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Another hellcat got in my way, and I dispatched it almost without a thought. Then I skidded on my knees to Jax’s side. He was breathing, that was the first thing I noticed. When I put my fingers to his throat, his pulse beat reassuringly against my fingertips.
Was this what Jax had felt when I fell into the trench? I didn’t know how he’d functioned afterward. My entire body shook with the adrenaline crash.
“He’s alive,” I called to Hudson, who fought to protect my back.
“Then kill something so he stays that way,” Hudson gritted.
I got back to my feet just in time to see two hellcats charge him at once. I bowled over one with a giant chunk of rock, but it recovered quickly, dancing out from under it with the grace only a cat could manage.
It snarled and snapped at me, but Hudson shot a ball of flame at it, and I finished it off. By the time I turned around, he was already beside Jax, examining his wound without moving his body.
“It’s not as bad as I thought,” Hudson said, “but he’s going to need a healer ASAP.”
Hudson’s head snapped up as we both felt Mel draw a massive amount of magic from our reservoir. As long as some remained, Jax would self-heal thanks to his vampiric nature. But if Hudson believed he needed a healer anyway, that meant it was more serious that he let on. And if teleporting us used up all our magic before he got to a healer…
To complicate things, Mel might kill Ty and close the portal at any moment. She loved us, but she wouldn’t let fear over our wellbeing stop her. She’d already proven she was willing to sacrifice her own lover to save his immortal soul — what she thought she’d been doing by killing Ty before.
To save the world? Or at least a city? Three lives were nothing in comparison. Mel could do the math, and she wouldn’t hesitate to follow through. We needed Jax to teleport us all out of here.
“One of you has to make it happen,”Tempest’s eerie voice only amplified my panic.
“Wake up, Jax.” I urgently patted his cheek.
“One of us has to do it,” Hudson breathed, his eyes widening in a unique kind of terror.
“It’s his circle,” I said. Witches could only use their own circles, not anyone else’s. At least, that was the way it had always been before.
“You saw Mel use the telekinesis circle Jax created back at the house,” Hudson insisted. “Our magic is combined now. We’re all the same, all able to wield each other’s magic. The circle will recognize you and let you channel magic through it.”
Hudson and I were both double elementalists. We’d never used arcane magic like teleportation. So I wasn’t about to let him foist this responsibility on me.
“You’re his brother,” I told Hudson. “You’re more—”
He shook his head. “No, you’ve probably seen him teleport more than I have. Back when you were both still in training?”
Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn’t. But either way, one of us had to do this. If both of us tried, we’d probably end up with our heads separated from our bodies as the conflicting magic tore us apart.
Mel yanked on our magic reservoir again, which told us we were out of time.
“Let’s get out of here.”
I picked up Jax in a bridal carry, hoping that maybe the contact with him might somehow ensure the magic did what I told it to do.
“Gather closer,” Hudson told the spirits. Their mournful gazes held too much hope when they looked at me. Tempest came to stand between me and Hudson.
“Wake up, Jax,” I whispered my final plea, but he was limp in my arms.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and imagined the house where Mel had healed me with her blood. The house she’d fought in front of naked, defending her coven-mates from a hellbull. The house where I’d fallen for her. I would teleport us in front of that house. Somehow.
“Hurry. Mel needs us,” Hudson urged as another wave of magic surged out of our reservoir.
His words distracted me. If that was true, then teleporting us in front of that house wouldn’t do us any good. We’d be too far away from Mel to help. But the rest of the land between the wall and the new threshold was so featureless, I wasn’t sure I could visualize one particular place well enough to land us all there.
Unless… I remembered Jax playing with my earth magic moments after we’d agreed not to use each other’s magic. He’d smoothed out the ground so Mel didn’t have to jump down the small drop off. Hopefully that would be distinctive enough for me to teleport us there and be close enough to help Mel if she needed it.
A real teleporter might have warned everyone that he was about to send them hurtling through space and time before he took their lives in his hands. But if I accidentally killed us all, I wanted it to be quick and painless. So I said nothing as I shaped my intentions into reality using nothing but Jax’s magic.
The magic circle glowed bright green around us, and the dread in the pit of my stomach turned to elation just before the world lurched out of place.
