Michelle Krys - Hexed

An involuntary shudder passes through me. “I get it,” I say. I stagger to my feet and push my sweat-dampened tendrils away from my face, sweeping my gaze around the room. Where are they?

Leo tips his head to the side. “Looking for your friends?”

“She doesn’t have to look far.” Bishop sits at a table with his feet up on a chair. He plucks a grape from a tray on the table and pops it into his mouth. And the fact that he isn’t panicked at the sight of a huffing dragon not twenty feet away makes my shoulders relax a tiny bit.

“Give us the Bible and we won’t kill you.” Jezebel enters through the kitchen doors doing her confident, swaying walk.

Leo speaks without even turning to face them. “I think it was you who once said that the one with the knife gets to make the rules. Well, I think the same principle applies here, with the dragon.”

“You think we’re scared of your crappy dragon?” Jezebel throws her head back and laughs.

Speak for yourself, Jezebel.

Leo nods. “Fair enough. But maybe one of my talented colleagues can summon more impressive magic for you. Shall we see?”

The double doors burst open, and men and women clad in suits almost as severe as their expressions file into the room. Ten. Twenty. Thirty …

A chill passes over me, despite the heat and sweat soaking the air inside the Athenaeum.

If Leo can summon a dragon on his own, I don’t want to know what dozens of sorcerers can do together. The Family—where is the Family?

Bishop stands.

“Oh, not so confident anymore?” Leo laughs. As if on cue, the dragon stomps closer to me, rattling dishes off the tables. It paws the air between us. I yelp and leap back, its claws narrowly missing my face.

Leo perches on the end of a table on the opposite side of the dance floor from Bishop. “Just quit being so damn stubborn, Indigo, and break the spell.”

I look to Bishop for direction. He nods at Jezebel, and not an instant later, they both materialize in front of me. Jezebel holds a hand skyward, and the roof of the Athenaeum blows out in a mass of white stucco shards and red cloth.

“Hold on tight.” Bishop grabs me around the middle, and the three of us dart straight up through the ragged hole in the roof, a storm of debris falling around us. We zip high into the cold air above the clouds, and I don’t bother pointing out that I can fly now, not wanting to test my brand-new skills when the Athenaeum is now just a white speck in the darkened cityscape below, and the hundreds of high schoolers milling around outside look as tiny as ants. A homecoming they’ll never forget.

Now that we’ve escaped, the full weight of reality hits me: we failed. My plan failed epically. Not only did we not get the Bible back, or kill Leo, or defeat the Priory, but I exposed witches to the public, ruined homecoming for my peers, and destroyed a city monument. I don’t even want to think about the consequences.

“At least we got out!” Bishop yells over the wind, as if sensing my disappointment and shame. He squeezes me tighter.

“Spoke too soon!” Jezebel yells. She nods behind her.

It’s so far away that at first I think it’s a bird. But it’s fast, really fast, and it’s not long before I can clearly see the veined wings of the dragon snapping up and down against the twilight sky.

“Oh hell!” Bishop shouts.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself!” Jezebel yells.

“What are we going to do?” Bishop asks.

No one speaks, the dragon’s flapping wings—growing louder and louder—reminding us that every second counts.

“Follow me.” Jezebel plunges down suddenly, like a pelican diving for fish. Bishop grips me tighter and follows suit. I’d always thought he didn’t hold back any of his power when flying with me in tow, but now I know that he did—a lot. Because the speed at which we descend toward the ground knocks the breath out of me. Yet, by the time we reach the ground, Jezebel is already lifting up a manhole cover. She tosses it aside like it weighs no more than a penny, and a dank, mildewy smell similar to wet clothes left to dry in a washing machine wafts up.

Reading my mind, Jezebel says “Ew” and pinches her nose. Then, without even crouching down, she drops into the dark hole, only a splashing noise to indicate that she’s landed.

“Jezebel.” My hair hangs around my face as I grip the sides of the hole and peer inside, but it’s too dark; I don’t see anything.

“Hurry up, it’s coming.” Bishop pushes my back.

I do a shoulder check and find the dragon fast approaching, cutting across the star-specked sky at an alarming rate. The fear that had gripped me earlier comes surging back like a jolt of electricity. I kick off my heels and take a leap.

The bottom is farther than I anticipated, and needles of pain shoot up my legs as I splash-land into calf-deep water. I buckle to my knees, hands braced against the gritty-yet-slimy bottom of the sewer for support, shuddering as I consider all the things that could be making the water slimy.

“Out of the way!”

Not a second later, there’s another splash as Bishop leaps into the hole after me, and then a quiet pop as the same taper candle we used for summoning lights up Bishop’s face and the faded redbrick walls behind him. “Come on.” He snags my arm, and we noisily slosh through the muddy water, the heavy, wet taffeta gown sucking against my legs, tripping up my steps despite its short length.

We make it only feet away from the hole we dropped through when a thundering boom shakes the walls. I scream and clutch Bishop’s arm, and he presses my head protectively against his chest. The echoes of the boom still resonate when it is replaced by a squealing roar so high-pitched it makes my ears ring. A taloned paw reaches into the sewer and angrily claws around left and right.

“Quit cuddling and run!” Jezebel yells, waving us toward her from her spot just inside the circle of light cast by the flickering candle.

Bishop pulls me farther into the narrow, snaking bowels of Los Angeles County. The dragon doesn’t follow—can’t follow—but I’m smart enough about the workings of the Priory to know that doesn’t mean we’re safe.

Almost as soon as I have this thought, I become aware that the cold, thick water that was licking my ankles not too long ago now reaches to my knees.

“The water’s rising!” Hysteria breaks my voice, thoughts of drowning in a sewer constricting my throat.

The others don’t respond, as if they noticed already and didn’t want to scare me.

Jezebel’s boots splash three feet ahead of us, leading the charge. “Just keep running,” she says between struggles for air. “We’ll get out at the next sewer cover.”

But it’s kind of hard to run underwater. The cold liquid rises up around the tops of my thighs, an awkward depth too high to run in and yet too shallow to swim in, and I have to lift my legs higher and higher to make any headway. Jezebel’s three-foot lead becomes twenty, and I gasp and struggle for air. Even tyrannical hellish cheerleading training under Bianca’s regime has left me unprepared for this task.

“I don’t get it.” Jezebel’s voice breaks up with obvious exhaustion. She slows to a jog, then stops, doubled over and panting. “Why wouldn’t the Family have helped? They promised. It doesn’t make sense. The Priory has the Bible. Why wouldn’t the Family send everyone they’ve got? It’s their own lives on the line.”

It doesn’t make any sense to me either, and I can tell by Bishop’s silence that he’s thinking about it too as he sucks in big gulps of air.

“Come on, we have to keep moving.” Jezebel pushes up and breaks into a sloppy jog again.