Jacks stood and walked toward his stepfather. Everyone in the Temple seemed to hold their breath in delicious anticipation as he stepped to the altar to be Commissioned at long last. His footfalls echoed in the suddenly silent auditorium.
“Jackson Godspeed,” Mark began, “do you offer yourself in the service of mankind?”
Jacks looked into Mark’s eyes. He knew the vows by heart.
“I do,” he said.
“Do you swear to keep safe, at all times, those under your protection?”
“I do,” Jacks said.
“Do you take this burden of your own free will, to do this good work on this Earth?”
“I do.”
Mark picked up the ring and slipped it on Jacks’s finger. “I commission you Guardian Jackson, of the Godspeed Class.”
Jacks could feel the weight of it. He looked down and watched it glimmer on his finger. It was all he had ever wanted. The ring of a Guardian. The ring of a hero. A close-up of the ring on his finger towered, sparkling, on the two screens behind them. In a moment Mark would read the names of the Protections, and Jacks’s destiny would finally begin.
“Congratulations, Jackson,” Mark said. “Turn and be recognized.”
Jacks didn’t move.
He stood very still. His mind had suddenly been transported far away from his stepfather before him, from the other new Guardians, from the crowd, from the Commissioning. His face blanched white. His eyes became unseeing and distant.
“Jackson?” Mark said, his face darkening in concern.
The entire Temple sat in charged silence, waiting.
“Jacks?” Kris said, getting up from her chair.
What occurred next happened so quickly it could not be seen. The glass in the windows of the Temple rippled like water—like a wave moving from the front of the hall to the back—and then exploded. Stained glass rained down on the crowd like multicolored diamonds as the doors to the temple were blown open. Wind howled down the aisle, vicious and twisting like jet wash. The crowd outside fell to the ground, some of them covering their ears in pain.
Mark looked up from the floor of the stage, where he had been knocked over.
Jacks had flown out of the Temple and was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Maddy’s eyes snapped open. Her head spun, throbbing with an unknown pain. Stumbling backward, she felt something hard and cold cut into her back. She reached behind her and felt its smooth surface.
The light pole.
In front of her shone the headlights of two approaching cars. Where was she? And what was happening? Fragments of memories swirled in her mind. The party. Talking with Ethan. And kissing him? Had that really happened? Then there was some boy named Simon, and . . .
“They’re . . . racing,” she whispered to herself. It wasn’t a statement of fact so much as the recollection of a memory. Like trying to piece together the remnants of a fleeting dream. The headlights grew closer. The cars swerved. She thought she could hear someone laughing.
What the hell is going on?
She forced her mind to function. She had left the party, she had been walking home, and—
A single, terrifying idea rapidly emerged, slicing through all the other muddled thoughts like a shriek.
The Range Rover.
It all came back in a rush. The impact, the sound of her bones breaking, the way the SUV’s grill felt as it embedded itself inside her. It was all too real to be imagined, too horrific to be make-believe. There was only one possible explanation.
She’d had another premonition. The grisly vision was the most intense she had ever experienced. Because it was her own.