Let the Storm Break (Sky Fall #2)(77)

VANE

T

he flight to Isaac’s street takes less than five minutes, and as I touch down next to his beat-up truck, I still have no idea what I’m going to say. I just know that I’m not leaving until he agrees to get the hell out of town.

His neighbors are still asleep—their blinds closed tight—and when I stare at the row of nearly identical houses, I feel like I’ve swallowed something bitter.

Dozens of families are in there, just like Isaac’s, all sound asleep, with no idea they’re in any danger.

Same with the next street over.

And the one after that.

And the whole freaking desert.

But I don’t have time to warn them all—and even if I did, it would only create massive panic.

I won’t let the Storms reach the valley, I promise myself as I sneak in the gate to Isaac’s backyard. His curtains are closed, and when I test his bedroom window, it’s locked. Which leaves pounding on the glass and calling his name, hoping I’m not waking his whole family.

It takes at least a minute of solid banging before he slides the curtains apart.

“Gah—put some clothes on!” I shout as he throws open the window wearing only supertight briefs.

“Dude, Vane, I don’t know what you’re on—”

“Come on, you know me better than that—”

“No, I used to know you,” he snaps, running his hand through his hair—or what little of it he has left. He buzzed it since I last saw him. And finally got rid of his scraggly mustache.

Now if only he’d put on some pants.

“Look,” I tell him. “I know things have been weird lately—trust me, they have been for me, too. It’s just . . . the world’s not the way you think it is, okay? There’s all kinds of other crap going on in the background that you don’t know about—and some of it is pretty huge. Life-or-death huge. I don’t know how else to explain it, but please, you have to trust me when I say you need to get your family out of here.”

Isaac snorts and starts to close the window. I reach out and block him.

He pushes harder, but it makes no difference. Three weeks of late-night workouts and I’m way stronger than him now. “I’m serious, Isaac. Look.” I use one hand to lift my shirt, showing him the wicked bruise on my side. “Does this look like a joke? Am I imagining this?”

He winces and stops trying to shut me out. “What happened— did someone jump you?”

“It’s way bigger than that. That’s why you have to get out of here.”

“No, that’s what cops are for.”

I almost want to laugh at the idea of a few out-of-shape policemen pointing guns at Raiden and telling him to freeze.

“This is so far beyond cops, man.” I sigh, trying figure out how to make him understand. “I’m talking about the kind of thing you only see in movies and stuff. Like Thor or—”

“Really? You’re giving me thunder gods?”

Crap, there’s no way to explain this without telling him everything.

And there’s no way to tell him and have him actually believe me.

Unless . . .

“You want the truth? Fine.”

I’m already winning the prize for Biggest Rule Breaker at this point, so why not shatter the Gales’ code of secrecy again?

I call the nearest wind to my side, tangling the cold Northerly around Isaac’s waist. Before he can blink, I tell the draft to surge and it yanks Isaac into the air, floating him a few feet above his bedroom floor.

When he’s done flailing and shouting words in Spanish that I can’t understand—but I’m pretty sure I know what they mean—I set him down and twist the wind into a small dust devil. I tell it to suck up a pair of pants off his floor and launch them at him. “Seriously, dude, cover your junk.”

Isaac barely manages to catch his jeans. He’s too busy looking back and forth between the tornado and me. “What the—how the— you just—”

“I’m a sylph,” I say, cutting him off. “Don’t worry, I’d never heard of it either. I guess it means I can control the wind.”

Isaac laughs. The hysterical kind where if he were out in public, parents would be pulling their kids to safety.

“How do you control the freaking wind?”

“It’s really hard to explain, but it has to do with words.” I whisper the command to release the Northerly and it sweeps around Isaac’s room, fluttering all the papers on his desk before it streaks out the window and races back into the sky.

Isaac stares at me for a second. Then backs away.

“Dude, you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m still the same guy you know.”

“Uh, the Vane I know could barely control his farts, much less the wind. And he didn’t bang on my window at the crack of dawn covered in mysterious bruises, telling me to get out of town.”

“Okay, so maybe a few things have changed.”

I glance around his bedroom, which has stayed pretty much the same since I met Isaac when I was eight. Some of the football and video game junk has been shoved aside to make room for pictures of his girlfriend Shelby, and all the papers on his desk look like college applications. But he’s still the same guy who went out of his way to talk to the weird new kid at school.