Spinning toward Raze, I grasp his hand with a quick squeeze. “Go do what you can. You could help tire her out. She can’t keep moving like that forever, right?”
His stance straightens. “Exactly.”
With a flash of a smile, he springs into the shadows.
I can’t leave it all to him. If we’re fighting together, I need to hold up my end.
So I’ll tackle this being with the one skill that’s never failed me.
I train all my attention on my awareness of her presence in the shadows, tracking her as she pops in and out along the street. Taking in every splash of flavor that leaps from her to me.
She’s determined and rebellious, yes. She enjoys the sensation of breaking all these objects around her. A shot of lemonade-sweet exhilaration rushes through her when she evades the shadowbloods yet again.
Then she materializes next to a lamppost halfway down the street. As she slams her fist into its side hard enough to crack the cement and send the pole teetering over, a brisk gust of wind sweeps across the road.
It blows through her hair and the baggy clothes she’s wearing—and she goes rigid for an instant with a smack of icy terror.
It’s the first hint of weakness I’ve sensed from her. Urgency grips me.
“She’s afraid of the wind!” I shout out. Maybe that’s not surprising—it’s an invisible but potent force that doesn’t exist in the shadow realm, not like the mortal version anyway. “Can we trap her with that?”
Hail’s eyes light up. He steps forward, extending his arms. “I’ll take care of it.”
As a frigid breeze laced with snowflakes whirls from his hands, Mirage perks up too. “We can make it a real blast!”
A warbling roar fills the street, amplifying the natural whoosh of Hail’s wind. The fox shifter must be creating an illusionary impression of fast-moving air to enhance Hail’s efforts.
Riva aims a thumbs up our way. The errant shadowkind ducks into the shadows again, but she squirms into view just seconds later with a hiss that makes me think Raze must have pounced on her.
Hail’s wind blasts her from all sides and swirls around her. A sharper shriek bursts from her lips.
Riva and Zian dash in. Riva produces a chain of silver and iron from the bag slung across her back.
Just as she moves to throw it around the rogue shadowkind, the crocodile-tailed woman hurls herself through the whirlwind and into the shadows.
Riva and Zian pivot, searching for our target. Hail keeps his wind coursing through the streets, ready for her to reappear.
She doesn’t. After a minute, Raze materializes at the far end of the block.
He sighs. “She ran off—too fast for me to keep up.”
Riva shakes herself as if dispelling the tension of the battle. “Fine. At least we stopped her from trashing this street. Now we patrol and see if she shows herself again.”
16
Mirage
Rollick sprawls in his seat in his private jet, but he’s only giving an illusion of relaxation. His fingers flex against the leather arm. There’s a tightness to his shoulders like he’s on the verge of jumping out of his skin.
I know that feeling. It comes over me often enough.
Right now, after everything we’ve seen, part of me wants to burrow way down in the dirt away from all of it.
Of course, that’s impossible while I’m tied to Peri by the glowing spot on my chest. And also when we’re thousands of feet in the air.
The man who’s awfully kind for a demon rubs one hand across his brow. “So there haven’t been any further incidents since the initial flood? No more shadowy material spilling out of the rift and no more destruction from any of the beings who might have spewed out with it?”
Jonah shakes his head. “We think the higher being who was causing the most obvious destruction is lying low after we got close to capturing her. Or maybe she’s left the city for someplace that feels less overwhelming.”
