Everlost (The Night Watchmen Series Book 3) (39 page)

ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE.

Bael enters the room with Clara and Edgar behind him, and the moment it registers just who’s with me, magic starts flying like meteors falling from the sky. I absorb the energy from the magic flowing all around and use it to blast them all backward, giving us enough leeway to make it out the door.

“Weldon, do you think you can find the doorway to the Underground from here?” I ask as we all jet down the hall, trying to put as much distance between Bael and us as possible. Jaxen hands me a bag stuffed with weapons, knowing there’s no time to beg me to go back. Not now.

“Yeah. Follow me,” Weldon says, taking the lead.

We take lefts and rights and run into a handful of demons who are taken out with fluxes. Bael’s angered yells of frustration echo down the halls, following us, and I almost imagine them forming into actual beings that will hunt us down.

“We’re close,” Weldon says as we come up to the end of another long, white hallway. He stops in front of a door and turns. “There are a dozen demons on the other side. They guard the door that leads to the Underground.”

“We can take them,” Gavin says, unblinking.

“But through that door, shadow hounds protect the small doorway left open by Mourdyn and Bael’s deal. It’s an invitation-only thing… just like our plane,” Weldon says.

“Can we get in?” Gavin asks, searching Weldon’s gaze.

“It won’t be easy, but yeah… I think we can.”

“Then let’s go,” I say, ready for whatever lies ahead. I drop my bag, pack on as many weapons as I can fit on my body, and then stand, ready.

Jaxen’s hand stops mine. “We can’t do this.”

I look up at him. I don’t have to say anything. He knows that we can’t go back. Knows that trying to keep me safe is impossible. This is what I was meant to do. This is who I am, and I watch as understanding drops like a thousand-pound weight on his heart.

He lets go of me, the emotions in his face drying up like an ocean. He’s shutting down. Building up his walls and shutting his emotions off. I wish I could stop him. Wish I had the determination I did once before to keep him from destroying himself, but I can’t focus on anything but this mission.

I can’t let anything come in between it this time. Not if I want to succeed.

Weldon pushes the door open and we rush in, fluxes raised, aiming for the sparkling stigmas hidden amongst layers and layers of tattooed skin. Demons evaporate into ash, one after the other, as we make our way through the room easily.

Almost too easily.

When the room is cleared, we turn and look at each other. Doubt and confusion is written in everyone’s gaze.

“Something feels off,” Jaxen says, turning to everyone.

“Keep moving,” I say, heading for the metal door across from me. I grab my last two fluxes and reach for the door just as clapping sounds behind us.

I don’t move at first. Just close my eyes, feeling every inch of my body fill with leaded hate. But it’s the silence after the realization that Bael is behind me that scares me the most. No one is moving. No one is acting.

Something isn’t right.

I slowly turn and feel the world shift off its axis the moment I do, because standing in front of me, arms tied behind their backs, are my mom and dad. My eyes rush over them, searching every minute detail. Her watery, bluish-gray eyes… they aren’t as bright as they once were. They’re hollow, outlined in deep purple circles. Her cinnamon hair that once glowed like honey when the sun hit the silken strands just right, are now ratted and matted to the sides of her sunken-in, ashen cheeks. This person is not the mother I knew. She’s a warrior, shown the horrors of battle.

His once sandy-blond hair is now a mixture of browns and reds. Blood, coating and matting it down. One of his eyes is swollen shut, covered in plum bruises that I fear have stained his skin permanently. His square jaw doesn’t hold the strength it once did before, and it’s taking every ounce of courage that I have to keep from turning away. To keep from curling up into a ball and crying.

“If any one of you so much as thinks about trying something, they both die, got it?” Bael says, his smirk eating up his entire face.

“Faye!” my mom says as she tries to reach out for me.

“Can it!” Clara says as she strikes my mother hard across the face.

Hate blurs my vision.

I take a step forward, but Bael’s finger is up in the air as he moves to stand directly behind my dad. “Ah. Ah. Ahhh,” he clicks through his teeth. “Don’t push me.”

He won’t kill them. He can’t. They’re all he has over me. He won’t. I won’t let him.

“I’ve tried being diplomatic with you, Everlasting,” he says, sounding almost like a parent scolding a child. “But it seems you want to do things the hard way.”

Clara looks almost cheerful, almost like she’s floating on a cloud that can’t be punctured. She doesn’t have to say anything. It’s in her eyes. Her smile.

She won.

Both of my parents are staring at me with strength in their eyes. Layers of blood, fresh and old, stain their skin. They’re remarkably thinner. Painfully pale. But they’re here, in the flesh, and I can’t look away from them. I don’t want to. Ever again.

“Again, I’m surprised by your logic,” Bael continues, his gaze searing my face. “I can’t fathom how you could possibly think you could get around my turf without consequence.”

“Blind determination,” Clara answers for him. Smugly.

Bael quirks his head to the side. “You know, I feel as if you don’t take me seriously, and I don’t think I like how that feels.”

“You have feelings?” Weldon asks.

Bael’s eyes snap in Weldon’s direction, but his words are aimed at me. “Enough games.”

With a snap of his fingers, we’re surrounded, once again, by demons. Rings of demon fire circle around our bodies like cages. With a shove, we’re pushed forward, following Bael’s hard, hurried steps. I keep my eyes pinned on my parents’ backs, not wanting them to leave my sight.

“Faye, they’re going to make you break the Unholy Seal,”
Jaxen says to my mind.

“I know.”

“You have no choice.”

“I know.”

“No one will blame you,”
Jezi cuts in.

“Even if they did, I don’t care. I can’t lose them. Not again.”

“When you have the Dagger of Retribution, use it, Faye,”
Weldon adds.
“Just like last time, there will be commotion when the machine breaks. We can use that to our advantage. Go for Bael.”

“Okay,”
I say, etching his words into my brain.

“I’ll make sure your parents are safe,”
Jaxen says assuredly, reclaiming the demons that have haunted him from his past mistakes.

“In here,” Bael says as he pushes a door open.

Sure enough, there’s the Unholy Seal stationed across the room, along with the seven leaders of the Darkyn Coven. Thomas is standing in front, hands crossed in front of him. He’s the only Witch with his hood pushed back.

“We meet again,” he says with a snarl.

“Call the Dagger of Retribution to you,” Bael says quickly.

I close my eyes and summon the Dagger to manifest in my hands. The weight of it seems so light compared to the destruction it’s about to cause to life as we know it.

The others are moved in behind me, watching me. I hear my parents struggling. Hear Jaxen’s quiet resolve that I’m sure is forewarning the others of what’s to come.

“Well, get on with it!” Clara says from behind me. Thirst crowds her words.

The Darkyn Leaders part just enough to let me through to the machine, but not enough to give me space to breathe. Their magic is overpowering, pulsing against my ears like a soundless electromagnetic wave I want to tap into. But how can I, when they have everyone I love in this room held up? I could try to level the place, but what if something goes wrong and someone pays for my mistake?

I can’t be rash in my decisions.

I count the steps to the machine, focusing on breathing to keep from draining everyone I hate in this room. The machine is exactly like the Holy Seal. I swallow thickly, wishing I could shuck off my jacket, and then slide the blade through the allotted hole and twist. After pulling the levers, the machine stutters to a stop. I count the seconds in between the silence, waiting for the commotion to begin so I can make my move.

But it never comes.

“That’s it?” Bael says.

“We’ve spelled the area to keep its structure. After the catastrophe at the church, we knew what we’d be up against,” Thomas says with a gloating smile.

I meet eyes with Jaxen. Feel my blood leaving my body. His eyes are two spheres of panic that lodge themselves in my throat.

“Oh well. If the show won’t come to us, then we must bring the show,” Bael says. “Everlasting, please come forward.”

My feet are two cinder blocks that won’t budge.

“Please, do hurry. I have other matters to attend to, and I’d like to get this over with as quickly as possible.”

“Get what over with?” I ask hesitantly.

“My word is my bond and, when I make a deal, I intend for the other to keep it,” he says as if I should have already known that. “You didn’t respect that, therefore, a price must be paid.”

“I haven’t broken your deal,” I say carefully, blankly.

“On the contrary, you have. My way. In return for their safety, you were to do things my way, and my way wasn’t spelling the camera and crashing our deal with a handful of your friends. Something has to be done about it. You’re on my territory now and, down here, when someone breaks their word, a price is paid.”

My heart hammers in my ears. My pulse beats in my fingertips. “I’ll go with you. I won’t try anything again.”

He closes his eyes. Shakes his head. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“What do you want?” I ask, scared.

“For you to choose.”

“Choose?”

A smile starts at the corner of his mouth, small at first, and then widens as he looks down at my parents. “Yes. Choose who lives and who dies.”

I THOUGHT I KNEW HORROR on a personal level.

I was wrong.

Clara grabs my mom by the arms and drags her up to her feet. Edgar does the same with my dad.

I’m gagging on fear. Choking on resentment. A million scenarios play out in my head, and not a single one offers a solution. Offers a comfort to help us out of this mess.

“Look at it this way,” Bael says as my parents struggle against being held. “I’m bargaining with you because I like you. I could kill them both.”

I feel Jaxen tense. Anticipate his next move before maybe even he does, and I hold my hand up, stopping him. Stopping any of them.

“I said I’ll go with you,” I say desperately. “I’ve realized how right you are. Just please… don’t make me do this.”

I’m looking at my mom. The same woman who slept on the floor next to me every single time I was sick. Who kissed away my aches and pains, and I know that I can’t lose her. Not again. And at my dad, who never… not even once, believed that I would be less than I am. Who slayed the imaginary monsters in my closet night after night.

And I feel the world crumbling, chunk by chunk, breaking off into irredeemable pieces.

“I… can’t. I won’t,” I choke out, seeing the world through a blurry haze. I can’t blink fast enough to clear the ever-present tears that won’t seem to go away. That keeps me from really seeing my parents.

“This isn’t up for debate,” Clara says curtly. “Your pretty face and pathetic pleas aren’t going to get you out of it this time.”

“Please,” I say, knowing they don’t understand that simple word, but trying anyway.

“The clock is ticking, Everlasting,” Bael says grimly. “Make your choice, or I’ll kill them both.” He taps his imaginary watch on his wrist.

The weight of the world seems to suspend in the air between us. It’s crushing. Suffocating.

And I can’t catch the seconds slipping past me quick enough.

“Faye,” my mother says softly. “Faye, look at me.”

I’m trying to, but these stupid tears won’t stop.

“Ten. Nine. Eight.” It’s Bael, showing me he knows how to count again.

“Faye, I love you. I always will,” my mother says in a rushed, shaky tone.

“Mary,” my father says, fear snaking through his words.

This isn’t happening. It can’t.

“Six. Five. Four.”

“Faye, you’ve always been a Hunter at heart. Be brave. Finish this for me.” Her words are as empty and as deep as a dried-up well. A well I want to throw myself into. Anything to not have to face this. Not have to make this choice. This impossible choice.

But life doesn’t come with a pause button.

“MARY! NO!” my father shouts out as time seems to suspend, allowing every worst nightmare I’ve ever had to crawl out of the closet in my mind.

Bael pulls out the gun that will end all that I’ve worked to save. Points it at my father’s head.

The hair on my arms rises as magic floods the room.

At the same time, my mother turns, chanting a spell strong enough to suspend time, and lunges against my father, knocking him out of the way as the gun goes off.

I can’t hear past my own screams.

Can’t think past my own fears as blood splatters all over me. All over the room.

Darkness clouds my vision as I hurl. Someone lifts me up by the arms. Drags me in some direction, heading somewhere I can’t see, because all I see is the life slipping from my mother’s eyes.

And the blood. So much of it.

“Keep moving,” I hear a voice say. A voice that shouldn’t be here. “Kiddo? You have to snap out of it. We have to move.”

I blink and realize I’m running, being dragged by Jaxen’s iron grip on my arm. My dad is on the other side of me, casting quick glances in my direction every chance he can get.

The moment we connect eyes, a whole swarm of emotions fill my throat, stifling my ability to breathe.

“You have to shut it off, honey. Please. Just for now. Just until we get somewhere safe,” my dad says with a strange distance that doesn’t belong in his gaze.

I nod, running off fumes, and switch the emotions off.

“Where are we going?” I ask, trying to get a head count. Gavin and Cassie are behind us. Weldon and Jezi driving the front.

“Back to base. Mary gave us just enough time to slip into a shadow, but we can’t risk going into the Underground. Not with the injuries,” Weldon says. “If it wasn’t for Mary…”

I nearly choke, trip, stumble over his words.

For Mary.

My mother.

Who is now dead, left on the ground to rot in the Underground.

“We have to go back for her,” I say as my emotions flicker back on. They won’t stay in a neat little box.

“We can’t,” Jaxen says sorrowfully. I can hear in his voice that he wants to too. He wants to hug away the pain. Reverse time so it never happened. But he also wants to finish what we started, and the only way we can do that is if we keep moving forward.

And leave her behind.

I feel him enter my mind. Feel him help me shut my own emotions back off, almost like a light caress over my heart as we slip out of the fiery darkness of the shadow Weldon moved us through.

But what’s on the other side is nothing like we left it.

“Shit,” Weldon says from the front.

The vomit I had been holding back makes its way up my throat and out of my mouth. Jaxen pulls the hair from my face, rubbing my back as I try to purge all the awful left inside me, but no matter how hard I gag, the sinking feeling won’t go away. The heat that keeps rushing over my body like waves won’t disappear. The chills that have settled deep into my bones won’t warm up.

Because I’m empty on the inside, with nothing left to give.

“They were just… just here,” I hear Cassie say through tearstained words.

Bodies lay everywhere. Some burnt. Other plugged with bullet holes. And Jaxen’s home… it’s half-burnt to the ground. Gavin resumes the role of leader and moves through the wreckage, flipping bodies over, taking count of everyone we lost in Bael’s wake. Cassie stands still with Jezi’s arm over her shoulder, both silently weeping.

I don’t move. Barely even breathe.

I feel my dad looking at me. Feel Jaxen looking at me. And I don’t acknowledge either, because all I see is every mistake I ever made that led up to this moment. That led up to this catastrophe. Bael leveled the place. Took away the last place where we all felt safe.

And I actually thought I could take him.

“Jaxen!” Gavin cries from somewhere near the back porch.

Jaxen takes off running, careful not to step on any of the Rebellion members and wolves left behind. Weldon is right on his tail. The rest of us follow suit, and it takes what little strength I have left to keep from looking down. To keep from breaking down.

A hand reaches out toward Gavin. At first, I can’t make out who it is. The skin is burnt away… the face barely recognizable.

“Can you hear me?” Gavin says, squatting down by him. He looks up at Cassie. “Heal him! Now!”

Cassie squats down next to Gavin, holding her hands out as magic pours from her palms. But seconds tick by and nothing happens. “I… I can’t, Gav. He needs blood.”

Sterling.

Gavin doesn’t waste time. He pulls out his last remaining flux and drags it along his palm. Presses it to Sterling’s lips. Life pours into Sterling as he greedily drinks from Gavin’s hand. Inch by inch, the burnt skin disappears, revealing the general we once knew, until he’s completely healed.

He lets go of Gavin’s hand and sits all the way up. Plunges both hands through his hair as he whispers something to himself under his breath.

“Sir?” Gavin says.

“We were ambushed. By Elites and Darkyns. Those that remained with Clara, even after the falling out, showed up.” He looks up, tears in his eyes, and says, “We were nowhere near ready.”

“Are there any survivors?” Cassie asks, barely able to get the words out.

Sterling looks at her. “We retreated to the weapons room underground. I went back for my wife, which is when I was caught in the fire. I don’t know anything after that.”

Jaxen takes off running for the shed, with the rest of us following suit. He’s already inside, punching in the code to open the hidden door in the ground when we enter behind him. Artificial lights overwhelm the tiny shed as Jaxen descends into the underground bunker, taking the steps two at a time. I don’t know how I move from one second to the next, maybe because that’s what we’re trained to do. Keep moving forward, even when every part of you wants to break down, but I realize I’m standing in the middle of what’s left of our Rebellion.

Which isn’t much.

Seamus sits at the table in front of us, across from Mack. Evangeline is next to him, holding Chrissa close to her. My eyes lift, gaining speed with counting. Katie, Chett, Lukah, Damien, Harper, Garret but no Joanna, Toby, Bianca, and a few other faces that have only recently been around.

That’s it.

I feel like I’m missing someone.

I hear Katie’s aching sobs.

Jonathon.

It seems I’m not the only one who lost a parent tonight.

I weave around everyone, not hearing the questions and sobs filling the space. All I hear is my best friend. All I want is my best friend.

We both fall into each other’s arms, down on our knees, holding each other as if we only just found each other.

“I can’t—I can’t,”

“I know,” I say, rubbing the back of her hair.

“They came out of nowhere. They burnt everything. The magic… it was so dark. So overwhelming. We couldn’t fight back.”

“I’m so sorry, Kat.”

“And I ran, Faye. My dad said go, and I listened. I shouldn’t have. I should have made him come with me.” I hear the panic clawing up her throat, threatening to take over, and I pull back.

“My mom died. They tried to make me choose, and she chose for me.”

Even as I say it, I almost still can’t believe it. Don’t want to believe it.

Her eyes go wide. Brim with tears overflowing.

I feel my dad behind me without having to look. He kneels down and pulls us both into a hug and, for a moment, I don’t feel like we’re anywhere but back at home. Like none of this every happened. But that moment comes and goes, and it’s my mother’s loving eyes I see when I close mine. It’s her words and her movements and every magical moment that ever happened with her that flashes past me like a movie I never want to stop watching.

And I feel my heart crack in two. Feel the hole inside me widen, waiting for the rest of me to fall into it.

“We should stay here tonight,” Mack says from somewhere behind us. “We all need… time.”

I look up over my dad’s shoulder, really seeing him for the first time since we entered the bunker. He looks like he’s aged thirty years.

Seamus is still at the head of the table, staring off into the distance. His left hand seems to be reaching out for something. Sterling stands behind him.

“We will take the night, and then head out in the morning,” Mack continues blindly.

“Where will we go?” Jezi asks for us all.

“The Veil is down, General,” Gavin says. “The whole world is up for grabs. You know Bael and the rest of the Underground scum won’t waste a second of it.”

“I do. But I also know that our mission isn’t finished, and we’re still Watchmen, changed or not. We will avenge those who lost their lives tonight. And we will put a stop to Clara and Bael, once and for all. The Veil is down, which means the Underground is just as open to us as this world is to them. We know how to demolish the Exanimator now.”

He looks at me.

“I’m ready,” I say, feeling a fire growing in my belly. Thinking of every face that I’ll never see again.

“Good. You’re going to have to be. So… let’s all get some rest, and tomorrow we start fresh with the plans. Do we have cots? Blankets?”

Cassie and Jezi, and the other witches in the room, make quick work of manifesting places for everyone to sleep. My dad loosens his grip on us, and I sit back on my heels, trying to catch my breath.