I turned my head and Harry was there, just sitting in midair, flipping through a magazine, calm as could be. He turned his head to look at me, lips even, as though he were not falling out of the sky at hundreds of miles per hour, his magazine pages practically ripping out from wind shear.
“How are our odds looking now, Harry?” I asked.
“Nary a change,” he said, as calm as if he were sitting in an airport somewhere waiting for a flight that was about to be called for boarding. He looked at me, unblinking, and then nodded. “Dragon.”
“Huh?” I blinked, and the answer came slamming in like a hammer to the head. “Oh! Right.”
I needed more square footage to save these people, that was the hang up. If only there were some way to create more places for them to hang onto me … like turning into a massive, multi-story dragon. Bastian, I said, and got the nod.
My clothes shredded like they always did, my legs joining together in my massive tail as I turned into a snakelike creature of the sort that would have been worshipped and feared in ancient times. The screaming around me subsided as Kat and Harry both collided with my back and grabbed onto my scales as my sensation died, the nerves disappearing beneath the hardened scales. I felt the weight of Colin and the airplane crew land on me, turning my head to be sure, and then Veronika caught me around the neck, signaling that I was good to go.
“Hang on,” I said, my voice changed now that I’d gone into Quetzlcoatl mode. I dove for the earth, slowing slightly over the natural pull of gravity, resisting it a little bit at a time so as not to jerk my passengers to a sudden, violent stop in mid-air. Because that would kill them, and I was trying to save them.
The wind whipped over the ridges that stuck out of the back of my head in lieu of hair, and I did a quick loop to slow myself under the suddenly blackening skies. It almost looked like night now, darkness shrouding us. I still had that foreboding feeling, and I knew what I was about to be up against. I could have tried to run, but the likelihood was I’d have been struck from the sky by a massive tornado. I would probably survive it, but it might send my passengers plummeting to the earth, which would have ruined my efforts to save them.
“Colin!” I called over my shoulder, “The minute we land, get the crew to a distance of at least ten miles. Preferably twenty.”
“Got it,” he called back. We were only a couple hundred feet from the earth now, and I could see the tornados coming, sweeping down out of the sky. There was one in particular, one that looked miles wide, coming at us from the east, and I suspected that was the one to watch.
I came to a landing, or within a couple of feet of one, my belly nearly touching the earth. I felt my passengers hop off, and Colin streaked south in a blast of wind, off to carry out my command. Veronika walked up beside my neck and stroked it gently. “Nice lizard,” she said, smirking. “You know, I gotta be honest. Do you realize how phallic you look right now?”
“Oh, shut up,” I said as the wide tornado in front of us came whipping closer and closer. “Harry?”
“They’re coming, yeah,” he said, stepping up beside Veronika and still paging through his magazine. I blinked as I stared at it; it was a girly mag, with a naked woman on the cover.
Veronika paused and tilted her head, doing a double take. “Really, Harry?”
He extended it to her. “You want to borrow it? Only a five percent chance it survives this fracas, so get your looks in now.”
“It’s grossly exploitative,” Veronika said, still cocking her head sideway to look at the cover model. “And … kinda sexy.” She brought her head up straight. “But mostly exploitative.”
“You’re such a puritan, Veronika,” Harry said with a cackle, eliciting an exasperated huff from her.
“Um, Sienna,” Kat said from my other side, looking pretty bedraggled, “I don’t have much in the way of living plant life to work with here.”
“Play medic, Kat,” I said, “unless you see an opening.”
The tornado in front of us dipped closer to the ground, vortex subsiding as it touched, and six figures came strolling out casually, as though they had just stepped off a plane’s stairs rather than being dropped out of the sky by a force of nature. The tornado withdrew only a dozen feet, hanging above them, under control—
Under my brother’s control.
“Nice to see you showing your true face to the world,” Reed called, his own still twisted with that vicious fury that had marred him every time I’d seen him lately.
“Oh, this old thing?” I flapped one of my wings around like I was brushing my cheek. It wasn’t an easy thing to do because my wing instinctively wanted to flap even though I didn’t need it to fly. “I just threw it on in a hurry.”
They came strutting across the plain like the cast of a Western doing their power walk into danger. Gothric the medic, Gaucho Marx, his eyes already aglow, and the Aussie with the knife, which was spinning in his hand so fast I could barely see it.
Then there were the three I cared about—Scott, Augustus, and Reed.
“This ain’t gonna go well for you, Sienna,” Augustus shouted. He should have known better than to talk.
“Jamal, Taneshia, and your momma are wondering why you don’t call anymore,” I said, and watched him blink like a robot shorting out. “I told them it was because you were too busy being President Harmon’s assclown.”
Augustus’s eyes flickered, looking back and forth, like he was trying to think of something—a reply, a memory, something—but failing.
“Don’t let her get in your head,” Reed said, voice like steel.
“Harmon’s already done that,” I said. “He’s a telepath, you know. He’s controlling your minds, putting in thoughts.”
“Like a puppeteer sticks his hand up a puppet’s ass,” Kat said, making things awkward. “The puppet in this case would be you,” she clarified, in case it wasn’t obvious what she’d meant.
“Ain’t nobody does that to me,” Augustus said, riled. “Except Tanesh—” His eyes went blank, like his programming had skipped the track again.
“I’m gonna slip inside you and carve you up,” the Aussie said, brandishing his blade. I swept off the ground a few feet, just out of easy reach, and his expression turned furious. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“42 Wallaby Way, Sydney, Australia,” I quipped. I had an idea for how to deal with him, but it wasn’t one I was looking forward to executing.
“What?” He frowned at me, deep crease lines cutting into his brow as the knife flashed. “I’m going to cut your heart out.”
“You’ll need to find it first,” I said. I didn’t really know where it was in my dragon form, and I hoped it wasn’t in an obvious place. Bastian?
I’ve never gotten an MRI in this form before, sorry, he snarked at me. They don’t make machines big enough.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” the Gaucho said, and his eyes started glow. I dove to the side, hoping to draw his fire, and the plains beneath me erupted in battle.
85.
Scott
The main objective obvious, her dragon form hovering over those three other people that were standing in opposition. He knew Kat, of course, but the other two … he didn’t have a clue. One was a guy, dressed kind of shabbily, and the other was a woman who looked to be in her late thirties/early forties, dressed so crisply she might have been US Secret Service except for her flair for style.
Get in there, Harmon’s voice compelled him. He should have known the man was there, right behind his ear, ready to push him into action. Kill her—
Scott drew moisture out of the air with efficiency he’d never had before. He wielded a blast of water and channeled it at the shabbily dressed man, who stepped easily out of the way of Scott’s new and improved beam. It was only an inch in diameter, but it could carve through a human being easily, tearing them in half if he chose to. The man ran oddly, jerking left and right in perfect time, dodging every blast Scott sent his way.
Scott brought up his other hand, channeled water in a blast through his mouth, and let loose with all three streams. He triangulated and brought them together in a convergence of death, one which would surely carve the precognitive to pieces—
The man did a flip sideways, snaking between two blasts, and then charged, sliding to the left when Scott brought the beams around to decapitate him.
You’re useless, Harmon pronounced, and there was a surge of pain in Scott’s head. I’d kill you right now, but I doubt she’d notice given what she’s dealing with.
Scott turned his attention to look, just for a second, to see what Harmon was talking about. Tornadoes were snaking down out of the sky, scrub brush was growing like tentacles, and together they were working in concert to drag Sienna’s dragon form back to the earth. She was fighting, but failing.
Now you watch her die, Harmon said.
“I’ll carve your heart out, bitch!” Mac shouted, and he was moving in a flash, at her side in less than an eye’s blink, ripping into her and stepping between the ribs, knife flashing as he carved between the dragon scales—
He was going to kill her, Scott knew, a scream in his head like distant thunder … because how could she defend herself from him now that he had carved his way past her defenses … now that he was inside her?
86.
Sienna
“This was not my bestest plan ever,” I muttered as the Aussie ripped through my side and started carving internal organs. Fortunately, my innards were not as easy to cut through as he’d probably hoped, and I was ready for this particular—and somewhat stupid on his part—gambit.
I started to return to human form, something which looked considerably less grand than my sweeping expansion into a graceful, reptilian dragon. Coming back to human after that was a little like a—well, like a—like a —
You know what, there’s really no appropriate analogy for it. Not one you could tell to the kids, anyway, because it involved me going from what looked a long, narrow snake into a short, tiny human. Fill in the blanks, gutter mind.
Unfortunately for the Crocodile Dundee impersonator shredding his way through my belly, the transformation back could be done in about two seconds. I didn’t usually like to rush it; I liked to take my time, let my joints settle as my bones and internal organs snapped back to filling a tiny cavity in torso rather than a fifty foot long snake body.
This time, I rushed. It usually didn’t hurt. This time it did, for obvious reasons.
“GACK!” I heard him say as I contracted to human—and much smaller than Aussie knifeman—size. He barely got the shout out in time, before my internal organs—set to heal rapidly thanks to Wolfe’s present intervention—fought back against the resistance they found in my guts. My ribs broke against him and reformed, broke and reformed, shoving against his skull and face and chest and legs and—it was a lot of smashing. Like my body was trying to chew him up, experiencing breakage for its efforts, but healing and trying again.
His body? Not so much able to heal rapidly.
It felt like something ruptured inside me, something that wasn’t supposed to be there, and fortunately my body expelled the mass as it healed. It hurt like hell, like I was passing a stone out of my stomach, but fortunately I expelled the foreign body right at the exact moment I had Gavrikov light up my one-piece unitard and my full mane of flaming hair (for effect). The crush of organic matter that shot out of my stomach just happened to catch fire as I dumped it unceremoniously out of me and staggered back, watching the mashed piece of mushed bone and shredded flesh try and draw its last breath as fire seared it black.
“Whoops,” I said mildly as the remains of the Aussie shuddered once and then lay there, looking like nothing so much as the victim of a tragic cattle mutilation that involved turning the poor thing inside out. Well, it was better than trying to birth him out of my hoo-ha, anyway.
“Mac!” Gaucho shouted, his eyes lighting up as he looked at me. They burst into a glow, and I just happened to quickdraw first, lifting my hand as I stood upright, now unencumbered by the world’s biggest artificial turd trying to squeeze out of my belly. I fired a flaming burst of gas and it passed Gaucho’s blast in the air—
87.
Scott
That was … revolting, Harmon said mildly, looking at the remains of Mac the Knifer as Sienna set him aflame after expelling him from under her ribcage like she’d dropped off an artificial pregnant belly. The knife itself came clattering to the ground, though no one noticed as Sienna took aim and shot at Joaquín just as Joaquín fired back at her.
His blast caught her in the side and vaporized half her chest, spinning her around and dropping her to the earth. Her tiny bullet of flaming gas caught him in the head, though, and Joaquín dropped as well, much more limply, and much more definitely dead.
“Joaquín!” Gothric screamed, charging up as he let loose of his grip on the native plant life to hurry to the last member of his team.
“Yeah, no,” the dark-haired woman said, rushing up to him and planting a hand on the back of Gothric’s neck. “Not so quick, sweetheart—you, I can kill.” Her hand blazed a bright blue, and Gothric’s neck disintegrated, his head and body tumbling free of her grasp—and each other.
The ground shook in fury, earth turning up in a quake of mighty proportions, and the sky blackened as those same massive tornados threatened to come down on them. Scott stood there, watching as Sienna struggled back to her feet, her side covered in flame in lieu of clothing, wound already healed, her eyes burning as she stared at Scott, hovering a few inches off the ground to dodge the effects of Augustus’s earthquake.
“You in there?” Sienna asked, looking right at him.
“I’m here—” Scott said, but was cut off by the blinding pain once more.
“I’m here,” Harmon said, speaking through him. “And you’re—”
88.
Harmon
“—Not nearly as amusing as you think you are,” I said, staring through the waterboy’s eyes at Sienna Nealon, who was giving good glare considering all the miles between us. I might have been shaking in my boots if I’d ever worn them in my life. “So congratulations, you killed some feebleminded loaner troops from Revelen.” I swept around, looking for the box that Cassidy should have left behind. I didn’t have a choice in the matter now, I needed it.
I slammed a palm down on the phone. “Ms. Krall, find me Cassidy Ellis.”
“Who?”
“The girl who was in here earlier,” I shouted through the receiver, trying to keep track of Scott Byerly’s mind as I ordered her to remember. “Find her! She should be in the Lincoln Bedroom. Also, have the new woman from finance brought in immediately.” I hit the button to disconnect us before Ms. Krall could simper at me.
I refocused, turning to Augustus and Reed. Tornadoes set down on the plains, which shook with a fury unlike anything that had been unleashed since the times of primitive metas, as her friends let loose around her—
89.
Sienna
I blasted Reed in the face with a net of light and the tornados receded as his control momentarily loosened. I did the same to Augustus, but the earth didn’t stop shaking. Not that it mattered to me; I was hovering above it.
“Well, the rest of us could use a lift,” Harry complained, keeping his balance so well that I could scarcely tell he was standing in the middle of a 10.0-magnitude earthquake.
“Yeah, this ain’t fun, Sienna,” Veronika said, wobbling on uneven legs.
Colin zipped out of top speed, and I made a motion quickly toward Kat, Veronika, and Harry. “DC,” I said. Colin shot over the rattling earth and grabbed the three of them in a blur, carrying them off … I dunno how, honestly. Two on his back, one like a bride? It was kind of funny to imagine him with Harry riding along in his arms, probably still flipping thro
ugh his dirty magazine while Veronika tut-tutted him from Colin’s back and Kat squeaked, hanging on for dear life to Veronika’s shoulders.
“You think removing your friends from this battle will save them?” Scott asked in President Harmon’s voice.
“It’ll save them for now,” I said. “That’s what I do, remember? I operate at too low a level to really fix things, so … I just stall death, really. Hold it back for a little while.”
“Pathetic,” Harmon pronounced.
“Well, we can’t all be super-genius elites who are the only ones with the wisdom to rule from on high,” I said. “Some of us have to do the day-to-day saving. Some of us have to put out the fires, stop the criminals, build things, fix things … heaven knows you wouldn’t want to get your hands dirty doing any of that.”
Scott’s eye twitched as I threw Harmon’s elitism in—well, not his face, strictly speaking. I wondered if it would have any effect. “You know why I take this mantle on myself?” Harmon asked.
“Because no one else is arrogant enough to believe they can micromanage the entire human race?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he laughed. “Lots of people think they can do that. Laws are about that the more granular they get. It’s a philosophy, the idea of using law and government to perfect man. I’m the only one who has the power to do it, though. I’m the hero—”
90.
Harmon
“—That you’ve always thought you were,” I said. The door to the Oval Office opened and Cassidy slipped in, box in her hands. Another woman followed, staring blankly at me, having been dragged out of the budget department. “I can be the one to solve the world’s problems, make you irrelevant. What need will there be for you when crime is over? When fires are eliminated by everyone working in perfect unity? When war is finished, when no one has to worry any more about—”
Unyielding (Out of the Box Book 11) Page 28