“Wh-where are you taking us?” the woman asked. She didn’t sound scared, which just annoyed me more. I looked down and saw my reflection, complete with my odd cargo. Does carrying these two stooges make me look fat? I wondered as I watched his grey hair and his bathrobe flap in the wind. I looked up again and ignored that reflection, because it was giving me a view I really didn’t care for.
I didn’t answer her inquiry, because I hadn’t fully decided yet. I just tightened my grip on her leg and the back of his neck, making sure I didn’t lose my prizes, and flew off into the western sky.
10.
Ma
“We’ve got a … minor problem here,” Cassidy said, dripping on the floor. She’d popped out of the tank without bothering to dry off first, and now she was just standing there in the kitchen, dripping all over the place. Ma kept her peace about it, though, because there wasn’t anything to be done about it now. She’d already left a trail clear back to the corner of the living room, surely, since she couldn’t exactly fly.
“What is it, sweet cheeks?” Ma asked, putting on her best smile. She’d had about enough of these particular houseguests, especially since they’d long ago overstayed their welcome. She looked sidelong at Denise, who was standing with her back to the oven, arms folded over her husky frame, more than a little disgusted at the sight of field mouse Cassidy drenched from head to toe and barely stuffed in that skimpy wetsuit-looking thing.
“Sienna got to the assassins I hired,” Cassidy sniffled. Ma couldn’t imagine that water being too good for anyone, not long term. “She burned down their house, captured them—”
“What do they know?” Ma jumped right ahead to the pertinent point. She had rolls in the oven and they were coming up on done.
“Nothing, really,” Cassidy said and hugged herself tight, lips a little blue now that she was out of that warm salt water. Ma had the windows open, because it was a perfect autumn day for it. “I hired them over the net, so—”
“Well, if they don’t know anything,” Ma said, making her way over to the oven, brushing Denise aside and prompting a scowl—that girl had no gratitude, even when she’d be grabbing a roll and buttering it in two minutes—never took her eyes off Cassidy the whole time, “I wouldn’t worry about it. Can’t tell her what they don’t know.”
“I didn’t think she’d be able to find them,” Cassidy said, sullen. She got like that when things didn’t go her way, like she couldn’t imagine being outsmarted. Ma could imagine it easily, because she kept seeing it happen. Simmons had done it quite a lot, even down to this last trip he’d taken without her. Sure, he’d said he was going with Denise and Junior, but she knew he didn’t, and they knew he didn’t. He wasn’t stupid, he gave an excuse why they should believe him, why he needed to get away, but she had a good enough read on him to know he was stepping out on the shivering waif that was dripping on her linoleum.
“Well, these things happen,” Ma said, feeling the blast of the oven opening up right in her face. She shifted her skin to vulcanized rubber as she grabbed the metal pan out with a bare, black hand. Didn’t hurt a bit. She pulled the rolls out and set them on top of the electric coils on the stovetop, letting the metals meet with a rattle as the baking pan found its balance. She shifted back to human skin and snatched a towel from behind Denise, prompting another petulant scowl, and crossed over to Cassidy, stooping down to mop up some of the dripping the girl was doing. “Why don’t you go make sure that you’ve covered your tracks up good?”
Cassidy made a face at her grammar, couldn’t even hide it. The girl was snooty, and that got under Ma’s skin more than a little. She’d tolerated it up until now, because of the promise of a painful death for Sienna Nealon. Oh, she’d talked a good game, Cassidy had, but she was all hat and no cattle. Plan after plan, and every one of them had fallen short because Cassidy couldn’t account for human behavior, not being much of a human herself.
Ma waited until she heard the tell-tale click of the sensory deprivation tank shutting before she let out a sigh of relief. “Denise,” she snapped, “get the wet-dry vac in here and clean up that carpet.”
“I don’t want to do it,” Denise said, like Ma’d just asked her to pick up a piece of poo bare-handed.
“Well, I don’t want it mildewing in here,” Ma said. “It’s gonna smell worse than that week we went down to Odessa and Junior let the dogs stay in.” The boy hadn’t even bothered to get up in the middle of the night and let ’em out. Twelve dogs, no relief, and when she got back she came within an inch of skinning that boy alive.
“Unnnnnh,” Denise said, sounding like a sixteen year old, which she’d left behind almost a decade ago. Ingrate. But she hauled herself off in the direction of the storage closet to get the vacuum.
Ma mopped up a little bit more of the water, as best she could, until the towel was saturated. She lifted it up and stared at it, watched the water drip down her fingers. She felt a lot like the towel; it’d had about all the water it could, and she’d had about enough Cassidy to last her a lifetime. If the girl had been able to deliver on even one of her promises, Ma might have felt differently. But instead she’d dragged Anselmo and Simmons out of prison to no use at all. Anselmo was dead; Sienna Nealon was alive. Ma stared at the tank in the corner of the living room and let her mind drift, thinking for the thousandth time how she was going to take care of this particular problem once this thing was all over with.
And she knew, for sure, it wasn’t going to end up messy like Cassidy’s plans. It was going to end up messy of the sort she’d need a wet-dry vac and maybe a steamer to clean up.
11.
Sienna
I marched my two prisoners into the detention block in headquarters without much in the way of mercy for slacking off. The woman, whose name was Rosanna Borosky, had offered a little resistance when we landed. I’d punched her in the kidney and she’d stopped, but not before I got a hint of her meta strength. It wasn’t anything special; that much was clear. Low-scale stuff, whatever she was.
No, iron tooth Michael Shafer was my main problem, and he wasn’t presenting much of one at the moment. He was still looking a little woozy from my “interrogation” of him. She was a lot more functional at this point, actually, but she knew about as much as he did. They’d taken the contract via the internet, and a little more hastily than they normally would have, apparently, because they’d been recommended by a trusted third party to this particular client. That was why most of the instructions had been out in the open rather than over an encrypted chat app of the sort the Brain had favored in the past.
She’d put a hit out on me and/or Reed—this wasn’t clear, because she’d just told them to wire his car—only an hour or two before it had actually blown up. So, not long before Anselmo and his protégé had tangled with Reed for the last time, Cassidy had ordered a special delivery of death to our campus. It was a move that would have reeked of desperation had it been a normal bomb, but the Brain hadn’t wanted a normal bomb. Oh, no, she asked for the deluxe, enough to kill a normal human five times over, even if they pulled a Robert De Niro in Casino and put a metal plate under their entire car.
I strolled the two of them, entirely dazed and with all the spine busted right out of them (not literally—I know you leap right to that because it’s me, but not this time) right up to the door to the prison without bothering to cuff them.
I didn’t need to cuff them. I’d just used my powers to steal the memories I needed right out of their heads. Normally I might not have, but these were special circumstances, and if I’d had to interrogate them without my succubus powers, I wouldn’t have bothered even asking civilized questions. I would have probably escalated straight to alternating between dunking them upside down into Lake Minnetonka and setting them on fire. Know thy enemy, know thyself, and thyself was not in a mood that encouraged trifling.
“Two to go down,” I said to the guard, Rogers, who regarded me with a carefully neutral look and my prisoners with one that
indicated that they were contaminated with toxic waste in his eyes.
“Uhhh …” Rogers said, clutching tighter to his M4 assault rifle. He pointed the barrel down and far, far away from me, then mumbled his next words. “I can’t let you down there.”
“The hell you say?” I asked.
“Can’t let you down there,” Rogers said, slightly less tentatively. Maybe his boys dropped.
“I’ve got prisoners,” I clarified for him without smacking him over the head or anything. Go thyself.
“You’re, uh … suspended,” he said, and like a mouse he whispered the last part, bringing a hand off the grip and scratching a sudden itch on his face.
“You know that big-ass explosion on campus a couple hours ago?” I fixed him in my gaze and he didn’t dare look up. He looked like he was feeling itchy. Must have been nerves. “These are the responsible parties. They are also metas. What the hell would you have me do with them if not put them in our meta prison? Because … maybe I’ll just drop them at your house.”
“It’s orders, Ms. Nealon,” Rogers said, looking especially pained at the mention of his house. “From the top. You’re suspended, you can’t arrest anybody, per the orders of the—”
“Director,” I muttered in the same tone as Jerry Seinfeld would say, “Newman.” “Is he in this morning?”
Rogers looked like he wanted to pace, possibly leaving his skin behind. His hand was back on the M4’s grip, and he was white-knuckling it. “I … I don’t know.”
“Okay, then,” I said, and turned loose of the two of them, both nearly collapsing, looking around with slack looks as they felt my grip release. “I’ll just leave them here for you, then.”
“Uhhh …” Rogers’s eyes went wide, he looked a little panicked. He was at the outside duty station, wasn’t even at the inner door to the prison. He just kept an eye on the lobby entrance with an assault rifle, was the first line of defense. “You—you can’t do that!”
“They’re prisoners without a prison to go to,” I said, and started to walk away.
“W-wait!” Rogers called. “Don’t leave them here!”
“You think the Director wants me to take them to his office?” I asked, walking away a lot slower than I could have, all for effect. Rogers looked a couple steps shy of panic, the end of his M4 wavering as he pondered bringing it up against Shafer and Borosky, who, while still not having their wits entirely about them, were clearly starting to steer their slow wits to the idea that they might be able to make a break for it. “He gets mad when I don’t take my winter boots off before I come visit. Doubt he’s going to respond well to me bringing assassins in.”
“You can’t just leave them here!” Rogers called, trotting that old chestnut again.
“Well, gosh, Rogers,” I said, realizing that I didn’t even know his first name. “I can’t take them with me, so …” I shrugged, as though helpless. Borosky stood up straight, and I figured Rogers had about three seconds to make a decision that was probably a lot more difficult than his usual fare. Beef or chicken, Rogers? Bud or Michelob? Death or dishonor?
“Okayokayokay!” he shouted, waving a hand in surrender while clutching tight to the M4 with the other, barrel only a few degrees off from pointing at Borosky’s head. Those few degrees would matter in about a second, but fortunately for him, I was quicker.
I swept Borosky and Shafer off their feet, crossing the distance between us and slamming their faces into the tile floor. Excessive force? Nonsense. These people were killers, and given half a chance they’d rip Rogers to pieces and take his M4 as a prize for their wall—if I hadn’t burnt all of them down.
I put a knee on each of their backs and then put their shirts between my hand and the back of their necks, enough to give me some nice grip on their scruff but enough cloth between us that I wouldn’t drain their souls.
“Oh hell,” Rogers muttered, blinking at the speed with which I’d done my thing. “Oh hell, what am I doing?”
“Your job,” I said, hauling the prisoners to their feet as Rogers opened the door behind him with a key card, looking nervous as a cat in a room full of dogs, sweat pouring down his temples. “Funny that I have to remind you of what it really is, since I’m the one on suspension.” And I frogmarched them both down into the prison, knowing full well that my next argument was going to be with a man who wouldn’t respond with nearly as much flop-sweat to my bluffs.
12.
“You just deposited two prisoners downstairs while on suspension,” Andrew Phillips said as I opened the door to his office and strolled in uninvited. He was sitting behind his desk, the sun not quite up yet, the glow of his computer monitor lighting his face with pale color. He didn’t deign to look at me, and whether it was because he thought I wouldn’t hurt him or because he somehow thought himself immune to harm, I didn’t know. “What are you doing?”
I also didn’t care. “I’m on a mission from God,” I said in my best Midwestern accent. “And if you know I dropped those two down there, I assume you also know why I did it?”
“J.J. forwarded me the pertinent intel.” Phillips looked up, impassive as ever, his large head perched atop broad shoulders. He was a big guy. And the bigger they are, the harder I tend to hit them, because that generally meant they were more of a threat. “What happened when you showed up?”
“They threw explosive chemicals in my face and tried to blow my head off,” I said. “Best first date I’ve had in months.”
He processed that, his eyes not moving. “What do you want me to do with them?”
“Your job,” I spat back acidly. “I just policed a metahuman threat and responded to it. Don’t block me now.”
“You’re the one who’s suspended,” he said, like I needed another reminder. “It’s not your job right now. Besides, you’re on a mission from God.” He didn’t add the Dan Aykroyd accent when he said it. “Not from the U.S. government.”
“Can you even tell the difference between the two on any given day?” Maybe this wasn’t the time to mouth off, I hear you saying. I hear you now; but then I was without any reason to think mouthing off as anything other than my best option.
“One’s wrathful,” he said, in the closest I’d ever heard to a quip from him, “and one’s just incompetent.”
“Where do you stand in all this, Phillips?” I asked, fixing him with a hard gaze. I suspected his knees were not exactly knocking under the desk.
“You’re suspended,” he said, repeating his mantra again. I wonder if he said it during morning meditation. “You don’t work here right now. You’re a private citizen, and you can’t go around arresting people, especially not on a personal vendetta. Which is not a mission from God or the federal government.”
“Which one is incompetent, again?” I pursed my lips real thin. “Whoever this Brain is, she’s an eminent threat.”
“To you.”
“She blew up a car in the middle of a government installation tonight,” I snapped. “Conspired to poison a federal agent in a scheme that almost resulted in something on the order of a nuclear bomb going off on the fringe of a major metropolitan area, and you, as head of this agency, don’t seem to give a damn. I think I figured out which one is incompetent, and I just wish I could see a little wrath—”
“You were the one who almost blew up the metro,” Phillips said coolly, and got to his feet, buttoning his suit jacket. “If you go off looking for this Brain while you’re still pissed off, what’s the likelihood you stay calm enough not to get civilians hurt or killed in the process?”
“You think I’m flying off all furiously angry?” I asked.
“Wrathful,” he said. “Fits better. You’ve been where you’re standing before.” He folded his arms. “Do I need to say it?”
“Say what?” I got out through lips that were so tight with anger they didn’t want to move.
“Parks, Clary, Kappler, Bastian.” He was an implacable monument carved out of the middle of the office. “Wrath.”
It was like having someone hold up a mirror to show you the giant mud pie dripping down your face. “I’ve got two assassins in the prison below that say differently. Still breathing. Wrath reserved.”
“What happens to the ones who really did it?” he asked, watching for my response. “Not just the weapon used, what happens to the finger that pulled the trigger?” He stared at me hard, like he really wanted to know. “Are you gonna reserve it then, too? Or am I going to have another PR mess of biblical proportions to clean up?”
I held back from answering immediately with the cheap snark. I held back the good snark, too, in hopes that age would make it better. It was a battle just to control my emotions, not to throw an easy witticism at him, something appropriate for me but not for anyone who had a brain or an appreciation for civil conversation. “I—”
His phone beeped and he didn’t even hesitate to interrupt our conversation. “Go.” He put it on speakerphone, even. What a dick.
“Sir,” came the clear tone of his assistant, whom I hadn’t even seen when I came in, “NASA has sent us a FLASH emergency brief—”
“What is it?” Phillips asked.
His assistant skipped a couple lines, undeterred. “There’s a meteor the size of a Metrolink bus on course for Lake Michigan at the moment, due for splashdown in about twenty minutes. It’s projected to impact twenty miles off Chicago.”
Phillips blinked, still calm as all hell. “And?”
His assistant paused, leaving hissing dead air. “They’re wondering if we can do anything about it.”
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