On the one hand, I agree with Tiberias. We’re exposed up here, and who else would be waiting in the trees, watching us scramble? But I understand Tyton too. I know what it is to pour lightning into a person, to sense their nerves sparking off and dying. It feels like a small death of your own, an ending you can never forget.
“Get Evangeline,” I mutter. “And tell Davidson. We need to be sure.”
Next to me, Tiberias huffs. But he doesn’t argue. He pushes off the transport, intending to stalk after Evangeline.
The breeze strengthens, playing across my face. Pine needles brush my skin, soft as trailing fingers. I try to catch one, but it dances off on the growing wind.
And it sprouts before my eyes, a sapling growing in midair. It spears a soldier before any of us can react.
The attack is not the storm of bullets we expected, but the spray of pine needles blasting in a strong, sudden gale. It catches Tyton head-on, tossing him off the wrecked transport. He rolls onto the road, head smacking against the pavement. He stumbles to a knee, then falls, oddly off balance. I throw up an arm to protect my eyes and drop to a knee as needles scratch across my exposed skin. Where they land, roots and trunks burst forth in curling, living explosions. The Hawkway cracks and transports heave, tossed by the forest growing before our eyes. My balance shifts with the road, and I fight to keep upright, bracing against the wrecked transport at my back.
Tiberias reacts without thinking. He tosses a fireball, charring the pines sprouting up around us as fast as they can grow. The ash swirls in the growing wind, obscuring the road lights, making my eyes water.
The air shudders with the sound of crushing metal and shattering glass. Evangeline and her crew are done wasting time. They flatten the wrecks that remain in the way, reducing them to solid puddles of iron and steel. The transports that still work roar, revving their engines as they lurch forward, fighting over pulsing roots and ripping branches. Evangeline leaps through the smoky air, climbing up onto a transport frame. Gunshots ring out, but the bullets fall to the wayside, tossed off by her ability.
Blue shields spring to life on either end of the Hawkway, tall and ethereal against the smoke and ash. Davidson controls each one with an outthrust fist. More shots sound, rippling over the shield. They can’t penetrate. The guns can’t reach us.
“Tyton!” I scream, looking for the electricon. “Tyton, kill them!”
He hoists himself to his feet, teetering as he wags his head back and forth. Trying to shake away the daze. Using the nearest transport, he props himself up, leaning heavily.
“Give me a second!” he yells back, shaking his head again.
We still can’t see the raiders, safe from their nests in the trees. There have to be greenwardens, at least. Tiberias’s flames spread across the surge of pines on the road, twisting like a snake, attempting to devour each new tree as it sprouts. His Lerolan guards run between the trunks, laying hands on each. They explode at their touch, splintering in clouds of bark and blooming fire.
“Get on the transports!” Davidson roars over the chaos. He still holds the shields, defending us from a hail of bullets. “We have to get off the mountain!”
I suck in a deep breath, steeling myself. Focus. In the dark, I can’t see the clouds gathering overhead, but I can feel them. Storm clouds, thunderheads. Growing at my command, ready to strike.
Someone pulls Tyton onto the approaching transport, buckling him in. On the road, Tiberias directs his inferno through the lethal forest trying to trap us on the cliff or push us off it. The rest of our detachment does their best to dodge the trees or destroy them, clearing the way for the transports and our escape.
My heart thunders against my rib cage, adrenaline charging in my blood. It rises until I feel like I might burst. I take one more breath, deeper than before, and raise my hands, palms flat. My storm breaks overhead, twin bolts of lightning shattering down into the trees on either side of the Hawkway. The pines crack. Embers flare. Trunks slide and lean before crashing into the underbrush. Fire springs up among the boughs, small at first. Then gigantic. Fueled by the strength of a Calore prince.
The bullets on our left stop long enough for Davidson to drop one shield and clamber onto the transport behind Evangeline’s. The six vehicles bristle with soldiers, familiar and unfamiliar. In their black suits they look like bugs, crowding for space on a stone in the middle of a churning river.
Tyton hangs off the side of Evangeline’s transport, one arm looped through a set of straps. As they drive past Tiberias, still fighting, Tyton extends a hand. The prince takes it without question, swinging up onto the transport with ease. I’m next.
I land hard, tucked between Tiberias and Tyton, with Evangeline upright above us. She fuses her metal boots to the body of the transport, which allows her to stand with confidence despite our growing speed. She clenches a fist, clearing the last wreck out of our way, slamming it against the cliff side. Glass sprays the air like jagged rain.
Davidson’s final shield drops, shifting from the trees ahead to the lead transport. But in that brief second, another storm of bullets peppers our convoy. A few hit dangerously close, pinging off the metal by my head. Adrenaline eats my fear. I focus on keeping my grip on the transport, fingers tight on makeshift handholds, my body pressed against the cold steel. Flame chases alongside us, flanking the cliff edge of the transport. Tiberias keeps hold of it, dragging the swirl of fire with us, charring anything in our path. We scream over the road, taking the switchbacks with blinding speed.
“More in the trees,” Tyton growls, his teeth gritted against the wind. He squints into the darkness, his eyes narrowing to slits. I know what he’s doing, even if I can’t do it myself. Tyton reaches out to the brains, feeling them as I feel the storm. He blinks once, twice. Killing anyone within his reach, leveling them with a fury of electricity in their skulls. I imagine raiders dropping to the forest floor, their bodies twitching through a deadly seizure before finally lying still.
I rain lightning into the pines, more bolts striking through trunks and branches. The blinding flashes illuminate the forest for a moment, enough to see the silhouettes of falling trees and fleeing figures. A dozen at least.
The Hawkway levels for the last mile as we leave the sharp corners and cliffs behind. The transports roar beneath us, eating up the straightaway in a mad race to the foot of the mountain. Fire and storm run with us, two guardians on deadly wings.
More engines flare on the edge of my awareness. Not as strong as the transports, but just as fast, and moving toward us with furious speed.
The first cycle snarls out of the tree line, its single headlight blinding. The raider on it is small, with spindly limbs, armor, and goggles. He is also boldly stupid, driving the cycle up and off a boulder, sending himself arcing over the road.
Above me, Evangeline slices her hands through the air. The cycle shreds at her command, spokes and pipes peeling apart.
But she isn’t the only magnetron here.
The raider keeps his seat, and the cycle knits back together beneath his body, continuing its leap over the hood of the transport. As he goes, he tosses something. The steel glints in the dim light, fast as any bullet.
Knives sail through the air, their razor edges cutting the wind. We duck together, Tiberias, Tyton, and I. One grazes my shoulder. The suit saves me from the worst of it, but I still feel the sting. I bite my lip hard, forcing back a yelp of pain.
The cycling raider hits the other side of the road hard, wheels skidding through dirt as he circles to make another pass. Instead he crunches into a thin blue wall, the cycle crumpling beneath him as he falls backward, gushing blood.