“SEMERJEAN!”
A nine-foot portal opened on the second floor balcony. A speeding figure burst through the surface and knocked Mercy unconscious. It continued down the stairs in a blurry streak, yanking Rebel off Esis and slamming him against a wall. Two heavy-framed paintings crashed to the ground.
Now Amanda could see this new man clearly. He stood as large and bald as Rebel, with powerful arms and a broadly muscled back. His entire body was glossy white, like a marble statue of a naked Greek god. It took two squinting glances for Amanda to see that he was covered in tempis.
Ivy stared at the screen in slack horror. “Oh Jesus, Richard. Come on. Break free.”
Rebel may as well have been crucified for all the force that pinned him. When he tried to kick his aggressor, the man grew a second pair of arms from his hips. They held Rebel’s thighs to the wall.
Gemma shook her trembling head. “God. What is that? Is it even human?”
Only Rebel was in a position to glimpse the man behind the tempis. Through the small round eyeholes, he could see pale skin and sandy brown eyebrows. His fierce blue eyes brimmed with savage fury, like a panther in mid-roar.
Rebel hocked a spiteful gob at his attacker. “Fuck you, coward. A real man shows his face when he kills someone.”
Semerjean’s eyes laughed with a shrewd and vicious mockery that Rebel found even more frightening than his rage. Clearly this creature wasn’t just a thug on the family payroll. He was a Pelletier through and through.
Ivy cried out when the tempic man grew a third pair of arms from his rib cage. They struck at Rebel with relentless fury, cracking his jaw, breaking his teeth. Once Rebel’s face matched the bloody wretchedness of Esis, Semerjean melted away his extra limbs. He leaned in toward Rebel and hissed a gritty whisper.
“You’ll know when I’m killing you, boy. You’ll see my true face then.”
Rebel moaned in pain as Semerjean traced a finger along each cheek, rifting the skin just enough to scar him. He let his victim collapse to the floor, then gently scooped his wife into his arms.
Amanda watched in bleary-eyed anguish as Semerjean carried Esis through a new portal. The gateway shrank to a close behind them.
All was once again quiet in the lobby as the living fell as still as the dead. In the remote command room, three Gotham women stared numbly at the monitors. Gemma shuddered in her seat while she received new intel from the future.
“It’s safe to get Rebel and Mercy,” she told Ivy. “But you have to do it fast.”
“Why? Are those monsters coming back?”
“No.”
Gemma adjusted the camera displays to show a view of the street. A trio of ash-gray vans came to a halt in front of the building, with several more approaching.
The Deps had arrived in full force.
—
Howard Hairston parked his rental coupe at Bowling Green Park, a block away from the action. The freckly young redhead was the only member of Melissa’s team to follow her here. Everyone else had been called back to Los Angeles by the regional director, who sought to sever his office from this quagmire of a case. Until Integrity seized the reins, as everyone assumed they would, the six otherworldly fugitives were officially New York’s problem.
The moment Howard reached the siege site, he saw that New York was ready for them.
Seventeen government vehicles flanked the building—armored trucks, reviver vans, mobile thermal scanners. A trio of NYPD aerocruisers circled the roof like buzzards.
Howard scanned the crowd for Melissa, to no avail. He moved in on Rosie Herrera, a small and sturdy woman whose masculine features were only slightly countered by her salmon-pink ensemble. She paced the barricaded entry, commanding her men like Napoleon at Austerlitz.
“I want all exits covered before that tempis comes down. Every door. Every window. Every vent.”
“Excuse me . . .”
She held up a finger to Howard, then fumed at the young agent working the gate controls. “Why am I still looking at this barrier, Jules?”
“None of the overrides are working. Someone jammed it good.”
“Well, fix it already. We got thirty guys standing here with their twigs out.” She turned to Howard. “Who the hell are you?”
He raised his badge. She leaned in to study it. “Huh. Another one from Sunland. You must be Melissa’s boy.”
“Yes, ma’am. Has she arrived yet?”
“She’s here. She’s changing.”
“Changing?”
“You faced these perps before. How bad are they?”
“Bad.” Howard sighed. “One of them broke my teammate’s back. Another punched the gate off a Tug-a-Lug truck. They’ve got an Australian kid who’s an ice-cold gangster and a Filipino who probably already knows your middle name. If they slip out this time—”
“They won’t.”
“—it’ll be because of Maranan. That guy just knows things.”