He jerked back in his wheelchair, shock distorting his face, and Lu was suffused with a savage satisfaction.

A smile curved her lips, but she knew it wasn’t she who was smiling. It was the animal, eager to feed. Eager for blood. There was a noise in her head, a cry like a thousand roars in the wilderness, an unearthly chorus of gnashing teeth and snapping jaws and hissing. When she took another step back, it was with raised arms, her hands flexed open. A sudden crackle of static electricity sparked through the room, and all the downy hair atop the Grand Minister’s head lifted, haloing his face in a cloud of white.

His expression of shock turned to an extremely pleasing one of terror.

“Sorry,” Lu said aloud, her smile gone, “but I’m not really the cooperative type.”

FOUR

In the split second before the unearthly detonation shattered the quiet and a blast of heated air knocked him off his feet, the hunter on the roof across the street who’d watched Lumina Bohn enter the Hospice sucked in his breath sharply, frozen by the almost sexual pleasure from the burst of power that crackled over his skin. He closed his eyes on a blissful shudder.

Holy mother of God. She’s even stronger than—

An orange fireball erupted from the Hospice. It blew out all the windows and destroyed the roof in a fantastic, deafening display that glowed hellish bright against the dark night sky. The shockwave sent him tumbling back, but he quickly recovered, leaping to his feet in a lightning-fast move and steadying himself with a hand gripped around a satellite antennae.

Though this could only be an unmitigated disaster, he felt for a moment the insane urge to laugh. She was so strong. Her power, in spite of its terrible fury, was so refined.

The urge to laugh quickly fled as people began pouring from the building, screaming.

Some of them were on fire.

He ran with long, even strides across the peak of the roof, never losing his balance, his gaze narrowed on the rain gutter at the opposite end. It had detached, a long length drooping down toward the shorter building adjacent. He leapt on it without hesitation, using his weight and speed to propel him far enough over the alley below that he could drop to the roof of the lower building just as the metal gutter gave way with a groan and buckled. He let go, landed in a crouch, and was up and running again before the ruined length of gutter had even hit the ground.

Sirens screamed from far off in the night. He didn’t have much time.

The building he’d landed on was some kind of office complex. He sped over the roof, hurtling skylights and skirting air vents, until he reached the far edge. Looking down, he judged the distance—about one hundred feet from the ground—and, without hesitation, jumped.

He landed soundlessly, his legs accustomed to absorbing the shock of high falls. It only took a moment to reorient, then he was off and running again, darting down an alleyway that led directly to the street and the chaos beyond.

Just as he emerged from between the two buildings, Lumina Bohn flew out the front door of the Hospice, running so fast she was only a streak of painted light against the darkness.

Directly behind her, dodging debris on the ground and the burning chunks of wood and plastic still raining from the sky, a dozen men in black suits followed.

There could only be one place she was headed. The hunter muttered a curse, then set off in pursuit.

“Father!” Lu screamed, bursting through the front door with such force it came unhinged and tore away from the frame with a shriek of crumpling metal. “Father!”

She looked around for him wildly. Not downstairs, not in the kitchen, not in his chair near the front window. She bounded up the stairs, calling his name, knowing it was still a while before his shift in the fields, knowing he’d never go anywhere else. He had to be here. He had to be!

She could run faster than any human, but the Grand Minister’s men weren’t far behind. They only had minutes to get the bug-out bags and leave. Possibly less than minutes. Every second counted, every—

She skidded to a halt outside the doorway of her father’s bedroom. Her entire body began to shake, and bile rose in her throat. “No,” she whispered, choked and horrified. “No!”

He lay still on the floor in the middle of the room, staring at the ceiling, his beloved fedora knocked off his head and tipped over forlornly in the corner. One shoe had been knocked off, too, and even from where she stood she could see the swelling and bruising on his face.

Beneath him on the wood floor glistened a slowly widening pool of blood.

He turned his head, caught sight of her in the doorway, and smiled.

Lu cried out and ran to him, throwing herself to her knees. She embraced him, sobbing into his neck, her pain so great it felt as if her chest would explode from it.

This was her fault. This was all her fault. If only she’d been able to—

“Liebling,” her father whispered, passing a gentle hand over her hair. Lu looked up through her tears to find him gazing at her with tenderness shining in his eyes, that loving smile still on his face. His voice came very weak, punctuated with a raspy, rattling wheeze. “You mustn’t blame yourself. Your mother and I knew exactly what we were doing when we brought you home. We knew the risks.”

“No. No. No.” It was all she could say. Anguish clogged her throat, tightening around her heart like a vise. Every cell in her body was flush with a horror so profound it had heft, so that she felt weighted to the ground, gravity pulling at her harder than it had only moments before. Tears poured down her cheeks, dripping onto his chest, and for the first time she noticed the three perfect, dark holes in the center of his cardigan. Everything smelled of gun smoke and violence.

“I did so many things wrong, raising you. I should have found a way to teach you to hone your gifts, to grow them, instead of making you hide. I never meant to make you feel ashamed of what you are, liebling. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I was only afraid.” He faltered. When he spoke again, his voice was the barest of sounds, whispering thin. “That is my biggest regret: allowing my fear to rule me. Don’t let it rule you, child. Do the thing you are most afraid of. Always ask yourself, ‘What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?’ And then do it. Don’t be a coward like I was. Don’t be like me.”

“Father, please, we need to get you some help, I’ll call Jakob—”

He coughed up a vivid spray of blood. Wracked with sobs, Lu clutched his hand and cried harder.

“Never forget, liebling,” he whispered, his eyelids fluttering closed, “you are one of God’s creatures, wondrous and rare. You deserve a place in this world, and so do all those like you. Find your people. Do the thing you are most afraid of. And never forget that I love you. Never . . . never forget . . .”

He fell quiet, and Lu sat in frozen, breathless, disbelieving silence as she watched her father die.

It didn’t take long. Mere seconds. His breathing slowed, then stopped. His hands fell slack. One moment he was in the room with her, his presence palpable. The next, she was alone with a corpse.