Mystic City (40 page)

Thomas shakes his head. “What the—”

“Too hot for you, Foster?” Hunter calls, smirking.

They keep at this for a few more minutes, circling, weaving
through other mystics and men—they clearly have eyes only for each other.

“Come on!” Thomas screams.

Hunter leaps over a fallen body, and I watch as his shield begins to flicker.

The green light pulses for a moment, then disappears entirely.

Hunter has a shocked expression on his face. Thomas uses the opportunity to shoot at him, but his gun’s magazine is empty. He calmly ejects it and inserts a fresh one.

Hunter closes his eyes and holds out his hands and the shield appears again, surrounding him like a bubble. But then it fades.

He’s getting tired. He won’t be able to keep this up for long.

“Don’t have much left, do you?” Thomas teases, his lips curled in a smirk.

Hunter’s shield disappears again; he tries to revive it but can’t. Thomas laughs heartily.

In the distance, I can see my brother fighting a female mystic. I can’t see my father, but I don’t imagine he’d get into the heart of a battle.

I try not to call attention to the fact that I’m still alive until I can figure out my next move.

“Nowhere to run now, mystic,” I hear Thomas say to Hunter, whose face is awash with fear. Thomas has him up against a wall, his gun pointed at Hunter’s forehead. My beautiful, courageous Hunter—I have to save him. I have to help him.

I glance next to me, where one of my father’s men has fallen, eyes closed, dead. In his grasp is a machine gun. If I can do this
right, I’ll have a moment—one moment—to grab the gun and fire, taking Thomas down. If he sees me first, he’ll shoot me. And then he’ll shoot Hunter.

I can’t fail.

I take a breath, mentally preparing for what I have to do.

One, two, three
, I count in my head. Then I’m off.

I grab the neck of the machine gun, prying it from the dead man’s hands. The weapon comes to me easily, as though I’m supposed to be holding it.

Then I jump up, pointing the barrel of the gun at Thomas’s back. I don’t want to kill him, but I have to. He’s certainly not going to show any pity—if I wait any longer, I’ll lose Hunter.

“Stop!” I scream. Confused, Thomas turns around to see me. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, I close my eyes and pull the trigger.

The sound is deafening.

I don’t let go until the kickback from the weapon makes me drop it. Water soaks my hair and face, but Thomas has fallen beside me, his eyes open in surprise.

Suddenly, the earth around me begins to shift.

“Aria,” Hunter says. His face is covered in dirt and sweat, but he’s never looked more beautiful to me. “We’ve gotta get out of here. They’re setting off a bomb.”

I spit out murky brown water. “Who?”

“Your father’s men—I heard him talking about it. Come on.”

Hunter grabs my arm, and I’m able to bring myself to my feet.

My eyes land on Patrick Benedict, who is soaked with blood and gore, a gun strapped to his chest. He is farther down the tunnel,
where the ground has yet to be flooded, his feet on the bottom rung of a ladder.

He leans down and places both of his hands on the ground.

Immediately, the dirt goes soft, like quicksand, and begins to boil. His touch causes it to stir and flow, emanating a soft yellow glow.

A dozen or so of my father’s men plunge into the liquefied ground up to their waists. They scream in shock. When Benedict withdraws his hands, the ground goes solid again.

Their screams end abruptly.

I realize it’s because they’re dead.

He looks at me triumphantly. Then I see Elissa come up from behind.

She points her gun.

And shoots.

The bullet hits Benedict in the back of the head, and he falls off the ladder, plummeting to the ground.

Water is spilling out a side tunnel now, washing over the bodies, and Benedict gets swept away and vanishes beneath the cloudy currents.

Then there’s an incredible blast.

The ground trembles.

Tunnel walls begin to fold in on themselves.

The catwalks twist and bend, screeching as they snap. Ladders drop into the water. Chunks of the ceiling begin to fall like deadly rain.

Everyone is screaming. Shouting.

“Come on,” Hunter says to me. Turk is there, too.

“But Benedict—”

Hunter shakes his head. “We have to go, Aria. Now.”

He pulls me back into the passageway and we head toward the platform where we came in. The catwalks are no longer useable, so we slosh through the water, trying to reach safety before the underground fills and collapses completely.

There are no winners here.

I spit water from my mouth, wipe it from my eyes.

Violet Brooks—the mystic hope—is dead
.

Hunter grabs my hand, pulls me up the flight of stairs onto the platform.

Patrick Benedict is gone
.

The ground is covered with bodies. For a moment I fear I’ll be swept away. Hunter and Turk find my arms.

I killed Thomas
.

I close my eyes, letting the crowd carry me away.

The streets are full of sirens. Before I can get my bearings, Hunter pulls me onto a side street, out of sight; we stand underneath a dark awning, trying to make sense of everything that’s happened, while Turk helps tend to a group of injured mystics.

What’s left of my clothing is soaked, and Hunter’s skin is cold and clammy. He rests his head against mine, taking me into his arms and trying to warm me.

“The secret tunnels,” I manage to say. “They’re ruined.”

“Shhh,” Hunter tells me, “don’t worry. Aria, we’re alive.” He presses his lips to my ears. “You and me. Together. Nothing else matters right now.”

I fall silent, listening to the sound of our breathing. The air is hot, but it’s still a welcome change from the misery of the tunnels. I feel my locket against my chest and think of everything Hunter and I have been through. He’s right—the backlash of what just happened is something we’ll have to deal with for the rest of our lives.

I pull Hunter’s face to mine. Even though he tastes of blood and tears and sweat, I don’t want him to stop kissing me. And then I start crying—because he’s here. With me. After all this, even with what we’ve fought for in jeopardy, we still have each other.

It’s raining again, and the falling drops mix with my tears until I can’t tell one from the other. I may not have my family, but I have my memories.

And then I feel my knees go weak. “Hunter,” I gasp as I feel a shooting pain in my side. He pries his lips from mine, staring at me with a look of pure concern.

“Aria?” he says softly, scared.

“I love you,” I tell him.

Hunter sweeps me into his arms just as the world seems to close around me.

• EPILOGUE •

I wake in a world swathed in white.

But that’s just the sunlight on the white walls and the sheets and the bleached tile floor. A plastic bag filled with liquid hangs from a stainless steel hook; a tube runs from it into my arm, secured with a piece of clear tape.

To my right is a set of windows, and below the windows is a chair. In one of them is Hunter.

He’s asleep, his head tilted back and sideways. He looks tired and yet still so gorgeous despite his injuries: his bottom lip is swollen, the bruises beneath his eyes green and purple. The slash across his forehead has begun to fade. Otherwise, he seems fine, dressed in a clean T-shirt and jeans.

I lie there for a few minutes, watching him. He must sense that he’s being stared at, because his eyes flutter open. He yawns and stretches his arms toward the ceiling.

Then he smiles.

“You’re awake.” He rises from the chair and comes to my side. Gently, he takes my hand in his.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“We’re upstate. Outside the city. Turk and I smuggled you here three days ago.”

“Three days?” I repeat. The last thing I remember is coming out of the tunnel, kissing Hunter, then … nothing.

“You were hit by a beam of mystic energy,” Hunter tells me. “It should have killed you—and would have—if not for this.” He reaches over to a table beside the bed. Then he holds out the locket in his palm, tapping the silver heart with one finger. “Lucky for you, it’s a capture locket, and it caught the beam and saved your life.”

It’s tarnished now. Black. But I don’t mind. So much has come to be because of this locket. It’s so small, and yet in every way that matters, I’m here because of it.

“Having all that energy so close to your heart, well … it took a toll on your body,” he says. “You’re going to be all right, though.”

“What about everyone else?” I ask, remembering things I saw. “I thought Benedict—”

“He’s dead,” Hunter says softly.

“Elissa?”

Hunter shakes his head. “She made it out.”

I think about how many others must have died, both mystics and humans. Thomas, who I shot. I don’t even realize I’m crying until Hunter rubs my hand. “This is a war for our freedom, Aria. It comes at a high price.”

“Your mother …” I say tentatively.

Hunter clenches his jaw. “She’s dead, too.”

“Oh, Hunter,” I say, sitting up and pulling him into a hug. “I’m so sorry.”

He lets me hug him for a moment, then pulls away. The news of his mother makes me think of my own mother, my own family, and wonder if they are alive. “Now that you’re up and I know you’re okay, I have to go back.”

“To Manhattan?”

He nods. “It’s up to me now to carry on the Brooks legacy. I have to take my mother’s place. No matter what happens now—whether the election still takes place, whether your family uses the explosion in Times Square to clamp down on the mystics even more—people are counting on me.”

“I know,” I say. “But why does it have to be you?”

“Aria,” Hunter says in a soothing voice. “I don’t want to upset you. I love you. But this is my duty. You understand, don’t you? It doesn’t mean we have to be apart forever.” He grasps my hand. “Just for now.”

I look away from him, at the IV and its slow
drip, drip, drip
.

“No,” I say at last. “You’re going to need help. I should come back to Manhattan with you and support you—publicly.”

Even though he tries to hide it, a tiny smile breaks out on Hunter’s face.

“Not a bad idea.”

“I’ll expose the sham of my relationship with Thomas,” I say, figuring it all out in my head. “I’ll go on TV and tell everyone what my parents did, and why we shouldn’t let them remain in power.” I think of the engagement ring still on my dresser and what it stands for. “I’ll expose all their evildoings.”

“I appreciate the offer,” Hunter tells me, running a finger down
my cheek, “but the risks are too great. What if you got hurt? I couldn’t live with myself.”

“This is what I was meant to do,” I say, and for the first time, it seems true. I’ve never known what I wanted to do with my life—I never really had to decide. But now I know.

With Hunter by my side, I will fix things. Heal the wounds my family has inflicted. Fight for love and truth and freedom.

My father was right about one thing. Manhattan is my city.

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS •

Thank you:

To everyone at Random House Children’s Books, especially Françoise Bui, for her fierce insight and support, Colleen Fellingham, Kenny Holcomb, and the incomparable Beverly Horowitz.

To my parents, Elizabeth and Steven Malawer, my family, and my friends, especially Blair Bodine—who encouraged this novel when it was just an idea on a train to Boston—Kate Berthold, Julia Alexander, Anna Posner, Nic Cory, and my sister, Abby, who has always been my biggest fan. Special thanks to Ruth Katcher, Paul Wright, Dan Kessler, and Bronwen Durocher for their early reads and thoughtful comments. To Stephanie Elliott for seeing a spark in the darkness, and to Christopher Stengel for his design ingenuity.

To Michael Stearns, for being a tireless thinker, a brilliant teacher, and a wonderful friend. Your sense of story and language brought
Mystic City
to life. This book simply would not exist without you.

And lastly to Josh Pultz, who is—above all—a true peach.

RENEGADE
HEART

A
MYSTIC CITY Novel, Book II

Summer 2013
Delacorte Press

About the Author

Theo Lawrence was born in 1984 and is a graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School. A Presidential Scholar in the Arts for Voice, he has performed at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center as well as Off-Broadway. He is pursuing a master’s degree in literature at Fordham University and lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. His apartment is full of pictures of dachshunds.