Jake stood five paces away, hands steady on his gun, expression hard to read in the shifting, wind-tossed shadows. Behind her, Red heard the rustling of brush: the rest of the team, moving into position, surrounding them.
Rooster twisted with a low groan, glancing back over his good shoulder. “Vest, huh?”
Jake’s eyes flicked to him, briefly, before coming back to Red. He did in fact wear a vest, visible between the torn-open halves of his shirt.
“Shoulda shot you in the fucking head,” Rooster said. He forced a wheezing, humorless chuckle.
Red had been angry before.
She didn’t have words for the way she felt now.
Banking on the fact that they wanted her alive, she slowly straightened, empty palms turned toward Jake. Her bare hands were more dangerous than any weapon, and the way his throat jumped as he swallowed told her he knew that.
“I didn’t want it to be this way,” Jake said.
“Me neither,” Red said. She felt the power gathering beneath her skin; it hummed like a colony of bees. She could see the shimmer of heat above her hands, little curls of steam lifting up toward the last flare of the sunset. The wind shifted, pulled in toward her warmth, coming at her from all sides now, tree trunks groaning. “This is going to hurt very badly,” she said, quiet, bored, almost. “And I’m not sorry.”
She called the fire, and it came.
It erupted from her hands. From the ground, a protective circle around the two of them, a huge, blinding white column of fire. She felt her hair lift in the draft; felt the heat enfold them. Rooster looped a weak arm around her legs, held her steady, and the fire never touched him. It was Red’s to command, and it knew that she loved him, that he was to be protected.
She was aware of a sharp pain in her right arm, like a bee sting. The fire danced. Wavered.
Two men, nothing but dim shadows on the other side of the fire, circled them. Red gathered the flames in close, into her open palms, and then shot it toward them.
Screams. Stink of scorched flesh.
Another pain, this time in her leg, and her knee buckled.
They were shooting ather, now.
She gathered the flames to her, swirling them around herself like a cloak, preparing to send them–
It felt like she was shoved. Like someone hit her across the backs of the thighs and shoulders with a monstrous baseball bat. One moment she was standing, and the next she was on the ground, twitching, teeth closing on her tongue until she tasted blood. The fire went out. Her power fritzed, and flickered, and died in her veins, leaving only weakness, and a horrible twitching.
She’d been electrocuted.
The woman from before, dark-eyed and fierce-looking, stood over her, holding the Taser whose leads were now attached to Red. Her hair was frizzed from the heat, soot marred her forehead, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.
“I need the cuffs!” she called to Jake.
Rooster, curled on his side in the dirt, moved like a striking snake. Red saw the flash of silver as light caught the blade of his knife, and he sunk it in the woman’s thigh.
When she yelled and went to her knees, Rooster sat up and cold-cocked her in the face. She went over like a felled tree, unconscious. And dropped the Taser.
Bleeding, shaking, hardly able to sit upright, Rooster leaned over and pulled the leads from Red’s twitching body. The spasms lingered, but they were already fading, the last of her energy funneling power through her, healing her; she could already feel the bullet wounds starting to close.
She was sotired. If she closed her eyes, she would fall into a deep sleep, and when she woke, she’d be only a little sore, but mostly whole.
Rooster was looking down at her, swaying; a little trickle of blood leaked from one nostril. “Finish him, sweetheart.”
That’s right: Jake was still on his feet somewhere, cowering from the fire. But he would come soon.
She gathered air into her lungs. “Leave him!” she shouted, and hoped Jake could hear her. “You can have me, but you leave him alone! Understand? That’s the deal: take me, but leave him. Don’t you dare hurt him!”
Rooster’s face blanked. “Red–”
She reached up and pressed her palm to his forehead. Drew on what little of her strength remained, and pushed it, just like always, through his skin, and bone, through all his atoms.
Please let it be enough, she thought.
She retained consciousness just long enough to see his eyes roll back. To watch him collapse.
Was just drifting into the black when Jake came to stand over her, a pair of fat silver cuffs in one hand.
