“Salt!” A hunter next to him shouts and freezes.
The crowd goes still, all eyes on the first hunter who gapes at us, his jaw shaking in terror. The curse hits without a delay.
The hunter screams like he’s being torn apart. “Make it stop! Make it stop!”
He shakes and falls to the ground, rolling and writhing. His pain is an illusion—a mean curse. But that doesn’t make it easy on him.
“Nobody move,” Andreev shouts. “We need to get rid of the salt.”
“Make way!” Someone pushes through the crowd. It’s a firefighter with a hose under one arm.
I take the briefest of moments to freeze in awe. The hunters’ reach truly is substantial if they have infiltrated the fire department. The firefighter shouts for the hunters closest to the fallen man to step back. He opens the valve and sprays away the line of salt on the ground. Without a shred of remorse, he sprays the fallen hunter until the poor fellow is soaked to the bones.
The man’s screams finally stop.
“Is he okay?” I ask Zach, who nods.
“Smaller curses can be washed away with water.”
His words carry through the gang of hunters. For a moment, all falls still. Then the mob launches for the image of Awan behind the car, not knowing it’s a trick.
Hunters surround the space between the Volvo and another car. They’re ready to shoot, guns and crossbows aimed. It takes all of my self-control not to jump in, but a voice in my head warns, “Not yet.” And I know that tonight will get much worse. I’ll need to wear my hunter’s disguise as long as I can.
A purple charm flares up, but it can’t hold. When it flickers away, Charity’s face stares at us in fear, her black eyes wide.
Vaughn pushes past Zach, thankfully missing me again. “You said the charmer wasn’t in the circle. This is how they must have broken in the first time. She disguised herself as the hotel staff.” Then he scans the surrounding hunters. “What are you waiting for? Get her.”
The hunters descend upon Charity, and by the strangled wails that follow, they overpower her quickly. But she isn’t alone.
Vanessa gets pushed out from between the cars, her expression murderous and her hands restrained behind her back. Before she can hiss out a curse, Fiona steps up from the crowd and gags her, tying a piece of cloth behind Vanessa’s head.
Fiona takes a second look at the viper and frowns. “I need another cloth. Got a feeling she’ll try to curse us with those eyes.”
Someone hands her a second piece, which she ties over Vanessa’s eyes to blindfold her. Vanessa struggles as much as she can, but they tie her hands with a rope and push her, so she doesn’t stand a chance.
With a yelp, Charity sways on her feet, but she suffers a similar fate. The hunters gag her too, though they leave her without a blindfold. Her red-rimmed eyes find me, then look up. I follow her gaze to the first-floor balcony. Then, up and up, until I catch the figure scaling the building like a pro.
It’s Awan.
The girls bought him time.
I look down, afraid my gaze will betray his position, but I’m too late.
“What’s up there?” Someone shouts.
“Another one of them!” Andreev bellows. “The lion. Shoot!”
The army of hunters shifts into position, crossbows aiming up for the shot while I silently pray for Awan to take that last swing up to the roof. The arrows fire into the night sky, but with superhuman agility, he flings himself, somersaulting through the air and crashes into a window on the top floor, spilling inside. The arrows hit the balcony and nearby windows, but I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Is he bound into the circle?” Vaughn’s fingers dig into Zach’s shoulder. The accusatory tone only fuels his menacing demeanor. “Is he?”
“I don’t know,” Zach rasps.
For the first time, I sense a tension between them, which must have run under the radar before. It’s chilling.
Their eyes might be the same hypnotic green, but Zach’s betray a flinch of fear, whereas Vaughn is livid. My shoulders tense, my gaze remaining on Zach’s flushed cheeks and quickening breaths. I can relate to the wave of scorching anger he seems to be fighting.
Thankfully, Mrs. Hastings’ arrival disperses the tension. “Their cold one escaped. Fiona saw her whoosh out when the curse hit.”
“Send hunters after her,” Vaughn spits out the words.
Andreev signals a few of his crew, and they take off into a run. “Go get the banshee,” he says to Vaughn. “We won’t let the cold one get away this time.”
“I should think not.” Mrs. Hastings’ voice is venomous. “Not after what she did to that poor boy on New Year’s Eve.” Then she regards her husband. “I’ve got everything under control here. You go ahead.”
Vaughn nods at her, then bellows for the hunters to regroup and storm the hotel again. Charity gives me a pleading look, her mouth held open by the gag in a way that looks painful. I try to signal to her that I’ll help the others, but a whisper makes my attention snap back to Zach and his mother.
“Did you find it?” She places a hand on her son’s shoulder, speaking in a hushed tone.
“Got it right here,” Zach says. “Mason?”
I stall for a second, stewing in doubts, but as much as I see parallels between me and Zach, that information would always be safer with the legacies, rather than the hunters. Safer for my weird kind, anyway.
“I gave it to Awan,” I whisper.
Zach’s bright eyes darken with anger. I don’t think I’ve even read a dark emotion in his expression before. He’s the smooth talker, the negotiator, the spy. Now, he looks like an executioner. My executioner.
I duck just in time to avoid the punch I felt was coming.
“Stop it,” his mother hisses, but Zach is on me, grabbing the collar of my hoodie and using it to propel me crashing into the wall.
I curl my arms around my head to soften the impact, then peek up and move to avoid Zach’s kick. His sole scrapes the wall, and I see an opening. I kick a straight leg under his knee, making his leg jerk up. Once his balance is off, I push him, so he lands on the pavement.
“Stop it!” Mrs. Hastings says with authority that makes it clear why she’s a match for Vaughn.
Zach grunts and scrambles to his feet.
“Did you read it?” she asks.
Zach throws me a look of burning hatred, then nods. “We both read it. It’s a solid lead, but it didn’t specify the steps—”
“That’s good enough,” his mother cuts him off. “Can you reproduce the text in reasonable detail?”
Zach and I stare at her, bewildered.
“Can you?” she demands.
“Yes,” Zach says, then hurries to add, “But we need it back, don’t we?”
His mother purses her lips. “It may be safe enough with the circle.”
I open my mouth to ask the questions still forming in my mind, but Mrs. Hastings catches us both by the elbows and pushes us toward the door.
“Go, now.”
I hesitate, my eyes finding Charity and Vanessa, gagged and blindfolded, in Vanessa’s case. “What about them?”
“I’ll make sure they’re fine,” Mrs. Hastings says.
I can’t explain why, but I believe her. Zach and I lock eyes for a second, a silent peace treaty, though multiple questions are still bursting in my mind.
Zach’s first through the door, pushing it open, and I follow at his heels. The last of the hunters storm up the stairs while the front desk staff chats casually, as if they haven’t just seen an army barge inside their posh hotel. Jean must have compelled them to keep calm, no matter what they see.
We catch up and push past the last hunters, taking the stairs two at a time. The staircase grows more crowded the higher up we climb. Zach asks the hunters to make way, which I think they do only because he’s Vaughn’s son. I see more than a few sour expressions as we rush past them.
Vaughn has stopped in front of a wall, as quiet
settles over the hunters. Every time I’ve come up to the suite, I’ve taken the elevator which opens directly into the living room. But it wouldn’t fit more than six hunters, so Vaughn has adjusted the plan. He measures the wall with his eyes while I gape, finding it hard to believe he’s about to demolish it to get to Cami.
Then, a scream shakes the walls. There’s a fight on the other side. One Cami can’t win if the wall breaks.
“On my mark,” Vaughn whispers. “Four shots to make a frame. Garret will demolish the rest.” He nods at the firefighter who readies his ax. “Then, a nicker nut grenade. And silver bullets at the ready.”
He nods at those closest to him, two of whom are Andreev and Fiona. They aim at different points on the wall with weapons that look way too real. The shots ring through my ears, but I stall.
Not yet.
Garret, the firefighter, swings his ax into the wall, taking it apart in large pieces.
I elbow Zach in the ribs. It isn’t safe to talk, but after all we’ve been through and given his own strained relationship with his father, I’m hoping I can appeal to him somehow. That I can make him see this is bad.
Garret has only made a football-sized hole in the wall when the scream cracks the rest of it in a spiderweb pattern. Cami.
“Nicker nut at the ready!” Vaughn shouts.
A final silent plea crosses my expression before I turn away from Zach and grab the nicker nut grenade from the nearest hunter. I activate it and throw it into the gang of hunters behind me. The smoke it lets out causes a commotion, but I can’t see if it lasts.
The hunter I took the grenade from elbows me under the chin, then yells, “Traitor!”.
The metallic taste of blood slits across my tongue.
And the mob is on me. They kick and swear at me, until I collapse on the ground into a ball—my last defense against their assaults. But new kicks land against my back, and worse, my head. The sound of their yells turns to ringing in my ears, probably from the head trauma. I feel the blood ooze out from the corners of my mouth.
Cami’s next scream is so piercing it makes them all stop and turn. Through a gap between their legs, I watch the wall collapse, shredded by the sonic blast.
And despite my bruised body and shallow breathing, I can’t help but think, That’s my girl.
Chapter 33. Cami
MY THROAT TEARS WITH the scream that brings down the wall, creating an ugly, gaping hole in the luxury suite, but I don’t care. They had Mason. They were hurting him.
Now they’ll have to deal with me. They can join the two guards in the suite who are knocked out cold. Between my screaming and Seff’s attacks, they didn’t stand a chance.
Once the dust settles, my stomach swoops in panic. I heard their shouts and their swearing, but I’m still surprised by the hunters’ numbers. The corridor is packed. So much so that I don’t spot Mason at first glance.
I take an instinctive step back, but the hunters are trained to be quick. Weapons reload and take aim at us. Awan’s protector leaps into the air, drawing all eyes to his shimmering body. Arrows fire at him but bounce off his glimmering translucent body as if it were made of steel.
Seff growls, in position for attack, but unlike the protector, he can get hurt. My banshee’s sixth sense tells me the weapons aimed at us are almost exclusively silver-tipped or dipped in wolfsbane.
“Don’t,” I say to the wolf, but he only growls in response.
The commotion the bronze cat has caused among the hunters doesn’t last long. As unpredictable and fast as the protector’s moves are, a few hunters peel themselves away from the melee. They sprint toward us, shouting, “Find the lion boy.”
I stiffen in terror, so the breath I take for a scream is shallow and strangled. I target it as best I can at the hunters dashing our way, but a few sneak past my sonic blasts.
“Go!” I shout at Seff. “Help Awan!”
Seff growls at me for a moment, his electric-blue eyes narrowing, but he knows as well as I do that the second they hurt Awan, he’d have to take in the protector to heal. And that would free the angry army of hunters.
I focus on the next few hunters coming for me and send them flying back with an ear-splitting scream. It’s hard to tell how long I could keep this up. My throat is dry and raw from screaming already. And if they throw nicker nut at me, I’m done for.
That stray thought might have been a premonition. From the melee of hunters, still mauled by the protector, two grenades fly at me. I take in a sharp breath and wail to produce the sound wave, which I split into two streams.
I take control of one stream in each hand and sweep up the grenades before they’ve hit the floor, then fling them to the side. The sound wave shatters the living room window and sends the grenades through it.
But there’s hardly time to catch my breath. The protector freezes, his beefy tail pointing up into the air. The hunters get to their feet and take a defensive stance in case he jumps on them again, but he doesn’t move.
My first thought is that something has happened to Awan. But if that were the case, the protector would return to him. Besides, Seff is more than capable of protecting Awan from the few hunters who slipped past my sonic blasts. They’d be too afraid of getting the wolf’s poisonous bite to do much damage.
But when the hunters disperse, some of them entering the living room through the wall I tore down, I finally see the reason the protector watches them, frozen. Vaughn stands in the middle of the group, a nasty grin on his face. He prods Mason, bloodied and bruised, while another hunter ties Mason’s hands behind his back.
I suck in a breath. Vaughn holds a silver blade to Mason’s neck. It may be made for wolves, but it could kill a human just as well.
“I see I have your attention now, banshee,” Vaughn says.
My stomach roils, but I look at Mom’s murderer straight in the eye. I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how sick the sight of him makes me.
“You can’t win.” Vaughn pulls Mason’s head back once the other hunter has finished binding Mason’s hands together. “I have your charmer and your viper. Both gagged and restrained. You may have wasted our nicker nut grenades, but you can’t scream forever. We’ve got the numbers to take you in, as well as the wolf and the lion. But I don’t even think we’d need our numbers’ advantage.”
He presses the silver blade against Mason’s neck. One more millimeter in and it will draw blood.
My senses strain. I want to know if Seff and Awan are all right, if they’re hiding and waiting for an opportunity to attack. And if Jean made it out. She needs to have made it out. Please, Jean, run like the wind.
“You see,” Vaughn says. “I’ve discovered your weakness, banshee.” He cackles in a way that makes cold dread seep into my very core. “This boy has placed the hunters in enough danger with his betrayal. Perhaps it’s time to end it? Surrender or he dies.”
The sight of him threatening Mason’s life chokes me. I can’t submit to the man who murdered Mom. She didn’t give up, not until the last breath. So I can’t either. I’ll hate myself if I do.
But the blade shines, ready to dig into Mason’s throat. He’s put his neck on the line for me one time too many. Even though we were born to be enemies, he trusted me when I assured him I wouldn’t bind the circle. And when I betrayed that trust, no matter how angry he was, he never turned on me. He fought for me even today, even as I made a complete mess of everything.
I see it in his eyes. Despite it all, he still loves me. And I love him.
My heart is about to burst at the realization.
I can’t lose him. Not now. Not ever.
I’ll fight for him with everything I’ve got.
“I’m here,” Jean’s whisper carries like a soft breeze, only audible to me. I don’t dare glance at the living room window—the direction it came from.
“If you think...” I drag out to buy time, “That you have the upper hand, I must correct you. You see, after the Claiming, after I saw wha
t you did to my mother, I was never going to make the mistake she made that night. You’re right. Strength is in numbers. So I decided to get some numbers myself.”
Vaughn studies me with tense green eyes but doesn’t move.
“Tell me...” I focus on Mason, willing him to read my expression, to know he has to fight back at the right moment, somehow. “How fast can your hunters run?”
Mason’s warm eyes blaze with anger and determination. He hits Vaughn with fists tied at his back and uses the momentary distraction to swing his head back and smack Vaughn’s nose.
Jean jumps through the window, zapping to his aid. She swooshes between the hunters, landing stray punches, before ripping the ropes off Mason’s hands.
Jester is second through the window and somehow manages to wink at me on his way to cause mayhem. He pushes through a row of hunters, leaving pained screams and fallen soldiers in his wake.
But a grenade whistles through the air and lands at my feet. It emits a puff of purple smoke at intervals.
“Wrong grenade,” I call out at the hunters.
I hear their screams further down the corridor. Jester’s cold ones must be attacking from the stairs. But Vaughn steps into the suite, which quickly fills with vervain smoke. Jean and Jester rush for me, but they step back as soon as they near the purple fumes.
“Much better,” Vaughn says. “It’s just us now.”
He loads an arrow into his crossbow. A second too late I realize it’s copper, not gold, that glistens on the arrow’s tip. The arrow flies past me and lands true. I whirl around and gasp.
It sticks out of Awan’s chest. Scarlet, sticky blood drenches his shirt in a circle around the wound. The bronze cat takes two giant leaps and jumps back into him, but even so, Awan falls to his knees, then crumples to the floor.
“Awan!” Mason screams and runs into the vervain-gassed room.
In the corridor, the cold ones continue to fight the hunters, preventing more of them from coming to Vaughn’s aid.
Mason pulls out the arrow from Awan’s chest with a sickening sound, then applies pressure to the wound. “Come on. You can heal from this, right?”
Suspension (Elmwick Academy Book 2) Page 23
