by Sadie Moss
Uh.
So for those of you who think it might be fun to transform into, say, an animal?
Don’t.
Just don’t. I really don’t recommend it.
Because it’s not some magical poof, and then you’re a fuzzy-wuzzy bunny rabbit. Oh, no.
It’s your bones cracking, shrinking, and rearranging. It’s your skin tearing and shifting and your body flexing. I’m pretty sure this is what it would feel like to be strapped to a medieval torture rack.
The one good thing about it is that in the process of transforming, I’ve escaped from the lightning whip by contorting and expanding and writhing into a new body.
But now I’m completely confused and disoriented. Why are colors weird? And, oh God, the smells. There are so many scents attacking my nostrils it’s a fucking sensory overload.
I look down at myself, and sure enough, I have fur. And paws.
I’m a goddamn wolf.
Great. He stole from an Unpredictable with a wolf shifting power. Fun. Dandy. How the fuck do I change back?
That’s something I need to figure out fast, but in the meantime, there’s no point wasting these perfectly good fangs.
I leap at Agustin, snarling, and manage to get my teeth fastened around his shoulder. Ah-ha, you fucker! Take that.
Agustin screams in pain as I bite down harder, my jaws so much stronger than they’ve ever been, and the coppery taste of blood hits my tongue as skin and muscle give way.
Mentally, I scramble for a power to mirror. I think I can feel one—
I grasp onto it and immediately transform back into a human, repeating the same painful process in reverse. My howl of pain turns into a ragged scream as my bones shift back to their usual configuration.
Holy fuck, oh my God, I am never doing that again.
I fall to the rooftop, spitting out the blood that’s still in my mouth, grimacing as I struggle to identify the power I’m currently feeling. It’s like I’m seeing a bunch of fireflies in my head. Tiny dancing lights. Very faint, floating and pulsing. All at different points in… in a web of some kind. Like I’m the spider, and they’re the flies, trapped.
What…?
Agustin grabs me by the front of my shirt and hauls me up, lifting me off the roof’s uneven surface as if I weigh nothing. Holy shit, he’s strong. His other hand comes up and grabs my throat, squeezing. I claw at his arm and kick at him, trying to get him off.
“You insolent little bitch,” he snaps.
All my fight skills are useless. He’s too strong, I can’t break his hold, my feet are off the ground so I have no leverage, and he’s squeezing hard enough that I’m seeing spots in front of my eyes. I can’t concentrate, I’m losing too much oxygen. And if I use a boom while I’m dangling in the air, the kickback will probably send me flying right off the roof.
Faintly, I hear someone yelling my name.
One of the men, I’m pretty sure, but I don’t know which one.
I can’t think.
I can’t breathe.
“I was going to keep you alive,” Agustin hisses. “I would’ve given you a very nice life. When I didn’t need your help, obviously. But no. You just had to be so goddamn stubborn. Maybe it’s better this way though. Now I’ll just take your power. I’ll have any magical ability in the world at my fingertips. Nobody will be able to stop me, and it’s all going to be because of you.”
Right, because I’m the one who made him an egotistical idiot in the first place.
Fuck. I need more power, need more strength. I just need more.
In a move driven by survival instinct and desperation, I reach out with everything inside of me and just fling it all at Agustin, greedily trying to snatch up everything he has, yanking on every thread from him that I can find.
I latch onto two that I recognize, even as Agustin raises his hand, letting a strange spark ignite between his fingers.
It’s the one I saw when I was in his memories, the one he used to siphon magic from his teacher slowly and painfully.
He’s about to steal my powers.
To take them and to take my life.
Chapter 24
There’s no time to think, no time to second-guess, as I start to lose sense of the world from lack of oxygen and my body starts to twitch. I just reach inside him and unleash any and every one of the powers that I’m feeling from him.
A powerful blast explodes between us, tearing me from his grip. I’m shot backward, and I should be falling off the roof to my possible death, except that I’m—still in the air.
Holy shit, I’m levitating.
Agustin has also been shot backward, his clothes and chest burnt. I unleashed a fireball at him. While levitating.
I’m mirroring two of his powers at once.
“Elliot!”
Cam teleports onto the roof and body slams Agustin, who’s gaping at me. Blood mats my boyfriend’s blond hair and coats the side of his face, and I can see a large lump with a gash in it near his hairline. But he’s up and conscious, and I’m so fucking glad he’s here.
Agustin is knocked off-balance by the blow and stumbles, and I propel myself back onto the roof, reaching out with my senses as I land and blasting him with water.
Ha! Oh my God. I can do this!
And all it took was nearly dying. I guess that is a pretty damn good motivator.
A second later, there’s a crashing sound from the partially collapsed tower, and then several massive chunks of stone are shoved up and out of the way. Roman bursts through the gap that’s been created, and the demon who broke through the rubble follows him onto the roof, flexing its massive, veiny muscles and roaring.
Roman makes a commanding gesture, siccing it on Agustin. The asshole mage snarls and throws his hands out too, and the demon slows, shaking its head as if trying to clear it.
Good. Locking Agustin in a battle of wills over control of the demon will hopefully keep him distracted long enough for me to take care of things.
Still keeping one hand extended toward the wavering demon, Agustin scrambles to his feet, gaping at me. “I didn’t think you could do it,” he says slowly.
There’s grudging respect in his voice, but I don’t really give a fuck. Absolutely nothing I’ve done today, or ever, has been to impress him.
“Thanks,” I mutter, a little distracted. I can still feel that weird… firefly thing in the back of my head. The spiderweb. What is that, what is it doing? “I thrive on succeeding out of spite.”
The demon roars, lurching toward Agustin as the mage’s concentration breaks. Baring his teeth, Agustin refocuses on the massive creature just as Dmitri and Asher emerge from the hole in the rubble of the tower.
“The tide’s turning!” Asher yells, and at first I think he’s telling me, trying to encourage me, but then I realize he’s talking to Agustin. “Give it up! We’re stronger than you are!”
“No one is as strong as I am.”
Agustin spits at him, readying another spell. Cam teleports close and body slams him again, and I feel the fireflies in my mind jolt.
Huh. It’s almost like they were affected by what happened to Agustin.
I try to reach out a little farther into the spiderweb, following the sticky trail of it toward the little dots of light. It’s like there’s a connection between them and me, carried along the lines of my spiderweb.
Only it’s not mine, it’s Agustin’s.
It’s almost a part of him somehow.
The men are hitting Agustin with everything they’ve got. A few others scramble out onto the roof too, Kendal in the lead. I don’t recognize the people who are with her, but I know they’re on our side because they immediately launch an attack on Agustin.
Down below, the tide of battle does seem to be turning in our favor, thank God.
Agustin’s down, but he’s not out yet. Not by a long shot. He fought off five of us handily in his basement, and he’s doing it again now.
I ignore the urge to just throw myself into the fra
y and try to destroy him, concentrating on the threads. Agustin’s still trying to reach me, pursuing me with single-minded focus, so I reach out, mirror Dmitri, and split into multiples.
Then I give each of them a simple order—mimic me and move around. I start moving around too, like the human equivalent of that game where you have a ball hidden underneath one of three cups and you switch the cups around really fast so whoever’s watching loses track of which cup has the ball. I don’t want Agustin to know which one is the real me.
Even as my body moves erratically through space, the fireflies in the web draw my attention again.
The more I follow the lines of the web toward them, the more convinced I become that… they’re people. The points of light are people. And I can feel that Agustin has some sort of link to each one of them. Not like they’re his family or anything, but like he knows them, he’s touched them, he’s spoken to them. He could name each of them if he had to.
Curious, in my mind, I pluck at one of the threads.
It reverberates through the web, down to one of the fireflies. I see it vibrating, and I hear a gasp, what sounds like the jolt of a heartbeat, and the firefly lights up, shining as brightly as a sun. I can sense the person’s thoughts, feel them waking up.
This is it! This is the power that was keeping everyone in stasis.
That’s why he managed to get so much of the government but not all—he had to personally be in contact with each person. Touch them or something, have some face-to-face contact to establish a connection, to create the threads of the web.
When we hunted him down, the men and I surprised him at his house, catching him off-guard, so he probably had to put his plan into action early instead of wiping out one hundred percent of the government.
And he still nearly succeeded in everything, even with the rushed execution.
Okay. Okay, I just have to wake everyone up now.
Fuck. I hope I’m doing this properly, and that I’m not somehow inducing brain damage or whatever. I start plucking at the threads, strumming them, calling out in my head.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
The fireflies in my mind all light up like torches and I can feel the jolt. Yes! I’m doing it! I can’t do it all at once, I don’t think I’m practiced enough, but the more strings I pluck, the more people are waking up. Just a little while longer…
“Reckless!”
Roman’s voice breaks through my concentration, a warning in his tone.
Agustin conjures a hefty spear from thin air and hurls it at one of my doubles, catching her right through the abdomen. I nearly bend over in pain as I feel the echo of her agony.
“I know!” I yell, and I have my doubles echo me. Agustin’s still dangerous as fuck, maybe more so now that he’s starting to lose. Goddammit, we have to kill him soon. “Keep holding him off! I’m almost there!”
Agustin hears that and starts fighting with renewed, angry desperation. I don’t think he knows exactly what my plan is—he can’t look into my mind while he’s busy fighting off magical attacks and wrestling for control of a demon—but he knows I’m up to something. He knows there’s another plan underneath the one he read in all of those Unpredictables’ minds, and that he’s been duped.
Just a few more strings. Come on, just a few more…
Someone down below waves their arms up at us and shouts something. Asher runs to the edge of the roof, disengaging from Agustin, his brow furrowed.
“Officials in the infirmary downstairs have woken up!” he yells, beaming at me. “You’re doing it!”
A thunderclap of air comes flying at him and Cam teleports, grabbing his friend and teleporting away with him just in time before Asher can be thrown off the roof. Agustin lets out a yell of fury as he realizes what Asher just said, and what that means I’m doing.
But it’s too late for him to stop it. With growing confidence, I pluck the last few threads, and the last few people—I think, I hope—wake up from stasis.
Yes! Our government’s back, bitches.
Agustin flings out daggers of ice, one piercing Dmitri’s double in the chest, another slicing Roman’s arm. Roman doesn’t break concentration on the demon—until Agustin sends everyone flying across the roof with a powerful cyclone.
“Tell them it’s over!” I scream at Asher as the cyclone rages and the demon, temporarily freed from Roman’s hold, roars its anger. “Go in for the kill! It’s over, I got them! They’re all awake!”
I don’t think everyone on the roof knows what I mean, since not all of them knew the full plan—they couldn’t, or Agustin would’ve read it in their minds—but they sure as hell appreciate Asher telling them to go in for the kill. Still sprawled on the roof where he fell, Asher uses his psychic powers to speak to everyone in their minds. He’s not giving them an order they have to obey, not controlling them, but making sure the message is heard. And it sure beats one of us trying to scream over the noises of an entire battlefield.
We don’t need to keep Agustin alive anymore.
A vicious joy fills me at that thought, and I suck my duplicates back into myself, ignoring the pain from the ones who’ve been injured. Two were killed, and they disappeared on their own, winking out of existence.
With no more doubles to hide behind, I advance on Agustin. The look of rage on his face is all-encompassing, but so is the rage I’m feeling.
This man has been manipulating and murdering people for at least a decade. He’s tried to kill me and everyone like me—his own people. He took my baby sister, and he was going to hurt her.
He’s a selfish, self-centered, small-minded, violent, giant man-baby. He tried to kill Roman, he tried to kill everyone I care about, he’s tried to strip our entire community of our rights and to establish a dictatorship.
I want him dead, and I want him dead now.
I know I shouldn’t do this. Roman’s told me about the danger, about how long it took him to get his power under control. That his power wants to consume him once it’s activated, that it hungers for more and more and more. I saw it myself, with my own eyes, on top of the tower last year when Roman killed the mage that was about to kill me. For just that brief instant, it wasn’t Roman living in his eyes, it was something else—something dark and ravenous. Honestly, it scared me. It was the one moment since I met him that I haven’t felt safe with Roman, because in that moment, it wasn’t really Roman in control.
But even though I know all of that—I’m angry. I’m so, so angry. I’m fury, I am rage, and I am vengeance.
I mirror Roman.
And I take his death touch.
Agustin has his eyes fixed on me, furious and red-faced. He advances on me as I advance on him. My men are still scattered by the force of the cyclone he conjured, but they’re picking themselves up slowly, Roman holding out his hand and bringing the demon back under control.
“Sin! Watch out!”
Cam clearly thinks I’m still in danger—and maybe I am, I could definitely still fail here—because he staggers to his feet and teleports into Agustin’s space, body slamming him for a third time. But this time, Agustin is ready. His super strength and super speed make him move like lightning as he lifts Cam as though the broad-shouldered mage weighs nothing and slams him to the ground, pinning him with a pile of earth and rock he’s conjured. Cam lets out a ragged cry of pain as the heavy weight lands on him, and I hear something—a bone—cracking.
Oh, no, you fucking don’t.
I mirror the same super speed Agustin just used and rush forward so fast the world blurs around me. Then I grab the evil mage by the neck, letting Roman’s magic surge within me.
It feels… strange.
Something that’s a part of me and yet not latches onto something inside Agustin and begins to pull, drawing it out of him in deep drags. He stiffens and raises his hand to cast a spell, to stop me, but I tighten my grip on his neck.
He chokes and gurgles, but it’s not because I’m cutting off his air supply. It’s b
ecause I’m cutting off his life. Siphoning it out of him to feed the thing inside me.
I’m hungry.
I’m so very hungry.
I want to feed.
And this man has so much power, so much life. It’s filling me up, satisfying the gnawing hunger that just wants more.
The cyclone that was tearing across the roof dies out into a light breeze. Agustin throws everything he has left at me, like an insane magician pulling rabbit after rabbit out of a hat. But I mirror every one of his powers, counteracting the magic he summons, and as he grows weaker, I grow stronger.
Right before it ends, I see it in Agustin’s eyes. The knowledge that he’s lost.
He starts to scream, to say “no”, but I bring my other hand up to grip the side of his face, and I think one word.
Feed.
My palm glows a deathly, unnatural orange, searing Agustin’s face where I touch him. He screams, the sort of agonized scream that you never hear, not even in movies, because nobody has ever felt that kind of agony and lived, so who could possibly replicate it?
I suck it up. Every last bit of it. I consume all of his life, and it tastes… amazing. Like a burst of pure dopamine in my head, like fireworks, like the best food ever in my mouth, it just feels good.
Agustin’s scream dies out as he collapses to the ground. His face is gaunt and hollowed out, his skin leathery and dry, his eyes unseeing.
For a moment, I gaze down at him, a sense of perfect satisfaction passing through me. Contentment, almost.
I did it. It worked.
And then, so fast it almost makes me gasp—I’m hungry again. I want more. That wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. I don’t even feel any vindication that he’s dead, I just feel more hunger.
Cam is beneath me, struggling to get the huge, heavy chunks of rock and dirt off himself. I think his arm’s broken. I can hear his life force beating inside of him. His heart.
And I want it.
I’m so hungry. I want it. It’s like there’s a void of darkness open inside of me and I need the light to feed it. And Cam has so much light. So much sunshine.
I want to feed on his sunshine.
