He looked utterly inhuman. Unearthly. She realized only now how true that observation was.
With a snarl, Crowe seized her, yanking her up off the ground and bringing her around in front of him like a shield. Kellan had her gun raised on Crowe, but somehow Crowe had acted equally fast, having retrieved a weapon off one of his fallen security detail before Mira had even registered his movements.
He put the cold nose of the pistol against Mira’s temple as he started backing toward his waiting helicopter.
“Put her down,” Kellan commanded.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Crowe kept retreating, edging closer to the aircraft. The breeze off the slowly rotating blades stirred Mira’s hair, sent wisps loose from her braid and blew them across her face.
She stared at Kellan, imploring him with her eyes, hoping he’d see that she wanted him to take his shot. Hoping he’d feel through their blood bond that she wasn’t afraid. She trusted he could hit Crowe.
Do it. Take this bastard out before he reaches that bird.
She saw Kellan’s finger tighten on the trigger. Felt his pulse kick with fear of harming her and the icy need to kill the one holding her. But at the last moment Kellan shifted his aim, shooting past Crowe and hitting his pilot.
The human rocked back in his seat with the impact before slumping down over the controls. The engine choked, and the blades lost some of their speed.
Crowe barked a laugh, unfazed. “You think after a few thousand years on this chunk of stone I haven’t learned to fly your crude machinery? Please.” He was still backing up, preparing to make his escape and keeping a firm hold on Mira the whole way.
She couldn’t do much to get loose. His grip was iron around her middle. The metal nose of the gun bored into her right temple like ice. She swallowed her mounting panic as her ears filled with the steady chop-chop-chop of the rotor coming closer.
“A pity I’ll only get to kill one of you before I have to go,” Crowe taunted at Kellan. “I guess it’ll have to be you.”
Mira felt Crowe’s muscles twitch nearly imperceptibly as he readied to take aim on Kellan. The instant the pressure eased from her temple, Mira broke loose from Crowe’s hold and knocked his arm up, twisting out of his reach at the same time. She felt the sudden force of something heavy hitting him. Heard the low crunch as the propeller blade took his hand off at the wrist.
Crowe staggered, mouth slack as he gaped at his severed limb.
Then he looked back to Mira.
Something strange crossed his features as he stared into her eyes. He no longer seemed to notice the terrible wound that wasn’t healing itself. His lost hand lay on the asphalt next to his gun, blood pumping down his forearm and onto the black rooftop. And yet Crowe stared at her eyes, utterly transfixed.
Her eyes . . .
She felt the tickle of one of her lenses where it clung to her cheek. It must have popped out during the struggle, unveiling the hypnotic mirror of her iris. Crowe didn’t seem able to tear himself away from her gaze.
But he was still drifting backward, his steps sluggish now that he was caught in the power of her visions.
She didn’t know what he saw.
She didn’t think she’d want to know.
And in that next instant, it no longer mattered.
Crowe—or whatever his true, Atlantean name was—stumbled back on his heels. He was too close to the blades. Too tall, when the slowing rotors had started to droop with their loss of momentum.
Crowe turned his head then, almost as if some stronger part of his subconscious recognized the threat his waking mind couldn’t see under the spell of Mira’s gaze. He glanced behind him . . . just as the helicopter blade swung toward him, cleaving his head away from his neck.
Mira averted her eyes, but it was impossible to shut out the horror of what just happened.
Then, as Crowe’s body crumpled to the ground, a bright light began to swell inside him. It rushed through his limbs and poured out of his neck, intense and pure and otherworldly. And in the center of his intact palm, a symbol began to take shape, illuminated from within.
It was in the shape of a teardrop falling into the cradle of a crescent moon.
The same symbol Mira and every other Breedmate bore as a birthmark somewhere on their bodies.
There could be no doubting it now.
The Atlanteans were real, the otherworldly fathers of the Breedmates.
The Atlanteans were alive, an unknown number of them, hiding in secret with their banished queen. Lying in wait for their chance to rise up against the Breed and mankind.
They were immortal and deadly.
They were the enemy.
Lucan crashed through the battered door of the rooftop service stairwell, Darion and Nathan right behind him. It seemed the only feasible place for Crowe to have fled, but the situation that greeted Lucan at the top of the GNC building was nothing he would have expected.