49

Indeed, when I looked around, I saw a mass of white fur standing right where I left Sarah a few moments ago. Yin was back from the dead. I couldn't understand it at all. I had watched the albino die and yet here he was, standing on a rooftop in New York. "I notice you're surprised to see me," he said with the slightest bit of condescension in his voice: he knew exactly what he had done, and he was practically bragging about it. I probably would be too if I had escaped from death's clutches when I was already in them.

"Well it's not often that someone who I left dead on the floor in a secret laboratory." What? It was the best I could come up with in such short notice.

He sighed, seeming annoyed, and rubbed his temples with his hand. "I'm going to make this simple for you," his voice suddenly more serious. "Aaron comes here, or the girl dies." It was only then that I noticed what was happening, brought to my senses by the thought of imminent death.

He had bound Sarah for real, and was holding her hostage.

And Aaron was flying forward to meet him, as fast as he could.

50

I tried to catch him. I really did. But right before I could I was tackled mid-flight from the side, and I realized that once again, the fight was on, and with our trump cards out of the bag it wasn't going to be pretty. I already had two Erasers in position to try to take me out, while Jace and Raine, and Eric were busy taking care of their own opponents.

I noticed a shadow above me, and I ducked just in time to see yet another Eraser dive past where I had just been. It seemed to me that they REALLY wanted me down, if not dead. I then decided to fold my wings and land hard on the Eraser as he tried to flip up and get back above me. He was unconscious almost immediately.

As I leaped off of him and again unfurled my wings to stay aloft, I noticed Eric delivering a devastating series of blows, finishing with a hard blow to both temples. That Eraser wasn't going to wake up in a while. Or ever. Damn, it must be handy to have four arms, I thought as Eric flew over to attack one of the Erasers that had been covering my movements. The poor wolf hybrid went down in an instant.

The last Eraser showed a trait that I had never seen before in their kind: Cowardice. When I turned to look at him, he turned around and fled, with his tail literally between his legs. It would have been funny if I didn't have more to do. There was still my brother to look after.

I turned around just in time to see him fall.

51

"No!" I cried as I tried to catch up to him. He had fallen behind a building, and the albino puffball was diving in pursuit. I couldn't catch them. I tried. There was a loud crash as Yin caught up to Aaron's descent and threw him into the ground even harder.

After that, I could barely stand to look.

Aaron's body was twisted around in so many ways that should never have been possible; limbs twisted right around, bone poking out at impossible angles. He was groaning; he was still alive, which made the image all the worse. "You know what they say," Yin chided after noticing me hovering above him. "Payback's a bitch." That was the sentence that sealed the Eraser's fate.

Jace and Raine were flanking him now. There wasn't enough space for him to take off. I reached back into my bag and took out my handgun as I landed in front of him. It would be so easy to pull the trigger, to send this miserable excuse for a living being to the hell that he deserved. And yet, something inside me faltered. There was something about the situation that was staying my hand.

Fate would not let me kill this man.

So instead, I did the next best thing. I knocked him out with a quick strike across the temple with the butt of my gun, and ran off into the street, in the direction I'm certain was North. Eric was now carrying the unconscious Sarah. He followed me through the city, with Raine close behind him. I was wondering where Jace was when I heard him shout, "What the fuck? He's gone!"

That stopped all of us in our tracks. "What?" asked Eric, who was bearing a quizzical expression just like the rest of us.

Jace caught up with the group, saying, "Aaron's gone. I turned to take a piss, and when I looked back, he had disappeared. I don't know what's going on here, but I can tell it's something big," he said, echoing my own thoughts.

I then thought, But just how big?