Within These Walls

Life After Dark: 21 (WTW Sequel)

It takes the rest of the team twelve long minutes to get to us. We walk over to a nearby underground parking lot for privacy, and the whole way Janie rants about wasted opportunities and the importance of recovering our captured team members instead of taking on a potentially unstoppable enemy. Her cheeks are glowing pink by the time Willow and the others jog up to us in the stairwell, and the flash in her amber eyes dares anyone to argue with her.

Well, I dare.

"Janie, come on," I say, my voice loud and hollow in the concrete and glass stairwell. "It looks like Adam is safe, or he wouldn't be walking around out there with Alec. I'm betting the others are okay, too. We'll have plenty more run-ins with Gardiner, but how often are we going to get the chance stop the mastermind behind the human Blanks?"

"What makes you so sure we even can?" she retorts.

"Hermes wouldn't have brought us here if it wasn't a possibility." As much as I don't know the guy, as much as I hate his cloaks of ambiguity and deflection, I believe this wholeheartedly now that I remember our months of stilted dialogue.

"How did they find us?" Willow asks.

"I told them to come," Jones answers in a barely discernible whisper.

We all turn to him in silent shock as he sits on the top stair above us, his arms wrapped tightly around his parka-clad torso. Jones has never been the bravest kid among us, but this level of terror, the quaking knees and pale face and shifty eyes, isn't reminiscent of his usual freak-outs. He normally covers up his fear with false bravado and sarcasm, but he's not even pretending to be okay.

Marcus acts first. In two seconds flat, he's made it up to where Jones is sitting and has picked him up by the front of his jacket, slamming his back into the wall in a move that almost shakes the stairwell. The other boy, only a few inches smaller, groans with pain, then his eyes widen as he finds himself staring at Marcus's lethal expression.

"I'm sorry!" he squeaks. "You have to understand—I was trying to do the right thing!"

Marcus rocks him against the wall. "What did you do?"

"Stop!" I yell, unable to watch anymore. "Please let him go, Marcus."

I know he's not capable of thinking when he gets in these destructive moods. He's a fuse that's seconds away from being lit by Jones' careless words, and I can't let him make the mistake of blowing up all over the scared kid. Especially knowing how much he'll regret it later.

I reach them and pull at his shoulder insistently. He drops Jones, but he's not ready to let go of his darkness. It's no surprise to me when he spins toward me like I'm a new opponent and his obsidian eyes threaten to cut me down to the bone. But there's more on his face, emotions I couldn't see before because I was missing an understanding of his nuanced expressions. Emotions I couldn't see because I didn't know our history.

Need, fear, betrayal, longing—it's all right there in front of me, slivers of light breaking through cracks in his hard countenance, whether he wants them to or not. This is what's in his heart, and the knowledge nearly brings me to my knees.

I meant everything to him. I know that now better than I ever did, even then. My steady calm soothed the unfettered rage curled inside him like a waiting serpent, and my compassion convinced him of his own humanity. He paid me back by giving himself to me wholeheartedly, without question. He trusted me in a way I didn't dare trust even Sam, and what did I do in return? I took his love and trust and fashioned them into a spear that I delivered into his heart.

"What happened, Jones?" Willow says in a soft and understanding way.

Willow's question breaks some of the tension, and I breathe easier when Marcus scowls less murderously at Jones. Jones focuses on her with pleading eyes like she's his lifeline. "I texted Adam. I—I know we talked about how Gardiner most likely confiscated it, so I knew they'd be listening." He sticks his hands in his armpits to contain his tremors. "There's something seriously wrong here. Every cell in my body is telling me we shouldn't be here."