously?” she asked, tears streaming down her face. “This is my fault, too. I let you go to Boston to investigate our powers. Don’t you dare try to take credit for this.”
I sighed. “Fine. But keep your eyes open. You find an opening, take it. No matter what happens.”
She nodded. “Same to you.”
“My Riley,” Lady Azar called, appearing from behind curtains leading to a doorway behind the dais. “Are we almost ready?”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes glowing as he took the last demon’s magik. “I think so.”
“Do you feel the most powerful you ever have?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
His voice, so young and compliant and confident, tore through me. Riley was only three years old. He shouldn’t be in this mess in the first place, never mind being a siphon like this.
“Riley!” I called down the hall, though I bit down every instinct screaming at me to get up and run to him. “Don’t listen to her!”
“Riley, it’s us!” Rachel joined in. “Your family.”
“Bring them,” Lady Azar cut in, her voice shrill and unwavering. “Let them see. And when we open a path to the city, let them be the first to walk through it.”
“What, you don’t want to be first after all the work you put into this bullshit?” I asked. “Or are you really that scared of what will happen if your magik touches the cianza first?”
“Enough,” she snapped.
“What made you think you could neutralize a cianza despite the amount of dark power you wield?”
“Silence him,” she barked.
The soldier closest to me reeled back his hand and hit me square in the jaw. My vision rocked, blackening around the edges.
“Don’t,” Rachel cried. “Please. You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
Lady Azar jumped down from the dais and came halfway to where we sat on the floor in the hallway. “Don’t I? Bring them.”
Guards hauled both Rachel and me off the ground. I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t scream out as the guards paid no mind to the bullet wound on my shoulder. They dragged and shoved us down the corridor. With a great heave, we were deposited on the steps to the dais.
“I know your magik will help keep the cianza neutral until I’m through with it,” Lady Azar said. “That is half the reason I brought you both here.”
“And the other half?” Rachel snapped, defiant.
Lady Azar squatted down so that, even in this weird position, the three of us were now eye-level. “I want you to see what your son has become, Ben. So you too can be proud of all he’s achieved. He’s performed better than my highest expectation.”
“Who the hell are you to decide who he is, huh?” I barked. The guard’s fingers dug into the bullet hole in my shoulder, widening it, blood pouring out, but I kept my voice strong. “You’re not his mother. You’re not anything to him.”
She grinned as she stood and made her way back to the center of the dais. “And now, neither are you. Although I never had any problems getting Riley to forget you, Ben. You’re the one who let me take him in the first place.”
Anger pulsed like starlight within me. The pressure of it was like the mass of a star threatening to explode inside of me. I grabbed hold of that rage and threw myself into it, ripping out of the guard’s grip and launching myself from the dais’s steps. I tore the cuffs off of me, wincing as the pain cut into my wrists until I was free.
“This ends now,” I roared, reaching for the back of Lady Azar’s neck as she walked.
The guards were fast, but I moved faster, my fingers closing the distance between my skin and hers. They found purchase on top of her golden choker necklace, her skin soft and malleable beneath my fingertips. She cried out as I squeezed down, feeling her muscles bend beneath my grasp.
“Stay the fuck away from my family,” I growled, crushing her neck with absolutely everything I had.
“Ben!” Rachel’s cry barely made it through the blind rage overtaking me. I didn’t break contact, didn’t let up at all. “Ben, stop!” she screamed again.
Only then did an ear-piercing cry collide with my mind, so shrill and heartbroken that it froze me solid, my hands still wrapped around Lady Azar’s neck. Riley’s cry.
“Don’t!” he shouted, running with his small legs toward us. Blue lightning crackled around him, seeming to appear from everywhere all at once like a catalyst instead of from his hands like how mine would have. “Stop this now.”
I let go of the demon heiress’s neck and turned to Riley, dropping to my knees in front of him. I reached out, but he stopped three feet from me, a single hand held out. At the very tip of his tiny pointer finger was a dancing blue spark.
Riley. The baby I’d barely gotten to know before he was kidnapped. My son, whom I’d never expected and had never gotten over losing. My son, whom this demonic monstrosity had stolen to use as a tool.
“Riley, it’s me, your dad,” I said, looking him in the eye. He avoided it, trying to look over me to Lady Azar. “Please, Riley.”
His burgundy eyes narrowed, a reminder that Riley was now a demon. I didn’t know what that meant yet. Or if it really was the same Riley in there anymore.
It had to be. Something in my gut told me so. But it could just be wishful thinking.
“You left me,” he said.
“No, Riley. That’s not what happened. I love you, buddy.” My throat tightened with every word, emotion stinging my eyes. What had she done to him all these years so that he couldn’t see the truth?
It’s the truth for him. Lady Azar raised him almost his entire life.
The reality of it crashed
down around me, a dreadful, sickening truth sloshing around inside my head. She was his mother to him, at least in that right. He didn’t know any better. Except he did remember both Sandra and me. So some part of him, even minute, must be susceptible to the actual truth.
“Then why did you leave me?” he asked, his eyes, though demonic, as innocent as ever. “You don’t leave people you love behind.”
“That’s why, my dear Riley, we are bringing your father and aunt with us to the city of Alzan,” Lady Azar said as she stood, rubbing her neck with one hand. The other had formed a tiny tornado in her open palm. “So they, too, can witness the wonderful empire we will create.”
“Empire,” Riley echoed, childish, naive awe in his voice.
“Indeed.” Lady Azar sent her tornado careening my way. I let it hit me, knock me off the dais back to the floor, numb to my new reality. What was I supposed to do? Keep trying to kill Lady Azar on my own? Even with Rachel, it wouldn’t be enough. Not if Riley kept getting in the way—or even into the same space. Killing her wasn’t worth risking his life.
But I wasn’t giving up. Not yet.
I landed hard against the stone. My wrists throbbed with pain, as though I’d maybe broken or at least fractured something while tearing the cuffs off of me. I cringed through it and pushed myself off of the floor, kneeling beside Rachel.
There was no way out of this chamber, not without going somewhere Lady Azar couldn’t touch. And with no way of getting to Alzan on our own, and no idea how to even come close to the Neuian plane of existence, we were trapped. For now. And I wasn’t leaving Riley.
Krystin is coming. We just had to hold out until then.
“Bring in the witch,” Lady Azar called to someone in the distance.
Witch? Did she take more than just Rachel and me? Were Krystin or Shawn here?
I craned my neck around as far as I could, straining to see who was being brought into the chamber at Lady Azar’s request. Two guards flanked a single woman with long, dark brown hair, her head hanging between her arms. My gut twisted with recognition.
