“Not Jesus,” I said softly. “Fallen angels. Incendiary rounds.”
The trio tucked their wings back, but didn’t slow their pace, as if they didn’t care that we had guns trained on them.
“I don’t have incendiary rounds,” Diego said.
“Fuck. Keep it exploding then.” I spoke as I squeezed off the first round. The bullets hit the fallen one on the far left of us, and while it rocked him backward, there was no real wound. No blood, and the creature didn’t even slow his approach. “Something else, what else have you got?” I yelled as I kept firing.
I aimed for the joints in the legs, hoping the force of the bullets would at least knock the ugly fuckers down.
Peter squeezed off a few of Dinah’s fiery rounds, and that seemed to drive the creatures back. For a moment. And then they stepped over the flames and kept on coming.
I caught one in the knee, and the joint dislocated, the big ugly going down with a howl. His two buddies looked at him. “Get up,” the one in the middle said. “For the glory of the creator, get up and abolish this filth.”
“Look who’s talking! You might as well have crawled out of a goat’s ass, stinking like shit and saying a field of daisies smells bad!” Dinah yelled in between shots. She had a knack for the insults, I’d give her that.
The one I’d downed tried to get back up, but I kept working on those joints, snapping them with the force of the bullets even if they weren’t actually doing permanent damage. I backed up and aimed at the knees of the one closing in on Peter.
The creature whipped a wing around and blocked the bullets. They bounced off the wing as if it were metal.
What the actual fuck was happening here?
I swung the gun around on its strap and charged the creature. His eyes widened and he swept one of his four arms toward me. I grabbed him by the hand and reversed direction, snapping his arm with my entire body weight. The crack of bone filled the air, but I didn’t stop. I spun, still hanging onto his arm, so I twisted it completely free of all attachments with the exception of his skin.
He roared and another arm came for me. I let go and went low, kicking at his knees, knocking him sideways.
“For big, monstrously ugly motherfuckers, you sure aren’t all that scary,” I said. No doubt they were used as the final intimidation once the soldiers had pinned down the abnormals they were hunting.
The one in the middle shot toward me—and I mean shot. He was standing still one moment and the next I had all four of his hands on me, holding me by the arms and legs, stretched out.
My dog snarled and leapt forward, grabbing him around the ankle and tearing him from side to side. She didn’t put a dent in him, but at least she kept him off balance.
“We have you now.” He smiled and his face lit up.
“Shock her,” said the one who seemed to be the leader.
“Nix!” Dinah yelled. The lights around us dimmed, the streetlights popping and the world going completely dark as the creature holding me lit up like a fucking mini-sun. He was clearly drawing all that power into him. This was going to hurt like a motherfucker, no matter how I looked at it.
“Ruby,” the dog’s name came to me in that moment, “release!” I yelled as my limbs were pulled taut, muscles straining. Ruby backed off, but she was whining and growling, her body hunched as she stalked around the freakish creature that held me tightly.
I didn’t fight the power as it slammed into me, designed to maim and kill.
I welcomed it.
14
The surge of power snapped my teeth shut and I closed my eyes to keep them from bugging out of my head. Breathing was not an option as the jolt surged through me three times, cutting into my head, lighting up my nerve endings. I fought to hold onto it, pooling all that power in my lower back—strange, I know, but that was where I’d kept stuff like this before.
Killian’s ability was one of lightning and I could absorb his power and hold it in order to discharge it at my leisure later. I was hoping this would be the same. I was hoping I wasn’t completely blocked from this ability the way Cowboy was from his EMP pulse.
That’s the thing with being an abnormal. We were all different, even the ones with similar abilities. Part of mine was being able to hang onto another form of energy and then redistribute it through a weapon. Usually Dinah.
Seeing as she was with Peter, Diego was about to get the shock of his afterlife. I hoped.
As quickly as it started, it was over.
The creature dropped me to the ground. “There. She is out.”
I stayed down on the cold concrete, breathing hard, my eyes closed as I tried to feel my body.
As I tried to find my way through the blocks that had been put on me. They were still there, still holding me back.
Sweat rolled down my spine as I lay there unsure of how to untangle my abilities, so I could use the power that these fucking fallen had run through me.
The briefest touch of something in my mind kept me still. What felt like Eligor’s fingers spread through my head and deftly unblocked the wall that kept me from my power, more carefully than I’d ever felt him move through my consciousness before. Smoother and . . . softer, almost gentle.
I didn’t know how. I didn’t know why, and I wasn’t about to ask in that moment.
It was a weapon offered freely, and I was going to use it.
I opened my eyes.
“She’s not out!” one of the fallen yelled, but I was already rolling onto my back and lifting Diego to my shoulder. They hadn’t even bothered to take him from me. Cocky featherbrains.
I
