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We thought we orchestrated this battle with every advantage, but in some ways we were going in blind from the start.
My vision clears enough for me to make out one of the shadowblood teens just a couple of feet away from me. I jab the syringe I’m still clutching into his back and squeeze.
He spins around, making me lose my grip, but the effects are already kicking in. Even as he tries to spring at me, his knees buckle under him. He topples over unconscious on the ground.
One more down, God knows how many more to tackle.
Ajax’s voice reaches my head again.She says it looks bad down there. She’s heading in.
No, wait—
Before I can finish my protest, fiery wings flash against the sky above us. Sorsha’s voice rings out. “Clear the crowd! Give me room!”
Room to burn them all. My gut lurches in recognition of her meaning, but I heave myself backward instinctively. No part of me is interested in getting incinerated.
But I can’t help letting loose my protest aloud at the same time. “No!”
Where’s Nadia—Tegan—Devon? Can I at least pull them to safety? If they were away from the former inmates’ influence for a little while, surely—
Sorsha swoops lower, her phoenix fire sweeping an orange glow and a waft of heat over our milling bodies. Has she hesitated because of my protest?
She raises her hand to fling out a stream of flames. At the same instant, a feral bellow like I’ve heard during our past fights with the rogues careens through the air.
In the milling crowd, I catch sight of the man with the skull-and-snake tattoo—the one Nadia called Cutler, who seems to be the leader of the rampaging shadowbloods. His head is tipped back and his mouth stretched impossibly wide.
His roar must carry a supernatural force. Something invisible smacks into Sorsha, snapping her head to the side. Her body sways off-kilter.
“Sorsha!” With a roar and a swish of black feathers, Thorn hurtles out of the night. He catches the phoenix woman in his arms before she can drop from the sky.
I don’t know what that jolt of power did to her, but it’s obviously disabled her for the moment. And as I whip back toward the crowd of wayward shadowbloods, the second siren cuts out.
More silver bolts flash through the night from the crossbow-gun the snake-man is wielding. Some rattle against the asphalt, and a couple strike his own allies, but in the space of a few heartbeats, one carves a smoking path through Crag’s gargoyle thigh as he plummets to join the fray.
Another bolt slams into Willow’s temple where she’s waving her summoned roots onward. Bits of skull and locks of hair fly out with the billow of essence. She’s thrown into the sapling and sags down its frail trunk.
Another blast of Nadia’s light blurs my sight. A cacophony of yells and snarls and grunts reverberates around me.
Then a sudden sense of silence despite the din, as the final siren crackles and stops.
Oh, no.
With a louder bellow of rage, the shadowbloods we were trying to contain erupt into more purposeful motion. They lash out at our ring of Firsts and shadowkind with every power at their disposal.
Some speedy form dashes through our forces with a flash of a blade. The shadowkind he passes blink into the darkness to dodge it or hunch over with gushes of essence from the stab wounds.
The tang of Tegan’s toxic smoke reaches my nose. I swivel to see her exhaling a vicious cloud toward Zian and a few of the shadowkind.
My hand leaps to my remaining syringes. Grasping it, I leap toward her.
Not quite fast enough.
A huge, brown-furred form barges at her from the other side. Fang pummels the girl who’s less than a third his shifted bear size with one of his massive paws and tears into her neck with a wrench of his brutal teeth.
No—please, no. But even as my wordless plea tumbles from my mouth in a gasp, Tegan crumples, her head lolling from her shoulders at an angle that makes it clear no life will ever come back into her vacant eyes. She hits the asphalt with a splash of her blood.
My lips part wider. I suck the air into my lungs, a scream bubbling up my throat.
I don’t know how to pick apart allies and enemies in the chaos around me, but I can freeze them all. I can halt the carnage in its tracks.
