“Your emotional state is more or less irrelevant,” Weissman said, and I could tell he meant it.
“Clearly the key to every successful marriage,” I said. “Right up there with despising your intended’s friends.” I looked from Grihm to Frederick. “We’re really covering all the bases here.”
“You’ll get over it,” Frederick said, his dark head bobbing as he maintained his fighting stance.
“Given time, you’ll probably come to realize how perfect for each other you and Sovereign are,” Grihm added. He was smiling under that red beard.
“And if I don’t?” I didn’t really care what they thought, but I was delaying again. This fight was going to suck unless I could lay hands on a missile launcher. Hell, even if I could.
“That sounds like your problem, not ours,” Frederick said.
“We’re just here to help arrange the wedding,” Grihm said. “The honeymoon and everything that follows is between you and a counselor of your choosing. Though I’d suggest you avoid Dr. Phil.”
“Stall all you want,” Weissman said, his voice echoing down the hall. “Your campus is my next stop after I have you packaged and ready to ship, so don’t think you’re doing anything other than delaying your friends’ painful and impending deaths.” I could hear him chuckle from wherever he was perched. “I’m gonna have a lot of fun with that boyfriend of yours before he dies. Do you have any idea how much I hated his aunt and uncle? Enough that I made their murder scene unintentionally look like Wolfe’s handiwork, that’s how much. I figure I can do at least that much courtesy to him when the moment comes—”
I felt a surge of rage and leapt at Grihm, who was nearest to me. His eyes didn’t even widen as I came at him. I hit him in the jaw with my lead-off punch then landed another in his belly.
He did not even flinch. Just stood there and grinned through his feral teeth. “My turn.”
I had no time to dodge his offhand jab, and I honestly don’t know if I could have even if I’d had ample warning. Grihm was fast, faster than anyone else I could recall fighting, and his hand hit me in the nose like I’d had a piano fall on my head. I heard my nose break, felt it crack. Warm blood spilled down my lips as I staggered back.
“Don’t kill her,” Weissman said mildly, his voice seeming to come from all around me. “Or remove anything that won’t grow back. Everything else is fair game.”
“Sovereign … won’t be too happy … if you hurt me,” I said through the blood running down my lips. There were stars flashing in my eyes.
“I think he knows that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” Weissman said. “Besides, we’ll hose you off before we hand you over, make sure you have time for the bruises and bite marks to heal.”
I blinked as another monstrous punch came my way, this time from Frederick. I saw it in my peripheral vision just before it landed and barely inclined my head in order to mitigate the damage. It still sent me staggering; this time right into Grihm’s waiting paws. He slashed me hard across the belly and I felt my skin open with a screaming pain, felt blood run down my shirt and belly.
“Hmm,” Frederick said. “That’s just what I did to Charlie. It’s kind of poetic, or perhaps even a little symmetrical, in a way.”
I couldn’t have opened my mouth without screaming or I might have asked if it was symmetrical because I was folded in half, clutching at my belly. One of them elbowed me in the back of the head before I could get upright again, and I hit the floor, hard.
The smell of blood and monkey dung hung in my nose. The tangy flavor of the blood was heavy in my mouth. I could see one of the Wolfe brothers’ trunk-like legs standing in front of me and I reached out for it, grasping at the cuff of his pants. If I could just pull it aside to get to the skin—
“Nuh uh,” Frederick said. Or was it Grihm? Someone punched me in the kidney hard enough that I was sure they’d broken my back or burst my internal organs or maybe just caused my entire upper body to explode.
My face pressed against the concrete floor as I lay there. I could hear the maddening thunder of my blood pumping in my ears. I tried to roll, but something was stopping me. A heavy weight was on my back, keeping me down.
A giggle sounded just in front of me, and I raised my eyelids just enough to see Weissman standing there, stooped over, to look me in the eye. “I gotta admit, this was a little disappointing. It wasn’t like a fight. It was like I threw a bunny into a cage with two rabid dogs—” He looked up. “No offense, boys.”
“None taken,” Grihm said.
“A little taken,” Frederick replied.
“—and you just … you couldn’t even go one round,” Weissman said. His grin was so wide, it eclipsed all the other details of his face. “But then again, you always were out of your depth. You know why? Because all this time, we’ve been planning, and strategizing, and preparing … and all you’ve done is run, and react, and use up every last ounce of luck you’ve ever had.” He punched me hard, in the kidney, where one of the Wolfe brothers had landed a world-ending blow just a few moments before, and it hurt so much I was sure I would bleed to death internally. “Guess what, princess? Your luck’s finally run out.”
He stood, and all I could see were his black shoes. “Now bind her up and let’s take her to the airport … I’ve got still got a long, painful night of business to attend to with her friends.”
Chapter 42
I was unconscious for most of the ride, only dimly aware of my surroundings. My hands had been bound with barbed wire, and it burned every time I moved them. A slow series of moans worked its way free from my lips against my will, entirely involuntarily. My face was mashed against the rough fabric of the trunk of Weissman’s car, and in between forced, gasping breaths of blood, I wondered if I would ever see my mother alive again. Or Scott. Or Reed. Or …
A vague thumping sound came to me as I drifted in and out of wakefulness. I couldn’t tell if it was the car hitting speed bumps or something else. I wondered if we were shifting in and out of time as we drove. Badly beaten as I was, I couldn’t tell. Being awake for more than a few seconds felt like a struggle.
We came to a stop and a final loud thump jarred me mostly awake. Everything ached, especially my back, and I wondered if I had a broken spine. I could still feel my toes, so I supposed not.
There were muted voices outside, and then I heard a click as the trunk sprang open. I wanted to jump through it, force myself to my feet and start running. My body failed to obey, though, the pains and agonies gripping me still screaming through every nerve ending in my body.
“Help me …” I whispered, not sure who I was calling out to. “Please …”
“No one to help you now,” Grihm said, his smug face appearing above me. His clawed hands reached into the trunk and I felt the tips of his fingers grasp hold of me and draw blood as he dragged me out.
“Your brother died screaming like a little bitch,” I said as he stood me up, hooking his arm under mine. I looked up and saw a hangar around us and a plane in the center of it, an old propeller-based one that looked like it hauled cargo. The smell of oil was thick in the air, overcoming the blood still dripping in my nostrils.
“That sounds like him, all right,” Grihm said with a shrug. I caught sight of Frederick a couple paces off, and he nodded.
“You don’t even care?” I asked. Grihm had me; he was entirely supporting my weight, like my legs were refusing to work at all.
“Nope,” Frederick answered for him. “There’s a reason we weren’t with him when he died.” He laughed. “Let’s face it; Wolfe was a lowbrow, unsophisticated asshole. The family dunce, really.”
“And you guys are so much different from him,” I snapped.
“We are,” Grihm said.
“We beat you, after all,” Frederick said with a grin of his own. The lack of hair on his face made him look even less human as he said it. “Wolfe died trying, the big sub-human pussy.”
I felt a stir of anger wit
hin that wasn’t from me. “If you hated him that much, why are you so all-fired eager to hurt me?”
“There’s a difference between hating your brother and wanting him dead,” Frederick said, and he punched me in the gut as Grihm paraded me past. I heard something pop inside, and I was sure it was something important.
“Yeah,” Grihm said as I got a really good view of the hangar floor. My belly cried out from the damage Frederick had done to me, and it—or something else—was keeping me from standing upright. I felt the harsh ripping of skin on my wrists as he tore the razor wire free. “Here we are—your new home. I bet it looks familiar.”
I raised my head to look at where he’d carried me. As soon as I did, I wished I hadn’t.
There was a dark metal box standing open in front of me, slightly narrower and shallower than the one that my mother had imprisoned me in as a child. The glistening of the metal told me it was something more solid than steel, that the thickness of the walls was plenty enough to keep me from breaking down the door as I had in my old prison. It shone in the half-lit darkness of the hangar, and the thrumming note of panic and pain in my gut became a screaming chorus.
I tried to make my legs work, but they wouldn’t. I tried to writhe out of Grihm’s hold on me but to no avail. I could only turn my head, and when I pushed it to one side I saw the hangar doors open wide, the dark night and the runway lit up outside. When I turned the other way, I realized why I couldn’t move my body.
“Hi there,” Claire said, waving to me with the tips of her fingers. “Having a little trouble with your basic motor skills?” I wanted to punch her so hard she’d need assistance doing everything including toileting for the rest of her life. “Tsk-tsk,” she said. “It took a good day for me to walk normally after what you did to my leg. This is only going to last for as long as it takes these boys to get you in your new home.” She waved again and turned off. “Ta ta!”
I heard a hard slapping hit and glanced back to see Claire hit the ground. Something snapped and she fell like she was dead.
“What the hell?” Frederick said. “How’d you get here?”
“I rode the bumper,” my mother said, standing over Claire’s fallen form.
“How’d you keep the telepath from detecting you?” Grihm asked.
“I presume I had a little long-distance help from a stronger telepath,” my mother said with a wary smile. “Now then … which of you dies first?”
There was a flash behind my mother and something appeared in her chest, right in the middle, beneath her sternum.
A blade. Sticking out of the center of her chest.
“Off the top of my head, mommy dearest,” Weissman said from just behind her shoulder, his grin stretching from ear to ear, “I’m going to say … you.”
Chapter 43
SIERRA
Sierra Nealon felt her legs give way, the metallic tang of blood bubbling on her lips. Her hands shook, and her legs fell from underneath her. She could feel the blade poking through her chest, knew it had penetrated the heart. Cleaved it.
“Oh, mommy,” Weissman whispered in her ear. “Poor mommy. It was really stupid to come here instead of staying with the others. You never stood chance, after all. Time … was never on your side.” He was entirely too gleeful about it.
Sierra tried to burble something out, but her breath didn’t come, and she struggled.
“Oh, you’re still alive!” Weissman said. “Barely, it’s true, but I can work with that.” He slid the blade out of her back—slowly, agonizingly slowly, and she felt every inch of it as he did it. “I can make it last a while. But first …” He turned his head, and Sierra felt herself crumple face-first to the hard concrete floor. She barely felt it. “Get her loaded.”
It took Sierra a moment to realize that the “her” being mentioned was not her, but Sienna. She tried to turn her head to look. Sienna. The breaths were coming raspy now. Had the blade hit her lungs, too? How was that possible? Or was it just—
Her logical mind tried to apply her medical training to what she felt, but her brain wouldn’t cooperate. She could see Sienna now, silent, horrified, with that look on her face like she’d gotten when she was a kid in over her head on something. She’d gotten it that time she’d fallen down the slide in Des Moines, and it had sounded like she’d hit hard enough to break something. That had been scary. That had been the look on her face, too, when she was four years old. It hadn’t changed.
Sienna’s face hadn’t ever really changed. She was still just a girl. Sierra gasped and tried to roll. Could she crawl? She could damned well try. Her face was pressed against the concrete floor. She’d die trying. She’d known it was coming anyway.
“So …” Weissman said, and Sierra could see the back of his head. The Wolfe brothers had Sienna in the box now. Sierra wanted to laugh and cry at the same time over the irony, but she had put all her effort into crawling toward her daughter. Every inch she moved hurt like she was ripping her own heart out. For all she knew, she was. “Feel homey?”
Sienna was stood up, leaned against the back wall of the box. Probably didn’t have control of her limbs yet. Not that it would matter. Sierra could see the Wolfe brothers hovering, waiting for her to try something. Sierra doubted she could. That telepath was strong; whatever she’d done might not have worn off even after Sierra knocked her the hell out.
Sienna didn’t answer. That was the right option from Sierra’s point of view. Bide her time. Don’t waste energy sniping with shots that wouldn’t do any good. She thought about it for a second; Sienna’s power of speech was probably gone. There was no way she’d shut up and take this indignity in silence.
“Now,” Weissman said, in a voice dripping with glee, “you’re going to take a little plane ride. This crate will keep you out of trouble during your flight, and maybe—just maybe—if you’re good … the boys will let you out for a walk when you get where you’re going.” He cackled. “Maybe not. I mean, you’re going to Sovereign, but no one says you have to go to him right away, if you know what I mean.” He laughed again. “You know what I mean. Because you deserve a few weeks of beatings and whatnot before you get to him. It’ll probably improve your disposition, learning who’s the boss.”
It had never worked before, Sierra thought, still inching forward. There was an awful lot of blood pumping out of her. An awful lot. It was pooling out at an alarming rate.
“Get her out of here,” Weissman said, and Sierra looked up just in time to see them shut the door to the box. It was a familiar view, one she’d seen from the outside more times than she could count. Every single one of them was followed by a gut-wrenching, sickening feeling of regret.
But this one was the worst of all.
She pulled harder, and a little wash of blood burbled out of her lips. The plane’s back ramp was down, and Weissman was just standing there as the Wolfe brothers dragged the box up the ramp. It rattled along the uneven deck of the plane, ringing out with each thump as they dragged her daughter away from her.
“No,” she whispered, and a mouthful of blood poured out on the concrete.
“Oh, it’s you,” Weissman said. He was staring down at her from a few feet away, as though she were some object unworthy of his interest. Like she were lower than low. Lower than him. She wanted to rip his legs from beneath him, bury her teeth in his jugular— “You just don’t know when to give up, do you?”
Weissman shook his head, then looked back over his shoulder. Now was her chance. “Close the ramp and take off, will you? And take your time with her. Beatings every day, maybe a vivisection a couple times a week. Make her suffer. I’ll let you know when you can turn her over to Sovereign.” A sideways smile broke across his profile, and Sierra wanted to break all of his teeth out. All of them. “It might be a while.”
She was almost to him. Almost there. The ramp of the airplane was rising, but she couldn’t focus on that now. She had to kill Weissman. It was why she was here, her sole reason for existing on this day, a
t this moment. She reached out, and took hold of his pants leg-—
He looked down at her. “God, still you, huh? You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that.” He grinned. “Now let’s cut them out before you die.” He tugged at his leg, but she did not relinquish it, holding tight to the hem of his pants. “Oh, now you’re just annoying me. Fine, I’ll—”
His eyes grew wide, and his jaw fell open. “How—what the—how are you doing that?” He bent over, staring at her hand. “You’re not even touching me, there’s no way you could be stopping me from halting time and—” He stopped, flustered, face red. “Fine. We’ll do this the old fashioned way.” His hand reached behind his back—
Sierra pulled with all her fury, all her strength, and ripped his leg from the ground. Weissman tottered, one leg left to stand on, and Sierra struck out with her hand. She could hear his ankle snap from the perfect placement of her strike, years of training funneled into this moment.
He landed hard upon his back and let out a cry. She could hear the grinding of the plane’s gears as the propellers spun up in the front. She didn’t waste time looking to see if the ramp was closed; she had no time to spare. Sierra pulled herself along Weissman’s fallen body as he struggled. She punched him hard enough in the groin for his ancestors to feel it then did it again for good measure. The sound of popping tissue and his screams were all the encouragement she needed to keep going.
She crawled along the length of him while he struggled and stopped at his throat. He was struggling against her weight, against the way she had him pinned. She saw his hand break free from behind his back, brandishing the knife he’d been carrying in his back waistband.
If she were some new trainee, facing down a man in a knife while she was bleeding out, she might have panicked. Especially given the stakes. But she was Sierra Nealon, by God, and she’d known this was going to happen. She’d trained her whole adult life to fight like this, to do the things no one else was willing to do in order to be the best. Discipline was everything. She was iron.
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