30. Max

30

MAX

R alph carried Saif to the medical ward, and while my uncle was most certainly not dead, I also had no idea if he would wake up again.

It was another mystery to add to the list of fifty that I already had to figure out.

The excitement and shock of encountering him had bled into heartache and a strange sense of acceptance.

But now, I was just numb.

"He just passed out?" Izzy asked again, her eyes narrowed in focus as she hooked his limp form up to several of the machines Greta had managed to scavenge. "You don't know how or why?"

I curled my fingers into fists, a strange new buzz tingling through them that I wasn't ready to dissect yet. "I think he whispered some spell."

"A spell?"

I blinked a few times at her question. I'd somehow known the spell too, had chanted it alongside him, but the memory was like a shadowy wisp, one I couldn't quite curl my fingers around. "Something about unblocking my?— "

"Max?" A deep voice called, cutting through my anxiety about Saif and whatever power transfer he'd initiated, only to make room for a new panic when I turned to meet it.

"Arnell?"

He ran into the room, his chest heaving in deep breaths, eyes blown wide with concern.

My stomach flipped at the sight, at the concern drenching every tense muscle in his body. Arnell was almost always collected, calm—even during some of the most dangerous missions.

He only got like this when?—

"Ro." I latched on to Ralph, using him to keep myself upright. "My team? What's wrong? What happened?" On instinct, I took a deep breath, searching for the tethers connecting me to them.

I exhaled. They were alive. Safe. But still shutting me out. Declan's new project of giving me time to destress.

"I'm sorry—" he shook his head, "they said I couldn't tell you."

Any relief I felt disappeared. "Couldn't tell me what?"

"They had a meeting," he swallowed, his eyes not meeting mine, "with some people from The Guild." He wet his lips. "With some high-up people in The Guild, just below the council."

My mouth went dry.

"Dec stayed behind," he continued, his voice higher than usual, his fingers trembling. "And I got a new message after the others left, about twenty minutes ago. From Jarrod. H-he must have found out about the meeting, about their attempted coup. He said something about a massacre for a massacre, the people he grew up with for yours." He licked his lips. "We weren't sure what that meant, but then Ro started panicking about the town you grew up in. They went to check, said they'd be back in five minutes once they verified things were okay. I—" he took a deep breath that did nothing to dispel the anxiety radiating from him. If they left twenty minutes ago, that five-minute time limit was more than up. "I tried to stop them, but Dec just disappeared. And then I wanted to go after them, but I realized that I have no fucking clue where you grew up. Whenever we talked about his childhood, Ro never gave me specifics about the location, just the people."

Arnell continued talking, but his words melted into the air, indecipherable to me. I licked my lips, trying to bring moisture back to my mouth, to form words. I shook my head, trying to process what the hell had happened in my few hours away. Half of my family went off on one dangerous mission, while the other half went on another. Without me.

I swallowed the betrayal, now wasn't the time for that.

I cut my eyes to Izzy, she shook her head, hands up in surrender. She had no idea.

That did nothing to soften the fear unfurling in my chest though.

"Are any of them back? Have you heard anything?" I fought to keep the tremor of terror from my voice, but it just came out sounding robotic, metallic and distant. How long could I compartmentalize my emotions away until I lost all ability to control them? I had a feeling I'd find out soon.

Arnell shook his head, his fingers and hands twisting in a knot as he tried to calm his own panic. That softened something in me and I reached my hand for his, squeezing his trembling fingers in mine.

I wasn't the only one worried about Ro—and I was eased by a strong sense of gratitude that Ro had found someone else to love him as fiercely as I did. Maybe that would make leaving him behind without me a little bit easier. "I'll get him back, Arnell. I promise."

"I'll go—" he started to say, but I let go of his hands and disappeared before he had a chance .

It was broad daylight, and in any other situation, I'd aim to be more subtle, to avoid human eyes. Right now, I didn't give a fuck if any of them in our town saw me.

When the world reshaped itself, I was in the middle of a familiar street, right outside the very post office where Ro and I had picked up Seamus's letter begging Cy to come help train at The Guild.

But it looked nothing like I'd remembered.

Smoke billowed around me, the heavy heat of thick flames crisping the hair on my arms.

A loud crack, and a roaring wave of noise pulled my attention.

The diner.

It had collapsed, swallowed almost entirely by flames now.

My breath lodged in my chest, clogged and unwavering as visions of sitting in there every Saturday night with Ro tugged at my memory.

"Max?" the voice was soft, drowning in the angry clatter of the fire. The whole town was burning. The smell of charred meat and smoke all I could breathe in. A body was on the ground, outside of the diner, all recognizable features burnt away.

I bent over, vomiting when I saw another arm lying still under the rubble. A familiar gold bracelet circled the wrist.

Darlene.

Darlene who served at the diner.

Darlene who'd played a feature role in every birthday, who made this town I lived on the outskirts of feel like home whenever she could.

Darlene who greeted us with a smile that took up her whole face whenever we walked in.

Darlene who was one of the only people I'd met who was brave enough to tease Cyrus.

Darlene who was dead .

Not just Darlene. They were all dead.

Michael, the boy I'd kissed, Jason, his brother—Jarrod had killed them all.

I wasn't sure how I knew, but I felt it in my bones, an unwavering certainty that made it impossible to breathe. They wouldn't have stood a chance against his power, against his rage.

Which meant that they weren't just all dead—they were dead because of me. Because I left them all here to fend for themselves.

Why didn't I plan for something like this? Could I have saved them somehow?

My hands were numb and stiff at the same time, my ears ringing with a low, droning buzz.

"Max?" The voice was louder now, and it sliced through my racing thoughts long enough to pull my focus.

"Declan?"

She pulled me to her in a tight hug. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. We didn't get here in time—we tried, it was?—"

"Ro?" I croaked out, my voice raw from the force of vomiting. I pulled out of Dec's hold, frantic now as I searched for him. I didn't want to be comforted, didn't want her to make this better, to make things okay in the way only Dec knew how to do. "Ro? Where is he?"

I screamed his name over and over again. My vision blurring as I fought back tears.

Not him. Not Ro. He couldn't be gone.

Declan grabbed me, her hold firm but still somehow gentle. She was speaking, trying to calm me, but I couldn't form meaning from her words.

"Ro!" I yelled, my voice puncturing through the roar of the fire as my lungs filled with smoke. I coughed, scratching against Dec's hold, as I fought to push through, to find him.

"Max! "

I sobbed out a breath of relief as familiar blue eyes formed in front of me, blurry through my tears, but impossible not to recognize.

"I'm here, I'm here." Ro pulled me to him, and I sank against his familiar form, clutching his shirt as I fought to hold myself up. "I'm okay."

A loud crash echoed around us, the ground rumbling from the force of it. Ro ducked, tried redirecting us away. I was vaguely aware of another building collapsing, but I couldn't bring myself to move away from his hug, to spring into action.

I'd almost lost him. For a brief, terrifying moment, I was convinced that I had—that he'd been lost to this town, like the rest of them.

Dec grabbed hold of us both and the familiar sensation of shifting from one spot to another rolled through me.

We didn't go far, just a few feet away from the bulk of the damage—far enough that we weren't in immediate danger from the fire, only the smoke.

"We checked," she whispered, her voice trembling with regret as she pressed a soft kiss to my hair, "they're all gone. I'm so, so sorry. We shouldn't have?—"

I shook my head, finally pulling back from Ro, from them both.

"What—what did you do?"

"We were trying to find a way, to get to Xavier and Jarrod, the stone—" her breathing was stilted as she fought back tears. "It was reckless, we should have known that they'd find out, that they'd take revenge—but I never thought something like this—I'm sorry. I'm so, fucking sorry, Max."

I fell to my knees as the horror of the town spread out before us—the image more hellish than anything I'd experienced in the deepest depths of hell. The fire had been roaring hard and long—it had already started ripping through the forest, the branches and dried leaves providing fresh kindling. I knew it would take hours—maybe days—to get it under control. How much more destruction, death, would the council be responsible for? Would I be responsible for?

Buildings crumbled and charred, and when I turned to the right, I saw a pile of bodies—most of them familiar.

Their necks had been slashed and they'd been stacked in a pile, as if they were haphazardly discarded, unimportant.

A hand, too small, curled around a plush toy.

A patch of familiar blonde hair, but I refused to let myself linger on it, to determine with any certainty if it belonged to Michael. If I didn't verify, if I didn't confirm it with absolute certainty, maybe I could live in the fairytale that they'd gotten away, that some of them had survived.

I choked on a sob, retching again, but there was nothing left in my stomach, only the bitter taste of bile.

The three of us sat there, clogged in the utter terror of the scene for what could have been five minutes or five hours—time had become meaningless.

Tears streaked Ro's face, carving clean lines through the ash. His hands were covered in bloody cuts and burns, and when I looked down at Declan's, I noticed hers were too.

Their clothes were singed and cut, with small holes burned through the fabric where fire had eaten it away.

They'd been digging through the rubble, fighting to find someone—anyone. That's why they hadn't returned right away, why Arnell hadn't heard back from them. They were trying to salvage something, to save the people here.

My chest squeezed at the thought.

But one more glance at the pile of bodies Jarrod left for me made it abundantly clear that he'd sucked the life out of this town before he'd burned whatever remained.

He would leave no survivors. To someone like him, that kind of humanity would be a marker of weakness .

If those were the rules he wanted to play by, I'd gladly do my part.

"I'll kill him," I said, my hands shaking with anger I no longer had the strength to repress.

I'd kill him, and I'd make him suffer before I did, make him feel every ounce of pain and fear he'd put this town through—tenfold.

There was no redemption for someone like him, someone who stole power and used it to torture and destroy those who had none.

"I—" I paused, swallowing whatever else I was going to say, as my stomach bottomed out, even though I didn't think there were any lower depths for it to go. I looked up, meeting Ro's eyes. "The cabin."

We shifted there together, but as soon as the familiar landscape filtered into focus, I almost wished it hadn't.

Jarrod stood near the entrance of what used to be our home, surrounded by what had to be at least a hundred of his lackeys.

So he hadn't committed all of that slaughter alone.

But I couldn't focus on any of them.

The image of our cabin, eaten alive by flames and curls of smoke would be imprinted on my brain for the rest of my life.

"It's gone," I mouthed, unable to find my voice through the grief, "it's all gone."

The journal.

A wave of grief knocked me to my knees when I realized that the last bit of Cyrus I had, the words he'd etched into the pages while we grew up—I'd left it in the cabin months ago.

It was gone too .

Ro grunted, the sound angry and deep, almost animalistic, before he charged towards Jarrod and his army.

Declan had her shit together enough to grab him and pull back, using all of her strength to contain him while he used all of his in a desperate attempt to shake her off.

I stood there, frozen—unable to muster the strength for anger, for anything other than the deep, suffocating pain of grief.

"This is all rather unfortunate," Jarrod said, pulling my attention back to him. "If you had simply agreed to my terms when they were originally offered to you, we wouldn't have had to sink to such levels." He made a soft clicking sound with his tongue. "All those people, dead when they had nothing to do with this." He shook his head. "Such a shame. A terrible price for an important lesson."

"Why?" My voice cracked, and I clutched my chest, fighting like hell to suck in a breath. "I?—"

"Because I can't kill you." Jarrod's mouth spread into a sneer as he glanced around at his followers. They stood, unmoving, the traces of the massacre they'd taken part in cloaked their clothes, stained their skin. "I need you. We all do." He spread his arms open wide, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, "I need your power. With it comes the only chance we have at surviving. Yet you remain stubborn, and stubborn children need to be broken. Only then can you be of use to me."

"You killed them. You killed them all." Ro spat, his voice filled with a venom I'd never heard. He renewed his attempts to rush towards Jarrod, hatred etched in every line of his face, but Dec's hold remained strong.

"Well," Jarrod tilted his head to the side as he studied me, eyes narrowed, "if I couldn't kill you, and our conversation got us nowhere, what options did I have? Like most insolent children, I can punish you. Take things from you—the things you love most. "

"They're people," Declan said, "not fucking toys. You're a monster." She shook her head, eyes wide in disbelief. "You're all fucking monsters. There were children—" her voice broke. "You killed children."

"Humans die every day." Jarrod shrugged, as if the distinction bore no scrutiny. "You are running out of time, Miss Bentley. Consider this a little push, urging you to reconsider your stance on things. You're a smart girl, a quick learner—I think you'll see things my way soon. And when you do, have your little techy friend send us word—he's clearly figured out how to reach us."

He nodded to the sea of his minions, and without a word they parted.

I screamed at what I saw, the sound so deep and feral that I hardly recognized it as my own.

The tree where we'd scattered Cy's ashes, and the ground surrounding it, were burnt to a crisp.

"Consider this town, this cabin, just old, empty graves of your past." Jarrod spoke as if the dozens of humans they'd killed were no more important than specs of dust—as if I'd needed any more convincing that he cared nothing for protecting humanity, only for power. "But we can dig fresh graves, Miss Bentley. And we can fill them with those you love most." He shifted back into my line of sight, Cy's resting place lifting in plumes of smoke behind him. "My intel has identified a small little resort—one not too far from here—that has experienced a large uptick in activity, despite all suggestions that it closed several years ago. Work with us, and maybe I won't investigate this particular anomaly for myself. Work with us, and no one else you love has to die."

The Lodge.

Bile crawled up my throat, hot and stinging.

No.

He could not do this to them .

He needed to die.

Now.

It didn't matter if his death meant that we'd never find the stone. We'd find another way to get to it, to complete the ritual.

He wasn't touching them.

Something inside of me broke and all that I saw was red.

I screamed, rushing forward, my own flames licking along my arms and braiding with those around the cabin. I let my pain out, unthinking, as I killed every protector I reached.

There was no hesitation, no regret, only pain. Only rage.

When I spun around, ready for him, hungry for the prey I was really hunting, a series of darts hit me square in the chest.

Jarrod's face, complete with that nauseating smirk of his, was the last thing I saw before the flames, and everything they consumed, turned to black.