38. Raegan
“Dane!” I scream again, charging forward as the portal swallows him and Charles, then fades.
“Reid!” Whirling around, the others are already surrounding me when Reid appears where the portal was.
He gives me his hand, and once I’m sure the others are all attached too, I nod sharply that we’re ready.
The beach is empty when we arrive.
No. No. No!
“That was the portal we went through. It should have brought them right here,” Reid remarks, almost defensively.
Did he manage to break Dane’s hold on him and teleport them?
My heart gallops, nerves tingling with adrenaline and fear as I try to think of where he could be.
He’s not getting away with Dane.
Jackson cocks his head as if listening to something only he can hear.
Immediately, I lock on to him.
“I hear him.” His gaze swings upward to the top of the cliff.
“Up there.”
Reid sticks his hand out again.
“Everyone, hold on.”
The world tilts again, my tolerance of these jumps thinning after so many in one day, and then we’re in front of the beach house.
Dane chucks a handful of rocky sand at Charles—the knives gone from his face and Kell’s gift active where they’d been—but the sand and Dane bounce back as if something repelled them.
Reid vanishes again just as a woman struts from the beach house, and Dane stands.
Reid teleports next to Dane and grabs him.
“Not so fast,” the female sings.
Vibrant red nails sharpened to a point on slender fingers wrap the side of Reid’s neck and dig in.
Reid’s jaw tenses, the only indication of pain, before his eyes widen.
And then, nothing. His surprised expression doesn’t clear.
His body rigidly holds its position even as Dane struggles in his grip.
The woman laughs behind the back of her hand, then wraps her arm around Dane.
“Looks like I caught two for one.”
I drop to my knees, slapping my hand down, and snarl, “Hands off!” My gift shoots into the ground.
It cracks and splinters in a jagged line toward her.
She dodges to the side, then shrieks when it follows her.
Gunfire pops like fireworks behind us.
I whip my head to look over my shoulder.
Countless bullets slow their trajectory toward Aiden, Jack, and Kell.
Six…eight—no, ten goons are spread out behind us as if they’d been waiting, their guns aimed at the guys.
Jackson tosses his hand at them, and the bullets fly back to the group.
Charles laughs. “I knew you wouldn’t be far behind. I’m glad you’ve joined us. We can end this little game of back and forth once and for all. ”
“Split them up! And don’t waste your bullets on those two!” one of the goons orders, jabbing a finger at Jack and Kellan.
The GE president looks to the woman with sharp nails.
“Bring Dane and my son inside until this business is finished.”
Kellan lets out a roar, running to the other side in seconds and distracting them long enough that he barrels into Dane, grabbing him, and then jumping onto the collapsed cliff.
He works his way down the rockslide, adding distance between us until we can get Reid back.
“After them!” the agent who spoke up last time demands.
Four of the goons race to follow, but Aiden and Jackson stop two of them.
Charles takes a call, turning sideways to focus on it even as fighting breaks out.
The nail lady and another agent grab Reid, dragging him toward the beach house.
“Jack! Get Reid.” Aiden slashes his arm in a diagonal, and his whip sword catches in a viscous substance.
“Go after the other two,” the guy fighting Aiden tells the rest, and they run toward the rockslide.
“Hey!” I shout, pressing both hands to the sand and releasing my gift at them.
One of them jumps in front of the others and stomps a boot to the ground.
The earth caves in a perfect circle, taking my gift with it.
They’re after Kellan and Dane before I can send another attack.
Dane!
I shove back to my feet and leap over the hole.
“Raegan!”
I hear Aiden calling for me, but I can’t let them get away to go after Dane.
Seeing the guy who’d disrupted my gift the last time, I run and jump at him.
He’ll ruin any chance I have at getting the others from a distance, so he’s the first to go.
He dodges to the side, but I’m used to chasing Kellan around a training room and pivoting as soon as I land to try again.
The agent stamps his boot again.
The ground quakes, then breaks inward to form another hole.
Right where I’m about to land.
I fall through the gap, and my chest and head hit the rocky terrain.
Pain rings in my ears as I gasp for breath.
I claw at the rough sand, my fingers sliding and offering me nothing to help me pull myself out of this pit.
Screams fill the air, and I jerk my head up, wincing at the resounding throb when I do it.
Aiden’s fighting the others back in front of me.
I use the time he’s given me to army crawl my way out with an exhausting heave of energy.
Aiden slashes across the group once more, then spins to me.
He brushes hair from my temple, inspecting something there with lips turned down.
“Don’t leave my side again.”
“I’m fine. We can’t let them get Dane.”
He picks a clump of—is it wax?
—off his sword and tosses it.
“You can take the three on the left, and I’ll get the three on the right. Let’s push them in the other direction to add some distance. But if they try to go around us to get down there, don’t chase after them without me. We’ll go together.”
Nodding, I fill my body with my gift.
“Got it.” I take off to the three I’ve been tasked with, using my gift in the ground to chase and herd them away from the sunken cliff as Aiden instructed.
I keep my attention on the guy who can deflect my ground-based attacks, jumping over or dodging his pits and sending a new burst of my gift at them, forcing him to run as well when he can’t keep up.
He turns down the headland, the long and narrow stretch of land that cuts into the sea.
Is he trying to corner himself?
The goon stamps his foot, then jumps into his own pit.
What the—
I’m kicked forward, and I stumble toward the pit as someone screams behind me.
My balance and the ocean breeze fuck with me, not helping in the least as I drop to my knees at the edge, my upper half still falling.
I grab the edge of the hole, digging my nails into the unforgiving earth and gritting my teeth.
Whoever was behind me is still screaming.
That’s what they get for touching me while my gift is active.
The dirt disintegrates a little beneath my hands.
Fuck. Focus.
I use my grip to push myself back, throwing my weight in the other direction until I fall away from it.
Too fucking close.
The same guy is clutching his foot, his boot already gone.
My heart’s pounding a mile a minute as I catch my breath from almost falling into his pit.
But he’s in reach. I grab his arm and light him up with my gift, finishing the kill in seconds.
A gunshot fires. It’s so loud, so close, that I think I go deaf from its echo in my ears.
I look up and find Aiden standing in front of me, blocking my view of where the gunfire came from .
“Aiden, what—”
Another shot rings in my ears.
Aiden’s body jerks.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Four.
He falls.
I dive to catch him, my arm slipping beneath him at the last second before he hits the ground.
His eyes are closed.
No.
I shake him. “Aiden. Aiden. ” My chest constricts tight enough to hurt.
To make breathing sharp and cutting.
No, no, no!
This isn’t real.
This isn’t happening.
He was just here. Ordering me around.
Pulling my hand free, I stare at the crimson color staining it.
My world narrows to that vibrant, glistening shade.
“I promise, we’ll be old and gray one day.”
He can’t be gone that fast. He wouldn’t give up.
He wouldn’t lose.
“I’ve never seen anything, anyone, and felt even a sliver of what I feel when I look at you, Raegan.”
I reach for his face with a shaking hand, spreading his blood on his cheek as I try to tell myself he’s only been knocked unconscious.
He isn’t gone .
“I’ll give you whatever you want, whatever you need, if it means you’ll stay.”
“Aiden. Wake up. I…I need your help.” My voice cracks, and tears swim in my vision, distorting his face until all I see is red from the blood soaking his shirt.
I angrily blink them away, pushing them free to track down my face.
Anything, so long as I can see the moment his eyes finally open.
“Get up!”
“No matter what happens, the five of us will prevail. I swear this to you, Raegan, on Gordon’s corpse.”
“You swore we’d all make it through this! You swore it!”
I smack his chest. Shove him.
I don’t care if it hurts him if it means it’ll wake him up.
“Because for as long as we’ve known one another, I’ve wanted you. I’ve loved you.”
The world spins around me, pressure weighing on my chest the longer he doesn’t move.
The more blood stains his shirt.
“You are my everything.”
“Please!” I beg, tears choking me as I grip his shirt with all of my strength, refusing to let him go.
“I love you, Aiden. I need you. The Guild needs you. We all need you so much. So, please... wake up.” I sob into his chest, and the smell of copper rather than cinnamon fills my lungs.
A scuffing noise snaps my head up.
Charles smiles. “I think I’ve had my fill of your pain. It was exceptional.”
There’s a gun in his hand.
“You. You did this?!” I demand, my grief twisting to something dark and ugly .
“Come, now. Don’t look at me like that. Casualties are inevitable in war. You killed my ally, and I’ve killed yours. It’s fair, don’t you think?” The bastard pauses as if I might actually respond to that, then continues when I don’t, “In any case, you shouldn’t let your emotions get the better of you. We’re still in the middle of a fight. Here.”
Aiden’s ripped from my arms.
I gasp, and Charles flicks his wrist just as quickly.
Aiden is thrown past the cliff, out to sea so far that he’s barely a black speck before Charles releases him to the ocean.
“Now you can focus again. Let’s end this, shall we?”
My mind blanks.
Checks out.
Even if there’d still been a chance…
If I’d had any inkling of hope before…
My blood boils, seething through my veins as I release a scream of violence and pain.
Of death and destruction.
My gift surges through me, lighting my veins in fire until there’s nothing left but it and the wrath that feeds it.
I launch myself at him, throwing my body into him and knocking us both down as I scream and rage and lose myself.
I let my gift explode through me.
To use my body as a vessel as it unleashes itself unchecked.
I want to reduce him to ash.
To nothing.
It feels like lava’s flowing through me, filling me up with scorching heat, but I don’t feel pain from it.
It’s nothing compared to the agony in my chest .
The headland is dust when Charles’s body hits it, my gift skating over his burnt scales and to the ground beneath him.
We fall to the sea, but I don’t care about any of it.
Charles is laughing, his arms wide as he doesn’t even try to stop me.
The ground rushes toward us, and we crash into it, but still, my gift burns and disintegrates.
The water’s not there, held back by some invisible force as the ground craters underneath with us at its epicenter.
I throw everything I have at him.
My gift.
My soul.
My fury.
My screams.
My tears.
All of it.
I’ve passed my limit, but none of that matters.
Aiden’s dead.
“Is this all you have?” Charles shouts.
“It’s a beautiful display, but not enough to beat me, I’m afraid.” He grabs my wrists.
“I’m going to take Dane now and kill the rest of your friends. You should thank me for a poetic ending. I’ll let you die in the same watery grave as your lover.”
No.
No. Beat him! I have to win!
He palms my face. “Sleep.”
My gift dies, and I hear the sound of rushing water just before darkness claims me.