The Echo did not look at Ronan.
It looked past him, and past Finn, across eighty metres of open stone to where James stood in the middle of the formation with Alice a step ahead of him and her wings already open.
Its face changed. It was a small change, a tightening at the corner of the mouth, the way someone looks when they see a face in a crowd they did not expect to see again.
"Lust," it said.
Alice's wings snapped wider, and then it came.
It did not run. It went low and flat across the court with its wings half folded, and the air it pushed in front of it hit James in the face a full second before the Echo did.
James was already moving. Durendal was in his hand before he had decided anything. He went right as Finn went left, and Ronan drove into the lane in front of them with his shield up. Behind the Echo, Ciara's hand came round, and a plane went up across its back, set in the air between it and the open middle of the court.
Alice took the collision on her wings.
