Jonah and Gracie step into view on either side of me. Jonah lifts his voice. “We’re humans like you, and we don’t want to see all this destruction either.”
Gracie’s clenched hands wobble at her sides, but she speaks with total conviction. “We don’t want to see other people like us hurt in the fallout.”
Mirage joins us, sending an illusion of the city into the air—much brighter than it is right now, with no cloak of murk, and possibly better designed than the actual architecture. It’s okay to fudge the details a little for a good cause, right?
“We’re going to bring it back to how it should be, without blowing anything up!” he calls out.
“That’s right.” I propel another wave of reassurance over our audience, and Mirage makes the city buildings outright shine as if they’re made of crystal, the Diamond Victory Tower living up to its name. “You can be heroes, restoring everyone’s homes to how they’re meant to be.”
Faint smiles curve some of the soldiers’ lips. My pulse thumps faster with a flicker of excitement.
But several of the uniformed figures haul themselves away from their companions. One clamps his hands over his ears; another starts humming as if trying to tune me out.
They dash toward the jets like they mean to take off right now.
29
Hail
At the sight of the soldiers sprinting toward the plane’s cockpits, all I can think is,Fuck, no.
I’m not letting these assholes screw up Peri’s peacemaking efforts—even if I don’t particularly want peace with them myself. Every particle of her being vibrates with the certainty that our situation will go to hell if those jets manage to take off, regardless of what happens after.
And I trust her more than even myself.
I shoot a layer of ice across the paved ground. Time for a little slip-and-slide.
The unsuspecting soldiers skid on the suddenly slick ground. A couple fall to their hands and knees, others onto their asses. I can’t restrain an upward tick of my mouth.
Serves the pricks right.
Peri is still calling out in her persistently sweet voice, and other magical effects warble past me, but I focus on my ownpowers. I turn the ice as slick as I can make it. The soldiers flail around as they try to stand up.
But I can’t keep them down forever. One and then another manage to shove to their feet, stiffening their legs against the glass-smooth surface.
Fine. If what’s on the ground isn’t enough to stop them, I’ll just have to throw some obstacles into the air too.
A gust of snow and frigid wind whips from me to whirl around the soldiers. The dense fall of snowflakes obscures their vision and turns them into a blur to even my eyes.
But they keep pushing through it. The assholes are fucking stubborn, I’ll give them that much.
Why can’t they be that determined about something that’ll actually help us?
I’d blast them with even more snow, but outright freezing them would go against Peri’s insistence that we don’t hurt them—at least, not too badly. Where the hell is that brute of a basilisk shifter? Why isn’t he toppling them?
I risk a glance around in time to see Raze roaring as he focuses his attention on a horde of soldiers barging toward us from the nearby buildings. His stance rigid, he aims his gaze at one and another, knocking them unconscious before they can finish raising their massive guns.
Okay, he’s stopping our Cream Puff from being battered with bullets. I can’t say his priorities are misguided.
Mirage leaps by with a swirl of his foxy tails through the air, and the image comes back to me of the glittering illusion he created minutes ago. Inspiration lights in my head.
“Fox boy,” I holler. “Make my snow sparkle!”
The fox shifter doesn’t appear to mind being bossed around. He spins toward me and peers at the blizzard I whip up even faster around the trudging soldiers.
The snowflakes flare with a sudden intense gleam. The soldiers stumble and swing their arms as if trying to clear it, but it’s obvious they’re totally blinded now.
With wallops of wind—forceful but not bone-breaking—I shove them around on the ice they’re still standing on until they’re no longer facing the planes.
