I flew for one of the pieces of debris. A bike engine. Beast of Burden turned on his heel to keep me in view, and said something to the others, keeping them focused on Tristan and Sveta.

I threw the debris, and Beast of Burden slapped it aside before it could hit anything.

I’d meant it more as deterrent than anything.

Disjoint grabbed Sveta, and I could see her stumble. Sidepiece prepared to hurl something.

It was Chris to the rescue. I was pretty sure it was him.

Black, feathered, and wholly unintuitive in construction. He had four legs like a crow’s talons, but large and spindly, and his body wrapped in on itself, with thick scale-like plates like the talons that extended around his ‘face’ and front. The actual features weren’t birdlike, but were nestled in the ‘conch’ of his physical form. If he’d been a banana, the eyes, mouth, and useful features would have been on the inside curve, the outside curve facing forward. But he was more of a tight spiral than a banana, confused by the crests and flares of large, glossy black feathers that filled the gaps.

It was only because his eyes were spaced out that he could rotate them and look out to the sides, each eye yellow with a distorted pupil.

The feathers were heavy and hard, I realized, as he blocked one blast from Sidepiece by rearing up and fanning the feathers out.

He stumbled in response to the explosion, then dipped back and into the field of wooden racks and greenery. Beans, it might have been.

Dark Introspection, he’d called this, if I remembered right.

The addition of an unknown player gave them pause. It was our opportunity to back off. Beast of Burden’s group gathered together.

“I would have had her,” Damsel said.

“Will you shut up?”

“You’re strong but slow,” she said. “You lack grace, and you need mobility to deal with mobility.”

“Enough.”

I could see the others getting together.

I could also see that the Fallen were gathering.

Snag had said he outnumbered these guys? It didn’t look that way. I could see Love Lost and a few others. Cleat. Etna. There were a few mooks, rounding out their number to ten or so, but not many with powers that I also recognized.

They were backing away from a larger group of Fallen, twenty-strong. More young Fallen with cheap masks, less in the way of tattoos.

Their leader wasn’t like that. He had an aura to him. As dark and grungy as the others were, as cheap as many of their costumes were, their skin cluttered with tattoos, he was all in white. White hair, white mask of overlapping segments with no eyes and black lipstick across the feminine mouth, white tunic, white leggings, white cane.

Valefor. He’d attacked my hometown.

He’d be leadership, or he’d be up there. He had that pedigree.