I sprung to action before I even had a good view of what was happening. In the dark, it was hard to see the particulars, but I could see the outside context. A car turning around a corner, only to hit a barrier.

Naibiter’s claws.

I was already descending, and taking action meant a trajectory change, the momentum already there. I struck the claws from above, driving them down toward the ground. Though rigid, they bowed beneath the pressure from above.

She was the escort, running alongside much as Rachel and I had been doing with the van. The difference was that we were making sure Precipice didn’t drive off the road or slide into incoming traffic, keeping an eye out from where we were. Nailbiter was running interference.

Buying time for their vehicle to get away with their hostages. Our friends and teammates. If they reached Cradle—

I caught the nails, and I lifted, hauling them up, so they wouldn’t be a barrier for the van.

Nailbiter’s distant figure barely moved. But the ‘nails’ came hard. More than fifteen, pale and narrow, passing me, stabbing into the street, stabbing a nearby building face. One hit the Wretch, and the other hit me, grazing the underside of my fucking foot.

In the same moment I reacted, the fingers I was gripping withdrew, slipping from my grasp. Too fast, too silent, no cues, and it was too dark to see what I was fighting.

She wasn’t the only one running interference.

Another flier, coming at me as I tried to take evasive action. Nailbiter, off to the side, was scaling a building, preparing to come at the van or come at me from the flanks. I focused on the flier for the time being.

She had a silvery glow about her, long, wild hair made wilder by the fact that she wasn’t human any more. I could see the veins running across her body, the fact that her body had incorporated her costume—maybe clothes. A high collar that could have been a hoodie or a collared shirt. A ridge at the hips and waist that could have been pants, with a pair of horns decorating the ridges halfway between where the belly button should have been and the nethers—by placement and protrusion, I was guessing belt buckle. The solid mass in the midst of the silvery nimbus was a dark purple.

Breaker.

Breaker meant on-off powers, ones that tended to ‘break’ reality. A breaker power meant there were other powers in the mix.

Hers was creating a foot-long blade at each hand, black, to contrast the silvery glow, flickering and shimmering.

I flew closer. I saw her stop in mid air, faster than any flier I’d seen, then immediately set off in another direction. Direction change on a dime. To turn that abruptly, I usually had to land, hit something, plant myself on some solid ground and then fly off.