“Where the hell did they go?” Kiev said, panting.

As speculations abounded among our crowd, my and Ben’s eyes lowered to the ground. We seemed to be sharing the same suspicion.

“Whatever that explosion was,” Ben spoke up, “I doubt the witches are dead. It doesn’t seem to have been meant to kill them. Otherwise where are their bodies?”

“What are you thinking?” Sofia asked.

“I can’t shake the feeling they’ve been taken down into The Oasis,” he said.

Maybe they’re down there with my family. I hated to think where they might be keeping them. I guessed the most likely place was those prisons again.

“Well, we can’t get out,” Derek said. “That much I think we can all agree on. We have no choice but to go down.”

“Perhaps the witches here hold more power than we estimated,” Sofia said. “These residents of The Oasis, they must have sensed our presence in the desert and allowed us to enter the boundary. I guess they also sensed we had our own witches and wanted to take them out…”

“Let’s go down,” Kiev said impatiently, running toward the trapdoor.

Ben caught my hand and pulled me after him.

“Vampires and werewolves, that’s all we have now,” I said to Ben as we ran. “And even when those dragons arrive with your grandfather, it’s not like they could even get in through the boundary. Our witches couldn’t. I can’t see how the dragons could. Are we left with enough force to stand against The Oasis?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said heavily. “But now we’ve no choice but to keep moving.”

He bent down and along with Kiev, his father, and Xavier, heaved at the trapdoor and forced it open.

A chill formed at the back of my neck and crept down my spine as I found myself looking down at the familiar sight of the atrium. It felt like everyone was holding their breath as we listened for any signs of life from within.

My own ears could pick up nothing but the sounds that had been echoing in my head the past weeks ever since I left. The sounds of The Oasis had previously been in my mind, now I was experiencing them live again. Except the grinding of the machine… I couldn’t hear that right now.

Derek and Kiev were about to begin descending the staircase when Ben stopped them. “Wait. I want to go down first.”

Ben didn’t wait for the men’s response. After I had slid onto his back, he pushed through the crowd and moved down the steps with me. Then he paused, looking up toward his father, who was about to follow after us with Kiev. Ben shook his head. “No, don’t come yet. Wait until I say.”

I sensed the guilt in Ben’s demeanor. He hadn’t wanted anyone accompanying him here to begin with, and now that things had gone so wrong and we had lost our witches, he was feeling the weight of responsibility.

Kiev looked like he was about to ignore Ben’s request and come down anyway, but Derek gripped his shoulder and held him back. “We’ll do as Ben says,” he said. “But we won’t wait more than five minutes.” Derek shot a stern look at his son. “Come back by then, or we’ll come down.”

Ben nodded curtly, then continued down the staircase with me. The familiar scent of jasmine drifting up from the gardens below filled my nostrils. Arriving on the topmost platform of the atrium, Ben and I paused, looking down and taking in The Oasis’ sinister beauty.

Ben’s grip around my calves tightened. Despite the fear clawing at my chest, his hold on me brought me a sense of reassurance I hadn’t thought possible in this terrifying place.

Chapter 10: Ben

I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do now that I was down here with River alone, with my family and everyone else waiting up in the desert, but after what had just happened, I wanted to be the first down here to see what the situation was.

When I looked around, there wasn’t a person in sight. Even as I listened, I could barely make out a sound. But this shouldn’t have been surprising. The Oasis was known to be quiet in the morning, because its residents had a habit of staying up late into the night. The familiar quiet noises of the atrium filled my ears—the distant dripping of a tap, the occasional splashing of fish in the ponds, the whistling of the draught from the desert above.

After observing the upper layers of the atrium for a minute, I entered the elevator with River and we made our way down to deeper levels.

River’s soft mouth brushed against my left ear. “Where do you think everyone is?” she breathed.

“I guess asleep,” I said.

Though clearly somebody was awake. And that somebody was the person we needed to seek out. The person responsible for taking our witches and causing the boundary to clamp down on us.

We traveled down several floors and stopped halfway down.

“So what now?” River whispered. “We only have a few more minutes before they come down.”

I didn’t answer, and instead kept moving swiftly but silently around the verandas. Then, reentering the elevator, we moved down to the ground level, which appeared to be as empty as the others. Once I was satisfied that there appeared to be no immediate threat, I didn’t see another option but to return to the others. Kiev had been chomping at the bit when I’d left him, he wouldn’t be held up much longer.

As I motioned to retreat, River suggested, “You could send me back, and you could stay down here to keep watch?”

“No,” I whispered back. “I don’t want you separated from me.”