"Come on, sugah. Wake up."

"Five more minutes, Mom …"

"Sorry, sugah. Not your momma. Can you open your eyes up for me? Don't know how you lived through that, but it ain't safe to be lollygagging right now."

The voice was definitely not my mother's. My mother didn't sound like Southern Honey deep fried in pure unadulterated sexy. (And thank God for that!)

So I opened my eyes. And there was only one thing I could say: "Wow."

She was beautiful. Not real life pretty girl beautiful, but rather like what a super model looks like on film. Except this was in person without a ton of make up or touched up photography—and smudged with dirt and concrete dust. "Thanks, sugah. Ah'm Rogue. You got a name?"

"Kyle." The Lady had drilled into me that I should never give anyone my full name—deception can backfire on a sorcerer so outright lying isn't a good idea, but the more someone knows about you the more they can hurt you. So all I said was, "Kyle."

"Pleased to meet you, Kyle. Ah guess today's mah lucky day. Not every day Ah got knocked out of the sky—thank God Ah landed on a mutant powerful enough to survive the impact."

"Impact? Mutant? What impact?"

She giggled. "Ah love a man with a sense of humor. Take a look, sugah."

We were in a crater.

Granted, it wasn't a deep crater. About four feet deep If that. Still, it was a crater.

The street wasn't deserted, but it wouldn't be long till it was. No one seemed all that anxious to stick around. "Where'd everyone go?"

"You ain't been in New York long have you, sugah?" She ran a hand through her glorious hair. Brown with a white streak. "When someone falls out of the sky here it means all kinds of trouble you wanna avoid if you ain't got supah powahs."

"I ain't got—I mean I don't have any powers." Technically, it was true. A sorcerer manipulates mystical energies to achieve effects. Theoretically, anyone could learn how to do the same—just like anyone could theoretically learn how to play a musical instrument. Theory and reality aren't always on the same page.

"Then how do you explain this?" She pointed at the crater.

"I …ducked?"

She laughed. "Look, sugah. Ah can get you probably had to hide what you were back home and it ain't exactly a good idea to start going all 'mutant and proud' even here, but there ain't too many guys who can survive when a gal falls on him from a few hundred feet in the air. And we ain't got time to play. Something knocked me out of the sky, and there ain't a lot of things that can do that."

"Don't you know what happened?" I was starting to think that now would be a really good time for me to get the hell out of Dodge, but I hadn't yet mastered teleportation and it didn't look like I was going to be able to call a cab anytime soon.

"No. Ah was on my way home when something hit me like a freight train and the next thing Ah know Ah making a pavement sandwich with a Kyle filling." She had the kind of smile that could make a man forget about being smart.

This girl was going to be trouble.

And then I felt something scratch against the wards that the Lady had insisted I cast to protect my mind from mental attack. It had seemed like a waste of time to me back then, but she had been right again …

Which she usually was.

The girl—Rogue winced. "Telepath. Get outta mah head!"

There was a shimmering and a rush of displaced air, and three people stood before us.

One was a thin—way too thin- girl clad in a blood red skintight outfit. She wore a silver helmet on head that was shaped rather like the head of a German Shepherd. The "eyes" were glowing red LED lights.

Her own eyes were blank and as white as snow.

"A Hound," Rogue gasped.

There was a collar around the girl's thin neck. Attached to that collar was a silver chain. Holding the chain was a woman … well, a woman's head on what looked like to be an entire metal body. (There was no way she could have had a body underneath the metal cause it was translucent in places and showed nothing but gears.) The woman's face should have been breathtakingly beautiful but the hate on it made it ugly instead.

The last one was a giant.

The Lady has told me there are creatures huger than the human mind can imagine. Creatures as large as planets … even larger. She had told me and shown me some images, but images are nothing compared to the real thing.

The giant was made of iron.

Yeah, an iron giant, a robot of some kind perhaps. An iron giant who had a helmet that looked like a horse's head.

So, yeah.

An iron horse.

Go figure.

"Who are you people and what did you do to that poor girl?" Rogue reached down and ripped up a piece of concrete with no more difficulty than I'd have picking up a piece of paper.

Strangely enough, that didn't make her any less hot.

"We are the future," Iron Horse said.

"The first shot was just to knock her out of the sky! Let me finish her now!" The Woman-Bot said.

"Not yet, Metalyx. We have need of her abilities. We want her alive. Blythe, howl for us!"

The girl- Blythe?- raised her head and howled like a dog.

Immediately, Rogue dropped the piece of concrete and fell to her knees, covering her ears. She cried out in pain and fell down face first.

I gritted my teeth. The girl's screaming was aggravating-and I couldn't quite see how she could do that without taking a breath- but it wasn't that debilitating to me.

"The boy- why isn't he going under?" Metalyx demanded. "Her cry has worked on every mutant we tested- even the ones with no hearing! How can he possibly be standing?"

In a way, I was glad that Rogue had passed out. At least this way if I wet myself with fear she wouldn't be there to see it.

"That's because I'm not a mutant! Vapors of Valtorr!"

Tendrils of smoke seeped out of the ground and formed a band around the screaming girl's mouth. She immediately stopped screaming and tried to claw them away from her face but of course accomplished nothing.

"Die, mutant!" Metalyx's friend arm- the one that wasn't holding Blythe's leash- shifted and became something that looked disturbingly like a chainsaw.

"Shield of Seraphim!"

A shimmering golden dome formed around Rogue and myself. The bullets from the cyborg's gun pinged against it but did no damage.

The giant's expressionless face stared at me. "You have no place in this battle. You are not a mutant. Give us the girl and we will not harm you. We have no reason to harm you. Give us the girl and we will be on our way."

"I don't think so." My voice was starting to crack with fear. I had never been in a real fight before, and I was running out spells that I knew how to use. The smart thing to do would have been to let them take the girl- and get the hell out of the way.

The Lady would have told me to do it.

But I couldn't.

Not if I wanted to be able to look myself in the mirror.

The iron giant and I stared at each other for a moment.

Rogue groaned and began to stir.

"Blythe, take us away from here."

"Are you afraid?" Metalyx demanded. "We have her!"

"We have nothing, Metalyx. The boy is unknown to us. He may be about to fall over. He may have enough power to snuff our lives out with but a thought. And Rogue is too dangerous to face without Blythe's howl. We go now." That giant head turned back to me. "But I will remember your interference, boy."

I didn't trust myself to speak. I just nodded my head.

Blythe, her mouth still gagged, raised her hands and they disappeared exactly as they had came.

"Wonderful. Not in New York an hour and I've already made enemies. Could things get any worse?"

A strong hand clamped over my mouth. Three sharp metal points suddenly jabbed themselves into my throat. Not far enough to hurt, but far enough for me to know I was bleeding.1

"Hello, bub. Suppose you explain to me exactly why Rogue is lying at your feet ...?"

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