Karl nods in encouragement at me. So I take a deep breath and address the team. “I willed them out of existence. I’m a Destroyer, too, remember.” I glance over at Will, who is back to playing with his sword. “It just took someone reminding me of what I can do.”
Will rolls his eyes. It’s obvious he hates that there’s so much attention on him here. But, he’s got to suck it up, because I don’t think I could have done it without him.
“The thing is,” I continue, “it appears I need to be touching them in order to do so.” My lips twist ruefully. “You should know they can make themselves look a little more like people now. And they can talk. And they can be touched, bleed, and turn their limbs into weapons.”
Will mutters, “Creepy as fuck is what they are.”
“Yeah, they are.” Karl shudders, then, as if he’s annoyed he showed his true feelings toward what we saw, he scowls.
No one seems to know how to take this. Karl, admitting that he’s scared, too? It’s almost too much for them. But, despite my own fear over what we’re about to face today, I force myself to sound cool and in control. I need to get them to focus on what’s going to go down, so nobody freaks out once we’re confronted. “If after what you see in a couple of minutes, you still decide to continue on with the mission, you need to understand there’s an excellent chance you’re going to get hurt. The Elders need to be incapacitated for me to be able to work my craft on them, and they won’t go down without a fight.”
“Chloe.” Kellan is trying so hard not to show his true feelings in front of everyone on the plane, but as he’s twisting his cuff around at an alarming speed, I know he’s struggling. “Please tell me you weren’t hurt fighting these things.”
He’ll know if I lie. I search for the right words to describe the hell I’d gone through, but none of them seem soft enough.
So Will answers for me. “The first time we fought one of these beasties, it cut us up like we were paper dolls. Broke some bones. We didn’t have any of your fancy healers with us, so we were simply stitched up afterwards and given some extra blood to replace what we’d lost. The second time . . .” He glances at Karl, and then me. “There were four against the three of us.” He pauses. “We were able to take down two, but the others fled.”
There are too many emotions to handle raging in Kellan’s eyes, so I look away, back toward the team. Their horror is much more manageable.
“What Will isn’t telling you is that we were lucky to make it back to Annar when we did,” Karl says flatly. “We had a very talented Métis who took care of our injuries, but the truth was, they nearly killed us. And that might very well happen today.” He pauses, looks around the airplane. “For this mission, we will give Councilwoman Lilywhite every chance possible to take out these bastards. This team is built of people who’ve been found capable of incapacitating the Elders, one way or another. That is what we will do. We will do our best to stun them long enough for Chloe to do her job. If you don’t think you can do this, then you need to let us know right now. You’ll be free to leave after Whitecomb ensures your silence.”
Nobody gets up. Not even the bitchy girl who called me a princess and insinuated Will wasn’t worth her time.
Karl nods just once. “It’s important you know they adapt to our crafts. The first time I knocked one out, it lasted ten seconds. Then, within minutes, it went down to eight.” He scratches at the back of his neck. “Chloe, are you ready to show them what they’ll be up against?”
No, I want to whisper. Not with Kellan sitting here across from me. But I create a screen in between the body and cockpit of the plane, just like Zthane requested me to do. And then I throw my memories up for all to see.
The team watches in tense silence as I first show them what happened with Cailleache, and then when Karl, Will, and I fought in the warehouse. It’s brutal viewing it again, seeing just how badly we were all cut up in the end. I look even worse up on that screen than I remember being—the last shots I show them, where I’m laying in the dirt, bleeding out, seem more like something that happened to somebody else rather than me.
But I let them see it all, even Erik stabbing me in the ass with a tranquilizer while I groaned like a dying, beached whale, because it’s best they know what to expect. I’m all about choices nowadays. If they want to leave, they should have the right to.
Oh, gods. Jonah left.
I force myself to focus. Can’t think of that right now. Not today, not when so much is at stake.
When it’s finished, and I’ve done away with the screen, Lola murmurs, “Well, damn.”
One of the Shamans titters nervously. “What she said.”
There’s a tense spat of laughter from everyone but Kellan. He simply stands up and says, “We need to talk. Now.”