14. Declan

14

DECLAN

M y hand was on fire.

Well, not on fire, but very much holding it. A little ball of warm, soft light that licked up my fingers sat in the center of my palm.

"You did it!" Max smiled, her excitement zipping through me via the bond. "I knew you'd catch on quickly."

It was the first time I'd seen her smile today and the sight of it sent a river of warmth down my spine, smooth and deep like hot chocolate. I wanted to sip on it for hours.

And I'd conjure fire every minute of every day, if it would take away some of the grief and pain clawing at her chest.

Between cleaning up the mess in the medical center, treating the remaining patients, and trying to comfort Eli after he and the guys brought a knocked-out Seamus back, things had been pretty bleak.

Izzy and Ro eventually had to physically shove us out of the med center cabin, and Max's fingers nearly gouged the door frame when she fought to stay inside.

It was the first time I'd ever seen Max look stern with her best friend or brother .

But after a quick, "We've got this, go teach your boyfriends and girlfriend how to control their new tricks before we have another tragedy on our hands" from Izzy, Max finally relented.

We were all rattled by the loss of Greta.

I didn't know her on a profound personal level—didn't know her favorite color or movie—but she'd been a constant presence in my life, a figure of stability from the moment I stepped foot into Headquarters. And I knew she'd been the same for Max too.

It was a blow that would take a while to heal from.

"We've been doing this for hours." Eli stared down at his hand, face bent in concentration as he wiggled his fingers. "Why isn't it working for me?"

We were on the shoreline, away from the docks and where the cabins were planted—open ground and close enough to the water that we could train with fire without risking taking out The Lodge. Izzy was right—there'd already been enough tragedy and loss today.

Learning that Seamus was a wendigo—or on his way to becoming one—had cracked something in Eli. Whether it gave him renewed purpose or would break him down was yet to be seen.

He'd approached the training session with a rigid focus. And he hadn't so much as unclenched a single muscle since making sure Seamus was locked up and safe, that Levi understood the express orders to keep an eye on him and make sure no one harmed him.

Every time he tried to conjure the fire, his veins would practically puncture his skin from the tension lining his body.

Max bit back a small grin as she walked over to him. Massaging his hands in hers, she forced him to relax a bit.

"Don't worry, I didn't pick it up as quickly as Dec either. When I was learning," she said, her voice soft, soothing, as she closed her eyes, her chest lifting in slow, deep breaths, "it helped for me to try to visualize it. To feel the flames as if they were stemming from my blood, my skin, my bones. A part of me as much as the rest."

She cracked an eye open to make sure that Eli had his eyes closed.

He didn't.

He was watching her intently, like she was the last treasure left in the world, like he was two seconds away from licking her mouth.

Honestly, I didn't blame him.

His skin blushed slightly and he mumbled a quiet, "Sorry" as he slammed his eyes closed, doubling down on his focus.

Which apparently meant tensing back up again.

Max squeezed his hands, pushed a serene relax, don't try so hard through the bond and, surprisingly, he did.

"And then," she said, voice confident but soft, "when I can feel the start of the spark, I chase that warmth, until I can let it free. That's all it wants. To be free."

Her hands flared to life around his, the flames strong and powerful, a mesmerizing array of colors as his face cracked into a small smile—the first one I'd seen from him since the day's events too.

I jumped, the flames in my own hand popping into a soft, wispy smoke, before disappearing altogether.

"Interesting." Darius was leaning against the tree. While he'd managed to teleport to Max when his emotions were heightened, he'd been struggling to conjure fire or reproduce the shift since our session. "Looked like when Max conjured it, she pulled it from Declan."

Max frowned, then turned back to me, head tilted in curiosity. She held her hands before her face, the large flames effortless as she studied them. "Do you think you can conjure it again, Dec?"

"Erm, yeah, sure. Let me try." I licked my lips, then closed my eyes, trying to block out the pressure I felt from being put on the spot. I still wasn't entirely sure how I'd gotten it to work the first time.

Darius had mentioned that he'd been able to teleport because he was aware he had access to the power. That, combined with the desperate need to get to Max, had allowed him to access the ability. Deliberate intention. Need.

I tried to tap into that knowledge, to fake that sort of emotional desperation. Max was in front of me, we were, relatively speaking, quite safe on the shore here. There was no shade in our presence, and while we were all still recovering from the events of the day, the immediate threats were taken care of.

So that didn't work.

Instead, I focused on my connection to Max. Felt her inside of me, a part of me. As much me as I was. Tasted her lips. Felt her soft skin.

And through her, I felt the others too. My team.

I'd always had an awareness of them. Before Max, I devoted most of my time and energy to keeping them in line, keeping them safe, having their backs. The more I visualized that connection, the different branches that wove between us, the more I could feel them.

They were mine, all of them. And I was theirs.

The connections linking us were bright and vivid, stunning in the way bioluminescence was stunning—the kind of captivating colors and lights that took your breath away. The links also didn't feel imaginary or ephemeral. I could feel Eli's arrogance, the way it wrapped around his fears like a security blanket, Atlas's insecurities that he wasn't enough lapped against my skin, but so did his unwavering stubbornness, his strength. Wade's quiet intelligence, laced with his newfound sense of self, purpose. Darius's unwavering loyalty and reluctant compassion, braided in with a dark power that hurt to focus on too much.

And then there was Max, the crux of us all. Her determined sense of justice, her legitimate kindness, her yearning for community.

They were strong, steady, coated in warmth.

I took a deep breath, drew in that warmth, lined my veins with it, my body.

"Fucking hell," Eli whispered.

"Uh, Dec. Open your eyes." Wade's voice held a tinge of fear, of laughter. I felt it pulse through me.

I did as he said and found both of my arms engulfed in vivid, intense flames.

"Fuck." I waved my arms, panicking as the flames climbed higher, fanned by my anxiety. "I don't know how to turn these buggers off."

Max laughed, the sound enough to calm some of my unease. "Just take a deep breath, Dec. Honestly, you have far better control of them than I usually do. I could feel you harness the bonds, could feel as you pulled the flames from me." She shook her head, eyes wide in awe as she ran her hands up and down her arms, like she could still feel me there. "The bonds have never seemed so visceral to me—so clear. And you had complete control—as if you could play them like guitar strings." When I didn't relax, she laughed again—the sound a delicious melody. "Seriously, that was amazing. The fire won't hurt you. It can't. It is you. Just breathe."

Her dark eyes found mine, they were filled with mirth, with pride. And for a moment, I was transfixed by their depths, by the way the flames cocooning me reflected in the cool, almost-black shade of her eyes. She took a deep breath, a gentle reminder for me to do the same.

I nodded, and followed through.

But the flames didn't go down, I'd lost whatever grip on the connection I'd had, though now that I knew how to access it, how to draw from it, it would be easier next time.

A soft smirk hooked the corner of Max's mouth as I felt her—she drew the fire away from me back to herself, controlled it, and then absorbed it back into her own hands.

Darius walked over as my heartrate settled down, then swiped his arm between us like he expected to find resistance, like he could grab hold of whatever was linking Max and I.

"Fascinating." His brows furrowed in concentration. "It seems we can only borrow them. Meaning only one of us can access your power at a given time."

"How did you do that?" Wade walked up to me, grabbed my hand in his. He had that look in his eyes—the one he always wore whenever he dove into a new theory or dense textbook. He looked like he wanted to dissect me, peel me back layer by layer while he took notes. With a quill. "Can you walk me through what you were thinking about?"

"I see the incubus hasn't stolen your nerdiness." I shoved him off, laughing.

The sound bubbled up out of me, a fountain that couldn't be contained—full and demanding. Joy.

It was infectious, growing bigger and louder as the others joined in.

Even Atlas's face was split into a smile. He glanced timidly around at us all, like he felt guilty for enjoying himself, like he was still getting used to being back in his skin and figuring out how to interact with us.

Honestly, it was the same for me.

We'd all changed so much and so quickly these last few months. I was looking forward to everything being over—the war, the ritual, whatever else was inevitably thrown at us in the meantime—when we could just sit down and hang, slowly figure out how we all fit together again through all of the transformations we'd undergone .

"Makes sense you're good at this, Dec," Atlas said, his eyes meeting mine. The pride I saw there made my chest ache. He was coming back to himself. Not quite like the Atlas I'd always known, but that Atlas wasn't entirely gone either. He was growing, reshaping into something new. "This power is built on connection. You've always been our backbone, kept us in line, the strongest of the lot of us. Well," he nodded to Max, "except for Bentley of course."

Max squeezed me to her, and I could feel the rare happiness of the moment settle around us all, warm and soothing.

You're amazing, she whispered through the link, her voice and sentiment a caress that licked straight from my head down to my toes. More powerful than you realize. You will hold this group together. Don't lose sight of that. You're connected to them all through this bond, not just me .

There was something gentle in her tone, affection, maybe, but also something I couldn't quite name.

A spark of unease unfurled deep in my gut.

Before I could press, she turned back to the group, adding for everyone's ears, "Now, try to explain exactly how you did that. Maybe we'll get the fire chain flowing through us all before the night is up."

We worked well into the night, but we were making serious progress. Even Max—who already had amazing control over her powers—was getting stronger, more adept at conjuring.

After I explained what I saw, what I felt, the more we spoke the connections into reality, the easier it became for everyone. Wade and Darius picked it up fast, then Eli begrudgingly followed an hour after them.

Atlas took the longest, but I think that had more to do with his hesitancy around connecting. He'd made great strides with Max, had been more vulnerable with her than he'd ever been with anyone. But it would take time for him to fully open that wound for us all .

Even still, he managed it a few times.

We also quickly discovered that it was only Max's powers we could share. None of us, Max included, could mobilize Wade's power, or Darius's, or Atlas's. Just hers. And she rarely grew tired with the siphoning. She was like the sun, shining her light, her power, down on us all—freely, happily.

Well into the night, with a soft fire lighting our little work ground, casting dancing shadows around us all, we started working on teleportation. Darius and I were the only ones able to access it just yet, and we were both nauseated with every shift. It would take time, pushing through it over and over again and eventually, Max assured us, it would get easier.

Charlie and Bishop had run food out to us a couple times, bringing updates about the med center each time and occasionally sticking around for a few minutes to watch. Izzy and Ro were handling the medical ward like pros. Greta had, thankfully, left rigorous and thorough notes on each of the patients, which made their care more manageable.

Charlie suspected that the nurse had been expecting something—preparing for it. She'd always had a sort of preternatural knowing, like she could sense when something was coming before the rest of us could. And it didn't help that she'd run herself into the ground for her patients, both at The Guild and here—that kind of stamina could only last so long. We only had so much strength, so much power, and Greta had dedicated her life to giving hers to everyone she met.

It made perfect sense that she'd left behind a clear set of notes, directions to help guide us, to help us, even when she was no longer here to directly do it herself.

Well after midnight, we came back to fire conjuring, all of us needing a morale boost after the rigors of teleportation before we finally hit the cabin for some much-needed rest.

The rest of The Lodge had settled down, but Bishop joined us once more to let us know there were still no new updates with Seamus, and that Levi would be crashing in the medical center tonight in case there were any issues. Levi seemed to have the best handle on Seamus—something that clearly rankled Eli, but he was doing a good job of letting those jealousies slide off his back right now.

Bishop came with two six packs of beer dangling loosely from his hands. He raised them up a few inches, brow arched. "You've been out here all day and all night. It's almost three a.m. You deserve a beer and a good sleep after today's shitshow." He paused, glancing briefly at Darius. "All of you."

Bishop didn't exactly look refreshed and revitalized himself. The dark bags under his eyes were full-on suitcases at this point.

"So do you," I said, grabbing a beer and a spot around our magical little bonfire.

He considered for a moment, indecision warring across his expression.

In the months we'd been here, Bishop had been a bit of an enigma—a phantom moving from one mission or task to the next. The brief time he'd spent watching us practice using Max's power today was maybe the closest I'd seen him to relaxing or hanging out since we got here.

Atlas nudged his shoulder, grabbing a beer. "Come on man, just one."

"Promise I won't bite," Darius said with a grin as he sat down next to Max.

Bishop shot a glare at the vampire, though it was absent the vitriol he usually reserved for Darius.

I was certain he'd refuse, that he'd make up an excuse about getting back to Charlie checking on supplies. But after a defeated grunt, he nodded, grabbed a beer, and fell back on his ass next to Wade. He propped his arms on his knees and took a long draught of the beer, his eyes watching the flames with wonder.

They were quite a sight to behold. Even I found them difficult to look away from, and I'd seen Max conjure this fire countless times over the months.

Hellfire wasn't just orange and red—it was layered with blues and purples, the colors merging and diverging in an elaborate dance that was impossible not to find beautiful—hypnotizing, even.

No one said anything for a few moments.

It had been so long since we'd been able to simply exist, to sit and enjoy each other's presence, I wasn't entirely sure how to do it anymore.

"To Greta," Max said, raising her beer. Her eyes were glazed with emotion, sadness for the loss, but there was gratitude, strength, there as well. "She was the first person to ever encourage my rule-breaking." She bumped her elbow into Darius. "And if it weren't for her slipping me her key card, I probably would never have met Darius."

"Well then," the vampire cleared his throat, raised his beer, and said, "to Greta. Apparently, I owed the woman a deeper gratitude than I ever realized."

"To Greta," echoed around the fire, a solemn peace settling around us.

"I've lost count of how many times that woman saved my life." Bishop shook his head, the shadow of a grin on his face as he took a pull of his beer. "She always had a soft spot for the rule breakers at The Guild." He shrugged, features softening slightly. "Makes sense now, of course."

"She was the best at keeping us the fuck out of trouble." Wade smirked. "I swear, the number of times she caught me spying on you all down there after your missions." He shook his head, "Alleva would have had my head before I managed to reach puberty if she knew the half of it. But Greta found ways to keep me busy, slipping me bits of information and casually looking the other way whenever I found myself hovering outside of one of your rooms after a bad sparring session."

"She let me hang around in the medical ward on weekends," Eli said, his stare distant, "when things got really bad with my mom, when my dad would disappear for days at a time—" he a blinked a few times, voice thick, before a soft smile lit his face, "she'd bring me down with her—insisted that learning basic medicine for the field was a better outlet for my anger than moping around Headquarters or shuffling through women." He took a drink, then shook his head. "Stubborn woman, but she taught me everything I know about healing."

Bishop laughed into his beer, then shook his head. "She said something similar to me, but I wasn't smart enough to take her up on the offer. Not often enough, anyway." He took a deep breath, leaned back on his hand. "She was good at that, training people without them even realizing it. I reckon most of us living in this community have more expertise in field medicine than half the medics working in The Guild. Which is good, something tells me we'll need it."

The ambiguity of the future was like a heavy veil around us all. One we could all feel, but were reluctant to focus on for too long.

But Bishop carried more than his fair share. I could almost feel the stress wrapped around him like a weighted blanket. He was gruffer, more impatient than I'd remembered him being. He'd never been a particularly warm or affectionate person, but there was a darkness about him now, an exhaustion that I felt deep in my bones just from looking at him.

How much of that was because he had an entire community here counting on him, that he was trying to keep safe? A community that we were putting in more danger simply by the nature of us existing here amongst them.

And then there was Charlie.

Neither of them had officially said anything, but it had become more than obvious that she was pregnant—the tender glances they shared, the few times I'd spotted their hands lovingly pressed to her belly.

I was pretty sure they weren't deliberately keeping it a secret—more that the pressure was high enough. I wondered if they wanted to wait, to speak the pregnancy into existence only after they were certain they were offering their child a future worth having.

"And," Darius caught my eyes, like he was reading my mind, and raised his half-empty bottle up, "to Bishop."

Bishop tensed slightly at his name in the vampire's mouth.

I still didn't fully understand the history between them, but it was clearly a loaded one. And, knowing Darius, he'd probably done quite a bit to earn that loathing Bishop seemed to reserve only for him. Still, it seemed like Bishop was warming up to him, however slowly. Darius had certainly proven himself more than once over the months.

I bit back a grin remembering how much I'd hated him for the first few weeks.

He had a habit of growing on people.

Like a fungus.

Darius's teasing expression turned unexpectedly earnest. "You, Charlie, and the others didn't have to offer us a place here, but we're grateful that you did. And we're grateful to the community here for taking in so many of us lab rats."

He took a heavy swig and we all followed suit.

"Can't believe you were really locked down there all these years." Bishop's jaw muscles shifted as he clenched and unclenched his teeth, mulling something unspoken between them. After a long, stretched moment, he met Darius's eyes and took a drink, before adding with a smug grin, "pretty sure Charlie would've sent me packing with you all if I'd refused, but we're glad to have you all the same. You've pulled your weight here, and I know that the six of you are the key to giving us the highest odds of winning this war—whatever may come of it, and whatever shape winning will take exactly."

We settled into a comfortable silence, finishing the beers, and enjoying one of the few peaceful moments we'd had together—maybe the only such moment since the Bentleys had come into our life, if I was being honest.

Max conjured a ball of fire, stared at it wistfully as it grew and then shrank again, like her own built-in fidget spinner.

After a moment, she'd worked up whatever courage she needed, before she turned to Bishop. "Do you know much about Greta's family?"

He frowned at the question, caught off guard, then shook his head. "You know, it's awful, but I really don't know almost anything about her, about her past, her family." He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Gods, that's terrible, isn't it? How had I never thought to ask?"

The last part was said more to himself.

"I don't know anything about her past either," I confessed, the shame of the admission sinking low in my gut. I'd taken her for granted. I'd taken so many people for granted. So many histories I'd never hear, just because I'd never done the work to ask for them.

Mirrored grunts and averted looks suggested the same was true for all of us.

Greta had been an enigma. Protectors usually kept to their teams, their colleagues, their families—but Greta was more of a lone wolf. Who did she confide in? Did she have a person to turn to on the particularly dark nights? Or did she carry that weight all on her own?

Max sighed, draining the last few drops of her drink before balancing the empty bottle on her knee. "When I spoke to Evelyn—" she grunted, "gods, was that only yesterday? Feels like it was a week ago, she mentioned that Greta wasn't from The Guild line of protectors. That she might be connected to my family, or at least know something about them. With everything going on, I didn't have the chance to ask. Or, if I did, I didn't take it." She shook her head, wincing. "Fuck, and how awful am I for regretting that now, in light of everything? It seems so small compared to her loss."

The small ball of fire in Max's hand disappeared, reappearing in Atlas's palm instead. The added light danced across his features as he watched her. "You can be sad that she's gone and also sad that a well of information about your family has dried up, Bentley. Both things can be true at once."

Max studied him for a moment, swallowed, and nodded. I could tell that he said something else through the bond link, something that eased some of the bunching between her shoulders.

For a few minutes, we lazily passed the hellfire around, pulling it from whoever had it, through Max, and back again.

Childlike wonder and excitement lit Bishop's face when he watched Atlas conjure fire. Their eyes met briefly and Atlas grinned back at his cousin. For a moment, it was as if all of the shit we'd been through had fallen away. It was a brief moment, but it felt infinite, important.

Under all of the bullshit, we were still us. We'd find our way back to the core of that.

The Guild had ruined so many lives. Robbed so many of us. And now, their greed—dating back to hell's creation—could doom us all.

I'd drive myself into a fit of rage if I let myself linger on what could have been. What our lives might've looked like if we'd grown up outside of The Guild's grip. If we'd known the truth sooner .

"This is amazing," Bishop sat down, arms propped on his knees as he watched us pass the fire from person to person, like hot potato—a quick training drill Wade came up with. For once, when his eyes landed on Darius, there wasn't even the suggestion of a repressed scowl. "I've never seen anything like what you can do, Max." He shook his head. "What you can all do now, I guess."

"Well good," Darius said with a fangy grin. "Job security, I guess. For taking on The Guild."

The awe on Bishop's face turned into something else, something like…hope, maybe—sharp and useful. I could see his mind working a mile a minute as he watched us.

I understood why. If we could master these powers—and do so quickly—it would change things for us dramatically.

Even though we could only use the powers one at a time, having six of us with the capability would give us a huge leg up when we took on the council.

When I siphoned the flames from where they were with a bleary-eyed focus—from exhaustion, one beer was hardly enough to have an effect—Bishop stiffened.

"What's wrong?" As if sensing my changed focus, the fire snapped into air, until I held just my empty hand in front of my face.

He sat up taller, a light in his eyes as they caught mine. He shook his head. "Nothing's wrong. Maybe something is right." He stood up, collected the empty bottles in a hurry. "I need to think, need to mull some things over. Can you all meet me at the restaurant in the morning? I might have an idea. A wildly reckless one, but it might just be unpredictable enough to work, to give us the edge we've been needing."

"What idea?" Atlas asked, tracking Bishop's every suddenly-stilted move with the steady patience of a predator.

He shook his head. "Tomorrow. I need to think this through, if it's going to work. Don't want to get our hopes up if it's nothing." He climbed back towards the main cabins, before turning around and calling back, "and don't mention the beers to anyone. With Vincent and the shade, getting resources in is going to be more of a project than it already was. I'm supposed to save non-necessities like this for emergencies and celebratory toasts and shit. Charlie and Mer will have my head if they see the supplies dwindling before there's a proper plan in place to regenerate them."

Without another word, he was gone.

"Is he really going to leave us on that cliffhanger?" Darius asked with a snort. "What a dick."

"Yeah," Wade sighed, stood up, grabbed Max's hand, and pulled her up into a hug, "I think he is."

I stood too, suddenly feeling the effects of using Max's magic weigh on my body. Exhaustion flooded me.

"Sleep," I said, my voice practically a whimper now. "Sleep sounds very?—"

A soft rustle in the nearby bush erased my sentence into air.

All of us froze, waiting to see whether this was a threat or stray animal searching for food.

Twigs cracked and icy snow crunched, alerting us to an animal far larger than a deer or a wolf.

My fingers twitched along the handle of my blade, and I saw the others reach for their own weapons from the corner of my eyes.

A tall, dark shadow loomed in the clearing about forty feet away, winding around the curve of the lake.

For a brief second, breath clogged in my throat—but then it released into a laugh.

"Ralph!" Max's voice was filled with as much lightness as I suddenly felt, as she took off towards the familiar hellhound.

"How the hell did he get here?" I asked no one in particular. Despite myself, I couldn't keep the smile from stretching across my face as I ran to greet our friendly hound.