“Just let him go, witch,” Erik ordered, his gun still trained on them. “You’re surrounded. There’s no where to go. Let the kid go—he has nothing to do with this.”

“HA!” the witch barked a derisive laugh into Alexander’s ear. “Go ahead hunter.” He moved his hand closer to Alexander’s face. “You and your buddies better back off, or the kid’ll get a face-lift before his date with the barbecue!”

At this, Alexander sucked in a breath. The heat was intense and he could see his bangs starting to curl as they burned. “Y-you’re going to kill me anyways, aren’t you?” he said finally.

“Oh how cute, the kid gets it,” the witch teased.

Alexander tensed and grit his teeth. His gaze me Erik’s for a split second. “In that case—!” he slammed his heel into the witch’s foot as hard as he could muster. Alexander felt a satisfying crack and the man howled in agony and surprise. In the same split second, Alexander’s left hand came up and slapped away the hand holding the flames. Now loose, the fireball flung across the room into the water feature and exploded in a cloud of steam, debris, and smoke.

With a frustrated snarl, the witch threw him to the ground with force.

Time crawled to a snail’s pace as Alexander reeled from the floor, rolling over to defend himself. He raised his arms, shielding his face. The witch raised both of his hands, more fire congregating between them. The air itself screeched to a fever-pitch. Alexander’s gaze met the madness behind the glowing yellow-orange eyes of the fire witch—the man grinning a little too widely for normal human features.

“BUUUURRRN!”

Gunfire shattered the time-hold just as the witch brought the conflagration down upon Alexander. He curled up, squeezing his eyes shut, hoping it would be a quick death—yet, the searing pain he expected to feel as his flesh vaporized did not come.

For a moment Alexander wondered if the fire had been so hot that it burned away his nerves—or if his brain couldn’t cope and made it feel like he was cold instead—or if that deep crackling sound was his bones splitting and spitting from the sheer intensity of the heat.

Alexander hesitantly opened one eye, and then the other. His breath came out in little white puffs of condensation. He was cold. The air around him was freezing, causing him to cough. An orange-yellow glow against the blue light around him made him look up again. He could barely make out the form of the witch on the other side of a thick and rapidly forming shell of blue ice nearly ten centimeters thick. No matter how much fire was thrown at it, it just kept growing back.

The crematory blast intensified for a second, and Alexander wondered if the ice would hold as it let out a deep crack and rumble. It sounded like a glacier breaking apart—yet, a moment later, the glow of fire faded and so did the distorted image of the witch as he retreated to the escalators.

With the danger gone, Alexander breathed a sigh of relief and the ice exploded into a fine snow that instantly vaporized in the heat of the hall, filling it with clouds of condensation.

“Roll call!” Erik barked through the fog, waving it aside uselessly with his pistol as he scanned the room.

“Dose.”

“Mother!”

“Tech…”

Three voices responded in varying tones of urgency or light pain. Alexander looked around the room for them, but he couldn’t see anything through the haze until Erik materialized, pointing his weapon at him. “You, did you make the ice?” he asked. “Where is the witch?”

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Eyes locked on the gun, Alexander mouthed wordlessly, gesturing lamely towards the escalators when pain shot through his arm and wrist. Pain like he had never felt before coursed through him and he screamed, making the mistake of gripping his arm with his other hand. When he looked down at it, he could see the polyester of his hoodie melted against his skin, and where there was no fabric left, his arm was burned red and black and forming charred boils in the shape of a hand print.

He sucked in a sharp breath of surprise and looked up at Erik, the colour draining from his face. “H-help me,” he whispered pleadingly before passing out.

Erik watched in horror as the boy collapsed. He took one last glance around the room and holstered his gun under his long coat. He crouched and propped up Alexander, gingerly lifting his arm to inspect it. “Dose! Medical emergency! Mother, you’re in charge here. Tech—.”

“Securing the scene, Sir!” Leon replied, stationing himself near the top of the escalator, his gun at the ready, checking down the inoperable staircase. The rails were dripping stands of melted rubber pooling on the floors, the metal twisted and bent outward as though to escape the heat of the witch fire.

Sonia scurried to Erik’s side, slipping briefly on some loose tile, but she caught herself well. She knelt next to him, already unfurling a small medical kit from a pouch in her cargo pants. “This is one ballsy kid,” she muttered, setting to work.

“How does it look?” Erik asked Sonia, his eye catching another female hunter across the room heading for the station entrance. The brunette gave him a stoic nod as she exited.

Sonia was snipping away the remnants of Alexander’s sleeve as best she could. “Not good,” she muttered. “I’ll need to take him to base—this is bad,” she added, pointing to the edge of the burn. “It’s growing.” Sonia produced a marker from her medical pack, drawing a strange set of markings directly onto Alexander’s arm. “Now, Ghost!” she said urgently, backing away so that Erik could scoop the boy up into his arms.

“Hold your horses,” he scoffed. “It’s not like I can move him if your drawing all over him.” However, that clearly didn’t stop Sonia, as she kept working even while he carried Alexander—Leon bringing up their rear close by. “Tech, any sign of him?”

“None,” Leon replied. He reached up and touched his ear-piece, “Tech to Eagle, anything from the sky? Over.”

Their radios crackled to life all at once, “Eagle to hunters,” Marcus’ voice chimed through, “No signs on the surface, but there are a lot of places he can access from under the station. I don’t think we’re going to get another chance today. Over.”

Erik’s expression was grim as Sonia held the door open for him, “Tech, you’re driving, you alright for it?”

“Yes sir,” Leon replied, backing out after Sonia, finally lowering his gun as the three of them stepped out into the chilled September air. It was overcast again and the street was lined with police vehicles—the officers tactfully hiding behind the doors of their squad cars. One officer was standing in the open speaking with the other female hunter.

She looked over and caught Erik’s eye, said something to the officer, and trotted over to him. “Are we leaving him with the paramedics?” Anna had a soft but professional voice, large, round brown eyes, and a very short fashionable cut that kept her dark brown hair out of her face.

“Dose says she needs him at base,” Erik replied.

“And I mean now, Ghost,” Sonia prompted, shoving her boss towards the same truck from earlier.

“Take care of things for me here, Sub-Commander—and keep Eagle with you,” Erik said, tossing her his car keys. He carried Alexander after Sonia to the truck where Leon held open the back doors for them, and once inside, he slammed them shut again.

Sonia quickly unfolded an emergency cot, locking it into custom slots on truck floor for Erik to place her patient. Around them, the truck rumbled to life and Sonia set about digging things out of compartments around her as though it were second nature.

“What the prognosis?” Erik asked once they were moving.

“Mm.” Sonia didn’t reply as she hunched over Alexander’s damaged arm, carefully removing the molten polyester shreds. “Might be a curse—looks like a curse,” she muttered.

Erik sighed heavily and leaned back against the wall of the van, “Sorry for the extra work.”

She looked up at him in a brief glance with a rare fleeting smirk, “I live for this, Erik. If you hadn’t taken me on, I’d probably be taking care of some snot-nosed brat with a skinned knee and an over-protective Karen yelling about how I can’t instantly cure her precious crotch-goblin.”

Erik couldn’t help but let a grin sweep across his normally stoic face as he let out a chuckle. “Yikes. Baggage much?” he teased.

“Not as much as yours, luggage queen,” she teased back.

“Humph.”