Jade
Black flames surround us, the air’s angry roar flooding my brain as the world tilts and spins. Then Logan and I are sucked into the vortex where time and space don’t exist, a hollow pop comes from everywhere and nowhere all at once, and then—
I’m standing in the Obsidian Caves. The music’s pulsing, and the floating flames are flickering. My friends are laughing and drinking, blissfully unaware that monsters are going to pour out of the darkness at any minute and tear them apart.
“We’re fifteen minutes back.” Logan’s hand finds mine and squeezes hard, even though his fingers are trembling.
Sweat beads his temples, there’s a gray tinge to his skin, and the hollows under his eyes are deeper than they were before the jump.
“I’m going to start the evacuation and get everyone to the exits before the hellhounds emerge.
If we clear the caves fast enough and attack with fire and steel on open ground, we’ll have a fighting chance. ”
“Okay.” I nod, trying to steady my breathing. “What do you need me to do?”
“Get the first-years out. Sam, Elizabeth, Francis, and the others who died near the back of the cave.”
“On it.” I’m already scanning the space, static prickling across my palms.
“Hellhounds!” Logan screams across the cave. “Everyone to the main exit!”
In seconds, people are screaming and running for the exits.
Dozens of red eyes flare in the tunnels, glowing like scattered embers, as if they’re answering Logan’s call.
The first creature bursts from the darkness, and I shove through the crowd, searching for familiar faces.
“Sam!” I spot him near the drink table, frozen with shock, and I grab his arm hard enough to yank him back into focus. “Move! Now!”
He doesn’t question me as I drag him with me.
Elizabeth and Francis are near the edge of the crowd. Francis has his hand on her shoulder in an attempt to guide her to safety—an attempt that I know will result in them ending up in the back of the caves getting slaughtered.
I reach them in seconds.
“This way! Stay with me!”
Fire erupts around us, hellhounds pouring from the tunnels, but we’re ahead of them. We’re actually ahead of them.
A hellhound lunges from the left. Logan’s fire hits it, driving it back. He’s everywhere at once, throwing flames and shouting orders, directing the panicked crowd to the exits.
“Keep moving!” I shove Sam forward when he tries to look back. “Don’t stop!”
We’re almost to the main tunnel. Moonlight glows ahead, fresh air glides across my face, and Sam and Elizabeth and Francis are in front of me, still alive—
“Help!”
Garrett’s on the ground twenty feet back, his ankle twisted, a hellhound stalking toward him with bared teeth.
I shove Sam toward the tunnel. “Get them out!”
“Jade—”
“Go!”
I run back, electricity building in my palms. I can do this with small, contained bolts, like I used in the caves the first time around. I can be subtle enough that no one will notice in the chaos, or that few enough people will notice that Logan can compel them to forget.
The hellhound lunges at Garrett. I throw a bolt of electricity, precise and controlled, and it catches the creature in the chest.
It goes down convulsing.
I haul Garrett up, draping his arm over my shoulder. I don’t even like Garrett, but he was in my original group of six that fought in the Hydra trial, and I’m not letting him die on my watch. “We have to move!”
“My ankle—”
“I don’t care. Move!”
We hobble to the exit, but we’re too slow. More hellhounds are closing in, and I can’t carry Garrett and fight at the same time.
Fire erupts around us, and Logan emerges from it, clearing a path.
“Go!” He takes Garrett’s other arm. “I’ve got him!”
We stumble to the tunnel, and I’m throwing small bolts of electricity at anything with red eyes that gets too close. I keep them contained and precise, nothing that would give me away.
Finally, we burst from the cave mouth into the night air. People are scattered across the hillside, more of them than last time, but the hellhounds followed us again.
“Form up!” Logan shouts. “Everyone together! Fire barriers, now!”
Everyone scrambles to obey, fire erupting in defensive walls.
It might actually work. We might be able to hold them off with fire, without me having to—
“Nina!” Vera screams from my right.
I spin just as a hellhound barrels through a fire barrier like it’s nothing.
And then, just like that, Nina Aldridge goes down.
I throw a bolt of electricity, but I’m too late. She’s already gone, her body chomped nearly in two, blood pooling around her as her dark eyes stare at nothing.
No. Not Nina. I was starting to see her as a friend. Now she’s gone, and she’ll never finish whatever she was working on in that notebook or figure out who she wanted to be instead of the cold-hearted information broker her parents were forcing her to become.
Vera releases a war cry, vaults herself forward, and slams her dagger into a hellhound’s head, driving the blade between the creature’s eyes as she’s flying through the air.
The hellhound collapses next to the pieces of Nina’s body.
“Hold the lines!” Logan calls out, desperate now. “Don’t let them through!”
But they’re breaking through everywhere. People are falling and dying, and the hellhounds keep coming—
A scream cuts through the chaos from forty feet to my right.
“Everyone get behind me!” Deidre’s on the hillside, her hands raised, her fire gathering around a cluster of people retreating. “I’ll create a barrier! I’ve studied advanced defensive formations!”
A hellhound leaps, clearing her barrier in a single bound.
Its jaws close around her throat.
“Deidre!” Lauren screams across the hillside, shoving against the flow of people, fighting toward her sister’s body.
“Lauren, no! She’s already—”
A hellhound cuts me off. I kill it with a bolt of electricity, but there’s another behind it. By the time I look up, Lauren’s down, a hellhound standing over her shredded body.
Logan appears beside me. Blood’s dripping from a cut on his bicep, and his hands are shaking between throws, but his fire hits clean when he lets it fly.
“The fire isn’t enough,” he says, way too calm for someone who’s standing in the middle of a giant slaughter.
I’m throwing a contained bolt at a hellhound closing in on Tyler Brennan when a scream cuts through the air.
Alessandra Sterling’s pressed against the cliff face, her expression twisted with horror as three hellhounds circle her.
“Alessandra!” Callie screams, desperate and breaking.
I run to her, throwing electricity as I go. One hellhound down. Two.
The third one lunges.
I throw everything I have, but I’m too far away, and the angle is wrong.
Alessandra falls.
Callie’s scream is the worst sound I’ve ever heard.
Hellhounds keep coming. Fire barriers are failing. People are dying everywhere, and my small, precise bolts aren’t nearly enough.
A hellhound takes down Deacon Park. Another kills Margot as she’s trying to protect a group of first-years.
Avery’s surrounded, her flames flickering weakly. Vera’s bleeding from a gash on her side, barely holding off two creatures at once.
The evacuation bought us time, but it didn’t change anything. People are still dying. It’s just different people, in different places, at different moments.
I grab Logan’s arm. “I have to—”
“No.” His face is gray with exhaustion, sweat coating his hair, but his tone is still fierce. “You’re not pulling lightning from the sky. We’ll find another way.”
“There is no other way!” I gesture at the chaos around us. “Everyone’s dying, and I can stop it, and I’m not going to stand here and watch when I can save them.”
“If you call lightning from the sky in front of all these people, the Council will—”
“I don’t care about the Council! We didn’t come back to watch more people die!”
I plant my feet on the ground and raise my hands to the churning sky, the clouds rumbling in response to my grief and rage.
They’ve been waiting for me. They know what I need, and I’m ready to take it.
The first bolt slams into my palms, I thrust my hands toward the hellhounds surrounding Sam, Elizabeth, and Francis, and the lightning explodes from my fingertips.
Three bolts. Three piles of ash. Three of my friends saved.
Catch. Kill.
Another bolt crashes down. I redirect it to the creatures closing in on Garrett.
Catch. Kill.
The rhythm takes over. Lightning strikes my hands and channels through my body, exploding out to every red eye I can see.
Catch. Kill. Catch. Kill. Catch. Kill.
The last hellhound falls.
I lower my shaking hands, smoke rising from my clothes and hair.
The survivors stare at me. Their expressions haven’t changed, still caught between awe and fear, still carrying the horrible weight of witnessing the impossible.
Sam, Elizabeth, and Francis are all alive.
But Nina’s dead. Lauren’s dead. Deidre’s dead. Alessandra’s dead. A dozen others whose faces I’ll never forget, whose names I might never know—they’re all dead.
The deaths are different, but the exposure is the same. The failure is the same.
“I’m sorry,” I say, scraped thin.
“We’re going back again.” Logan’s trembling hand closes around mine, his palm sweaty, his eyes hollow. Electricity hums under my skin from the lightning, and when it jumps between our palms, his grip tightens. “We’ll divide their attention, split into smaller groups, and head for different exits.”
He pulls me against his chest, and his fire builds around us, shaking between pulses.
“Hold on,” he murmurs, and silver crackles across my skin, black flames surround us, and we’re pulled back into the vortex.