“There’s a guy up there,” he said, useful words finally galloping out of his mouth. “In 6B. Hasn’t been here long; maybe a couple weeks. Don’t get me wrong, there’s always been a rougher element as long as I’ve worked here, but…” He swallowed again, and paled slightly. “Now we hear screaming sometimes at night. I heard someone got dragged up in the elevator. And the other residents? They’re walking around like zombies half the time, can’t hardly believe what they’re seeing.” He shook his head. “Anyway…sixth floor. 6B. That’s what you’re looking for, I’d guess.”
I exchanged a look with Rose. “Sounds like 6B is where we’re headed.”
“Yep,” she said, and we nodded, heading back through the door.
“Oh, and by the way,” he said, catching us on the way out, “if you could leave my name out of this—”
“Your secret is safe with us,” I said, heading back toward the elevators, “chickenshit.”
“Do you blame him?” Rose asked once we were safely in the elevator, heading up to the sixth floor. It moved with a quiet hum, crawling up so slowly I could hardly feel it.
“No,” I said, “but I’m not in a place in my life where I like to condone the sort of ordinary, go-along cowardice that enables serial killers, so…”
Her eyebrows rose, and she nodded, but did not say anything.
I was already moving when the elevator dinged, sliding out into the hallway and stalking along it toward 6B. It was the second door I came to in a wide hallway to the right of the elevator bank, ordinary, nondescript, but showing some serious wear. Almost like maintenance hadn’t been doing jack on this floor for a while. (Though in fairness that probably preceded this scary incubus moving in.)
I took up position next to the door and Rose put her back to it across from me when I motioned for her to. Using hand signals, I tried to convey what was coming next, though who knew whether she got it or not? She nodded, at least.
That done, I launched off the wall and readied myself, blasting forward into apartment 6B with a kick that shattered the frame and carried me through into a living room that was utterly placid, looking out over a beautiful view of Edinburgh town and marred by only one thing: a man standing with his back to me, head bald and, when he turned to calmly look at me over his shoulder, a grin as wide as any I’d ever seen.
“Hullo, Sienna,” he said in a light brogue, arms clasped behind his back. “I’ve been waiting for ye.”
27.
“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you too,” I said and shot a Gavrikov-fueled flame bullet out of my fingertip. It shot across the impressively appointed apartment, this little oasis of cleanliness with a prime view of Edinburgh. It was headed right for his chest, and he lifted a hand, reaching out for it, and catching it in his palm. He seemed to twist his wrist, then opened his palm again to reveal—
Nothing. No burn, no flame bullet, nada.
He’d dissolved it as easily as I’d created it.
The man grinned broadly. “I’ve seen that trick before.”
I started to get a cold, creeping feeling about this. He didn’t take umbrage when I lifted my hand though, and a second later I was blasting him with a light net.
The air around him distorted, like a mirror that someone was bending, and the light nets disappeared, leaving me with nothing but a view of his smiling face. “Ye’ll have to do better than that.”
“Oh, I’m just warming up, bub,” I said, looking back at Rose. She was staring at him intently, working her powers, but after a moment she broke off, looked at me and shook her head. Empathy was a no-go, which meant—
I can’t read his mind, Harmon said. I’m betting he’s the one that screwed up my ability to read the toughs he sent after you earlier.
That means the Warmind will similarly not be of use, Bjorn said.
No light nets, no telepathy, no Warmind, no fire…what the hell am I supposed to do now? I asked the souls in my head.
Please don’t go dragon, Bastian said, unless you desperately need to.
We’re in a populated building, Bastian. Of course I’m not going dragon unless I have to.
You’ve still got my stunning good looks, Zack said, and, after a beat, What? I’m not allowed to crack jokes during tense moments?
I stared at my enemy, and he started to talk again, arms now clasped behind his back once more in the sheerest display of arrogance while fighting me that I’d seen since…probably Sovereign. “Now you see plainly what I am,” he said.
“Yep,” I said, racking my brain. Seriously, guys. He’s been juicing.
He’s been doing what you’ve steadfastly refused to do, Harmon said, adopting the air of a lecturing douchebag. Acquiring power by any means necessary.
“Thanks,” I said, accidentally aloud, causing Baldy to cock his head at me curiously. “Sorry, wasn’t talking to you.”
Displaying momentary surprise, he said, “Quite all right,” in a fairly sonorous voice. “Have ye heard a word I’ve said, or are you too busy being in your own head?”
“Well, it’s pretty in here,” I said, tapping my temple with a knuckle. “I mean, no offense, but your face is not exactly the stuff of ladies’ fantasies.” This wasn’t entirely true, but I needed a distraction while my mind was racing, trying to decide on the best course of attack. I mean, if this guy had stockpiled a fire power, telepathy or empathy, plus…whatever the hell he’d done to that light net…
Who knew how many other powers he was sitting on? Lunging at him, trying to get in a hand-to-hand scrap when I had no idea how deep his metaphorical bench of powers was? Sounded like a formula for calamity, especially given we were in an apartment complex surrounded by people.
“Ye wound me,” he said, not showing a lot of signs of wounding. “Don’t you know…we’re made for each other, you and I?”
I made a deep, guttural gagging noise and stuck my tongue out while doing it. He recoiled an inch or so, and I glanced back to Rose for solidarity. She too seemed to be wearing an expression of acute surprise that I’d do this in the buildup to the big fight scene we were about to partake in. “Why does every incubus say this same, tired BS?”
Rose didn’t waste a second before answering. “I think a lot of men say this, actually, and with much less justification than he’s got.”
“Point to you, sidekick,” I said, reeling myself back around to find Baldy right where I’d left him. “Look…serial killer guy…it’s not that I don’t appreciate your attention…okay, never mind. I actually don’t appreciate your attention. Because you’re a serial killer.”
“So are you,” he said calmly, lacking any sign of being affronted. “And you’ve killed more than I have.”
“I’m not a…” I paused, trying to figure out how to best frame my argument. “I’m not a serial killer, okay? Just a…justice killer,” I finished lamely.
“Is that who you are? The swift sword of justice, Sienna Nealon?” His eyes showed a spark of amusement.
“Most of the time, yeah,” I said. “Who are you?”
“A worthy question,” he said. “My name is Frankie.”
I stared at him for a second. “No, seriously. Do you go by, like, Frank? Or Francis? Or maybe—”
“Frankie will do.”
“God, I think this one’s got Peter Pan syndrome,” I said, just shaking my head at him, talking clinically like he wasn’t here. I kinda wanted to get him pissed off enough to attack and start showcasing some of the abilities he had up his sleeve. My other alternative was to smash him through the windows in an attempt to fly him up above the city and drop him like he was a hot potato in hopes that he hadn’t absorbed the power of flight. Yet. Other options involved hand-to-hand combat of the kind that would result in the certain destruction of this apartment and probably the surrounding floors, maybe even the rest of the building if he had the off-the-charts energy projection I suspected. Just having Gavrikov powers put him right at the top of the scale.
“Oh, I’m all g
rown up.” He smiled, either not noticing or not caring about my insult. “Would ye like to see?”
I assumed one meaning for that. “Keep your pants on, Frankie. I don’t know you that well.”
“You always assume the worst of people, don’t you?” Frankie said.
“Well, so far since arriving in Edinburgh I’ve looked one of your dead victims in the eye and been nearly killed by a gang of metas whose leashes I assume were being held by you.”
“They weren’t going to kill you,” Frankie said. “They were going to bring you to me.”
“Why?” I asked. It was really the only question that mattered, getting to the core of who he was and why he was doing…all this.
“I needed to meet you,” he said quietly. “Needed to look you in the eye. See who you were…in there.” He pointed at my head. “Oh, sure, we all see you on TV. Big, bad Sienna Nealon. You look taller on television, by the way—”
“I get that a lot.”
“And it doesn’t fully capture that sparkle in your eyes.” He stared at me, that head still cocked, shining from the light cast in through the windows behind him. “I think you’re sneering at the world, all the time.”
“Well, I’m certainly sneering at you right now.”
“Was your mother like this?” Frankie asked, and my blood turned hot with anger, leaving behind the cold calculation of how best to kill him. “Your grandmother? Because—that’s the line through which the power was passed, right? Matrilineal?”
“Yes, my mom was hell on wheels,” I said, struggling to be civil. If I could get close enough, I could maybe use my Wolfe skull to smash his face into a paste. He wasn’t moving any closer, and he was out of the range where I could easily pull that off. “Whyever do you ask?”
“We’re all related, our kind,” he said. “Just trying to put the pieces together.”
“If you’re trying to say you’re my secret brother, I already had one of those. And fortunately for me, he’s not a psycho serial killer.”
“No, I don’t think I’m your brother,” he said. “Probably up the family tree somewhere, though.”
“That’s special,” I said. “Let me introduce you to how we do things in my family.”
I launched at him, at last, keeping my movements low and close to the ground. Short, shuffling steps carried me forward, and I refused to commit to a stupid, grand leap that would leave me open for a deadly counterattack. Instead I rushed him almost half-heartedly, ready to start slugging him in the face, which—I mean, really, that was a Nealon family tradition. At least the way my mom and aunt did it. And my great uncle Raymond, sort of, come to think of it.
It was a good thing I stayed low, because Frankie started to glow a second later, and unleashed a burst that I only just dodged in time. It was a glowing, vibrating red, a power I’d never seen before, and one that seemed to rip out of the very floor in a wall of sheer force as it passed, an eruption that splintered carpet and ceiling and peppered me with the spray of debris from both as it tore through the apartment. Rose cried out and leapt out of the way just before it blasted out the way we’d entered, annihilating the door in the process and leaving nothing but splinters raining down.
“Shit,” I muttered as I rolled across the carpet. What Frankie had just done in here was unleash catastrophic damage. I couldn’t see very much past the wrecked door, but I could see that his wave of ripping force looked like it had continued on past the hallway, and the apartments above and below were visible through the scar he’d torn in the floor and ceiling.
Rose was getting up, separated from me by the small chasm that divided the apartment. She had a worried look, no disguising it. She held her side but got to her feet, shaking but determined, facing Frankie, as I found myself doing. Now that I knew at least a little of what he was capable of…there was no way in hell I could afford to turn my back on him. Not for a second.
“Is that how you do it in your family?” he asked with faint glee, as the building creaked around us, my stomach plummeting as I realized exactly how bad a trap I’d walked us into.
28.
Wolfe
Norway
322 BC
The battle was like something out of Wolfe’s sweetest dreams. Fur-clad clansmen, an unfortunate lot of them, a hundred or more all bound to foot and horseback in a few cases, laid out like a pleasant feast for him.
Him…and the daughter of Death.
She did not speak as she fought, using the blade they’d picked up in their travels to the Far East, where the people spoke a strange language, and whose appearance and customs were so different from those of their homeland. They had been welcomed, though suspiciously, once they journeyed past the land of the steppes, the cold, and all the way to the far shores of a distant sea. The blade had been a gift from King Dao and was beautifully crafted, very different from the style of swords in their native land. She was beautifully lethal with it.
It danced in the hands of Lethe, sharply cleaving through the chests of those northmen who charged at her, screaming in their oxen language. Wolfe followed behind, his claws slick with blood as he danced through the battle, tasting the throats of those he ripped through, enjoying the slick feel of their guts as he ripped them out. They came for Lethe from the back as she cut through them at the front and Wolfe gloried in their attacks, gloried in the waves of them as he slashed through, rending their furs and their bellies, tasting their sweet life pouring out in his face and across his hair, matted by the ichor he continued to tear from them by force.
Lethe let out a scream of battle fury. He had heard her do this before, a sonorous bellow, and her attacks became frenzied, even more furious. She did not seem to be stirred to it by any particular sensation, save one—a battle so chaotic she did not have the proper time to use her power against her foes. Here, her sword rose and fell, cleaving heads and arms, limb from torso, torso to pieces. They came at her and came at her, and no mere seconds existed for her to grab one, seize them with a hand, and drain them dry the way he knew she loved.
Wolfe did not stop his battle fury behind her. He redoubled his efforts, wanting to buy her those precious seconds, to give her her glory. They had traveled now for so many years, through so many places—to the edge of the sea in the east, to the swamps and jungles of the southeast, where the air was hot and thick, like the vines that stretched from tree to tree. They had crossed mountains west of that which had seemed to go on forever, some taller than Olympus, going beyond the heavens, perhaps. In a land of people with darker skin they had learned new names of those venerated and worshipped. And coming back from that, crossing the endless deserts, they had found other things, other battles.
And somewhere in that space of years, sleeping out among the stars or sheltering with friendly tribes that desired gods for protection and worship…Wolfe had awoken to a truth that he dared not speak.
Watching the daughter of death in her lethal dance, sword blazing and shining in the cloud-covered sunshine, he saw her fury and joy, twin feelings that warred across her face as legions were slain by her hand. She wore no robes, no clothing, for they were an impediment to war, to the fight, to death. She was clad only in the blood of her enemies—across her supple flesh, her chest, her face, it stained her crimson from top to bottom, the fight having dragged on over dozens of dead and dying. The cries of the bitterly wounded were like sweet music in his ears; no singer could have serenaded him as sweetly.
Wolfe licked the blood off his lips and buried his hand up to the wrist in the guts of a dirty tribesman. He did not dare pause to take his own relief, to suck blood and taste sweet meat—Lethe disdained that craving of his, though she tolerated it and other, more base and carnal ones. He focused only on clearing the back as she moved forward, slashing through these bodies like her sword cleaved through the flesh of her foes.
And he watched every moment he could. Turned and watched her in every lull of the battle. The lines of her body, dripping with gore as she cut through foes
, her skin dripping with delicious blood, delicious death…
Delicious.
The enemies were thinning. A horn was sounding in the distance. They’d had this fray behind a hill, where this army of tribesmen was lined up for other purposes. That did not bother Wolfe and it certainly did not seem to faze Lethe, who continued to pursue them, cleaving one enemy in half even as their line broke and they ran to the side, trying to skirt the hill’s edge and escape in a mad panic, fleeing from whatever was before them—and now, behind them.
“Hark,” Lethe said, her voice weary as she stopped, seizing one of them by the back of the neck in his flight. She gripped him there as he struggled, but only for a few seconds before he gave up the fight once more, though this time not in retreat. He jerked a few times in her grip, then slumped, her power exercising its dominion of his soul. She threw her head back for a mere moment, savoring it, then cast the body aside. It was plainly dead, and Wolfe slunk in as Lethe grabbed another, taking to the corpse she’d just discarded as a dog might to a bone thrown by its master. “Something approaches.”
“I’ll be quick,” Wolfe said, sinking his teeth into the neck of the body. He liked them like this, fresh, her effect on them stilling them without making them cold. This man’s heart was dead, true, but only recently, and a few last pumps of blood spurted across his lips before it went still. The meat, though…that was still warm.
“See that you are.” Her disgust was contained by her wariness at the approach of possible danger. She had thrown her head back to the heavens, savoring her own drink, the tearing of the soul from the body of these savages. Another taken in, she shuddered, her body shivering in the chill of the autumn. She tossed this one aside too, but not at Wolfe’s feet. She may have tolerated his savagery, but she did not enable his eating of enemy flesh. His other practices, though…those she did not seem to object to.
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