The fight gets uglier after that. And fast.
Cason ducks a strike from one of Malcolm’s soldiers before driving his fist into the guy’s throat hard enough for him to stagger backward.
Someone lunges for me, and shadows spear upwardinstinctively, wrapping around their wrist and snapping it sideways with a sickening crack.
Gunfire erupts.
Shouts echo.
Glass breaks.
The artificial stream explodes upward as another Ascended manipulates water into razor thin blades that slash through the lobby. Rory takes one across the arm and screams, cursing loudly.
Then Cason yells. “Baz!”
Sebastian turns, and Cason throws electricity directly at him. For half a second, even Sebastian looks confused.
Then understanding hits.
The current rips across the lobby in branching arcs of white and blue and green, striking Sebastian square in the chest hard enough that the air cracks around him. The electricity doesn’t dissipate. It absorbs, crawling over his body, racing beneath his skin in flickering veins of light.
A feral grin stretches across Sebastian’s face. “Oh, that’s fun!”
Then he redirects the entire blast into one of Malcolm’s men charging across the lobby. It hits the guy like a bolt of lightning, and he convulses violently before crashing through the glass elevator, shattering it into glittering pieces.
Cason laughs. “Holy shit! Teamwork!”
Something in my chest stutters, some place inside that I didn’t even realize was empty finally feeling full.
He’s one of us now.
And somehow, despite everything…
He fits perfectly.
But then a man with a long scar down one side of his face who’s standing across the lobby jerks his hand upward, catching my attention. Every shard of broken glass scattered acrossthe atrium rises with it. Hundreds of shimmering pieces hang suspended in the air for one terrible second before launching straight toward Cason like a storm of knives.
My shadows move before I can barely think the command.
They surge upward in a dense black wave, swallowing the space between them. Glass vanishes into the darkness, piercing through, and when it all comes out the other side, it’s nothing but glittering dust, showering over Cason like sparkling rain.
Then my shadows go flying, twisting through the air like a horde of bats. They aim for the man with the scar, swallowing him in a cloud of black. His screams echoing off all the glass and stone in the atrium is fucking satisfying. If I had the time, I’d make him suffer even worse for attacking Cason. But his screams die out quickly.
Grabbing Cason’s arm, I yank him backward against my chest.
“Hey!” he protests.
“Listen to me.”
I ease my grip on him enough so he can turn and face me.
Around us, the lobby is falling apart. Malcolm’s people are regrouping. Mine are still fighting. I don’t know how much time we have left, and I think Cason might be safer anywhere but here.
“You need to find where that demonstration is,” I tell him. “Stop it before it starts.”
His brow furrows, and his jaw tightens. “What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
