He was so close to them now, the fear and hope his friends felt was almost a part of him. It echoed in his own heart, and he longed to be with them. Coming back to them was like coming home after a lifetime away.
He had to get to them before it was too late.
He couldn’t remember what would happen if one of the other guardians died, but he had a feeling it would mean the end of hope.
I can’t let them die. We have to see this through.
They needed to get to the island and put a stop to all of this.
And they were so close now. Just a little farther, and they would be reunited. With their full powers restored, the Dark One would be unable to defeat them as long as she was still trapped beneath the earth.
These basic rotters would become trivial. Almost nothing would be a threat anymore, short of facing the Dark One herself.
Hold on tight, he said to Zoe.
She gripped his arm tighter and nodded.
He jumped off the edge of the building and caught a stream of air, moving it beneath them so that it lifted them both higher. To propel them faster, he also wove a stream of air behind them, using the same technique he’d used with the miniature tornado earlier.
It was more effective than he’d expected, and they shot forward. Zoe clung to him, burying her head against his shoulder.
He’d been heading in the direction of Central Park, hoping to avoid too many rotters on the rooftops, but now they’d switched directions and were on their way back toward Third Avenue.
Maybe ten more blocks, and he should see them. Seven. Six.
He pushed himself faster, gathering more air beneath them.
The second he crossed over the trap, though, he understood just how stupid he’d been. He was a strategist, after all. He should have known he was being drawn toward something this whole time.
He and Zoe both fell from the sky as the wind was sucked out from under him.
He barely had time to summon a fresh stream of air to cushion their fall, but he managed it just at the last second.
Startled, Zoe blinked and looked around at the empty rooftop where they’d fallen.
“What happened?” she asked. “Where’s Parrish?”
He shook his head, still trying to make sense of it in his mind.
He touched her arm.
Something pulled us down. A trap, I think. Be careful.
Zoe’s eyes widened and she looked around, scrambling back against a wall near the door to the stairwell.
David stood, surveying the area and trying to figure out what exactly had been triggered that could make him simply fall from the sky.
“Do you see anything?” Zoe asked, and he shook his head.
Not yet. But he could feel it.
Some new energy drowned out the guardians. Something dangerous.
Something close.
To be careful, he conjured a sphere made of air, gradually enlarging it until it was big enough to cover him and Zoe from the front. It wasn’t quite as effective as a full shield, but it would keep them safe from a surprise attack.
His ability to control and manipulate air the way he did was a bit unusual in his homeland. Technically, he was born with power from the ice elemental side, like Noah. But he’d always been able to manipulate air better than ice or water the way most of the iceborn did.
In all of his years, he’d only known a handful of people in his world who’d had a similar type of power to his.
When he wanted to, he could conjure a layer of ice on the outside of a sphere of air like the one he had now, but those types of shields were more difficult to see through, and he had a feeling he was going to need his eyes.
“Do you hear that?” Zoe whispered.
It was a high-pitched kind of sound. Something faint, at first, that would never have been noticed on a normal New York City day with cars passing on the streets below.
But in the dead quiet of the afternoon, he heard it approaching like a hum.
And then a roar.
He realized too late that the sound was coming from inside the building.
His shield of air had been designed to protect them against an attack from the front. When the group of zombies pushed against the door behind them, it flung both him and Zoe across the roof.
Thinking fast, he was able to send a quick cushion of air toward Zoe so that she landed softly, but there was nothing he could do for himself. He grunted as the wind got knocked from his lungs and his head banged against the side of a metal pipe.
Zoe scrambled toward him, grabbing his hand and attempting to pull him backward as five zombies stepped out of the building, their mouths snapping hungrily as some kind of green acid dripped from their teeth.
“What’s wrong with them?” Zoe asked.
A strange question, considering there was something very wrong with the entire world right now. But she was right that there was something particularly wrong with these.
It was the first time he’d actually encountered zombies with special abilities, like Parrish and Crash had talked to him about. Super zombies, they called them. He’d been hoping they wouldn’t face any up here on the rooftops, but he was the one who’d been dumb enough to trigger the trap.
The five super zombies in front of them now seemed to move as one, and David realized the high-pitched humming sound was actually coming from their throats.
He gathered a ball of compressed air between his palms and hurled it forward, hitting the zombie in the middle with a direct blow. A hit that hard should have knocked it backward or blown a hole straight through its chest, but it barely fazed this one.
The group continued to move forward, their red, glowing eyes locked on his face.
He was going to have to try something new with these. If they moved as one, maybe he’d have
