Aden had made it his mission in life to appear weak. It was what had allowed him to rise to a position of leadership within the squad right under Ming LeBon’s nose. But at that instant, as he prepared for countless sniper rifles to fire, all directed at him and Zaira and the innocent people around them, he knew the time had come for him to show his true colors. No small demonstration as he’d planned to orchestrate later tonight.
This was going to be a big one.
“Get down!” he called out in a voice that was calm but brooked no disobedience . . . then he reached for power as he’d never before reached. Always prior to this, he’d asked only a little, been given it with no questions asked from the five men and women who knew what and who he was.
Today, he squeezed Zaira’s hand and he took everything.
She went to her knees beside him as he channeled her ability through himself, but no matter that he’d stripped her of her psychic weapons, she made no effort to close that channel, to block him. Neither did Vasic, Axl, Amin, or Cris. Their power blasted through his psychic veins in a single split second. In the next, it became far greater than the sum of its parts.
Because Aden wasn’t a simple telepath. He was a mirror.
Hidden deep in his mind, behind the shields Walker Lauren had taught him to build, was a lens that reflected and multiplied the power he could channel from others. At that instant, he was stronger than a cardinal, the strength of five powerful Arrows merged by his mind into a roar of pure energy.
His telepathy expanded exponentially, until he could scan the entire city, but he didn’t seek to target the minds of the shooters. They were too distant and he couldn’t guarantee he’d locate each and every one. There were too many innocent lives at stake to chance a mistake. Shoving out his right hand, his left still locked with Zaira’s, he thrust out his power just as the bullets began to hit.
* * *
ZAIRA sucked in a breath as she saw a bullet heading directly toward them, readying her weakened body to push Aden out of the way. But the bullet seemed to slam into something before she could move and it just fell to the ground like a bird stunned by flying into an unexpected obstacle. Blinking, she stared as it happened again and again . . . and finally she caught a glimpse of the barrier. It was like an oil shimmer on a wet road, visible only in patches of light and color.
A soap bubble as strong as titanium. Stronger.
Looking up at the man who was holding that shield unlike any she’d ever seen, she sucked in another breath. Aden’s hair was blowing back in a breeze that existed only around him, his eyes an impossible reflective silver and his right hand held palm out as he stopped those bullets dead. She was weak because he was pulling power from her, but in the shadow of his power, she felt no sense of weakness, of being in a situation she couldn’t escape.
A second later, she watched in astonishment as he flicked his hand and the bullets stopped hitting the ground. Instead, the soap bubble became a mirror that echoed his eyes and the bullets pinged back along the direct flight paths on which they’d arrived.
Around her, the people who’d hit the ground at Aden’s order gasped and stared as bullet after bullet reversed trajectory, heading straight back toward the shooters at a speed that only the fittest and fastest would survive. Many wouldn’t—eyes to the scopes where they were set up at apartment windows, they wouldn’t be able to imagine a bullet reversing course. And so they would die.
The bullets stopped coming moments later. Some of the snipers had to be dead. Others had likely missed death by a heartbeat and would be racing to get away. Her telepathic strength was faint with Aden having locked her into his personal network, but it was enough to reach the high-rises and the cardinal mind she needed.
The rats are running, she said to Kaleb Krychek, having snapped out a warning to him the instant before Aden initiated the highest level of the psychic protocol the six of them had agreed to when Aden was only twenty-one and Zaira twenty. She’d known Vasic wouldn’t be able to respond as fast as usual, not with the teleporter forming one point of the five-pointed star that was the engine for Aden’s extraordinary ability, but Krychek was as swift a teleporter.
All she’d said was, New York! It had been enough.
I have two dead, two contained, Krychek responded. One more in progress.
Leaving him to the hunt, she got to her feet and placed her free hand on Aden’s jaw. The situation is under control, she said mind to mind. You can drop the shield.
It took him a minute, the tension leaving his body muscle by muscle until the breeze stopped, the mirror sliding down to fade into the ground. His eyes, however, remained that eerie reflective shade she’d never before seen. “Casualties?”