Swansong’s power was audible, and the nothingness that extended around the perimeter of the area became a universe of roiling distortion, blurs, and shadow. The bubble collapsed. I saw Swansong with her hand extended my way. She’d caught another glancing hit from Paris for her trouble.

A bit of flight and the ability to take one baton swing without flinching or slowing down in the slightest bought me an opportunity.

My thumb slipped one of the rings from the base of my finger to the middle part. Each ring had spikes that swept back along the back of my hand, and by moving it to where I had, with my hand in a fist, the spike pointed forward.

I aimed for the throat, worry for Sveta burying the clear awareness of what I was trying to do. The spike punched into meat. I repeated the hit, flying close so my legs wrapped around his upper body, punching—catching the underside of his jaw, his face, mask, then helmet. He twisted to keep me from getting at the neck again.

“Vic!”

Swansong’s voice. I kicked away and flew back.

Vulturehawk was swooping in, and I was ready for a fight. Ready to just fly in close and put a mess of holes in him.

But he wasn’t interested in a brawl. He cut me off and backed away, dropping down near Contender to check the wounds.

“No arties, ’Tend. All sho’, rest sure.”

“Fucking hurts,” Contender growled.

“Yep,” Vulturehawk said. Even the single word had its peculiar inflection.

“Don’t stand in the water,” Paris ordered.

“Water?”

He pointed up.

Above us, a diagram in blue lights. Byron’s constellation. He was still lying on the road, I could see, but he was focusing enough to draw something for us.

As if seeming to realize the other guys were onto us, Byron activated the diagram.

The water the diagram writ across the sky created was something that gushed skyward.

I took advantage of the distraction to fly straight for Swansong. I still couldn’t hold up my entire weight with flight—whatever had shaken our powers had shaken them good—but I could make myself nearly weightless. I pulled a Harbinger and situated myself above her.

I’d heard the term raining buckets before, but this—this was closer to the idea. It was as though a swimming pool had been dropped on us from above, diffused by the fact it had been cast up, breaking apart as the wind and slight differences in timing added up together.

I leaped upward, and then I used my powers. Flight, to stay airborne longer. Forcefield, to block and break the worst of the water.

Swansong used her power.

The water settled, sloshing and filling up irrigation ditches. The villains found footing on higher ground, where snow and ice piled up, or where the dirt was highest. Paris had one foot up on a fence, the other on stone.

Byron had drenched them, at least. When I looked at Swansong, she looked sixty percent dry.