One
ZAYA
* * *
A boom followed by a blast of energy reverberates through the parking lot, yanking my attention away from the half-dead dire awry on the ground at my feet.
I straighten, pivoting in the direction of the blast. Beside me, Reck bows his body over Presh. And Bellamy. Inadvertently, I assume, due to the younger awry hovering over her newly discovered half-sister. The residual of that energy churns through dust and loose gravel across the cracked pavement of the small parking area next to the outpost in the middle of the barrens, ruffling Presh’s pastel-rainbow-colored hair and the lapel of Reck’s black suit jacket. It doesn’t touch me or Muta — presently sunbathing in his bushmaster form on the blood-spattered pavement — at all.
Essence, then.
Not just random energy.
And likely malignant. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have noticed it.
While we’ve been distracted with saving the dire awry, Bellamy, storm clouds have gathered on the western horizon. Well, not so much saving Bellamy as Presh healing her, maybe even realigning her half-sister’s life force. The storm is at least twenty minutes away by car, at best estimate. I can actually see rain streaking down from the now-darkened sky.
The unnaturally dark sky. Given the bright sunshine we’re standing within.
Clad only in sweatpants, his dark-gray hair falling over his eyes, DeVille stumbles a few feet away from Reck’s black SUV, his gaze also fixed to the stormy horizon. All the doors of that hulking vehicle hang open behind him. The seventeen-year-old has barely recovered from transforming into his beast — a sabertooth tiger — for the first time.
The Authority-issued nature of the SUV — with all the protection that implies, both mechanical and essence-based — is about to be seriously tested.
I know that fact without any prompting from the universe. I knew it in some form the moment I defied the universe and climbed into that vehicle with Reck not even two hours ago. But now I’m not at all certain that those protections will be of any benefit to me. The opposite, in fact.
On the far side of the parking area, the bodies of the two other Authority agents — the shifter Shaw and the mage Wilson — lie inert on the cracked pavement. The blood-spattered pavement. Mostly due to the aforementioned sabertooth tiger’s mauling of Shaw, but also from the dire awry who stupidly insists on flinging her blood around to fuel her spells.
Well, more like her curses, though Bellamy does have an annoyingly robust essence-wielding skillset. Too bad it comes with a side of homicidal mania and a seriously fucked-up moral compass. I doubt her long-lost possible twin, Reck, will ever forgive her for pretending to be me while trying to goad him into fucking her.
Nothing else moves on the horizon.
No one leaps through another invisible barrier to attack us.
But I already know, don’t I?
I know there’s something coming that the universe doesn’t want me anywhere near.
A whisper flits across my mind. A telepathic call … a plea? I try to open myself to it, to loosen all the natural defenses built around my mind, because I think it might be —
Miles away, a bolt of pure energy streaks skyward from the ground into those dense, rain-filled clouds. A projectile weapon of some sort, but clearly essence enhanced. Targeted on … what? Or who?
My stomach bottoms out. I strain to hear that telepathic whisper, that voice, again. Because I know … even though the connection between us is thread thin … I know that voice. It’s anchored within me.
“Fuck!” Reck shouts, grabbing Presh’s shoulders and hauling her to her feet.
“What?!” the young awry cries. “What is going on?”
That bolt of energy hits something rapidly heading our way while hidden within the storm, exploding and lighting up those dark clouds from within.
It takes a moment for the boom to reach us a second time, right before more residual energy floods through the barren landscape. It resonates across the parking lot and around my legs. Around us.
At the same time that residual hits, I also watch a massive wingless creature with a long serpentine body fall through those same storm clouds.
A celestial dragon. Limp bodied and plummeting unimpeded to the earth.
“Zaya!” Reck shouts, half-dragging Presh to the SUV. “Move your fucking ass!”
“What is that?!” Precious struggles to free herself from Reck. Or to at least look past him. She’s so much smaller than her eldest brother that her view of the skyline is blocked by his body. “Is that …? No! Is that Rath?!”
