“My arm’s gone completely numb,” Harry said, shaking it out as soon as I delivered the last blow. “I hope you’re happy.”
“I was happy on the beach in Florida,” I said, crossing my arms in front of me to keep from physically abusing Harry any worse than I’d already done. I could have broken bones and done so much worse, but I kept a lid on it.
“Bullshit,” Harry threw back at me, a little angry, probably from the pain.
I chewed on that one, gritting my teeth. “Fine,” I said at last, “I wasn’t happy happy. But I had scotch, and I was safe, and—”
“Yeah, you were living the high life in your little dog run,” Harry said, now more animated than I’d yet seen him. “Make sure you don’t go any farther than your shock collar comfort zone would allow. And keep diving into that bottle, Nealon, eventually when you hit the bottom maybe you’ll find an answer to how pathetic your life has become.”
“I already have an answer for that, Harry,” I shot back, “I’m on the run from the frigging law, and I got my ass beat and my powers stolen by some ginger with a mad-on for me. I’m entitled to sit back and tip a few—”
“Bull. Shit.” Harry thumped the wheel and the car shook as he took us slightly over the bumps at the side of the road, then got us right back on the straight and narrow. He turned to me with blazing eyes. “You can sit and drink and feel sorry for yourself all you want, but don’t turn around and tell me that it’s because you were happy wallowing.”
I wanted to hit him again, but I didn’t, because I wasn’t sure I could restrain myself from using lethal force. Hell, I didn’t even know what lethal force was for me anymore, without Wolfe strength.
“Looks like I missed some good times,” Eilish said woozily from the back seat.
“I didn’t ask for you to come along and become my cryptic asshole shaman spirit guide,” I said, trying to ignore the distraction.
“Well, I needed your help, so—here we are, anyway,” Harry said. “All part of the service.”
“Me getting my ass kicked by the Terminator is part of your service? Your service sucks. Like—Comcast bad.”
Cassidy chuckled, and we all turned to look at her. “That was funny,” she said, blushing. “Their service is bad-award winning. If there was a J.D. No-Power award, they would get it.”
“I don’t need your damned help, Harry,” I said, still steaming.
“Yeah, you were doing great without me,” he said. “Just keep a little something in mind—you may have just run across this guy now, in my company, but he’s been hunting you for a while. So he would have found you down in Florida, eventually, and then you wouldn’t have been in a position to at least outrun him when he knocked your ass sideways.”
That annoying little factoid had an infuriating ring of truth to it. I’d been hunted by the best, and this Terminator guy—he was right up there. If I’d had my old powers, sure, he might not have been as much of an issue. A few fire blasts, boom, he’s pre-cremated and my problems with him are over.
Now, thought? His super-speed punchy powers damned near caved my freaking head in, and my own punches were not nearly so lightning fast.
How had I fought guys like this before?
Oh, right. I cracked my back, and felt for that empty space where I used to carry a holster. Well, I had a Walther in my travel bag, a gift from one Manannán Mac Lir, and it still had a few rounds left in it. “Cassidy,” I said, “be a not-pain-in-my-ass and hand me my bag, will you?”
She shrugged, put aside her laptop, and reached into the back, pulling up my bag and one of Eilish’s countless candy bags with it. She tossed it to me lightly, between the gap in the seats, and the candy bag broke loose and showered the rear floorboard with Twizzlers and Almond Joys.
Eilish moaned. “My head hurts so, I don’t think I could stomach any more of your American candy right now.”
I reached back and grabbed an Almond Joy, furiously ripping the paper off it and then throwing the wrapper back in her face. “Fine, then! Our candy is too good for you anyway.” And I took a big bite of almond coconutty goodness as I unzipped my bag and pulled out the Walther box.
“Please don’t shoot me,” Harry said, and I froze, contemplating it for just a second before I tucked the gun into my waistband. “It was long odds, but it was a possibility,” he said when he caught me frowning at him.
“Throw me into an unexpected fight with an unstoppable ass kicker again and the odds are going to get a lot less favorable for you, bucko,” I said after I practice-drew the gun and then checked to see if it had one in the chamber. Of course it did; they were pretty damned useless without one in the chamber. At least that old habit died hard.
“Oh, good,” Eilish said, leaning forward so I could see that she was sporting a big bruise across her pale forehead. “The angry, drunken American is now armed. You people are crazy.”
“Why?” I asked, not particularly perturbed about Eilish’s characterization of me, unflattering as it was.
“Because you just tucked a gun into your waistband,” Eilish said.
I stared back at her. “I got this gun in Scotland.”
She started to open her mouth to protest, paused, then said, “Yeah, but, you’re carrying it in America now.”
I just stared, still. “And …?”
She stared back, apparently trying to construct her argument and not having much success. “You people are gun crazy.”
“Well, in this case, it’s a problem solver for me,” I said, shaking it off and turning back to putting away my bag. That done, I tossed it to the back of the hatchback area. “As in, if I can, I’m totally going to blow the brains out of that asshole the Terminator, and then my problems with him will be over.”
“But is that really the way you want to be solving all your problems?” Eilish asked, like that was some kind of compelling argument.
“The ones that involve people wanting to harm or otherwise kill me? Hell yes,” I said. “That is how I want to solve them. With bullets to the head for all who threaten my wellbeing in a serious manner.” I looked sidelong at Harry, who let out the thinnest smile. “Judgment reserved on where you fall into that category, Graves.”
He didn’t argue back. Which was wise.
We passed a sign warning us that the next major city ahead was Nashville, somewhere in the near distance, and I quietly seethed about getting my ass handed to me—this was becoming a habit—by some rando meta in a Waffle House who apparently had beef with me. What was his deal? Kidnapper for unknown parties? He didn’t seem like a government stooge, since they usually came in teams, a swarm of stinging pains in my ass.
I’d have to file him under mystery for now, which left me with two to unravel—three, counting Harry “I might be trying to low-key kill you” Graves. Why the hell was he hiding behind my skirt (metaphorical, not literal—I don’t wear those)?
“Uh, Sienna?” Cassidy piped up from the back seat.
“Tell me you have a read on who that asshole was,” I said, turning, my hand brushing the soft cloth seat. “And that we can go to his house and just wrecking ball it to the ground right now, so that when he comes home he finds himself in a rough approximation of my old house, burned and—”
“No,” Cassidy said, shaking her head urgently. She spun the laptop around toward me so that I could see the screen, and when I did …
My freaking guts felt like they’d fallen out of my body and dropped through the floorboard and onto the highway, left behind as the wheels spun on through the night and carried us away.
METAHUMAN MASSACRE
Cute lede, I might have thought any other time, but the subhead gave me chills in its dense simplicity, and it took my brain another second to process through the information.
Veronika Acheron had been attacked. Outside her house.
And suddenly it started to feel … so very clear.
I knew Eric Simmons.
I knew Jamie Barton.
I knew Veron
ika.
This guy who flew, who had fire … he was targeting people I knew. And the guy in the Waffle House? He’d come for me, personally.
Somebody was sending a message to me, loud and clear.
This was war.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Kat
Los Angeles, California
This was the part of California weather that Kat liked best. It was winter but hell if it felt like winter. The day had been in the eighties, and now the temps had fallen with the sun to somewhere in the low seventies. Cool enough she could feel the prickle of it on her skin, but not so cold she’d need to flee the hammock in the backyard of her rented house.
She lay there, under the dark sky, the moon the only visible light, a few clouds passing overhead, and took a slow breath. Her mission was complete, successfully. Her team had done well—sure, Veronika helped keep them on course, but it was Kat’s team, really. Reed had made that clear to her. She was pretty content to let Veronika think she was in charge, but Kat knew who the real star was.
She yawned, checked the time on her cell phone. The backyard wasn’t exactly expansive, but it was a pretty good size. Palm trees lined it, swaying in the light wind. A few other types of trees were present, too, giving it the feel of a garden oasis. They’d survived the drought, which was nice. Lots of trees, lots of other greenery hadn’t. It made Kat so super-sad to think about it.
One of her legs hung over the side of the hammock, brushing the grass beneath with her bare feet. It tickled at her toes, swaying to touch her. It was a neat thing, the way greenery bent for her, bowed to her, wanted to touch her. Like she was a queen, and every seed was one of her subjects.
So here she sat, at four in the morning, ruling over her subjects, her kingdom. Tomorrow they were going to do some filming for her TV show, Beyond Human, and … and … and …
Kat let out a lazy sigh. Could life be any better? She did her service with the agency, was making millions with her TV show and associated merch; ratings were way up now that she was back on the job, seemed like people really responded to the metahuman policing procedural format that they’d switched to in the second season.
Yeah. Life was good, and only getting better.
The only downside, she frowned—between the glory of the weather and all the success …
It was such a little thing, but …
She couldn’t see the stars here. The only ones she saw were the ones at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant or the Four Seasons. Alas.
That was life, though, wasn’t it? Tradeoffs. It was all right, though; she had a vacation planned for Anguilla, because she still had to squeeze a little bit of the lux and glamor into her show to provide her fans with that amazing escapist feel, so she’d see the stars again soon enough. She had a private villa booked, and it’d be glory itself, staring up at the stars from the beach, no light pollution to blot them out. She could see Cassiopeia … Orion …
Kat blinked; there was a star, albeit … one she didn’t know. It was glowing, right there, faintly in—
Oh. It was moving. Probably just a plane.
No. It was arcing down, toward her.
A nervous tingle ran through Kat’s scalp. That … wasn’t a good thing, was it?
She started to get up. The faint glow reminded her of a star—maybe even two, it was hard to say, just that distant glow, like a plane coming in for a landing.
That wasn’t a plane, though. It couldn’t be. They didn’t look like …
That nervous tingle became a full blown warning, something telling her to move, to seek cover, and she followed that instinct without hesitation, that gut reaction that carried her to the edge of her yard. There was a Moreton Bay fig tree here, and she knew it well, could commune easily with the roots. She sent it a simple request: “Protect me.”
It swept down with its branches and scooped her up, bringing her into its enveloping canopy, shrouding with leaves and branches. She lay there in its embrace, held in the sway of the wind, and looked out through the smallest of gaps that it provided.
Something floated down into her field of view, into the back yard, seconds later. She blinked.
It was a man on fire.
He hovered inches off the ground, looking at the back of her rental house. “Katrina!” he called, toward the house …
He hadn’t seen her. Kat didn’t dare breathe.
“Katrina!” he called again, at the back of the house, as though speaking to someone within. He waited, long seconds, and then cast a ball of fire at the far end of the structure, landing it on the roof above the garage. It blazed wildly, spreading within seconds to cover the entire thing.
Kat did not dare move, nor speak. She only watched as the roof blazed bright, and the man called, “Katrina!” louder and with increasing fury, adding the occasional, “Come out!” every now and again.
The house burned, sirens wailed. The roof started to collapse, and Kat remained in her hide-out. The heat of the flames wilted the leaves around her, their intensity growing by the minute.
Finally, the man could stand it no longer. He sank to the ground, just for a moment, and turned away from the blaze.
Backlit by the flames, she stared at him. He was but a silhouette against the glowing ochre; frightening, he loomed, a figure in the dark with nothing but malice for her.
Still, she said nothing. Breathed only the shallowest of breaths, wrapped tightly in the embrace of the tree.
She watched him as he turned, his profile exposed. There was no satisfaction there, as he watched the fire blaze. “You are weak,” he said, almost so low she couldn’t hear it, and then floated off the ground.
With one hand, he reached out to the swimming pool at the back of the house. A motion was all it took; with one hand he snuffed the flames and with the other he commanded the pool water to drown the ashes of the burning house. The hiss of heat exchange overrode the sound of sirens growing closer and closer.
His task done, the man flew into the sky, disappearing out of her view within seconds. She waited a minute, then two.
The fire trucks arrived. She could hear the fireman on the lawn, doing … whatever it was they would do when they arrived at a house already burned and put out.
Another minute passed, and she could wait no longer. She bade the fig tree to release her, and then she was on the ground, reaching for her cell phone, dialing the number by memory.
What time was it on the east coast?
It didn’t matter. He answered, a moment later.
“Reed,” Kat said, not waiting for an exchange of pleasantries, and ignoring the thick sound of cottony sleep in his voice, “your guy—the one from the bridge—he just showed up at my rental house and burned it to the ground after trying to call me out. Like, Old West style.”
The voice at the other end of the line snapped to instant wakefulness. “What?”
“Yeah,” she said, staring at the pillar of black smoke, the glow of the blaze now gone from the LA skyline. “Reed … I think we’ve got a problem …”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sienna
Iwas a buzz of nervous speculation after seeing the news about Veronika. It wasn’t helped by the news that came blazing across the wire minutes later:
Kat Forrest rental house burned; fate of starlet remains unknown.
That was the sort of headline that added a further element of sickness to my stomach. I’d promised her damned brother I’d look after her, after all, and it wasn’t until the update came in a few minutes later pronouncing her completely fine—Kat was smart enough to hide from this attacker—that I let myself breathe again.
But at this point … it was pretty damned impossible to take this particular sign for anything other than what it seemed to be.
Someone was trying to kill my people.
“Sienna …” Eilish said, breaking a lovely silence in which I was cursing myself, cursing that I was ever born, and cursing lots of other things, too.
“What?” I asked
, trying not to let too much of my anxiety loose on her. She hadn’t asked for it, and odds were good that, as another of my associates, she was now under threat.
“I was going to say, ‘I hope you’re not blaming yourself,’ but I think we all know that’d be wishing for a unicorn,” Eilish said, leaning forward a little tentatively. “Guilt isn’t going to make you feel any better.”
“Oh, who cares if I feel better?” I asked.
“Not I,” Cassidy said, still browsing the web. When I gave her a frown, she shrugged. “What? I just want you to kill this guy. Whether you feel great or terrible in the process is immaterial to me. Unless feeling good helps you kill him more efficiently, in which case … would you like me to get you some sort of mood elevator from a local pharmacy?”
“I wouldn’t mind one,” Harry said. “Things are getting a little down around here.”
“All I want is some scotch,” I said, watching another sign for Nashville pass me by. “Is that too much to ask?”
“At this hour on a Sunday in Nashville? Yeah, probably,” Harry said.
“Oh, I always wanted to see Music City,” Eilish said, bouncing a little in her seat.
“We’re working, we’re not here to do touristy shit,” I said, gloom and doom settling over me. “I need a drink, you know, to keep functioning, that’s all. Maybe in Kentucky—” I soured and stopped talking when I caught Harry subtly shaking his head. “Well, shit.”
“Pretty sure this is the actual definition of alcoholism,” Eilish said, but she didn’t sound too judgmental about it.
“While you’re doing definitions, you should look up ‘nosey,’” I said.
“As in, sticking in your nose in the business of others?” she asked.
“As in, ‘You’re about to get popped in the,’” I said.
“Oh.” She sat back, conveniently out of my reach. “Irritability is another sign of alcoholism.”
“Leave the diagnoses to the properly trained clinicians, will you?” I sat facing forward, watching the green hills roll up and down in front of me. So these were the hills of Tennessee? Not bad. Even I could see that in my somewhat aggravated state. That pissiness thing, though, it was like an itch under my skin I just couldn’t wait to scratch. “I miss flying,” I said, trying to make it sound innocuous so someone—Eilish—wouldn’t see the rake I’d set up until she stepped on it.
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