Driven

by Robert J. Crane

  Staring at the distortion where Adoncia had hit with her blast, I saw an indentation on their side where she’d carved about halfway through the gel. The power of her beam had diffused off through the whole wall, and she’d presumably gone through her energy reserves, which was why she was now chatting and buying time; she needed to recharge before she punched through a massive hole that she could shove her face into and then pick Angel and I off with a look.

  Now that I was sitting up, though, I stared through that weakness in the wall, lining things up. Miguel was directly opposite me, looking through it at me, suspiciously. I smiled and waved jauntily, and watched his eyebrow twitch, because, hell, I was trying to infuriate him. Well done, Sienna. When my wave was done, I let my hand come back to rest just to the side of my lap, on the arm of the chair.

  About six inches from the gun I was carrying inside my waistband just over my right kidney.

  It was the Walther PPK that Manannán Mac Lir had given me back in Scotland, the weapon I’d used to turn Rose’s head into a big hollowed-out pumpkin. I’d loaded it with some fine American hollow points, and Harry had been kind enough to pack it in my bag, unasked, probably seeing this moment in my future.

  Would a single .380 bullet be able to punch through the recessed gel and through? I doubted it.

  Which is why when I drew and fired, I held my hand precisely, and executed a double tap.

  With metahuman muscle control and years of practice, I could hold on target in the face of recoil better than anyone on the planet save for perhaps a Reflex-type such as Angel. The gunshots rang out, startling everybody in the room as they echoed like explosions in the close-quartered space. Even Adoncia and Miguel jumped, the noise muffled through the gel.

  I couldn’t see what happened, exactly, but the second it was over, the results spoke for themselves.

  There was a single .380 bullet lodged in the gel pack, lead almost comically distorted. It looked like a flattened bean from where it had punched into something hard and given it a good shove …

  The thing it had hit was the bullet I’d fired first. That one had also gotten lodged in the gel. My second bullet came along and gave it a little shove, sending it flying forward …

  Right into Miguel’s face.

  He only stayed upright for a few seconds, the bullet hole already gushing red out of his cheek just below his eye. It had made a nice exit out the back of his head, a spray of scarlet all over the ceiling, some pink mist now settling to the carpeting.

  Man. If Cassidy came back, she’d surely regret giving me free rein in her new house. Brains were probably a real bitch to get out of carpet.

  I didn’t care. If I could have added Adoncia’s to the mess right then, I would have, but she howled in fury as she saw Miguel go down and blasted at the hole.

  A trickle of red vaporized the bullet and burst through, the nice little gel dam dissolving as she muscled in,

  “Move!” I shouted, grabbing Angel and hauling ass for the exit Cassidy had taken.

  Angel shrugged out of my grasp as we passed a support pillar, and she let a punch fly that crashed through the concrete. A resounding gonging noise rang out just over the whine of Adoncia’s eye beams searing through the last of the gel. I picked up on what Angel was doing and turned to my left, where another pillar waited. I slammed a kick into it, taking a hint from her own attack that there was probably a heavy steel beam buried inside the drywall.

  I was rewarded with a resonant gonging of my own as my kick dislodged the heavy steel bolts holding the pillar in place. It tore out the other side of the drywall from the sheer momentum of my hit, and I grimaced as I set my foot back down. “Let’s motor,” I said, catching Angel giving a cringe of her own; her hand was bleeding, but the pillar she’d hit also had a steel support blasted out the other side of it.

  We made it into Cassidy’s exit just as the gel wall failed behind us. Unfortunately, I’d failed to grab the remote on the way out, being a little more concerned about holding onto my gun and getting Angel moving, otherwise I’d have dropped the second barrier between us.

  “Putas!” Adoncia screamed at us, and I could almost feel the power of a beam lancing through space toward us. Angel shoved me before I could do the same to her, and we both hit the ground just inside Cassidy’s exit tunnel. The beam plowed into the lintels on either side of the tunnel, bringing down the wall …

  And the entire ceiling on that side of the basement.

  Oops.

  “Guess Adoncia missed the structural engineering 101 coursework in her cartel kingpin classes,” I said, dust flooding over me from the collapse. There was a ton of soil and drywall behind us, and it looked like part of the yard had collapsed in on the tunnel. Which made sense, since we were now probably traversing toward another house. The destroyed one, if I had to guess.

  “I doubt that’s part of the curriculum,” Angel said, her hair powder white. “And wouldn’t she be a queenpin?”

  “That’s a good question,” I said. “Let’s debate it when we’re the hell out of here, preferably before she gets back to the street—and our car.”

  “Yeah,” Angel said, gripping my arm and dragging me to my feet. She broke into a sprint down the tunnel, and it was all I could do to keep up with her.

  We burst out into the ruin of the other house, the one Reed had reduced to its component pieces when he’d coerced Cassidy into helping extract me from my Scotland troubles. There was a nice little space to crawl out, though, which I presumed was the path Cassidy had taken. Angel wordlessly squeezed through, showing me the path, and as she popped out onto the front lawn, I followed a couple seconds behind.

  The night had a brisk feeling to it, summer in Minnesota not exactly well-known for its ridiculous heat index. Whatever warmth had been present earlier in the day had given way to this. I wasn’t exactly shivering when my feet brushed the long blades of grass on the lawn, but I did kinda wish I’d brought a sweatshirt. “Home sweet home,” I muttered as I got to my feet.

  “You Minnesotans are crazy,” Angel said, already grabbing me by the arm again and zooming us toward the car at a dead sprint. My feet left the ground and didn’t touch down again until we hit the street, such was the strength of her pull. I just sort of flapped behind her like a flag in the breeze.

  “We look pretty sane this time of year, when you Texans are dealing with 115 degrees in the shade,” I fired back as she let me go and my feet touched street. I started toward the passenger door of our car. “And we’re hanging out at a cabin by the lake, sipping a Summer Shandy and—”

  Adoncia’s eye beams hit the side of our stolen Mazda like a garbage truck t-boning a VW Beetle. The car split neatly in half, both sides collapsing without the other to hold them up, and I managed to dodge out of the way at the last second only because I saw the flash of orange light coming from the house.

  Catching lawn—again—I rolled back to my feet and saw Adoncia striding toward me, leaving Cassidy’s front door wide open as she stepped out into the night. All her sweetness was gone, and her eyes were aglow—again—and focused directly on me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Angel

  Four Years Ago

  Abuzzing awoke Angel, the sound of her alarm clock infringing on the pleasant, blissful sleep that it’d taken her half the damned night to find. It was like a gnat around her ears, just outside the peripheral bubble of her body, and she reached out to swat at it.

  Something shattered, and Angel’s eyes popped open in surprise. She was tangled in sweaty, twisted sheets, lying on her side, and in front of her, on the nightstand …

  Her alarm clock was in tiny fragments, pieces of plastic scattered on the battered oakwood surface and onto the carpet below.

  The buzzing came again, longer, louder, and she sat upright. It hadn’t been the alarm …

  The door.

  Angel sprang out of bed and almost vaulted to her feet. It was a surprisingly energetic maneuver for someone who’d been utterly d
rowsy a second earlier, a drowsiness which seemed to persist. Nonetheless, she’d managed it, bare feet on the ragged carpet in her aging one-bedroom apartment.

  The doorbell buzzed again, an irritating sound that she’d never liked. Who could it even be? The only person who ever seemed to stop by was Miranda, after all. No solicitors could make it past the building’s locked front door, though it wouldn’t take much, probably. Just buzz apartment 4F and they’d let almost anyone in, as she’d figured out when she left her keys inside one time.

  “Yes, who is it?” she asked as she reached the little speaker next to the door, pressing the button.

  No sound came out. No answer.

  “Hello?” Angel waited a few seconds. Still nothing.

  She stared at the speaker, and after five seconds when nothing came out she said, “For this you wake me up?” Casting a long look back into the bedroom, she saw the fragments of the alarm clock all over the floor and night stand and sighed. “For this I lose an alarm clock?” Shaking her head, she started toward the hall closet where she kept the broom and dustpan. How the hell had she shattered the clock? It must have been a defect in the manufacturing because there was no way, half-asleep, she could have smashed a solid plastic thing like that.

  Passing the kitchen, her eye caught the butcher block—and the clock on the oven next to it. Swearing silently, she realized she was going to have to hurry if she wanted some breakfast. On the other hand, maybe making something at the restaurant would be a better option. The knives she had here weren’t her good ones; the Wüsthof knife she loved so much was there now, and she’d bought a cheap set from Walmart as a replacement. There was no replacing a Wüsthof with a simple paring or butcher knife. Still, with money being tight from starting the restaurant, she had to make do.

  The alarm clock swept up easily into the dustpan, and she unplugged the remains from the night stand and tossed it in as well. Dropping the whole mess into the kitchen trash can, she sighed again as she looked at the butcher block next to the stove, and a little pang of worry struck her—almost nine. Yes, she was going to have to eat breakfast on the run, at the restaurant or not at all. She lifted her shirt and gave herself a sniff. The strong odors of yesterday’s cooking permeated her shirt, but she could maybe go one more day before being compelled to wash up. It wasn’t her preference, but she was in a rush, and—well, her hair didn’t smell too onion-y, did it?

  And who cared, anyway? It wasn’t as though anyone was likely to get close enough to tell. She’d re-up the deodorant and put up her hair, and that’d save twenty minutes and almost put her back on schedule. Good enough, she’d decided, starting back toward the bathroom to hit that deodorant stick before she dressed, when the actual doorbell rang. Not the buzzer that signaled someone trying to gain entry to the building, but the one right outside her door, the familiar ding-dong even more annoying than the broken alarm clock given the circumstances

  “What now?” Angel asked herself, keeping herself from swearing at the sky, or asking God, “Why me?” She tried not to do either of those things, though her Catholic upbringing had lapsed.

  It was probably just Janelle Radliffe from next door, wanting to borrow eggs again. That was Janelle, always assuming that just because Angel had a restaurant, her personal kitchen must be fully stocked. It wasn’t. It was almost as if she put her whole heart into cooking at the restaurant and had none left for when she got home.

  And no eggs. Because all her money went into supplying the restaurant, too. Some day, though …

  Angel had almost made it to the front door when someone kicked it down, the wood splintering under a heavy boot.

  Angel screamed.

  Two men came through the broken door seconds later, both wearing ski masks and black clothing. Their eyes alighted on her and they started toward her—

  And she froze.

  The first was only inches away now, reaching out for her, teeth bared through the hole in his black ski mask, hands outstretched. He landed one on her arm. She felt powerless to twist away, and suddenly she’d gone mute. His grip was clawlike upon her arm, and the scream that wanted to break from her lips was struck there, swallowed inside her as though she’d taken a gulp of noxious, poisonous air that clawed to get out.

  “She’s just as pathetic as he said,” the first man said, dragging at her, trying to pull her forward. “Didn’t even run—”

  Angel couldn’t scream, and his fist was around her arm now, trying to tear at her, yanking her forward. She was frozen, though, couldn’t react, couldn’t move, couldn’t—

  She just stopped, planted herself, and somehow—

  Tore her arm free from the man’s grip.

  “What the—?” the first man asked, brow furrowing beneath the mask. She could see him concentrate, anger lancing over his partially hidden features. “Little bitch—”

  He threw a punch at her—

  It was … so strange. Adrenaline spiked in her veins, her heartbeat raging in Angel’s ears. But then suddenly it seemed to slow… and his fist seemed to slow… and her breathing slowed …

  It was like everything was unfolding at half speed.

  Her muscles were like coiled wire, ropes pulled to maximum tautness. But as she saw the punch coming—so slowly—it wasn’t like other crises she’d encountered. She’d always hit a wall during stressful situations and simply stopped.

  But now, it was as though everything around her were slowing down, giving her a chance to breathe, giving her mind a chance to free itself from the prison of overthinking—

  There was a fist coming toward her, a hard punch from an angry man in a black mask.

  And Angel just … stepped to the side, and watched it sail slowly by.

  She could barely believe what she was seeing; time snapped into fast motion again as the first of the thugs breezed by her with his overthrown punch. Angel let out a little squeal of shock. She’d never had a fist thrown at her before, and seeing it go lurching by, slow-motion …

  This morning, this whole morning, from the alarm clock to the men busting in …

  It was more than she could properly handle.

  The second man came at her now, swinging his fist, just as slowly as the first. He was close, too close for her comfort, pushing her back toward a wall as he threw a fist right at her face. She didn’t think; she reacted. Grabbing his arm she guided it just slightly away from landing on her nose.

  Instead he struck the wall behind her and smashed through, grunting his surprise at the impact against the stud in the wall. Bones crunched sickeningly, reminding Angel of the sound a chicken’s bones made when you had to break through them with a knife while taking the bird apart.

  “Ahhh!” the man screamed, his arm buried in the wall up to his wrist. Angel started to back away, but he reached out for her, swiping with his remaining hand.

  She was nearly backed into a corner, and, surprised, she lashed out and slapped his hand away. His wrist cracked—that same snapping, chicken-bone sound, and he screamed, falling to his knee, hand still partially buried in the wall. It slid out as he fell, blood dripping off it.

  “You little—” the other man said, from halfway across the room. She looked up at him, surprised at the sheer violence and anger in his voice. It was not something Angel was used to dealing with. In all her life, she hadn’t heard that kind of viciousness, that hatred.

  He’d pulled a gun and was lifting it up to aim at her, in slow motion again. Angel dove as he snapped off a shot. Instinctively she went for the only cover she saw, head between her hands, diving like she was playing baseball. She slid past the fallen man with the bloody hand just as the first shot rang out.

  BOOM.

  The bloody man jerked just above her, his body spasming as the bullet hit him. Angel screamed. The bloody man jerked again, another shot ringing out as Angel huddled, trying to bury herself in the carpet.

  Someone was shooting at her.

  Someone was trying to kill her.

 
“You little bitch, you just killed Blake!” The shout rang out as the bloody man thumped against the wall, the man with the gun screaming at her.

  How had she killed Blake, she had a spare moment to wonder. He’d been the one firing a gun—at her—and hit his friend in the process.

  Angel had her hands covering her head, quivering, looking between them at the man with the gun. He was bearing down on her, his mask slid up to reveal a face with all the blood drained out of it, pale as milk, his blue eyes wide. The shock was plain, even in Angel’s addled state. He could barely believe what he’d done.

  The surprise faded fast. Rage replaced it. The man swung the gun up on a line with her face.

  There was no dodging this bullet. Blake’s black-clad body was already slumped over her midsection, blocking her legs. There was nothing between her and the man with the gun save for a few feet of air, and Angel’s hands were anchored onto the carpet. Nothing to throw, nowhere to hide.

  Angel squeezed her eyes shut, watching the man’s finger tighten on the trigger. It’d be over quickly now—

  The shot rang out, followed by another and another, and Angel jerked, anticipating the pain. It had surely already come, he’d been so close, after all, he couldn’t possibly have missed at this distance. The shot had just passed through, maybe. Adrenaline was pumping madly, and she was frozen in place.

  Four shots. Five shots.

  Angel didn’t feel a thing.

  She opened one eye, slowly.

  The man with the gun thumped to his knees, arm limp.

  Janelle Radliffe, Angel’s egg-borrowing neighbor, stood behind him, a pistol in her hands, her own face as pale and waxy as the man with the gun slumped over, blood rushing out onto Angel’s carpet. “I heard screaming,” Janelle said simply. “I called the cops. And then I heard shots, so …” She lifted her pistol, as if to shrug, looking at the lump of silvery metal in her hand.