Jade
Five times I’ve watched these floating flames dance. Five times I’ve smelled sulfur mixed with cheap alcohol and a burned sleeve from a fire trick gone wrong. Five times I’ve stood in this same spot while the bass thrums through the floor and everyone has no idea they’re about to get slaughtered.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
No more resets. No more second chances. Whoever I save in the next few minutes, I keep. Whoever I lose, I lose forever.
The thought should terrify me, but it doesn’t. I’m too empty for terror. Four loops of watching people die in different ways has scraped me out until all that’s left is the mission.
Get them out of the caves as quickly as possible. Outside, I can end this. Outside, I have ended this.
“Hellhounds!” Logan screams through the cave. “Main exit! Everyone move!”
I’m shoving through the crowd before the screaming starts, to the drink table where Sam’s standing.
I grab his arm, and he drops his drink. “Stay behind me,” I tell him. “Don’t stop. Don’t help anyone.”
Glowing red eyes appear in the tunnels. That ancient smell rolls out ahead of them—sulfur, decay, and a bloodbath waiting to happen.
I don’t wait for the first creature to emerge. I’m already dragging Sam to the exit, my free hand crackling with electricity.
Elizabeth and Francis are where they always are, with him leading her to the back of the cave, where more hellhounds will eventually come through.
A hellhound bursts through on my left, and I throw a bolt without looking. Muscle memory from four loops of practice.
“This way!” I’m screaming at Elizabeth and Francis, but the chaos is too loud. Fire is erupting in bursts. People are trampling each other. Deacon goes down hard in front of me and I have to jump over him, dragging Sam with me.
“Jade, wait.” Sam’s trying to slow down, to look back.
“Don’t.” I yank him forward. “Keep moving.”
“But there are people—”
“There are always people. Move.”
We’re halfway to the exit when I hear it.
“Everyone get behind me! I’ll create a barrier! I’ve studied advanced defensive formations!”
Deidre stands on the platform near the center of the cave, clear and commanding. The angle is different this time, but the same scene plays out ahead of me, her dark ponytail swinging as her hands weave fire into elaborate patterns.
“Deidre, no!” Lauren screams, high and desperate. “You can’t hold that alone!”
She can’t. She never can. But she’s going to try anyway, because she’s Deidre Mitchell, and she has a five-year plan, and no understanding that some problems can’t be solved because you wrote a paper on the subject and got an A.
Her barrier expands, bright and fierce.
One of the hellhounds crouches low, but there are too many bodies between us, and even if I tried throwing a bolt, I’d probably hit someone innocent. That would break me in a way I don’t think even Logan’s time travel could fix.
The creature leaps. Deidre’s mouth opens in surprise. The hellhound’s jaws close.
I look away before her body hits the ground.
“Deidre!” Lauren’s scream tears through the cave, and she tries to run to the body, but she’s dragged back like she was in the first timeline by people trying to save her life.
I grab Sam’s arm tighter.
Keep moving. Don’t think about Deidre’s blood spreading across the obsidian floor. Don’t think about Lauren fighting to reach her sister’s body.
“Jade!” Sam screams, and then he’s torn out of my grip, and he’s not behind me anymore.
When I finally spot him through the crowd, he’s ten feet back, pressed against the cave wall, three hellhounds between us.
I throw a bolt at the nearest hellhound. But there’s more panic in the crowd this time, someone crashes into me, and my bolt misses… hitting Elizabeth instead.
Elizabeth crumples, and she’s on the ground, convulsing, smoke rising from her chest where my deadly blast of electricity hit her.
My brain short-circuits. Everything narrows to Elizabeth’s body on the floor as the crackling webs of electricity along her skin die out.
Francis drops beside her, screaming her name.
I can’t stop staring at her. Because I killed her. I was trying to save Sam, and I killed Elizabeth while doing it.
My hands are shaking, I want to throw up, and Francis is screaming, but I can’t do anything except stand here and watch the smoke rise from the body of a girl who was alive because of me and is now dead because of me too.
All my power, all my goddess-given lightning, and I murdered an innocent girl who was trying to survive.
A wet, tearing sound yanks me out of my thoughts.
I spin around, and Sam’s not against the wall anymore. He’s on the ground. One of the hellhounds is standing over him, muzzle buried in his chest, and there’s so much blood, too much blood, spreading across the floor in a dark mirror that reflects the floating flames above us.
He’s not moving. He’s not screaming. He’s just lying there, eyes open, staring at nothing.
No. This can’t be right. I’ve done this four times. I should know what I’m doing. I should know how to stop this.
How is everything going so horribly wrong?
The hellhound raises its head, Sam’s blood dripping from its teeth.
Electricity tears from my hands before I register raising them. The creature convulses and drops dead.
I stumble over to Sam’s body, my knees hitting the floor beside him. His warm brown eyes are open, but there’s nothing behind them anymore. The fear is gone. The confusion is gone. The open smile he always wore is gone.
Elizabeth and Sam are dead because of me. Elizabeth from my magic, and Sam from my hesitation. I acted and killed someone. I hesitated and let someone die. Either way, people end up dead, and I don’t know which is worse.
“Jade!” Logan screams, although it’s distant and muffled, like hearing someone shout through water. “We have to move!”
I can’t move. I can’t stop staring at Sam’s face.
A hellhound charges from my right.
A bolt leaves my hand, the creature drops, and I feel nothing. There’s no satisfaction, no relief. All that’s left is empty numbness spreading through my chest.
“Jade.” Logan’s hand closes on my arm, yanking me to my feet. “We have to go.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. But my eyes find Francis, hunched over Elizabeth’s body, just as he looks up at me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Go,” he says, his voice hollow. “Just go.”
I go.
The tunnel to the exit blurs into fire, blood, and electric bolts that I throw with precision at anything with red eyes. Logan clears the path ahead, but his fire is flickering out.
I don’t let myself think. Don’t let myself feel. Every bolt hits exactly where I intend it to, because I can’t afford another mistake.
Lauren’s near the tunnel mouth, fighting against the current of fleeing people, trying to go back to Deidre’s body.
I grab her arm before she can get past me. “Don’t.”
“My sister—”
“She’s gone,” I say, but it sounds distant and dead, like someone else’s voice coming out of my mouth. “But you’re not. Keep moving.”
Her face crumbles. She stops fighting.
We burst onto the hillside.
The night air hits my face, cold and clean, nothing like the copper and sulfur coating the back of my throat. The sky churns above us, dark clouds swirling with lightning flickering in their depths. It’s waiting for me. Ready.
I scan the chaos.
Nina’s near the cliff face, her hair flying as she throws fire at a hellhound backing her toward a twenty-foot drop.
Vera’s dagger is out as she faces down three hellhounds at once, because of course Vera Jackson would try to take down three at once.
Avery’s honey-blonde hair is tangled with ash, a hellhound closing in on her and Tyler while her fire sputters and dies.
Alessandra and Callie are back-to-back against a boulder, their fire barriers flickering.
Logan’s beside me, his face pale, his fire reduced to embers curling around his fists.
I ground myself on the hillside and raise my hands to the churning sky.
The first bolt slams into my palms.
Electricity surges through every vein, and underneath all that power, the last piece of the girl who hesitated cracks and breaks.
Now, there’s only the storm.
I thrust my hands toward Nina. Lightning arcs from my fingertips, and the hellhound backing her toward the cliff vaporizes into ash. She stumbles, catches herself, and stares at me with those dark, calculating eyes.
Vera’s still fighting those three hellhounds. I pull down lightning and split it three ways, each stream finding its target. They die simultaneously.
Another bolt crashes down. I catch it, redirect it, and kill the hellhound that’s seconds away from slashing Avery and Tyler to pieces.
Catch. Kill.
Catch. Kill.
Alessandra and Callie’s fire barrier fails as my lightning hits the hellhounds circling them. Callie pulls Alessandra against her, both of them staring at me like I crawled out of a nightmare.
Catch. Kill.
The rhythm takes over, primal and automatic, and my body becomes a conduit for the angry sky.
A pack of hellhounds breaks toward the tree line. Four streams of lightning leave my hands, and four piles of ash hit the ground.
Margot Ridgeway, cornered. Dead hellhound.
Rebecca Gibson, pressed against a rock. Dead hellhound.
Garrett, scrambling backward. Dead hellhound.
Lauren, on her knees, not even trying to fight. A hellhound stalks toward her, and I vaporize it before it can take another step. She doesn’t even flinch.
Catch. Kill. Catch. Kill. Catch. Kill.
The last hellhound falls.
My body’s vibrating. Smoke rises from my clothes, my hair, and the scorched earth around my feet. The smell of ozone fills my nose, and underneath it, my own burning skin.
I lower my hands.
Every single person on the hillside is staring at me.
Vera’s on her knees, her dagger forgotten.
Nina’s frozen mid-step, her eyes sharp as always.
Tears are cutting tracks through the ash on Lauren’s face.
Callie and Alessandra are wrapped around each other, prepared to stay together until the very end.
Avery’s honey-blonde hair wild, and she’s staring at me like I’m either her salvation or her doom.
There are over fifty survivors.
But Sam’s dead because I hesitated.
Elizabeth’s dead because I missed.
Deidre’s dead because some deaths can’t be stopped.
“Go,” Logan murmurs in my ear, low and urgent. “Get to the passages at Phoenix Hall. Now.”
I picture the storage closet in Phoenix Hall, fire rises around me, and the last thing I see before disappearing into the flames is dozens of faces, frozen in shock, staring at me like I shouldn’t exist.