Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (18 page)

Joss straightened. “You know I can’t do
that.”

“Wow, that is just so moving,” Marco
sneered, “your…commitment to law and order and justice and shit.
What do you think, Tony?”

“Yeah, it really is. Should we test that
commitment?” Tony held out his hands, palms up, and they burst into
flame. “How about a little fire, Scarecrow? Trina says you like to
play with fire.” He moved his hands over each other, looking like
an evil magician with this flickering orange glow on his face, and
a ball of fire appeared in his hand. He hurled it toward us.

Joss probably could have stopped something
that small from reaching her, but I yanked her off to the side. She
let out an un-Joss-like shriek, and I didn’t know if it was because
of the fire or the manhandling, but she was pale, her eyes were
wide, and seeing her scared pissed me off.

The next thing I knew, my shoulder was
connecting with Tony’s gut and I ran him into the check out
counter.

The high counter struck him behind the
lungs, knocking the wind out of him. I followed up with a few hard
shots to his ribs before he got his feet under him again. Then his
hands came up, glowing and crackling with heat and orange flame. We
circled each other for a moment, him throwing fiery punches, me
dodging, getting in a few more hits.

I ducked under a right cross aimed at my
head, losing my balance just a little, and suddenly felt a searing
burn on my neck.

Son of a bitch!
I fell back a step. I
knew my jacket had taken the worst of it, but it hurt so bad it
made me dizzy, my eyes watered and I could smell the stink of it. I
wanted to get this over with.

I charged Tony again. He caught me by the
arms but I was still able to hammer at his midsection, driving him
back toward the checkout. I pulled my arm free and hooked a blow
that knocked him off his feet. His head struck the counter and he
slumped to the ground.

I dropped and rolled over once, just to be
sure my jacket wasn’t still burning. Jeff grabbed me by the front
of it and yanked me up. I tried to look around for Joss and saw
Angie and Bella slip out of the front of the store. Jeff’s blow to
my jaw spun my head back around to find Joss near the back wall,
holding her own with Marco, but recoiling from one of his powerful
hits that even her Talent couldn’t take all the sting out of.
Jeff’s fist sunk into my gut, doubling me over. I had to pay
attention. Joss could stand up to Marco for a while. She’d done it
before. All I had to do was put Jeff down, and then I could get in
there and help her. He couldn’t stand up to both of us.

We could do this.

Determined to get to Joss as soon as I
could, I pushed hard and drove my shoulder up into Jeff’s stomach.
He grabbed onto me, yanking me along with him as he stumbled back a
few steps. I took the opportunity to get in a few more body shots,
but I didn’t really have the leverage to hurt him much and he
wasn’t letting go. He tried to pick me up and kinda throw me—dude
was watching
way
too much TV wrestling. Of course that
didn’t work, but it made us both falter off-balance.

Then I heard it. That sizzling crack
followed by a crash. Jeff and I both took a second to see one of
the light fixtures shatter near Joss and Marco. I took advantage of
the moment to land a right cross to Jeff’s face, and then looked up
again. There were a few more light fixtures and a few ceiling fans
that Nathan could use as ammunition. I wondered if he was trying to
hit Joss or just distract her for Marco.

While I was wondering, Jeff returned the
favor with a solid blow to my cheek that sent me staggering
sideways and down on one knee. I spat blood, adjusted, and waited a
moment for him to come to me. I launched myself up and into him
with a series of punches that drove him back to the wall.

There was a flash of color in the corner of
my eye, and I had to turn. I heard the groan of it at the same time
I saw the guitar banging against the angel as it started its
swing.

I forgot Jeff. It was like that day at the
construction site, when I was running full out and there was
nothing in my mind but getting to Joss in time. It must have been
Jeff who grabbed at me. I flung him off without stopping, but
stumbled, trying to keep up my speed as I crashed into Joss. She
was knocked clear, rolled, and disappeared in a flash of light.

Then everything was dark.

* * *

Joss

The voice that screamed his name didn’t
sound like mine. I didn’t even feel like me. I don’t know what I
felt. It was like nothing…and everything.

The angel flew from Dylan, swung through the
air like a bat, taking Marco in the midsection, flinging him back,
colliding with Nathan, both of them falling to the floor.

Nathan. He did this.

But I couldn’t think about that now. There
was this pulsing ball of static in my head. A part of me that
seemed far away thought,
It’s shock. Keep your eye on Marco. Get
to Dylan.

Dylan.

Marco and I maintained eye contact as I
crawled across the floor, which felt like it was trembling beneath
my hands. But maybe that was just how hard I was shaking. Marco
shoved the wooden angel aside, but didn’t make any move to pick it
up. He stayed on the floor. That faraway voice said,
That’s what
someone looks like when they’re cornered by a wild animal.

Another part of me was pleased.

My hands found Dylan, the stiff, cool
leather of his jacket. And then there was blood.

I glared at Marco, daring him to try
something, and then looked down at Dylan. He lay facedown, still,
one arm flung out. The arm that had shoved me away.

Pulse, Joss. Find his pulse.
Assess.

I was moving so slowly. I knew that I was. I
felt wrapped in something sticky that slowed my limbs, seeped into
my head to slow my brain. Something that was dragging at time
itself. The backs of my fingers trailed along Dylan’s cheek, the
same way he would touch me. I had never done that before.

Assess!

Under the collar of his jacket, his neck was
warm and slick with blood. My fingers slid into place and felt the
throb of his pulse beneath his skin.

Time revved back up, spinning my head like
the hands on a watch gone mad.
What do I do, what do I do? Okay,
okay, there’s bleeding. So apply pressure to the wound.
I
looked around frantically for something quick and easy to press
against his head.
Nothing here!
my mind screamed in
frustration. I was about to try to yank the sleeve off my jacket
when I saw a scarf lying several feet away, probably dropped by one
of the girls. I threw out a line from my mind and grabbed it.

Stop! Do not apply pressure to a head wound
if any of the following conditions is present—

I froze for just a second, and then started
checking Dylan over more carefully, feeling like time was racing
all around me and I couldn’t move fast enough, I couldn’t process
fast enough to understand my own thoughts or make my body move
right. It felt like the heat of him burned my frozen, clumsy
hands.

Bleeding from the ear.
Oh Jesus, God.
That was on the list for not applying pressure. But what did it
mean? I couldn’t remember. Couldn’t think.

“Is he okay?”

“You dropped a two-hundred pound log on his
head!” I screamed at Nathan. The air shuddered around us; the
building itself seemed to tremble.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Shut up, man,” Marco said, swatting at
Nathan’s arm. “Joss, you need to calm the fuck down.”

“Calm down? Calm down?!” Energy pulsed
around us, hot, thick, pricking against my skin. In my throat,
cutting off my air, pricking at my eyes. Above, lights flickered,
dimmed. A bulb shattered somewhere, and glass came tinkling
down.

“What the fuck?” Tony groaned, sitting up.
He looked over at all of us, his eyes going wide when he saw Marco
half-lying on the ground and me kneeling over Dylan, staring
daggers. He got to his feet, stumbling toward us, his hands already
starting to glow.

Beneath my own hand I could feel the burned,
scarred leather of Dylan’s jacket. My breath started to come
harder. Tony had started this. Tony and his fire had pushed Dylan
to act. “Stay. Back,” I ground out.

“Tony—” Marco started to warn him.

But Tony kept coming at me, the glow turning
to flame that licked the air from the tips of his fingers.

And I was so done with all of them. My
forearms crossed in front of me like a shield. The air between us
gathered, focused. When Tony hit it, I felt it in my mind, like a
spider on a web. Only this wasn’t a web. I yanked my arms apart,
forcing outward with my mind. The air itself punched into Tony,
throwing him backward, rolling and skidding across the floor,
crashing again into the checkout counter. He lay still.

My head felt foolishly empty, fragile,
wrapped up in pain. Marco was yelling at me, but I didn’t really
follow, and he still wasn’t making a move. Something tugged at my
sleeve and my head swung drunkenly on my neck to find Dylan’s hand
gripping me.

His eyes were open, looking up at me, a
switch thrown that brought everything back online.

“You okay?”

“Am
I
okay?” I almost did the
laughing, sobbing thing. “Who’s the one bleeding here?”

“You are,” he croaked.

I reached up to my face, found blood under
my nose, and actually thought about how unattractive that must be
as I swiped at it with my sleeve. “Yeah, well, you should see the
other guy.”

“Help me up?”

“Are you sure—?” Then the sirens penetrated.
I saw the phone in Nathan’s hand. “Are you kidding me?”

“What’d you expect when you practically made
the kid piss himself with your freak girl gone wild act?” Marco
sneered. Then he grinned at us. “Guess we’d all better get out of
here. Good luck outrunning the cops this time.”

He gained his feet and bolted for the back
door without so much as a glance at his crew. Nathan scurried
toward the front of the store to kick at Jeff and Tony while I
pulled Dylan to his feet. He swayed dangerously.

“Maybe we should—”

“I got this,” Dylan cut me off. He looked
pale but determined and took a step toward the door.

“No, they’ll bring the cruisers back there,
and there aren’t enough places to hide. We’ve gotta go out the
front.”

“Okay.”

He moved okay. Kinda slow, kinda off
balance, but a few minutes ago I wasn’t even sure if he’d regain
consciousness.

Rick and my dad weren’t exactly friends, but
Dad knew all the merchants personally, and so did I, to some
extent. I started trying to think up a story in case we got caught.
Something to explain the disorder, the damages the police were
going to find. It kept my mind from thinking about how slowly we
were moving.

By the time we got outside, I knew that the
cops would see us any minute. Dylan already seemed to need a break.
I dragged him past the next building into the alley as fast as I
could and propped him up against the wall. We couldn’t stay there.
They’d be searching the nearby alleys for us soon enough. I looked
out at the mall, trying to think of someplace close, some little
unlikely nook where we could hide, where Dylan could gain a few
more minutes to rest. But I looked up and down the mall, with the
soft lamplight glowing on the bricks and glinting off the windows,
and saw nothing.

I heard tires screech to a stop behind the
store. Car doors. And then, one by one, the bulbs in the gas lamps
began to pop. I started with the one closest to us, and moved down
the mall, hopping from one side of the bricks to the other, until
everything was shrouded in darkness.

“Joss Marshall,” Dylan’s voice whispered to
me, “you are a very bad girl.”

I let my aching head fall against his chest.
He’s going to be okay.
The relief of it made my knees weak,
but I had to hold us both upright. Sure, he’d have a killer
headache. He might even need a few stitches. But if he was moving
around mostly under his own steam and obviously up to teasing me,
it couldn’t be serious. He’d be fine.

Next step. You’ve got to keep moving.

There seemed to be at least four cars so
far, and not one of those officers had come alone. I had to wonder
where Fairview was getting the budget for all these guys and why
none of them could be bothered to, you know,
prevent
the
crime. They were preoccupied in the store itself right now, but it
wouldn’t be long before they spread out to canvass the area. Two
were already in the service road. I could see the beams of their
flashlights bobbing. Any moment they’d reach this first alleyway
and spot us.

“Time to move.” I tugged Dylan away from the
wall, wedging myself under his shoulder again, and wrapping my arm
around his back. We needed to make it across the bricks and between
two stores on the other side. But to avoid being seen by the two
guys who were about to shine their lights down the alley we’d have
to go diagonally, away from Vinyl Salvation, and, unfortunately,
away from Dad’s store which we could easily have hidden out in.

We were halfway across when Dylan started to
go down. Hard. It was so quick I almost let him take us both down
to the ground. I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow—more
reflexive self-preservation than anything else—and I felt bad about
it.

“Hey, stay on your feet. We’re halfway
there.”

He tried to get his feet back under him as I
struggled to hold us both up, terrified that we were stopped in the
middle of the road. It was a miracle we hadn’t been spotted
already.

“I can’t do it. Just. Let me sit here. I’ll
make something up.”

Yeah, sure, you’re up for that.
His
voice was all thready and he couldn’t walk twenty yards. I couldn’t
imagine him talking his way out of eating peas, let alone this kind
trouble, even if he
was
Dylan.