“Where is it?” Charlie asked. His voice was hoarse.
“Still parked in an alleyway at the front of the bank.” Even as I said it, my heart fell.
“That means we’ll have to fight our way through the barricade and hope the cops didn’t take the car,” Marcus moaned.
“It’s our only shot,” Charlie said. “Let’s move.”
The sirens were closing in all around me, intermingling with the voices in my head, which were starting to blare out warnings. Oberi ran out of the vault and back down the hallway, and my friends raced after him in a dead run.
“Kallie, take down the shield,” Charlie ordered. “We’ll release the hostages and blend in with the crowd as it leaves. I’ll disguise us with illusion magic so they don’t notice us slip out.”
Kallie nodded. Tingles crawled over my skin as I felt the shield lift. We hurried into the lobby, where the hostages had figured out the shield had dropped and were racing for the door.
I hardly had time to take a breath before Union reps stormed into the bank from all sides. Noxite darts and spells flew everywhere. I flung myself out of my chair and onto the floor as magic flew over my head. A second later, a battle orb slammed into my chair and blasted it to pieces.
Well, so much for that.
“Oberi, I need to be on your back,” I instructed. She instantly changed into a unicorn and knelt to the floor. I pulled myself onto her. The saddle pad formed beneath me, and I strapped my legs tightly to her sides.
Oberi raced me behind a corner while Charlie, Kallie and Marcus ducked behind a counter to take cover.
Hostages were hit with multiple noxite darts or pelted with spells. They immediately went down. Holes formed in bodies as supernaturals took magical blows that were meant for us. Chaos ignited the area. Union cops collided with the fleeing bank patrons, until the crowd formed a literal mob. This was an absolute shit show.
Our plan to get out had failed, because we hadn’t thought the Union members would kill civilians in order to get to us. Who were the real villains here?
“Why are they putting the hostages at risk?” Kallie asked.
“Esther must’ve lost her patience and ordered them to go in!” I yelled. “She doesn’t care who lives or dies, so long as they arrest us!”
“You’ll never take us alive!” Marcus screamed. He fired off six rounds, and I watched Union cops go down once his magical bullets hit.
There was so much noise, and everything was in mayhem. A lump lodged in my throat, and I clung to Oberi’s mane. “Charlie, I’m scared.”
“Don’t quit on me now, pidge.” Charlie poked around the corner and fired three shots before pressing his back to the counter. He went to shoot again, but a battle orb collided with his shoulder, and he gave a gasp. I felt the pain ricochet across our bond as blood spewed out of the wound. I saw that the orb had wrecked his shooting arm, to the point I could see muscle and bone poking through the tear in his clothes. He slid onto the floor as he struggled not to pass out.
I’d failed to use my pistol before this moment. I didn’t think I had the strength. But Charlie was hurt. Seeing him like that, in desperate pain and trapped in this goddamn bank, erased the part of me that was afraid.
Fuck my earlier reservations, my morals, whatever it was that held me back before. I’d use this pistol to take as many lives as I had to in order to keep Charlie safe, and I’d feel no guilt about it whatsoever afterward.
Taking a life for him, in whatever way I had to? Simple. Easy.
I reached into the lining of my jacket, where my pistol had been concealed, and drew it out. I urged Oberi forward, right into the line of fire, and raised my weapon to pull the trigger.
I couldn’t even see straight— I must’ve blacked out. All I could feel was the recoil of the pistol in my hand as it went off, and felt my Water magic rushing through the gun to create ice bullets. Union cops screamed in terror and went to take coverbehind objects as my shots hit their target. Oberi helped me by launching fireballs from her horn, and as our hits connected, I realized something terrifying and invigorating.
I didn’t need to be trained. I was an excellent shot.
Even so— more Union cops kept flooding in, and they made a small army. We might be demigods, but being outnumbered had stopped us before.
“We need to clear a path, or we’re never getting out of here!” Kallie cried over the noise.
Charlie managed to stagger to his feet. Through a heavy breath, he gasped, “Light it up, pidge.”
I was more than happy to oblige my dom. Each wall of the bank immediately ignited into gigantic flames the second I thought of it. My Fire magic licked up the marble, so hot that it even melted the stone, causing the building to buckle. Any furniture within the bank was instantly set ablaze and turned to ash. Several Union cops standing near the flames spontaneously combusted. Oberi shook her head in fury. An enormous jet of fire resembling a flamethrower shot out of her horn, helping me turn the bank into a pyre.
The incredible heat in the building caused all but the grittiest Union police to flee the bank. We picked off the rest of them with our pistols as we fled toward the doors.
The cool air outside kissed my skin. It was just as chaotic outside the bank as it was inside. Squad cars surrounded the bank, but the Union cops were divided on whether to go after us or stop the fire. Around the area, humans had surrounded the bank with expressions of shock, videoing the scene with their phones as both we and the police shot off spells.
