Mars urged his horse forward a few paces with a nudge, putting himself in front of the line of gods atop the hill. Marius kept his eyes on the man—Mars, the God of War. He watched him, and Mars lifted his hands and sighed again, then pushed his hair back over his shoulders.
Mars lifted his hands in the air and held them aloft, eyes closed. He stood, still as a statue, facing the battle below. Marius heard faint whispering, like voices over the horizon, the maddening sounds of people just beyond his sight but not beyond his ears.
The wind swirled past him in hot tongues, the summer sun heating the air around him. Marius kept his eyes upon Mars, watching him hold there, the whispers raging around them. Marius’s eyes broke from the God of War and looked all around for the source of the whispers. The gods were all silent, gazes fixed on Mars, and the hillside around them was devoid of any spectators or speakers.
Marius turned his attention to Janus, ready to break the silence and ask the question, but Janus held a finger up to his lips to quell it before it was even asked. He then took it and pointed it to the battle, and Marius let his gaze fall back upon the site of the rout.
Where the usurper’s men were now losing.
It was not even a contest. He watched in the outlying spaces as the men of Proculus’s army fell upon their own spears by the dozens, by the hundreds. Even those not taking arms up against themselves were finding the Roman Legion surging through their number with increased ferocity. Marius squinted, his superior eyesight giving him a close view of the fight, as though it were happening right in front of him. The men of the Roman legion were moving with speed beyond that of normal humans, their blades moving up and down in fast, precise motions that sent the blood of their foes through the air in sprays and gushes.
Marius turned back to look at Mars, who was now lowering his hands. The battle was won, the enemy lines dissolved in a frenzy of suicide and panic. Mars let a long sigh of satisfaction and spoke. “Your servant yet lives, Janus. No accidents this time, you see.” He wheeled and smiled, his blunt, flat face suffused with a satisfaction that Marius had seen only a few times on the faces of people.
“Indeed, your skill is great, Ares,” Janus said with a nod. “I saw one of your children once attempt to influence a battle a tenth of this size.” He chortled. “They all killed themselves, to the last man.”
Mars’s face lost its look of amusement. “What can I say? Sometimes the apple is kicked far from the tree.”
“Indeed,” Janus said, and his eyes fell upon Marius, favoring him with a smile. “This is true.”
Marius turned his attention toward the battlefield below, a bloody mess of corpses and wounded, the screams echoing up to the hilltop. It was an utter display of cruel death, inconceivable defeat pulled from certain victory. Death grabbed whole from the jaws of life.
Marius realized after a moment that the sight of the battle’s more grisly elements—the blood, the screams—did not bother him at all. He looked back at Janus and saw the subtle nod. And he returned his mentor’s smile.
Chapter 29
Sienna
Now
Reed was already halfway out the door and I was right behind him when Harper yelled out, “Wait!” I glanced back and she tossed me something small, like the size of a shelled peanut. “Ear mic. I’ll be able to give you eyes in the sky.”
Reed hesitated and she tossed him one as well. He caught it and poked it into his ear, and I saw the look on his face. “We’re at least twenty minutes out, if we’re lucky. We’ll never make it in—”
I surged past him, pushing him out of the way as I headed out into the bullpen. “Maybe you won’t—”
I didn’t bother finishing my statement. I just took off in a flat charge toward the nearest window and called Wolfe to the front of my mind as I leapt through it. No surprise, it hurt a lot. Glass doesn’t shatter in full windows like it does in cars or in movies. That’s called safety glass and it turns into little pebbles that don’t tend to do much harm.
This glass shattered into razor sharp slivers, and I felt my clothes and skin suffer dozens of cuts of varying depths as I broke through.
I ignored every single one of them for about two seconds while I felt Wolfe go to work, then I pulled Gavrikov to front of my mind as well and switched off the Earth’s gravity.
I shot into the sky like I had a rocket motor latched to my feet, wind rushing into my face. I threw a hand forward like I was Superman … err … Superwoman? Whatever. I threw a hand forward as I flew and saw lines of blood running off my newly knitted flesh.
“What the f—” I heard Harper in my ear. “Did she just jump out the window?”
“She did,” I said, enjoying the feel of the wind in my face. I surged east, the sky above and the ground blurring past below. “I’m about two minutes out from the site.” I followed the freeway east and saw the white line of 494’s loop ahead just a few miles. I didn’t know exactly how fast I was going, but it had to be in the hundreds of miles per hour. The rush of the wind was probably not helping Harper hear me, I figured.
“Are you in a wind tunnel?” Harper’s voice came back. She sounded cautious. “There’s no way your ETA is two minutes.”
“Status report, MARS SIX,” I said.
That seemed to snap Harper out of her state of confusion. “Right,” she said with crisp professionalism. “The town car is burning, but we have three friendlies on the ground and moving. Tangos are engaging with them, I’m picking up a lot of heat discharge from one of them, like they have a flamethrower or something, I’ve never seen anything like it—”
“Understood,” I said.
“I am designating you MARS SIX-ACTUAL,” Harper said calmly. More calmly than I would have been if I’d been in her situation.
“Neat,” I said. “Consider me designated the Goddess of War.”
There was a moment’s pause, and I figured Harper’s brain was crunching away on the other end of the line, trying to come up with an explanation for everything she was experiencing right now. I knew she’d given up when I heard her reply. “Copy that, MARS SIX-ACTUAL.”
I streaked through the air, passing the interstate and coming down lower as I got closer to St. Louis Park. I tried to match my geography with the overhead imagery I’d seen from the drone and locked on to Minnesota Highway 7. I skirted toward it and slowed slightly, looking for the turn. My eyes found it a mile ahead and I traced it back to the grid-like latticework of roads. A lone warehouse stood with vacant lots for several blocks on one side, and I knew I’d found it. Even before I saw the flaming car just down the street.
“MARS SIX-ACTUAL …” Harper’s voice came into my earpiece. “Is that you flying …?”
“Like a bird, like a plane,” I said. “Janus, if you can hear me …” I paused. “Brace yourself.”
It was a total furball on the ground, someone scrambling around, someone else—one of my people, I assumed—firing a gun, and someone else throwing fireballs into the air like they were Aleksandr Gavrikov, Jr. Except this one was female. It very much looked like a battle, like a frigging war on a city street, completely with flames and black smoke churning skyward. I couldn’t pick out which of the people in front of me were enemies with full certainty, but I caught a glimpse of a guy hanging back from the others, closer to the warehouse than the fight, and I realized he was surveying the scene. And not one of mine.
“Incoming,” I muttered and arced sharply downward. I put my feet out and dropped, letting my speed carry me along with the power of gravity. The wind blurred my eyes, and I saw the ground rush up at me in a way that might have scared me yesterday.
I landed feet first on the top of the Century agent’s head and slammed him into the ground like I was a sledgehammer and he was a watermelon. His skull exploded when it hit, a cascade of red spraying in a ten-foot cone across the cracked and ragged pavement. It was icky on my nice boots.
And it made a noise, too. Like a SPLAT.
Four heads wheeled to lo
ok at me, and the gunfire stopped for a moment as the little battlefield caught its collective breath.
I looked at each of them in turns over the next few seconds, caught the stunned looks on their faces as I stood there, one of their people already dead at—or, actually, under—my feet.
“Hi,” I said with a little wave and smiled enough to bare my teeth, channeling my best Wolfe impression. “Let’s play.”
Chapter 30
There were two women and two men remaining, all dressed reasonably well, all of them standing in utter shock at my entrance. I had to say, it was one of the more dramatic ones I’d pulled.
Their shock lasted about another second after my quip, and then the one who had been throwing fireballs tossed a big one at me.
I started to dodge but a voice in my head told me to stop. Gavrikov shouldered his way to the front of my mind. You may not be able to control the fires within without practice, but this one thing I can teach you to do easily.
I held out my hand and absorbed the fireball into my skin like a vacuum sucking up a loose plastic bag. Just WHUUUMP! and it was gone like it had never even been there. I turned my palm toward me and there was no sign of burns or blackness, not even a hint of smoke to indicate the passage of the flame from existence. “Well,” I said, “how ’bout that.”
There was another moment of collective silence and then things erupted. The same woman who’d cast flame at me seconds earlier chucked another ball of it, bigger this time, while a big guy who’d been lingering to my left seemed to grow a couple feet in height. I started toward him, pegging him for a Hercules-type, but Wolfe spoke: Atlas-type. Similar, Little Doll, but not exactly the same.
“How bad?” I asked as the big guy headed for me. There was another guy lingering back, who looked like he might have been from India, watching me kind of cagily. There was also an Asian woman, probably the one with the commanding voice who’d somehow picked up on the laser.
Bad, Wolfe said. The bigger they get, the stronger they get.
Like a Hercules, then.
No, Wolfe said. Much worse.
“How does it get worse?” I asked, below my breath.
Ask and ye shall receive.
The Atlas kept growing, his muscles staying in proportion to his body, the way it had been when he’d begun. His clothing started to rip when he reached eight feet of height, and I could see that although he was muscular, he wasn’t like a Hercules where it grew to ridiculous, beyond-steroid proportions. He looked like a well-built guy, just … well … taller.
And then he grew past ten feet, and I started to worry maybe a little.
I saw something long and black that reminded me of an arrow shooting by, but it sounded like a swarm of bees as it passed. I caught a glimpse of it and had a sense of plague as I watched it, a sense that I realized was coming from Wolfe.
Rudra-type, he said, like that was supposed to mean something to me. Fires arrows of disease.
“Lovely,” I said, and turned my gaze toward him, letting it drift over the last of the four metas arrayed against me, the Asian woman. “And her?”
While I was watching her, her skin began to glow subtly. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before; when Gavrikov had started to glow, he just caught on fire. In her case it was as though her skin was the sun, and after a second I was forced to look away from the harsh gleam.
Amaterasu, Bjorn supplied. Japanese Sun Goddess. The real one, I think.
“Century must have run out of flunkies,” I muttered under my breath.
The woman throwing fire, Gavrikov said, drawing my attention to her. She was cold and pale, had a Norwegian look about her. She is the last of my kind.
Friend of yours? I asked.
No, he said rather definitely. Most certainly not.
The Atlas came at me hard. He was nearly fifteen feet tall now, a giant the likes of which I hadn’t faced before. He was reasonably fast, too, operating at a speed which—for most metas—would have been impressive.
I wasn’t most metas.
I shot toward his knee with my power of flight, turning myself into position for a side kick as I went. I hit his knee with the force of a speeding Maserati, just at the point between the bones on the side of the kneecap. My foot tore into his flesh and and ripped through, his femur and tibia bowing apart as I blew through.
I landed on the other side and rolled back to my feet, still moving. There was a mighty thump as the Atlas hit the ground, but I was already coming around in a dead run toward my next target, Ms. Gavrikov. I felt a harrumph of annoyance from Aleksandr as I called her that.
“What the hell is going on down there?” I heard Harper mutter over the comm link.
“Something magical,” I said as Ms. Gavrikov sent another burst of flame my way. I saw the look in her eyes and it was pure panic. I sensed she’d never had someone go all fire-eater on her before. She’d probably never met anyone she couldn’t at least slow down with a timely bit of flame, and it was freaking her out. I saw the whites of her eyes as she froze, deer-like, in my path while I bore down on her. She’d seen what I’d just done to Atlas, after all …
I slammed into her, and freight train doesn’t adequately describe my momentum. I led with a front kick this time, and it folded her in half so hard that her face actually hit her feet as they were ripped off the ground. She flew in a straight line, and hit a lamp post with her back. The crack was short and significant, followed by the sound of her arm being ripped from her body at the point of impact—the shoulder—as she and the pole continued their journey another forty feet before they both came to rest. Her arm? I’m not sure where it landed. Poland, maybe.
Krakow, wench.
I saw a blur of light come at me from the right and turned in time to get blinded. It was as though I’d looked directly into the sun, and I wondered if I still had corneas. Based on the scalding feeling in my eyeballs, I would have guessed not. I couldn’t tell whether it was tears running down my cheeks or blood. Amaterasu hit me and I could feel the heat. I tried to absorb it with Gavrikov’s power but I failed, and the searing pain that hit my arm told me I’d had skin burned off.
No, no! Gavrikov shouted in my head. It won’t work! Different kind of heat energy!
“Helpful,” I gasped out in the midst of the pain. I gritted my teeth. Very helpful, I muttered in my head as the agony nearly overwhelmed me. The smell of burning flesh filled my nose, and I realized it was my own.
Something sharp and painful struck me in the back, and I realized I’d forgotten Rude Rod or whatever his name was. All the air rushed out of me at the sharp sensation of the impact, and feverish chills spread out from my flesh at that point. I sagged to my knees, all the strength leaving my legs in a rush like fans at a concert bailing after a no-show.
“Sienna Nealon,” Amaterasu said. She sounded eerily calm. Calmer than I would have been if I’d been in her shoes. I had just taken out at least three of her crew. I felt my arm burn and blacken, the flesh burning down to the muscle, and I realized where her confidence was coming from.
I fell to my back, which hurt, surprisingly. Something was happening to it, and it burned in its own way. I rolled slightly and my good hand traced its way up my shirt to find blisters and pustules clustered along my spine. I jerked my hand away at the touch, but not before it caused a howling pain down my back.
I lay on my bad arm—assuming it was still there. I couldn’t feel it, except for the pain. My eyes were firmly squinted closed, and though I tried to open them, they failed to respond. I could faintly see a glow, though, and wondered if I was imagining it or if the light of Amaterasu was simply the last thing I would see.
“Should we keep her alive for Claire?” It was a man’s voice. It was high and accented and sounded not at all pleasant. Rudra, Wolfe told me.
“I think not,” Amaterasu answered. I could tell by the sound of her voice that she was above me, and then I felt the soft glow of a sun coming to life. My skin began to burn, and the smel
l of it filled my nose, even as my body started to quiver in the rising, scorching heat.
Chapter 31
Knowing you’re about to die brings a certain amount of clarity. It eliminates the extraneous worries for the most part, the random thoughts, the idle nattering of all those voices in your head telling you to do this, do that, finish your homework, go to school, get a job, do your work, be responsible—
Oh, wait. I never had those voices.
I had one voice in my head (absent those mental hitchhikers that were giving me assistance nowadays). It was my mother’s voice, and it only said one thing, ever.
Survive.
I drew upon Aleksandr Gavrikov’s power and snapped my speed of flight from zero to maximum in two seconds, heading straight for Amaterasu’s voice. I felt myself impact against her, shoulders checking hard against her legs. She registered the pain with a “Hngh!” noise that was followed by her face and upper body smacking the pavement. I could feel the ground beneath my back, less than an inch below as I dragged along blind, then shot skyward to escape the situation.
Wolfe! I called out, the pain clawing at me. I could feel the wind against my face and then my sight began to return. I didn’t dwell too hard on whether I’d just regrown my eyes. Instead I focused on regaining my sensation. My jacket was scorched and sleeveless on one side. I watched the flesh return with my newly restored eyesight and struggled to keep my mind on what needed to be focused on—flight and my health. I had a feeling that Gavrikov and Wolfe were giving me a hand with both, because the pain was making it insanely difficult to concentrate.
I halted in midair and looked down. The city looked like a tiny model beneath me, the figure of the Atlas barely, barely visible lying far below. There were clouds, and suddenly I realized that I was having a harder time breathing. “Too … high …” I gasped and let myself drop into a dive again.
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