“Four Specials,” came the correction as Arial landed in besides us, glass powder covering her shirt. “I had to take cover a moment there. Sorry I’m late.”
“All the better, all the better,” said Divi. “Now I suppose it’s time to begin? I wouldn’t want to be interrupted if they find a second blimp, though that one did take an hour to fly here. Amazing how cheap you can bribe them for when you assure the operator that he’ll soon replace the Specials that force him to labor the holidays away from his family for a pittance.”
“I can wait here all day,” growled Blake. “Make your decision.”
“Then we start. To make it interesting, let’s announce it, shall we? Wouldn’t want those on the ground to be unaware of the trouble.”
He pulled out a small object from his pocket and pulled a pin, rolling it along the floor to the window’s edge. It flashed, then smoke poured out, crimson that spilled over the edge and down the building. Visible over the entire city, especially in the theater we had just departed.
And as Divi leapt forwards, Matteo just behind him, I felt the first tremor.
Chapter 63
Crystals erupted along Blake’s arms as they charged, adding an extra inch of thickness for Divi to remove. Francesca mashed at the button again as the doors stayed firm. Lilac roared, and Arial leapt into the air as I grabbed her wrist, keeping her from zipping away. Next to me, Slugger wound up, raising his gloved fist high into the air and bringing it smashed down on the hardwood floor, infusing the glove with as much mass as he could muster.
The wood paneling leapt upwards in a wave away from the impact, the boards flying free of their nails and scattering, the debris showering over us all. The apartment shuddered, Francesca’s fridge toppling over with a thud and, any remaining stacks of boxes catapulting into the air. The wave caught Divi and Matteo just before they reached Blake, launching the three of them towards the ceiling in a mass of flying limbs, and only Francesca’s strong grip on her countertop kept her from following. Lilac swept over them as they crashed back to the ground, standing in a protective stance in front of Francesca, growling and showing her knifelike incisors.
“We need to get her out of here, not fight them,” I said to Arial, and another tremor hit the building, my grip on her floating form the only thing keeping me on my feet. “Trouble’s coming quick. Last place I want to be when this building falls is trapped inside it.”
By now, Blake and Matteo were locked in a fistfight, though this time, Blake was prepared for Matteo’s abilities. Crystal grew a full five inches off the front of his fist and gathered irregularly around his form, giving him the appearance of an amethyst rather that a cut diamond, the rough edges adding grotesque bulk. He threw a punch at Matteo, who raised his knife to block the razor sharp edge of diamond knuckles, his power suppression making the crystal shrink away as it neared him. But Blake’s fist was hidden in the bulk of crystal, and the knife passed through air as the crystal shrank away, completely missing Blake’s hand. Instead of stopping, his punch continued behind the missed knife, connecting with Matteo’s nose in a sickening crunch. Blood sprayed away as he stumbled back, his eyes tearing up, stunning him until he regained his composure and threw himself on the attack once more.
Beside them, Divi advanced on Lilac, the hackles of her fur rising with each of his steps.
“An abomination of a creation, an abuse of nature,” he said disdainfully, walking forwards with full confidence. Lilac’s growls rose in volume, her tail swishing left and right, her crouch like a loaded spring ready to pounce. But Divi extended his hands, and her growls turned to whimpers, her ears folding flat across the top of her head. And at her sides, her wings started to curl and wither, dark scabs forming over the rapidly dying skin.
“Slugger, occupy him!” I commanded. “He’s suppressing Ennia’s blending powers. That’s going to kill her. Keep him from focusing. Arial, I have an idea—we’re going down!”
Slugger raised his fist to pound against the ground once more, and I threw a dark orb at the floor, absorbing the material to make a hole leading directly into the apartment below. Then I grabbed Arial’s arm, jumping in as she lowered us inside, only to be met with two wide-eyed faces of a husband and wife sitting at a kitchen table, surrounded by dust and chunks of ceiling.
“Scusi!” I shouted as the husband released a torrent of Italian beyond my comprehension, but the meaning quite clear. He leapt to his feet, steak knife in hand, and his wife downed the glass of wine on the table. But Arial was already zipping through their living room, carrying me with her as I blasted a hole in their wall into the bedroom, then another directly into the elevator shaft. Then Arial turned upwards, bringing us up to the level of Francesca, and my dark orb carefully carved away at the door frame. When the hole was large enough, Francesca’s back appeared, and I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into the shaft as she shrieked, her scream echoing up and down the tunnel.
“I can’t hold you both for long,” Arial said as we entered the apartment below once more. She dropped me in the bedroom, then continued with the struggling Francesca, dragging her through the apartment and back up through the hole in the ceiling we had created. I followed on the floor, the Italian couple even more stupefied to see us return, the husband dialing the police on his phone. Then Arial returned through the hole, pulling me upwards, and we reentered Francesca’s apartment next to her shattered window.
“Slugger, retreat!” I shouted as Divi whipped around, his face furious as he saw Francesca with us. “Lilac, come!”
The tiger needed no additional encouragement, dashing around the turned leader, her wings dangling useless at her sides but still healthy enough to run.
“The blimp!” I shouted, and Arial lifted Francesca once more, diving towards the undercarriage. Lilac leapt after, her wings allowing her to glide enough just to pass through the door, the terrified operator backing up into a corner.
“That’s my man!” said Divi. “He’ll never fly it for you!”
“Don’t think we’ll need him to, lad,” said Slugger as Arial returned. “To the top!” he said while I slid along one of the cords left over by Divi and Matteo, reaching the cabin. Then I cut us loose with an orb as Slugger landed atop the balloon, infusing us with enough mass to start falling downwards, accompanied by Arial to hold him in place. We turned, the building moving away, heading out over the city. But not before I saw Blake jump, his needlelike fingers digging into the side of the blimp, giving him a handhold while puncturing the canvas. Matteo followed him, swinging on a cord that now dangled far below us, tied to the outside of the undercarriage where I could not reach without risking damage to the blimp.
“To the coliseum!” I shouted above as we continued to move, my stomach lurching as we fell more than we flew, Slugger commanding the blimp as if he were riding a whale.
Chapter 64
Air whistled out of the blimp as Blake clung on, and Slugger staggered, straining as he fought to keep the blimp aloft. One hand he placed directly on the canvas, sucking away the mass as quickly as he could, knowing that he fought a losing battle with gravity. With the other, he touched left and right, pulling away mass from either side of the blimp to turn the nose. Pull too fast, and the blimp threatened to roll. Too slow, and they’d never reach the target.
Below, the terrified operator huddled in a corner, refusing to touch the controls.
“Can’t you do anything?” I demanded as we lurched downwards, but he only shook his head, his voice stammering.
“Can’t, can’t fly without air, and he’s letting all of it out.”
“Well then, get this thing moving forwards at least!” I said, pushing him to the panel. Panicked, he slid a lever forwards, and fans whirred to life behind us. We started to glide, no longer reliant entirely upon Slugger pitching the nose forwards to generate motion, and the floor leveled off enough for me to see the coliseum approaching through the windows. Next to me, Francesca looked in the opposite direction, her
face drawn as she whispered.
“No, oh no.” Her palm pressed up against the glass, and I followed her gaze. “I’m too late.”
Smoke plumed up from the Daedalus amphitheater as the crowd fled through the streets, the entire right hand side caving in, toppling like children’s building blocks to the fissure that had formed at the center. But that was only the start —the path leading up to Francesca’s apartment lay broken, the buildings on either side leaning inwards, long cracks running along the stone and asphalt. In the center, something moved, something simultaneously dark and red like an infrared light, and the entire street shuddered. Two buildings toppled, sliding completely off their foundations before their bricks blasted forwards, clearing away a mass of cars deserted by terrified owners.
The red glow intensified, and the street heated, the stone melting into a river of magma, white hot with dark black smoke. Smoldering buildings fell into it, growing the pool, the liquid swelling higher with each added brick. Then the molten rock rushed forwards, and the figure stepped into it, the lava flowing to coat his entire body. He surged with it, consuming the entire street, pulling in more and more buildings, leaving only flames and rubble behind him. A squad of police cars pulled forwards, forming a barricade at an intersection, but were immediately swept away as fire from their gas tanks consumed the cars, and bright purple sparks erupted from forcefields as they were overcome by heat and sheer power.
“Your father?” I asked, goosebumps running down my arms at the sight of the damage. Water welled in her eyes, the flaring fire reflecting on her tear film as I asked a second question. “You knew?”
“Of course I knew,” she answered, wiping her eyes. “What do you think happened that day in the opera house? I missed a note. That was supposed to be when I would heal him. I thought that was why they sent you, once I found out yesterday. That if I missed a note again, you’d kill him, before, before—”
Her voice cut off, but the horror on her face completed her sentence without words. Below, the magma stream continued forwards, growing, swelling, consuming an entire building, screams reaching the entire way to us. The flow turned from Francesca’s apartment to follow us in the blimp, a tendril reaching upwards towards us in the sky, but falling behind as we continued to accelerate.
“Francesca, we didn’t come here to kill him,” I said, hoping that statement still remained true as magma licked up the side of a basilica, shattering the stained glass windows and toppling a row of statues. They fell like dominoes into the burning sea. “We came here because all the Silver Tongues started going missing. Did you know about that?”
“Did I know about that?” She laughed now, the tears flowing freely. “Of course I knew. Between Marshall, Ann, and me, we had just enough power to convince them that they came to the choir of their own accord, that they were privileged to be here. Are you saying that you wouldn’t do the same for your parents? It’s only supposed to be temporary, they’re given room and board, no harm came to them!”
I opened my mouth, remembering the injury that befell Amelia when she was kidnapped, then froze, Francesca’s words circulating around my mind. Are you saying you wouldn’t do the same? she’d asked, and I remembered my own experience, saving my mother from Peregrine. How I’d harnessed an entire class of brainwashed Specials to free her, how I’d justified risking their lives to fight against Siri.
“Did you come up with this then?” I asked, and she shook her head. “This whole idea, where did it come from? Capturing the Silver Tongues, arranging them like that. How did you know?”
“There was a lady who used to meet with my father,” Francesca confessed. “Every few months, she would show up to an appointment that my father never forgot. No matter what, he would skip my performances for it. He even missed my mother’s wedding anniversary. That’s what started my parents fighting, and I overheard them one night—and he couldn’t defend himself. He didn’t even know why he met with this woman, and my mother couldn’t take that answer.
“But then, the woman missed her appointment. And I was visited by two men the next day, just after one of my shows. They said my father was sick, that something was wrong with his ability. That if I didn’t heal him, others would come for him, that he would hurt himself —that it would be another scandal, and that I was the only one who could fix it. They gave me the instructions, they gave me the means. I still don’t know who they are.”
Her voice fell then, and the next few words came out flat.
“But I now know they were right.”
Chapter 65
“Hold on!” The shout came from the side of the undercarriage as Arial whipped by, struggling to fight the wind. “We’re about to crash. Slugger’s putting us down right in the center, and I need to get back up there to stabilize him!”
The ground moved beneath too fast and too low, the rooftops seeming only an arm’s reach away, the lip of the coliseum looming before us. We rushed over a park, Matteo clipping the upper branches of a tree from where he dangled, leaves exploding outward but their grip not enough to break him away. I waited for us to slow as the coliseum grew larger, spotting a patch of grass just off to its side that would be perfect. But instead, the blimp’s nose tilted skywards as we gained just a tad of altitude, and Slugger’s plan came to light.
He didn’t intend to land us near the coliseum. He intended to land us in it.
Francesca screamed as the front of the undercarriage cleared the wall, the blimp operator joining her as the midsection crashed into the stone, denting the metal upwards and my teeth clacking together on impact. Lilac released a noise somewhere between a yowl and a roar, mingling with the cry of Matteo below as he slapped against the wall. We bounced, the entire blimp turning and spinning on its side, slingshotting the undercarriage into a mess of flailing limbs and intertwined bodies, far too much of which consisted of angry tiger. Then the top of the balloon reached fully horizontal and collided with the far end of the coliseum inside wall, absorbing the shock like an airbag as we tumbled, and Slugger brought us down in a controlled rolling fall that righted us once more. The operator fled, throwing the door open and sprinting towards the exit, leaving Francesca and me to stumble out with Lilac.
Sirens sounded in the distance as the last remaining tourists in the colosseum followed the operator, their screams faint by the time they reached us below. A semi-truck-sized chunk of the coliseum lip now rested in the center of the arena, completely blown away from the wall, resting precariously on the ruins beneath it. We stood on the modern platform overlook, rubble scattered across the cement, the walls rising around us in every direction.
“Where did you find a tiger?” Francesca asked, blinking and staring at Lilac as if seeing her for the first time. “That’s so outlandish. Does it mean some of the other memories are real?”
“Nothing was real, Francesca, and I can’t apologize enough,” I said, the dust settling around us as Slugger and Arial rushed over. “We only acted to protect you. And while we might not be doing the best job, based on the last half hour, I think we’ve done better than the alternative.”
“Who are you then? The police? Fans?” she asked, shaking her head, and I saw blood matting into her hair, her expression dazed. In our tumble, she might have been concussed—we’d have to address that as soon as we arrived home.
“Call us foreign aid,” I said. “It’s close enough. Now, we need to get you out of here. Arial, can you fly her up to the portal? I’ll push her through, then we’ll need to lend a hand to the police here.”
“Absolutely not,” said Francesca. “I’m not leaving. That’s my father out there, and only my power can stop him.”
As if he could hear her, a roar erupted out of the coliseum, one that sounded like a landslide of rocks grating against each other. Light appeared near the coliseum edge, a glow traveling into the archways to reflect off their interior.
“And that’s why I brought us down here,” said Slugger. “Figured we could use a bit o wall betwe
en us and that.”
“Francesca,” I said. “I think maybe we should try to let him burn out and get you out of here in the meantime. This may be past the point of stopping.”
“It’s been done before, so I’ll do it again,” she stated, determination filling her face. “No one puts on a show like me.”
Except a Titan did it last time, I thought, and nodded at Arial, gesturing up towards where the portal waited above. If we were to fight her father, she would only become a distraction. We needed her out of the way, and safe.
But before we could make a move, light burst through each of the arches, casting the rest of the coliseum into comparative shadow. With a sound like an explosion, a crack raced up the stone, blowing pillars outwards, rocks the size of my body tumbling into the arena. Then the wall folded, crumpling as molten rock spilled through the second story, melting the structure to claim as its own. The smell of burnt plastic and sulfur billowed towards us, stinging my eyes and throwing Arial into a coughing fit, while Slugger whipped his shirt off to cover his mouth. And in seconds, the molten mass fully entered the arena, the wall completely eliminated with the burning city only visible beyond.
The magma mounded upwards like a pyramid, as if drawn by a giant glassblower, in an inverted funnel that gained brightness with each meter towards the top. Red, orange, yellow, and a burning layer of white piled atop each other, capped with a ash-black silhouette, the figure atop it easily twice the size of a linebacker. His arms were as thick as tree trunks, spilling down coal as he waded forwards, his torso as thick as piled tires and neck nonexistent. Rubylike gems formed his eyes, shining so bright, they cast beams that raced like laser pointers along the ground until they found us. And when both danced around our position, he opened his mouth in another roar, the color of his throat matching his eyes, his teeth gnashing sapphires, his hair spiked purple amethyst.
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