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We flew through the city streets, already getting busy as the morning rush got going. Gideon made a faint noise when I blew past a red light, but I didn’t care what he thought. His job was letting me know if there was anyone nearby who’d care about the traffic laws I broke.
Wylder was checking texts and looking at a map on his phone. “Right around here…” he said.
At the same moment, the sound of shattering glass reached my ears. I turned a corner and spotted the vandals easily enough.
They were spread out across a few blocks up ahead, at least a couple dozen of them. Some carried hockey sticks or baseball bats, others random debris like a broken tree branch or a length of pipe that they must have scrounged up somewhere.
They didn’t seem to be working together, just focused on whatever destruction they could carry out on their own. A guy over there was smashing at a restaurant awning with a dusty board. A woman across the street from him was heaving what looked like a bowling ball through a barber shop window.
They seemed intent in their destruction, but the lackey had been right—they didn’t look like the Storm’s people to me. A few were teenagers, and others older men and women with graying hair. It was like a bunch of random strangers had suddenly decided it was time to riot. What the hell?
I parked the truck by the curb, and the other Noble cars stopped behind us. None of the vandals appeared to have noticed us yet.
“Jesus Christ,” Gideon muttered under his breath.
As we got out, a middle-aged guy down the street yanked down a big inflatable sign outside a gas station and tore it open. Closer by, a teenage girl was scrambling out of a store through a smashed window, carrying what looked like a broken piece of the checkout counter. It was total fucking chaos.
Watching them, an uneasy shiver crawled up my back. There was an air of desperation to them, and a lot of them hardly seemed to noticeanythinggoing on around them except what they were doing with their two hands. I spotted glazed eyes and sweaty faces.
When I inhaled, I no longer smelled the asphalt road or felt the heat on my skin. Memories of drugs and pain washed over me.
I shook myself out of the momentary daze and concentrated on the present. I couldn’t let my past eclipse what I needed to do.
I turned to Wylder. “They’re out of their minds. They all look like druggies to me.”
“All of them?” Gideon asked.
I squinted at the ragtag bunch again and nodded. “I’d say so.”
Rowan frowned. “Why would a bunch of junkies be smashing up buildings like this? That’s not going to get them more drugs. They don’t seem like they’re hallucinating—and Glory hasn’t made people aggressive in the past.”
I shifted my weight, restless and on edge. All I wanted to do was to barge in and set every single one of them straight, no matter how far I had to go to do that. But I’d messed up big time the last time I’d rushed in without listening to Wylder, and I’d gotten Mercy into trouble.
I trusted Wylder. I knew he’d run things right. Letting him call the shots and telling me when it was time for me to crack some heads wasn’t really giving up that much control but showing I could control myself enough to be part of this team.
Thinking of it that way helped keep me focused.
Wylder walked up to the closest vandal and yanked the bat he was holding out of his hands. He waved it at the guy. “There’s nothing you want here. Go home.”
The man wobbled on his feet. “Why you got to go and do that, man?” he mumbled. “I just want some peace.”
“Is this your idea of peace?” Wylder asked, gesturing to the mayhem around us.
The man coughed. “I just want Glory. I don’t want no trouble.”
“Then get going and quit smashing up other people’s property,” Wylder ordered him.
The man cringed, but he wandered off. Wylder shook his head. He motioned for us to follow him.
Up ahead, a man and a woman were punching and kicking at each other as they fought over what looked like a chunk broken out of a store sign. The woman hit the man in the ribs, and his grip on the hunk of plastic loosened, but before she could drag it completely out of his grasp, he snatched it back and slammed his foot into her shin. She hissed through her teeth.
Wylder glanced at me and tipped his head toward them. That was all the signal I needed.
I marched over and caught the man around the waist in one swift motion. He was so skinny he felt almost weightless as I hauled him over my shoulder. Rowan snatched up the sign piece that clattered to the ground.
The woman swayed from side to side, looking like she was still considering making a grab for the piece of trash. I wrinkled my nose at the BO wafting off the guy I’d grabbed and chucked him onto the opposite sidewalk.
“She’s taking it away,” he protested. “Don’t let her take it away!”
