by Jessica Gunn
I looked up at Ben. My body shook harder as I met his wild, cold glare. “Ben, please.”
His jaw set hard, sliding into an everlasting look of disgust. “I knew you were bad news. For this team and for the Fire Circle as a whole. You’re a demon, a monster, just like the rest of them.”
Ben will never believe you. He’d never see past this to the truth, to Kinder’s ultimate plan: destroying the Fire Circle and all of its Hunters by killing it all from the inside out. Her plan was to save Alzan from her daughter on her own and to use me as a pawn to take out the Fire Circle in the meantime. She’d played us all and gotten her ultimate revenge. Now, she was probably laughing the entire way to Alzan.
And I would be killed or imprisoned for her revenge. For everything she’d forced me to do when all I’d ever wanted was to escape from this. All of this.
I forced one leg beneath me, then the other. Ben watched as I stood but didn’t move to attack. He was waiting for something. Not hesitating like he usually did but… waiting.
There was nothing left to say. If I didn’t leave now, give some space for things to settle down and for me to prepare any defense I might have, he’d kill me right here. Right now. For hurting Rachel. For nearly killing my entire team and the Leader of the Fire Circle. For everything.
Ben seethed, the curtain of red drawn down over his eyes. Toro toro. Nothing would stop him now, not even a patrol of Ether Head Circle Hunters.
I was a dead woman.
So, I just shook my head and said, “Teleportante.” It was the only magik, the only escape, I had left.
Chapter 28
BEN
Fog. Everything around me, inside of me, everything that made me me, was foggy. Confused. Blurred. As if the entire world had just been flipped upside down. I couldn’t breathe—my lungs refused to function. And the pain inching its way up my leg didn’t promise anything happy, either.
“Ben!”
Rachel’s keening broke through the blur, a startling clarity in a world that’d darkened. I spun, my vision clearing, as my feet carried me toward her without any conscious thought.
“Ben!” she cried again as I made my way to her. She’d been trapped by a fallen bookcase, her legs pinned beneath it. She had both hands in the air, holding it up with water to keep the rest of it from falling on a barely conscious Jaffrin. His shirt had soaked through with dark red blood. Smoke rose around them as small fires continued to burn throughout the room.
“Ben, please.”
I hurried to her side and helped her push the bookshelf upright once more. “Can you feel your legs?”
She nodded, tears streaming down her face. She tried to speak, but only a hiccup came out. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close. “You’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”
Rachel shook her head and pushed me away. “Shawn. Nate. The others.” She looked beneath her at Jaffrin.
Footsteps sounded in the room. I looked up as Avery hurried inside. He must have been the one to stop Krystin. “You need to call this in. I’ll help what wounded I can downstairs.”
“You’re the leader of the flagship team,” I said.
“Just call,” Avery snapped, then ran back into the hallway. His team must not have been in the fight, and now they were all helping the survivors.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
I reached into my pocket to call the Ether Head Circle, but my phone wasn’t there. I stood, frantically looking for anyone’s phone. Jaffrin’s sat on top of his desk. I rushed for it and dialed the Ether Head Circle for help. I looked across the room to Jaffrin as I told their Command everything, but every word I spoke saw him getting that much closer to death. There wasn’t time for healers.
“Just get here as fast as possible, you bastards. People are dead and dying.”
I hung up the desktop phone with a loud slam and rushed back to Rachel’s side. “You need to teleportante him and you to the hospital. Right into the alleyway outside. Go to the emergency room.”
“B-But Shawn. N-Nate.” Rachel’s shocked stare jumped from me to the hallway where Shawn had fought with Krystin, and to the hole leading that way where Nate now lay sprawled across debris. “I can’t leave you with them.”
I shook my head. “I’ll be right behind you. Go. Jaffrin’s about to bleed out.” I laid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I’ve got this, Rachel. Go.”
She nodded once, then disappeared with Jaffrin deeper into the city.
I forced myself onto shaky feet and stumbled over to where Nate lay unconscious. His torso was so bloody that I couldn’t tell where the original wound had come from or how… until I saw the slab of plywood frame peeking out from the area just above his left hip.
“Shit,” I hissed, reaching for his neck to find a pulse. There had to still be a pulse. I wouldn’t lose two members of my team tonight. I couldn’t. My fingers searched and searched until finally, a soft, steady rhythm pulsed beneath them. “Stay alive, buddy. I need to check on Shawn.”
Actually, I was scared to move Nate from the plywood sticking out of him. Would that make the wound worse?
A sharp groan emanated from the hallway—from Shawn. I looked up and watched him try to roll over, but halfway through the motion, he slid back to the ground and groaned again.
I climbed over Nate and through the hole in the wall. “Shawn?”
He made an unintelligible sound in reply.
“I’m coming. Hold on.”
Electrical wiring, nails, and other debris were in the way, and making my way over them proved harder than it should have. Pain spliced up my leg with each step, and it was only once I’d gotten into the hallway through the hole in the wall that I realized I must have broken something.
Still, I pushed onward to Shawn’s side and collapsed beside him. I put a hand on his shoulder and Shawn rolled, using me for help. When at last he lay face up, I almost wished he hadn’t.
“Oh, god. Are you okay, man?”
Shawn squeezed his eyes shut and stared at the ceiling, unmoving. His now crooked nose was dripping blood.
“Shawn?” I shook his shoulder. “Hey, stay with me. You were just here.” But I, of all people, knew how quickly one could shift in and out of the abyss of unconsciousness. “Shawn?”
“Everything… hurts…”
I nodded and glanced up at the ceiling. Krystin had thrown him up into it just to let him fall. There was no way he’d gotten out of that without broken bones. “We need to get you out of here and to a hospital. Nate too. He’s unconscious and in a bad way. Can you walk with me over to him?”
Shawn shook his head. “No… fucking… way.”
Fuck. I looked back to Nate’s limp body. If I moved him without having a plan to get him to help, he’d probably die. But if I tried to carry Shawn back into the office, I’d hurt him even more than he already was. Shawn might survive it. Nate wouldn’t.
I stood and bent down, grabbing hold of Shawn. “This is gonna hurt, man. I’m sorry.” And then I lifted him over my shoulders in a fireman carry.
Shawn shouted in pain, but it stopped abruptly as if he’d passed out. My leg screamed with every step back into Jaffrin’s office. The bones in my knee felt as though they’d been knocked loose, jiggling around in ways they shouldn’t be. I ignored it, swallowing down every inch of pain and any other emotions. I was alive. Alive. Which was more than I could say for everyone else inside of Headquarters right now.
So many people had died today.
Too many.
When I finally reached Nate’s side, I dropped to my good knee and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Stay with me, you guys. Teleportante.”
Blood spurted out of Nate’s gut the moment the three of us landed in the alleyway next to the emergency entrance to the hospital. I dropped Shawn unceremoniously to the ground. He grunted, but I ignored him and pressed both of my hands down against Nate’s wound. Blood crept out between my unhelpful hands.
“Shit,”
I said. “Shit! Help! Anyone, someone! Please!”
I couldn’t leave Nate to get help. He’d bleed out faster than he already was. But Shawn needed help too. I looked over my shoulder at him. His eyes were closed, his face swelling like nobody’s business. Maybe it wasn’t just his nose, but his jaw or cheekbone or—I didn’t know. Krystin had fucked him up good.
“Help!” I screamed again, pressing harder down on Nate’s abdomen. “Shit.” With one hand, I pulled off my shirt as best I could and shoved it underneath my hands, hoping it’d help stop the flow of blood.
“Is everything okay?” someone shouted from the mouth of the alleyway.
My eyes flickered down at them. They looked normal enough. “Doctor! I need a doctor right now! My friends are dying!”
Dying.
They’d warned us, all of us, when we’d graduated from training that Hunters tended to die young. Not many made it to thirty. But I was twenty-four. Nate was only twenty-two. This was young, too young.
And every single part of it is my fault.
I pushed the thought from my mind and concentrated on keeping Nate’s blood from pouring out of his body—and failing miserably. Help arrived in under a minute as nurses and a doctor ran out of the emergency room entrance. They wheeled over two gurneys and fell to the ground at Nate’s side.
“What happened?” the doctor asked as nurses flocked in around her.
“He was impaled,” I said, my voice cracking on every word. “Please, help him. He’s my friend. My teammate.”
Oh, god. What if he died? What if they all died—him and Shawn and Jaffrin, just like the rest of the Hunters at Headquarters tonight? All because of Krystin and Kinder…
“Back up,” one of the nurses said as she placed a hand on my shoulder. “We need some space.” She winced and pulled back. “Full of static, are we?”
Only then did I feel the small sparks of lightning dancing around my fingertips. I tucked them into the front pockets of my jeans. “Guess so.”
The nurse followed me back a few steps and pulled out a pen light. “Follow the light, please.”
I pushed her hand away and rose to the balls of my feet to see Shawn and Nate over her. “I’m fine.”
“You’re in shock.”
“No fucking shit.”
Her face hardened. “Sir, I know you’ve been through something traumatic, but I need you to calm down and cooperate.”
Cooperate. Cooperate when half of the people I cared about in this world were nearly dead? “I’m sorry.”
Her brow knitted together. “Wait a minute.” She turned behind her and looked down at Nate as the doctors worked to get him onto a gurney. Another set of nurses and doctors were at Shawn’s side, fitting him in a neck brace. The nurse turned back to me. “Ben, right? Hallen?”
My eyes narrowed, jaw setting hard. “How the hell do you know my name?”
She looked behind her again at my teammates, then back up at me. “No, you probably don’t remember me, but… What happened? Did Fire Circle Headquarters get attacked?”
I stepped back from her and reignited lightning in my hands. “Who the fuck are you?”
She lifted her palms and calmly said, “My name is Beverly Rose. It’s been so long, but I’m the nurse that called you from the hospital, years ago, to let you know about your pregnant girlfriend’s car accident. Three or so years ago now, maybe?”
My eyes narrowed, fists clenching. “Excuse me?” How did an emergency room nurse know about the Fire Circle? How did this nurse even remember me when that was three years ago in a different city altogether?
Her eyes rounded. “I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I’m the one who called you. I was transferred to Boston a few months ago. I remember you because the baby had traces of magik in his system. I saw it when we ran blood work following her accident.”
Rage surged beneath the surface of my skin, barely contained. I reached up for her throat but stopped short of actually strangling her. Too much tonight. “Get to the damn point.” I didn’t know if I believed her. If it was even possible for me to believe her right now.
Beverly’s eyes watered and she began shaking her head slowly. “No. This is our fault. The attack on Fire Circle Headquarters. Your son being taken.”
“What?”
The doctors and nurses working on my teammates looked up, but she waved them off. “I’m a member of a demon faction working against Darkness, destroying them from within. I told our faction leaders about the Power being in your son and somewhere along the way I fear that other demons of Darkness got involved.”
My knees weakened, my legs like jelly, and I fell to the pavement. The broken bones in my leg shifted against one another, but I didn’t cry out. I had nothing more inside me to give. Krystin was gone. Headquarters had been torn asunder. And now this nurse was telling me she was the reason Riley had been taken years ago? How was it possible that nurse had ended up here, in Boston, miles away from me the entire time?
Because this war is coming to a head. And Boston is at the center of it all.
“Why now?” I asked. “After so many years?”
“I never knew where you went.” Beverly knelt before me. “Ben, I’m so sorry. Lady Azar has your son again.”
I stared past her, unable to focus on anything but Shawn and Nate being carried away on gurneys. “This wasn’t Lady Azar. This was a Fire Circle Hunter.”
Beverly’s mouth fell open and for a moment, I swear the streetlamp overhead flashed against her eyes, revealing contacts and a reddish color underneath them. A demonic burgundy color. “A Hunter caused all of this?”
“A powerful one,” I mumbled. “And Kinder.” I shouldn’t have told her that, but at this point, I wasn’t sure it mattered. Kinder had as many enemies inside Darkness as she did the Fire Circle. Who the fuck cared anymore?
All sound processed through cotton balls in my ears. Muffled. Grainy. Barely anything at all. Krystin had done this. All of it.
“Ben, I’m sorry,” Beverly said again.
“You don’t even know me.”
“But the Rebel Darkness Faction is the reason these things are happening,” she said, looking me in the eyes. Searching for understanding I didn’t have for her right now. “Our mistake is why Lady Azar knew about your son and the Power. And why she has him now. Why she’s going to… She’s going to do it and you’re going to need our help to stop it.”
My brow furrowed. “Do what?”
Beverly stared me right in the eyes, tears building, face splotchy. “We heard earlier today that Lady Azar has turned a boy with the Power into a demon to claim him for Shadow Crest. She’s going to enact her plan to get to Alzan this fall. During Autumn Fire.”
“No. You’re lying.”
She shook her head. “I wish I was, Ben.”
But this couldn’t be true. None of this could be real. All of this, from Kinder’s appearance to Krystin’s attack, it all had to be fake, some instrument of torture developed by Giyano and meant specifically for me.
This was my own personal sort of hell.
But when Beverly didn’t look away or move, my heart sank. The world fell out from under me. My vision spun. And my face and chest planted themselves into the pavement.
Riley was a demon. Krystin was gone.
And the world had been turned upside down.
Chapter 29
BEN
Three hours.
I waited three hours after waking up in a hospital room before they’d let me see Rachel. Before I recounted to her what that nurse had said. Beverly Rose.
Rachel shook her head. Her arm was in a sling held tight against her chest. “I barely remember that even happening.”
“It was right before finals,” I said, the memory growing clearer every time I thought about it. “I was studying with your brother when I get Beverly’s call. It was the first time I really realized Sandra and I were having Riley. Like, actually having a kid.”
Rachel�
�s blue eyes narrowed, then widened with fear. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t that also the first time you saw a demon stalking Sandra? Wasn’t he right outside her hospital room?”
My breath hitched. “Yes.”
Beverly was telling the truth.
The beeping of the machines monitoring Rachel’s vital signs was the only sound in the room.
Chapter 30
BEN
“This is the first time they’ve let me see you.”
I sat next to Jaffrin’s bed, almost the same way he’d visited me after that stupid warehouse fight in Salem three months ago. Only he was much more out of it.
His fingers slid over the morphine drip as he administered himself some more. I was sure they’d cut him off soon, but I didn’t blame him. The end of his left forearm had been wrapped in white bandages that Rachel couldn’t stop staring at from the other side of the room. Jaffrin paid her no mind, except for when we’d first come in and he’d asked what had happened to her shoulder.
“How are Nate and Shawn?” Jaffrin asked, his voice raspy. His face had paled considerably. Rachel had gotten him here just barely in time.
Rachel sobbed and turned away.
“Still out of it,” I said. “Both of them. They’ve got Nate in a medically-induced coma and Shawn’s just… out.” I rubbed my face with my hands. “I think Iris’s asanak screwed with his magik at a soul-level.”
Jaffrin’s eyes fell. “Not Iris. It was the stone.”
My brow furrowed. “What stone? The one he said Kinder broke?”
“Yes. It was tied to his destiny at Alzan. With it destroyed, I fear…” He blinked slowly and then shook his head. “I fear too many things.”
“Well, so do I,” I snapped.
This wasn’t fair. Jaffrin didn’t get to fall apart while I was left picking up the pieces. We’d all lost shit two days ago. Krystin was gone. My entire team was in the hospital. Headquarters had been ripped apart, dozens of Hunters killed or injured. They might as well have booked an entire wing of the hospital. Jaffrin didn’t get to just give up at a time like this. He was the Leader of the fucking Fire Circle, for God’s sake.
