Driven

by Robert J. Crane

  Angel just nodded at her, unable to think of anything else to say. Over the ringing in her ears from the gun blasts, she could hear—just faintly—sirens, sweetly, in the distance.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sienna

  Now

  “Move!” Angel shouted and dragged me, hard, off the lawn, back behind the wreckage of the Mazda as she went in the opposite direction. It was a good move; I went sprawling onto the pavement and rolled out of it, faster than I could have sprung for it myself, and Angel went in the opposite direction into a roll of her own. Girl had moves. And we both survived Adoncia’s next attack.

  The Mazda, unfortunately …

  The eye beams blazed through, shredding the engine compartment of our already-destroyed getaway car. I ran along the side and came out the back next to the trunk, punching into the lock as I went past, but not stopping to retrieve my bag yet. There was a dangerous lunatic with laser eyes attempting to kill me and picking up my luggage didn’t seem like the best use of my time just now.

  As I came around the car, the trunk springing open, Adoncia swung around, ripping the top off the already sagging Mazda, turning it into a convertible without the ability to actually convert.

  I drew my Walther and fired, sending another couple of .380 rounds at her face and body.

  The eyebeams caught the damned things mid-flight, and I went sideways yet again, back behind the remnants of the Mazda, seeking cover desperately. My bullets were presumably dissolved before they hit her, but I didn’t keep my head up to check. Laser blasts followed me, telling me that the bullets had not hit their target. Bummer.

  When the eye beams hit the flaming car wreckage, the tires squealed and shoved it into me, giving me a nice little bump for my trouble. Better than getting hit by them dead on, though. They weren’t heat based; there was some serious force behind them, and I had a feeling based on what I’d seen of her and others with similar powers that if I got hit, I could potentially lose a limb, or get my rib cage crushed and dissolved, my head exploded—in short, they seemed like a very bad deal.

  The car was sliding toward me, bumping me over again, the first strains of light popping out from where her blazing beams were cutting through the top of the car. I rolled sideways, toward the front of the vehicle, for a little less wrecked coverage, and just as I did, her laser blast bisected the damned car in half horizontally, beams of illumination and force springing their way through the cracks between door and frame and body.

  The Mazda burst again, sideways this time, as I rolled to avoid the blast. I looked to my left; Angel, wisely, was cowering in the shadow of Adoncia’s car. There wasn’t a lot for her to do there, especially if she didn’t want to draw fire to our only remaining escape vehicle.

  All this while, I was humming The Flamingos, “I Only Have Eyes for You,” under my breath for some reason. Totally have no clue why.

  I pointed at Adoncia’s car, and Angel nodded, slipping the long bar out of her coat and going to work on jimmying the lock. The Mazda was shredded about six different ways by now, squealing as it collapsed in on itself.

  It took Angel a second, and then she had it. I cowered in the shadow of the Mazda’s front wheel well, still humming, waiting for a break in the laser beams to strike back.

  It didn’t seem to be coming.

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” I stopped humming long enough to mutter under my breath as I hunkered down. The Mazda’s engine was there next to me, mostly intact, but the entire front of the car had taken some pretty brutal damage. Even a really skilled mechanic would struggle to get this puppy working again. And a body shop with a lot of free time. Yeah, it was probably more of a total loss, what with half the engine missing—

  Hm.

  If half the engine was missing … and the car was cut in half already …

  I was strong. Strong enough to lift a full-sized car if I had to, but …

  Subtract the back end and a goodly portion of the engine, and …

  Why by golly, what we had here was what I would call an easy lift, folks.

  Testing my assumption, I thrust my hands up under the frame and got a secure grip beneath the wheel well. I wasn’t in the safest lifting position, what with the majority of the mass I was lifting extending some several feet in front of me, but hell, I was 5’ 4” and had super strength. I was forever lifting big things awkwardly.

  Gritting my teeth, I lifted the wreckage of the Mazda, which came up easily, perfectly bifurcated up the middle. Adoncia’s eye beams adjusted to follow me, and some swinging piece of engine hanging out of the vehicle caught part of her blast and dinged me in the shins.

  I screamed in outrage and a little pain and hurled the entire remainder of the front end at her.

  The eye beams caught it midair, warring with the weight and the momentum I’d put behind it. The entire thing screamed, metal against energy, and I didn’t wait around in one place to see how it ended.

  I sprinted for the trunk and grabbed my bag out, slinging it over my shoulder as the ruins of the Mazda collapsed on the pavement. I watched the front of the car lose its war with the eye beams and get batted down, hitting the ground some ten feet or so in front of Adoncia. She paused, her eye beams off for a moment, shoulders slumped, clearly a lot of juice wrung out in the process of saving herself from a good squishing.

  And since she’d plainly had so much fun with half the car, I couldn’t bring myself not to chuck another section at her. So I did, lifting the back end and hurling it at her. Without any part of the engine it was a much lighter lift, and it flew, ever so gracefully, at her face.

  I couldn’t see her reaction, but I heard her scream, followed by the high-pitched whine of the laser eyes trying to keep the car from wrecking her skull. If I’d had a clear shot at that point, I’d have put my remaining .380 rounds in her skull. Unfortunately—or fortunately, really—there was a half a car in the air between us.

  Tires squealed next to me as Angel brought Adoncia’s black Miata alongside me in reverse and flung the door open. I didn’t ponder her invitation for more than a quarter second before jumping in, slamming the door behind me, squeezed into the passenger seat with my long duffel beside me. I unzipped it, pulling out one of Harry’s more useful, more “Sienna” gifts—

  An AR-15 with a shit ton of fully loaded mags. Easily the sweetest gift he’d gotten me during our entire romance. Diamonds might be most girls’ best friends, but for me it was brass and lead all the way, baby. What do you get for the succubus who’d lost her ancillary powers?

  The great equalizer, that’s what.

  I thrust the AR-15 out the window and started laying down covering fire as Angel drove us, backward, down the street. I was peppering the falling remains of the Mazda’s back end, which was being held up, awkwardly, by Adoncia, to keep it from landing on her. I had to be careful of my backstop so one of my bullets didn’t go screaming past and into some poor soul’s house and skull, which meant I was firing very slowly and carefully.

  Too slowly, too carefully. We were out of sight a second or two later, only a few rounds expended, and no shot on Adoncia’s head, unfortunately. Angel jerked her hand around on the steering wheel, and it went from being at the nine o’clock position to being at the three o’clock in about a second, and we spun in a perfect one-eighty to match it. Then she floored it and off we went, down the residential streets and the hell out of Richfield.

  “Well, that went swimmingly, I think,” I said, stuffing the AR-15 back in the bag after making sure I’d put the safety back on.

  Angel looked at me sideways, with plenty o’ daggers. “These are the days I wish I’d never left the kitchen.”

  “Ah, yes, the eternal prison of the patriarchy,” I breezed. “And you put on shoes, too. Look at you, breaker of chains.”

  “No, I meant I was a chef,” Angel snapped. “Before all this started.” She kept her eyes front and skidded us down another side road. “Before …” What she meant by that trail-off was
anyone’s guess, and I didn’t ask.

  “I’m hungry,” I said. “Since you mention cooking.”

  “Well, I don’t have a kitchen or any food or I’d fix you something.” She was white-knuckling the steering wheel.

  “So …” I said, looking in the rearview for laser beams that weren’t appearing, thankfully, “… about Miranda?”

  Angel just sat there. “What about her?”

  I took a little breath. “You said that her condo was a dry hole, but …” I looked at her sideways. “… How extensively did you check out her office?”

  Angel closed her eyes. “I didn’t.”

  I checked my watch. “Well, it’s the middle of the night. Likelihood is that the office is empty, so …” I shrugged. “We should check it. Before one of Adoncia’s goons does. If they haven’t already.”

  Angel nodded slowly. “Seems like that’s our only lead at this point. Maybe if Miranda had some other safe houses here in the Cities, she might have left us some trail there. After all, it’s generally more secure than her condo, what with metas wandering through on a regular basis.”

  “Exactly,” I said, and she took us down another road. The freeway was ahead—MN-62, I thought. That’d give us a straight shot to Eden Prairie, and the new office. I cradled my big duffel, sharing the seat with me a little tightly. “Plus … when you checked out her condo you ran across a whole slew of mercenaries with guns, right?”

  “Yeah.” Angel nodded tightly, then gave me a wary look. “Why?”

  She must not have liked my tone, which probably bordered on … excitement. “Oh, I dunno,” I breezed, cuddling with my bag and feeling the rough touch of the AR-15 within, ready to deploy and a little warm through the fabric from firing. “It’s just been so long since I’ve dropped any mercs …”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  We pulled up to the office long after midnight, and I had to admit …

  … Man, this was a hell of a step down for Reed & Co.

  The building looked like a holdover from the 1940’s that had never been refurbished, and maybe even been imported brick by brick from Britain in the wake of World War II, like the original London Bridge. The place looked like it even came complete with possible bomb damage for the sake of authenticity. It was a dull beige, colored yellow by the single, flickering parking lot light.

  There were a few isolated cars out here, and Angel circled once, just to be sure there weren’t a crap ton of mercs hiding in a panel van or something.

  There were no signs of imminent destruction after our first orbit, so she parked up front and we got out, me with shoulder bag slung over, zipper down, hand on the AR and ready to deploy it. I already had the safety off, but I was keeping my finger off the trigger. I could have it out and firing in less than a second, and that seemed like it’d have to do for response time, at least until we got inside, because anyone seeing a lady walking around with a big black rifle deployed in a suburban shithole office park in Minnesota was bound to get a little attention of the “911, What’s your emergency?” variety. Not like Eden Prairie hadn’t suffered enough Sienna Nealon-related calamity to have cause for excessive caution.

  “This place is a real dump,” I said, following Angel up to the glass doors at the front entry. The paint was flaking, the plaster was missing in quite a few places, and the rebar that held the facade on was peeking through next to the door.

  “Yeah, Reed thinks that the landlord only leased to us because he’s hoping it’ll get destroyed in a meta battle,” Angel said, anxiously fidgeting with the door, key in her hand. It clicked, and she threw it open, holding it for me as she swept a gaze around the parking lot.

  “Doesn’t he realize that meta battles aren’t covered by insurance?” I asked, doing a little sweep of my own and then popping inside. Within was a very small lobby area, leading down a hallway or up a staircase. Those were the only two directional choices. No elevator.

  “I assume not, based on Reed’s theory,” Angel said, “though I heard the Minnesota legislature wrote a bill trying to get insurance companies to drop the ‘Acts of Gods’ proviso.”

  “Probably because Minnesota’s been ground zero for meta ass-whooping activity,” I said, declining to mention whose fault that was. Mine. Squarely. “I had a feeling that omission’s days were numbered.”

  “Maybe the landlord’s running out the clock, counting on that,” Angel said with a shrug, and we started up the stairs. She led the way, but I was only a step behind, tempted to deploy the AR. If anyone ran across me this close, they were likely to recognize me just due to the setting. I tended to find that the closer I was to the sort of places you might expect to see Sienna Nealon—like inside her brother’s metahuman detective agency—the more likely people were to see through my disguise.

  Lying drunk on a beach in Florida? That’s totally not Sienna Nealon with the scotch in her hand and the hair that looks almost exactly like hers.

  The girl with the facial tattoos and the funky colored hair holding the scary black gun outside the metahuman bounty hunting group office? OMG, THAT’S SIENNA NEALON! Call the cops!

  I kept the AR at low rest once it was out, safety off, finger just off the trigger as Angel led me down the hall. The office complex was quiet, overall, but I couldn’t hear very well over the ticking of the ancient air conditioner. It overrode everything; the basic city noise outside, even the hum of electricity running through the building.

  My feet squished on wet carpet, and I looked down, then up at Angel. “That’s normal,” she said, barely concealing her disgust.

  “Normal for the building, or did Scott have a bad bladder day?” I asked.

  “That’s probably not Scott, no.”

  “Gross,” I said. Oh, how the mighty had fallen. Not that we’d ever had a beautiful glass downtown office or marble entryways or anything, but this was pretty skeezy. And that was before I passed the insurance agency with the combo mortgage brokerage next door, so you could get all your financial screwings in one convenient stop.

  “Here,” Angel said, stopping before a heavy, unmarked door. All it had in the way of signage was a brass sign outside on the wall that read “Suite 212”; the panel below was blank. Angel tried the handle first, and, finding it unlocked, stiffened.

  “Uh oh,” I said, and nodded at it, stepping up. “You open, I breach and clear.”

  “Okay …” Angel said, looking a little skeptical.

  I pulled the Walther, which now had a fresh mag. “You follow behind with this?”

  She took the gun but did not look super pleased about it. “Okay.” At least she was more definite this time.

  Positioning herself to the side of the door, she got in a stance like she was readying for a raid. My heartbeat picked up; I’d never really loved this kind of thing, but it did tend to give you a bit of a rush.

  “On three,” I whispered, meta-low.

  She nodded, and then pulled the handle down, yanking the door open.

  I flung myself in through the open door, looking down the AR’s barrel instead of wasting time with the sight. At this range, all I needed to do was fire and someone was catching a round in the chest.

  And as I burst in … there was definitely someone waiting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Holy shit!” someone screamed as I came in, AR-15 clutched tightly in hand. I tracked the moving figure as he dodged sideways, leaping behind the front desk. I was expecting full-black tactical gear, of the like that Angel had described to me from her experience at Miranda’s condo, with the mercenaries.

  I saw black, all right.

  The black of a suit … covering the upper body of Scott Byerly … I’d seen him without the suit on enough times to know his frame anywhere.

  “Oops,” I said, snapping the safety on and dropping the weapon to my side as he landed heavily behind the front desk, which was abandoned. “Sorry, Scott.”

  He popped up a second later, the air wavering in front of his hands li
ke a shield of water was preparing to form before him. He had an intense look on his face, a scowl, but when he saw me …

  Well, his eyes just about popped out of his head.

  “Sienna?” He stood, the traces of the water shield dissolved, and he was left with a boggled look, like he’d run across something he could in no way explain. “Is … it really you?” He leaned forward, as though a few inches would somehow enable him to see me more clearly.

  “Yeah,” I said, putting my palms up, far from the AR slung at my side. “Or … at least some recent iteration of me.”

  “You look …” His voice trailed off and he just stared at me, blushing after a few seconds, the dusky color of his skin a contrast to his sandy blond hair. “Uhmm … tattooed.”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling my face, like there was some tactile evidence of what I’d done to hide my appearance. “How are those holding up, by the way?” I looked back at Angel.

  “Fading,” she said, coming inside and shutting the door. “It’s almost like you’ve been exerting yourself.”

  I sighed. “I’ve got some more pre-mades in the bag. Maybe I can wash this off and—”

  “What the hell is going on out here?” someone asked, popping around the corner. “Is that who I think it is?”

  I saw pale skin, a tall blur of motion, and Guy Friday hit me in a hug, lifting me off my feet. “It’s my favorite niece!” he bellowed, swinging me around in a circle.

  “I’m your only niece!” I said, and he brought me back to the earth before my powers could start working. He had on his mask and was wearing a black muscle shirt that revealed his shoulders, which were only about half to a quarter as big as I knew they could get. “Hey, Friday,” I said as he set me down, giving me a last squeeze before we parted.

  “Wow,” someone said from behind him, and I looked past his bulk just in time for Augustus Coleman to sweep in and catch me in another pulled-from-my-feet hug. All these tall guys I palled around with. I mean, I could have gotten free if I wanted to, but … c’mon. These were my guys. “It really is you,” Augustus said, settling me back down, warm sincerity in his brown eyes.