by Jessica Gunn
“We’re only going to have one shot at this,” I said. “Maybe less.”
“Less?” Will asked.
I inclined my head at Veres. “If you borrowed telepathy from a guard, now that it’s gone from your system, the guard will have it back. If they hear us and our plan, we’re screwed.”
“Let’s not waste time, then,” Veres said. “This hallway is full of captured witches and magik-users stored for Autumn Fire. That much I was able to glean from the guards. We’ll have to leave this area if you intend to have hope of finding your target.”
“Well, if he’s anything like Veynix was, he’ll enjoy the chase at least,” I said, then entered the empty hallway.
The space seemed to go on forever. The flickering lights played with my mind, making me see flashes of Veynix. Shadows that moved, their gaping maws ready to swallow me whole. Even a darkness that swept like New England fog down the corridor. Things that couldn’t have realistically been there, but my mind fed me all the same. Probably thanks to the aura sickness pills that were now starting to wear off.
Veres kept her distance from Will and me, though she never strayed far, as we passed by door after door. They more than likely each led to another room like the one we’d been imprisoned in. Although if the sound was any indication, there were dozens of people behind each door, trapped for who knew how long.
There was nothing we could do for them. Not just now, but likely ever. Our small team might not be enough to do what we came here for, even with Veres on our side.
My heart constricted, a pang of worry squirming around in my chest. Where was Kian? How was he faring? And, most importantly, how were we going to find him once he was done being a distraction?
“Ava,” Will said, pulling me from my thoughts.
I tapped the syringe again, triple checking to make sure it was still there. “Right. Sorry.”
At the end of the hallway was another wooden door. I placed an ear against this one too, checking for the guards I knew had to be making rounds around his place, but heard none. I swung open the door, leaving Veres to face whatever might be on the other side.
Nothing.
We shared a concerned look, but at Will’s insistence, kept moving. Corridor after corridor we found nothing new. The same old wood paneling walls and doors with people crying out behind them greeted us at every turn. Everything was the same until one hallway led to a floor-to-ceiling window at the end of it. I crept along the corridor, signaling for Will and Veres to wait this one out. They listened.
Slowly, I approached the giant window and peered outside into the darkness. We were on a higher floor of a building, the courtyard of which lay down below this window, although any grass that had once been here had died long ago. A wide, packed dirt space filled the area. On one side were targets and thirty feet away stood a line of demons. At the same time, they each raised their right fist and shot off a wave of energy at the targets. The red-orange ether soared across, slamming into the wooden targets, sending pieces splintering.
No, these weren’t demons. They were the Ember witches Mason was trying to make into an army. But their magik was under control, unlike the witches locked up in quarantine at Fire Circle Headquarters. Their instructors, two demons with whips attached to their belts, watched as their captives continued their training.
On the other side of the courtyard were stocks covered in ether that snaked around the base and through the holes like a snake. Dark ether with a red tinge to it. I got the sinking suspicion that these stocks were a whole lot different than normal ones.
Transformations take place here. But not just the Ember witch soldier ones Mason was in charge of. All the demonic creations for Autumn Fire, too.
“I think we’re in a storage facility,” I said, loud enough for Will and Veres to hear. I turned back to them and padded down the hall. “This is where Jerrick and Talon keep their Autumn Fire stock.”
Will winced. “I really wish you wouldn’t refer to us and these people as ‘stock.’”
“It is what it is, Will.” Didn’t by any means make this right, but compartmentalizing was a Hunter’s greatest weapon. Otherwise, you’d get stuck in the horrific details of this war.
Something I knew far too well.
We turned around and started off down another hallway. The longer we explored, unnoticed by Talon guards, the more a sense of familiarity washed over me. Almost like I’d been here before, even though I hadn’t. I was pretty sure I would have remembered coming into Landshaft.
Wait a minute.
My stomach sank and my feet planted themselves into the floor. My limbs froze over with the realization.
As a result of my quick stop, Will smacked into me. “Ava. What the hell?”
“It’s Midnight,” I said.
He lifted an eyebrow. “No, pretty sure it’s like three in the morning by now.”
I shook my head. “No, Will. Midnight. The ring. The labyrinth beneath it. This place is laid out the same way, but…” Midnight didn’t have stores of captured witches and magik-users beneath it, not from what I’d seen when Kian and I had explored. “Crimson had the same layout but was more heavily populated. If the same is true for here, then if we head down a floor or two, we should come to an area where they’re holding Ember witches.”
A new idea started to form in my head. One that bloomed hope inside my chest. I allowed it to blossom for just a few moments.
“Maybe we don’t have to kill Mason at all,” I said, looking from Will to Veres. “If we can escape with all the Ember witches he has, if you can torch the place with Will’s power, Mason will have to start over.”
“Assuming he doesn’t have facilities like this across the country,” Will said.
“He doesn’t.” Not like this. The layout might be the same, but Midnight and Crimson’s facilities had been much smaller. “Besides, if we succeed, we’ll rescue a giant portion of Darkness’s Autumn Fire stock, too. They’ll be so furious at Mason and Jerrick for their plans interrupting the normal flow of things that they’ll likely not let them start over again. At the very least, it’ll buy the Hunter Circles some more time before needing to actually strike Landshaft.”
“This is insane,” Will said. “It was from day one of the plan.”
“Will—”
Veres nodded. “Your friend is right. Even if you could unlock all the doors, we’d be stopped before everyone escaped.”
I raised a finger. “Hear me out. There’s gotta be at least one person in each of those cells whose requirem wears off before everyone else’s. They can teleportante out as long as the ether shield comes down. We just need to find a way to do that, then get to Mason’s actual production site. Take those two things away from him, and it’s over.”
No fighting necessary, which I preferred.
“I’d focus on the Ember witches part of your plan if I were you,” Veres said. “They’re the biggest threat for war right now. Turn them to our side and there’s less of a problem for the immediate future—”
Footsteps echoed around the nearest corner. A guard!
I pushed Will into a doorway that would keep him mostly hidden. Veres fell into another one a few feet away. “I got this. Veres, be ready,” I whispered, my heart thumping in my ears.
As the guard dressed in Talon armor strolled around the corner, I tucked my hands behind my back and paced toward him, whistling. The guard stopped and held out an ether-stick pointed directly at me.
“Halt!” he commanded. “Who are…? You!”
“Me?” I asked, bringing a hand around front to point at my chest. “Me what? A girl can’t take a walk to stretch her legs?”
His face flushed red. In a swift motion—albeit expected—he lunged forward, the ether stick pointed directly at my ribcage. I dodged out of the way and came up with my elbow aiming at his jaw. The blow connected, but not without his free hand smashing into my side. Burning, searing pain swept over my abdomen like I’d been hit with fire. But when I looked down, only eth
er swirled in his palm.
An ether-shaper. Great.
“Veres!” I shouted. “Now would be a fantastic time!”
I didn’t wait to see if she heard me and cared to respond. Instead, I dropped out of the way of another swing of the guard’s ether stick and kicked out, sweeping his legs out from underneath him. He lost his grip on the ether stick in the process, sending it flying up into the air. I caught it and spun it face down, landing the blow to his chest. His body convulsed as ether flowed over and into him, like being electrocuted by magik.
Another guard rounded the corner at that very moment. I looked up, ready to strike out at him too.
“What’s going on—?”
Veres cut him off with a blast of Ember witch ether that finally added enough light to the hallway that I could see without squinting my eyes.
“We must keep moving,” Veres said. “As soon as someone finds these bodies—”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
And so we did, dropping down floor after floor as soon as we found stairs. Ever careful, we crept through corridor after corridor, searching for the same sort of room Kian and I had found beneath Crimson. Every time we ran into guards, Veres and I pulled the same stunt of me walking into danger and her backing me up. It was the only play we had.
Eventually, we found the set of metal doors I’d been looking for. The ones that undoubtedly led to where Mason was conducting the greatest portion of his experiments inside Landshaft.
Where his and Jerrick’s army was being built.
“It’s through there,” I said. “We’ll have to go in careful.”
“We’re already being careful,” Will said. “Short of not going in at all, that’s all we can—”
“All right,” I hissed. “Stay behind me, Will.”
We moved closer. When we were almost to the door, Veres shot out a hand and clamped an open palm to my chest.
“Wait,” she said, looking upward.
I followed her line of sight to the ceiling, where a set of cameras sat watching us and the hallway at large. Shit. I hadn’t even thought to look for those since the rest of Landshaft didn’t seem to have much technology.
“It’s too late,” I said, watching the camera watch us. “They already know we’re out.”
“Better make it worth it then,” Will said. He lifted up an ether stick he’d stolen off one of the knocked-out guards.
Veres didn’t move. She’d followed along thus far, swearing up and down that she’d help us to the end. But her face paled as we stood there wasting precious moments.
“Veres,” I said.
She blinked and shook out her shoulders. “Right—yes, we should go now.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You can still leave if you want, but I’d be lying if I said we didn’t need you right now”
Despite the vigor of fighting and the fast rate of my heartbeat, the requirem Jerrick had put on me only an hour or so ago still hadn’t worn off. From what I’d seen of the word-magik, I oughtn’t to have expected it to for some time. But that was fine. While magik was unbelievably helpful in a fight, I’d spent the first twenty years of my life without it.
Veres straightened, her loose clothes shifting, and shot Ember ether right past me at the metal doors.
I jumped out of the way—barely in time—as the doors burst open in the least subtle move I’d seen in a good long while. “Veres!”
She only grinned, a mischievous look of satisfaction on her face. “Let’s begin.”
Veres hurried on through the door, leaving Will and me to only gape at each other.
Will recovered first. “Can’t let her go in alone.”
We followed, locking the doors behind us for extra measure. Behind these metal doors was the same exact set-up at Crimson. There were immaculate white walls and a huge machine in the center with a window that revealed a churning mass of crimson liquid—blood, with tiny little embers of orange glowing inside. The Ember magik in the witches’ blood, making them what they were. Amplified by Veynix and Mason’s poison.
Turning them into weapons.
The only difference between this white-tile room and the one beneath Crimson was that instead of two ether-lined cages housing too many people, there were several. Each had witches with their faces and bodies pressed against the bars inside the shield, keeping them from being zapped by the energy.
“Jesus,” Will commented, taking his first look at the horror behind what had happened at Headquarters. We’d contained the witches before they’d become too volatile, but we’d never amassed quite this number. “Mason’s been too fucking busy.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Let’s get them out of here. Veres, see if you can destroy that machine. I think it’s what’s making the poison that turns magik-users into Ember witches.” Considering it appeared to be churning a large portion of Ember witch blood, I’d have said my guess was probably accurate.
In order to create an army to fight a race of beings we barely understood, Mason and Jerrick—all of Talon—were willing to eradicate another race. To cannibalize them to create even more Ember witches.
A system like that never worked out in the long run.
I hurried to one of the cages and pointed the ether stick at the shield around it. Sliding the setting up to max, I shoved the ether end into the shield. The shield crackled and dissolved. I wasn’t sure that would work, but since there was no guarantee every soldier would be an ether-shaper and could therefore act as a guard here, it made sense.
Watching me do it, Will ran to the next closest cage and did the same. People from all over the room began calling out, asking for their freedom first before the others. For help. For a way to end the nightmares.
I blocked them all out, focusing on rescuing everyone in this first cage before moving on to the next.
“Please,” said a woman pressed against the bars closest to me. “You have to hurry.”
“The ether shield is down,” I said. “If you have magik, you can teleportante home.”
She stared back at me with empty, confused eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on. None of us do.”
“You can’t mean…” I looked her over. Then the other people, too. With the ether shield down, they could all teleportante to safety. Requirem didn’t affect word-magiks.
None of these people were doing that.
The woman reached through the bars, the gap barely wide enough for her arms. Her fingers dug into my forearms. “What is happening?”
Veres shot a bolt of Ember energy that collided with the lock mechanism keeping the cage door shut. It burst apart, sending ether smoke rising around me. The woman let go of me and jumped backward, shocked by the magik. She wailed as others clambered over her, pressing over each other to escape.
On foot. Not by magik.
None of these prisoners were Hunters or witches. They were all innocent people. Civilians. The same magik-users the Rebel Darkness Faction nurse kept bringing to the Fire Circle. People like me who hadn’t known they’d had magik until a demon had attacked them.
My stomach dropped. The people pushed me out of the way as they flooded the room at large. Veres alternated between attempting to fire magik at the poison machine at the center of the room and opening the cages with her magik. But I stood there, dumbfounded, as the weight of it all sunk in. At the lengths at which Talon and Mason were going to forge this army to fight their crusade.
Of the impending war dancing giddily along the horizon.
That was when a new voice slithered in past the rest of the ruckus, louder than every other one in the room. “I see you’ve found part of my army.”
I spun on my heel, though I didn’t need to see the person to recognize him.
Mason stood in the doorway, flanked by an entourage of fully-armored Talon soldiers. He wore a grin that stretched across his face. “Shall we see what they can do?”
He lifted his left hand. His fingers were curled around a crystal of some
sort, although I was too far away to get a good look at it. It began to glow the same red-orange as a tainted Ember witch’s magik. So did the eyes of every Ember witch in the room. They all turned toward me, Will, and Veres.
And lunged.
Chapter 28
I raised my elbow and shoved it into the jaw of the first Ember witch within reach. Their head snapped backward, any further attacks from them thwarted for now. But more closed in around me, swinging wildly with their fists and their magik. Flashes of red-orange zipped across the room, preludes to ether attacks capable of burning the skin right off your body.
It became a dance, as fighting sometimes did. I twisted out of the way of one wave of Ember ether only to nearly come face-to-face with another. At the last second, I jerked my head out of the way. Ether singed the ends of my hair.
“Will!” I shouted as I swerved between waves of fire-like ether.
One of the witches, still controlled by Mason and that damn gemstone, planted themselves in front of me. He swung, his bulging bicep rippling with the force behind the attack. I grabbed his arm and twisted, throwing it above my head and then pulling back down around, holding his arm behind his back. Then I kicked behind his knees and he crumpled to the ground. A blow to the back of the head had him knocked out in seconds—and my fingers aching from it.
“Will, where are you?” I screamed.
“Right here,” he said. I spun, relief starting to bloom in my chest, but red-orange eyes greeted me, along with an evil grin that had no place on my best friend’s face.
“Will?”
He reached out and wrapped his fingers around my throat, squeezing tight. I gripped his fingers, trying to pry them away with my own. But dammit, when did Will get this strong?
The poison. It must be. In addition to drawing out his magik, it must have drawn out the demonic attributes that made Ember witches almost demonic—their dark magik and strength.
Air caught in my throat. Black dots danced on the edges of my vision.
“Please,” I croaked out, staring into my best friend’s eyes. Pleading with any part of him that might still be Will and not some deranged, mindless soldier for Mason and Jerrick.
