Page 16 of Gemini Kings
God knows he’s got plenty of that.
“Aw, shite, Zara.” My dad checks out the mess of stunned and twitching men I’ve left scattered all over the helipad and shakes his head. “Jaysus, why d’ye always have to make such a fecking mess?”
I boil over with hurt and rage. It’s the contempt and dislike he all too clearly feels for me—the same contempt and dislike he felt for my mom—that cuts the worst and always has. That right there’s the real reason I ran away.
Cheese on toast, it’s like I never even left.
“Guess that’s why you tried to kill me, huh?” I shout above the chopper’s whirring blades as the bird hovers behind me. “I’m not here to see you. Get out of my way. Or I’ll show you a fecking mess.”
“Will I now?” My dad jams his hands in his pockets and cocks his head. I can almost see the canny gleam in his baby blues as he takes my measure. “Ye’ve been out having the craic long enough. Ye’ve had yer fun, girl, and for donkey’s years. Now ye’re queen and all, and that’s just grand. But it’s time to come home.”
So, before you ask. Yeah, the guy really talks like that. It’s ridiculous. Especially when he’s pissed. Like it gives him an extra shot of Irish.
“I don’t think so, boyo.” I keep my voice hard and confident. His goons are still filling the stairwell (though now they’re afraid to come out), and his chopper’s still hovering, and Mick Gemini’s not dumb enough to vacate the lift with me hurling lightning out here.
But I’m not going back under his roof or his thumb ever again.
I mean it.
The edge of the roof’s still tugging at me. Slowly I pivot to eye it. I’m a cat burglar, so I’m not afraid of heights, and I’ve gotten downright comfy in the air with Vasili. That swollen moon hovers overhead, so close to full, almost close enough to touch. I’ve been really well bitten by both my shifters (though Vasili has too much Mogadon in his DNA to actually shift). But I haven’t been able to shift myself.
Still.
I know what I’m turning into, don’t I?
Yeah, we haven’t been sure. It’s pretty fucking rare, even in the witching world, that thing I’m becoming.
But no time like the present to find out.
Every cell in my body starts tingling. That’s my power rising. The rush is so heady it almost lifts my feet from the tarmac. Arms loose at my sides, sparks leaking from my fingers, I drift toward the edge.
“Awww, c’mon, ye’re off your head, girl,” my dad calls after me. “There’s no bleedin’ place to go!”
“Watch me.” I shift into a lope.
“That’s it then,” Dad barks to his boys, all that Irish charm discarded like a cheap suit. “Take her out. Take her the feck out!”
Shit.
Or, as Dad would say, shite.
When the first shot rings out, I’m already running. These guys have been pulling their punches all night, because supposedly Dad “only wants to talk,” but now the gloves are off.
The helipad ends. There’s a low metal barricade and then empty air and the Strip one hundred stories down.
A bullet whines past, so close it grazes my ear in a slice. And I’ve got just enough precognition, thanks to my Valyrian DNA, to have a pretty strong hunch that the next bullet’s gonna bury itself in my brain.
Call me crazy (because it’s been said before).
But every bone in my body is humming with certainty.
I am the lightning. I’m the bridge between earth and heaven. I’m the fucking Gemini queen.
I got this.
Thumping against my chest, Xiao’s medallion throbs and burns. I dredge up an extra spurt of speed, then hurtle over the barricade and leap from the roof.
For a few electrifying seconds I keep moving forward through the air, like I really can fly. My heart singing, my limbs churning, the wind stinging, my hair floating.
