Aaron #2
Josiah’s laughing. He takes a spell that splits his cheek to the bone and comes up off the floor still grinning, blood sheeting down his throat. “Keep ‘em coming,” he says, and throws himself at Eric, and Eric blasts him into the bookshelves, the wood splintering under his weight.
“I’m going to torture you so bad if you survive this,” Layla calls to him, sweet and threatening.
Josiah drags himself up out of the broken shelving, his fangs red. “Promise, Layla?” There’s real want in it. “You promise?”
“Aaron, please!” Mara is on the far side of my shield, clawing at the curve of blue-gold light with both hands, her tail lashing the air. “Aaron!”
Eric drives me back into the wall with a sheet of black fire, and I catch it on a barrier that nearly folds, the heat pushing through, my arms shaking under it.
He prowls toward me where I’ve gone down to one knee, my power flickering, and stops close enough that his stolen young face hangs over mine.
“You are so fucking weak,” he says. “Always have been.”
I’m breathing through blood, my magic guttering low, and he crouches down to my level.
“I bet you were still hoping. Still longing. Still thinking I’d come around and love you.
” He turns his head and finds his own reflection in the glass front of a bookcase, the smooth skin, the dark hair, and laughs at it, soft, in love with what he stole.
“I’ll never give up my beauty to love you,” he says. “You’re worthless.”
Something rises in me, and my hand shoots out and locks around his arm.
I touch his skin and my power latches on, and the dark magic comes pouring out of him into me, turning gold the instant it crosses over.
Eric jerks back. I hold on. I plant one foot, then the other, and push up off the floor, dragging him up with me, his arm clamped in my fist while my magic drinks him down.
“Worthless, huh?” My voice comes out level. “Let me show you how worthless I am.”
Eric’s head whips toward Henry. “Help me!”
Henry stays where he is, his hands clasped at the small of his back. “I told you. A father-son quarrel is not worth my time.”
“Time to send you back where you belong.” I pull harder, his power flooding into me faster than I can hold it.
Josiah’s head turns toward Henry, slow, his grin sharpening into something with edges. “I’ve been waiting to meet you face to face.” But his head snaps down instead, toward boots on the stairs, fast and heavy, the rack of weapons coming up with them. The police are almost on the landing.
Henry lifts a hand and says nothing. The bodies on the floor, the blood across the marble, the spray up the walls, all of it shudders at once and caves inward, every corpse and every stain collapsing into gray ash that hangs a breath in the air and then scatters to nothing.
The room is clean, as if the massacre had never happened.
Even the doors repair against the hinges, slamming shut.
“Another time,” Henry says. He opens a portal at his side, and I can’t see into it, the edges dark and oily and the middle just black, a hole punched in the air that shows nothing.
Behind me, Mara drops to her knees, her tail going limp against the floor, and when I look back she’s down, her amber eyes wide and wet on me.
Henry’s gaze passes over her and dismisses her.
“I shouldn’t bother with you. You’re as worthless as your son...
” His palm comes up and fires, and I catch it in my free hand without letting go of Eric.
The spell stops dead against my palm, and I feel my magic close on it and start tearing it apart, swallowing it the same way I’m swallowing my father.
Henry’s brow draws down. He watches my hand drink his power, and something crosses that still face that looks like surprise.
Josiah charges him. Henry’s hand snaps out. A wall of force tears across the room and slams into both of us.
It rips me off Eric and hurls me into the bookcases. Wood cracks against my back. Beside me, Josiah hits the wall hard enough to bring a shelf crashing down on top of him.
I shove the boards off and stagger to my feet. Henry has Eric. Magic coils around my father’s drained body and lifts him into the air, dragging him toward the black portal. Eric’s eyes are rolled back. His face hangs slack. Henry feeds him through.
His gaze comes to me last.
I’m already pulling my magic back together. It comes faster than it should—fuller, stronger—fed on everything I tore out of Eric. Power surges up my arms, ready to strike again.
Henry steps backward into the portal. The dark edges begin to fold shut.
I lunge and jam both hands into the closing seam. Cold bites into my palms. Dark magic spits against my skin. I dig my fingers in and pull, forcing it open inch by inch.
Josiah stops at my shoulder, grinning into the gap, ready to follow me through.
The double doors explode open behind us. Police flood the landing, their weapons raised, shouting.
I rip my hands back, and the portal collapses, snapping shut.
Henry and Eric are gone.
I tear my own portal open with a sweep of my arm, blue-gold splitting the wall. Josiah flashes to Layla, drops her shield, and hauls her up over his shoulder. She curses and pounds her fists into his back, kicking and snarling, but he just carries her toward the light and grins the whole way.
“Mara!” I drop her shield. “Come, baby. Come now, please!”
She breaks into a run toward me, and the humans open fire.
The cracks come fast and loud, muzzle flashes snapping bright off the marble and the high windows.
I throw my hand out and catch every round in the air, the bullets stopping dead in a line of blue-gold light and dropping to the floor while she runs straight through them and slams into my chest. We go through the portal together.
I snap it shut the instant we’re clear and land flat on my back, Mara sprawled on top of me, both of us heaving.
The sirens and the gunfire are just gone.
A pair of boots stops in front of my face.
I push up onto my elbows, Mara sliding into my lap, and look around at where we landed.
We’re back in the Market, in Wintermoon, the cool air carrying the burnt-ash smell off the stalls we torched the other night.
I tip my head back. Kade is standing over me with her hands on her hips and her blue eyes flat.
“What the fuck have you gotten yourself into?”