Page 21 of Gemini Wicked

Especially mine.

Fuck. For all I know, this entire shitshow was designed to make me lose it on live TV.

While I hesitate, my guys spring into action.

Hair swirling around him in a cloud of ink, Ronin flings Neo behind him, spins clear of all of us, and cocks an arm like a pitcher winding up at Yankee Stadium. A flaming ball of golden psi fire erupts from his palm. His fireball sears across the deck like a comet and barrels into the nearest heavies.

Those guys go sprawling in all directions, electric batons abandoned in favor of yelling and beating out the flames engulfing their imperial unis.

Ronin grins fiercely, eyes flaming gold and teeth gleaming white in the billowing smoke, and winds up to pitch another fireball at the second wave of stormtroopers—who are now uber-focused on him.

While Ronin deals with the incoming, Vasili streaks airborne across the poop deck (levitation is one of his gifts, he can fly like fucking Tinkerbell). With a sweep of his casting hand, he hurls a wall of telekinetic whoop-ass that slams both doors shut on the heavies still trying to push through.

Cue the muffled shouts and pounding while the backups try to shoulder through the barrier.

The living quarters of this megayacht are not exactly Fort Knox. Those doors won’t hold long, and there have to be other exits.

Still, I call out, with lightning lurking in my voice, “Way to go, Goblin King!”

Since our psychic channel’s still blocked.

Meanwhile, Lucius gives up a losing battle and let his wolf out in a blinding flash of light. He’s a timber wolf, all gray and chestnut, shaggy and slavering and freaking massive. His wolf gallops across the deck and launches himself into the back of some guy who’s climbing on a table to get behind Vasili’s hovering frame with his shock stick.

Those two crash to the ground, leaving V untouched, with the stormtrooper screaming. The wolf’s fanged jaws lock into the back of the guy’s neck and shake him like a rat.

“You tell him, Lucius,” I mutter. Because his wolf doesn’t follow human speech.

I drop to the deck and spin to check on Neo. He’s the only one of my guys who isn’t trained to handle himself in a fistfight.

That’s when some asshole from the crowd—a heavyset guy in a tux who isn’t even one of the troopers—makes the mistake of grabbing my arm in his big sweaty paw. His ruddy face scowls down at me.

“That’s enough, you Gemini bitch. Call off your fuck buddies or I’ll—”

I’m torqued pretty tight, and this rough handling I didn’t ask for and wasn’t expecting really sets me off. With a flash of lavender light and a staticky crackle, the electric shock I call the little lightning rips his grip off my arm and hurls that asshole halfway across the deck.

He slams into the bar and slumps to the deck. Where he lies pretty much unmoving. While the cameras roll, a fussy-looking older woman in a purple feather boa shrieks and rushes to his side.

Her shrill scream splits the night. “He’s not breathing. He’s not breathing!”

“Oh, fuck me.” I look around wildly, spot the defibrillator unit mounted on the wall, and rush toward it.

I’m in the middle of ripping off the plexiglass cover that protects the gizmo when another scream—a heart-stoppingly familiar one—drags my attention to the stern.

Dez is standing at the head of the gangway, with the biggest brute on the whole damn boat twisting her arms viciously behind her back to cuff her. She’s really struggling, and the heavy—who’s snarling and blistered red and still smoking from a hit of Ronin’s psi fire—is handling her so roughly he’s about to rip her arms off.

Dez’s pretty face twists tight in fear and pain.

“Hey!” I shout. “You leave her the fuck alone, you big bully! Pick on someone your own size.”

Dez is, like, the real innocent in this whole shitshow. She’s my housemate. She’s my friend. She’s literally only here to support me. She’s not athletic, she’s delicate, she doesn’t even know how to fight. Her gifts are telepathy and precognition.

She’s defenseless.

She’s scared.

And she’s hurting.

The poop deck is a mess, civvies running and screaming, troopers bellowing commands and trying to impose order and then arrest us I guess, the doors splintering despite V’s solid efforts to let more of the brute squad barrel through.

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