Marius stared at him. “What you’re outlining is impossible in conventional terms.”
Weissman shook his head. “Not with a meta army.”
Marius put his head back against the headrest. “Yes, even with a meta army it’s still impossible.”
Weissman broke into a grin that did not look pleasant at all. “I found a Hades.”
Marius felt a mild surprise run through him. “Did you? That’s interesting. That line was supposed to be wiped out.” Or at least that’s what Janus told me, the liar. “Still,” he said, carefully turning his expression back to neutral, “that’s not going to be enough. A Hades can kill a lot of people, but we’re talking about a need for a two-stage plan here.”
“Oh?” Weissman sounded more than a little snotty as he said it. “How would you do it, then?” A challenge.
Marius thought about it for only a second before answering. “First, you kill the metas. Quietly, behind the scenes. You kill them first because no one is going to notice or care that they’re gone, and once they are, you can’t exactly resurrect them to fight for you. Second, you kill the armies of the world, the police—anyone who would raise a weapon to do harm to us.”
Weissman’s eyes were large, hiding behind those greasy bangs. “That was a fast answer. But I’m detecting a mighty big flaw in your plan.”
“Oh?” Marius waited for it. “What’s that?”
“Uh, namely that we don’t have a way to wipe out every single army and violent person in the world.” There was a snippy self-satisfaction in the way Weissman said it.
It was Marius’s turn to smile. “Actually, I do.”
Weissman’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Oh, you just do? Just like that? A simple method by which to snap your fingers and BAM! There goes all the opposition in the world.” He leaned slightly. “If you have this, why haven’t you used it until now?”
“I’ve thought about it,” Marius said, and he drummed his fingers along the armrest built into the door, pleather thumping with each touch of his fingertips. “In truth, I’ve thought about it every day for the last two thousand years.” He sighed. “But I never had a coherent reason to until now. No plan. And, as you know, I’ve just been content to stay the hell away from humanity as a whole and run my own life apart from them.” He pictured her again, the girl he’d just seen. Sienna Nealon. “Now you’ve given me a reason.”
“All right,” Weissman said grudgingly. “So what’s this way of destroying all opposition you’ve got? Does it have a name?”
“It does indeed,” Marius said. And he felt something shift inside him, a voice in the throng in his brain. I am ready to assist you, it said, only faintly resembling the fearsome man he had met on the hilltop outside Rome all those years ago. “I think you would know him as … Ares.”
Chapter 55
Sienna
Now
I stared at Sovereign and he stared back at me. He had warm eyes, somewhere under the crazy stalker ones. Or at least he was trying to present that aura. I could still taste the drywall dust floating in the air, and though the sun had started to sink lower in the sky, light shone through the cracks between the mechanical armored shutters. He waited for my answer and I could see the hope on his face.
And then I crushed it.
“Just exactly how stupid do you think I am?” I asked.
“Wh–what do you mean?” His whole demeanor changed, caught completely off guard.
I put aside the weariness I was feeling, dragging Wolfe to the forefront. A predator urge shot through me, along with adrenaline. “You killed and absorbed Ares back in Gaul.”
“Wha …” He shook his head, shut his eyes for a second and they shot back open wider than ever. “What does … I don’t know what you mean—”
“You are a terrible liar,” I said, shaking my head. “Thanks for confirming it.” He looked at me dead on. “I suspected it,” I said, “after Janus mentioned how he died all mysteriously, knowing that the threat we were waiting to get hit with was a long-hidden Ares type. But I didn’t know until you answered it for me just now.”
“Ohhh,” he said, and he looked first annoyed then resigned. He knew he’d been had. “Come with me.”
“I think you know I’m not going away with you—”
“Not away,” he said, and stood up, taking a couple steps back. “Just a little ways. Back. Back to the beginning.” He flew up, out through the hole in the roof.
And me? I was after him in a heartbeat.
I did have that final duty, after all.
He was already close to sonic speed when I cleared the hole in the roof. I angled after him and took off, racing to catch up. He poured on the speed once he knew I was following him, and I heard him break the sound barrier. I followed, feeling the cold air race over my body, causing the dress I was wearing to flutter in annoying ways. This is why I don’t wear dresses. Well, it’s one of the reasons, anyway.
We shot over the 494 loop. Houses passed in a blur underneath me. He slowed and started to descend moments later. He clearly wasn’t hotdogging it, so I followed slow, making sure he wasn’t setting a trap for me.
He wasn’t.
I recognized the street when he came down. The trees lined either side, the late summer heat shining on us from above. I was about a hundred yards behind him as he set down under one of the giant maples that shrouded the house in front of us. He disappeared under the cover of it and I took my time coming down, finally landing in the middle of the street. I had to use my hands to keep my dress from billowing up like a parachute as I descended. What a pain in the ass.
I saw him waiting at the front door, and he cracked the knob and stopped there. “Like I said, back to the beginning.” And then he disappeared inside.
Great. I stared at the house, low annoyance thrumming through me.
It was my house.
I crossed the yard, halting by the front door to peek in. “I’m not waiting in ambush,” his voice came from somewhere deeper inside. “I’ll be in the basement if you want to change first.”
I couldn’t argue with that idea.
I slipped inside and found he wasn’t visible at all. I walked through the living room and stopped by the glass coffee table. “Where are you?” I called, cautious. The place smelled like it always had, minus the aroma of bad cooking that I was pretty sure hadn’t been here before mom and I moved in.
“I told you, in the basement,” his voice came back, and I could tell he was exactly where he’d said he was. I took a breath and headed toward my room, shutting the door behind me.
I dressed quickly, pulling on jeans and a t-shirt and grabbing a spare holster out of my closet to change over to. I’d been wearing an ankle holster before and, with the length of the dress I was wearing, could just about get away with it. The gun didn’t quite fit, being a little smaller than one you’d normally wear at the hip, but I wasn’t in a mood to be picky.
I exited my room, thinking briefly back to the day I’d left it, and kept going out the front door. It hadn’t been that long ago, really, but it felt like forever.
I walked toward the basement, remembering a very different day. Of all the times I’d had to fear the basement, the one I would always remember most was the day I faced Wolfe down there, sure that it was going to be the end of me.
Something about that memory gave me a spark of confidence. Because that day had not been the end of me.
It had been the end of Wolfe.
Not the end, Little Doll.
“You’re non-corporeal now, so it was kind of an end.”
“Did you say something?” Sovereign’s voice came from behind the door to the basement stairs.
“Not to you,” I replied as I opened the door.
Each step caused a clumping noise on the wooden stairs. I wore heavy-tread boots, laced tightly because the steel toe did wonders for the damage of my kicks. Aesthetically, they were a nightmare, and I’d be the first to admit that. But aesthetics were never m
y primary concern.
Sovereign was waiting, and he watched me as I took the turn at the L of the stairs. I paused on the wooden landing and looked at him, lurking in the dark close to what had once been the bane of my existence.
The box.
It was metal, stood about six feet tall, and looked like nothing so much as an overlarge gravestone hiding in the shadows behind Sovereign. He gestured to it in a very Vanna-White-esque way, like it was something I’d never seen before.
“Are you going to monologue now?” I asked, leaving a hand resting on the wooden rail next to me. “Because if so, I can come back later.”
“Come on,” he said, inviting me down into my own basement. “You’ve figured it out, and credit where it’s due—I thought I had outwitted you on the Ares thing, but hey, it’s not so bad.”
“You’re planning to destroy every soldier in the whole world, every police officer,” I said and took my hand off the railing to fold my arms in front of me. “It’s pretty bad.”
Any amusement in his expression vanished. “Well, plans can change.”
I let out a fake laugh that actually made him take a step back. “You’re still a terrible liar. You’ve been running a scam on me all along. There wasn’t an inch of daylight between you and Weissman at any point after Andromeda.”
His mouth warped and his eye twitched. “What gave it away?”
“The plane he put me on,” I said. “The flight plan said it was bound for Tulsa.”
He shook his head like it didn’t matter, but I could see the lie written on his face. “So?”
“So you were going to have him put me in storage,” I said. “In a stasis unit.”
His lips pursed with fury. “Maybe that was Weissman’s plan, but—”
I drove a fist through the railing and splinters exploded from it. Sovereign took an abrupt step back. “No more lies,” I said.
“Okay. Fine,” he said. The shock in his voice had been replaced with a menace I doubt he even realized was there. “I just wanted you to see the real me.”
“I’ve seen the real you,” I said. “I’ve probably seen more of the real you than you have.”
“You don’t know me,” he said quickly, with a flare of indignation.
“I know what you’ve done,” I said. “What you planned to do.”
“No, you don’t know, you don’t know anything.” He shook his head and now he just looked furious and disgusted. “I can’t believe you figured—” He let out a grunt that sounded primordial. “I was just trying to show you the way. We were fixing the world. Imagine a world without violence. Without cruelty. Without people trying to hurt and kill each other. A place where—”
“Where if you step out of line, the power of a vengeful god descends upon you, prepared to smite you for your wrongs,” I said. “That’s what you were planning to be: the hammer of righteousness.”
“I was—I am going to be the one who makes sure that if someone steps too far over the line, they get what’s coming to them.” He was breathing a little harder now, staring me down. “What if someone had done that for you when your mother was sticking you in here?” He flung a hand out to indicate the box. “What if you had been raised in a world where the threat of violence didn’t hang over you?”
“Except the violence you would do if I stepped out of line,” I said. “You’ve got aspirations to be a petty tyrant. To run an Empire like Janus and the others did. And you’ll rule from on high, making sure the peasants and slaves don’t step out of line.”
“That’s not how it would be,” he said, but he sounded like he was becoming more progressively unhinged. “I want to help people—”
“Provided they’ve survived your genocide and are appropriately loyal to your new regime.”
“It’s not like that!” he shouted, crossing into maniac territory. I could tell I’d succeeded in getting not only his goat but his whole herd. He’d been got. “I wanted to make it a better world! Free from war, crime, poverty—”
“Free from humans making choices,” I said. “A utopia ruled by the iron fist of—”
“If you say ‘a god’ again, so help me—”
“You’ll what?” I asked, staring at him from the landing. “You’ll make me the first to fall?” I took a step down and then another until I stood on the concrete, staring at him, breathing hard, his face reddening. “You know what you want to do? You want to lock the whole human race in a box of their own. Take away all their freedom and choices and power—”
He made this kind of squeaking noise of fury, and I had to steel myself to keep from stepping back. “You see this the way you’ve seen your life play out up until now.” He sounded strangled, like he was barely hanging on. “Everything that’s happened to you is coloring your perceptions of this future. It could be grand—and bright —”
“I’ve seen your future,” I said. “There’s nothing bright about it.”
He cocked his head at me. “What are you talking about?” His eyes narrowed. “What do you know?” He looked at me, face straining, eyes trying to see into my soul. “He’s blocking me. How the hell is he blocking me?”
“Dr. Zollers?” I asked. “You wouldn’t know this, but he’s been blocking you all along.” I took another step forward. “He’s been blocking you since I got back from your attempted abduction.”
“Why?” Sovereign sounded furious, but just a hint of weakness had crept into his voice. “How would you know—”
He shot through the air without much in the way of warning, and he was upon me, inches away. His hand flew to my throat and jerked me from the ground, fingers clutching around my windpipe. He lifted me off the concrete, and I could feel my vision darken, the sensation of being choked, of having the blood to my brain stopped. “You know what?” he asked. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Because I am not going to take this shit from you. Not from you. All my work, all my efforts, none of them mean a damned thing without you, and I will not lose you. Not this close to—”
Chapter 56
The darkness closed around the edges of my vision, and sensation disappeared. My head drifted to a place I had been only a few days earlier, a place full of life and sensation, a place as far from a dark and dingy basement as could possibly be imagined.
It was a forest.
The sounds of living woods were all around me. I could hear the chirp of birds, the thrum of insects. The smell of fresh greenery had been in the air. The lovely warmth of the sun shone down upon my pale skin, and I lifted my face to it where it streamed through the canopy above.
I’d come here in my mind when I’d been in the box, on the plane. And ever since, it had been a memory that played in my head over and over, always at the surface.
And it was the thing I could not let Sovereign see.
Yet.
“Hello, Sienna Nealon,” came the voice of the girl standing across from me. “I have been waiting for this moment. I have been waiting here in the darkness.
“For you.”
“Adelaide,” I said and looked up into the sunlight. “It’s a pretty nice darkness you have here.”
“This is but a memory,” she said, and I saw the faint echoes of the girl who had once been Adelaide change, shift like an illusion wavering in the summer heat. “You are still in the darkness of your captivity.”
“I am,” I said, knowing it was true. “The Wolfe brothers … they’re going to—”
“Shhh,” she said, and her finger was upon my lips. “They are nothing. A worry for another time. I can teach you to make them as irrelevant to you as they are to the world at large. But there is a greater consideration that you need to be made aware of.”
“Sovereign,” I said.
“Sovereign,” she agreed and took a few steps back from me.
“You can teach me how to use my powers?” I asked. “Really? Truly?”
“I can teach you,” she said, nodding with that sense of peace I’d always associated with her. “But first I must
impart to you something else. Something of vital importance.”
“All right,” I said. “Hit me.”
“I can feel your spirit flagging,” she intoned. “I can feel your strength waning. You are the last one who is able to fight, Sienna. You are the last to be able to take up this challenge. Omega fed me full of souls so that I could be ready to accept the mantle.” She lowered her head. “It was all against my will, of course. They made me a weapon and were to make me a bride sacrifice. I was told to follow whoever opened my tank, to become indebted and bonded to them. They meant to give me over to him if it came to it, and if he would not accept me, I was to fight and kill him.”
I swallowed. “But you didn’t.”
“Because you freed me,” she said, and she took my hands once more. “Because you saved me—”
“I led you to death,” I said, and closed my eyes. “I got you killed.”
“You let me see the sun once more,” she said. “You let me make my choices. I was not a pet, but they made me one. They took away my will, subordinated it to their own, and kept me in captivity where I could do nothing but witness the world roll by around me.” She turned her eyes to me. They found mine, and something like a fire roared inside them. “I know what comes,” she whispered.
The forest faded around us, and was replaced by something else entirely. Something … horrifying.
Black skies were clouded with a dense fog. The skeletons of buildings stretched around me in every direction. Girders and broken concrete were all that remained, like a tableau straight out of any post-apocalyptic CGI-fest you can imagine. It looked as though the whole world had been washed away by fire and destruction, and all that remained was ashes and bones of the civilization that had once been.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, staring at the horizon for any sign of life, of movement. There was no breeze and the air stunk of death and fire.
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