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  "I think it's happening," I said. "Xavier, we might want to leave."

  He smiled and grinned at me. "It's a good time.”

  The noises intensified. I couldn't see inside the circle, but I could still smell. The burnt sewage smell of Thoreau's form remained, but then a newer scent, a wood smoke one that marked a War Mage, joined in and merged with the other.

  I staggered back. My strength was returning, but would I be fast enough? Leon would roast us as soon as look at us. Allunna would help if she materialized here as well.

  But I grabbed Xavier's hand and we ran.

  I staggered once at the entrance to the tunnel, but we continued on, me guiding Xavier through the dark as his evil grandfather continued to take form behind us.

  Chapter Two

  "What have we done?" Xavier asked as he closed the hidden door to the underground.

  We both lay on the dust now, exhausted underneath the late night stars, as the last of the horrible stench vanished from my nose. Xavier's hat fell off the top of my head as I focused on a star right above. I didn't know the names of the stars, but the night sky was my friend. It meant the sun wasn't out to make me sick. It meant I didn't have to hide.

  I stretched my legs, which still felt somewhat like rubber. "I don't know," I said. "That rite drained me. I think I'm starting to feel better, but we need to walk and get as far from here as we can." I sat up, as much as my body wanted the rest. "I felt like everything was drained from inside of me for a moment."

  "Some of that was my fault," Xavier said.

  "All of it was your fault." We were changing the subject to our messed up relationship again. I knew Leon was right below us but I couldn't get off of this. Even though the dread feeling had been drained out of this place, it was still bringing out the worst in me.

  "Look, the kiss was a great thing to do at the time," he said.

  "Exactly," I said. "It was nothing more than that, so why did you spend the last few days suggesting it might be something more?"

  "It's complicated," Xavier said, standing. He stood right over the door now, which was disguised to look like dusty ground. Only one little notch in stone told a different story. Beyond him, the circular ruins of Gobekli Tepe spread out with the rings of T-pillars half excavated from the ground. I didn't see any tourists, but I heard distant speech. The tour group had escaped and all of them seemed to be sticking together. I wondered if they'd found the road that led back to the city. I just hoped no one else who was with the Dark Council found them or more scary rites would go on as planned, with or without me.

  "Okay. I get it. It's always complicated," I said. "It always will be. We'll settle it there. Now we need to leave before Leon emerges from the ground and kills us. Who knows if Allunna's with him?"

  I rolled up my sleeve to eye the fire mark on my wrist she had given me, the mark that promised a burning death if we didn't fulfill our promise to bring her back, and I was shocked to see bare, pale skin there. The mark had vanished as if some toll had been lifted. We had fulfilled our promise. This meant that Allunna lived again.

  Xavier watched me with interest. "What do you see?"

  "My fire mark is gone. That must mean Allunna is back to life. If she's not down here, she's somewhere out there."

  "Then we fulfilled our end of the bargain," Xavier said with a sigh of relief. "We're free from that until she finds us. There's a chance she came back with Leon down there and she might be below our feet, filling him in on all the details as we speak. I don't know much about resurrection spells. That was the first one I've heard of. The other thing that could have happened is her coming back where she died."

  "That's in the ATC building," I said.

  "Well, she has to be back. If Leon lives, she lives."

  "You explained the battle partner rules to me," I said, making myself sit up taller. I couldn't believe how tired and useless I felt. "We need to go." I didn't want to talk to Xavier anymore but it was inevitable. We had to spend time together.

  Kissing me was just a great thing to do at the time. I couldn't stop dwelling on that as we walked as fast as we could towards all the tourist traps. I stumbled a few more times. The distance seemed like so much. I tried to focus on any sounds around us. The bus driver I had bitten was still out there among the ruins, groaning and weak with pain. I couldn't feel any sympathy towards him anymore. He had roped tourists in to be killed and never heard from again. He could lie out there for a while, waiting for someone to find him. A big part of me wanted to go and stab him with my sword, but I held back. Getting out of here came first.

  The tourists' faint voices, in a myriad of languages, floated from the direction of the road. Xavier and I stopped once we stood between all the darkened tourist shops. Only a couple of orange lights burned by some back doors, providing just enough glow for me to see in color again. I sniffed the air, which was faint with the near-victims' dinners. They had been here minutes ago while Xavier and I were trying to resurrect pure evil. From here, I could see the parking lot.

  "Gaozu's limo is gone," I said. "The dragon emperor actually left. The bus is still there and the driver's still out in the ruins, groaning." That meant those tourists had no choice but to walk out of here. They hadn't heard the bus driver like I could.

  A dark look came over Xavier's face and he faced me. He had witnessed what I'd done and now he was reliving it. What did it matter now? I had ruined things by biting that guy in front of him, the same way I had ripped my family apart by biting Hannah in the second grade. It was just the way it was going to be for me. Even other Abnormals wouldn't fully accept me. Maybe it would make Trish happy that I was moving on from blood bags but I was screaming inside.

  "Then the bus driver might have keys," Xavier said. "It's miles and miles back to the city. We can't let those people walk through the dark the entire way there. Gaozu could snatch them at any second. He couldn't have gone far, either."

  "I'll go and get them," I said. "I think I can run now. Can you wait here?"

  I didn't pause for his answer. It was good to be away from Xavier, running across the hilly ruins and kicking up dust. I found the bus driver still lying there, deep in the ruins and clutching his neck. Now-dried blood caked around his wound. I sniffed. His scent was weaker now but still spicy and my stomach rumbled a bit again, but I wasn't going to drain him to death. Sweat had formed around his forehead and he breathed in a slow pattern like he was trying to calm himself down, to slow his pulse even though he was no longer bleeding.

  "Help," he muttered when his gaze landed on me.

  "Nope," I said. I should stab him so he couldn't hurt any more people. I had already killed one Normal who was helping the Dark Council. I could do it again, but right now, I just couldn't. This was my shame right here. Besides, if we were going to pick up those tourists, they wouldn't want to get on the bus with me once they saw my sword with fresh blood all over it. I already had some dried blood, both demon and Normal, all over the blade.

  So instead, I shuffled through the man's pockets until I found the keys I needed. I held them up as the guy swore at me in Turkish and I turned away, running until I met Xavier again at the tourist traps. By now, the tourists' voices had faded. They had made it quite far from the ruins. Those people were moving as fast as they could. It wasn't that I could blame them.

  "Great," Xavier said, smiling when I jiggled the keys.

  "The bus driver's still alive," I said. "We'll let the employees in the morning find him. I don't think he's going to die and they need to know that people have been sneaking around here."

  "Well, you're not a huge person," Xavier said. "You didn't need to take much from him."

  "Can we talk about something else?" I asked. "I know you're all freaked out at me, but we have another job to do."

  "Sorry, Alyssa. I wasn't freaked out. Well, I sort of was, but that was the shock of seeing you, well, never mind. It didn't change anything between us at all." He waved me towards the bus. "Come on."


  I wanted to say yeah, right. But we had Leon behind us somewhere. I hoped it would take the old man a while to emerge from the ruins and figure out what had happened. Allunna might even be close, too, but I didn't smell any demon yet.

  Xavier and I boarded the bus. It still held traces of peoples' scents. Apparently, the tourists had tried to start the bus because the driver's seat still held a trace of sandwiches. I got into the driver's seat and started the bus, which rumbled to life, even though I could hear some clicks and clunks under the hood that Xavier probably couldn't. "I think the ropers got this from a junkyard," I said.

  "I think you're right," Xavier said, standing there and running his hand along a ripped seat. "People like them don't deserve to live."

  I hadn't heard him so hateful in a long time. Or ever, for that matter. Xavier was sinking into one of his moods again. It might have just been me, but it seemed like it was getting more frequent. Something was wrong and he wouldn't tell me what.

  Maybe my biting the bus driver really hadn't had to do with things going bust.

  I struggled to figure out how to get the bus in gear. Once I did, turning and pulling out of the parking lot was the hardest part. The road was mostly smooth and I opened my window as I drove closer to the group of tourists, who were walking maybe a mile ahead of me. A woman looked back, tugged on a man's shirt, and started to run.

  "They think we're those guys," I said, speeding up. "Xavier, yell that we're here to help them, or something. I hope they understand us." I fumbled around and found the lever to open the bus door. It squeaked open and Xavier grabbed onto a railing, balancing on the steps.

  "Hey!" he shouted into the night. "We're not those goons. We'll take you back to the city."

  He kept shouting over and over as I drew closer to the tourists. Some were walking still as if too exhausted to go on and about half of them were running across the open, brown fields and into the night. There was nowhere to hide out here. I stopped the bus next to the old man, who looked up at me and Xavier with fear at first, and then incredible relief.

  "Get on," I said as Xavier stepped out of the way.

  The old man did, but not before he turned and shouted at the people in the dark in what sounded like French. We were the people who had freed them from that cage underground, after all. The old man succeeded in coaxing back the woman and the ten year old girl who had been the last out of the underground cell. The girl managed a smile at me, even though I still had my dirty sword sitting there, propped against my seat on the other side of me.

  I felt all warm and tingly inside. I had killed a man in front of these people and they weren't recoiling in horror. They must have known Xavier and I were Abnormals. I was a pretty small girl and that man I'd killed had been twice my size.

  And I had a bit of blood at the corner of my lip when I checked in the rearview mirror.

  Crap. I wiped it off with my sleeve (gross, I know) before anyone else got on the bus.

  "Not everyone is going to come over here until they see us," Xavier said. "We need to get out and look for people. We can't just leave them out here in the middle of the night in case Gaozu comes back."

  "At least we don't have Thoreau to worry about," I said, getting off the bus. I made a hand gesture that said to the three people already on that we'd be right back. The girl nodded as she sat towards the back of the bus. Maybe she was a Hannah and thought Abnormals were cool, even after nearly being killed by a couple of them.

  We had to rely on my vision to find the rest of the tourists who were out running along the hills. People had split up, which meant I had to run to catch up with everyone. Xavier and I came across a British couple first, who we could talk to and who helped us round up the rest of the tourists. It took forever, even with my enhanced movement speed, but at last, Xavier and I guided the last little group, a Brazilian family with two adult children, towards the bus where everyone was waiting. I could tell that they were leery of us. The mother kept looking at me the whole way back. I watched as they boarded and went as close to the back as they could before sitting. We might have saved them, but we were still Abnormals and they knew. Xavier and I waited outside the bus while they boarded. So far, so good.

  "That's more what I'm used to," I said as the mother glanced at me one last time before sitting.

  "I suppose you get that more than I do," Xavier said.

  "Well, you're human. You can go out and blend in so long as you don't do any magic."

  "True," he said. "We should do one last check out there to make sure we're not leaving anyone behind, or we're going to see a news story about someone who wandered around the Turkish countryside for a month, barely surviving."

  I held up my finger again to tell the people inside the bus that once again, we'd be right back. A man inside nodded at me and smiled. It was a mixed bag of reactions inside that bus, mixed prejudices. Not all Normals hated us but the haters were always there. Some of those people had boarded that bus because they were more scared of Gaozu and Thoreau than they were of us. They knew bad things were out there in the night--things even worse than me.

  Xavier and I turned away from the bus and climbed a hill. Now that we were away from the idling vehicle and its lights, my gray vision snapped back, showing me all the details of the landscape around me. I spotted several wooly lumps that were sheep about a mile away, sleeping beside a wire fence.

  "I don't see any more people," I said once we were at the top of the hill. "I think we have all the tourists. We should get them back to the city and see if we can find a way home."

  It was then that something very strange happened.

  My gut told me something was wrong right away. The stars were normally bright to me no matter what kind of vision I was using, but somewhere ahead, from the direction of the city, the sky was darkening. It wasn't a cloud, either: it was more like some rolling blackness, like a shadow in space that was moving across the sky and it was coming right towards us. A sense of dread crawled up inside of me. It reminded me of how it felt to have an army of Shadow Wraiths close to me.

  "Xavier...get down!" I grabbed his arm and pulled him to the ground.

  "What?" he asked once we had hit the dust.

  I dared to look up. The darkness spread across the sky, growing closer. It was big. No. Enormous. I watched as star after star vanished as the circular blob sailed right over us and continued on towards the ruins.

  "What is that?" Xavier asked, looking up. Even he could see it.

  "Another Dark Council member?" I managed once it had passed. The dread was beginning to clear from the air and I felt safe to stand. I watched as the darkness sailed away in complete silence, lowering towards the ruins...yeah, it might be a third Dark Council member. "The five of them were supposed to all meet there soon. I think we should get those people out of here. They probably even felt that."

  "Well, Leon's going to get a surprise," Xavier said, grinning.

  "This isn't funny," I said. "We're not even sure how the rite worked which is another reason we need to go." I grabbed his arm and we ran back towards the bus. I hoped we hadn't left anyone out here to wander around within miles of that. I got back into the drivers' seat and closed the door as Xavier stood next to me, holding onto a another seat. A glance back confirmed that everyone on the bus was uneasy as if they had sensed the presence sailing over. The old man had his head tilted back and he was staring at the ceiling. The girl was leaning on her mother and the Brazilian family was muttering amongst themselves.

  "Everyone," Xavier announced. "We're getting out of here."

  I smiled and waved to everyone. I switched gears and the bus lurched forward, clunking the whole way. Now that I was driving it, I noticed everything wrong, everything that could break down and leave us stranded. But the bus drove on, dim headlights illuminating the road ahead. I could spot tire tracks where the limo had passed right before us. Gaozu had departed. Leon's magic exploding all over had chased the ancient dragon off. I wondered why he hadn't stu
ck around, waiting to strike when we came out from the underground.

  The dread feeling faded the farther we got from the ruins. I spotted the lights from the city ahead that had the name that I still couldn't pronounce.

  "Alyssa," Xavier said. "We're going to need to get a flight back home."

  "I know," I said with dread. Flying would mean exposure to daylight at some point and the risk that we'd be discovered. We had left Xavier's jacket back in the ruins. I had nothing to cover myself with effectively unless we found something. "I'm not looking forward to it. The daylight is going to suck."

  "I agree," Xavier said. "It's not going to be easy. I carry a fake ID so that might help."

  Panic exploded in me when I realized that we had a big, big problem on our hands. In the last ten years or so, airports had ramped up security to keep Abnormals from getting in and out of the country in case they were plotting to hurt any Normals. It was mostly based on paranoia over groups like Beatrix's crime ring but I knew the new laws weren't going to make it easy on us.

  "We don't have any portals over here we can use," Xavier continued in a low voice.

  "That sucks. We have demon blood," I said, gesturing to my sword. "We could use one."

  "Don't wash that sword," Xavier said. "And besides, we need to save that demon blood."

  "For?" I asked before it hit me.

  "For the ATC portal," Xavier said. "The one that's going to lead to our parents. We might be able to get there now."

  "Oh."

  Dad. He was still trapped in the Infernal Dimension, asleep as far as I knew. Thoreau was no longer going to be there to stop us from using the portal. Xavier was right. We needed to save the dried demon blood on my blade. Demons weren't easy to kill or even to find. Sure, we could meet Allunna again, but she would be ready to take revenge on us. My fire magic wouldn't do any good against a demon. I wasn't even sure yet who it could or couldn't work on. Gaozu's minions had been immune, anyway.