“Maybe I did,” Scott said, trying to cover for himself now. “But she’s a good person—”
“You got a death wish?” Judy said, and came to her feet. “You are as dumb as a box of rocks, boy. You got the hots for a succubus? Let me spell how this is gonna end for you—she’ll either get you killed in a fight with Sovereign or she’ll eat your whole entire soul before she realizes how much it would burden her to be weighed down with an idiot like you for all the rest of the days of her life! Do you know how long these things live?”
Her last words came out as a scream and I stood from my place at the table, not sure whether I should be offended or not. “I am not a thing, I’ll have you know, and the only souls I’ve ever willingly absorbed are the people who have tried to kill me.”
Judy’s eyes got wide and the raven flashed in my head again. “Get out of my house,” she said as the blood drained out of her face.
“I’m not going to make a snack of your consciousness—”
“You’re not eating my damned soul,” she snapped back.
“You got that right,” I said, and started for the door, “I don’t want you shrewing in my head—”
“Get out!” she screamed. “OUT!”
I held up my hands to try and be peaceable and went for the door. She was a few steps behind me, giving me my distance. “I didn’t come here for a fight,” I tossed back over my shoulder.
Scott was trailing behind and started to say something. “She’s not—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Judy said, following us across the carpet. “Bringing a soul eater into my house. I oughta—”
“What you oughta do is watch your mouth,” I said, stopping before I turned the handle. “I’ve eaten Odin-types before.” I fixed her with a sweet smile and turned on my heel. Scott just missed getting the door slammed on him as we stepped out into the cold of winter.
Chapter 15
“I’m so sorry she treated you that way,” Scott said as we pulled out of the driveway. I was in the driver’s seat this time, and he didn’t say a word as we started back down the road.
“I’d heard metas hated succubi and incubi,” I said. “I hadn’t really ever experienced it until now.”
“Yeah,” Scott said as the car went slowly down the drive toward the edge of the trailer park, “it’s not subtle. You see it a lot in cloisters. Incubi and succubi are kind of like the bogeyman for meta kids.”
“Nice,” I said, not really feeling all that pleased about it. I reached up and put the tip of my right-hand glove’s middle finger in my mouth, and started to pull it off with my teeth, one finger at a time.
“Don’t take it too hard,” Scott said, and I could see the tentativeness in his posture toward me. “It’s a backward view, and it’s fading.”
“Not like there are a ton of my kind still out there, even,” I said, looking at the windshield wipers as they squeaked, sweeping powdered accumulation from the glass. I started on the second glove, biting on the leather as I removed it and then tossed it on the center console.
“No,” he said. “There really aren’t.” He waited just a minute. “Is there a reason you’re taking your gloves off? Are you about to off me?” There wasn’t a trace of fear in his words anywhere.
“Off you?” I asked, and sent him a sidelong glance. “According to your aunt, it’s more like I’d be getting you off—without the gloves, I guess, because you’re super dumb and want to die for a kinky thrill. No, I’m not about to ‘off’ you, I just don’t like driving with gloves on.” I looked back out the windshield and hit the brakes, hard, as a shadowy figure dashed out into the road from behind the last trailer in the line. The figure was small and wearing a black hoodie. The car went into a subtle fishtail, the back end going left about forty-five degrees before I managed to bring it to a stop. “Way to almost get yourself killed, kid,” I muttered, my hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. The headlights illuminated a boy, around twelve or thirteen, peering out at us, hands buried deep in his pockets.
“Hey, I know him,” Scott said. “That’s Rajeev.”
“He looks familiar,” I said, squinting out into the dark. “He’s from the Directorate, I assume?”
“Yeah,” Scott said, already reaching for his door handle and stepping out. “Rajeev! How you doing?”
I followed a moment behind, stepping out into the dark of the night, the snowfall lit by my headlights and the front porch lights of the nearby trailer. I got a look at Rajeev and he looked a little familiar, dark hair, the faintest beginnings of what would probably be a mustache in about five years lining his upper lip.
“Scott,” Rajeev said, and when they got close they shared one of those bro-hugs where their right hands met in the middle and pulled close, like a shoulder bump, but slightly more masculine. I didn’t roll my eyes, exactly, but it was only through epic self-restraint.
“Glad to see you made it okay,” Scott said.
“I’m glad to see I made it okay, too,” Rajeev said. “You were gone long before it happened, right?”
“Yeah,” Scott said, a little hushed. “I was far away when the Directorate went boom.” He shifted a little uncomfortably in his shoes. “Listen, we came up here—”
“I know why you came,” Rajeev said, nodding. “They had a meeting about it this afternoon, about this threat that’s coming.” He made a gesture to encompass the cloister. “They’re talking about leaving. Pulling up stakes, going to Canada.”
“Yeah,” Scott said with some discomfort. “I bet they end up doing it tomorrow, too, now that they know what’s coming.” He clapped Rajeev on the shoulder. “Listen, we could use some help. We’re going to take on this thing that’s destroying the metas. You should come with us.”
I gave Scott a searing look. “He’s like twelve.”
Rajeev looked offended. “I’m thirteen.”
I tilted my head at him. “Have you even manifested yet?”
He shook his head. “Well, no.”
“How old is the oldest of the kids who came with you?” I asked.
“Sixteen,” Rajeev said.
“Yeah, we’re not recruiting any of them,” I told Scott with great finality.
“Their lives are in just as much danger as ours,” Scott said.
“Still no,” I said. “I’m not taking a bunch of teeny-boppers into battle, unless I find out that Sovereign’s secret weakness is high levels of angst or a deep affinity for Justin Bieber.”
“Hey!” Rajeev said, “just because I’m young doesn’t mean I like Justin Bieber. Besides, we all want to stay with the cloister anyway,” he said, stopping Scott from what was looking like a really burgeoning argument. His face was red and everything. “We took a vote.”
“Smart kids,” I said.
“What?” Scott said, turning his red face to Rajeev. “The entire species is being wiped out, do you realize that?”
Rajeev gave a nod. “Yeah, and that’s tragic, but we’re not that old, and none of us want to die. This thing is killing metas thousands of years older than us and more powerful, and besides, we already had one brush with them outside Brainerd and barely got away.”
“What?” I asked, honing in on Rajeev again. “What do you mean you had a brush with them?” Scott turned his attention on the boy as well, fully attentive.
Rajeev hesitated, thrusting his hands deeper in his pockets. “We stole some cars to get up here. We were on the road and a helicopter dropped down on us, caused one of our cars to flip on the icy road.”
“Rajeev,” I spoke quietly, my mouth dry, “was everyone else all right?”
“Mostly,” Rajeev said. “We were lucky, none of them were metas. They shot up the cars, almost killed me. They would have, if not for—” His face bore a subtle hint of anguish. “We managed to get in the other car and speed away while—”
I felt a flash of fear. “Who was it? Who died?”
“They saved our lives, the three of them,” Rajeev said. “It was unbelievable. He took
out all the men that were after us, I think.”
“Who?” I asked, more insistent. “Who died?” I had a sickening sense I already knew.
“Jeremiah Stevenson,” Rajeev said, hushed, the snow falling around him as he cast his eyes downward in the reflected light of the headlamps. “They shot him first, right through the head. He didn’t stand a chance. Sara Astley did much better, managed to take a few rounds in the body and still kill one of them with her strength.” Rajeev wore a ghostly smile. “And Joshua, he—”
“Joshua,” I whispered. “Joshua Harding?”
“He died in a blaze of glory,” Rajeev said. “Broke the necks of two of them himself that I saw and managed to work a grenade off one of their belts and blow it up in the chopper, before the last of them put him down as we were driving out of view.” He put his head down. “We threw all our cell phones out the window after that, got rid of everything they could trace and just ran for it.”
I felt a stir of emotion at the thought of a kid I’d met only once, who probably—no, almost certainly—had a little schoolboy crush on me. I tried to picture him, but all I could see clearly was the glasses. “Damn,” I whispered.
“He saved our lives. They all did,” Rajeev said. “But what we were up against wasn’t even metas and they nearly killed us.” He cast a beseeching look at Scott. “Please forgive me for not being excited about stepping up to go toe-to-toe with this group’s A-team when their B-team already nearly wiped us out.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said quietly. “You should stay here, with the cloister. They’ll be able to better protect you than we will.”
“They will?” Scott asked, giving me the sidelong.
“They will,” I said. “Because we’re not going to be about defense, we’re about offense. Our job is to take the fight to Sovereign and Century, not circle the wagons and stay carefully cocooned until the threat is over. Tell them to run,” I said to Rajeev, and he nodded. “Tell them to keep running. Run as far as you think is safe and then run farther, because nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe from this man.” I felt a burning deep in my gut. “And nowhere is going to be safe for him to run from me.”
Chapter 16
Tomah, Wisconsin
September 1947
The cranberry bogs were full to the brimming, flooded with water to bring the berries to the top. There were patches of red filling swampy little square ponds on either side of the road. It all looked quite magnificent from above, which was how Aleksandr Gavrikov saw almost everything. It was an early fall day with just a hint of a blustery wind, though he couldn’t truly feel it within the fire that covered his skin; he was aware of it, though, dimly, as though it was blowing in the face of someone else. He flew a little lower than he normally would have, taking in the majesty of the view. “I barely notice it anymore,” he said aloud, the mild wind whipping him in the face. “And it is such a shame.”
He took a breath and smelled something a little different. More of the slightly sulfuric smell that he had long since grown accustomed to. It was heavier somehow, though, more fragrant. He paused in his flight, idly curious. Nowhere to go, no great hurry. Several days until I’m to rendezvous with Janus in Chicago ...
He took another whiff and caught it again, stronger this time. He stopped his flight, ceased the forward momentum and extended his hands out. The winds were always warm around him, the heat from the flames that wrapped his body doing their level best to warm the air. Something was different, though, something ... more.
“Hello, Aleksandr,” came a voice from just behind him. He spun in the air, twisting, his jaw slack as he looked up. HOW? The sight sent waves of shock through his body. Another figure was hovering just behind him, wreathed in flames that glowed blue, a slightly off-color mirror image of himself, staring back at him, an odd, fiery grin set upon non-existent lips. With a black hole as the only sign of a mouth, it was really more of a leer.
“Who are you?” Aleksandr asked and felt himself bob in the air from a sudden lack of control over his flight. He steadied himself, trying to push aside the shock of seeing a doppelganger hanging just outside his reach, staring back.
“Sovereign,” the other figure said casually. “But that’s just a name.”
“What do you want?” Aleksandr spat with a hiss and a crackle of flame. He could feel his non-existent skin burning.
“Nothing,” the other figure said with something approaching a shrug. “I just sensed you flying over and thought I’d introduce myself, let you know that you’re not the only one in the neighborhood right now.”
“The only what?” Aleksandr said, looking the flaming body up and down. “The only fire-covered freak?”
The figure gave another slight incline of the head and the flames dissipated as they’d been snuffed. A man remained behind, a figure a little taller than himself, clad in khaki pants, dress shoes, and a dress shirt. “Now I’m not fire-covered, at least.” He smiled. “Though one could argue that every meta-human, by dint of being so comparatively rare, is a freak.”
“What do you want?” Aleksandr asked again, his brain running along the same grooves repetitively, his mind still reeling from the shock of seeing someone like him hovering just a few feet away.
“I told you, nothing,” the man said, his amusement gone. “Like I said, I saw you flying by and just thought I’d say hello.” He gave a semi-formal salute with two fingers. “That done, I’ll leave you to your business. I wouldn’t want to impose upon you, after all.” He tilted in the other direction and began to float slowly downward, toward a state highway a few hundred feet off in the distance.
“Where are you going?” Aleksandr asked, struggling for a word, for a question, something beyond the rote instincts that were throwing absurd question after question at him. He was vaguely aware that he should be asking something different, something more ... intelligent, yet he could not seem to find it in himself to do so.
“Wherever I want,” the man called Sovereign said, not bothering to turn back as he sank toward the road below, drifting as casually as a leaf on the wind and no more concern about his direction, it seemed. “Just like always.” The man turned and gave Aleksandr a little smile. “Take care of yourself. As far as I know, you and I are the only fire-covered freaks left in the world.”
Aleksandr watched him go, silent, unsure what he should say or if he should say anything. The man reached the pavement and began to walk—to stroll, really—along the blacktop, slowly, seemingly unconcerned with anything.
For a time, Aleksandr watched him, trying to think of something to say, something to ask. After a few minutes, the man disappeared behind the trees lining the road, and Aleksandr flew on toward Chicago, his head now swimming with all the questions he wished he had asked.
Chapter 17
Sienna Nealon
Now
Six months passed quickly in a fever of activity. They all started to run together, really, and the only differentiation until we moved into our new headquarters building (it took them only five months to build it) was what the weather was like outside my window on any given day, and whether or not Senator Foreman was in the building. He was with us at least once a week, popping in to make sure we weren’t slacking off while the world was burning, I supposed.
And burning it was.
“Estimated casualty reports say it’s all over but the crying,” Agent Li said from his place at the head of the conference room. We did things a little more formally in the new Agency. Li was standing in front of a map of Mexico City, which was the last place in the entire country of Mexico to feel the tentacles of Century snake their way through.
“The Mexican authorities weren’t able to muster an effective counter to their efforts?” Karthik asked from side of the table to my left, closer to Li.
“No,” Li said. “We extended another offer the week before last to assist, but they felt it was their ...” his face soured, “sovereign business to deal with. Mexico didn’t have a huge meta
population, but they had some very good cloisters that are now smoking craters, including one in a neighborhood in Mexico City that’s being attributed to drug war violence.”
“And Canada?” Scott asked, seated just to my right, which was fitting. He, Karthik and Reed had become my lieutenants, helping me keep the crazy fevered pace of operations running. Well, with a little help.
“They infiltrated telepaths into the major metro areas weeks ago,” my mother said, putting her elbows on the table, “after they were done nailing down Mexico. They’re finishing up a clean sweep now.”
“She’s right,” Li said with a curt nod. “Hawaii and Alaska are similarly already stitched up, Century’s work already done. We didn’t get much warning on either of those, of course.”
“Why is Sovereign saving the United States for last?” This one came from Senator Foreman; it was one of his days with us, and his deep, resonant voice echoed in the conference room.
Li paused. “We’ve speculated quite a bit about that, but the truth is we don’t have a solid answer.”
“Because of me,” I said, drawing Foreman’s attention my way.
“Pure conjecture,” Li said.
“But probably good conjecture,” I said. “We still have no idea what he’s planning beyond the extermination. I leaned back in my chair, barely noticing the leather padding. It had been a long six months, a frustrating six months. Most of the countries of South America hadn’t even wanted to acknowledge they had metas, let alone that they were being hunted to extinction by some unknown, shadowy force. Even having Foreman on our side hadn’t allowed us to intervene in any but the smallest cases. We’d managed to save five metas in Ecuador, to move them to a cloister here in the U.S. I’d also killed eight submachine-gun toting mercenaries and a meta who didn’t even get a chance to show me her power before I shot her dead. She’d been about a half an inch from breaking Scott’s neck, and so she had to go, no choice.
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