38.
Reed
My decision was a split one, born of the fact that Veronika was bleeding in front of me, a ton of advancing gunmen had just gone down outside because of Augustus’s assault, and Colin Fannon was MIA somewhere in York.
Stay to save Sienna, whose whereabouts we didn’t even know?
Or—
“SHIT!” Jamal shouted, thundering through the cabin. “Sienna’s clashing with this other succubus in York, and it’s—shit!”
I stole a look over his shoulder as my brain raced with what to do. “What?”
“She’s getting torn apart,” Augustus breathed, hanging over the seat. Scott, next to him, looked grey in the face.
“NO!” Jamal shouted again, matched a second later by a similar imprecation from Augustus. Scott remained utterly silent.
Jamal looked up at me, eyes a little teary. “Fannon just turned on Sienna.” He swallowed visibly, and looked to the floor. “She’s down.”
“What the actual…?” Veronika said, struggling to her feet. “Bullshit. Fannon wouldn’t do that.”
“He just did,” J.J. said, and turned his own laptop around to show Veronika.
“Reed,” Scott said, and he looked more pained than I could recall ever seeing him.
“We have to get down there,” Augustus said, pushing off the back of Jamal’s seat and ripping the leather in the process.
The sound of a bullet spanging off the body of the aircraft seemed to pressurize the cabin.
“We fight our way out—” Augustus said.
“Come out swinging, lightning in hand—” Jamal said.
“I’m gonna pulp some heads,” Friday said, already swelling. He’d been silent for a while, and I’d thought him asleep, but his eyes were cross and furious.
“I’ll rip up every blade of grass between here and town,” Kat said, and looked at J.J. “What’s that thing you say when I start using trees to fight?”
“The Ents are going to war,” J.J. said solemnly.
“I’m gonna plasma-burn some mofos,” Veronika said. “To ash.”
“You guys,” Scott said, and he was so quiet. “We can’t.”
A moment silence fell in the cabin, marked by another booming shot outside that made a ringing noise when the bullet impacted the body of the aircraft.
“What do you mean we can’t?” Augustus asked, bearing down on Scott with a brow curved in anger. “I know you’ve got your issues with Sienna—”
“This isn’t about issues,” Scott said, almost whispering. “We go out there now, we all die. Bravado aside—this is a suicide scenario.”
“Then let’s make it the charge of the damned light brigade,” Veronika said.
“If it would do an ounce of good,” Scott said, voice rising, “yes. I would make a glorious end of it.” He turned to me. “But it won’t. We will all die, and Sienna will still be the prisoner of that—that kilted bitch.”
“She’s not wearing a kilt,” J.J. whispered to Abby. “Do women wear kilts?”
“They’re called skirts, dear,” Abby said.
“If you’ve got one shot,” Scott said, and he was still speaking to me, “you don’t pull the trigger when you’re fifty miles from your target. Sienna would tell you that. She’d understand.” He looked right at Augustus. “And she wouldn’t want us to die, stupidly, right here, running out into gunfire so they can pick us off from a mile away.”
“Who’s going to rescue her if we don’t?” Augustus looked like he was about to lose his mind.
“Who’s going to rescue all of us if we’re trapped together?” Scott asked. “This succubus, Rose…I think she’s got it in mind to hurt Sienna real bad.” He looked at each of us, in turn, coolly. “Can you think of a better way than peeling the souls out of the only people left on the planet who still care about her?”
That cold notion washed down me in a sickening torrent.
Sienna was trapped.
And we were bait.
No…not bait.
We were the human sacrifices that this Rose intended to use to bring Sienna to hurt, to pain, to…
To agony, basically.
To her knees.
“Not today,” I whispered, and gathered my wits about me even though my skin was cold and my hands threatened to shake. I tried to get the wind, and it took me a couple tries to summon it up properly.
The plane rattled as I started the winds beneath it. It lurched as it took to the air, my plan all along being not to worry about the tarmac below, because I could just lift us up and start the engines—or simply pump out a few hundred mph of air in their place if need be.
“No!” Augustus looked at me, eyes flaring in disbelief. “Reed, she’s your sister!”
“And you’re my team,” I said, straining as another bullet hit the fuselage. “I won’t sacrifice your lives in vain, Augustus. Not when we’ve walked right into a trap.”
I thought he was going to lunge for me for a moment, but he didn’t. He looked like he wanted to.
Jamal just sat there, staring at his screen, but I don’t think he saw anything of it. Friday shrunk, his muscles reducing down to their regular size. He collapsed in his chair like his knees went out from beneath him.
I righted the plane and jetted high-powered air out the back of the engines, creating an artificial draft. The plane shot forward, one last parting bullet hitting us in the underbelly as we rocketed away from the airfield at several hundred miles per hour.
“We…we just lost her, didn’t we?” J.J. asked. It sounded like defeat. Abby just touched his hand.
“Get on ground radar, J.J.,” Scott said, issuing a command I might have thought of if I hadn’t been propelling a plane toward the stratosphere with nothing but my will and my powers. “Look for missiles. We don’t know what kind of control this Rose has over the UK military.”
“Yeah, that’s not the sort of thing I can just do—” J.J. started to say.
“I’ve got it,” Jamal said. “I’m tapped into their comms, too—throwing that over to you, J.J.”
Kat was still holding her hand over Veronika, who was standing in the middle of the aisle, staring past me, eyes unfocused. Chase stood just behind her, quiet relief slipping out on her face.
“Rose definitely has at least local control over the military,” J.J. said. “They’re coordinating a response.”
I turned the jets up harder, and motioned to the cockpit. “Someone needs to start the plane so I can go from flying to just giving us a good tailwind.”
“I’m a pilot,” Chase said.
“I’ll ride shotgun with you,” Veronika said. Her voice sounded like it was ground out, full of menace and anger at the fight not going as she planned. She and Chase vanished toward the cockpit.
“You left her behind, Reed,” Augustus said into the silence that followed.
“What else was I supposed to do, Augustus?” I asked. “Sacrifice all of us to this Rose? Because I don’t think she had intentions to do anything with us but maybe torture us to death in front of Sienna for her own kicks.”
Augustus slumped back in his seat, staring out the window. “We could have saved her, man.” But he didn’t sound sure.
“We’ve got missiles in the air,” J.J. announced.
“I’m taking us low,” I said, trying to orient the plane. I thought I’d been sending us west, but I couldn’t really be sure. “When they get close, I’ll feel them. Veronika,” I called warningly to the cockpit.
“She’s working on it,” Veronika called back. “I don’t think these things are meant to be cold started while in flight.” She threw one of the pilot bodies unceremoniously back into the aisle, then the other.
“This sucker is gonna hit us in like thirty seconds,” J.J. said. “Wait, maybe less.”
I floored the wind currents behind us, maintaining the ones beneath us. The plane shuddered, hitting a speed its engines were not rated for. I felt a little like I was donating blood, my very life running out of me as I pushed the plane forward.
“Relax, Reed,” Scott said, easing up next to me. “I’ve got this one.”
I could feel the missile as it started to close, cutting through the air faster than we were. I couldn’t tell what kind it was, just that it was there. “How are you going to do this, Scott?” I asked, my voice straining as I tried to concentrate on keeping us aloft and moving forward while still mentally tracking the missile that was coming to kill us.
“Easy,” Scott said. “It’s raining.”
I could actually feel it now that he said it, the water coming down outside the cabin. It was a light one, but enough that I felt it when a ball of liquid condensed and pulled together, streaming toward the missile. I could feel the wind running over its surface, and then, suddenly, for a second I didn’t.
Scott had flooded the missile with water, the additional weight messing with its ballistic characteristics, and then it dragged down, losing us as it fell to the earth below, engine puttering out.
“Uh, bad news, guys…like ten more incoming,” J.J. said.
“One at a time, partner,” Scott said as I drove us for the coast even faster. The smart move would have been to dive us for the deck, but I wasn’t sure I could keep us low against the total resistance that being at that altitude would provide. I would have liked to have pushed us higher, to the open skies and far from the higher air pressure below, but that wasn’t realistic given what I was combating.
Which was fatigue from lack of sleep, and flying a plane without any engines across the north of England.
“Bringing the engines online now,” Chase called from the cockpit. “Not sure how well this will work…”
I rolled my eyes and killed the airflow into the engines to essentially recreate their grounded, at rest state. It was a lot easier than continuing to thrust us forward, which I was having to do, or keeping us aloft, which was mostly being done by our forward momentum and the wings now, thankfully.
“Engine start!” Chase announced. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it for a few seconds while I get ‘em warmed up.”
“Sure, no problem,” I said, straining a little. I’d dispelled hurricanes, and lifting a plane wasn’t too difficult, but the missiles flying toward us from behind were a little concerning.
“Bogey only a hundred yards out,” J.J. announced. “Two more close behind it, and, uh…like twelve—no, fifteen—more after that.”
“Like walking in the park,” Scott said, and his forehead was showing a little sweat now. “Splash one.”
“Literally,” J.J. said. “One down. No, two—three.”
“Damn, waterboy,” Augustus breathed.
“If you wanted to throw some rocks up at the ones following, he probably wouldn’t object,” I said, sweating a little myself.
“If I could see them, I would,” Augustus said. “Or feel them.”
“I think I have this,” Scott said, straining.
“Four and five down,” J.J. said. “Six and seven closing…”
Something blew up a little ways off, and I felt it.
“Sorry,” Scott breathed.
I felt something else, too—sudden, supersonic, cutting through the air toward us from behind.
“Uh oh,” I said.
“Something else on radar,” J.J. said. “Unidentified…small…faster than the missiles…”
“It’s Rose,” I breathed, as the engines outside thrummed to life.
“She’s closing on us, man,” J.J. said, looking up at me, wild-eyed. “What are we going to d—”
“Scott…” I said, “lay off on the missiles.”
“Done,” Scott said, collapsing on the seat behind him. Kat came over to him, putting a hand on his head, but his pallor didn’t really improve. “That…was not the easiest thing ever. The welds on those things—”
I concentrated on those drifts behind me, on that supersonic object cutting through the air toward me.
There was a break of fury in my mind, like blood ran in front of my eyes.
I reached out with my mind, with my powers, and seized every single one of the remaining missiles in a furious wind—
And sent them right into a perfect convergence on the Scottish woman following us.
The Gulfstream issued a rough shudder as the explosion’s shockwave ran through the plane.
“Got her!” J.J. shouted. “She’s losing altitude…”
“I know,” I said. “I can feel her.”
Rose ceased her supersonic flight, dropping back, falling to earth. I pushed her along, slamming her into the ground as we rushed forward, away from her, away from the ground as Chase turned the flaps and added power to the engines and we left the ground behind.
I fell into the nearest chair and put my head back against the soft seat. I was pretty sure I hadn’t killed Rose, not if she was the premiere badass she seemed to be.
But maybe, just maybe, I’d given Sienna a break.
I consoled myself with that thought as I pushed the plane with a hard tailwind back across the Atlantic…and wondered if I’d ever see my sister again.