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My palm turns clammy against the siren device. I wet my lips, keeping my body tensed and motionless.
The group moves past the marked lamppost—the first several figures, then more, then the last forms bringing up the rear…
I wait until that last foot steps past the post’s thin shadow. At the same moment, Ajax’s voice rings through my mind.Now!
I hit the button with more force than it probably needs. The device shivers in my hand.
Its siren wail splits through the night, so loud and piercing I can make out a faint screech even with the industrial earplugs blocking the sound. I can only assume that Sorsha and Crag have set off their devices too.
The mass of prowling shadowbloods breaks apart. Kids and criminals alike stumble, their hands clutching their ears, their faces twisted with agony.
A few of them swipe at their eyes too. Andreas will be filling their heads with a jumble of other remembered images now, a nonsensical mishmash designed to confuse.
I bolt past the door and race toward the group of them, setting the siren device down on the curb. My hand reaches to the syringes hooked on my belt.
The faster we can get them all knocked out, the safer we’ll all be—them included.
The shadowkind are doing their part too. Stretching roots ripple across the pavement from where Willow has appeared by one of the saplings. One body and then another crumples to the ground as Steel and the lamia send out their talents.
The plump woman with sleeping powers is just reaching toward Devon when a massive figure looms in the middle of the chaos. My heart lurches.
One of the criminal shadowbloods has morphed into an unnerving blend of giant man and snake. His hairless scalp gleams with mottled scales—which cover his head like a shell except for his slit-pupil eyes and tapered muzzle.
He’s got no ears. The siren isn’t affecting him.
In the instant I realize that, he aims a contraption that looks like a blend between a crossbow and a gun at Steel. I’ve seen those before—in the hands of the would-be monster hunters.
A gleaming metal bolt that must be silver and iron shoots from the weapon and stabs straight into the demon’s broad forehead.
Twenty-Four
Riva
Smoky essence plumes up as Steel’s bulky form crashes to the ground. The demon’s body sprawls lifelessly on the asphalt.
A cry breaks from my throat that I mostly hear from inside my head. I whirl toward the shadowblood shooter with his reptilian face, the sound condensing into a killing shriek in my lungs.
But before I can heave it from my mouth, searing light lances into my eyes. A voice that must be Nadia’s hollers as loud as the siren as she flings her blinding power in all directions, even harsher than I’ve felt it before.
With my vision whited out, I stagger and bump into a body beside me. I can’t tell if they’re friend or foe.
My men are around me—I feel their presence through the marks on my chest. The little quivers of emotion that reach me echo my disorientation.
The rogue shadowbloods must be blinded too, but how much does that matter when they were already put off balance by the piercing sirens and Andreas’s projected memories? Nadia isn’t hurting them so much as putting the rest of us on an equal playing field.
Ajax’s voice careens through my thoughts.Sorsha wants to know what’s going on down there. Do you need her to step in?
Do we? At that point it’ll become a barbeque rather than a rescue mission.
My heart stutters with the sense of our plan falling apart.Not yet,I think at Ajax.We might still be able to pull this off.
I swipe at my eyes and grope through the scene that’s alternately blotchy and completely hazed with more bursts of Nadia’s light—and the sirens dwindle.
With my dulled hearing, it takes me a second to realize that they haven’t all gotten quieter. It’s just that one has cut out completely. A victorious shout rises from the stumbling crowd of shadowbloods, telling me the destruction was purposeful.
I don’t know how they did it, but one of our opponents managed to use their power to cut off the device.
It’s true that we don’t know where all of them came from before they were turned into shadowbloods or what they’re really feeling under the anger. We also don’t know most of the powers they can wield.
