Wind swept me over the fence, and I heard Justice scream something, but I was too far away to know what. Once I was out of the fenced area, there were more shouts—the soldiers had finally noticed my escape, most of them confused about my appearance from nowhere.
Bullets raced past me, but I deflected them with an air shield. A heavier thud from behind did steal my attention for a second, and as I turned, a familiar pain-in-my-ass, zooming across the bullet strewn landscape, came into sight.
That was when I lost my fucking mind.
Power exploded from me as my center of energy snapped out with tendrils, connecting both to the land below, and to my brother-bond—elevating my power to something destructive and deadly.
Wind whipped across the humans, stealing their weapons and crushing them in an instant. Fire scorched the land, avoiding Justice and me, but taking everything else in its path. I didn't allow it to kill the humans, just to keep them contained, but there were moments I almost lost control.
Seeing bullets fly at Justice … it robbed me of sanity.
Logically, I understood that these people were just fighting on two sides of a war, one against the interference of the American president, and the other for America itself. But too much of my mind was lost to the power, my need to keep Justice safe might be the downfall of everyone here.
"Jake," she shouted, unable to get any closer to me. There was nothing reflective to show me how I looked, but I felt the waves of power swirling as my elements whipped about in a frenzy. The sight would be unexplainable by humans, but with this much power around, electronic devices should have been blown out.
Still, even with no recordings, there were tons of witnesses.
I might have just created an international incident, and honestly, I really didn’t give a fuck.
The humans had it coming.
8
Justice Winter
I thought I'd seen and lived through some of the most terrifying experiences this world had to offer. Fists that crushed, hard eyes that lingered too long, hands that touched where they shouldn't, chains that rattled in my nightmares, and pain that never ended.
I'd been very mistaken though. Jacob had just added another level of something for me to fear: a supernatural who had lost control.
He was surrounded by a virtual plethora of power, elements swirling in the air so unnaturally that it stole my breath and rendered me both speechless and stunned. It had been a bad idea, clearly, to follow him over the fence, but my power had taken over when I saw him leave.
The power I’d tried so hard to ignore had decided it was done being boxed away inside, and like a cold draft racing across my skin and down my spine, had burst free. It was locked back inside now, but I knew one thing for sure: I needed to stop avoiding and start dealing with the reality of who I was. The reality of my heritage.
Not today though. Today I was going to be busy reeling a supernatural back before he straight up ripped a few hundred people to pieces.
"Jake," I repeated, since the first time had elicited no response.
His eyes, like green glass, icy and shining, were locked on my face.
He saw me. I just couldn't tell if he’d heard me.
"You need to stop," I said, taking a step closer. For some reason, whenever I moved, the power swirled and shifted so that it didn't touch me. Testing it again, I took another step forward, and again, and each time the power slid past me. For the most part, it seemed to be fire and wind that was raging.
As another surge of heat billowed against my face, a sick feeling settled low in my stomach … what if all the humans were dead? I doubted they could survive heat like this, I barely could, and I wasn’t even that close to it.
My rarely-used cellphone was heavy in my back pocket and I debated calling one of Jacob’s pack in the hope they might have some suggestions for what I should do. Jacob might have just killed a lot of humans, many of them both soldiers and the president’s special forces, and he wasn’t done yet.
And I legitimately had no idea how to stop him.
How the hell was he so powerful?
This was unlike anything I’d experienced—my teeth ached from the energy. Fuck, my bones ached. I mean, I’d thought I