Riley jumped, startled, but the arrow that had been fired at her had embedded itself harmlessly in the shielding light she’d coated her arm with. It hadn’t touched her skin, let alone pierced it.
The shielding worked!
She dissolved the protective light in that area just enough that the arrow fell to the ground. Then she looked back at Tsali without emotion.
The Poxinosa general’s smile had disappeared. He now looked shocked. “You can’t be shot, and still you’re looking for more powers before you are named?”
“Clearly I can be shot. I just can’t be harmed.” By arrows, at least. “Not without my own consent.”
“True,” Paselo verified.
Keeping his eyes on Riley, Tsali asked the man to whom he had passed the folder, “What’s inside?”
The underling leafed through the papers.
As he did so, Riley glanced at Tsali’s other men. None of the rest of them had pointed weapons at her. Fifty or so were scattered over the hill directly in front of her turtle. Jack and Will were not among them. They’d been assigned to the periphery, then, as Jack anticipated.
The man with the folder answered Tsali, “You’d better take a look at these yourself, sir.”
The Poxinosa general took the file back and examined the contents. His expression darkened, even as his light grew brighter.
“How did you come by this?” he demanded, all signs of entertainment and playfulness now gone.
—HIDE—
“We’ve collected it since you first attacked us.” Accurate, but also misleading.
“True.”
“That’s not what I asked you, Rain,” Tsali said menacingly. “How was this accomplished?”
Riley had practiced this answer before the confrontation. She recited it now with confidence. “That doesn’t matter, does it? The point is that we have the information. You may have to fight us to get what you want, but we don’t have to fight you. The Veiled authorities are going to do it for us.”
His eyes flashed dangerously. “You think you can coerce us?”
“From this point forward, every time one of our people is harassed, the authorities will find evidence that one of you has done it. Fingerprints, DNA, video, photographs, evidence we hacked from your computers… we have it all, on every single one of you,” Riley said, glancing from Tsali to the men standing behind him who began gasping and swearing. “They will pick you off one by one, starting with whomever we like. Either you will leave this clan in peace, or you will lose your freedom. It’s your choice.”
Tsali’s face was now a mask of rage. “You’re very brave for someone who’s standing out here all alone!” He handed the folder to Paselo, then turned and nodded at Msithwe.
Msithwe began frowning at Riley.
He’s trying to freeze me, she realized a second later. Does my shell protect me from him or not?
Inside her sneakers, Riley curled and uncurled her toes. Win! He has no effect on me shielded!
“Did I come here alone?” she asked Tsali. She lowered both herself and her invisible friends to the ground. “How clumsy of me.”
Riley looked up at Tsali and winked at him. And in the space of that wink, she made all the people inside her shell visible.
A collective gasp went up among Tsali’s men.
“Freeze the girl!” Tsali snapped over his shoulder at Msithwe. “We have to take her with us!”
“I can’t!” Msithwe appeared to be concentrating hard, but to no avail. “My power isn’t working on her!”
Freed of the immediate need to keep her shell behind her to protect the Greenwoods, Riley re-centered it over herself; that took in about a quarter of Tsali’s nearest men. One of them was the man who shot the arrow at her. She reached out her hand toward him, then she expelled him viciously. He flew twenty feet straight back before cracking his head on a tree and falling to the ground, motionless.
Two more men went racing toward Riley. She expelled them, too, theatrically lifting her hand each time as if she was exercising a power. She forced herself to disregard the sounds of fighting that had broken out around her, and Darren’s labored breathing as he used his power to protect her.
Tsali seemed riveted by what she was doing. Enchanted, even. “Are you really the only one throwing my men?”
“Yes.”
“True!” the Lie Detector confirmed nervously. He lifted both his hands, as if he were attempting to surrender. He looked so foolish that, even from within her turtle, Riley was tempted to giggle.
Tsali looked her up and down. “What are you?”
She raised both her hands toward Tsali as if she were going to throw him next. “As long as you target this clan, I am your enemy.”
“My enemy?” His expression was one of mingled amusement and wariness. “That’s never a good thing to be, little one.” He backed up half a step, though, as if doing so could somehow protect him from being ejected from her shell.
A loud explosion from the left drew everyone’s attention. One of the Poxinosa had tossed a grenade inside the shield. Riley briefly glanced around her.
The forest was a combat zone.
The Poxinosa were spread out along the hillside, many using warrior powers. The shield lit up in sections as it both defended against attacks and returned some sort of fire on its own. Riley couldn’t tell if it was repelling all of the volleys or only certain ones. The battling Greenwoods who were visible to her — every one of them elders — had knelt behind trees and were aiming and firing Veiled weapons at the Poxinosa. At least two elders had been hit, she realized with a jolt, and were lying still on the ground. It was unclear to her which side was winning the battle.
A few men who had tried attacking Riley from the side while she was talking to Tsali were now lying motionless on the ground as well, after experiencing the Wrath of Darren. Msithwe was among them.
In addition, four of the Poxinosa had got caught in the Greenwood shield and were unable to move at all. Each one was covered in bright, swirling light. The Greenwoods ignored them completely. Those men would stay frozen in place until the battle was done.
A handful of Tsali’s men were running down the hillside, heading toward the area where Xander and Katrina had been stationed. Riley prayed the two of them would be safe.
Jack and Will were still nowhere to be seen.
Tsali turned to face Riley again. “I underestimated you, Rain,” he told her. “I thought all you could do was telep—”
Another large explosion interrupted Tsali, this time from directly behind him. He stumbled, then turned to see water and soil shooting up through the ground, blasting four of his men into the air and knocking several others off their feet. Two seconds later, the ground began to shake, and more men fell.
Riley and Darren leaned against each other for balance.
“It’s their earth shaker! He’s causing a quake!” one of them yelled.
“Can anyone see him?” Tsali yelled, now looking frantic.
It was too late. The quake had taken down most of the men and both women who were standing behind Tsali. But the Greenwoods, who were almost all on bended knee, had not fallen.
“I doubt you’ll find Buffalo Shakes Earth,” Riley said slowly as Tsali shifted his feet in a vain effort to find a steady patch of ground. “He’ll be well inside our shield.”
“True!” Paselo called out from the ground.
As suddenly as it started, the earthquake stopped.
Tsali glanced around at the state of his men and bit back an oath. He then turned to Riley. “I suppose you think you’ve accomplished something tonight by your defiance!”
“I doubt it,” she replied. “You don’t seem like the kind of man who takes no for an answer.”
“I’m not. One way or another, you are going to help us.”
Riley took a step forward and, trembling, looked up at him.
“No. I won’t.”
His response was a slow grin.
Colonel Matthew approached, along with Ivan. The Colonel placed a hand on Riley’s shoulder. “You can’t defeat us, Tsali. Take your men and go back to the Cut. Leave my people alone. If you do not, we will use that evidence against you.”
Tsali shook his head. “Ah, well. Another day, perhaps.” Still smiling, he turned toward his men and shouted, “Fall back!”
Shock. Riley's emotional self broke free of her turtle’s cool embrace, and she started trembling again. ‘Fall back?’ Does that mean we did it?
“Fall back!” a few voices high on the hill echoed.
Her heart sped up when she heard them.
One of them was Jack’s.
The men behind Tsali picked each other up off the ground and hobbled back uphill the way they’d come, many clutching one another for support or carrying unresponsive comrades. None of them spoke. Msithwe and Paselo went up last, Paselo holding both his much larger clanmate and the folder that Riley had given them.
From somewhere near the top of the hill, shots began to ring out. The Greenwoods with weapons took aim again, but they soon saw that they were not the targets this time.
One by one, the four fire warriors who had gotten caught in the Greenwood shield were executed by their brothers in arms. Riley watched in abject horror as the nearest man died without making a sound, releasing a brown holy panther. His body then fell to the ground without light, movement, or any acknowledgment from his general.
The visibly frightened cat seemed to have been pushed away by the shield itself. Riley watched as the beast looked back over his shoulder at the body of the human he’d once been joined with. Then he turned and sprinted over the hillside.
Tears stung her eyes. Does he understand what just happened to him?
“Prince Matthew.” Tsali bowed and smiled at the Colonel, as if four executions had not taken place only seconds ago under his command, “You have a very powerful protégée.”
“I hope for your sake that you heed her warning.”
“I heard her warning.” The general now sounded bored. “Chief Kolapeka will decide how to respond.” He looked down at Riley and smiled again. “Well, Rain... it’s been a pleasure. I look forward to our next meeting.”
Without waiting for a reply from her, he turned and followed his men up the hill.
Riley, too, turned away. After one more glance at the lifeless, wide-eyed man on the ground that had once been joined with the panther, she buried herself in the Colonel’s arms.
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