"You will be naming your children AND grandchildren after me," Leigh panted, the unshattered neck of the bottle still clutched in her white-knuckled grasp. "All of them."
Stunned, I merely nodded, scrambling, with her help this time, to chip away at the ice using my keys I fished from my pocket and a lighter she procured from hers, flame licking beneath the ice to oh-so-slowly melt it away.
"C'mon," Leigh urged. "I outran Will-O-Wisp on my way up and she looked pissed. We won't want to be in the way when she arrives."
"I thought you'd left," I managed to say when I remembered how to work my tongue.
"I was just pulling out of the parking lot when people started running out of the school, and then I saw Lexi and she was all alone. I couldn't just leave her there. She wasn't making much sense, but I eventually got the gist, and now I'm here. Anything else you'd like to waste our time asking?"
"No. No, I think I'm good. Let's just get me out of here."
Shade staggered to his feet from behind her, wintery fury whirling around him like a storm. Red blood trickled down his scalp, freezing long before running its coarse, and flaking away to float in the air around him.
The door to the stairs burst open for a second time, accompanied by a furious shout. "I'll make you regret attacking my son's school and putting him in danger, Shade! You've gone too far this time! I'm going to cremate you!"
A massive plume of fire blew our way, Will-O-Wisp's volcanic fury a sort that completely disregarded our safety, presuming she saw us at all. Flames licked a circle around us at every side, faltering against Shade's storm. The fire didn't so much as singe his cloak. I almost could have been fooled into believing he didn't notice she was there at all.
Almost.
Something had changed, a shift in the air, and like nothing else I'd ever seen before, Shade — exploded. A wave of uncontrolled power in every direction sent Leigh crashing into the fence and me, on the other side of it, catapulting through open air, the ice around my ankle shattering from the force of the blast. Leigh tried to catch me. By the time she got over her own surprise and thought to reach for my hand I was already slipping out of her fingers.
"Lil!" she screeched, and it hurt to hear that desperate fear out of her mouth.
Propelled by the atomic wave of Shade's fury, I thought back to how angry Leigh had been at Ezra for abandoning me during Shade's previous attack, how she'd insisted she never would have left me behind, even if it put her directly in harms way. For the first time, I realized she meant every word. I never doubted her, per se, but conjecture and reality were two very different things. People made a lot of promises, only to shrink back in the heat of the moment.
Not her, not my best friend. I was almost certain that if that fence hadn't been in her way she would have dove after me, consequences be damned.
No sooner had the thought entered my head than I slowed, only not fast enough. Something sharp pierced the back of my shoulder, beneath the scapula, and kept piercing, burying its way through layers of my flesh until I could see a metal pole peaking through the front of my shredded blouse.
A few inches to the right and it would have found my heart, but it was hard to be grateful when I barely found the will to breathe past the pulse stuttering pain.
A pole of some sort, or a sign. I landed on a sign, sort of. Wind billowed through my hair and formed a fluid cushion below me, preventing me from being further skewered.
"Are you alright?" Tempest asked, and then seemed to think better of the question. "Hang on a moment, okay? If I pull this thing free you might bleed out."
YOU ARE READING
Super•Villainous
Fantasy"I've been looking for you." There was an unexpected rasp to his voice, a hint of desperation. He stretched out one hand, as if to brush it across my cheek, or perhaps wrap it around my throat. Oddly enough, I didn't know which option frightened me...
