The Golden Tower (Magisterium #5)(51)

“You didn’t defeat me,” Call said. “The Magisterium tied me up, not you.”

“No one cares about technical details!” Alex yelled. “No one cares about the real story. Do you think people cared about the fact that Constantine loved his brother or that his mother loved him? No, because that’s boring. And they won’t care how easy the Magisterium made it to kill you either. They will just care that I did it.”

“But not Tamara, right?” Kimiya said. “She’s my sister.”

Alex hesitated. “She’s loyal to my enemy, Kimiya.”

“Perhaps we kill the two boys and lock the girl in the dungeon,” said Anastasia soothingly.

“This place has a dungeon?” said Jasper.

“Of course it has a dungeon,” snapped Alex. “And don’t speak unless I speak to you, deWinter. You should have been loyal to me. Your father was loyal to Master Joseph.”

“My father was wrong,” Jasper said quietly. Call stared. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Jasper say that before.

“I told you not to speak!” Alex yelled.

“Or you’re going to do what?” said Jasper. “Kill me?”

“Enough,” said Call. “Maybe nobody has to die. Maybe we could make some sort of deal.”

“No deals, Hunt,” Alex said. “This time you don’t have anything I want. I don’t care about bringing people back from the dead. I care about power. And I care about revenge.” He grinned. “I want you to line up in front of me,” he said, and the black stars in his eyes were glowing like pinpricks. “First Tamara. Then Jasper. Then you, Call. I’m going to kill you in that order, and you’re going to watch your friends die, Makar.”

“You said you wouldn’t hurt Tamara!” Kimiya shrieked.

“I changed my mind,” said Alex, raising his hand. It was shimmering with dark light, a halo of blackness around his fingers.

Kimiya darted away from him, reaching for the matchbook with shaking hands.

Alex whirled toward her, smoke wreathing his hands. Call turned to look at Tamara and Jasper, both of them pale, but they shook their heads at him as if to say, Not quite yet.

“Just what are you doing?” Alex demanded of Kimiya.

“I was just …” Kimiya said, but then her words seemed to run out. She backed away from Alex’s approach, clearly terrified. The matchbook dropped out of her hands.

“You’re really going to betray me?” Alex demanded. “Me? Who was going to save you from your boring old life?”

“This isn’t what you said it would be like,” Kimiya said. “You never told me you were going to hurt people.”

“So you conspired against me? With these losers?” Alex shook his head. He lifted his hand, and a bolt of chaos grew from his palm; Tamara flew at him, abandoning the pretense of having bound hands. He swung his arm with the strength of chaos, flinging her aside, and Call’s hands flew apart, too, rage filling him — how dare Alex touch Tamara? How dare he threaten his friends?

He was still summoning chaos inside himself when Alex let fly a bolt of black fire. It shot straight at Kimiya.

Chaos exploded from Call’s hand at the same moment. The two forks of dark lightning met in the air. Neither dissolved, though. They slammed into each other and ricocheted into the wall of the tower, blowing the stone to powder.

“Whoa,” said Jasper. Call agreed. The chaos had smashed through rock, metal, and glass, and now there was a truck-size hole in the wall of the tower. On the other side of the hole, Call could see the field in front of the tower. The wall of chaos fire was dying down, though it looked like the mages still couldn’t cross it. A lot of them were gaping up at the tower, though, a few pointing and gasping.

Then Automotones’s massive metal face filled the space. Kimiya screamed. Tamara reached for her sister and yanked her down onto the ground. The acorn skittered from her hand. Jasper knocked the bottle of water out of his pocket and it hit the floor, leaking water everywhere. Call pulled the whistle from his pocket, gripping it tightly in his hand.

Anastasia leaned down and seized the matchbook.

Alex turned toward Call, his smirk plastered back on. “Oh, so you thought you were going to fight me! That’s why you came here willingly. The Magisterium and the Assembly are going to pay for setting me up, but you’re going to pay first.”

“Am I?” said Call.

“I am chaos!” Alex shouted. “I have become the void!”

“Oh, shut up,” said Call. “No one’s interested.”

Alex gaped at him. Call couldn’t help it. He’d started to grin. Because behind Alex, Alastair was swirling into being, air coalescing to form his towering shape. Havoc barked as Lucas rose out of the puddle on the floor, shimmering and silver. And from Tamara’s smashed acorn, Greta emerged, a river of dirt and earth reaching upward.

“What is this?” Alex whirled around, raising his hand again. He stared in disbelief. “They’re Devoured. But why are they here? Why are you here?”

“Anastasia,” Call called. “Strike a match!”

Her pale eyes turned to him, her expression strange.

Mom. You were supposed to say “Mom,” Aaron reminded him, but it was too late. Call hadn’t and now she knew he’d been lying to her.