Shades of Gray - By Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge Page 0,8

head snapped back, and she spun drunkenly before crashing to the ground. She didn’t get up again.

Wimp, Jet thought, shaking out her hand.

In Jet’s ear, Meteorite screamed: “Down!”

Jet dropped hard to the cement, her hands and arms absorbing the impact. Her cloak pulled taut against her neck before the clasp let go. Jet didn’t need to hear the snarls or the snapping of teeth to know that Were had completed his transformation to wolf. Fabric tore, and she winced.

“I liked that cloak,” she muttered, sending her creepers into the black material. The folds rippled with Shadow, and the cowl reared back with a life of its own as the rest of the cloak wrapped itself around Were.

Jet pulled herself to her feet, swallowing thickly against the dizziness. She’d expelled too much power. She needed to rest.

Soon, she thought, feeling the beginning of a headache behind her eyes. I’ll take some time off soon. Right after things here get less insane.

Whenever that would be.

She walked over to Were’s bundled form, and she couldn’t help but be impressed by how he was still struggling. Most people—humans and extrahumans alike—succumbed quickly to the numbing cold of the Shadow. “Hey,” she said, prodding Were lightly with her boot. “Come on, Shaggy. Calm down.”

Were roared and lashed out, swiping at her through the Shadow-covered cloak. It didn’t matter that the sounds were muffled or that the claws were unable to pierce either the material or Jet’s power. It still made Jet take an involuntary step backward.

“Traitor!” he howled, lunging for her.

Jet sidestepped. She watched the bundle sprawl to the broken concrete, feeling sad. Fighting with Were now was nothing like sparring with him back at the Academy. Then, all of his attacks were punctuated with dirty jokes and innuendo just shy of sexual harassment. Now it was deadly serious. If he tore his way free, he’d go for her throat.

But the Shadow held. Beneath the cowl and cloak, Were’s form shuddered, then finally went still. The material shifted and rolled until a man’s shape was clearly outlined under the black fabric.

Jet sighed, her heart feeling heavy, her shoulders sagging with exhaustion. “I’m not a traitor,” she said softly. But after fighting her former colleagues—and now her former friends—she wondered if Were was right.

right right

Behind her optiframes, Jet’s eyes widened. No, no—Light, no. It was too soon.

soon soon sweet girl sweet Shadow sweetness like bones crunching like dead leaves like

Gritting her teeth, Jet called back the Shadow, let it swim over her body and sink into her skin. The Shadow voices faded to whispers, which easily could have been the wind. But Jet knew better.

Not crazy yet, she told herself as she retrieved her cloak—torn and slobbered on. Groan. No, she hadn’t given in to those voices. Not yet. Not ever again, she promised herself as she clasped the soiled cloak to her shoulders and tugged the cowl over her head.

She’d sooner kill herself.

Feeling much older than her twenty-two years, she slapped a pair of stun-cuffs on Were, and another on White Hot. For the human thief, she resorted to good ol’ duct tape. He didn’t fight her; he was too busy babbling the Twenty-third Psalm of David. At least his hands were already clasped together, so tying them was a cakewalk.

“Ops,” she said.

Meteorite replied crisply, “Go ahead.”

“Note that I’ll need to carry more cuffs.”

“Noted.” A pause, then Meteorite asked, “You okay, babe?”

“Dandy,” Jet said, looking at Were’s pale form. “Just dandy.”

Meteorite cleared her throat. “Okay. Enough mommying. The others are here. You may have forgotten, what with all the fighting, that there’s a meeting in, oh, two minutes.”

Crap. “I’ll be there as soon as I drop these packages off at the Sixteenth. Out.”

Jet tapped her comlink, replacing Meteorite’s voice with the white noise of a waterfall. It wouldn’t be enough to keep the Shadow voices at bay, not forever. But for now, it would do.

She summoned a floater of Shadow big enough to hold White Hot, Were, Slider, and the thief, then she called up one for herself. It took a moment to create a graymatter leash to connect the two floaters. It took a little longer for Jet to massage away the headache.

Dragging the unconscious rabids and gibbering human on the disc behind her, Jet flew to the Sixteenth precinct, just inside of Grid 16—what many people referred to as Wreck City.

Iridium’s city.

Jet deposited the four people in front of the building, wondering if Iri was fighting against the madness infecting New Chicago and