Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  Sera hid a smile behind the tea mug, but Vickie saw her raise an amused eyebrow.

  “On the other hand, Johnny, you were just a garden variety fire-chucker before you turned into Vulcan, God of Fire, though maybe Perun would be more appropriate…”

  She stopped short when she noticed John wince ever so slightly, and watched Sera gently place a hand on his forearm. He feigned mock hurt to cover for himself, but she could tell that she had struck a nerve. “Garden variety? I figured I was at least mid-shelf.”

  Oh shit. Wasn’t there a CCCP meta that died next to him by that name? Yeah, during the Reb attack that Ubermensch showed up for. Way to stick your foot in it, Vix.

  She swallowed nervously, and continued her train of thought. “So…”

  “So. You want to perform rites over me, with incense an’ athames an’ all sorts of other mystical implements, to insure that I won’t turn inside out and set everythin’ on fire. Well, unless I’m asked to, right?” John sipped his mug of green tea quietly, his eyes watching her with a sort of bemused intensity over the edge of the cup.

  “Asked to? Or told to?” she asked soberly. Is he going to insist on being asked politely or is he still willing to follow orders? Because…we really don’t need an arrogant godlet right now.…

  John waved his free hand outward, placatingly. “Just a turn of phrase, comrade. All the same,” he said, folding the hand under his arm as he sipped from the mug. “You invited us here for a reason. We came here, right?”

  If this had been either of the old JMs, she wouldn’t have hesitated. The words would have had no extra weight behind them, they would have been simple, and simply interpreted. But this was a man who had done impossible things. He had all of the lethal skills of the old man, and far more power.

  And he killed, and did not hesitate. That was the problem. Before, angered, he could have killed…several people, if he had to, bare-handed, without his fires. But it would have been precise and surgical, and there would have been no overkill. People would be dead, but only if it was necessary.

  This was a…man?…with the same calm ability to kill. But was he a man with the same control, the same judgment, the same restraint?

  And that last strike before the Kriegers had made their final push, when Sera had been boosting him…before they collapsed, he had fried blocks-worth of the city, and the two of them weren’t even at full power when they’d done it, they’d been exhausted by their earlier efforts. What could they do if they were at full power? What had Michael March said? “The world in flames”? Had she been wrong in her interpretation all this time? Was this what he had seen?

  But did that jive with what she knew about John as a man, as a human—well, metahuman—being? Would that much power have made that much difference? Other Op4s had come fully into their powers, from nothing, and that much change over that short time period had made them all crazy. A lot crazy, like some, or only a little crazy, thinking you were a goddess, or drowning yourself in the middle of the ocean because you were suicidally depressed.…

  Maybe coming into your power slowly…you stayed yourself. Maybe when you had someone who loved you, who completed you, and who, herself, was preternaturally stable, you would be stable too?

  Only one way to find out. “Let’s do this,” she said, putting her mug down. “I promise it won’t hurt you.” Me? Well…remains to be seen.

  John shrugged, finishing his mug before setting it on a kitchen counter. “Lead on, Teenage Witch.”

  The little rock-creature that Vickie called Herb came toddling into the living room, spotted Sera, and made a beeline for her. Vickie’s enormous familiar sauntered up to John, and looked up at him, then gave him a brief brush of his head and followed Herb.

  That steadied her. If Herb—who was still an Earth Elemental—and Grey, who was far more attuned to the preternatural than she was, were comfortable with John…

  “After you,” she said, opening the door to her workroom.

  She’d put away the cot that Sera had used here for so long, and it was back to being the magical workroom that she was used to. Well, sort of. There was still a boost in her wards and shields that seemed to be permanent and could only be attributed to the presence of the Seraphym. Even at reduced power, she had had Celestial protections, and that seemed to have “rubbed off” on Vickie’s own protections. As John took his place in the center of her magical circle…without her direction…she raised the wards and strengthened the shields with a brief invocation and a triggering thought.

  “All right. Like I said, this won’t hurt you,” she told him, and began the process that would reduce him to the mathemagical formulas that would, she hoped, tell her everything she needed to know. “You can talk if you like.”

  All right, Johnny Murdock. How much of “you” is still in there? She knew exactly what “he” used to look like…from her old sample, she had a mathemagical model that described him in every possible way…from the simple physical structure through the enhancements and powers, to his personality. Now she had to build a new model to compare the old one to.

  Simple physical structure. That was the “least complicated.” And already there were differences, positive ones. The thing that had been killing him was gone. But not at the expense of losing his old powers. Now…enhancements and powers…

  Oh, new things there. Without asking him what they were, she couldn’t actually know what they were. But there was something she recognized from Bella as Empathy and Telepathy. There was something else in the mix too…something she couldn’t ID. But it was linked in with what she knew were mental/psionic powers, and she wasn’t going to have to worry about that. If he was going to have problems with being a psion, he’d have shown it by now.

  Fires…her eyes widened as she realized how amped up they were. Oh, she’d known that, but here it was, quantified. But he’s not the powerhouse the original Seraphym was…thanks be to the gods. People were not meant to handle that kind of power. Well, the instability of the Op4s pretty much proved that. And…she looked closer…closer…was that a Celest—

  There was no warning. There was a shrill of visceral alarm and suddenly she found herself propelled into the wall, as if she had been backhanded by a giant. She didn’t even have the chance to prepare herself for a better fall; she hit the wall and slid down it, seeing stars.

  “Jesus!” Johnny was instantly by her side. “Are you alright, kiddo?”

  Her brain wasn’t working. She looked up at him, dazed. “What…happened?” she managed.

  “I…I don’t know. I felt somethin’ buildin’, so I…I guess I kinda shut off the connection? Are you okay?” He looked concerned, crouching over her but careful not to touch her, as if he was afraid he would give off static electricity, or worse.

  She laughed shakily. “Show me on the doll where the bad magician touched your angel-parts, Johnny,” she said.

  He cocked his head at her, then grinned lop-sidedly. “You ain’t right, mage. Y’know that, I hope.”

  “Let’s try this another way. Out to the living room, with Sera there. No shields, no wards. I think whatever that was, it interpreted my looking as a threat. I think with Sera there, it might not. Or she’ll keep it from zotting me.” She started to try to get to her feet, but didn’t get the chance. John picked her up bodily and set her down again, carefully.

  Once out in the living room, she explained what she was going to do to Sera, who listened, nodding. “I believe I know what happened, and yes, I believe I can prevent it from hurting you again.”

  Vickie raised an eyebrow at John. “I did say that it wasn’t going to hurt you.” And without waiting for a reply, and with John sitting beside Sera on the sofa, she repeated her incantations, this time zeroing in on the fire-powers.

  This time…rather than attacking her, the “Celestial” component did something she had never seen magic do before. It scrambled and blurred itself, changing the equations so rapidly she literally could not read them. “All righty
then,” she said aloud, satisfied that at least it wasn’t going to constitute a threat. It just didn’t want anyone who might be able to use it to look at it. That was fine. I don’t want to muck with Celestial magic anyway. Ever. Way above my pay-grade.

  She dismissed everything with a sigh. “Short form, you two aren’t going to go crazy, and you aren’t going to hurt anything that doesn’t deserve it, at least as long as you two are together. John, the two of you are insanely powerful and dangerous in the right circumstances, you especially, given your personal experience combined with the new abilities and senses you have. Sera acts as…a channel for the power, and as your governor. And don’t worry what would happen if she was gone. It won’t matter. She could be vaporized and you would still be ‘together’ in all the senses that count. I think you are as powerful as you are going to get; from here on out, it’s a matter of refining and honing what you can do. Better control, more precise application. Experience. Learning how to pace yourselves.”

  “I think we’re all on the same page, Vic. This is all pretty new territory for me, but Sera said she’s gonna help me get a handle on it. We were thinkin’ of maybe askin’ Bella for some help with some of the…new stuff, too.” He looked down at the floor for a moment, intently studying the carpet for a beat before he raised his head and stared into Vickie’s eyes. “Are we really that powerful, though? As much as everyone has been sayin’?”

  “Off the charts,” she replied. “Okay, there has never been a fire-powered Op4 before, so your potential for destruction really has people nervous. Since no two Op4s have been alike, it’s kind of hard to compare you. But…have you guys even seen the footage of the two of you?”

  Sera and John looked to each other, then back to Vickie as they shook their heads.

  “Permit me.” She picked up the wireless keyboard that she kept on the coffee table, woke up the TV, swapped it to be an Overwatch monitor. “Overwatch: play all footage living room: UT Seraphym/Murdock.”

  This was the first time she had reviewed all of the footage, and there were some sequences caught by “eyes” piloted by Grey and Herb, or following the pair on automatic, that even she hadn’t seen. From the first lances and spears of fire to the final swath of destruction before they both collapsed and the Metisian ship showed up, it was…okay, she was getting that hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck scary she was sure a lot of military blokes were right now.

  When the screen went blank she turned to the two of them. “See what I mean?”

  John was the first to speak. “Y’know, I didn’t know how flattering nanoweave pants were. If’n I had any money, I’d buy up some ECHO stock for that alone.”

  Sera giggled and elbowed him in the ribs. She giggled. The angel giggled. I didn’t know they did that. But the giggle had the odd effect of making that edge-of-the-cliff, waiting-for-lightning feeling ease up.

  So she sighed with exaggeration. “Don’t quit your day job, Murdock. No way you’re replacing Craig Ferguson.”

  “Alright, alright. Anyways.” He turned to look at Vickie again. “I see your point. D’you think that you an’ Bella vettin’ us is gonna be enough to calm folks down? We just got done with one battle; I don’t want to start fightin’ a whole new sort any time soon, if’n it can be helped.”

  “Yes and no,” she said honestly. “The people you actually have to worry about—all the military blokes—will stand down on the Condition Red where you two are concerned. But you know how this works, if they don’t already have a firing solution to take you two out at need, they are going to start working on one. Just in case. Because that’s how this works. Right?”

  “I hate to say it, but you aren’t wrong. We’re potential threats now. We’re on their radar, which is a bad place to be. That’ll be somethin’ we have to figure out how to deal with, long-term. Once Bella an’ the Commissar are back from Metis.”

  “If they were not considering neutralizing us at need, I would consider them to be suicidally foolish,” Sera put in. “How could they possibly trust us without believing in what I was? And belief…is not something one can force upon someone.” She shrugged. “But what of ordinary folk? A mob is as dangerous as a missile.”

  “Spin Doctor,” Vickie said succinctly. “Already working on it. Figuring out exactly how to release that footage and he’ll be ready when we get the go-ahead from the military mavins.” She hesitated a moment. “One of the notions he broached was to doctor the footage, tone your destruction down a couple of notches. Maybe eliminate something, like the two of you duoing that dragon.…”

  “I’ll leave all that to the specialist; public relations hasn’t really been my strong point…like ever.”

  “I am indifferent. They may show whatever they please so long as they do not demand we hobble ourselves in reality,” Sera said, shrugging. John nodded; Herb had brought more mugs of tea for them, and John took his immediately.

  “We just want to keep doin’ our jobs. Whatever we need to make happen for that, well, that’s what needs to be done.”

  She had to smile a little. When she thought about the old, pre-Invasion days, and even just afterwards, when it seemed as if half of the focus of every meta was…publicity. Autographs, action-figures, fan-clubs. So many of them would have had a meltdown at the very idea of having their footage doctored to portray less than what they could do. “You and Djinni,” she murmured. “Different reasons, of course.…”

  And as always, there was pain when she thought of Djinni. She had reviewed every bit of his footage already. If there had been any shred of doubt in her mind about Red and Mel…well, the footage in the Tesla Tower, and their reaction when the Metisians saved everyone’s bacon and they knew the Glass Strike had been called off, would have told her that Mel and Red were…

  Right for each other. Give it up, Victrix. Give it up.

  John and Sera shared a look, then turned to face Vickie. “Hey, kiddo…You alright? It’s somethin’ ’bout Red, isn’t it?”

  She started, and then recovered outwardly, if not inwardly. Empathy and Telepathy. Hell.

  John held up his hands placatingly. “I wasn’t tryin’ to pry, honest. Like I said, still gettin’ used to this new stuff. More of a case of ‘couldn’t help but hear,’ y’know?”

  She swallowed tears. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever I feel, it doesn’t matter. It won’t change anything, and…” She couldn’t complete the sentence.

  “You can’t know that, not for certain, kiddo.” He set down his mug, moving forward to the edge of his seat on the couch. “You obviously feel pretty damn strongly for the Djinni; it’s comin’ off of you in waves. I’ve gotten to know him a bit better since the raid in the Superstition Mountains; he’s an alright sort…for a reckless asshole. Reminds me of someone, now that I think ’bout it…” He punctuated his sentence with one of his grins. “I don’t think that that would be somethin’ he could ignore.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she replied, with more force than she had intended…and tears she had not wanted to start, escaping to scald their way down her face. “He’s with Reverie—Mel. It—I’m just a friend. Besides,” she added, bitterly. “I’m an agoraphobic freak-show. And she’s beautiful. The ‘contest’ was over before it ever started. First Bella, then Mel, it’s not as if someone like me could ever get in the arena, much less compete.” She couldn’t continue, her throat closed and she scrubbed at the tears on her face with her gloved hands.

  “Hey, listen. S’alright, kiddo. I didn’t mean to dig all this up for you. We’ve all been through a helluva lot the last couple of years. Hell, the last few days, especially. But things are lookin’ up; you gotta see that.” He glanced over his shoulder at Sera quickly before continuing. “I ran from a lot of things, for years. You know ’bout the meat of it; the government, the Program, and so on. But I was also on the run from who I was as a person, an’ what I wanted. I pushed people away, an’ didn’t allow myself to find love until it was almost too late. It might be a stretch to say that it w
as part of what was killin’ me, but I don’t think it’d be that much of a stretch.”

  Sera touched his hand, and that simple act made Vickie’s eyes burn all over again. “I…do not know what to advise you,” the Seraphym said, humbly. “Only that you must not cut yourself off from emotion. That will destroy you. Perhaps you should tell the Djinni?”

  But the uncertainty in the Seraphym’s voice only hardened the resolve in Vickie. “Not an option,” she said, harshly. “I will not destroy the trust he has in me just to indulge in a stupid fantasy. We’re not done. We’re not even close to being done. Some of the key Thulians and a lot of personnel escaped, and you don’t escape unless you have a place to escape to.” She took a deep breath, swallowed the last of her tears, and steeled her voice. “I won’t jeopardize the team for emotion. It’s only me, and what I feel doesn’t matter; what I do, does.”

  “Y’gotta do what you think is best, of course. I’m not tryin’ to say anythin’ different. Just…go for love, always. We don’t have much time here, and love is always worth the effort, no matter what. That’s one of the few things that I’ve learned in my short time on this spinning rock.”

  His words surprised her. This wasn’t something she was used to hearing out of John, the self-described “dumb grunt.” “Is it worth it…” She thought she’d defeated her tears. “Is it worth it if it never goes any farther than you?” She couldn’t hold it back anymore. “Because…it hurts. It just hurts so much.”

  “You’ll never know if’n you don’t try, kiddo. I’m not sayin’ now is the right time, but I do know that I don’t like seein’ you like this. Who else is goin’ t’ steer my dumb ass in the right direction on an operation?”

  She closed her eyes, fought for, and obtained control again. No point in arguing with them, and right now…right now their very presence here was rubbing salt in the raw wound, though they couldn’t have known that. “Thanks, Johnny. I appreciate the advice.” Could they tell she was lying? Magic shields work a lot like psionic shields… She threw up and hardened her own. “I’ll think about it. But please, don’t tell anyone else about this, promise? I don’t want this to go any further. Even Bella doesn’t know.” Around Bella, she kept her shields like diamond. It wasn’t as if all her friends didn’t have too much to worry about already without adding a soppy unrequited love to the mix.