The Young Elites

The whole scene looks as if we were never here. As if I’m not standing in front of two corpses.

Such power. I swirl in the midst of it all, my jaw clenched, my lips curving into a triumphant smile even as another part of me recoils at what we just did. I feel numb—in control and yet completely helpless.

Through my invisibility shield, I sense Enzo give me a single nod. I nod back, letting him know that I’m ready. He leaps down from the pier. Fire erupts from both of his hands—he holds them out, and in the shadows, I see a masked figure that must be Michel lift his arms. He unravels Enzo’s flames, then reforms them far down the pier onto the deck of the first ship, near its crates of fireworks. The two vanish into the darkness. Seconds later, I hear the sound of startled shouts from the ship.

My hands tremble. Flashbacks of the night when I killed my father come rushing back to me, clouding my illusions. Suddenly my father’s ghost smiles at me in my thoughts. I think I can even see him standing on the pier. You’re a murderer, Adelina. Nice to see you coming into your own.

Seeing him disrupts my concentration—the shroud I’d put over the two dead Inquisitors at my feet suddenly vanishes, revealing them to the world. I start running to the second pier. My mind is completely numb; the image of the dead men is seared into my vision. Keep going. You can’t afford to stop. My attention turns to the buildings lining the harbor, and to the other Inquisitors patrolling the other five piers. Taking a deep breath, I call forth more of my energy. The threads pull taut in my mind, protesting.

I force them to bend, then to weave together.

Against the walls of the buildings, silhouettes of people run by. Illusions of dark blue hoods. Suddenly, Daggers seem to be everywhere on the piers. Inquisitors on the other piers raise the alarm—I conjure Daggers all around them, then run toward the second pier. My fear heightens, and as it does, so do the illusions closest to me. Inquisitors call for help as they strike out against my phantom Daggers. I reach the second pier under cover of invisibility just as flames ignite onboard the second ship.

“They’re all fake!” one of the Inquisitors cries as his sword slashes straight through one of my illusions. He calls on the other soldiers to stop, but they’re all too distracted, blinded with fear from my apparitions. “Stop—find the culprit who’s—”

He never finishes his sentence. One of the Daggers lunges for him with the speed of a striking viper—he twists the man’s arm around and stabs him straight through his chest with his own sword. A real Dagger. Dante. The other Inquisitors turn at his shriek, then attack the Spider, but he’s far too quick for them. He cuts them down in quick succession. His movements blur in the night, so that even after I erase the false Daggers, it looks as if there were more than one of him. The last Inquisitor at this pier tries to run for his life. Dante catches him before he can, and runs a dagger across his throat.

Up at the festivities, some revelers finally notice what’s going on.

Screams go up—then complete chaos.

My mind races. I move on to the third pier, then the fourth. We slaughter the Inquisitors as more patrols rush from the festivities in our direction. So much death.

My eye goes again to the roofs closest to the piers—and this time, I see figures stir. The other Daggers, flesh and blood, their faces hidden behind masks and hooded sapphire robes. One of them rises up from her crouch, carefully notches an arrow to her bow, and aims at the Inquisitors. Gemma. Above her swirls a circle of ravens—when she lets the arrow fly, the ravens plummet down, aiming in unison for the enemy. My illusion of phantom Daggers moving along the walls flickers for a moment, but I grit my teeth and sharpen my concentration. The phantom Daggers turn solid again. More Inquisitors run in their direction.

The Inquisitors are now within firing range. Suddenly, one of them is yanked straight up into the air. He lets out a strangled shriek as he’s thrown up as high as the top of the buildings, then plummets to his death. I wince—my illusions shudder again. That was Lucent’s work. Up above, more arrows rain down, one piercing the throat of a second Inquisitor.

Hurry, Enzo. As the other Daggers kill the Inquisitors with ruthless efficiency, I clench my teeth in desperation. I want to leave this place. I glance over to the ship docked at the first pier.

And there I see him—Enzo, this time with his face entirely covered by a hood and silver mask. He flashes through the inky blackness of the night. There one moment, gone the next. My cue to get out of here.

Dante grabs my arm, then breaks into a sprint. The wind rushes past us. In a matter of seconds, we’ve crossed the sand and grass and run into the shadows of the festivities overlooking the harbor. Screams everywhere. I drop the illusions I’ve been holding. The threads of energy all snap back into place, and I gasp at the sudden emptiness.

The first ship explodes.

The blast knocks me right off my feet. The earth shudders; screams burst from everyone around me. I cover my eye from the blinding glow, and when I squint through my hand at the inferno, I see a rainbow of fireworks light up the night sky in a terrifying display of glory. Fire and fireworks consume the ship’s deck. I picture Enzo setting each of the ships ablaze, his figure a shadow in the night.

Rough hands yank me up onto my feet. “Get to the Messenger,” Dante hisses at me. Then he vanishes into the crowd, his eyes fixed on other Inquisitors.

I fight my way through the crowd, remembering my next step. Meet Raffaele at the end of the square. He’ll usher you to safety. The energy in the air is like lightning—I can practically smell the terror—the power crackling all around me in a glittering shower of energy threads. The darkness inside me hungers for it, yearning to break free, and I have to force down the irresistible urge to flood this entire square with illusions of Underworld monsters. So much power around me, going to waste. For a moment, I attempt to shroud myself in invisibility—but too many people are jostling past me, and every time I start to throw the illusion over myself, I’m jolted out of it. Finally I just give up and continue running.