He’d fallen hard and fast, and it felt right. Considering who she was, she probably already knew. But even so, he wanted to tell her. Wanted to say the words out loud. Wanted to announce his love to the whole damn world.
But, most of all, he wanted to hear the words reflected back.
He drew a breath and took her hand.
“Izzy—”
The sharp ring of his cell phone cut him off. He considered turning the damnable thing off, but duty won out and he answered.
“Where are you?” Jason demanded.
“Good morning to you, too,” Mordi said.
“She’s bad news, Mordi,” Jason said. “Or at least her father is.”
His blood ran cold, and he stilled. Izzy frowned at him, a question in her eyes. He turned away. “What’s happened?”
“Can you talk?”
“Not really.”
“I figured.”
“Could you just cut to the chase?”
“Right. Sure.” Jason exhaled, as if from extreme exertion. “We had Hale go to Harold Frost’s lab to investigate this benefactor thing. Figured he can be invisible without having to keep his hands and arms under an invisibility cloak. And there might be security cameras, so—”
“Jason. Just tell me.”
“Right. Well. He found information. Frost and our father. Working together.”
Mordi closed his eyes, counted to five. “On what?”
“Don’t know.” A pause at Jason’s end. “Did she tell you?”
“No,” he admitted.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Maybe—”
“She doesn’t know?” Jason finished the thought for him. “I thought of that. But maybe she does. You need to confront her.”
“I can’t do that,” Mordi said.
Jason muttered something unintelligible. “Why?”
“Think about it.”
“You can’t talk.”
“Right,” Mordi said.
“Okay.” A pause, then: “I guess it does make sense. You’re on the Protector Oversight Committee. It’s your sworn duty to investigate any suspicious or potentially traitorous conduct. And you can’t investigate properly if she knows you’re watching her.”
“Something like that,” Mordi said, hating himself as he spoke.
“Just be careful, little brother.”
Mordi nodded, his thoughts a muddle, then realized Jason couldn’t see him. “Yeah. Of course I will,” he said, then hung up without saying good-bye. Everything Jason had said was true. But there was more. Mordi simply couldn’t believe Isole Frost was a traitor. Perhaps she didn’t know about her dad. Or perhaps there was some other explanation. Either way, Mordi trusted her.
He closed his eyes and took a breath, praying he wasn’t wrong. He’d misplaced his loyalty before, wasting years following his father.
Please, Zeus, he couldn’t be wrong this time, too. Not about Izzy. Not about the woman he loved. What would he do if he had to arrest her?
Every television in Circuit City was turned on, and Hieronymous stood in the middle of them, absorbing the information that was funneled toward him from the screens.
Mordi groaned. They’d been on their way to assist a mortal, but the New York City police had arrived first, handily stopping a mugging in progress. With nothing to do at the moment, Hieronymous had suggested the detour, and Izzy had given in.
From what Mordi could tell, his father was now in a state of bliss. Not too surprising, really. Lately he hadn’t had a lot of television access. Where once the penthouse had been lined with televisions—each tuned to some financial channel—now it was stripped down, its function replaced with comfort by the Council, who’d been utilizing it as a spare office and lodging for traveling Protectors who might need the facilities.
Without access to his financial reports, Hieronymous seemed at his wits’ end. Now the man was glued to these television screens, and Izzy had gone off to look at a replacement computer for her apartment. Mordi had insisted that he wanted to find a new CD, but really, he just needed a moment alone to get his head on straight.
He held up a Sheryl Crow CD and pretended to be reading the track list, In reality, though, he was watching Izzy. As much as he wanted to remain true to his convictions, tiny pinpricks of doubt had entered his mind. Surely she couldn’t be working with his—
“Mordichai! Isole! We must go.
Now
.” Hieronymous’s voice, urgent but full of self-control, yanked Mordi from his thoughts.
Customers turned to stare, probably wondering about the less-than-fashionable cape that fluttered from Hieronymous’s shoulders as he moved with near inhuman swiftness to where Mordi stood, still rooted to the spot.
“
Now
,” Hieronymous repeated.
Izzy rushed forward. “What? What’s going on?” she asked, voicing Mordi’s thoughts.
Hieronymous didn’t answer; he merely turned, one finger pointing toward the rows of televisions. Where once they’d been displaying shows—including the financial programs he’d been watching—from a variety of different stations, now each television showed one scene. Each was a different station, each had different camera angles, but all were focused on one impending tragedy—a splintered bridge, bits of asphalt falling into the river, and snapped cables writhing in the wild winds like serpents.
Cars had come to a dead stop, backed up on the bridge. Lights from emergency vehicles flashed red, blue, and yellow across the scene.
And there, at the center of every news camera’s image, was the possibility of real, deep tragedy. A school bus, bright yellow and filled to the brim with children, was dangling precariously over the fissure, its two front tires already free from the pavement. It balanced there, seesawing a bit, and every person in the store— eyes fixed on those television screens—knew what Mordi knew.
It was only a matter of time
.
“Where?” he asked.
“Upriver,” his father answered. “The Tappan Zee Bridge is collapsing.”
Mordi scowled, suspicious, but Hieronymous gestured toward one of the screens. A ticker was running across the bottom, and it confirmed what he’d said.
“We’re close. We have time.” He drew in a breath, then fixed his father with a stare. “Stay here,” Mordi said, then turned to Izzy. “Let’s go.”
She was already pulling a propulsion cloak from her Council-issued backpack. She flung it around her shoulders and nodded at Mordi, who was doing the same thing.
“Give me a cloak,” Hieronymous said.
Izzy hesitated, then dug deep in her bag.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mordi asked. “He can’t have that. This is too big, too serious.”
“I intend to assist you, son. If I have to take the train, I will most assuredly arrive too late.”
“We have it under control,” Mordi said.
Izzy, however, sided with Hieronymous. “We can use the help,” she said, and tossed Hieronymous a cape.
Her easy acquiescence to his father’s presence worried Mordi, but the kids were most important, and there wasn’t time. He took off running for the exit, his father and Izzy at his heels.
As he ran, he remembered that the power source for his cloak’s invisibility feature had gone dead, and he hadn’t changed it. He sighed. A quick glance at his companions, though, showed that they wore basic propulsion cloaks anyway—without such a feature. The three of them were going to be visible, and there was simply nothing he could do about it.
The thought went through his head as fast as a blink, and the next moment he was airborne, Izzy at his side and Hieronymous bringing up the rear.
“This is against regulations,” he growled to her as they soared off over the Hudson.
“Flying while visible? I know. But we hardly have a choice.”
“Not that,” Mordi said, certain that Izzy knew
exactly
what he meant. “No Outcast is permitted to have use of a propulsion cloak or other Council-issued device. That includes Outcasts participating in the re-assimilation program. Not until they are cleared to return.”
Her cheeks flushed pink, and he wasn’t sure if the color was from guilt or from the cool temperature at their current altitude.
“He had to come,” she said.
He hated the suspicion that bubbled in his gut. “We should have left him in Manhattan.”
She twisted, dipping a bit in the air as she turned to look at Hieronymous. “And what if even one of those children perished? What if we saved them all except one, and with your father we could have saved them all? Could you live with that? I couldn’t.”
Mordi swallowed. He couldn’t, either.
“We’ll have help,” he said. The Council had surely already sent a team.
“Probably. But do you know that for sure?”
He didn’t, of course. Izzy was right. On all counts. At least in terms of helping the most people. And since Mordi hated being wrong, he simply kept his mouth shut as she pulled out her holo-pager and reported in, telling headquarters their location and the nature of the impending tragedy.
As he’d suspected, the Council already knew— newly trained Protectors monitored CNN and the Fox News Channel around the clock, and others patrolled major cities—and a cadre of Protectors had already been dispatched.
Mordi took no pride in being right, however. From what the dispatcher said, the team would likely arrive on their heels. Mordi, Izzy, and Hieronymous would be the first on the scene.
The wounded Tappan Zee Bridge now came into focus, seeming to grow larger as they approached. Mordi didn’t need his cousin Zoë‘s super hearing now; the screams of terrified children filled the air.
A burst of wind startled him, and suddenly, Mordi realized he was in his father’s wake. He met Izzy’s eyes, and they both rushed to catch up with the Outcast.
Above them, news helicopters hovered, their cameras taking in and broadcasting the tragedy below. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Mordi realized that those cameras were also fuming him and Hieronymous and Izzy in their Fabulous Flying Capes. The thought, however, never really germinated; he was too concerned with how to rescue the children.
“Look.” He pointed toward the front of the school bus, the portion still resting on some of the slowly collapsing bridge. “That asphalt is unstable. It’s going to break away any minute, and then—”
“The bus will be counterbalanced,” his father said. “It will fall headlong into the water.”
“You two pull,” Izzy said. “I’ll push.”
They split up, and she headed for the front of the bus. Protectors in general had super strength—at least, they were much stranger than mortals—but unlike in the movies, all Protectors couldn’t go around lifting multi-ton buses.
A few
Protectors could, if that was their special skill, and for a brief moment, Mordi thought of Clyde. And he almost wished the creep were there to help.
Izzy would have it the worst, balancing in midair as she was, with nothing to push against or obtain leverage with.
These thoughts zipped through Mordi’s head as he planted his feet on the unsteady asphalt behind the bus and grabbed hold of the back bumper. He tugged as Izzy shoved, and the bus moved backward toward safety. It only moved a hair, but at least it moved.
Mordi dug his heels in, preparing for another massive tug. He kicked bits of plastic and metal out of the way, and tightened his grip. Then, as Izzy gave the signal and he pulled, he realized for the first time that he was pulling all alone.
What the—?
From the bus, he could hear the children’s terrified murmurs and cries. From a distance, he could hear the approach of the Council team, their arrival imminent.
Of his father, though, he heard and saw nothing. That slimy son of Medusa! He really was going to leave these kids to—
“Stay back!”
Hieronymous’s voice echoed in a
whoosh
of wind, and then Mordi was knocked on his back. His father loomed over him, holding a length of cable still connected to the beams above. Mordi blinked at the sight, unable to register his father’s actions against the reality of the situation. A fraction of a second ticked by, and before Mordi could react, his father tossed him over the side of the bridge.
No!
Oh, sweet Hera, his father couldn’t be planning to sacrifice all those children. It couldn’t be possible. And yet, after everything his father had done in the past, he knew that it
was
possible. It absolutely was.
With a massive effort, Mordi kicked his cloak into action and halted his fall. The Council team was almost there, just a few seconds away and near to being in range. Mordi called out for them to help him, to stop Hieronymous.
Below, he saw that Izzy had fallen as well, and now she was braking to a midair halt, her cape fluttering around her shoulders as her feet dangled in the air just inches above the dark water of the Hudson.
Mordi pushed her out of his mind. She was safe. Only the children mattered, and he focused on saving them, kicking his cloak into overdrive. His arms thrust forward as he tried to make himself as aerodynamic as possible. He ignored everything—the helicopters above, the children’s screams, the emergency sirens— and focused solely on his goal.
He cleared the bridge and found Hieronymous moving away from the bus, the length of cable secured to its back bumper. “Bastard,” Mordi screamed as he landed on the bridge. “What have you done?”
And that was when the explosion hit. The asphalt beneath the bus crumpled, taking Mordi with it. He fell, debris beating against his chest but fortunately missing his head. A large chunk hit his cloak controls, though, and he couldn’t fly. The water, now filled with flotsam and jetsam from the collapsing bridge, was rising up to meet him; and he switched tactics, focusing not on his cloak, but on his levitation skills. He could levitate himself and—
Something grabbed him, strong hands gripping under his arms and carrying him up toward the remains of the bridge. There were cables and girders and beams still standing, just much of the concrete had given way.
His father
. Mordi started to twist around, started to tell the man he’d rather fall to the river than be rescued by the likes of someone who would condemn a busload of children to a watery grave. But as he looked up, realization dawned. The bus was still there... even though the concrete that had been under it was gone. Instead, it was hanging from the cable that Hieronymous had attached. Now it swung, at an uncomfortable angle for the occupants, yes, but it was safe.