“Kittens are carbon emitters,” I said. “So I think it'd be me trying to save the kitten and you trying to knock it off.”
Scout's face darkened a hair. “I'm going to save this world from the worst threat it faces – humanity. Because humanity is a threat to animals, too.”
“Wow,” Reed muttered, “she really is going full Thanos and just doesn't even care.”
“Well, she's addicted to her idea of Utopia and thinks she's only a few more broken eggs away from achieving it,” I said. “But this one's for all the eggs.”
Scout made a face that I knew well – one of her souls was loudly protesting something that had been said.
“Was that Punk Rock Chick bellowing in your head?” I asked.
Scout shook it off, making an annoyed face. “She wants you to know she's vegan and would never hold to eating eggs.” Her lips were twisted as though she wanted to say more, and then she did. “But you kinda did at Denny's,” Scout muttered under her breath, plainly not to us. Oh, I remembered those days.
“Tell her to make sure to mention the vegan thing after her Crossfit habit,” I said, “but before talking about how she's never seen a single episode of Game of Thrones. There's a hierarchy on those performative boasts.”
Scout made a face. “Wait – how did you know Francine was into Crossfit and didn't watch Game of Thrones?”
“Oh, come on,” Reed muttered, almost burying his face in his hands. “This is too easy.”
“Won't be for long,” Lethe said. She was walking off to the side, splitting our formation. I tried to keep an eye on her, to see where she was headed. Olivia broke in the opposite direction, heading off to my right.
Scout took notice of the movement. “So do I have to kill all of you? Or are some of you willing to listen to reason?”
I looked around, stopping at Jamal. “What about you, young man? Are you willing to listen to reason?”
Jamal shrugged, pushing past me, then Reed, as he stared up at Scout. “Look, lady...I'm with you on needing to do something. Where you lose me is wiping out the city of Paris.”
“She loses you at genocide?” Augustus asked. “Good to know your line.”
Jamal kept striding forward. “Something needs to be done. But wiping people out like they're bugs? That's going too far.”
“Nothing else will work,” Scout said, standing up. “Haven't you been paying attention? Emergencies happen – brushfires, floods, people are literally fleeing for their lives – you know what?” She shook her head. “This is pointless. You don't care.”
“Oh, I care,” Jamal said. “I live here, after all. But I'd like to continue to, and I assume most other humans do as well. This makes it my problem. It's your solution that seems crazy-ass to me.”
“Tower is clear.” Greg Vansen's magnified voice echoed out, tinny, from wherever the hell he was. In my ear, for all I knew. The important thing was that he'd scouted the Eiffel Tower and it was empty.
“Jamal,” I said, in case he hadn't heard it, “quit arguing and do your thing.”
Scout's gaze snapped down to Jamal. With a glint in his eye that was visible even through the sudden reflected lightning at his hand, he raised it up–
Electricity crackled through the Eiffel Tower like it had been hit by a bolt of lightning. It coursed and arced, bright white and glowing over the darkened city. The bolts sparked and jumped to Scout and she bucked and jumped, falling off the tower–
And stopping in midair. Hanging there, smoke pouring off of her.
Her own eyes sparking electricity.
“Oh, man,” Reed said. “Now she's mad.”
Scout hung there, glaring down at us with lightning playing across her eyes. When she found her voice it was low, harsh, a whisper of anger in the storm of wind that was now blowing around us.
“No mercy, now,” she said in a whisper through the storm, “no mercy for...any of you.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-NINE
My team didn't wait for Scout to get ripping on this fight. We hit her hard right out of the gate, determined to get her down quick.
“Incoming!” Augustus shouted, pointing behind Scout.
She spun, framing herself against the skeletal tower of Gustave Eiffel, highlighted against its darkness. Jamal's lightning had knocked out its lights in addition to the cameras all over the structure.
Which was the plan.
The other part of the plan was to hit Scout in ways she couldn't counter, and the next part of this came not from the direction that Scout was facing – though there was certainly something to look at coming from behind the tower – but from our direction, over our heads.
Dirt swirled through the air from beneath the ground on which we stood, quickly coalescing into a sandstorm around her. She spun back toward us, already glowing, mad and burning. The swirl of dirt was thin threads, but grew thicker with each moment they twisted around her until...
Suddenly it was a full enclosure, a ball of dirt bigger than the girl herself, and a faint glow was coming from beneath the grains as Augustus closed it in on her. The smell of fresh earth mingled with ozone as he added more and more and she tried to burn her way out. He was packing it on thick now, making a human-enclosed sphere of dirt.
“She's going to burn through!” I shouted, something that was probably obvious to everyone by now.
“My turn!” Scott called, and Augustus slammed a last packet of dirt on top of the mess before dropping his hands.
A flood of water from the Seine wrapped the makeshift ball, like water enclosing a miniature earth. This one didn't just fill in oceans, though, it covered it over, flooding it completely. The glow beneath died, and a hissing sent steam up in a cloud that nearly blotted out any view of the dark tower behind her.
“Get ready for another round,” Scott said, straining, pooling another seething lake of water underneath the Eiffel Tower.
“Oh, I'm ready,” Augustus said. He'd pulled up another mountain of earth and was just waiting to for Scott to give the word to slam it on her.
I had to admit, as the heat sent more water sizzling into vapor around the makeshift globe, they had trapped her reasonably well – for the moment. Beneath the thinning surface of the evaporating water, I could see glass formed, and the glow within it made it look like a bottle with a superpowered firefly trapped inside.
“It ain't gonna hold her,” Reed said, sounding like he was straining. Because he was. Clouds had closed in around the tower in a wall of coverage to block out observing eyes, like a mountain of fog that stretched all the way to the low-hanging cloud cover lining the sky over Paris.
All a product of my brother's work. From clear skies to a cloudy day in minutes, and a wall to insulate our battle from prying eyes.
“Cameras in the area are down or have zero coverage, Sienna,” Jamal announced, hanging back a little now and playing with his phone. “You are clear to engage.”
“Cool,” I said. “Olivia?”
“Yup,” she said, “just waiting for Scott.”
“One...last...dose...” Scott said, bringing up the last of the water he'd pulled from the Seine. It slammed over the glowing, steaming, hissing globe with the fury of an angry wave. He'd been cooling the surface of the glass, but as it came down it instantly vaporized; she had gotten the interior of the ball too hot for him to even temper it.
“Olivia!” I shouted, but she was already in motion.
She shot from the ground toward the Eiffel Tower like she'd been pulled back and launched from a catapult. Reaching the bottom arch of the tower, she hung there for a moment like a fly caught in a spider's web–
Then she rocketed back, heading straight for the glowing globe–
When she reached it she hung there again, just for a split second, her momentum powers caught in place, the very air between her and the sphere moving with the shimmer of heat – and something else.
“It's loose!” Augustus said. “Here we go!”
Olivia and th
e ball. They both hung there for only a moment more, then both went their separate direction. Olivia went up, straight up, bouncing like...well, like a ball should.
The glass ball...it went down.
At several hundred miles an hour.
It was only a couple hundred feet fall, but when the glass ball hit it shattered, and the residual heat that Scout had been pouring into it spilled out. A wave of it poured over us, and I stepped forward and lit a flame shield to try and absorb it as the plasma just flowed freely, scorching the pavement around her and melting the metal barriers on the street.
When the heat began to subside, I made a hole in my shield and looked through, hoping to find Scout lying, prostrated, on the ground.
No such luck.
She was on a knee, stolen clothing burned to ash. Her skin had traces of blackened cloth still hanging on it like ashy makeup. Scout stared through the flames at me, her hands already aglow with blue plasma, eyes and face as angry as I'd ever seen her. “Did you think that would stop me?”
“Well,” I said, looking at her wistfully, “I was certainly hoping it would. But...no. No, not really.”
“What hope do you have, then?” she glared, rising to her feet, naked as the day she was born. “If–”
There was really no point in arguing it out with her, so I didn't.
I slammed her in the midsection at a hundred miles an hour, strategically burning through the seams of my clothes so that they would drop off, the remainder fluttering away as I turned to full flame. I slammed into Scout and heard her OOF! as the air left her. Twisting up, I shot into the sky, taking her up, away from my friends before she could get her head about her and drain them with her newfound powers.
As we passed the tip top of the tower, I smiled up at her and she looked down at me, the clouds shrouding us like we were already five thousand feet up even though we were only a couple thousand feet above the ground. “This,” I said to her as she stared at me, at my flying, in disbelieving confusion, “this is what I have.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY
Scout
“But...you lost your powers...” Scout gasped, disbelief ringing in her ears...along with actual ringing, because when Nealon had slammed her in the gut, all the wind had been forced out, and a radiating pain spiraled through her body.
“Don't believe everything you read on the internet, kiddo,” Nealon said, and threw her an infuriating wink before shoving off her.
They both hung there in the sky, just above the top point of the Eiffel Tower, Scout staring slightly down at her. She blinked at the smug, smiling face of Nealon, whose eyes were glowing yellow, and hands were covered in white-hot flame. No ice this time; it was useless against Scout anyway.
We can take her, AJ said. Come on. Plasma beats the hell out of her fire.
Does it? Scout wondered. Every assumption had just been shattered.
It does, Isaac murmured within her.
Plus, she can't stop lightning, Francine said. Give it to her, knock her out, then we can get back to the important business of finishing this city.
Scout lifted a hand, fingers crackling with electricity, pulling it from the well within her, and expelling it in a crackling bolt at Nealon–
Who took it in through her fingers, grimacing only slightly as she did so. “Ouch,” she said, waving that hand when she was done. It smoked slightly, the flames that had covered it a moment earlier dissipated. “Gotta tell you...that's not my favorite feeling ever, and I couldn't do it all day, but thankfully...I don't have to. Alley oop.”
“Alley...what?” Scout asked.
A flash of motion below made her look.
It was the blond woman, the one who had bounced off the tower like a bullet streaking toward her. She was hanging six inches from Scout's face, uncomfortably close, and Scout raised a hand and arced lightning toward her. “Hi,” she said.
It split and ran around her body inches from the skin as though drawn off. It sparked into the distance, dissipating harmlessly as she sat there, teeth showing, grimacing at Scout. “Bye,” she said.
The world around Scout lurched and she was flung up, up into the air at hundreds of miles an hour, her feet flipping above her head and then back again. Clouds closed in on all sides, and Isaac's power seemed to do nothing to bring it under control, this helpless feeling of vertigo surging in around her. This was nothing like flying; it was like being thrown, picked up and flung into the sky–
Something struck her again, this time in the back, and Scout was carried into the sky at the hands of merciless speed, driven up, up above the clouds–
She kicked, flailing wildly as she tried to get under control, hitting something solid, hard with a bare foot, her shoes having burned to ashes along with the rest of her clothing when she'd been trapped in the impromptu glass ball like a damned hamster.
Scout spun free and regained control. Her head still spun, but there was Sienna Nealon, holding her gut, covered in fire where her clothes should have been.
Scout stared down at her, Nealon stared up, and this was it.
This was the fight.
One way to win, AJ said. She can't take the heat.
Burn her out, Francine said. Burn her weenie little fire powers out with AJ's plasma.
“No more of this,” Scout said, and covered herself in glowing blue. Let her try and kick Scout now. Ram into her while burning this hot. Scout's face flamed, her hands, every part of her rocketing to five thousand degrees. She stretched her hands out and pointed them at Nealon. “The earth is warming, you know. And you don't want to stop it. So let's see how you live with...the heat.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-ONE
Sienna
“Ugh,” I said. “That is the lamest threat any villain has ever hit me with. Guess what? I can take the heat. Though I still stay out of the kitchen, but that's mostly because of the great tragedies that befall people whenever I attempt anything more culinarily complex than boxed mac and cheese.”
Scout and I were facing off and she'd gone full blue plasma, all reckless abandon and no limiting sense anymore. This was the most dangerous she'd been – to me, at least – really dipping into the deep well of her known powers and coming up with the one that was the absolute trump card to anything I had at my disposal.
Succubus powers against plasma? I lose limbs.
Fairy light webs? She burns through them.
Fire? Same. Fire just doesn't beat plasma, the temperature differential was simply too great, as I'd learned from my first battle with Veronika Acheron. Ice didn't even register as a speed bump for plasma.
Shame we can't use my shooting skills, Brianna grumped.
“Someday soon,” I muttered. Scout looked at me funny, like I was talking to her.
She came at me with full force plasma, and all I had was a shield of fire to defray some of it. It wasn't super effective, but I threw it up anyway, feeling the heat as she sprayed everything she had into it.
I could feel it buckling within the first second of contact. It would hold about a five count, I estimated. The heat was already bleeding through; her generated plasma had a compact heat signature for some reason, not bleeding in a wide radius, but once you were close...sweet fancy farmer's market, was it hot.
My skin was already blistering and burning, even with a shield of flame between me and her steady, pulsating blasts. She was concentrating her shots for best results, pumping in energy in a tight radius, only a foot or two in diameter. I adjusted my shield accordingly, but it did about as much good as the moisture from a kiss against a raging four-alarm fire.
I don't mean to alarm you, Brianna said, but you might want to engage healing before you lose an arm.
On it, I said, trying to pull to mind Wolfe while still balancing Gavrikov and trying to shut out the pain, which threatened to overwhelm me and cut off all my powers if I lost concentration in the building agony. There was a good chance I was going to lose an arm in the next few seconds, and shortly after
, probably my life.
“I never had a doubt about it,” Scout called over the burning flames and scorching heat. “I am going to beat you – and I'm going to be the succubus that actually saves the world.”
“By what?” I shouted back, feeling the scorching pain in my arm. “By killing every person on it? What are you saving it for? What's your purpose, Scout?”
“I won't kill everyone,” Scout said. “But I will save this planet from people like you. For the animals. For those who deserve it. For–”
“You went full goddess,” I shouted back. “You fell into the classic trap.” The skin began to melt off my arm, and my face started to scorch, peeling and cracking. I was running out of square footage on my body that she could destroy. “And you really...really should have had at least one doubt about what you were doing by now...just a minor, tiny second guess about whether you were right.”
“Why would I?” she crowed, almost sounding like someone else. “I'm beating you, aren't I?”
I drew a hot breath. “I doubt it.”
Then, with a fierce exhale, I hit her with Bjorn Odinson's warmind, and the heat faded for just a second as I scourged her mind, filling it with dark imagery and causing her to lose her grip on her powers.
Wolfe healing kicked in as I pictured the hirsute bastard, and the pain in my skin got worse, not better, as the nerves regrew.
With a final breath, I drew to mind the last piece of my plan.
Roberto Bastian. Tactical master. Soldier's soldier.
Quetlzcoatl-type metahuman.
My skin stretched and twisted, bones expanding and scales sprouting from my flesh. In seconds I went from being a smallish woman to being a 40-foot-long snake dragon.
Then I lit my scales on fire the way I did my skin, and boy, did it look cool.
Scout recovered herself in time to open her eyes and find a flame-covered dragon the height of a four-story building staring at her. She gawped. As one does when one opens their eyes to find themselves staring at a flaming dragon.
Second Guess (The Girl in the Box Book 39) Page 38