Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
As I scrambled over the piles of broken bricks and crumbled concrete, I was almost thankful that Callum was currently lying unconscious.
He would have no way of knowing what atrocities had just been committed in his name.
No way of knowing that the sirens I could hear approaching were coming here—where we searched for his friends and family, hoping not to find them beneath the rubble.
Behind me, I could hear Logan trying desperately to muffle his sobs. Tairen’s gruff tones as she tried to convince him that all was well. Beside me, Kira clambered over the piles of debris, her bronze scales covered in ash and her ears pinned tight to her head.
If I was upset, she had to be terrified. This was her literal family. Her home. If Faris hadn’t escaped the blast…
We finally reached the kitchen door and stumbled through it to find no signs of life.
No Irene snarling at whoever had disrupted her routine or messed with her cookware.
No Seamus bemoaning the broken glassware or the shambles of his perfectly organized liquor collection.
So we kept going. Into the back hallway, where shafts of daylight now illuminated the shadows.
“Up or down?” I asked Kira.
Her head tilted. “Down. The basement offers the most protection, and Faris probably guessed the dragon might come hunting them.”
We had no choice but to hope, so we headed that way, and had almost reached the door to the basement stairs when it literally burst off its hinges, flying across the hall and hitting the wall so hard they both cracked.
The power was out, so there was no light from the basement itself, but the stairwell was partially illuminated by a malevolent green glow—so bright that I almost cringed backward even though I knew what I was seeing.
Faris Lansgrave emerged into the hallway with magic in his eyes and murder on his face. Considering that he was able to walk and had literally punched the door off its hinges, I decided he was probably not injured enough to matter.
The moment she saw him, Kira let out a cry of relief and bounded forward to butt her head against his chest over and over again.
“You’re okay.” Her voice was muffled and shaking. “I was so afraid you weren’t okay.”
And Faris?
His eyes closed. His chin dropped, and I could see him murmuring words of thankfulness and relief despite the draconic onslaught that rocked him back on his heels.
“I’m fine,” he grumbled at last. “You can stop trying to push me back down the stairs.”
Kira sniffed and sat back on her haunches, wincing a little as she folded her right wing.
Of course, that set Faris off again. “Are you hurt?” he growled menacingly. “Did that”—here he dissolved into a string of unflattering names that would have made me clap my hands over Ari’s tender ears—“dragon try to hurt you?”
“You know I’m tougher than that,” Kira scolded. “I chased him off with a warning not to mess with me again. Where’s everyone else? Did they make it to the basement in time?”
“We’re fine!” Seamus called up from somewhere behind Faris. “Irene is threatening to kill us all if her knives are ruined, but no one is bleeding!”
Relief, pure and clear, washed over me. They were okay. All of my people were okay.
But The Portal… This place that meant so much to all of us had been utterly destroyed. It hurt my heart, and I had only been here for a few months, so I knew it had to be devastating for everyone else who had made it a part of their lives for years.
And even worse—for me—was the realization that some unknown person had brought about all this destruction in the name of the man I loved.
Faris let out a sigh that was nearly a groan.
“I guess… it’s time to see what’s left.” With one last pat on Kira’s shoulder, he stepped past her and moved towards the kitchen, his stride measured and his jaw set, as if this were just another ordinary day.
Just a bit of a dustup with a rowdy customer.
I almost couldn’t bear to watch his face when he saw the damage.
But we followed him anyway, through the kitchen, into the main room of the bar that was no longer a bar at all, but open to the sky. Charred and dripping. Full of the shattered remains of the business he’d built when he first came here from the ruins of his home world.
And as he strode into the center of the floor, I could see utter devastation in the way his lips thinned and turned white beneath his beard. See the pain in the creases around his eyes. The folded arms and the clenched fingers.
But then a small body hit him out of nowhere, driving him back a step and forcing his arms wide.
“You’re okay.” Logan’s arms wrapped around Faris in a trembling hug—an overwhelming display of emotion from a teenager who rarely allowed himself the luxury. “I thought you were dead.”
“You thought that scaly imposter could take me out?” Faris rumbled, looking down at the boy’s head with an oddly soft expression. “I thought you knew me better than that.”
And then he hugged him back. Not a gentle, tentative tap on the shoulder, but a firm embrace. Both arms wrapped around Logan’s shoulders, pulling him close for a moment before setting him back on his feet.
“I’m fine,” he said gruffly. “Everyone is safe. Everything else we can fix.” He looked from the shattered front facade to the ruined floor, steely determination in the jut of his jaw and the set of his shoulders. This wasn’t going to stop him.
I hoped he was right. Hoped we could fix it. Hoped that The Portal could be made whole again, and that we would be able to explain our way out of this mess.
But from the looks of the human police officers already standing in the street outside… I wasn’t so sure that was going to be the case.
“Before we talk to them,” I murmured to Faris, “you should know that someone was trying to pin this attack on Callum.”
The look he shot me was filled with boiling fury. “How?”
“Large black dragon, combined with someone in the street shouting ‘Callum no!’ where they could be heard by fifty human witnesses with camera phones. I don’t know how they figured out that he’s here, but someone must have ratted us out.”
“And we’re sure…”
He’d had the same first thought as I had. What if the poison had eaten away Callum’s self-control? What if he was genuinely capable of this violence?
“I’m sure,” Kira broke in. “I tried using the Voice, and it barely touched him.”
Faris shot her a confused look. “I thought that worked on all shapeshifters.”
She shook her head grimly. “Not on this one.”
I had no idea what they were talking about, but I didn’t need any extra evidence.
“I’m sure, too,” I told Faris. “It wasn’t him. The Assemblage wasn’t damaged, so he didn’t shift there, and Ryker and Angelica would never have let him out of their sight.”
“Then who?”
I looked at him steadily. “Tairen says it was Morghaine.”
I thought he’d looked angry before, but that was only an appetizer to the main course. This Faris could have chewed through solid steel and spat out bullets. But he was no idiot, so it took him only a handful of seconds to reach the same conclusion I had.
“Masterson.”
I nodded. “It works to his advantage if we’re fighting, so yes, it was probably one of his people.” Also, there had been that woman shouting in the street. I knew her voice, but from where?
Whether we recognized her or not, the fact that they’d been able to show up and then disappear so quickly suggested that Blake’s base was far closer than we knew. Maybe I’d been right, and he’d been in Oklahoma this whole time.
If so, I needed to warn Kes and Shane to keep a closer eye out for anyone who might recognize her or the kids…
The kids.
Ethan.
I’d left him behind. Left him standing on the sidewalk. He could have just walked away. Disappeared into the crowd to become a ticking time bomb, waiting for his magic to overflow with potentially deadly consequences.
Even worse, I’d left him where he could be seen by one of Blake’s people.
What if Blake remembered him? What if he realized the almost limitless potential posed by Ethan’s ungovernable power?
A torrent of horrifying possibilities flooded my mind as I moved towards the ruins of the club’s front wall and scanned the gathering crowd outside.
I saw Tairen first, surrounded by gawkers both human and Idrian.
Not my first choice as a candidate for human-Idrian relations in a moment of high tension, but at least she hadn’t snapped yet.
I could see her holding herself stiffly apart, looking at the humans around her as if they might potentially be harboring a contagious disease.
And right next to her… was Ethan. Exactly where I’d left him. Watching the fountain of water coming from the broken fire hydrant, despite being surrounded by shouting people and the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.
Sooner or later, someone was going to try to talk to him. Ask him questions. And if he got scared…
But he didn’t look scared. He looked… fascinated. As I watched, his head tilted and his eyes closed, and I realized with a fresh jolt of alarm that he was preparing to use magic.
I darted towards him, tripped over the rubble, and fell to my knees with a cry. “Ethan, no!”
Whether he heard me or not, I would never know, because what happened next ripped all other questions from my mind.
The flow of water cut off without so much as a trickle.
The pavement that had cracked and buckled beneath the impact of Logan’s earth magic seemed to ripple like a liquid before settling back into place, each crack narrowing and smudging together until it disappeared entirely.
And when the surface was smooth and unbroken, the hydrant righted itself—as if I were watching a recording of its breaking at Logan’s hand, but in reverse.
When it was over, I almost could have believed I’d dreamed the entire thing. No trace of the damage remained, except for the streams of water still flowing into storm drains on both sides of the street.