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I let my mind take me into the zone as I wrapped the chain around Curly’s neck and yanked, while I kicked the chest of an approaching Fiasla Manno. Curly slid to the ground with his sightless eyes wide.
Oh, shit. Don’t actually be dead. I hadn’t really killed anyone. At least, not anyone I’d had to stare at afterward.
Pushing the thought out of my mind on a shaky exhale, I used my trusty nun chucks to help my LL and clear out some of the Mannos. At one point, Egan was at my back, then Nato. Yunez and Rand seemed to work a bigger circle around us with a mixture of powers and hand to hand combat.
With the Mazza down for the count, we were making headway, turning the tides. Before long, there were very few Fiasla Mannos left standing. I sucked in a deep breath, readying myself to dive after the next one when a man screamed his frustration.
Sliad.
He stood on the platform and touched the two rocks behind him with bloody hands.
“Where the hell did those come from?” I yelled.
“I don’t know!” Jari answered as he clotheslined a Manno.
“There are portable Waesarises now?” What the hell man. As soon as I learned the rules, there were five exceptions that popped up.
More and more Mannos ran through the blue mist to join the fight. All were pristine and fresh faced, while everyone here was dirty and bruised. We couldn’t have been fighting more than an hour, maybe two, but it seemed like a lifetime already.
Mannos poured through the portal until there was barely any room to throw a punch. The fallen were being trampled and our people were being forced to the middle.
“No, no, no.” This wasn’t good. I jabbed my fingers into the eyes of the Manno in front of me with hot fingers…because what else was I supposed to fucking do? There was no arm space and I had mastered hot hands.
Random weapons, birds, and vines flew overhead as people fought with the only thing they could. Their powers. One by one, all of my allies and our men were forced to their knees. Rand grunted in pain next to me as a knife speared his shoulder.
Egan let out a hurt growl at my back as a vine tightened around his neck.
In my distraction, large, calloused hands gripped the sides of my head.
Fuck, I knew what this meant. I braced myself for a pain that never came. Instead, the man’s eye rolled back in his head, and when he fell, he revealed a very angry, and very alive Brody at his back.
He watched the man fall with a cold gaze. The Mazza somewhere at our feet started to stir, her groan of pain more than a little satisfying. Until Brody glanced at her and the groan turned into a squeal before cutting off all together.
I wouldn’t look. I wouldn’t ask. Now was not the time.
A gurgle that somehow made it over the cacophony of grunts and flying objects pulled my attention to the platform. A tall, slender man stood behind Sliad. His hair was long and his skin pale. He looked so familiar.
Where had I…
Blood spilled over Sliad’s tunic. He’d slit his throat before I ever turned. The man held Sliad to his chest until he took his last breath. All the while, the fighting had stopped, birds landed, objects fell.
Once Sliad was dead, the man tossed him away like yesterday’s trash. The men closest to the platform stepped back, not wanting to catch him.
Cold. Those were his men.
The man on the platform glanced up, and for a brief second, our gazes collided, like he knew exactly who I was.
Instant recognition slapped me in the face. This was the Shadow from the vision.
But it was more.
Everything was coming back to me now. The floodgates, whatever powers had been hindering sight seemed to have lost their hold.
This man was not only the boy from the vision with Brody, but he was the boy from the vision who had been imprisoned. Scenes flitted through my head like reels of a movie.
* * *
Sir, there’s a mark here, on the babe’s thigh,” a nurse turned the baby over just a little in the towel. He must have been minutes old, the film of white substance still sticking to his skin.
