Marius nodded. “I still have to exert mine with my mother.”
Janus made a grunting sound. “As commanding as she is, she is human. Metas have a much stronger will. They will fight back harder, will provide much more of a grapple than you are presently used to. We need to acclimate you by having you take on lesser metas in preparation for the final challenge.”
Marius swallowed, felt the dry mouth that always came with nerves. “How will we do that?”
“I am working on it,” Janus said with another grunt. “There are metahumans out there who have done terrible things, who travel the land and wreak havoc upon innocents simply to satisfy their own appetites. I intend to find a few of those, to place ourselves in their path, and then cull their abilities to build your strength.
Strength, Marius thought. What if I could wield such power as Ares over men? It made him shudder slightly, in fear and … something else. He looked back at Janus, and there was a wary smile on the man’s face. “Will I be able to control them?”
“With some effort, I think,” Janus said. “It is the act of harnessing their powers in your service that will become the difficult part, I expect. Simply quashing them within your mind is what most incubi and succubi do if they should absorb a meta, and thus never learn the secret to controlling these new abilities that they gain.”
“Why do they do that?” Marius asked. The firelight flickered on the walls and cast the room in a dim light. It was still better than going to bed as the sun set and relying on it to wake one up.
“They fear to control these abilities,” Janus said. “To draw the powers of other metas freely would be to draw the ire of Jupiter himself upon you. He has forbidden this thing, and now that his brother is dead, no one would stand against him.” Janus landed a hand on Marius’s covered shoulder. “What we do now, should you wish to proceed, will bring with it some risk. Should we be discovered by the others, they will try everything they can to kill you. Your kind has been hated and feared by the rest of metakind since they discovered what power you have over them. ‘Soul stealers,’ they call you, and revile your touch. They cast you out of their cities, out of their company, and kill you when they think they can do it unobserved. I have seen this myself and done all I can to ward against it.”
Marius felt himself swallow again. “Will they ask about my powers eventually? If I continue to show up in your company?”
“Almost certainly,” Janus said, no sense of deception about him. Marius could feel the bracing honesty, the sense of urgency. “Which is why it is of the utmost importance that we acquire for you some power that you can lean on, and as quickly as possible.” Janus stood straight again, his face foreboding. “From there, it will be up to you to learn to entice and enthrall that soul, to make it enough your own that its will is broken to yours and its power is in your own hands.”
“How do I do that?” Marius asked into the silence that followed. He could feel his own fear building on itself—first at the thought of having no power to show the other gods and goddesses if asked, and second at the thought of failing to bend some mind to his will. Failure in either case would be the same, he thought.
“I am not entirely sure,” Janus admitted. “And thus we come to another crucial bend in the plan. I place a burden upon you now that you must decide whether you wish to take up.” He sniffed. “Once we meet with Ares—Mars—and I have spoken to him about what must be done, should he agree with my thinking—and I rather suspect he will, based on the emotions I feel from him—then we are committed to action. Your role and abilities must be a secret up until the very second they are needed. This is for your own sake, and ours. You must decide for yourself whether this is a path you wish to undertake. For once we begin down it, it is thorny and walks the edge of a cliff. There will be no leaving it save for down into the abyss below, and be assured that that is the direction we will go should we make even one misstep along the way.”
Marius turned to look back in the cloudy glass. He could see himself, barely. He had only seen himself in the reflection of a cold, crisp pond on a still morning before. This was new and different and still very foreign, like the candles and hearths.
But he liked it. He liked it all.
And to fail meant having to leave, to hide, to go back to the shadows once more, taking shelter wherever he might find it.
“I will do it,” he said and felt the determination within himself. “Whatever it takes, I will do it. I will bend a will to my own.”
He felt the pressure of Janus’s hand on his shoulder once more. “I am proud this day, Marius. It is one thing for a man to say he will do something that he fears. It is another to make a true commitment in the face of fear. It would be a simple thing for you to have run. It is quite a bit more complex to face your fears in the way you have chosen.” Marius felt the hand leave his shoulder with one more squeeze. “Prepare yourself. Diana will be along shortly, and we should sup together. As a family.”
With that, Janus left, but Marius sat there staring at the mirror for a while longer.
Family.
Home.
With one last breath to give himself courage, he turned and walked toward the door. With each step he felt more certain than the last.
Chapter 39
Sienna
Now
I awoke to a gentle shake, opening my eyes to see Scott kneeling by my side. “You should be more careful waking me up,” I said sleepily, “it could get you killed.”
“If it means a morning kiss, I might be willing to go out that way,” he said.
I ran my tongue over the inside of my mouth. “If you could smell my breath right now, you might change your mind.” I shifted my body, rolling it to sit up on the edge of the couch. “What time is it?”
“Just after five,” Scott said. “Looks like you needed that sleep.”
“Yeah,” I said, and smacked my lips together. “What’s the word?”
“Foreman’s called a meeting in five minutes.”
“Good, because we have many important things to discuss and questions to answer.” I yawned and stretched, putting my arms over my head. “The first of which is, ‘Will there will be coffee’?”
“There’s coffee,” Scott said. “I heard a rumor he even had breakfast catered in.”
“Ooh,” I said and headed toward the conference room without bothering to say anything else.
There was breakfast, and it had been catered in by the local bagel chain. I had no complaints as I spread blueberry cream cheese over my bagel. Li was already there, trying to spread his cream cheese with one hand. The plate kept slipping away from him, but he didn’t look up to register my amusement, thankfully. A better person than I might have offered to help; I wisely kept my distance, figuring that offering him assistance would be taken as an insult or something.
Kat and Janus wandered in about five minutes later, Janus leaving heavily on his girlfriend. The sight of the two of them together still gave me gut-level heebie-jeebies, and I could tell from Gavrikov’s veritable rippling in my head that he was still none too pleased. I got the sense that he and Janus had been more than casual acquaintances, and that he viewed the fact that Janus was sleeping with his sister as something of an insult or treading on his guy territory or something testosterone related. I just viewed it as icky.
Reed and Scott breezed in a few minutes later, followed by Ariadne. She seemed like the odd man out, a little distant as the two of them took their seats. Foreman was the last to arrive; he had Harper and a new guy in his wake. The new guy did not look happy.
He was a touch under six feet, had jet-black hair with a hint of some sort of gel in it to hold the parts in place in a wave over his forehead. He was olive-skinned and serious, but his lips made him look like he’d held onto a taste of something very sour.
Foreman didn’t waste moments. He went straight to the head of the table. With a frown, he asked, “Where’s Zollers?”
“Sleeping,” I answered for hi
m. It was a reasonable guess. “With Sovereign in the building, I’ve got him on telepathic watch to keep any mental break-ins from happening.”
Foreman gave me a grunt of acknowledgment. “And with me and Janus lurking, he won’t be needed in the short term.”
“Hence the sleep,” I said.
“All right, well,” Foreman said, and clapped his hands together, “you’ve already met Ms. Harper. This is Mr. Rocha, from the National Security Agency.”
“NSA?” Scott asked as a slight buzz of energy ran through the room. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why is the NSA here?”
“Because you need help intercepting and decoding your enemy’s transmissions,” Rocha said. His voice was thin and light, and he kept whatever displeasure he was feeling out of his voice. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, but we have a program or two for that.”
“PRISM?” Reed said with a roll of his eyes. “I don’t even need to say it again, do I?”
“We’re all ignoring you by now,” Scott said. “This could be useful.”
“Oh, yeah, invading privacy of massive numbers of people is super-useful,” Reed said acidly. “To anyone who’s actually got control over the data. Those of us whose privacy is being compromised—”
“No one gives a crap about your browser history,” Scott said, waving him off. He paused then glanced slightly nervously at Kat. “Although … man, I hope they’re not reading our old text messages. And the photos…” He grimaced and Kat gave him a quizzical look.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “We’ve had access to PRISM intercepts for a while. What’s new?”
Rocha smiled, looking a little pained. “Now you’ve got me combing through it for you, and I know a lot more about how the system works than your resident tech geek.”
I shrugged. “Can’t hurt. If nothing else, J.J. will be thrilled to have you on his staff.”
Rocha’s smile died. “Excuse me?”
Foreman buried his face in a palm while Scott and Reed exchanged a giggle, like the twelve-year-olds they were. “Not what I meant,” I corrected. Man, I had to watch out for that one in the future.
Rocha gave me a look that was pure disdain. “If you’ll allow me to set up on one of your computers, I can start working immediately.”
“Sure,” I said. “Scott, set him up, will you? You know, if you’re done chortling.”
“Man, where the hell was all this help six months ago, when we were stumbling in the dark?” Scott muttered as he headed to the door, Rocha following just slightly after him.
“Where it’s always been,” Foreman answered, absolutely glacial. “The problem wasn’t it, the problem was you—your Agency is deeply classified. Or was,” he added, not looking all that happy.
“I’ll take it,” I said as the door shut behind Rocha and Scott. “At least there’s some benefit to us for getting blown out into open. Before when we would ask other agencies for information, they’d end up looking around wondering who the hell just said something.”
“Welcome to the federal government,” Foreman replied. He was so impassive I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to take that.
“So can Mr. Rocha tap us in to Century’s communications?” Ariadne asked. “I mean … is it possible that they’ve just been talking out in the open like this, where anyone could read it?”
“Not just anyone could read it, as I understand,” Foreman said. “Something about browser encryptions, and Tor, things that I couldn’t explain to you if I had to. However, the NSA does seem to have some experience tracking communications of all varieties, and with your boy J.J.’s help—and the laptop recovered from Weissman—Mr. Rocha seems to think we have an excellent chance to uncover some of Century’s back trails.”
“Find their trails, maybe find the tip-off for the meeting,” I said, tapping the table.
“That’s the hope,” Foreman said. “But I don’t know enough about it to be very optimistic. Still, it’s another door.”
“Every door we can open at this point is a good one,” Janus said wearily. He was leaning on the arm of his chair.
“What about the one with Sovereign behind it?” Reed asked. “Because I’m still not keen on opening that one unless we’re going to throw in a few grenades and wait before entering.”
“Very concerned about your right to privacy, not so concerned about perforating a man without a trial,” Foreman mused aloud. “That’s an interesting set of contradicting beliefs you’re running around with there, Mr. Treston.” Reed flushed but said nothing.
“Acrimony aside,” I said and shifted my attention to Harper, “if they find this meeting site, you can provide surveillance, right?”
Harper nodded once, crisply. “I’ll have to refuel soon, but that shouldn’t take too long.”
“Where does that happen?” I asked.
“If need be, we can do it here at the 133rd Air Wing, next to the airport,” Harper said. “Preferably I’d send it to Camp Ripley, where the drone wouldn’t look quite so out of place coming in for a landing.”
“Okay, well, just do it now,” I said. “We don’t know when we’re going to get a break and I’ll want something ready urgently.”
“With the pull the Senator has, I can get you a few more drones for coverage if need be,” Harper said, betraying nothing in the way she said it. “Have them standing off in orbiting patterns and just hand them off to other operators when they need to refuel.”
“Whatever it takes and whatever you can give,” I agreed. “But once we find these guys, then we have to decide what to do.”
“Hit ’em with a missile from the drone,” Reed offered, a little viciously. “That’s what drones are for, right?” I didn’t think he was serious. Exactly.
“We can’t do that in U.S. airspace,” Harper said with a simple shake of the head.
“Of course not,” Reed muttered. “We only—”
“Stuff it, Reed,” I shot at him. “So we’re back to a ground-based conflict on this one.” I looked up at Foreman. “Any other support? Army? Marines?”
He shook his head. “Posse comitatus.”
“National Guard?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “Get me a clear and present danger and the president might—maybe—move on this sooner.”
“Do you have his ear on this?” I asked.
“No,” Foreman said with a faint smile. “I’m a junior Senator from the opposing party. He’s more likely to listen to a man on the street than me. I’m working through channels with him, but they’re not particularly clear ones, if you catch my meaning.”
“So we’re on our own but at least we have some ancillary support at this point,” I said. “I’ll take it.” It was a hell of a lot better than having nothing. Foreman did not respond other than with a slightly amused raise of an eyebrow.
“So we wait,” Janus said. “We wait and hope that this … technical wonder you have constructed bears some form of fruit?”
“Unless you want to make an effort at questioning Sovereign,” I said, staring at him.
His head was bald, his beard gone, and his lined face looked peculiar even in the spots where the flesh had healed from his unfortunate scalding. “I will talk to him if you wish it, but I don’t think it will help. We have steered rather clear of each other for a very long time, and with good reason.”
“Yeah,” I said, harkening back to the story he’d told us, “but do you think talking to him would do any positive good?”
“If you are looking to aggravate him, perhaps,” Janus said with a shrug. “Otherwise, I doubt it.”
“We’ll skip that for now,” I said.
“Never underestimate the value of annoying people,” Reed said, and I wondered if he knew how much he was living out his own advice at the moment.
“Well, if there’s nothing else to discuss …” I said.
“Hold it,” Li said from his end of the table. “We still have no actionable plan on what we’re going to do when we find this meeting. You�
��re talking about facing down one hundred—”
“Eighty,” I said. “Or maybe seventy; I’ve lost count.” I paused, thinking about it for a second.
“You’ve killed so many people you’ve lost track of the numbers,” Li said, surprisingly calm.
I started to open my mouth to protest out of reflex, and stopped. “Yes,” I said, in slightly numb surprise. “I have.”
“She’s doing her job,” Foreman said quickly, not hazarding a look in my direction. “Every member of Century that’s removed from their organization makes it more likely that we’re going to be able to take them out.” He laid his knuckles on the table as he leaned over. “I’ve heard the basics about this Ares-type they’re holding onto, and I have to say—it scares the hell out of me. Watching them come for our people one by one was frightening; knowing they possess the capability to wipe out every last one of our defenders pushes my fear of them up to the next level. They need to be taken out, by any means necessary.”
“I am fine with that,” Li said, calmly assertive. “But in terms of a plan, even walking in with auto shotguns doesn’t seem like it’s going to cover all the bases. If we can’t just fire a missile and take them out of existence, then that means a fight—”
“No,” I said. I felt a slow grin crack my face. “No, it doesn’t. We’ve been looking at this all wrong. If we’re at war, and we’re up against an army … we need an advantage, right?”
“Right,” Foreman said, giving me a cautious look. “But as previously pointed out, we have no advantage to give you. No tanks, no soldiers, no planes—”
“We don’t need any of those things,” I said, shaking my head. “We just need one thing, and one thing alone—other than the location of their meeting, obviously.”
The smile on my face must have been very disquieting, because some cracks of nervousness started to show up in Foreman’s facade. “And what would that be?”
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