So I plant my feet on the ground, raise my hands to the sky, and reach up with every ounce of power I can gather.
The first bolt slams into my upraised palms, and electricity fills every vein, every nerve, and every cell of my body with raw, crackling power.
I’m a lightning rod. A conduit. Aweapon.
And I have targets.
So, I thrust my hands toward a pack of hellhounds closing in on Vera, Nina, Callie, and Alessandra. Lightning explodes from my fingertips. Four bolts, four creatures, four piles of ash.
Vera scrambles backward. Nina’s already gathered fire in her hands, ready to keep fighting. Callie’s eyes are huge as she hurries to check on Alessandra, and I’m already turning, already reaching for the sky again.
Another bolt crashes down. I catch it, power coursing through my arms, my chest, and my racing heart. I’m holding a piece of the sky, and it’s wild and screaming.
I release it.
The lightning arcs across the hillside and finds two hellhounds circling Garrett. One second they’re snarling, and the next they’re nothing.
More. I need more.
I reach up again, bolt after bolt slamming into my hands, channeling through my body, exploding outward to every red eye I can see.
A hellhound lunges at Deacon Park. I catch a bolt from the sky with my left hand, redirect it with my right, and the creature vaporizes mid-leap. Deacon screams, but he’s alive.
Three more hellhounds break for the tree line. I pull down a massive fork of lightning, split it into three separate streams, and send each one to its target.
They fall. They burn. They die.
I catch another bolt. Redirect it. Catch another. Redirect it.
The last hellhound falls.
My ears are ringing. My whole body’s vibrating with residual electricity. Smoke rises from the ground around me, from my clothes, and from the ends of my hair. The smells of charred earth and burning skin fill my nose as I catalogue who’s still alive.
Vera’s on her knees, gaping at me like I shouldn’t exist. Garrett stands frozen with his blade forgotten on the ground beside him. Nina looks at a loss for the first time in her life, and Alessandra has tear tracks cutting through the ash on her face as she stares at me like I’m either a god or a monster.
Tyler Brennan, who took Avery to the Halloween Ball, made it. So did a handful of second-years, Avery, Callie, some other third-years from the dining hall, and fourth-years who’ve never given me the time of day.
Every single one of them is staring at the girl who caught lightning with her hands and annihilated every hellhound on the hillside.
My hands are smoking, wisps of vapor rising from my palms. The skin should be destroyed, but they’re just my hands, same as always, minus the silver glow fading from my fingertips.
Logan’s right behind me, close enough that I could fall into his arms if I wanted to.
“I’m taking us as far back as I can,” he says, cutting through the ringing in my ears.
His hand closes around mine, residual electricity shocking where our skin meets. A sharp inhale cuts through his composure as his body goes rigid for a fraction of a second, but when I try to pull away, his grip tightens.
“You can’t expose yourself like that,” he says, fierce and determined. “I’m bringing us back so we can do it differently.”
Silver electricity crackles across my skin where our hands are joined, and the storm answers with a low, rolling growl. “Do it,” I tell him, as fierce and determined as he is. “Take us back.”
JADE
Black flames surround us,the air’s angry roar flooding my brain as the world tilts and spins. Then Logan and I are sucked into the vortex where time and space don’t exist, a hollow pop comes from everywhere and nowhere all at once, and then?—
I’m standing in the Obsidian Caves. The music’s pulsing, and the floating flames are flickering. My friends are laughing and drinking, blissfully unaware that monsters are going to pour out of the darkness at any minute and tear them apart.
“We’re fifteen minutes back.” Logan’s hand finds mine and squeezes hard, even though his fingers are trembling. Sweat beads his temples, there’s a gray tinge to his skin, and the hollows under his eyes are deeper than they were before the jump. “I’m going to start the evacuation and get everyone to the exits before the hellhounds emerge. If we clear the caves fast enough and attack with fire and steel on open ground, we’ll have a fighting chance.”
