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A surprised telekinetic throws in a catenary curve.
I sucked in a deep breath and spread my wings, my black feathers erect, their tips glowing with red like hellish coals. I thrust my arm at him and opened my mouth.
Look at me! I’m about to scream again. Look!
Xavier howled. The car dipped, swooped down, and flew at me at an insane speed. He’d swatted at me like I was a flying cockroach about to land on his face. He’d barely even aimed, and the car was coming way too fast and way too high.
I dropped to the ground. It hurtled over my head, across the parking lot, swooping up in an arc, and smashed into the Keeper’s tower, three stories up. Dark glass exploded. The car vanished into the building, leaving a ragged black hole.
Thank you, Connor.
Darkness boiled out of the hole, like the tentacles of some great nightmarish beast. Michael emerged from its center and halted at the edge of the gap. Blue lightning, too dark to be natural, forked behind him.
Xavier took a step back. Gunderson remained on his knees, oblivious. The glow of his mind was gone, its light diffused.
The darkness splayed out of the hole, streaking across the parking lot in black twisting currents. The streetlamps flickered and went out one by one.
The currents surged above us, and I felt their magic. It was horrible and ravenous. It wanted, it needed, it sought its prey. Gus whined next to me, cringing. I wrapped my arms around the dog, trying to shield him. If the darkness wanted us, it would take us. There was nothing I could do against it. I couldn’t even begin to fathom how to fight it.
Michael stared at Xavier. The currents twisted toward the telekinetic.
The circle around Xavier died. He spun and sprinted away, running for his life.
The currents bit at Gunderson like striking snakes. He made no move to evade. There wasn’t enough left of him to recognize the danger. They whipped around him and streaked upward.
A man-shaped sculpture made of grey dust knelt where Gunderson used to be. It collapsed and scattered into nothing.
The darkness turned toward Xavier. He was almost to the end of the parking lot. The currents shot toward him, pursuing him like a living thing, indifferent and hungry.
Xavier jumped onto a motorcycle at the edge of the parking lot.
The darkness was almost to him. The last set of lamps died.
The engine roared, and Xavier tore out of the parking lot at a reckless speed.
The darkness swirled at the edge of the lot, impacting into an invisible boundary, and streaked back to the building, withdrawn as if sucked back in. It churned around Michael and slipped behind him.
Michael looked at me. The power in his stare gripped me. I didn’t know if it was a warning, irritation, or a “you’re welcome.” I just couldn’t move.
He turned around and disappeared back into the building.
I sat in a small private waiting room just inside the ER. Gus lay by my feet. Cornelius had taken a chunk of shrapnel in his back while he was pulling the spike out, and the ER personnel adamantly refused to allow the Doberman into the room with him.
As soon as Michael had left, we pulled the spike out. Cornelius picked up my mother, and we hurried across the street to the Woman’s Hospital. They took Mom first, then Cornelius a few seconds later. I called home from Arabella’s emergency cell phone. The call connected and I gave them a thirty-second summary. That was all I had time for because the medical staff grabbed me and nearly dragged me into the room in the back. I didn’t even get to ask about Alessandro.
At some point during the fight, broken glass had punctured my legs. My pants hung in shreds and my legs had been drenched with blood. A few fractions of an inch deeper or to the side, and I would have bled out in that parking lot. I lay there as they cleaned and irrigated my wounds and prayed that Alessandro had survived.
I couldn’t lose him. I just . . .
I had this fear. It lived deep inside me like a small animal with sharp claws that had burrowed into my soul ever since I saw the recording of Arkan killing Alessandro’s father. I had been afraid before, I’d been anxious before, but this fear was a whole new beast. Whenever Arkan’s name was mentioned, it woke up from its hibernation and scraped me with its sharp hot claws.
Once they removed the glass and patched me up, I left the room in my hospital gown and underwear. I couldn’t stay in there. The walls were closing in. The brief brush of Michael’s magic kept reverberating through me, as if I had been stained by it, and that stain was now slowly fading. I needed to be somewhere in the open, where I could see people, so I’d come back to the private waiting room and found it empty except for Gus.
