“It’s better than the alternative,” Callum’s voice whispered from behind us—startling me because I hadn’t even heard him approach. The Brit’s eyes were stone cold as he said, “Roof. Now.”
The vampire’s hands curled over our shoulders, shoving us forward and brooking no argument. Matthew extended his hand and used it to help melt the icy floor in front of us, so that we at least stomped through slush instead of slid across the ice.
Callum followed more slowly. When we were halfway up the steps and he was at the very base, I turned back to watch him raise his hand. Two seconds later, the entire second floor filled with water—Callum backing up the steps each time the little waves threatened to touch the tips of his boots, eventually building a block wall of ice to hold the water back.
The water climbed. And climbed. And didn’t stop climbing …
I saw a pinhead appear in the water at the edge of the steps—he must have made it up the stairs and waded the entire length of the second-floor hallway. His swarthy complexion was set in a grimace as he lifted his hand and shot a huge fireball at the stairwell.
My face heated and I cringed, raising my hands to block my face and cursing my magic.
Matthew lifted his hand to stop it, but magic didn’t even begin to pour out of his palms before the threat was gone.
With a flick of Callum’s fingers, the fire died midair. He didn’t stop creating his waves. The water surged up another foot and he simply waved his left fingers back and forth as the ball of flame faded to nothing.
As I lowered my hands, I could only guess that Callum had done what Malcolm often did: change the air around him, make it so damp and muggy that the flames couldn’t breathe.
The cop tried again, this time sending a dagger of ice through the air, but not at Callum, at me.
The next moment, the cop’s head burst into flame. And another two feet of water surged up through the hall. The vampire was clearly the most powerful Icefire I’d ever seen—able to work with both his elements at once to maximum capacity.
Below us the cop screamed, turning his hands toward his own face and shooting water at it, not thinking clearly enough to just fall forward into the water to douse the fire. By the time he’d put out the flames, he was hardly more than a skull covered by random flaps of red—muscle and tendon exposed. He was as gruesome as a horror villain, and just as hard to look at. Near him, the melting bodies of all the frozen police bobbed like ice cubes, still slowly melting.
All of it made my stomach twist.
Despite looking dead, the burnt man surged forward through the pool of water, sloshing toward us.
My heart dropped when I saw that and I stumbled backward up a stair, nearly falling, scraping my hand.
Behind me, Matthew muttered, “Holy fuck! He’s not dead?”
“Claude must really hate you,” Callum said casually as he shot another jet of flame at the cop, this one straight through his heart.
“Who?” Matthew asked.
But I didn’t answer—because I saw my stepfather surge up out of the dead cop’s body and sail through the air right toward me. He’d been forcing the man’s body to move even as it shut down.
I covered myself in shadow, but panicked when I saw Claude try to fly inside of Matthew’s body. My brother shrieked and retracted his hand.
Callum merely laughed and glanced at me. “He’s trying to possess your brother, isn’t he?”
I nodded as I shot a net of shadows toward Claude, sending him back down toward the water, away from us.
“What the hell just happened? It got cold,” Matthew asked in a tight, strained voice.
“An asshole tried to possess you,” I told him, shoving him up the stairs as I spread the net out along the passageway so that Claude wouldn’t be able to follow.
“Vampires can’t be possessed,” Callum scoffed.
Claude gritted his teeth, eyes bouncing between the three of us. But then Callum sent another three feet of water toward him, a miniature tsunami that roared as it rolled down the hall growing even louder when it found the staircase to the first floor and barreled down the passageway.
When Callum turned back to look at us, his one-word order was all it took to make my legs pump faster. “Go.”
We raced up the hall of the third floor, then yanked at the emergency door that was already hanging crooked on its hinges. We went up the steep dark steps toward the roof. I used my hand to light the way, and my breath grew more frantic as I heard the sound of screams and gunshots outside.
What kind of fight was out there? Was it bad?
“Preschool?” I touched my earpiece, desperately needing to hear his voice, to reassure myself that he wasn’t the one wailing in pain.
“Jump!” Gray’s voice flickered mechanically through the earpiece. At least, I thought it was Gray’s voice. The distortion made it hard to tell.
I swallowed hard.
Had the pinheads hacked our system? Where was everyone else? Had that really been his voice?
Fucking hell. I wished I had the time to write a spell to check on him, the guys, to see what I should do.
I pulled on Matthew and hurried to the edge of the roof on the north side, away from the parking lot and the headlights and floodlights that polluted the shadows on that side of the building.
I touched my earpiece, but it sizzled with static. I pushed light magic into it, trying to clear the signal, but that didn’t work.
I turned to Callum and Matthew. “Let me go first,” I told them. Then I dropped my brother’s hand, climbed up onto the ledge of the roof—hoping against hope that what I’d actually heard was Gray’s voice and not some cop trying to pull a fast one.
The wind nipped at my nose and the drying tears on my cheeks made them feel as stiff and dry as paper.
I crouched, hands trembling.
And then I took a leap of faith, spreading my arms wide as I jumped from the building toward the stars.
My body and stomach plummeted toward the ground—my brain turned into a disco light and pummeled me with blasts of color and random shapes instead of the objects below me.
Fuck.
Wrong choice.
The wind scratched at my eyes and I decided to close them, instead of facing the end head on. I tucked my hands into my sides and that made me speed up, made the air around me flow faster, my abdomen tightened and twisted as I bareled like a rocket—only I was headed toward the ground instead of space.
“Incoming!” I heard a voice in my earpiece.
My eyes flew open as I searched for the owner of that voice—Evan. I realized with a start that I was no longer falling, I was shooting sideways—but the adrenaline and intensity had messed me up so badly that I hadn’t been able to tell the difference.
I shot through a hole in the broken window of the building next door, landing with an oomph, right on top of Gray.
My breath fled and I deflated; my fingers barely had enough strength to cling to him in complete and utter relief. I’d been so sure I was going to die.
“Hey, nemesis. You okay?” Gray’s arm came around my back and hugged me to him.
“I didn’t think you were going to catch me,” I mumbled into his chest as I tried to fight off the shakes of shock.
“I’ll always catch you, Hayley. Always.” Gray rubbed my back with his hand, soothing me.