Crystal Woman asked Vortex in a clipped word.
He nodded once, unfolded his hands as though pretending they were a book, and squatted down.
Crystal Woman stepped onto his hands clutching the crystals she had created tightly.
Vortex bellowed and threw her up into the air. The air he had been gathering shot her up even higher than the monster’s head. There was a moment of weightlessness before she started falling.
As she became level with the monster’s face, she threw the two crystals into its eyes with a warrior’s scream.
The monster swung at her, but Vortex used a burst of wind to knock her to the monster’s left, out of the path of its hands and onto the rooftop of a nearby building.
The monster staggered around, clawing at its eyes and screaming in pain, but it wasn’t dead.
“Can you throw me?” I asked Vortex.
He panted beside me. “What?”
No, he was too spent.
“Tremor?” I called. “Can you shoot me up into the air with a column of the earth?”
He stood and looked at the monster and back to me. “What are you going to do?”
“Killing blow,” I said.
“You can’t kill it yet,” one of the mystery men said. “We need to collect samples.”
“You can collect them when its dead,” I told them tersely.
“I don’t think I can throw you high enough,” Tremor said.
“I can’t use my drone,” I whispered. “I’ll fry him again.”
“Screw it, let’s give it a try,” Tremor said. “Just don’t get angry if you don’t go up very high.”
I smiled wide. “Right.”
He exhaled and shook his head. “Gargoyle was right, you are crazy in an awesome way.”
He had talked to Gargoyle about me?
“Ready?” he asked before I could ask him about it.
I nodded and then the next moment a circle of the ground beneath me catapulted me up into the air. I screamed, but quickly closed my mouth.
The trajectory was a little off and I landed atop the parking structure the monster was currently attacking.
It stopped when it sensed me and using the moment of distraction, I held my hands out, aimed at the crystals in its eyes.
The two men dropped down on the building beside me and I realized their guns weren’t aimed at the monster, but at me. They activated some cloaking device so I couldn’t see them and it was too late anyway.
My power exploded out of me, straight into the crystals.
They exploded, creating a rainbow for a brief moment before the monster’s blood sprayed everywhere, coating me and the parking structure.
The monster fell and didn’t move again.
“Yeah, Girl!” Crystal Woman cheered from the building she stood on.
The men shot their weird guns, shocking me with a weird red electricity.
I fell to my knees and panted for breath. It felt like my lungs were too tight and I couldn’t take a deep breath.
Why did their electricity hurt me? It shouldn’t have. Electricity shouldn’t have hurt me.
“Why?” I asked.
“Interesting, so it does work on her,” one of them whispered.
“Let’s report back to HQ,” the other said.
I slapped my hands to the ground and screamed as I sent out every bit of power left in me.
The men yelled and the cloaking device exploded, revealing them a few feet away from me. They fell to the ground, unmoving.
I fell to my back, darkness clouding my vision.
“Violet Strike!” Vortex yelled.
Crystal Woman dropped down beside me and put her hands on her hips. “You just had to one up me, didn’t you?”
I smirked. “Drinks are on you tonight,” I rasped.
“Stay awake,” she whispered, but it was too late.
“Lucky!” Alfred yelled.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A jolt of electricity shot into my chest.
I sat up with a gasp and coughed as I began breathing again. “What happened?” I asked, my throat sore.
“You died,” Alfred snapped. “Lucky, you cannot expend all of your energy or your heart will stop.”
“Your droid is strange,” Crystal Woman whispered. “He has an attitude unlike any AI I’ve ever seen before.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I whispered.
Vortex shifted, and I realized I was laying with my head in his lap. I looked up into his stormy eyes.
“Hey,” I whispered.
He glared down at me. “Do you know how much shit I’m going to have to hear from Hurricane now? You died, Lucy. He won’t let me live that down.”
I chuckled and sat up, my gaze falling on the dead men. “Who were they?”
“I thought they were new heroes or transfers,” Crystal Woman said softly. “But now I’m not so sure.”
“They said they were going to report to HQ. You don’t think…” I couldn’t