Reckoners 01 - Steelheart

said.
    “I’m going to pull up beside them at the next light,” Megan said. “It will feel natural. Be ready, Abraham.”
    I slipped the binoculars into my pocket and tried to look nonchalant. The next light was green when we hit it, so Megan kept trailing the limo at a safe distance. The light after that, however, turned red before the limo reached it.
    We pulled up slowly beside the limo, on the left side.
    “There’s an Epic near us for sure,” Abraham said from the back of our van. He whistled softly. “A powerful one.
Very
powerful. The dowser is focusing in. I’ll have more in a second.”
    One of the motorcycle drivers looked us over. He wore an Enforcement helmet and had an SMG strapped to his back. I tried to peer through the windows of the limo and catch a glimpse of Conflux. I’d always wondered what he looked like.
    I couldn’t see through the tinted rear glass. But as we pulled forward, I caught sight of someone sitting in the passenger seat. A woman who was vaguely familiar. She met my eyes but then looked away.
    Business suit, black hair cut short over her ears. She was Nightwielder’s assistant, the one who had been with him at Diamond’s. She was probably a liaison to Enforcement; it made sense for her to be in the limo.
    Something still made me suspicious. She’d met my eyes; she should have recognized me. Maybe … she
had
recognized me, but hadn’t been surprised to see me.
    We pulled forward, the light green, and I felt a spike of alarm.
    “Prof, I think it’s a trap.”
    At that moment Nightwielder himself flew through the top of the limo, his arms spread wide, lines of darkness stretching from his fingers out into the night.

28
    MOST people have never seen a High Epic in their glory. That’s what we call it when they summon their powers in earnest—when they rise up in their might, their emotions kindled to wrath and fury.
    There is a
glow
about them. The air grows sharp, like it’s become full of electricity. Heartbeats still. The wind holds its breath. Nightwielder’s rising made this the third time I’d seen something like it.
    He was clothed in night, and blackness writhed and twisted about him. His face was pale, translucent, but his eyes were alight, his lips drawn in a sneer of hatred. It was the sneer of a god, barely tolerant of even his allies. He had come to destroy.
    Looking upon him, I found myself terrified.
    “Calamity!” Megan cursed, slamming her foot down on the gas and swerving the van to the side as shadows leaped from around Nightwielder toward us. They moved like ghostly fingers.
    “Abort!” Tia called. “Get out of there!”
    There was no time. Nightwielder moved in the air, ignoring things like wind and gravity. He flew like a specter out in front of his car and toward us. He wasn’t the true danger, though—the true danger was those tendrils of blackness. The van could not avoid them; there were dozens.
    Shoving aside my fear, I raised my rifle. The van rattled and jolted around me. Wisps of darkness moved up, wrapping around the vehicle.
    Idiot
, I thought. I dropped my rifle and shoved my hand into my coat pocket. The flashlight! Panicked, I flipped it on and shined it right in Nightwielder’s face as he floated up beside my window. He was flying face-first, like he was swimming in the air.
    The reaction was immediate. Though the flashlight gave off little light that I could see, Nightwielder’s face immediately lost its incorporeity. His eyes stopped glowing, and the shadows vanished from around his head. The beam of invisible light pierced the dark tendrils like a laser through a pile of sheep.
    In that UV light, Nightwielder’s face didn’t look divine. It looked frail, human, and very, very surprised. I struggled to get my gun up to fire at him, but the rifle was too unwieldy and my father’s handgun was strapped under my arm where I couldn’t get at it while holding the flashlight.
    Nightwielder looked at me for the space of a single heartbeat, his eyes wide with terror. Then he fled in a blink, streaking sideways away from the van. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like he’d been losing altitude as I shined the light on him, as if all his powers were weakening.
    He vanished down a side street, and the shadows that had been moving around the van retreated with him. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to be back anytime soon, not after the scare I’d just given him.
    Submachine-gun fire erupted around us, bullets pelting the side