Page 69 of Resolve
Is Charles?
How?
“Rae!”
Dane stands on the wall bordering the arena with a gun in his hand. Our eyes connect for a heartbeat, and then hands outside the arena yank him off the wall, and he disappears.
“Dane!”
A grunt at my feet reminds me of Charles.
Lifting my boot, I slam it down with my gift.
He vanishes just before my attack hits, the ground cracking instead.
Damn it.
I draw more of my gift out. It’s going to take everything I have to kill him. More than last time. More than I ever had before. I call on all of it. Even when my body’s thrumming with magic, overflowing with my gift as it scalds my nerves and red lightning crawls up my limbs and strikes the area around me.
The sheer force of my gift brings my feet off the ground. I hold my hands out, building it up, feeding it with everything I am.
Charles watches me rise, the bullet hole through the side of his face already closed in and a patch of hardened skin in its place. He aims his gun.
Bullets fly at me one after another. My gift seeks them out, red lightning flashing in jagged arcs to disintegrate anything they touch. The bullets are dust before they can reach me. Agents in the arena are struck at random, held captive by my gift as it eats away at them, before releasing them to the sand. Lightning hits the people in the audience as well, destroying without thought.
Only the Guild members remain unaffected.
I aim it at Charles. I don’t have to physically touch him now, notas long as my lightning can reach him.
He starts cutting his own skin in shallow swipes, forcing Kellan’s gift to activate. My gift skates over his scales, burrowing into any areas he’d missed but not dealing nearly as much damage as I’d hoped.
I catch Kellan hopping the wall after Dane from the corner of my eye, no sign of the electrified barrier there. More agents have swarmed the room, and I realize a group of them is trying to throw their attacks at me, but Aiden and Jackson are fighting them back.
Aiden’s whip sword sails through the air, cutting through agents as far as it can reach and swinging in a half-circle. Jackson’s using his gift to cut the agents on his side with slashes of air.
Something shoots around the arena, taking down one agent after another. Reid appears by another agent, cutting him down with one of his twin blades.
A large block of cement slams to the ground between me and Charles. Another smaller one falls from the ceiling. The lightning scours the ceiling, creating fissures of heat and destruction.
Right above Charles.
One of our plans to kill him was to bury him alive. We don’t have the board members yet, but I’m not missing this opportunity.
I double down on my gift there, my heart racing with the hope that we can end this right here. He may heal from damage, but not if he's crushed. Like when Kellan had been stuck in the car accident, if Charles is so pinned that he can’t move, then he can’t heal, either.
More concrete crashes around him.
Charles teleports before being crushed by a massive chunk of debris, reappearing closer to me. He raises his hand, and I’m hurled backward. “Don’t be foolish. This is an underground facility. You’llbe dead by rubble long before me.”
Before I hit the wall, a cushion of air catches me from behind.
The pressure from Charles’s gift intensifies, pinning me between the two forces. A gasp wrenches from my lips as pain lances through me.
The GE president laughs.
I catch Jackson’s hand shaking, his face pinched in concentration as he slowly releases the air, and I glide backward.
Charles flashes to his side and punches Jack in the gut. The added strength of Kell’s gift has Jackson doubled over, and I strike the wall the last few feet before tumbling to the ground.
