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“Get the fuck off me!” Juniper screams, but her scream doesn’t last long. The man’s body lifts in the air and goes flying across the room, smashing into glass that leads to the glittery pool. People shriek and scream (as they have been doing since Juniper’s first bullet), jumping out of the way.
Hannie rushes into the kitchen, her eyes glowing, her hand up in the direction the man went flying. The man tries to get back up, but Hannie curls the tips of her raised fingers, and his nose bleeds. He hollers in agony as he bleeds out on the ground, clutching his head, and in a matter of seconds, the hollering ceases.
Everything is quiet now. Even the music has stopped. Juniper grunts as she stands, dusting herself off, and wiping blood off her cheek.
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?” A deep voice fills the room. Hannie drops her hand, looking back as a tall man shoves his way through the crowd.
He’s much, much taller than anyone here, his eyes blazing gold, his jaw clenching on and off. He studies the mess in the kitchen, the dead bodies on the ground. But his eyes settle on one person. The man outside, who has just bled out because of Hannie.
“Brother!” he cries, rushing for him. “No! Brother!” he wails, dropping to his knees next to the body.
“Oh, shit.” Hannie looks at Juniper. “We need to go.Now.”
“Who did this?” the man demands, but it’s all I hear before Juniper has my arm and is rushing with me out of the kitchen toward the front door.
We reach it—the door wide open for our escape—but it slams closed on its own, and Hannie sucks in a sharp breath as she spins around, watching as the tall man floats into the main area. Yes, floats. His feet are off the ground, but he’s moving toward us.
“Did you do this?” he demands.
“Tomán, I—I didn’t know he was your brother,” she says, her hands up, as if trying to calm a wild beast.
“Youdid this!” he roars this time, and he glides forward, slamming into Hannie and knocking her through the closeddoor. The front half of the house is gone from the smash, now an open crater that faces the street, and outside is Hannie and Tomán, battling in the air. Both of them are floating. Both of them letting off streaks of gold as they punch and kick.
“Shit! We’d better go!” Juniper says behind me.
“Oh, no you don’t!” A man grips Juniper by the hair, and she cries out as he twists it around his large hand. “You started this, you Blackwater bitch!”
The party becomes rowdy as the man tosses Juniper across the room. She lands on a display table full of glass and tumbles over, hitting a wall.
“Juniper!” I scream.
The crowd swarms me, rushing out the hole in the wall, running from the chaos. Hannie and Tomán are still fighting, and the man attacking Juniper is roaring as he picks her up and throws her again. Across the room, a burly man looks at me, points a finger, and asks, “Are you Blackwater too, ya darkie?”
“What?” I shriek.
“You are, ya darkie bitch!”
Get down.
Caz’s voice rings loudly in my head, and I don’t think as I react to it. I lower to a squat, and the sound of another gun goes off. When I look up, the man who was pointing at me no longer has a head. It’s been blown off, nothing but blood and membrane. The body falls to its knees and hits the ground with a heavy thud. More screams. More cries for help. More people running.
Panicking, I scramble away, bumping into someone’s legs. When I look up, I’m staring into Caz’s blue eyes.
“See what happens when you listen to Juniper and not me?” He reaches down, grips my arm, and helps me up. “Let’s go!” He charges through the back of the house, where more men are coming in, dressed in brown and grimacing at him. With onehand holding my wrist, he uses the other to aim and shoot. He doesn’t miss. Each man goes down, and he runs past their bodies like they’re meaningless creatures.
Behind me, I see Killian tearing through the rowdy crowd, and I have no idea where he came from, but I assume he showed up with Caz. How did they know where we were?
Killian rescues Juniper from the other man who is giving her hell, and when she’s up, their guns go off. Rounds of bullets fly in the air, Juniper screaming and Killian roaring, their backs pressed together, taking each man on. When they have a clearing, they run after us, and when we’re far enough, Caz releases my arm, demanding me to run to the black vehicle parked down the cobblestone street. It’s his car, and he presses a button on a fob, unlocking it and shoving me inside.
Juniper and Killian are at the car in a matter of seconds, hopping into the backseat. As soon as they do, Caz starts the engine and speeds off, driving away as fast as he possibly can to get out of Iron Class.
“Your head is as hard as steel, Juniper!” Caz barks.
“It’s not my fault that fucker was rude to us!” she shouts back.
“You’re always starting something!Always!” he snaps. “You know we aren’t to fight or use our guns like that in Vanorian territory! If Alora gets word of this and hears about your gun, she’ll ban us! Youknowthis!”
“Oh, don’t play the innocent, like you didn’t keep a gun or two yourself!”
