Jessica Shirvington - Empower

‘Since when did she listen to any of us?’ he responded with a shrug.

I flashed Carter a tight-lipped smile, quickly climbed over the railing and jumped the ten metres to the ground, hoping I wouldn’t be seen by either the exiles or the other Grigori.

I landed hard on the concrete, jarring my knee, but moved quickly. Two exiles spotted me and came straight at me, their eyes alight.

I threw my blade at one and was in the air, somersaulting over the second and landing behind him with enough time to grab his head and snap his neck before he could turn away. I picked up my dagger from where the first exile had now vanished, spun and drove the blade through the other temporarily stunned exile, before dashing into the shadows. Catching my breath, I crouched and waited for the next exile to come close enough for me to deliver another silent, efficient attack.

In a battle zone, exiles forfeited their choices, and I took out five more the same way before the other Grigori even made it onto the far side of the basement level. I’d helped reduce the numbers a little but there was still work to be done. Turk, Milo and Gray leaped down from the upper level, the same way I’d done and I watched, my heart pounding, as each immediately engaged with their nearest exile.

Gray was an impressive fighter – fierce and unforgiving, the type who didn’t hesitate or slow for a second until the job was done. His style reminded me of … others. Turk was all brawn. He hit hard and got big results, whereas Milo was sneaky. He’d bring them in, bounce all around the place and then, in a flash, his blade would be in their neck; they never saw it coming.

Once they’d cleared the way, I waved them over to my dark corner.

‘Having all the fun, I see,’ Milo said, looking out at the rapidly increasing mayhem. ‘What’s that you got, five?’ he asked.

‘Seven,’ I corrected, keeping my eye on the exiles. The London Grigori were now in full swing and the exiles’ attention was broken between fighting each other and engaging with Grigori, effectively helping us gain the upper hand. I breathed steadily, moving further into the corner to get my bearings as I felt a familiar cold sweat run down the back of my neck. My eyes scanned the space anxiously. Something was wrong.

Gray settled beside me, also taking in the scene. My line of sight finally settled on the scaffolding hanging a couple of storeys above us. Clive and Annette were fighting two exiles. I watched the senior Grigori gain the upper hand, and my shoulders relaxed when I saw their blades, first hers then his, take down the exiles in a flash of colourful Grigori mist. Clive stood behind Annette, both of them looking out over the fight below to see where they were most needed next.

But my relief was short-lived.

The air left my lungs as I watched a man appear out of nowhere behind them; short, bald, wearing glasses and a light grey suit. In one hand was a briefcase I recognised. In the other, a long Samurai-style curved sword.

I opened my mouth to scream at Clive and Annette to turn around.

I was too late.

The sword moved fast and sure, impaling them both as its long blade was pushed through both their bodies from behind, piercing their hearts.

I saw Annette’s look of shock before her eyes glazed over, and though I could not see Clive’s face I saw his hand as he grabbed hold of Annette’s in his last living act, and they crumpled to the ground.

Suddenly his calculated eyes met mine. Like he’d known I was there. Like he’d known all along I was watching.

Like … the entire display had been for me.

The corner of his mouth twitched and he bowed his head before stepping back into the shadows.

‘What the hell was that?’ Gray asked, still beside me.

‘Throw me up!’ I yelled.

He didn’t hesitate, just cupped his hands and held them out. When I leaped into the hand-hold he used all his strength to catapult me high into the air. I landed on the balcony above, and ran towards Clive and Annette.

When I reached their motionless bodies, I looked around frantically, but he was nowhere to be seen. I dropped to my knees beside them, checking for their pulses. They were gone. No matter how much healing power I had, I couldn’t bring back the dead.

Carter, who’d stayed on the upper level, was the first to reach me.

‘Aw, hell, purple,’ he said, crouching beside me. ‘Are you hurt?’

I shook my head. ‘He killed them before they even knew he was behind them.’

‘You sure you’re not hurt? You look white as a ghost,’ he said. ‘These two friends of yours, or something?’

I shook my head again. But Carter was right. I had seen something that had me shaking for the first time in two years. Something a part of me had been waiting for every day since that night.

The exile who took my blood is back.

And he wanted me to know.

‘To live is not merely to breathe; it is to act …’

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When I’d packed up and left the city with Mum and Dad two years ago, I’d really had no idea what lay ahead. Other than the eternal war. Although I had thought we would make it work all together, it didn’t take long to realise that too much had happened.

I wasn’t the only one who’d changed.

We moved a lot, bouncing between half a dozen of Mum’s safe houses around Europe. Sometimes we travelled simply to go somewhere new, other times it was because I could feel that he was getting close.

Mum was no longer Grigori, and that meant a few things for us. First, while her experience and training methods offered me a lot of insight, she didn’t have the strength or durability she once had. Second, and most frustratingly for her, it seemed that, like angels who exiled, when she became purely human she gave up many of her memories. She was still able to recall the important things, like her partnership with Jonathan and many of the battles they’d encountered, but every now and then I would ask her a specific question and she would just go blank.

Every choice has a consequence and this was one of hers.

As for Dad, as great as it was for me to see him so full of life, he constantly struggled knowing what I faced and had to fight against when I went out at night.

And then there was the love thing.

I was so happy for them. I barely recognised Dad without the haunted, sad eyes that I’d only ever known. With Evelyn by his side, he relished each day. I was proud of them; that they had moved beyond all the obstacles and found their own private bubble filled with love and passion and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the needle that burst it.

So I left, telling them it was to do my job.

Mum agreed that it was probably for the best, that I needed to take the fight to the exiles. She believed that the battles ahead would come to me whether or not I sought them and it would be better to be ready. But really, it was Dad who understood the most. I knew he recognised the look in my eyes as something similar to what he, too, had once displayed.

After I left Mum and Dad in Switzerland, I spent six months drifting from city to city, picking up odd jobs and failing miserably to pay my way. So, when Josephine tracked down my unlisted number and texted me with an offer of a paid-on-the-side job – fighting two exiles in Prague – I took it.

Since then, in return for her promise to keep our dealings private, I took the odd job when she didn’t have local Grigori in place.

For a while it worked well enough. I was alone, the way I had to be, and always ready to move on – something I had to do often. As soon as I felt him closing in, I’d bail. And that first year it was really difficult, he was so persistent. There were times I only just managed to skip town before he reached me. But I kept moving, even when it felt like I was pushing through almost-set concrete, determined to keep my distance. I couldn’t trust myself to slip up even once. No matter how much I wished I could look into his clear green eyes – the only place I’d ever found myself – one more time.