Chapter Six

AVA-MARIE

“Charlie, what do we do?”

My question failed to rouse a response. He wore a blank expression, even as Oberi nudged his side.

“Where the hell are we supposed to go?” Kallie cried. “Esther is going to break through our shield eventually!”

“They’ve got us pinned,” Marcus half-sobbed.

Charlie remained silent. He was completely helpless, which meant it was time for me to take action. We’d been cornered back in the Infernal Underground, and I’d go to hell before I allowed something like that to happen again.

“If you can get me to my car, I promise I can get us out of here,” I swore.

“Where is it?” Charlie asked. His voice was hoarse.

“Still parked in an alleyway at the front of the bank.” Even as I said it, my heart fell.

“That means we’ll have to fight our way through the barricade and hope the cops didn’t take the car,” Marcus moaned.

“It’s our only shot,” Charlie said. “Let’s move.”

The sirens were closing in all around me, intermingling with the voices in my head, which were starting to blare out warnings. Oberi ran out of the vault and back down the hallway, and my friends raced after him in a dead run.

“Kallie, take down the shield,” Charlie ordered. “We’ll release the hostages and blend in with the crowd as it leaves. I’ll disguise us with illusion magic so they don’t notice us slip out.”

Kallie nodded. Tingles crawled over my skin as I felt the shield lift. We hurried into the lobby, where the hostages had figured out the shield had dropped and were racing for the door.

I hardly had time to take a breath before Union reps stormed into the bank from all sides. Noxite darts and spells flew everywhere. I flung myself out of my chair and onto the floor as magic flew over my head. A second later, a battle orb slammed into my chair and blasted it to pieces.

Well, so much for that.

“Oberi, I need to be on your back,” I instructed. She instantly changed into a unicorn and knelt to the floor. I pulled myself onto her. The saddle pad formed beneath me, and I strapped my legs tightly to her sides.

Oberi raced me behind a corner while Charlie, Kallie and Marcus ducked behind a counter to take cover.

Hostages were hit with multiple noxite darts or pelted with spells. They immediately went down. Holes formed in bodies as supernaturals took magical blows that were meant for us. Chaos ignited the area. Union cops collided with the fleeing bank patrons, until the crowd formed a literal mob. This was an absolute shit show.

Our plan to get out had failed, because we hadn’t thought the Union members would kill civilians in order to get to us. Who were the real villains here?

“Why are they putting the hostages at risk?” Kallie asked.

“Esther must’ve lost her patience and ordered them to go in!” I yelled. “She doesn’t care who lives or dies, so long as they arrest us!”

“You’ll never take us alive!” Marcus screamed. He fired off six rounds, and I watched Union cops go down once his magical bullets hit.

There was so much noise, and everything was in mayhem. A lump lodged in my throat, and I clung to Oberi’s mane. “Charlie, I’m scared.”

“Don’t quit on me now, pidge.” Charlie poked around the corner and fired three shots before pressing his back to the counter. He went to shoot again, but a battle orb collided with his shoulder, and he gave a gasp. I felt the pain ricochet across our bond as blood spewed out of the wound. I saw that the orb had wrecked his shooting arm, to the point I could see muscle and bone poking through the tear in his clothes. He slid onto the floor as he struggled not to pass out.

I’d failed to use my pistol before this moment. I didn’t think I had the strength. But Charlie was hurt. Seeing him like that, in desperate pain and trapped in this goddamn bank, erased the part of me that was afraid.

Fuck my earlier reservations, my morals, whatever it was that held me back before. I’d use this pistol to take as many lives as I had to in order to keep Charlie safe, and I’d feel no guilt about it whatsoever afterward.

Taking a life for him, in whatever way I had to? Simple. Easy.

I reached into the lining of my jacket, where my pistol had been concealed, and drew it out. I urged Oberi forward, right into the line of fire, and raised my weapon to pull the trigger.

I couldn’t even see straight— I must’ve blacked out. All I could feel was the recoil of the pistol in my hand as it went off, and felt my Water magic rushing through the gun to create ice bullets. Union cops screamed in terror and went to take cover behind objects as my shots hit their target. Oberi helped me by launching fireballs from her horn, and as our hits connected, I realized something terrifying and invigorating.

I didn’t need to be trained. I was an excellent shot.

Even so— more Union cops kept flooding in, and they made a small army. We might be demigods, but being outnumbered had stopped us before.

“We need to clear a path, or we’re never getting out of here!” Kallie cried over the noise.

Charlie managed to stagger to his feet. Through a heavy breath, he gasped, “Light it up, pidge.”

I was more than happy to oblige my dom. Each wall of the bank immediately ignited into gigantic flames the second I thought of it. My Fire magic licked up the marble, so hot that it even melted the stone, causing the building to buckle. Any furniture within the bank was instantly set ablaze and turned to ash. Several Union cops standing near the flames spontaneously combusted. Oberi shook her head in fury. An enormous jet of fire resembling a flamethrower shot out of her horn, helping me turn the bank into a pyre.

The incredible heat in the building caused all but the grittiest Union police to flee the bank. We picked off the rest of them with our pistols as we fled toward the doors.

The cool air outside kissed my skin. It was just as chaotic outside the bank as it was inside. Squad cars surrounded the bank, but the Union cops were divided on whether to go after us or stop the fire. Around the area, humans had surrounded the bank with expressions of shock, videoing the scene with their phones as both we and the police shot off spells.

Supernatural secrecy was apparently gone. I searched for my car and saw with relief that it was still in the alleyway I’d parked it in earlier, and it had gone completely unnoticed by police. We could still make it.

I looked up when I heard wingbeats. Esther was here, hovering in the sky before the bank, her angelic wings spread out wide like she owned the very world.

But we’d gotten fucking lucky, because none of her friends were with her. They had to be doing other dirty jobs for the Warden.

Wasn’t going to prevent her from trying to kill us. Shrieks rose throughout the street as Esther used her light magic to blind us. I cringed away from the harsh light, and Oberi whipped her head away.

I heard the sound of a pistol going off, and Esther screamed. Abruptly, the blinding light immediately ceased, and a crashing thud boomed ahead of me.

Charlie had taken a shot with his good arm, and he’d managed to hit Esther in the wing. She’d fallen from the sky and landed on a squad car, breaking the windshield.

She cringed and went to get up, but I was already firing. Blood spurted from her front as several of my shots connected, and she collapsed flatly on the broken windshield with a pained groan.

My Fire bullets weren’t going to kill her, but they’d keep her down for a while. I flattened myself to Oberi’s neck, and she galloped through the zigzag of patrol cars as Union cops flung spells after us. Oberi jumped, sailing us over a squad car as Kallie and Charlie darted around it and Marcus slid across the hood.

My heart was pounding when we finally reached my car. Charlie swung me off of Oberi’s back with one arm and threw me in the driver’s seat before he slipped into the other side. Oberi changed into a husky, jumping onto Charlie’s lap. Kallie and Marcus barely had time to jump in the backseat before I revved the accelerator.

I was a damn good driver, and I knew I could outrun these assholes. We were pinned back in our seats by the force of the car shooting forward. I immediately turned out of the alleyway and onto a side street, racing down that before I got to the main road.

The Union cops were immediately on our tail. Red and blue lights flashed behind us, and police sirens wailed as squad cars followed us on a high-speed chase throughout the streets of Paris. Pedestrians screamed and dove out of the way as iron tables and chairs bounced off the hood. I winced as the furniture scratched the paint and left dents in the hood of my new baby.

My car was faster than theirs, so I was able to make it to the highway, where I had more room to maneuver. I swerved around other vehicles as I pushed the odometer past a hundred.

Marcus and Kallie leaned out the windows in the back and fired shots at the chasing patrol cars. They clung to the sides of the car to hang on as I swerved to avoid battle orbs whizzing toward us from behind. Squad cars tried to avoid their shots. Several ended up spinning off the road or crashing into each other, tumbling over into the ditch.

Traffic slowed up ahead due to construction. I went around it and started driving on the median, though it slowed us down. As we sped past the traffic and into the construction site, I searched the surrounding area, looking for something we could use to escape.

Oberi barked like crazy. One patrol car sped past us and went to box us in, but I spun the car around in a one-hundred eighty degree turn and got back on the gas, driving head-on toward a line of approaching squad cars.

“Ava, are you fucking nuts?!” Kallie screamed.

Absolutely. I had the balls to pull this off. Monica and I had stolen a car before, and the race we’d had with the cops back then hadn’t ended well. I was determined not to let this be a repeat.

There was a ramp to my right, used by construction workers for repairing a nearby overpass. I jerked the car to the side and drove up it, launching the car off of the ramp. My stomach dipped as the car went airborne, and we flew over the squad cars that had been racing toward us seconds before.

Kallie, Charlie, and Marcus screamed as we sailed through the air, but I tightened my grip on the steering wheel until my fingers were white and my arms were shaking. Come on, baby, you can do this.

The car slammed against the concrete, bouncing off the tires. I swear I heard a couple of parts in the undercarriage come snapping off. The windshield cracked with the force of the fall.

Holy shit, that was going to be a lot of repairs. I nearly wanted to cry.

“We can fix your car later, let’s go!” Charlie shouted, reading my thoughts. I pushed the car even faster, laying on the turbo.

The cars we passed became a blur, and dismay built inside my chest as we drove down the wrong side of the highway. I jerked the car to the side several times in order to avoid slamming head-on into vehicles that were barreling straight toward us.

“They’ve got people in the sky!” Marcus cried. I noticed out the front of my cracked windshield that several helicopters were trailing us from overhead, and getting closer.

I couldn’t outdrive a fucking copter, that was for certain. We needed an escape, somewhere to take the car and hide. If we didn’t disappear, and fast, they’d catch us, because I couldn’t keep this up. Eventually, the car was going to break, and if that happened, we were fucked. I had to get this car to a place we could take a portal out of here without them following.

I had to get us out. Losing the cops and portaling away was our only shot.

Then I saw a line of patrol cars up ahead. The highway was blocked behind us, and the Union police had set up a barricade in front of us. It looked like the highway was blocked off at all angles. I needed to go back into the city.

I immediately slammed to a stop. I heard Marcus yelp as his face hit the headrest behind me, and blood spurted from his nose onto my arm. The vehicle made a screeching noise as I threw the car into reverse, and I painfully turned in my seat so I could look out the window behind me. My spine screamed in protest— I still didn’t have great control of twisting my upper body, and fuck if it didn’t hurt like hell to do so, but I had to right now. I drove backward at over sixty miles an hour, before I whipped the car back around and took an exit that curved into Paris.

The Union was waiting for us off the exit, of fucking course, and they’d laid down spikes on the road ahead. I did my best to swerve, but I couldn’t avoid them all. I groaned as I heard the spikes pop the right tire.

“Great! Now we’re screwed!” Kallie snapped as the car leaned to the side. I didn’t slow down, but kept on the gas as we sped back into the streets of Paris— this time, a business district with a variety of expensive skyscrapers.

“We can still drive on the rim for a minute, but we have to get away from them,” I insisted. “Kallie can’t portal us away right now, which means Charlie is the only one who can.”

A singular Union squad car had managed to keep up with us the whole time, and they were still sticking with us. It wouldn’t be long before my car gave out, or they caught up to us.

“I need a mirror!” Charlie yelled.

“Where the hell are we gonna find that?” Marcus cried.

I was debating on pulling this bitch over and convincing the others to scatter out of the car and make a run for it while I held the cops off with my magic, until Oberi stood on Charlie’s lap.

There! That skyscraper has a reflective surface, Oberi said, pointing with his nose.

It did. There was a building straight ahead that had a mirror-like surface coating the entire building. We could use it.

Drive through it, pidge. Charlie’s thoughts were full of determination. I’ll get us home.

I didn’t think twice as I pushed the car in a straight line toward the skyscraper, the odometer climbing past one hundred and twenty. If Charlie said he could do it, he would do it. There was no fear, only complete and absolute trust. I’d put my life in this man’s hands more times than I knew, and he’d never let me down before. He asked, I answered. He ordered, I complied. That was my role, and that was who we were. I’d crash this car and kill us all before I denied his command.

Yeah, I was fucking crazy. I loved it. He loved it. And riding this high and feeling alive, playing with the lines between life and death, was the most exhilarating thing we’d ever known.

Kallie and Marcus hadn’t heard our conversation, and had no idea what we were planning. Kallie’s voice got nervous. “Ava, what are you doing… AVA!”

I closed my eyes and braced myself, fully expecting to feel the car collapse around me as we crashed into the building.

But… I didn’t. I pried open my eyelids, and my mouth dropped open in amazement as I observed the space around us. Mirrors surrounded us everywhere, reflecting our appearance millions of times. My face flew by in a blur as the car continued moving steadily past. It appeared we’d stepped into the mirror… like we’d entered another world.

Charlie had done it. He’d opened up a portal through the reflective surface in the skyscraper.

But we weren’t the only ones who’d driven through it. The squad car who’d followed us was sailing behind us through the Mirror Realm, almost like we were moving in slow motion.

A portal blossomed ahead of us, and I saw the sea that surrounded Ilamanthe. We drove through the portal and came out at ground level on a highway outside of the Elven city.

I stopped the car on the side of the road. I turned to see what we had come through, and saw that the mirror behind us was some sort of reflective billboard, welcoming refugees fleeing The Mission to the city of Ilamanthe. On the right side of the highway was a cliffside, lined by a guardrail. Beside the cliff was the open ocean, a wide expanse of the Mediterranean Sea.

Charlie leaned out the car window, aimed his pistol, and fired a shot at the mirror we’d come through. Disbelief pierced my chest as I watched the bullet shatter the billboard into pieces.

The last thing I saw as the portal closed was the shocked faces of the two Union representatives as the portal slammed shut.

The fragile bits of the mirror fell to the pavement. My heart stuttered. A broken mirror couldn’t reflect clearly enough to make a portal. Those people had no way out.

Marcus turned green. He swallowed thickly as he asked, “Are… are those Union cops stuck in the mirror?”

“I had to seal off the portal. Otherwise, they’d follow us and expose Ilamanthe,” Charlie said roughly. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Something gnarled inside of me like jagged thorns. A lie. He did have a choice, and he’d made it.

But Charlie was right. We couldn’t afford to put the Elves in danger again, not for anything… we couldn’t. The city was more important than whoever had been in that patrol car, even if they were now stuck in the mirror world. The lives of thousands meant more than the existence of a few, and they’d chosen to chase after us when they knew we were demigods and what we were capable of. We’d done all we could.

I opened the car door and bent down to pick up a large fragment of the broken mirror lying on the road.

In its reflection, I could see the pale, terrified expressions of the Union representatives stuck inside the mirror. They were screaming.

Charlie stumbled out of the car and took the broken shard from my hand. Then he walked to the edge of the cliffside, beside the guardrail, and pulled his arm back to toss the broken mirror as far into the ocean as he could.

Nobody said a damn word.

When Charlie got back in the car, I managed to rasp, “We can’t leave Chancey and Ivy.”

“We have to. We can’t go back for them,” Charlie said heavily. “Whatever happened, we’ll put ourselves in danger if we try to find them now.”

Ancestors, I prayed they got out somehow. I couldn’t handle it if the Warden captured them because of us.

I drove slowly back to Ilamanthe, where we got a lot of attention from the curious Elves on the streets. They were all too keen to gawk at the damage to my expensive car.

We managed to pull into the royal garage within the palace boundaries unseen, by some fucking miracle, but I bet the guards were already running to Emperor Cassiel to tell him we were back. Shit. I’d hoped when we’d returned, we’d have the vampire key in hand to calm some of his anger. Instead, we’d completely blown the whole operation and nearly gotten killed in the process.

I parked the car within the enclosed garage. Under the hood, the engine was smoking. Dammit all, Bren was going to kill me.

Kallie huffed. “Time to face the music, I guess.”

“Not yet. This was my idea. I want a chance to explain things to my grandpa, before the rest of you get in trouble,” Charlie said heavily.

“Fine by me.” Marcus was out of that car in a flash. Kallie waited for a minute or two before she left.

After she was out of the garage, Charlie opened the door, and Oberi hopped out. As much as you need to learn the consequences of your actions, beloved Charlie, I don’t wish to see them put upon you, Oberi noted. I will cover for you. If people see me, they will follow. Perhaps it will give you time to seek out your grandfather and come up with an explanation.

“Thanks, Oberi,” Charlie said, and he ruffled his ears. Oberi trotted off, leaving Charlie and me alone in the car.

There was silence for a moment, before I asked with a smirk, “Baddest bitch you’ve ever met, huh?”

“You definitely live up to that reputation.” He leaned forward, and I lightly touched his shoulder. The arm that had been fried by the battle orb mended, healing over until the injury was completely gone.

“Better?” I asked.

“Yeah. It no longer hurts.”

We sat in the car for a few moments. Then Charlie reached out and snagged me across the waist, hoisting me out of my seat and into his lap.

Both of us were breathing raggedly, and he was already hard. I had no desire for foreplay, and he fucking knew it. He pushed the skirt of my dress up, and I hastened to unfasten his pants. Charlie ripped my panties off of me, grabbed my hips and thrust up. I sank down, letting out a loud moan as he went all the way in.

Charlie matched my noises with a moan of his own, and he started fucking me hard, lifting me up and down on his dick. I grabbed the car seat, and my nails dug into the leather as his movements went deeper. I felt my eyes roll back as the pieces of our soul connected, his body slamming against mine. I looked deeper inside our bond and felt his side of our spirit resonating against mine with a pure, clear warmth, his dominance wrapping around my half in a way that felt like I was being bound to his will. He kissed me hard, just as roughly as he had in the bank. I drank darkness from that kiss, licking up every drop.

It didn’t take me long to come— he’d been edging me for what felt like forever, so my body was ready for it. The whole robbery, and the car chase afterward, had been like a BDSM scene created straight from our deepest fantasies. We’d totally fucked each other’s heads, and the rush was even better than the one we got from sex. I’d been dying for a release ever since he’d put that gun to my head, and the thought of the cool metal pressed against my temple as he toyed with the trigger made me delirious… exhilarated. As my thoughts crossed across our bond, Charlie’s excitement increased, telling me he’d liked it, too.

This was wrong. We were twisted as all hell. And we fucking loved it.

Charlie grabbed my hair and pulled as he came, and I screamed his name as we rode through it. Sweat beaded our faces, and I could feel his heartbeat pounding through his shirt against my own.

We put our foreheads together and just breathed. I was spinning in place and grounded all at once. This was better than any high I could get from any drug on this planet. I didn’t want to get off his lap.

Charlie brushed my face. “Apparently we’ve found a new hobby.”

I smirked. “Robbing banks isn’t a hobby.”

“Might as well be, if it can get us going like that.”

I let out a soft laugh. He’d certainly started my engine.

I jumped as there was a sharp knock on the glass window beside us. I turned my head, and was absolutely mortified to see my mother standing there, her arms crossed with a disapproving frown.

“If you two are finished, Charlie’s grandfather would like to speak with him,” Mama said shortly. “I hope you have a good explanation for the damage you caused.”