“Fuck,” Sylvia spat, wiping a trickle of blood from her ear. “Shiv, he’s headed your way.”

  The cultist they’d been chasing, a man specifically recommended to them by Marco, who’d assured them that he was “one of M's more sociopathic hired sociopaths” and “a real piece of work,” catapulted himself away from her and darted into the trees. Each of his explosive movements was accompanied by an ear-splitting shriek, some sort of sonic defense he was employing to confuse them. It was working.

  “God, is that noise him?” Shiv buzzed in her ear. They were communicating with a makeshift walkie-talkie system mostly facilitated by their phones and a pair of Airpods. “God, sound-based Knacks suck ass.”

  “Whatever he's doing, I think it knocked one of my fillings loose.” Sylvia stood and bounded after him, streaking as fast as she could manage through the sparse woodland. It was nearly sundown now, and even with her sight enhanced it was nerve-wracking trying to avoid branches and stumps while moving at top speed.

  “This is gonna be a massive pain,” Shiv said.

  “Yeah, well, getting you a functioning heart out of the deal will take some of the sting out. He in sight on your end?”

  “No, not- Wait. Yep. Moving in.”

  Sylvia heard the muffled sounds of a struggle rasp through her earpiece, the telltale explosions of their quarry mixed with the roar-and-snap of some sort of electrical attack from Shiv.

  “Dammit,” Shiv hissed. “Missed him.”

  “He’s slippery.” Sylvia drew as much power as she could from the quickly dwindling supply in the pair of car batteries strapped to her back and sent herself rocketing several stories up. In the early twilight she managed to make out the distant shape of tree branches swaying, a wake in the canopy that culminated in the robed form of the man as he burst out from cover and darted into one of the warehouses that dotted this part of the riverside.

  “We lose him?”

  “I got a glimpse,” Sylvia said. She landed, moved slower, looking to conserve the last of her fuel. She bent to the ground and felt the soil, navigated her private world of vibrations and resonances, locating Shiv about a hundred yards up ahead, standing in a tree. She hurried over, made contact with her partner.

  “Where’d he go?” Shiv dropped from her branch.

  “Warehouse, or grain mill, or something, up ahead. Seemed empty. I think he’s hiding, probably out of juice.”

  “Well, that’d make two of us.” Shiv re-shouldered her own pack, twice the size of Sylvia’s, four batteries joined with leather studded in ceramic beads. “You empty?”

  “Close to it.”

  They broke through the treeline and Sylvia could see the warehouse clearly now. It looked dark, abandoned, with several broken windows and a few winding tattoos of graffiti around its base. They paused for a breather by a streetlight, each of them taking turns sticking their Auras through its metal exterior to siphon fresh energy from the power grid within.

  “I don’t hear any of those god-awful sonic booms,” Shiv said, squinting at the building. “Either he left on foot or he’s still in there.”

  “I don’t hear much more of anything on my left side.” Sylvia shook her head as if to clear water from her ear, then knelt to feel the concrete. She took a moment to study, then stood, quizzical.

  “What’s up?”

  “Building feels weird. Like, muffled, inside, but to touch. Fuzzy. Can’t really see in.”

  Shiv shrugged. “He was already doing weird shit with sound. Maybe his whole thing’s, like, screwing with vibrations? If anything that’s a good sign, means he’s cornered and close to empty. We’ve got him.”

  “That’s true.” Sylvia over to squeeze her partner’s hand. “You ready? You feel okay?”

  Shiv nodded, grimly determined. “I read Marco's notes. I’m ready to eat the fucker.”

  “You take front, I take back? Try and hit him with one of our electric crossups?”

  Shiv grinned. “Sounds like a plan. God, I hope we finally get to land one of those.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Sylvia laughed and bolted off, batteries fresh and topped up. She arced over the warehouse itself, shooting multiple stories in the air and curving back down to an outcropping next to one of the building’s shattered topmost windows. She settled and touched her Airpod. “You set?”

  “Roger roger,” Shiv crackled in her ear. “On the count of three, hop in. At this distance, he won’t be able to hide his Aura from both of us. The first person to feel it beelines, the other follows their lead. Ready?”

  “Ready.” Sylvia did a mental three count, held her breath, and dropped into the building.

  Immediately upon landing on the concrete three stories below, she realized her mistake, as a dim Aura manifested, hidden behind a crate to her right, and a much, much more powerful one bloomed directly behind her.

  “They're here!” their quarry yelled from his hiding place.

  Shiv turned just in time to see a hulking man in white robes, face scarified by some sort of burn, roar and let loose with a wave of force. She took the attack square in the chest. The blow was so powerful that even though she’d been primed against kinetic energy, the attack quickly overwhelmed her defenses, a portion of the force overflowing the limits of her Aura and colliding with her body unobstructed. She gasped as the wind was driven out of her, and felt a rib snap as she caromed off a concrete support pillar.

  Her ears rang, and when she heard the sound of Shiv roaring, both nearby and in her earbud, it sounded distant, thin. Shiv darted over her and let loose with a flurry of explosions, too late, only managing to destroy part of the wall the man had been standing in front of.

  “Apostle,” Sylvia rasped, trying to raise herself to her feet. “He’s an Apostle.”

  Shiv met the man on the ground and hit him, twice, a kick to the leg and then the chest. The man easily absorbed these, but, too complacent, he let Shiv’s third attack connect with his face, expecting it to bounce off.

  A spiderweb of razor-thin cuts bloomed on the man’s neck and jaw, and he roared again, lashing out with another wave of force, darting back. Sylvia was up and ready for him now, charging a roiling ball of lightning, the energy pulling at her like an eager dog on a leash.

  “Shiv!”

  Shiv let her own pocket of energy bloom, a positively-charged vacuum of sorts, right behind the man. The lightning arced toward Sylvia, drawn to the target she’d drawn, and it collided with the Apostle’s midsection, potent enough that the man's skin became briefly translucent, his insides lit with an eerie blue glow.

  The man screamed another curse and convulsed briefly, before slashing the air with a fist, discharging the overabundance of energy, too much for him to absorb at once.

  The waste electricity danced away, colliding with the man they’d been chasing, just as he’d ventured out from his hiding place, knocking him unconscious. Sylvia would’ve laughed at his awful luck if her ribs hadn’t been in such agony.

  The Apostle came to his senses just as Shiv reached him again, rained down two more blows, cutting bloody gouges into his upraised forearm. He punched at her, missing, and Sylvia was behind him now, raining blows into his back, his liver, his kidney, each blow penetrating his retreating Aura more and more, each impact imparting more energy through his defenses and into his fragile, human body.

  The Apostle roared and wheeled, blood spurting from his scalp as Shiv cut him again and again. He was strong, but too slow, and disoriented, a moose fending off a pack of wolves, losing steam.

  Sylvia felt a surge of excitement as she danced around his desperate attacks, landing increasingly weighty blows, knocking back his defenses more each time. They’d come to get Shiv to absorb a relative nobody, some low-ranking cultist goon, but they might end up with an entire Apostle’s worth of juice, now. If there was any doubt that Shiv would be strong enough to fix herself after this, it was banished. They had him on the ropes. The man was faltering, losing, bleeding. Just a few more-

  A third Aura blossomed from a hiding spot on the periphery of the warehouse and streaked over to them, faster than Shiv or Sylvia could react. A thinner, more severe-looking man kicked the Apostle away and stood between the two of them, one hand held aloft. At the tip of his finger, a nauseating golden light ignited.

  The sight of the queasy yellow energy immediately made Sylvia’s brain lurch. She moved to kneecap the man and slipped, her limbs suddenly foreign, less like parts of her body and more like distant, remotely-operated machinery. She felt her awareness of her Aura slacken, she felt the sudden, jarring weight of the batteries on her back, now, she felt her constant awareness of the world of tremors and textures shrink away.

  Across from her, Shiv stumbled and fell to her knees, vomiting. The thin man chuckled and booted her in the stomach, sending her careening into a far wall. He turned and pressed his foot against Sylvia’s back, pinning her down.

  “Toby, you still alive?” the man called.

  “Barely,” the Apostle responded, somewhere past the edges of Sylvia’s swimming vision. “Mike wasn’t so lucky.”

  “Well, sometimes the fish eats the bait.” The man ground his heel into Sylvia’s back, making her ribs flare with fresh pain. “Looks like we got a two-for-one. How’s about we split it? You take the-”

  He was interrupted by the trill of a phone and grumbled. Sylvia heard him retrieve the device, flip it open. “Hello? Right. You found the knight? Engaged him? Fantastic. How’d it go?”

  There was a moment of silence. The afterimage of that awful yellow light was beginning to fade from the inside of Sylvia’s eyelids, and she was feeling her strength begin to return, when the man slammed his heel against her back again.

  “We gave you a detachment of thirteen Apostles,” the man growled into the phone. “Thirteen!”

  Another pause. Cracking her eyes open, Sylvia caught a glimpse of Shiv rising to one knee, face slack and pale, her eyes averted from the man.

  “None of them?” the man hissed. “The fuck do you mean none of them survived?”