The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(182)

Hannah’s eyes lit up. “I know that one.”

“Babes in Toyland?”

“Yeah. I did it in college.”

“You’re an actress?”

“Uh-huh. I played Jane.”

“I was Alan.”

The two speedsters blinked at each other in addled stupor.

“Why are you people trying to kill us?”

Bruce chucked his hands. “Honestly, I don’t even know. A few months ago, all our prophets started madding out, screaming gloom and doom. Then some of our young ones started disappearing and everyone panicked. Rebel’s the only one who seemed to have a plan. He says killing you breachers will make everything right again.”

“That’s crazy! Why does he think that?”

“Who can say with these augurs? They’re all nutballs. Of course they think the same thing about us swifters. It’s strange to meet a new one after all this time. Do you ever hallucinate when you go real fast?”

A wary voice in Hannah’s head cut her off before she could answer. He’s still playing you. He’s stalling for time.

She turned around to check on her sister and now caught the outlines of three shrouded men. They crouched fifty feet behind her, moving in with the blended stealth of crocodiles.

“AMANDA!”

A shadow grew at Hannah’s feet. Once again, she spun around to see Bruce raise his fingers in anxious surrender. He’d halved the distance between them while her back was turned. Now Hannah could see the tip of a wooden nightstick protruding from his sleeve. At this speed, he could crack her skull like an eggshell.

“You *!”

“It’s not what you think. I was just—”

“Fuck you!”

She aimed the gun at his thigh and pulled the trigger. His leg erupted in a bloody torrent.

Olga gasped as she watched Bruce’s plight on the monitor. Gemma yelled into her headset.

“Don’t all go for the swifter! Someone get the tempic!”

Her warning went ignored. The moment they heard the gunshot, the three Gothams swung their palms at Hannah and launched their attacks in reflex.

A pair of twelve-inch tempic shards shot from the hands of Colin Chisholm, a stocky young blond with a pocked and piggish face. Even in Hannah’s shifted state, the projectiles flew at her like fastball pitches. She dove out of their way, her shoulder colliding painfully with the edge of the fountain as she dropped to the tile. Her pistol fell in the water.

Ben Herrick, the gangly beanpole of the trio, fired an invisible blast of heat from his charred right palm, a blurry cone of air that cooked everything in its path. Tables smoldered. Upholstery bubbled. Ceramic lamps burst apart. Hannah ducked behind the concrete fountain. She shrieked as hot steam hissed above her, scalding the hand that remained clasped on the fountain’s lip.

There was no escaping the third assault. Nick McNoel was a portly redhead of seventeen, a skilled lumic who’d been bending light since he was a toddler. The cloaking colors vanished from the trio’s skin and garments as he channeled his thoughts. Suddenly Hannah became engulfed in a dome of searing white radiance. The light blinded her through the membrane of her eyelids.

Gemma’s high voice howled in their earpieces. “Goddamn it! The tempic!”

Amanda clenched her teeth and thrust her hand at the attackers. A spray of white force erupted from her palm, quickly splitting into three long arms that shoved each man back against the steps. She felt something snap in Nick McNoel’s back.

The tempis vanished. Amanda rushed to her sister’s side. “Hannah! You okay?”

“No! My hand hurts and I can’t see anything! I can’t see!”

Amanda studied her red, blistered fingers. They looked like second-degree burns.

“You’ll be okay. Just hold on to me. We have to go.”

“I shot someone,” Hannah uttered, in a stammering daze. “I aimed for the leg. Is he . . . is he alive?”

Bruce lay unconscious on the nearby tile. From the way blood spurted from his thigh, Amanda was sure the bullet hit an artery. Her inner nurse and Christian clamored for her to make a tourniquet. She dismissed them both as lunatics.

“He’ll be fine. Come on.”

A half mile away, Olga grabbed Ivy’s arm. “He’s bleeding to death! You have to extract him!”

Ivy kept her hot gaze on the sisters. “What are you waiting for, Mercy? Hit them! Now!”

Amanda caught new movement above her. By the time she looked to the second floor and saw the slender young Asian at the railing, it was already too late.

Mercurial Lee was the daughter of augurs. Her birth name itself was a prophecy, a forecast of her future temperament. Though she’d spent much of her life trying to disprove the prediction, there was no denying it. The twenty-three-year-old artist was a turbulent woman, as quick to humor as she was to huff. She heckled the elders at public assemblies and littered the walls with subversive graffiti. She arrived at a wedding wearing nothing but handcuffs, a protest against the clan’s forced unions. Her parents would have done just as well to name her Rebel.

Five weeks ago, her teenage brother Sage became the latest young Gotham to mysteriously vanish, a shock that put an end to her incendiary antics. At long last, Mercy stood aligned with her people. Her unique temporic talent, one she’d long considered useless, had single-handedly turned the tide in the battle against the Golds. To Rebel, she was more than a cherished ally. She was the key to destroying the Pelletiers.