A moment silence fell in the cabin, marked by another booming shot outside that made a ringing noise when the bullet impacted the body of the aircraft.
“What do you mean we can’t?” Augustus asked, bearing down on Scott with a brow curved in anger. “I know you’ve got your issues with Sienna—”
“This isn’t about issues,” Scott said, almost whispering. “We go out there now, we all die. Bravado aside—this is a suicide scenario.”
“Then let’s make it the charge of the damned light brigade,” Veronika said.
“If it would do an ounce of good,” Scott said, voice rising, “yes. I would make a glorious end of it.” He turned to me. “But it won’t. We will all die, and Sienna will still be the prisoner of that—that kilted bitch.”
“She’s not wearing a kilt,” J.J. whispered to Abby. “Do women wear kilts?”
“They’re called skirts, dear,” Abby said.
“If you’ve got one shot,” Scott said, and he was still speaking to me, “you don’t pull the trigger when you’re fifty miles from your target. Sienna would tell you that. She’d understand.” He looked right at Augustus. “And she wouldn’t want us to die, stupidly, right here, running out into gunfire so they can pick us off from a mile away.”
“Who’s going to rescue her if we don’t?” Augustus looked like he was about to lose his mind.
“Who’s going to rescue all of us if we’re trapped together?” Scott asked. “This succubus, Rose…I think she’s got it in mind to hurt Sienna real bad.” He looked at each of us, in turn, coolly. “Can you think of a better way than peeling the souls out of the only people left on the planet who still care about her?”
That cold notion washed down me in a sickening torrent.
Sienna was trapped.
And we were bait.
No…not bait.
We were the human sacrifices that this Rose intended to use to bring Sienna to hurt, to pain, to…
To agony, basically.
To her knees.
“Not today,” I whispered, and gathered my wits about me even though my skin was cold and my hands threatened to shake. I tried to get the wind, and it took me a couple tries to summon it up properly.
The plane rattled as I started the winds beneath it. It lurched as it took to the air, my plan all along being not to worry about the tarmac below, because I could just lift us up and start the engines—or simply pump out a few hundred mph of air in their place if need be.
“No!” Augustus looked at me, eyes flaring in disbelief. “Reed, she’s your sister!”
“And you’re my team,” I said, straining as another bullet hit the fuselage. “I won’t sacrifice your lives in vain, Augustus. Not when we’ve walked right into a trap.”
I thought he was going to lunge for me for a moment, but he didn’t. He looked like he wanted to.
Jamal just sat there, staring at his screen, but I don’t think he saw anything of it. Friday shrunk, his muscles reducing down to their regular size. He collapsed in his chair like his knees went out from beneath him.
I righted the plane and jetted high-powered air out the back of the engines, creating an artificial draft. The plane shot forward, one last parting bullet hitting us in the underbelly as we rocketed away from the airfield at several hundred miles per hour.
“We…we just lost her, didn’t we?” J.J. asked. It sounded like defeat. Abby just touched his hand.
“Get on ground radar, J.J.,” Scott said, issuing a command I might have thought of if I hadn’t been propelling a plane toward the stratosphere with nothing but my will and my powers. “Look for missiles. We don’t know what kind of control this Rose has over the UK military.”
“Yeah, that’s not the sort of thing I can just do—” J.J. started to say.
“I’ve got it,” Jamal said. “I’m tapped into their comms, too—throwing that over to you, J.J.”
Kat was still holding her hand over Veronika, who was standing in the middle of the aisle, staring past me, eyes unfocused. Chase stood just behind her, quiet relief slipping out on her face.
“Rose definitely has at least local control over the military,” J.J. said. “They’re coordinating a response.”
I turned the jets up harder, and motioned to the cockpit. “Someone needs to start the plane so I can go from flying to just giving us a good tailwind.”
“I’m a pilot,” Chase said.
“I’ll ride shotgun with you,” Veronika said. Her voice sounded like it was ground out, full of menace and anger at the fight not going as she planned. She and Chase vanished toward the cockpit.
“You left her behind, Reed,” Augustus said into the silence that followed.
“What else was I supposed to do, Augustus?” I asked. “Sacrifice all of us to this Rose? Because I don’t think she had intentions to do anything with us but maybe torture us to death in front of Sienna for her own kicks.”
Augustus slumped back in his seat, staring out the window. “We could have saved her, man.” But he didn’t sound sure.
“We’ve got missiles in the air,” J.J. announced.
“I’m taking us low,” I said, trying to orient the plane. I thought I’d been sending us west, but I couldn’t really be sure. “When they get close, I’ll feel them. Veronika,” I called warningly to the cockpit.
“She’s working on it,” Veronika called back. “I don’t think these things are meant to be cold started while in flight.” She threw one of the pilot bodies unceremoniously back into the aisle, then the other.
“This sucker is gonna hit us in like thirty seconds,” J.J. said. “Wait, maybe less.”
I floored the wind currents behind us, maintaining the ones beneath us. The plane shuddered, hitting a speed its engines were not rated for. I felt a little like I was donating blood, my very life running out of me as I pushed the plane forward.
“Relax, Reed,” Scott said, easing up next to me. “I’ve got this one.”
I could feel the missile as it started to close, cutting through the air faster than we were. I couldn’t tell what kind it was, just that it was there. “How are you going to do this, Scott?” I asked, my voice straining as I tried to concentrate on keeping us aloft and moving forward while still mentally tracking the missile that was coming to kill us.
“Easy,” Scott said. “It’s raining.”
I could actually feel it now that he said it, the water coming down outside the cabin. It was a light one, but enough that I felt it when a ball of liquid condensed and pulled together, streaming toward the missile. I could feel the wind running over its surface, and then, suddenly, for a second I didn’t.
Scott had flooded the missile with water, the additional weight messing with its ballistic characteristics, and then it dragged down, losing us as it fell to the earth below, engine puttering out.
“Uh, bad news, guys…like ten more incoming,” J.J. said.
“One at a time, partner,” Scott said as I drove us for the coast even faster. The smart move would have been to dive us for the deck, but I wasn’t sure I could keep us low against the total resistance that being at that altitude would provide. I would have liked to have pushed us higher, to the open skies and far from the higher air pressure below, but that wasn’t realistic given what I was combating.
Which was fatigue from lack of sleep, and flying a plane without any engines across the north of England.
“Bringing the engines online now,” Chase called from the cockpit. “Not sure how well this will work…”
I rolled my eyes and killed the airflow into the engines to essentially recreate their grounded, at rest state. It was a lot easier than continuing to thrust us forward, which I was having to do, or keeping us aloft, which was mostly being done by our forward momentum and the wings now, thankfully.
“Engine start!” Chase announced. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it for a few seconds while I get ‘em warmed up.”
“Sure, no problem,” I said, straining a little. I’d dispelled hurricanes, and lifting a plane wasn’t too difficult, but the missiles flying toward us from behind were a little concerning.