Her head jerked up, and translated Spanish spilled from her lips. “I killed him! I killed him! I don't know what—”
I pushed a packet of knowledge straight into her brain. The magic looped back through her system and shot from her skin into the boy's. He heaved forward, taking a deep, hacking breath. Her arms shot around him, and the magic flew more wildly.
I stared at them as they gripped each other. Siblings. A strange feeling worked its way up my throat.
Shadows emerged from the edges of the room, coiling inward and upward from the baseboards and floor like smoke. No. Choking sorrow turned to rage. I tore open the first shadow, and destroyed the second. The third smiled, opening its arms.
I flung the portal pad out and whipped it around the girl and her brother, then sealed the edge around me.
We landed in the same Second Layer Death Valley location I'd chosen previously. Magic, like anything else, diverted to the familiar by default.
Almost immediately, shadows rose from every direction.
I reached for the sibling pair. We’d go to the Third Layer, where the rocks joined the—
My hand hovered motionlessly in the air at the sight of them.
The boy was seizing, staring blankly at nothing while the girl shook him like she could stop his second death. Powerful magic swirled wildly around her. “Carlos, Carlos!”
I had made a dreadful mistake.
The boy was from the First Layer and he wasn't a mage. He didn't have the magic to mentally navigate a world drenched in it. Not without dedicated exposure.
I shot a bolt at the first diving shadow, then at the second. But this was the praetorians' playground, and they smiled manically as they shot into the sky, then dove again.
The boy couldn't survive the Second Layer, so he wouldn't be able to survive the Third—
The girl turned to me, desperate and angry. “Help m—”
I enveloped us again, dropping us into the busy emergency ward of a hospital in NYC.
I grabbed the girl before she could react and forcefully pulled her away. Immediately, the hospital staff started running to the boy spasming on the floor. An earthquake rumbled beneath our feet.
The girl strained toward her brother. “Let me go, let me g—”
“They’ll take you both, if I do. I’ll send someone to help your brother,” I said, already slamming Marsgrove with the request.
I folded us back to where I'd left Axer and Constantine in mainland China. They weren't there. A quick check said they were still in the First Layer, together, but now just to the southeast, in Taiwan. Greene and Ramirez were in Africa again.
“That's good,” I said out loud, blankly staring at the charred ground of the battle. “There are five—” I felt the light of one extinguish. “Four more, now,” I said numbly.
A little whine in the back of her throat was the only warning I had before the girl started sobbing. Heaving, world-ending sobs.
“Mine was like that, too,” I said, voice detached. I didn't bother asking her name, I just drew on Constantine’s magic and plucked it from her mind. “Rosaria. Huh. Rosaria and Carlos, R and C. Me too.”
“What?” she asked brokenly. “What are you—?”
“That's a good question,” Julian Dare said, appearing out of nowhere.
I stopped his net before it landed on me.
“I think not,” I said coldly.
“You are not in your right mind,” he bit out, eyes icy and calculating. “And the world suffers.”
I could see every atom of the world swirl around him, opening the universe's secrets to my view. “I am fully in my mind.”
I could pinpoint every single atom that I could use to bring him down if he tried to stop me.
“You need to be neutralized until we can use you.”
“You can try.”
He smiled and magic shot from him in a crystal-clear wave.
“Julian!” Marsgrove yelled, appearing out of nowhere and knocking aside whatever Julian Dare was attempting to do to me.
Magic shot sideways, and the skies cracked open.
“Get out of my way, Phillip.”
I didn’t wait to hear the argument as another of the Awakenings dimmed. My hand wrapped around Rosaria’s palm and I pulled the more overwhelming Awakening magic from her, fixed the sky, and folded us through space.
The feral in Niger was safe—Greene and Ramirez had triumphed—but the feral in Madrid was gone, confirming the dropped link in the chain. A body-shaped burn mark was the only thing left in a crater of white rock when I arrived.
No allies were at the tenth Awakening in Weber, New Zealand...but the Department wasn’t winning.
There was something a little...touched...in the Awakening boy's eyes. Like he hadn't lived in the real world for a long time and had no feeling for anyone who did.
The boy reached out for one of the hunters who came to close. The man's hand dropped, eyes going glassy.
“You are looking for a powerful leader to follow,” the boy said.
He reached over and touched me, and I could feel a connection trying to form—a silver blue line—stretching from the hunter to the boy to me, and through me to Rosaria.
I pushed gently at the connection to the man, pushing it away before it fully formed.
The boy—the name Samuel Bly whispered in the loosened connection—cocked his head. The hunter’s eyes were still unfocused, the thread shimmering in the air between them.
“That isn't the way I work,” I said softly. “We choose our connections.”
Samuel cocked his head to the other side. “He wants to make this connection. He just doesn't know it.”
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
“It will benefit you both. I can feel it in the way that you both feel. It will benefit the four of us.”
I looked at the powerful magic surrounding the boy. Muse magic manifested in a slightly different way, but there was a similarity to his. “I have a friend who can help you harness and control your magic and these feeli—”
Before I could complete the sentence, swirling figures moved into view. With a rush of adrenaline, I threw a shield around Samuel and shoved him into the Second Layer. Talking was for later.
Everything shuddered around me.
The Bogotá mage, the eleventh Awakening, had vanished. Taken between one breath and the next, another Department triumph.
In Taipei, I found Constantine and Axer.
Axer had twisted a protection field around the twelfth Awakening mage, who was staring at her hands, just like every feral seemed compelled to do. He adhered a device to her back and activated it. The petite girl disappeared to the pre-programmed destination. I didn’t know to where.
He took out two hunters, while Constantine incapacitated a third.
The book soared overhead, protecting them, like I knew it would. Guard Rock was actively darting between them, stabbing and twirling. Constantine’s cat and Axer’s paper guardians were pouncing and swooping.
With the girl gone, both Axer and Constantine seemed to relax a fraction, but they argued vehemently as they blasted magic at the dozen remaining hunters, and, occasionally, at each other.
“We need to find her,” Constantine said.