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FORTY-NINE

T he Howlers stumbled forward and slammed the door behind them, dulling the screams and rifle fire behind them. Whatever chaos continued to brew in the hall was nothing compared to what lay ahead.

Fire of every hue spiraled around the great room. Light reflected off the clear, fractured walls, blinding Kel from a thousand directions. Heat shook the air.

Sweat pooled down Kel’s back as she inched forward.

She peered through the pulsing heat, resisting the urge to clamp her hands over her ears to block the deafening screeches bouncing off the diamond.

Her sweater was too thin, her feet bare against the uneven ground.

Even if she reached Savita, without her gloves or leathers, what could she do?

Phoenixes raced around the hall in clustered infernos.

Their fiery wings transformed the room into a flaming cathedral, the diamond turning to a glass mural of reds, oranges, yellows, browns.

To Kel’s left, a panel of tinted glass resembling a mirror shimmered with the growing heat.

The darkened panel rose to half the ceiling’s height, the only piece of the room not coated in twinkling diamond.

Kel edged further into the hall as phoenixes soared in narrow circles above her.

Every step forward made her skin prick, reawakening the pain in her hip.

She tried to peer through the heat, desperately searching for Savita, but it was near-impossible to distinguish one ball of flames from another.

She could tell that none wore saddles, though bands of silver collars glinted through each flaming cloud.

There was something strange about the rhythmic pattern.

Even when they’d been trained to race, phoenixes were difficult to control.

In such a contained environment, these phoenixes should have been lashing at one another, flying in all directions.

Not racing along the faint, melting lines along the ground.

Was Cristo controlling how they moved? Had he made the phoenixes train in this hall, for this moment?

How many times had he stolen Savita from her aviary to teach her how to die?

Coup placed a warning hand on Kel’s arm, but she kept moving. Sweat poured down her forehead, evaporating almost as fast. Wind battered her skin, drying her mouth. She blinked, trying to see through the growing smoke and shimmering heat and— there!

There she was.

Copper talons glinting, feathers and flames as deep as blood in some places and pale as sunrise in others. Two onyx eyes locked straight ahead, as hungry and determined as any god.

Kel cupped her hands around her mouth and screamed, “ Savita! ”

If the phoenix heard Kel, she ignored the scream. Savita was too busy fighting for space amid two other flaming beasts, her feathers turning more molten with every second.

“Which one is Sav?” Coup asked, moving to Kel’s side.

Kel pointed, trying to follow Sav’s path beneath the ceiling. “She’s in between those other two,” she shouted hoarsely.

Rahn shifted to Kel’s other side. “Even if she heard us calling her, I’m sure Cristo has a new collar on her to keep her racing. He’ll be guiding her wings. She won’t be able to stop.”

“We need to get out before the heat becomes too much,” Bekn barked, nearest to the door. “Maybe we can find Cristo and force him to stop this. But we can’t do anything from in here.”

Kel followed Rahn’s hazel gaze to the tinted window. It looked like the same tinted, thickened glass that she’d found in Cristo’s lab, preserving the flaming phoenix ashes.

“He’s there,” Rahn breathed, almost too faint to be heard over the roaring blaze. “Behind the window. Controlling the phoenix collars from where he can watch. I know it.”

“What?” Dira shouted. “He’s on the other side of the window?”

Rahn nodded, slowly, distractedly. “There’s an adjoining room behind the window, but the door to it is across the other side of the building. It’ll take us too long to get in.”

Before any of them could question the strange pain cutting through Rahn’s words, Rahn pivoted to her right, toward Dira. The winger frowned, though her brow quickly smoothed as Rahn pulled her into a swift kiss.

Dira froze, dropping her bat. For just one, short moment, the winger and the technician clutched each other in a knotted embrace, straining their arms, until Rahn forced them apart.

She glanced at each of them, her eyes dark, pleading.

And then the newest Howler lunged toward the track’s fracturing flames, into the path of six burning phoenixes.

Dira screamed, a wordless, gut-wrenching wail, as the firebirds barreled toward Rahn. Horror and confusion collided inside Kel. She would never reach her in time—

Flames. Kel was the only Howler meant to die.