Chapter Forty-Five

Rebel sprang heavenward into the rush of air, her smile filling with wind.

It happened so fast. The wish was cast, propelling her into the night sky so quickly, not even bystanders had time to grasp what had taken place. To catch a glimpse of Anjeline’s magic unfold, wrapping around her, embedding into her skin, as if it were giving her invisible wings. They left the city’s unforgiving streets behind and flew among the swirling stars. One of Rebel’s lifelong dreams had come true. A fulfillment of a childhood wish. She was flying.

Soaring.

A voice sounded in her ear. “Told you.” Warm fingers grasped Rebel’s waist, and Anjeline pressed against her back as she supported their weight. Straightening her arms out like an eagle’s pinions, she weaved them up and down as though she were treading on the surface of the ocean. But this wasn’t like the last time. This time she was doing the flying.

She. Was. Flying.

She glanced over her shoulder, her face right next to Anjeline’s. There had never been any doubt in those fiery eyes. “How do you know this is going to work?”

“When you wished in the basement, a consequence should have surfaced. But it didn’t, because you cast it for both our sakes. I didn’t see it before.” Anjeline pressed her hand to Rebel’s chest. “Your soul’s as strong as Solomon’s was. Unable to wish for the self alone. A selfless heart.”

Never did Rebel think it would be her. The heart her own father had been searching for. The one thing keeping them from plummeting toward soot-covered smokestacks was Rebel. Her wish. She laughed, her voice faint upon the wind. Above them, the night stretched out huge, full of celestial bodies and wild things.

And she laughed again. Because she was one of those wild things.

Sizzling magic washed over her as Anjeline kept her warm from the frigid temp of the skies. They were suddenly alone, hovering over the city amid the infinite night. Rebel’s hair streamed in the zephyr. Their feet dangled above the diminishing buildings, across a sea of dark rooftops and the lamplit stretch of streets. They flew on for several blocks toward their destination in a state of blessed peace, drawn upward by a protective force of wind.

A howl split through the sky.

“Dammit!” Rebel swayed, startled.

“They’re coming.” Anjeline inhaled.

Screams echoed far below.

Sounds of guttural growls replaced the shrilled cries. Dark beast-like figures bounded down the roadway with such prodigious force that people were clambering to get indoors. Cars swerved and pedestrians fainted. Wolves in the streets. Four-legged figures, two-legged shapes, and some who were undecided, plowed through traffic, leaping over cars, snapping and flashing their eyes up at the sky. If the Moon Court had been chaos, then this was absolute madness.

“Cockeyed mutts.” Adrenaline shot through Rebel’s every nerve ending. She could barely make out teeth shining and tongues frothing in the moonlight. The sight almost caused her to lose her balance, but she straightened up, calming her heart. She kept her sights on nearing their destination. “How many are there?”

Anjeline peered down below. “A dozen, at least.”

“How’d they find us so quickly?”

“Blood. You have enough wounds on you I can smell it.”

Rebel’s leg throbbed. Her bloody ankle.

Anjeline gasped. “They’re coming over the roofs!”

The fury of noises grew closer. More figures were leaping, scaling drainpipes, and climbing the sides of buildings. Some reverted from lycanthrope form, paws molding to clawed fingers, beasts rearing up like men, but their faces stayed unchanged. Fangs shined, tongues lolled to the side, and their bone armor rippled along their spines as they hurtled across roofs.

A dark figure bounded into the air underneath them—snapping—before landing back on the roof. Another leaped, hitting the side of a taller building instead, and bellowed its frustration. But they kept coming. A tidal wave of hungry wolves vaulted over rooftops, sweeping into the air again and again like shark-infested waters, jumping one after the other, willing Rebel to fall.

“Can you gain more height?” Anjeline asked.

“We’ll find out.” Rebel flung her arms up, back into her climb, propelling them upward. Anjeline whispered encouraging words in her ear, seeming to fill her to the place she needed, and they mounted higher. But it wasn’t enough. The higher Rebel went, the higher the buildings became, as well, and the frigid air set her lungs on fire.

Another lycan leaped into the air—jaws gaping.

For an instant, Rebel glimpsed the tip of a wet muzzle illuminated in the moonlight before the head dropped out of view. That one had been inches away. She clenched her fists, and her eyes flicked to the bag. “The spheres?” she called over the rushing in her ears.

There was movement in her satchel, and then Anjeline withdrew an Inferno globe, seething in her palm with luster. “I can guide your aim,” she said. Placing one hand on Rebel’s arm, Anjeline directed her aim as though they were releasing a missile. Then Rebel let go. It shimmered as it spun downward.

A moment later, it hit.

An explosion of heat rocked them forward. For a moment, the sky was lit in a crimson glow. Jets of light jutted out from the blast on a rooftop and gushing noises filled the night. Shrieks and half-human wails split the air. Glass shattered and bricks gave way, plunging lycans over the edge of a roof. As the magical light died, Rebel spied the damage. The sphere had downed about five wolves, not to mention many were now hobbling from the blast.

Several more were scrambling over the buildings.

“I’m going to enjoy this.” Anjeline smiled savagely, reached into the satchel, and grabbed the first sphere she touched. Taking rapid aim, she let it drop.

The sphere bounced off the backbone armor of a plump lycanthrope and into the throng of beasts. It cracked open, gusting out a fiery breath. Wolves reared up as sheets of flame rose around their paws. Furry forms retreated from the inferno in circles, running helter-skelter back along the buildings and down the streets, tossing their bodies to the ground to snuff out the blaze.

Halfway between howls—out through a wall of fire and over the rooftop—leaped three rapidly ascending forms. A smaller figure rode atop the back of a blood-red lycanthrope. Even from this height, Rebel saw his amber eyes. Wulfram and the twins. He guided his pack, calling out commands, his voice changing, and his body immaturing by the hour.

“This one’s mine.” Rebel bared her teeth, her face glistening with cold sweat. She hooked her fingers around two spheres Anjeline slipped inside her waiting grasp. Still flying ahead, she glanced down along the length of her body to the rooftops below and centered on her target. Her fingers released.

As the spheres dropped, they glinted blue light.

A skull-rattling boom came. Like thunder after a lethal lightning strike. The Shockwave globes hit the alpha, one to his face and another to his chest. A starburst of electricity crackled across Wulfram’s body, shocking through him—and directly into the twin wolves. The force of the blast jarred Rebel’s bones, momentarily blinding them, but it did so much worse below. Wolves fell back, some twisting in retreat.

“Never fail to impress,” Anjeline said, squeezing arms around Rebel’s waist.

They soared past an avenue heavy with traffic, where the gap between buildings became too great for the lycans to leap. A few daring ones tried, only to fall stories below, their snouts greeting the pavement. All around came the manic panic of the city. An alarm wailed and battalions of police raced to the explosion’s aftermath.

More rooftops flashed underneath them, then the shimmering of the Thames River came into view. Sweat dripped into Rebel’s eyes and her arms grew heavier. Her pulse slowed, zapped from the lack of adrenaline and a functioning heart. If that weren’t enough, her ears began to ring.

A melody whispered in her ear.

Harmonious sounds emerged, flowing through the night, swirling up to meet them. It sounded like something from one of her dreams. Someone was singing a familiar song. Her mother?

When the blazing sun is gone. When there’s nothing he shines upon,

Then you show your little light. Twinkle, twinkle, through the night…

Anjeline went rigid, as if she’d been bitten. “Melusine,” she hissed.

It wasn’t really Rebel’s mother singing. She knew the voice belonged to the Siren, playing tricks on her. But how did she know that song? A waft of warmth rippled through her, spreading over her backside as Anjeline pressed closer, the contact clearing her mind fog.

Behind them, the air rushed with the flare of wings.

Glancing over her shoulder, Rebel saw the creatures the sky had coughed up. Four of the largest vultures she’d ever seen rose in the sky, holding within their talons a horde of slippery sea folk, Melusine at the head. The mermaids hissed and screeched, filling the night in predatory sounds.

“They’ll be on us in a shiver,” Anjeline warned.

Barely a street’s distance separated them from the Siren. Aided by their vulture friends, the mermaids trailed behind, their fins flapping in the wind, pervading it with a salty scent. At Melusine’s command, wings beat rapidly and rushed in closer. The birds blinked with dreamy looks in their eyes, and from the Siren’s lips came the most pleasurable sound.

Come to me…

The voice slinked inside Rebel’s mind. The call like a lover’s caress. The earth spun beneath her and her vision blurred. Heat washed over her. “I’ve got you,” Anjeline said, cutting through the enchantment.

Rebel shook it off. “Hold on,” she told her.

Then she thrust forward, splitting through the sky.

The vulture’s beaks clattered, and in a banshee wail, the mermaids surged after them. Rebel flew, lithe and fluid, slicing through the wind as sharp as a blade, with Anjeline pressed against her back, prompting her on. Using the same maneuver she’d witnessed Anjeline carry out, she swept her arms to her side, allowing her to drop through the air, dive-bombing them toward the traffic-filled street below before coming back up and sending her stomach into her chest. They nearly missed a stoplight turning green, and Rebel’s boots grazed the top of a double-decker bus. Her muscles ached, feeling the sting of her ankle, and her heart shouted curses in her skull.

But the melody only increased.

“Your time’s ticking!” Melusine crooned.

Something whizzed by Rebel’s head. She craned her neck, barely able to see the long and curved objects in the mermaid’s grasp. Three of them drew the objects up and pulled back a string. She squinted. “What are they—”

Another zipped past.

“Arrows!” Anjeline flattened herself against Rebel as more flew by. Arrows skittered off buildings, breaking in two, and disappeared into the night.

Rebel shot savagely forward, going into a wobble, giving them greater distance between the mermaids. She swerved to the right, then dizzily to the left, plunging and lifting higher. The arrows missed them by a prayer. Every time she weaved, her heart trembled violently, her energy running low, her flying dodges becoming less quick. A wave of vertigo washed over her, and her heart sputtered, her lungs gasped, and then hands were on her. Heat magic. Anjeline spurred her on, and she pushed harder, propelling them against the wind.

Another arrow split the air.

As quick as Rebel was, she couldn’t get out of its reach. One glanced off her bicep, opening a red gash along her jacket. She felt the arrowhead catch flesh and slice, but no pain. All her blood had migrated to her heart, numbing the rest of her with adrenaline.

Another arrow flew at her thigh. Before it could make contact, Anjeline pressed against her side, shrouding Rebel’s body. The runes upon Anjeline’s arms began to glimmer through the clothing, pulsing sultry energy, and the arrow bit into her leg instead. Light and smoke poured from the wound, and then it vanished.

“Anjeline…” Rebel wheezed.

“The arrows aren’t magical. They can’t harm me.” Her face showed no pain. “Two spheres left.”

“Good. Make them count.” Rebel swirled around for a better aim. She withdrew the last two globes and handed one seething Shockwave to Anjeline. In unison, they hauled back their arms—and launched.

The spheres spun, twinkling like gems in the dark.

The first one cracked against a mermaid’s abdomen. Waves of electric shock rippled along her tail, bouncing off its end and up to the vulture. The fowl convulsed, wings stopped mid-beat, and it tumbled from the sky as if they were never there. At the same time, the second sphere hurtled straight at Melusine. Though her vulture looked of sizable mass, he was apparently brainless. The bird opened its beak wide.

With a snap and gulp, it swallowed the sphere.

The vulture shook its beak as Melusine shouted violent commands at it. It squawked. Bolts of blue lightning shot out from the vulture’s mouth, licking up around its head in shocks and flashes.

“It’s going to explode,” Anjeline shouted. “Fly, Rebel!”

She took off again.

Electric shockwaves bounced and rocked off the vulture, zapping into the Siren. With a brilliant shower of sparks and a croak, the sphere erupted inside the vulture. The bird’s face swelled with the sounds of crackling, and it burst into a shower of plumes. Melusine cried out as they dropped from the sky like a stone.

Leaving one lonely feather drifting in the wind.

The few remaining mermaids shrieked in revenge and darted after Rebel and Anjeline. Just then, something blasted upward from the streets below, the object ascending and curving over them, only to explode near a vulture. Its wings beat frantically, keeping the mermaid aloft long enough for another blast to hit. The vultures dropped one after the other, taking the mermaids with them.

Their screams rang all the way down.

Rebel caught her breath and furrowed her brow. “Where did the blasts come from?” She could barely make out a skirmish on a near rooftop.

Striking black lycanthropes scaled over buildings, meeting the Night Guard head-on, and a dozen figures in crimson leather battled with blades glinting. The Bright Guard. In the middle of the chaos, a figure was shrouded in rippling magic. Lady Danu. The wail of fire engines flew down the street, and another flash of smoke crashed from a rooftop.

Then, like a twisted fairy tale, the heavens opened and it began to snow.

The cold weighed Rebel down, numbing her fingertips, pressing on her lungs, and stuttering her heart. Her muscles bunched in her back, and she began drifting lower toward the leveled rooftops. Her arms had never felt so heavy, as though they had been filled with iron. The corners of her vision hazed, turning unfocused again. She shook her head.

“Rebel?” Anjeline called.

“I can make it.” Another prick of pain.

“Hang on, Faddi.” She pointed. “We are almost there.”

Woozy, Rebel followed Anjeline’s finger. Ahead of them, she could see the moon dazzling above Westminster Palace. Three blocks more. The distance had never felt so far. Her lungs felt refrigerated, and she blew out a frosty breath. She struggled with her arms in a fevered effort to keep them level, but her heart was gasping, on its last pumps of power.

It was then she realized, fate was coming for her.

Anjeline shouted at her, looking over her shoulder. Lips were moving, eyes searching Rebel’s for any sign of understanding, but all Rebel heard was the rushing of winds and fate moving in closer. Words were in her ear: “…can you hear me?”

But it didn’t matter as gravity took hold.