John pushed Liv behind him. “How did you find me?”
Hunting laughed. “We can always find you, kid. You’ve got your own personal LoJack. Which makes me wonder how you managed to hide out this long. Wherever you were, you should’ve stayed there.”
Hunting started walking toward us, his lackeys right behind him.
Lena squeezed my hand.
Oh my God. He was safe in the Tunnels. This is all my fault.
It’s Abraham’s fault.
John stood his ground. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Hunting.”
Hunting flicked his cigarette into the darkness. “It’s almost a shame I have to take you back. You’ve got a lot more fight in you when Abraham isn’t messing with your head. Does it feel any different to think for yourself?”
I flashed on John wandering like a zombie through the cave at the Great Barrier. He swore he didn’t remember what happened that night. Was it possible Abraham was controlling him then?
John froze. “What are you talking about?”
“Guess you haven’t been doing much thinking after all. Oh, well. You won’t miss it, then.” Hunting lowered his voice. “You know what I won’t miss? Watching you twitch all the time, like someone’s poking you with a cattle prod.”
John’s hands started to shake. “Shut up!”
I remembered the way John’s body used to jerk all the time. The way his muscles had seemed to seize involuntarily—the way it had gotten worse when he was with Abraham the night of Lena’s Seventeenth Moon. I hadn’t seen it happen once since we found him in Ridley’s room.
Hunting laughed. “Come over here and make me. Or we can skip the part where I beat some sense into you before I take you back.”
Link stepped up next to John. “So, tell me how it works. Is this like a regular fight, or do I need to use some kinda Jedi mind tricks I don’t know about?”
I was stunned. Link was clearly trying to even the odds. John looked as surprised as the rest of us. “I got this one. But thanks.”
“What are you—” Link never had a chance to finish.
John threw his hands out in front of him, the way Lena did when she was using her powers to tear up the ground or bring on torrential rain.
Or hurricane-force winds.
John was using Lena’s powers—the ones he absorbed the last time he touched her.
The wind picked up so fast that it knocked Hunting off his feet. The other two Incubuses were thrown backward, skidding across the parking lot at a speed that would result in serious asphalt burn. But Hunting ripped before the full force of the wind caught him.
He started to materialize a few feet away, but the wind pulled him back again.
“He’s still coming!” Liv screamed. She was right.
Lena pushed past me.
I have to help John. He can’t do it alone.
She threw her own hands forward, her palms facing Hunting. Lena’s powers were stronger than ever. And as unpredictable.
Rain poured from the sky as the clouds broke open.
No! Not now!
The rain hammered down on us—and the wind, which was dying down fast.
Hunting was dry, the rain running off his jacket in rivulets. “Nice trick, kid. It’s a shame Sarafine’s daughter destroyed the Order. If her powers weren’t so screwed up, you might’ve been able to save your ass.”
I heard a dog barking and caught a glimpse of Boo Radley running around the side of one of the cars.
Macon was behind him, rain running down his face. “As luck would have it, mine seem to be developing in quite an interesting manner.”
Hunting was as shocked to see Macon as the rest of us, but he did a good job hiding it. He lit another cigarette, despite the rain. “You mean after I killed you? It’ll be a pleasure to do it again.”
The members of Hunting’s pack had picked themselves up and crossed the parking lot the old-fashioned way. Now they were standing behind Hunting.
Macon closed his eyes.
Everything went quiet and still. Too still. The way it feels right before something horrible is going to happen. I wasn’t the only one who sensed it.
Hunting vanished, ripping through the shiny black sky—
As he materialized, inches from Macon, a pulsating green light enveloped us. The light hummed with power.
It was coming from Macon.
Hunting froze in the eerie green glow, his hand outstretched, canines bared.
“What is that?” Link was shielding his eyes.
“It’s light,” Liv said, transfixed.
“How can he create light?” I asked.
Liv shook her head. “I have no idea.”
The light grew brighter, and Hunting dropped to the ground, thrashing on the glowing concrete. An agonizing sound tore through him, like his vocal cords were shredding. The other two Incubuses were writhing on the ground, too, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Hunting.
The color started to leach out of him, beginning at the top of his head and moving down over his face. It was like watching a sheet being pulled off someone, slowly. But this sheet was a black mist, and as it moved down, his neck—and his hair, his skin, his empty black eyes—became almost translucent. It was happening to other members of his Blood Pack, too.
“What’s happening to them?” I don’t know if I was expecting an answer, but it was John who had one.
“They’re losing their power. Their Darkness.” I could tell from the panicked look on John’s face that he’d never seen this firsthand. “That’s what happens to Incubuses when they’re exposed to daylight.” I looked at John. It wasn’t affecting him.
“He’s really creating light,” Liv whispered.
John said something else, but I wasn’t listening anymore. I was staring at the other two Incubuses, who were translucent now. The Darkness had seeped out of them much faster. I watched as their bodies stiffened, like statues, their eyes fixed and lifeless. But that wasn’t the most disturbing part.
The black mist—the Dark power that had drained out of their bodies—was seeping into the ground.
“Where is it going?” Lena asked.
“The Underground.” John took a step back, as if he didn’t want to get too close to what he could’ve been. “Energy can’t be destroyed. It just changes form.”
I froze. The words replayed themselves in my mind.
It just changes form.
I thought about Twyla and the Greats and Aunt Prue. My mom and Macon.
I remembered the green glow of the Arclight.
The same light that was washing over us now. Had something happened to Macon within its walls? Had my mother changed him somehow? Remade the man she had loved and lost?
“What will it become?” Liv sounded frightened. John was actually telling her something she didn’t know.
The color had drained from Hunting’s body, all the way down to his hands. Macon hadn’t moved, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, like he was in the middle of a terrible nightmare.
John didn’t answer for a second. When finally he did, I wished he hadn’t. “Vexes.”
“Macon would never want to do that.” Liv was as shocked as I was.
John took her hand. “I know. But he doesn’t get to decide the way the universe operates, Liv. None of us do.”
“Oh my God.” Lena was pointing at the two Incubuses, now completely void of color. The air around them seemed to shift, but then I realized what was really happening. They were disintegrating. But they didn’t turn to ash, the way zombies and vampires in the movies do. The tiny pieces of them vanished, as if they had never been at all.
I heard Macon inhale sharply. This was draining him, too. I watched him fight to hold on long enough to finish off Hunting, but the light began to dim, until the black night swallowed up the parking lot again.
Hunting’s body dropped to the ground. He was moaning, dragging himself across the asphalt. His face and torso were still rigid and completely translucent.
Macon dropped to his knees, and Lena knelt down next to him. “How did you do that?”
Macon didn’t reply right away. When his breath sounded regular again, he answered. “I’m not entirely sure myself. But it seems I can channel my Light energy. Create light, for lack of a better explanation.”
John wandered over, shaking his head. “And I thought I was different. You give new meaning to Light Caster, Mr. Ravenwood.”
Macon looked at John, the hybrid who could stand in the sunlight. “In Light there is Darkness, and in Darkness there is Light.”
I heard the rip as Hunting disappeared, his body marked by the Light.
12.13
Tears and Rain
After what happened in the parking lot, Macon and Liv took John back down into the Tunnels, where he would be safe under the veil of Concealment Casts and Bindings. We hoped. There was no doubt Hunting would tell Abraham everything, but Liv wasn’t sure if he was strong enough. I didn’t ask if she meant strong enough to make it back to Abraham, or to survive at all.
Later that night, Lena and I sat together on the steps of her uneven porch, my body pressed into hers. I tried to memorize the way it fit perfectly with mine. I buried my face in her hair. It still smelled like lemons and rosemary. One thing hadn’t changed.
I tilted her chin up and pressed my mouth against hers. I wasn’t kissing her as much as I was feeling her lips against mine. I could have lost her tonight.
She leaned her head against my chest.
But you didn’t.
I know.
I let my mind drift, but all I could think about was what it had felt like without her last summer, when I thought I’d lost her. The dull ache that never went away. The emptiness. It was the same way Link must have felt when Ridley walked away. I’d never forget the look on his face. He was so broken. And Ridley, with those haunting yellow eyes.
I felt Lena’s mind churning even harder than mine.
Stop it, L.
Stop what.
Thinking about Ridley.
I can’t. She reminds me of Sara—of my mom. And look how she turned out.
Ridley’s not Sarafine.
Not yet.
I slid the corsage off her thin wrist. There it was. Her mother’s bracelet. My hand brushed against the metal, and the second it did, I knew everything that belonged to Sarafine was tainted. The porch started to spin—
It was getting harder and harder to keep track of the days. Sarafine felt as though she was in a constant fog, confused and detached from her everyday life. Emotions seemed beyond her grasp, floating on the periphery of her mind as if they belonged to someone else. The only place she felt grounded was in the Tunnels. There was a connection to the Caster world and the elements that had created the power running through her veins. It gave her comfort, allowed her to breathe.
Sometimes she spent hours down there, sitting in the small study Abraham had created for her. It was usually peaceful, until Hunting arrived. Her half brother believed Abraham was wasting his time with her, and he didn’t attempt to hide it.
“Here again?” Sarafine could hear the contempt in Hunting’s voice.
“I’m just reading.” She tried to avoid confrontations with Hunting. He was vicious and cruel, yet there was always a thread of truth in his words. Truth she tried desperately to ignore.