Apex

by Robert J. Crane

  He didn’t need to recover, though. He was perfectly positioned to lash out, and lash out he did, with a short punch that hit me in the ribs and launched me backward.

  My left foot left the ground behind as I tumbled, hitting the counter across the back of my thighs. The sudden contact arrested my lower body’s momentum and I flipped, my head and upper body continuing on without obstacle and my lower body adjusting its momentum to go in the same direction.

  The result? I tumbled ass-over-teakettle behind the counter and hit the wall knee first, then thumped into the griddle—ouch, hot!—and then torpedoed into the tile floor beneath.

  I made contact all across my forearms, thumping my head lightly but enough that—yeah, ouch, I felt it. As I landed in a heap, I heard heavy feet thud as someone else came down behind the counter only a few feet away.

  I opened one eye and looked up to find Mr. Terminator upside down, leering down at me with that frozen, expressionless face. “You’ll be coming with me, now,” he said, and raised a hand to deliver the finishing blow.

  And there was a not a chance in hell I was going to avoid it.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Veronika Acheron

  San Francisco, California

  Vernonika was a night owl by nature, her brain wired so that she couldn’t really get to sleep until the wee, small—hell, the wee many hours of the morning. A stolen look at the clock provided the knowledge that, yes, she was well beyond burning the midnight oil, and now safely into the territory of burning the three o’clock oil. Three-thirty, almost.

  Her muscles were tense, ears pricked up, listening. The darkness was complete outside, but in here in the bedroom—

  It was nothing but action and excitement, baby.

  That was the Veronika everyone knew. Wild to a fault. Frenzied when crossed. Furious in battle.

  And in her personal life?

  Well, she had stories.

  Veronika loved the stories. Loved to tell them, loved to watch the expressions on peoples’ faces as they took them in, digesting the exciting, emotional, sexy content she fed them. It was always a trip, watching a choice joke land, a good reference, some ribald story hit home.

  Such excite, as the kids on the internet said.

  Yeah. Excitement. This was what drove Veronika.

  And it was the reason that she was awake now, pushing herself to stay up later, go longer, and not sleep until she’d had all the fun she could.

  Wild. Crazy.

  Veronika didn’t have to even try and hold her breath when she felt it coming on. The bedsheets were tangled around her, damp with sweat. Her breathing was quicker, because—hell, she was plainly excited. Even having been through this before—so many times—she couldn’t help but get … enthusiastic.

  Sure, it was almost three-thirty now. But she could do this until four. Until five. Six, seven, eight, who cared? She’d do this all night and the next day, she reflected with undying enthusiasm as she rolled, slightly, her hand tight from overuse, a faint smile perched on her lips from the evening’s enthusiasms. She reached up to mop her brow; was it hot in here? Or was it just her?

  “I just can’t stop with you,” she whispered, a little bead of sweat drip down her temple. “No matter how times we … do this dance.” She looked ahead, impish mischief in her eyes. “We get to a certain point and … I just gotta finish, you know?”

  The book in her hands did not answer her. But then, she’d read Pride and Prejudice hundreds, maybe thousands of times now. It never did disappoint.

  Veronika brushed the cookie crumbs out of her bed and onto the floor as she shifted position. Her hand was practically cramping from holding the book open this long. What was it about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy that kept her reading all damned night? Even though she knew the outcome, even though she could quote it by heart?

  Oh, who cared. It was three-thirty in the damned morning and she was still reading a book she’d read so many times before. If she didn’t feel the need to justify anything else in her life, she damned sure wasn’t going to justify this.

  “You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”

  Veronika sighed, letting the book fall to her chest. Nobody talked like that anymore. Certainly no man. If they did, she might be more interested in them.

  A thump came on the roof, like Santa Claus landing. Veronika paused, turning over in bed, hand frozen while reaching for another cookie. “What the hell?” she muttered.

  It had sounded like … like a damned flying meta just landed on her roof.

  That got her to put down Pride and Prejudice, fighting loose from the bedsheets, which had tangled as she’d tossed and turned all night, plucking her way through the pages. She threw a silken robe over her t-shirt and boy shorts, went down the stairs of her townhome, and out the front door.

  She hit the front steps, out into the chill evening air, wind coming in off the Bay making her shiver. She kept going, down to the sidewalk and looked up, up, trying to see on the roof. It wasn’t easy; the roof was flat, and two stories straight up. Her townhome was a quintessential San Francisco-type landmark, built in a row, basement just below street level, two stories rising above that. Her mother had bought it for cheap back in the seventies, and Veronika had taken it over now that her mother was … unwell.

  “Hey!” she called up into the night, trying to project her voice up onto the roof. “Who’s up there?”

  A man made his way to the edge of the roof and stood there, looking down at her. He was shadowed in the dark; she could tell nothing about him. He stared down at her, she stared up at him.

  “Dude, what the hell are you doing on my roof at this hour?” Veronika asked. She brought her hands to her sides, ready to light off plasma if need be. She’d be damned if she was going to toss a burst up at him now; a bad throw and her house would go up in flames.

  No, her mind was in one place now—kick this guy’s ass and go finish the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, dammit. Not like she didn’t know how it was going to end, but still. She didn’t like to be left hanging any more than anyone else. In any way.

  The man stood at the edge of her roof for a moment, then floated down, his hands strangely shadowed. “You are Veronika Acheron,” he said, reaching the street a few seconds later, a delicate leaf making his way to the ground, unhurried by gravity.

  He didn’t ask it like a question. “Yeah, and you are?” she fired back. “Other than an annoying, stalking cheesedick?”

  “I seek you,” he said, that Euro accent echoing down the canyon of a street. “I seek your … strength.”

  “Well, you’re about to get it,” she said, keeping her hands at her side. “Though I don’t think you’re going to like it when you do get a taste.”

  Closer, under the streetlight, she could see him a little more clearly now. His hair was dark, skin pale, and his hands seemed to be … writhing, catching the light, a thousand sparkles glaring out, like—

  Like the Bay. The reflection of the city on the—

  Shit, Veronika thought, he’s a Poseidon. A flying Poseidon. He’s got water powers, his hands are wrapped in water, that’s why—

  She flared her plasma to life and came at him, crossing the distance between them—only a couple feet, and meeting him as he raised a fist to her. Her hands were bright blue with the glow, and she struck at him as he struck at her, her leading plasma edge finding the globe of water wrapped around his fist—

  There was a hiss and a crack, and a rush of heat that Veronika was utterly unprepared for forced her to step back or be scalded. She jerked away, the air temperature rising several hundred degrees around where they’d collided, and threw herself into a backward roll.

  When she came up off the sidewalk, she found the Euro guy still standing where she’d left him, burns and blisters disfiguring his face
. His mouth was a tight grimace, pain infusing his entire expression. His eyebrows had been burned off, his face red and raw as though she’d tossed boiling water at him—

  But he stood there, clothes steaming, and he straightened up—

  And came at her again.

  Veronika blinked; seeing this guy come at her after taking a wounding like that was intimidating, though she tried not to let it get to her. He was human—well, metahuman. He could be hurt. Hell, she’d just hurt him.

  Now she just needed to hurt him again.

  She flared plasma, making a ball of glowing blue wide on her hand. It grew, expanded as she rose up, ready to strike at him, to burn him down to embers—

  He smiled as she came, hands spread wide, no sign of that flickering light, the water on his fingers. He was just going to take it.

  That made Veronika smile.

  Right up until the stream of water came splashing down on her from above.

  The heat roared, sizzling off the ball of plasma she’d just created. With no way for her to channel it, the raw heat ran across her skin, burning and crackling it as though she’d been dropped into a blast furnace. Control of plasma was her power, and she could diffuse a great deal of heat by swallowing it up in plasma, but this—this subtle, simple workaround—

  There was nothing Veronika could do as the flash-boiled water seared her flesh, burning her skin. Her ball of plasma dispelled instantly as she dropped, nervous system overwhelmed, thudding on the sidewalk. She couldn’t really feel anymore, just an overwhelming sense of every nerve firing in pain. The sky lay dark above her, a light in the distance, a street lamp, shedding the only illumination.

  The dark-haired man loomed over her, staring down, curious, almost. She looked back up at him with eyes that were half-blinded, her vision blurred with tears.

  Words crackled from her throat, raw and burned, wafting up to him. “Who … are … you … ?”

  It was, after all, the only question that mattered.

  He just stared down at her, dark and forbidding. She thought she saw him smile, a little.

  “If you live,” he said, as he started to lift off the ground, floating up, up into the darkness, “maybe someday … I will tell you. When I find out myself.”

  And then he was gone, and the darkness came sweeping down on Veronika, sirens in the distance edging closer as her sense of the world faded away as surely as any thoughts of finishing her book in peace.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sienna

  It had been a few months since I’d gotten my ass kicked, and man, the experience had not gotten any better in the interim.

  I was lying on my back behind the counter in a Waffle House just over the Tennessee state line from Alabama, my weight resting not so comfortably on my shoulder blades, my legs straight up in the air. I’d landed that way after taking a hit that would have wrecked a car, smashing into the griddle where, dammit, my waffle should have been cooking even now.

  But, no, instead some yahoo with a grudge had come stalking into the place and started shit with me. Poor, innocent little old me. Depowered, just-a-vanilla-succubus me.

  Now he was closing in for the kill with his super-fast-punchy powers. About to level me with a last punch, in fact, aimed right at my face. He was leaning down to do it, because he was super tall, and I was on the ground (well, head and shoulders, anyway).

  Most people probably would have been unconscious by now. I would have liked to have been. Sleeping in my bed somewhere, preferably, where my entire cerebrum and spinal column would be much more in harmony and not carrying my lower body’s entire weight. It was, after, generally supposed to be the opposite, but here I was, almost standing on my frigging head, about to get punched out properly by some looming linebacker of a man who seemed an awful lot like the African-American version of the Terminator.

  I just hoped he didn’t have a metal skeleton.

  He started to lean down to deliver the knockout blow, and I made use of those legs dangling over my head by lashing out and giving him a solid kick to the balls. I couldn’t do much—not nearly much as I used to do—but I still had some strength, and dudes still had the ultimate weak point, and—

  All the wind went out of the Terminator as he realized, too late, Whoops! She’s not out of the fight! He didn’t say that, instead going with, “WHOOOOOOOF!” a muted version of the pained noise most guys tended to make when you hit them in the boys with super strength.

  I followed up with a nice, clumsy kick to the face, taking advantage of the natural slowdown that happens right after your body takes critical damage to a crucial area. His jaw made a profound cracking noise, and his speed advantage seemed to be nullified by the fact he was in pure agony. He was doing a really good job of controlling it, though, credit to him.

  “Ungh,” I said, rolling over and landing a knee, painfully, on the tile floor. Terminator was on all fours, and, not being one to waste a lot of opportunities for cheap shots, I drilled him in the jaw and he slammed into the base of the griddle. “Jerk off,” I grunted, getting to my feet and aiming a kick at his lower back. I hit him, he grunted, but he was tense—

  He was preparing himself to be beaten on the ground. Bad sign. Take it from one who’d adopted that same posture every now and again. If someone was preparing their body in that way, a counterattack was coming.

  And I just didn’t have time for that. We’d been brawling for a few minutes—well, I’d been getting my ass handed to me for a few minutes before this reversal of fortune—and that meant there had been plenty of time for someone, probably Mike! my waiter, to call the cops.

  This being not to my advantage and maybe to his, instead of delivering another blow, I leapt the counter and grabbed a barely-conscious Eilish by the collar, dragging her to her feet. “Come on,” I said, to her and to Cassidy, who was standing back all wide-eyed and ineffectual, waiting for somebody to tell her uber-smart-but-useless-in-a-fight skinny ass what to do. “Move!”

  I ushered them both out the door in a hurry, mourning the loss of my chance for a waffle. I half walked, half dragged Eilish, who was barely conscious and moaning at the physical harm done unto her, out the door and into the parking lot as someone came skidding to a stop inches in front of us.

  Harry. Driving the damned car.

  I threw the back door open and tossed Eilish in as Cassidy skittered around the other side. Then, with a look back over my shoulder at the Terminator, who was rising to his feet behind the counter inside, I hopped in the passenger seat and Harry floored the accelerator. The SUV took off with a roar, and we skidded onto the street and straight onto the entry ramp to I-65 north about a half second later, causing some semi driver to lay on his horn in full-fury pissedness as he came to a stop with a hearty ROOOOOOOOOOOAR of his engine brakes.

  I looked back in time to see the Terminator come leaping out the hole in the window that he’d made with Eilish’s barstool. He hit the pavement running and disappeared as we moved down the onramp far enough that the slope of the earth obscured him from my sight.

  All I could do was hope that we made it out of there before he could get to his vehicle and begin an honest pursuit. But for the moment I sat there, breathing in, my aching side, back—hell, everything—crying out at me, as we rolled onto Interstate 65 and Harry accelerated up to 80.

  I did not stop looking back for many miles.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Shit, what if that guy has a car?” Cassidy was the first to ask the question I’d been ignoring for the last five minutes as we boogied up the freeway at high speed, the speedometer needle buried against the right side of the instrument. Harry was keeping very careful control of the vehicle, sliding in and out of traffic brilliantly.

  “Oh, he does,” Harry said, breaking his silence. He lifted a hand and something dangled from within his fingers. “Where do you think I got these spark plugs?” He shot me a grin.

  I just stared at him. “Wait … you sabotaged his car?”

&
nbsp; “Damned right I did,” he said.

  I thought about it for a second, then my voice went frosty as I watched Harry stiffen, subtly. “You knew he was going to bushwhack us before you stopped at that Waffle House, didn’t you?”

  Harry just sort of shrugged, and I hit him on the shoulder. Not too hard, but enough that he cringed, and suddenly I knew why he’d tensed a moment earlier. He’d been anticipating the hit.

  “Yeah, okay, I knew,” Harry said.

  “How?” I asked. “Who is he?”

  Harry shook his head, not looking at me. “Don’t know. But he’s tied up in this whole thing somehow, so this was a necessary meeting and also …” he seemed to be deciding how best to say it, “… your best chance for survival.”

  I hit him again, and he grimaced. “Dammit, Nealon … sometimes, I swear … associating with you definitely brings its own sort of pitfalls. Pain being one of them.”

  “I haven’t mangled you beyond repair yet, Graves,” I said, which was about the most charitable thing I could manage after he’d just copped to walking me into the worst beatdown I’d experienced … in three months. “Count your blessings given what I just went through in that Waffle House.” I seethed in silence for a moment. “What the hell are you playing at?”

  “Me?” Graves kept his eyes on the road for once. “I’m just the driver.”

  “The driver who can see into the damned future and just walked me into an ambush. Try again.”

  “I told you—this guy was going to cross your path regardless. I just tried to engineer it so—”

  “A warning would have been nice!” I hammered Harry’s arm. “‘Hey, Sienna, this stop isn’t so much about waffles as it a chance for you to get your skull beaten in by some superpowered goon with the personality of a freaking android’!” I thumped him again and again on the bicep, and he just took it.