I scramble to the last place I saw Ellery, and I’m soaked in under thirty seconds. Useless jacket. The water’s cold, but I don’t feel the chill, my blood scorching my veins as I scurry after the sheriff. He’s already halfway down the steep shoulder, his uniform molded to every muscle as he slides confidently toward the rocks and dirt pinning the van against several blackened trees.
I didn’t notice it before, the storm doing its best to hide the fire-decimated landscape, but the vista is barren except for sporadic stalks of tree trunks that are nothing more than blackened husks. Mud and rocks have carved a path through the devastation, and even though the sludge-like river has stopped flowing here, the ground’s obviously unstable.
“Goddamned idiot,” I mutter under my breath, cursing Ellery just before I set out to mimic said idiot.
The van is upside down and beat to shit. Mud and debris press against one side, and I hope the side of the vehicle wedged against the trees has fared better against the deluge of rocks and dirt. If they give way though, the van will plummet down the rest of the mountain. There’s no surviving that.
“Ellery!” I shout as he starts to work his way closer to the car. The wind rips my words from my lips and tosses them down the side of the mountain, stealing them away before they can reach him. The gale screeches like a Valkyrie, and I can hear the glide of mud and the rumble of rocks falling down lower on the hillside beneath us. The ground shudders beneath my feet as though the whole mass is threatening to move any second now.
My heart shoves its way roughly into my throat, and I can’t swallow. I can’t breathe. Can’t think. I can only watch as Ellery darts toward the river of mud that cascaded down the mountain. I don’t know how he’s going to get from the side he’s on to the side where the van is lodged. Just when I decide it’s impossible, he leaps onto a boulder jutting out of the chaotic mess of dirt and stone. Crouching, he throws his body into the air with inhuman strength.
My anxiety flies with him, rising up as I watch his muscular form hurtle through the sky, because there is no other boulder for him to land on. He’s going to smash down into that liquid mud and be sucked under—
He doesn’t fall when he should. His jump lasts longer than it logically should, as if gravity has loosened her rules just for him.
What the flying fuck?
My mouth opens and closes and opens again, as startled surprise mutates into silent horror and then into utterly discombobulated awe.
This shouldn’t be possible.
It isn’t possible.
But I watch Ellery land on a boulder that’s at least thirty feet away from the one he started on, his boots smacking down on the stone with a resounding thud.
He turns back, assessing the deluge, and catches sight of me as lightning cracks apart the dark sky behind him. He yells something at me, but it’s drowned by a clap of thunder that shakes my very bones.
Adrenaline and fear make my feet move before I’ve truly grasped what the hell I’m doing, my body following Ellery even though I have no business being this stupid.
I find myself sliding down the hillside, boots skimming like a surfer, riding the mud and short wet bracken with a level of skill I’ve never possessed before. I expect to eat it and fall the rest of the way down on my ass, but I don’t. Somehow, my body moves gracefully. And it’s definitely not because I told it to. I just went—just moved—didn’t think.
Perth’s smirk flashes inside my head, but I don’t have time to flip it off.
Ellery has already made it to the other side of the landslide, and he’s rushing around the van and shouting at whoever is inside. Somehow through the cacophony of the storm and the rumbling mountain, I hear a high-pitched wail.
Shit. There’s a fucking kid in there.
Any fear is wiped away. Determination blazes through my veins and—without giving it a second thought—I run toward the river of mud, leaping with all I have, just like Ellery did. I aim for the large boulder sticking out of the muck, landing hard, and have to clamber and scrabble at the rock to keep my feet under me.
Holy crap.
I almost overshot it, which is crazy. I shouldn’t be that strong. At least I never was before. Understanding flickers through me like bolts of lightning, burning through my doubt and surprise.
I’m not human.
I know they’ve been saying it, but this is the first time I’m really feeling it. Feeling it in a way that isn’t confused attraction or startling anger. Feeling it in a way that’s pure strength and ability. Emotion whirls in my center at that thought, but I push past all the inner noise and focus. There’s no time for me to freak out right now.
My eyes zero back in on the van. Right now, it’s about them.
Moving on instinct and hope alone, I crouch down, muscles tensing, and pull in a deep inhale before I shove myself up. With the wild cry of a banshee, I launch myself across the mud. My stomach drops out, and when I glance down I realize that I’m soaring through the air like I was built to fly. I’m easily fifteen feet above the ground and slowly starting to drop.
“Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!” Pinwheeling my arms, I try to slow my momentum as I fall, not wanting to plunge right into the liquid mud. Just in case I measured the distance wrong, I clench my teeth together and hope I don’t choke on too much dirt before I can find the surface again.
To my utter shock, as if my body knew exactly where to go and what to do, I drop onto the far side of the mud river, my hand smacking down against the hard dirt.
Well, fuck me. I just Supermanned that landing.
Breathing hard, I push myself up and wipe my stinging palm on my raincoat. In two strides Ellery is in front of me, his hands on my shoulders as he glowers down at me, pissed.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demands, his bright eyes raking over me as though he’s frantically looking for injury.
I look back at the mud river I just leap-frogged across and realize his question is valid.
What the hell am I doing?
The answer cracks against me like a clap of thunder, and I turn back to Ellery. “Trusting my instincts, like Perth told me to do.”
He growls and his blue eyes start to glow. I can tell he swallows down a hell of a lot he’d like to yell at me—and most likely Perth—but instead, he grabs my hand and pulls me toward the van.
“Help me then,” he orders, not wasting any more time. “We both need to get over there,” he explains, pointing to the trees, “and push the van onto its side. The tree trunks are blocking the doors and windows, but if we can get it over, I can pull them out.”
I can hear people crying. It sounds like a set of parents trying to soothe their children. I can’t tell how many, but I hate to think about what they’re going through, how scared they must be. Ellery helps me climb over the car to the tree side and positions me between two blackened trunks.
“Stay in your seat belts!” he calls out to them. “We’re going to push the car over and help you out.”