Painkiller

by Robert J. Crane

  “Veronika.”

  “It’s going to be a real shame when I have to kill you, Veronika.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing, Nealon,” Veronika said, leaning forward slightly. “Shall we?” She spread her arms wide.

  “This is the way things should always be settled,” Nealon said, matching her motion. “Let’s.”

  Veronika raised a fist at the same time Nealon did, just behind her ear. “You know, that guy over there just tried this,” Nealon jerked her neck slightly to indicate one of the toughs that was bloody and insensate on a nearby table, “and it didn’t work out very favorably for him. You sure you want to go bareknuckle with me?”

  Veronika smiled and struck, and Nealon came right back at her. They clashed, fist to fist, and the force of the impact threw them both back. Bottles shattered behind the bar, and the glass in the slot machines ringing the room burst from the shockwave of their collision.

  Veronika slid back ten feet, skidding to a stop on carpet that ripped under the soles of her shoes, and she looked up to see Nealon staring back at her in a similar posture, surprise obvious in the girl’s eyes. “Yeah,” Veronika said with amusement, “I do.”

  “Well, okay, then,” Nealon said, looking a little disoriented, shaking her hand. Hints of blood welled from her knuckles. Veronika didn’t bother to check her own, she just charged forward again.

  Veronika came at her straight on, and Nealon dodged right. The girl was fast, Veronika would give her that, faster than anyone else Veronika could recall fighting recently—

  Veronika traded punches with her; Nealon landed one to her side, causing Veronika to gasp, Veronika planted one solidly on her jaw and felt bone buckle from the impact. They both flew off to the side, Nealon rolling over a roulette table and sending it skidding ten feet, Veronika slamming into the bodies of the two suited thugs draped across the craps table.

  Veronika shook off her landing in a hot second, springing back to her feet as Nealon sat up, Frankenstein-like on top of the roulette table. Her eyes looked faintly dazed, and she muttered, “Wolfe,” so low it was barely audible. Her jaw pulled back into line and her eyes cleared in a second. “Gavrikov,” she said, “let’s end this.”

  Veronika watched Nealon stick out a hand. The girl smiled as it sprang into flames. She hurled a burst of blazing orange fire right at Veronika—

  And Veronika stuck out her own hand to intercept it, springing to life with cold, blue fire. The orange burst curved right into her hand and disappeared, absorbed right into her palm like it had never even existed.

  Nealon stared at her, her jaw slack even though she’d just fixed it. “Uh. Okay.”

  Veronika just smiled and faced her down. This was the most fun she’d had on a job in decades. “What else you got?”

  20.

  Sienna

  Uh oh.

  My mom was always fond of saying that there’s always someone badder than you out there. It was her all-purpose reason to keep training constantly, like a motto designed to blow away all my excuses about why sleep or television were more important than going down to our basement dojo and getting slapped around by her meta-powered ass for a couple hours per day.

  The truth was, since I’d learned what an unleashed succubus could do and really gotten a grasp on how to fully use my powers, I’d been in peril a lot of times, but I hadn’t met very many people that I would have considered even remotely as badass as I was. Oh, sure, they had powers, but most of them were soft or attacked me when I was down or used some unfair advantage to sucker punch me because they couldn’t stand up to me in a head-on fight.

  This bitch … if she wasn’t badder than me, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

  There was none of the flinch in her that I’d seen in other metas I’d fought. She knew how to fight, she’d clearly done quite a bit of it, and she had gone knuckle-to-knuckle with me and caused a shockwave in the process. She’d yet to try and run, even though her nose was bleeding just slightly, probably from said shockwave.

  She just looked like she was having a ball.

  Like me.

  As I said before … uh oh.

  I wasn’t exactly ready to throw in the towel and call it quits, you understand. But it did give me a moment’s pause, realizing I was up against someone like myself, someone who enjoyed the fight, someone who prided herself on being a badass.

  Eve, I said silently and sprayed a net of light right at this Veronika’s face.

  It hit her around the eyes and dissolved a second later as part of her face and hair sprang into a cold, glowing blue before dissipating back to reveal her features. It looked a little like fire, but with more substance. I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d seen this power before, but I was at a loss to recall exactly when. I’d fought so many metas by this point that I couldn’t even remember all of them. I just knew I didn’t have anyone with these powers currently stuck in my prison.

  Not that that narrowed anything down. I’d killed way more metas than I’d imprisoned at this point.

  I racked my brain, throwing a quick look at Reed, who was fending off the four toughs that had come in through the side door. He should have been having an easy time of it, but two of them had guns and he was blasting them around, trying to dislodge the weapons from their hands.

  I snapped my attention back to Veronika, who was advancing on me as I flipped back off the roulette table, buying myself a second or two. I yanked my jacket along for the ride, ripping it from where I’d left it at the point of the wheel when I’d taken it off earlier and flung it right at Veronika as a distraction. Bjorn, I said as she disappeared behind the leather.

  On it, Bjorn said, blasting the warmind at her.

  “Ooh,” Veronika said, swiping aside the coat and blinking at me, a smile perched on her perfectly red lips. Had she applied lipstick before our fight? It hadn’t smeared at all since we started to rumble. “Warmind. I’d forgotten how that felt.”

  “You seem strangely unmoved by it,” I said, kinda glad the roulette table was still between us.

  “I learned mental defenses from a telepath I slept with on and off for a century,” she said, dabbing at the little drip of blood on her upper lip. She looked down at her knuckle, tipped with red, and smiled. “The warmind is like a gentle kiss compared to what a real telepath can do.”

  LIES! Bjorn said, but somehow I doubted he was right based on both her reaction and his.

  I’d run through almost my entire gallery of powers and was left with only a few options, none of them awesome.

  Please don’t turn into a dragon in the middle of the room here, Bastian said.

  I’m not going to, I said, it’s downtown Chicago and there are other things in this building besides an illicit gaming house. If Maclean disliked me now, imagine how he’d feel if I dropped a five-story building off State Street while turning into a dragon. That’s not the sort of thing that brings in the tourists.

  I’d run through Gavrikov’s, Eve’s and Bjorn’s powers, though, which left me with only Wolfe’s, Bastian’s and my own to fall back on. Bastian’s, for the reasons above, was right out. Wolfe’s I had been drawing on from the first punch of this fight, and Veronika’s strength clearly matched his pretty well. All that remained was his healing ability, which I would probably need to make copious use of if we kept brawling. It wasn’t exactly a game-winner, though.

  And neither were my own powers. Assuming I could lay a hand on Veronika, I kinda doubted she was just going to stand there and take it while I absorbed her soul. Most people didn’t, and she was much more of a fighter than your average meta.

  “Why are you here to kill me, Veronika?” I asked, hoping it would give me a moment’s respite.

  “Because I’m being well-paid for it,” she said with a smile.

  “I kinda figured that you were an assassin,” I said as we faced off over the roulette table. “I just thought maybe you’d accord me the respect of telling me who wants me dead bad enough to engage
the services of a preeminent badass like yourself to get the job done.”

  “I didn’t ask the why,” she said, still smiling, “because I don’t care. And you should know I’m a professional, so telling you would be … well, gauche.”

  “Right,” I said, and the DUH! idea clicked in my head. “Well, I’m a professional, too, and it strikes me that in all this hustle and bustle, what with being sniped and having you get all up in my area, I haven’t even had a chance to show you or your buddy Phinneus the tools of my trade.”

  Her eyes widened and she kicked the roulette table as I drew my CZ-75 Shadow, which I had conveniently nicknamed “Shadow” (because I’m super original). The table hit me in the upper thighs but I snapped a shot off as I dragged Gavrikov into the front of my mind to lift me into the air. Veronika was already moving, using the kick against the table to try and shove herself backward and down. She hit the floor and rolled as my first shots echoed in the gaming hall.

  I fired fast; she moved fast. It wasn’t exactly a draw, but my visual acuity rated her as a fricking blur as she rolled under the craps table, and I held my fire so as not to hit the dumb lumps of goon that were unconscious upon it. I came back down to steady my aim, holding my pistol in front of me, focused on the table.

  Veronika’s eye popped up from behind the craps table. She was clearly holding her head sideways, awkwardly so as to spoil my shot. I considered trying to shoot her through the edge of the table, but I was using hollow-points designed to expand when they hit, low velocity rounds that were meant to disperse their force upon impact with targets like walls. It was a hedge, an acknowledgment that while I might be a pretty good shot, sometimes I missed. Using a higher-powered bullet with a full metal jacket round meant those bullets might keep going, killing some poor bastard in the next room. So shooting through the craps table was not a great option.

  “That was a quick draw,” Veronika said, a hint of pain apparent in her voice. “And here I thought we could keep it a fair fight.”

  “Ever been in a fair fight?” I asked, my aim not wavering.

  “No,” she said with undisguised pleasure. “This was probably the closest I’ve had to one in a long while. I have to admit, I don’t love it, but the exhilaration? Not bad.”

  “Yeah, I don’t love it, either,” I said, keeping my aim on her. She’d try and break the stalemate, that I was sure of. I’d known her for less than five minutes, but I was already certain that Veronika was a full-bore killer, and she wouldn’t pass up me turning my back, not even for a second.

  “Well,” Veronika said, still looking out at me, “I hate to sound like your high school boyfriend, but … save yourself for me.”

  “You missed that one by years, lady,” I said, frowning at her. “Oh. You … you meant I shouldn’t let anyone else kill me, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Veronika said, amused, “but thanks for making this weird.” She ducked back behind the table and it flipped up into the air, spilling both goons and all the assorted dice and sticks and other regalia of the game into the air several feet. I didn’t have to step back to dodge it, fortunately, but when it came back down it lay on its side, a perfect bulwark to prevent me from seeing what was going on behind it. I heard a door thump open behind it and a slot machine rattle as something hit it—I suspected it was Veronika on her way out, but there was no way I was going to just trust that she’d fled.

  I eased around, flanking the table wide, trying to listen over the sounds of Reed’s scuffle at the other side of the room, not daring to look away from where I’d last seen Veronika. I shuffled my feet slowly sideways, bumping my hip against the bar and letting a grunt escape unintentionally. I navigated around it and the half dozen stools lined up along its side in order to get a clear line of sight around the craps table. My shoes crunched on broken glass from the bottles that had shattered when Veronika and I had clashed with our fists, and the sound jangled against my raw nerves. My mouth felt dry and my anxiety rose while I circled.

  Veronika was gone. The door she’d escaped through had slammed back shut, and unless she’d deftly hidden around the side of the craps table while I circled around to check on her, she’d run. I saw a decent-sized bloodstain on the ground next to the craps table where she had peered over at me and traced it back to where she’d been when I’d shot at her originally. There was a smaller stain there, still wet, where I’d apparently tagged her with a bullet.

  Whew. A sense of relief flooded over me, and I sagged slightly, the adrenaline starting to fade. I leaned back against the bar, collapsing on one of the stools, lowering my gun. That … had been tense.

  “What the hell?” Reed asked, shuffling over to me, a pained look on his face and a trickle of blood running from his left eyebrow down his cheek. “Why didn’t you help me?” His lip was bloody, and it had smeared down his chin. He also had a thin cut along the side of his head, visible even through his hair, and his clothing was torn in three places.

  “Did you see what I was up against?” I asked, looking past him. Bodies were strewn all over the place on his side of the room, including one that looked like he’d been crushed under a slot machine. Ouch. Guess that guy should have cashed out before the stakes got too high for him.

  “No,” Reed said, his annoyance bleeding out like his scalp wound, painfully slowly. His eyes were all narrowed. “I was a little too busy fighting for my life against four armed thugs.” He scaled back the furious judgment a little. “Why? What happened to you? I thought it was only one person?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not quite ready to return Shadow to its holster just yet. “One person. One highly trained assassin with the power to—I don’t even know, generate blue superheated plasma from her skin? She absorbed my Gavrikov fire like it was nothing and burned through my nets. She shrugged off the warmind like I’d thrown a glass of water in her face on a hot day.”

  Reed’s face fell. “You really didn’t see any of my fight?”

  I looked at him in disbelief. “I almost died, Reed. This woman’s a badass, and she confirmed assassins have been hired to kill me.” I shook my head. “Why does it matter if I saw your fight? It looks like you came through it okay.”

  He looked a little … miffed. “I was … I think I was kinda at my best.” Hints of pride made their way through his facade. “I showcased my mad skeelz. Figured it looked cool.”

  I took a long breath, and now that the adrenaline had fled, I felt exhausted again in spite of having just woken up. “Sorry. I’m sure it was awesome, like something out of a John Woo movie—but you know, without the slow mo.”

  “Are you all right?” Reed asked, staring at me. I brought a hand up to touch my jaw, where his eyes had fallen, and I found blood there. It ached where Veronika had hit me, and my knuckles were covered in sticky crimson.

  “Still alive,” I said, trying to force a smile. It was all I could muster, considering that for the first time in a while, I actually had someone worthy of being a little intimidated by lurking somewhere out there in the city of Chicago, someone who desperately wanted to kill me.

  Someone who had a genuine shot at getting the job done.

  21.

  The Chicago vice squad showed up to our crime scene a few minutes after we finished our battle in the casino. They picked over the wreckage of the place as Reed and I stood outside, glancing occasionally down the very alley where this had all started, where the man Thuggy had called Graves had killed Dr. Carlton Jacobs.

  I still hadn’t quite figured out why that had happened. Not that Thuggy had been a wealth of information; his knowledge of Graves had been limited to polite niceties exchanged with the guy, who had been a regular patron of the casino. Detail was in short supply in Thuggy’s brain, though, and while he’d certainly noticed the look on Graves’s face when the decision had been made to kill Dr. Jacobs, he hadn’t seen it for what it was at the time. To him it was just a nasty look that followed Jacobs touching Graves. I only knew what it meant given the benefit of hin
dsight.

  And I still didn’t really know what it meant, exactly. Did Graves kill him simply because Jacobs had touched him? I’d certainly known people who would kill for less, but they tended to leave more of a body count. Then again, Graves had already killed someone else today, and who knew how many unsolved murders in Chicago might be attributed to him. There could be tons of them; Chicago wasn’t short of unsolved murders. These two had just gotten attention because they happened in an area that murders didn’t typically happen, and because the first was so obviously committed by a metahuman that it forced them to call me in.

  I had a headache, both from the fight I’d been involved in and all the crap that had flown my way in the last day. So much for a peaceful last week. I didn’t even know how to feel about having assassins after me. Clearly someone was upset that I’d come to town on this, and after clashing with Graves and having him tell me I was dead, my list of suspects was limited to just him at the moment. He’d made a pretty clear threat, after all, and I took him at his word that he wanted me dead.

  I only wished he’d hired some less skillful assassins. Veronika looked to be one tough lady, and that sniper—Phinneus Chalke, she’d called him—had only missed me because I’d turned around at the last second because I heard—

  I smacked myself in the forehead hard enough that I staggered backward, Wolfe chortling in my head as I did. Sometimes my souls liked to play tricks on me like sneaking their powers to the fore right before I did something stupid like hitting myself. I shook it off, using his healing ability to repair the minor damage I’d just done to my skull. “Ow.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Reed asked, arms folded, a look of irritation mingled with concern causing his brow to furl.

  “I just thought of something,” I said, straightening up as I caught my balance. “Remember before our hotel got shot up—”

  “Hard to forget that.”

  “—you were watching the news?”