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A dozen humans filled Plymouth between Congress and Van Buren, and they were beating the shit out of one another, the sound of flesh hitting flesh echoing through the near darkness. The crowd was a mix of people in street clothes, pajamas, suits, and an assortment of ages, genders, races.
Cars were stopped in the middle of the dark street where people had simply abandoned them, climbed out, and begun pummeling one another, engines running and radios still blasting. Doors to apartment buildings were open, and a paper bag of fast food—someone’s late-night snack forgotten—lay tipped over on the sidewalk.
This wasn’t a party, wedding or otherwise. It was a fight.
I couldn’t tell what had started it. It didn’t look like a turf war or victory riot. This was a brawl that had brought people out of cars, out of homes when they should have been sleeping. And there was no obvious cause. But something had driven these people to violence.
“What the hell is this?” Catcher asked.
A man ran toward us, yanking at tufts of his hair. “The voice! Get the goddamned screaming out of my head!”
This man wasn’t the only one screaming those words—the same words I’d heard Winston mutter. And he wasn’t the only one with panic practically itching across his skin.
I swore, and could feel the blood drain from my face. There’s something in the air, Gabriel had said. It feels like the world is shifting.
Was this what he’d meant?
“Winston,” Ethan said quietly, as if raising his voice might have drawn them closer.
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said, but the word felt thick on my tongue. And in the back of my throat, the sharp tang of chemicals, just like I’d sensed in the House.
He was only ten feet from us when he suddenly pitched over, and the scent of blood filled the air, adding copper to that sharp tang of magic.
Behind him stood a man in a business suit, tie unknotted and top button undone, dark circles beneath his eyes and five-o’clock shadow across his face. And in his hand, a bloody tire iron. He looked at us, raised his weapon.
“Is this your fault? Are you doing this to me?” The words were demands, his eyes flitting back and forth between us, looking for someone to blame. And since we were the only ones unaffected by the magic—whatever magic it was—he’d picked us.
“Get inside.”
Ethan and I gave the orders to each other simultaneously. But when we looked at each other, we nodded acceptance. We’d just taken a vow to stand beside each other. Might as well get started now.
Catcher looked back at Shay. “Get inside and call the cops. Go. Now.”
She wasn’t a war correspondent. She was a wedding photographer, and horror had her freezing in place, eyes wide and dazed.
“Shay!” Catcher said again, a sharp and decisive order.
She blinked, looked at him.
“Inside. Call the cops. Go.”
He must have gotten through, as she turned on her heel and ran for the door.
Unfortunately, Catcher’s voice, that protective order, had traveled. More of the brawling crowd realized we were there, and turned back to look at us, their immediate conflicts forgotten.
We condensed into a smaller group, a tighter group, scanning the growing threat.
“Sentinel?” Ethan said. “I believe you’re the one with the experience here.”
They didn’t need killing; they just needed subduing. “Knock them out,” I said. “That’s the best way to keep them from killing themselves or each other.”
“Or us,” Mallory quietly said.
“We can distract them, separate them,” Catcher agreed, gaze narrowed as he looked over the group.
The man with the tire iron raised it over his head.
Mine, Ethan said silently, and took off his jacket, tossed it on a parking meter.
