Tally slams on the brakes. The Mercedes skids to a halt an inch from their non-moving forms. “Well, that’s just great,” she complains. “You got your wish, Bright Star.”

A pulsing glow tethers her to the creatures. It’s difficult to tell where the light starts and stops, but it’s clearly binding. I’m staring at her, wide-eyed, when she blinks aggressively, severing the connection.

If Declan’s connected to them, he’s somehow camouflaged the string. He isn’t completely unmarked, though. The strange emblem on his palm has a neon candescence spiraling in on itself. He seesaws his hand, and the gray shimmers silver. Tally’s mark glows green, mirroring a woven tree, symbolic of life.

“Sumairs,” I gather, understanding what they meant about knowing if one was in proximity. “What do they want?”

“I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.” Tally sneers at them. “Begins with a Y. Ends with a U.”

She almost looks intimidating. Almost. No matter how hard she tries, I seriously doubt she can compete with the creatures blocking the roadway.

They pace, their monster paws vibrating the ground beneath us. The more menacing of the two breathes out through its nose, fogging up the windshield.

“Just let them have me. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Tally laughs. “They can’t hurt me.”

Declan whistles sharply. “Let me do the talking.”

Tally won’t turn down that offer. Despite being physically unable to feel her fear, it’s seeping from her pores into my heart, constricting it. My empathy is glitching, but I’m counting that as the least of my current problems.

Their animalistic tendency to stalk keeps them moving back and forth, in and out of view like a horrifically twisted game of peek-a-boo. Neither of the beasts has talking in mind. If they use their mouths, it’ll definitely be for chomping.

Peek-a-boo. Time to eat you, Superego sings.

I look at my palms and see nothing. I clench my hands into fists and feel nothing. My fire has picked a rather inopportune time to hibernate.

Declan heaves open the door and walks right up to them, holding out his hand as if his will alone will keep them from charging. I lose sight of him as he moves around the breath-coated windshield.

“Will they hurt him?”

Her eyes shutter. “No.”

“There’s a big can’t in this, isn’t there?”

“The biggest.”

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The only thing keeping me in my seat is the thought of Derry and how I’d believed him to be anything like them. No idea what happened between us, but it certainly wasn’t anything violent, as I’m sure this death will be.

It was a foolish notion to go seeking death. I should’ve known it’d come without invocation. I find solace in the fact, if nothing else, I’ve experienced my first real kiss. I focus on the memory of Derry’s lips on mine, and while I feel braver, I’m indisputably empty. My flame has been extinguished.

There’s a loud crash, killing the engine. Inside the car feels like an earthquake has happened right where we’re stopped. I smell smoke coming from under the hood. The mist on the windshield is wiped away by reddish-brown fur. Declan threw the smaller of the two creatures onto the hood. I’m scared he’s in real trouble.

“Help him,” I urge Tally, but she simply yawns and leans back in her seat as the thing peels itself off the car to lunge at Declan again.

His reaction is to extend his hand, immediately stopping its momentum. He flicks his wrist, causing it to fly on top of the Mercedes. The metal collapses, coming to a stop just a smidge from my head. I lower myself further down in the seat just in case.

This is bad, Superego notes unhelpfully.

“It’ll go like this until they smarten up and talk to him,” Tally explains.

The second Sumair hasn’t moved. It’s watching, lips curled up in a feral snarl. The moonless-midnight-colored, anti-beauty is a hybrid wolf-bear mix, more wolf than bear and more polar than giant panda. All predator. I’m not eager to experience its bite.

“Are they all beasts?”

“No, just the Sinsear Sentry. Scouts, actually. They’re handpicked by the Tribunal to delegate...and decimate. What you see here are land-walkers. They utilize the earth element like me, but where I can control flora, they can control fauna, hence the beastly display.”

“Can’t you call your leaders to talk to their leaders?”

“We answer to the same authority.”

“If you’re on the same side, why fight?” How can any leader condone attacks in their midst and encourage them?

She huffs. “Are you trying to annoy me into leaving you here alone?”

“Is it working?”

She flips her hair over her shoulders. “Just because we have the same governing entity doesn’t mean we all get along. We are different. Both sides can utilize elemental magic. A Solathair is born with their power.”

“A Sumair isn’t born with it,” I mutter. Declan made some strategic omissions in our prior Sumair discussion. Not cool.

There’s another loud crash, and the car is swept sideways into the embankment. Tally’s head shatters the door window. She brushes the shards off, unperturbed.

“So, your leaders use Scouts to do their bidding, meaning they’re somehow bound to you. That checks out since you have the power they crave, but they can’t take it from you directly. They can only take it from people like me, a human for all intents and purposes.

“They want to drain me because they can’t produce energy on their own. I can replenish mine because I have human blood. Everyone’s taking something from someone to gain what they need. What do you take? What will feed me once I transition?”

Before she can answer, the car is flipped upside down, and I’m hanging by my seatbelt, struggling like a flailing octopus to get out of it. Tally has no lingering concern about the fisticuff happening outside the now-totaled vehicle.

She lifts a brow as the door, the only thing keeping me from the middle of a raging battle, is ripped from the car and tossed a hundred yards away. My seatbelt snaps free, and I fall in a heap, my head crashing into the steel below me.

I feel a strong sense of panic, but it isn’t coming from me. Someone near me is overcome by fear, then regret. It’s only a flash before it’s gone. Given my empathic loss, it had to be intense for me to experience it.

I open my blood-filled eyes to a terrifyingly beautiful display. The russet beast changes right in front of me, muscles twitching and shrinking. Fur disappears to be replaced by gloriously golden skin that shimmers with sweat in the moonlight.

“Get your healer,” the man says as he reaches inside the car, sweeps me up, and cradles me in his arms in one single, time-stopping movement.