“How likely do you think it is they’ll try to kill me?”
The wind shrieked.
The boy laughed. He always laughed at the wrong things.
“Good. That’s good.” He held out his hands, his face hard, his eyes bright. “Then let’s hit them first. And let’s hit them hard.”
The wind screamed, shielding the boy as he rode his tsunami and hurled a deadly lightning sword across the sky.
13
Wind roared in my ears, its hot breath a violent dragon’s thundering as I flew south. A lightning storm raged over New York Harbor. The sky was lit with flashes of blue, purple, and sizzling white. Angry spears of lightning rained down in a constant torrent. The air was filled with the sharp, biting crackle of static electricity, and the scent of ozone beat against me.
I leaned low over the grotesque’s neck and flew in a spiraling dive toward the thick storm clouds imprisoning the harbor. I’d never ridden the stone beasts before. I’d never woken one either. For my entire life, the two grotesques had perched on the roof of Hell Gate, menacing statues that silently snarled at everyone who entered. They were a conglomerate of mythical creatures and wild animals, melded together in smooth gray stone. As a kid, I didn’t like to look at them. Their bulging stone eyes had a way of following me, and their claws gripped the rooftop ledge with an arrested tension that made me think of crushed bones and cut-off screams. When I was older and wiser—nine or ten—I’d realized there were plenty more things to be scared of, and the grotesques just became another part of Hell Gate.
Now I gripped the grotesque’s stone neck as its pointed wings captured the electric currents and flung us toward the harbor. It might be like riding a horse, if the horse were unhinged, evil, and wanted nothing more than to toss its rider off its back and eat their brains.
I’d woken it with my blood. Only Jagger’s blood could release the grotesques from their stone bondage, and as a mine, my blood was teeming with his essence. So I’d thrown myself onto the grotesque’s wide back, sliced my palm, and slapped the blood against the hot stone.
Across the roof ledge, Justice had called to life the second grotesque.
I’d always thought of the grotesques as Jagger’s watchdogs (even though they had wings, scales, claws, and fangs). I knew they could come to life—after all, Jagger had made them with blood and stone—but I’d never seen them move, much less fly.
Within a second of waking, they’d plunged off the roof and then shot to the sky. “South. The harbor!” I’d shouted, urging mine with tightly clenched legs and a death grip around its stone fur-collared neck.
It had turned and snapped, its long neck swiveling like an owl’s. When it lunged, its razor teeth were half an inch from my cheek. It had bucked and beat its wings in a vengeful frenzy and tried to throw me off. I would’ve fallen thirty feet and smashed onto Hell Gate’s stone steps, so I’d smeared my bloody hand harder into its hot stone neck, kicked it sides, and shouted, “You see that lightning? Get me there and you can snap at whoever you want.”
The grotesque had liked that.
It dove around buildings. It played chicken with buses. It raced toward giant construction cranes and at the last minute veered to the side. It was like riding a roller coaster without the tracks. My stomach was flung up, down, and to the right. Every time I clutched tighter, the grotesque swiveled its head and snapped its stone teeth.
Sometimes, I’d turn to make certain Justice was there. He flew close, crouched low, a tight-lipped shadow on a black beast.
We flew lightning-quick over the city, passing pedestrians, buses, and taxis, and not a single one of them noticed us. Why? The grotesques were Jagger’s creation, and he’d placed a noseeum on them. That meant humans wouldn’t look at the grotesques. Their eyes would automatically avert. However, if they did happen to look at the grotesque, they’d see something else. A cloud. A balloon. A bird. Whatever made sense to them.
We flew over Manhattan, our shadows darkening bus stops and crosswalks for a half-second, and no one saw us. In Battery Park, a little girl holding her mom’s hand looked up, smiled, and then pointed at us. Maybe she thought we were a birthday balloon bobbing on the wind. Her mom ignored her, tugging her quickly across the park, fleeing the approaching storm.
The wind had flattened the blades of grass, and the trees lining the water bowed under the heavy gale. Already, waves crashed against concrete, roaring and receding.
I gritted my teeth and urged the grotesque to fly faster.
There were dozens of people in the park, some fleeing the storm; others filming the lightning and the quickly thickening fog. They would all die. Every one of them. Unless someone stopped whichever conjurer was out there wreaking havoc with nature.
To any of the people below, the storm would be a freak weather event. Lightning. Heavy clouds. Fog. Violent wind. Crashing waves tossing boats skyward and rushing toward land. It would be something to talk about at work in the morning, or over a coffee.
“Did you catch that freak storm yesterday? Yeah? They really gotta fix that flooding. Every time it rains, the FDR is a friggin’ mess. So anyway?—”
Except there wouldn’t be work in the morning if a tsunami hit the city. None of these people would be here. Not the little girl. Not her mom. Not the two idiots in the small boat speeding toward the fog. None of them.
After Rou made her pronouncement, Jagger had laughed. “It’s the Smith. He’s been shaking the earth since he got the crown.”
He wasn’t wrong. There had been small, rumbling earthquakes that lasted half a second ever since Finn came back. It was disconcerting, because New York wasn’t supposed to have noticeable earthquakes.
Jagger had claimed it was Finn flexing his muscles and testing his power. I didn’t believe it. Or I didn’t want to believe it.
“It seems he’s decided to have a bit of fun.”
A light I recognized had come into Jagger’s eyes when he said that. He was wondering how to use death and disaster for his own benefit. Then he smiled, and I knew he’d thought of something.
