Her stolen, crystal eyes laughed a good laugh at me.
“I thought you worked for Inanina maybe . . . trying to subvert the Welfs to vote for Root when the time comes. Or the Tsar making some blackmail play. Or Pwent scamming Welf Financial. I thought you were anything but what you really are. Why the fuck would the Curator give a shit about Heinrich Welf?”
“Obadiah Paine sends his regards, King Henry,” she whispered so low even I could barely hear it. “He’s a great man, isn’t he?”
My hand started to squeeze and I wasn’t gentle about it, nails in her trachea. “It’s about me then.”
She shook her head as much as she could. “Not about you!” she choked out. “Not even about Heinrich! Just an experiment that you accidentally broke! Again!”
“Why try to kill Jason? He hasn’t hurt anyone! He’s just a Recruiter!”
“Let’s run another experiment shall we?” she said, words barely formed. “Let’s see if you stay here and guard me or if you race to save Jason by the end of the first bell. You can do it, King Henry! You can break right through the glass. Slide on down the metal rails. Wrap up Conan with the cage itself. You could save him!”
Her face went red as I squeezed. “I ain’t no hero,” I whispered to her. “How ‘bout we let our experiment be how long you can go without oxygen? How ‘bout we preemptively send good ‘ol Obadiah a message about what happens when he kills one of me and mine?”
Isabel smiled again as air hissed out of her mouth. “There’s my lover.”
“King Henry!” T-Bone yelled in fear. “Pocket and Jesus can’t get through the guards! We have to do something!”
“What?” I yelled back. “What do you fucking want me to do?!?” I threw Isabel down in the chair. The bruises on her throat were already healing. “I got nothing, man! Want me to break the glass? I can break the glass for you! Think that will be enough? Think you can hit Conan Sapa from up here with a lightning bolt? Think any of us can run through the crowd and reach them in the next twenty seconds?!?
“No! We can’t! We ain’t gods. We’re half-trained mancers that don’t know shit!” I raged. “Maybe if we saw this coming we could’ve stopped it! But did I? No! I was too focused on stopping the other hand! Never even saw it coming. Now Jason lives or dies all on his own . . . all alone . . .”
I slumped down into a chair.
Fuck me.
Paine.
Paine broke Isabel out of the Pit.
Paine’s using Sapa to kill Jason.
Paine . . . anyone but Paine.
When Vicky screamed, I knew it was all over.
“No, no, no, no! This can’t be happening! No, Mancy, no!”
She wasn’t the only one.
The whole crowd gasped and screamed. You could feel all ten-thousand people recoil. Recoil at death and their own bloodlust that had led up to it.
Me . . . I watched as Isabel shrunk her hands and slipped right on out of my Cold Cuffs, easy as can be.
It wasn’t all planned. It couldn’t have been all planned, I thought, detached to her being free, detached to the brief picture on the giant screens of Jason Jackson lying dead, before it all went dark as the producers cut the feed. I broke the experiment. What did I break? What happens next?
And what could I do to make sure it doesn’t happen?
Jason’s dead.
Paine killed Jason.
Just like that . . .
What bullshit . . .
T-Bone cried out about Isabel being free. Vicky screamed again, backing up into her brother’s arms for protection. Trying not to hold it against her. Very annoying. Didn’t like it. Val wouldn’t scream.
I’m the one that’s supposed to be dead.
Vega, Inanina, Paine, one of them were supposed to kill me by now.
The big screen came back on. Conan Sapa had his arms raised. Part of the crowd booed him. Another part of the crowd cheered him. He flipped them all off as he exited the cage and headed for backstage. They showed a brief shot of EMTs surrounding Jason, but at an angle that really wouldn’t let you see anything. The announcer said something about there being a Rejuvenation Society doctor on standby, but . . . even hydro-anima won’t fix a head that crushed.
“You were supposed to fall into my arms, Heinrich,” Isabel said. “Into Veronica’s arms . . . would you rather still do it even knowing? I can be her again, if you like. Or Hope . . . I like Hope.”
What could I have done to stop it? Beat it out of her? Been more involved in what Jason and Pocket and Jesus were all up to instead of chasing Isabel? Did they have a picture of Sapa in the program? Would it have been that easy to stop?
Welf snarled at her. “You’re dead,” he said in grief and rage and many of the emotions I usually put past the douchebag. “You’re dead!”
His Construct spun into action. It went right for Isabel, arm swinging to ram into her neck like an undead hammer. Even as human as it faked being, even as ‘artistic’ as its model was—it still had to have some weapons beside necro-anima strings. Titanium-laced knucklebones? Fucking Wolverine tri-claws?
Didn’t matter.
Welf missed.
Isabel ducked, sidestepped, and pirouetted away from the rush all in one motion.
The Construct jump-stopped and spun back around after her.
Isabel’s fingers worked at her belt, sliding the whole thing off into her hands. Two arm-lengths of golden discs once it was released. A weapon, but what? This was Paine I was dealing with. Not Isabel Soto. Not Conan Sapa.
Paine.
The Broken One.
Obadiah Paine, who didn’t know when to die. Who survived a mountainside dropping on his head. Who didn’t just fight off a strike team of vampires but killed each and every one of them. The monster who stole children, that bought and sold the rest, that kept them all prisoner and used them as anima batteries, drain you when I please. Who wanted to kill off a whole chunk of the human race just to rebalance anima levels.
If that was his goal any more.
I had a bad feeling that he’d expanded his aims after running into me.
Me and my big mouth.
Me and my World-Breaker.
That golden belt in Isabel’s hands was an artifact. Only what did it do? Had a monocle in my pocket that could answer the question for me, but not the time to grab it. I was busy setting up my own bit of anima at her feet. More in the window. No room left to focus on anything else. Easy to split a pool and throw it all about, much harder to set the anima ready to go and hold it in place.
Waiting . . .
Isabel didn’t have time either. She jumped up on the wall and then sprang backwards away from the Construct chasing after her. Her stolen, crystal eyes went wide and the rest of her flopped all the way to the ground as a lightning bolt from T-Bone arched across the room. It slammed into the wall, a miss marked with scorched paint.
The Construct came in again, slashing with palm-edge strikes that judging by the glint of metal had a bit more edge than usual. Isabel backpedaled, hands working in front of her with her belt. She fingered her way through the process, finding the right spot, and then twisted one of the discs so it was perpendicular to the rest. At that activation every disc slid and changed places against each other. Those under the perpendicular disc formed a small square hilt, those above it a serrated blade two feet in length.
Across the luxury box, Welf smirked at her. “Stab all you want. She won’t feel it.”
Isabel smirked back. “It doesn’t stab, Heinrich, it cuts.”
Come on. Come at me. Stop playing with the toy and come at me. I’m just sitting here. I’m dazed. Do it!
“King Henry, I’m out of anima!” Tyson yelled. “Use one of your artifacts or something! She’s going to kill us!”
Come.
At.
Me.
She didn’t.
She kept playing dance with the Construct. The golden sword was behind her back, she wasn’t using it. Instead she seemed
to be protecting it over her own body as she tried to get around the Construct and towards the rest of us.
This would be so much easier if we could all see what each other were doing. Stupid anima being divided into thirteen parts.
“All I can make is an illusion or a ball of light or . . . .nothing for this!” Vicky babbled. “I was never good with lasers . . . they’re too focused for my tastes. If we could just get to the door!”
“We’re not in danger, Little Sister,” Welf said, calm and collected in the face of battle, believe it or not. “Isabel is in danger. Isabel is about to die. Isabel will be sent back to her master one piece at a time. The Artificial Prison is too good for her. Only death pays for death.”
Isabel sacrificed a long cut along her arm, up into her shoulder, to get on the other side of the Construct. Not that it improved her odds of getting to Welf much with the way the dead woman stuck to the corpusmancer, attacking with every free motion, unrelenting, even less caring of limbs and flesh than Isabel was of her own.
It was going badly for her.
Welf was winning.
Until Isabel pressed a button on her sword and slashed it upwards at nothing at all.
Nothing but the necro-anima strings that connected Welf to his Construct.
Autumn crashed immediately into the tile floor, lifeless—even the falseness of fake undeath taken out of it.
“That’s impossible!” Welf yelled, hands moving to try to regain control.
Isabel slashed downwards.
And that’s where Welf is a rookie. He doesn’t realize she can’t see the strings. If he just sent them looping around instead of directly through her . . .
Welf tried a second time with the same results.
Isabel advanced across the luxury box. Welf’s jaw fell open in fear. Tyson put himself in front of Vicky to protect her. At least someone is a hero, I thought.
Me, I didn’t care about saving anyone.
Didn’t even care about Jason dying too much.
Deep down I probably did.
I liked the guy, can’t dislike a guy you fought that much growing up. Might have been friends with him if he wasn’t friends with Welf. Imagine what we could’ve done if we wouldn’t have been fighting each other but the bullies at the Asylum. Both of us always had a fun time during the Winter War. He didn’t have a father. Did have a mother and three younger brothers. Sent her part of his Recruiter check every month so she only had to work one job and not two or three like when he was a kid.
Didn’t care about protecting anyone in that moment.
Not T-Bone.
Sure as fuck not Welf.
Not even Vicky.
Wonderful, still-more-innocent-than-she-thinks Vicky.
All I cared about was some destruction.
All I cared about was Isabel taking two more steps forward.
I tried to aim it all away from us. Two five-minute chunks of anima. One in the glass spraying out at her. The other in the floor at her feet. Up and out.
Didn’t matter what I tried to do.
That much force in an enclosed space did more than make Isabel go sky high. The glass blew outwards in the other half of the luxury box. The inward bit was sort of diffused, by the change in pressure. Less shrapnel bomb and more shower of little knives. All in front of my eyes.
Isabel had disappeared back into the other half of the room, part of the floor, pieces of pipes, electrical wire, and a bunch of wood and sand with her. Smoke . . . second you blow something up there’s always smoke. The fire alarm activated, spraying water from the ceiling . . . what parts of the ceiling were level, since most of the floor had exploded upwards and chunks of broken metal and concrete were stuck up there like darts on a dart board.
I couldn’t hear very well.
I felt to see if my ears were bleeding and was happy to find out they weren’t.
I stood up, fumbled around in my pocket to find my PAD.
Before I could throw it, T-Bone grabbed it out of my hand. “I think you killed her enough already!” he yelled at me, barely heard from all the ringing.
Could barely hear him, but I could hear the screams from the stadium just fine. Ain’t that weird?
“She ain’t dead yet,” I said with surety.
Should’ve been dead. Normal person, Were person, mancer person, maybe even a Vamp person—if they count as people—they’d all be dead. Not Isabel.
She wasn’t dead.
Just a little inconvenienced.
What with the way three of her toes were missing and that huge chunk was knocked out of her leg so badly you could see white bone. Plus she had a shard of glass sticking through her cheek. Arm looked broken way she held it. Tip of her nose was cut and bleeding bad.
Inconvenienced.
Not dead.
She got back up to her feet slowly.
Behind me, T-Bone swore.
Welf finally got a connection with the Construct—also a bit worn for wear thanks to the geo-mine—and sent Autumn flying back towards him and Vicky, making sure those necro-strings were as short as they could be, almost impossible to cut.
Isabel glanced to her right. “Told you I’d escape, lover.”
Bitch hurled herself out of the glass hole.
Left her three toes behind.
Session 155
They cleared the arena out.
The rest of the Day of Brawn was cancelled.
Ouroboros security and workers were everywhere, unsure what had happened. Was it all an accident or something more sinister? One of the contestants died and then a bomb went off, is that what happened? No, it was a water pipe bursting. No, the contestant’s friend was so in grief over what happened that his anima outburst shattered the glass.
Rumors.
They’re a bitch when you’re trying to get to the truth.
Me, I knew it was something more sinister, knew it was all worked up in the mind of Obadiah Paine. But I still aimed to have some questions answered about how it all happened.
And why.
Why was a big one.
Why break out Isabel?
Why spy on Welf?
Why kill Jason?
None of it seemed to be about me. Not yet. But it was gonna be about me. Was gonna make it about me if I had my way.
The guards had rushed into Welf’s box, almost got themselves killed before everyone calmed down. We were wet, smoky, and scratched up where glass and other debris had struck our skin. Welf’s Construct limped, which spoke of a mechanical failure since the thing didn’t feel pain. Vicky burst into tears and wouldn’t stop crying. Even with two sisters of my own I didn’t know what to do for her. Asshole boyfriends breaking hearts was one thing, seeing a friend beaten to death and then being attacked by an almost unstoppable Facechanger was something else.
Welcome to the Crazy, Vick, this is why I didn’t want you to get involved.
I guess no one gets a pass on it.
Guess the Crazy is the new normal.
Fate ain’t happy with just fucking King Henry Price, wants to have herself an orgy of destruction before she ends it all.
Don’t matter if it finds me or I find it—destruction and me are meant for each other.
Armageddon you say? How very lovely. How very grand.
We were moved to another empty luxury box and politely told that we should stay inside . . . for our safety. A doctor was sent in and decided our wounds were superficial. She offered to give Vicky a sedative, which was less than politely refused. T-Bone was busy sitting on the couch with her, big arms wrapped around her.
Welf didn’t even notice.
He was on his phone, making calls, wheeling and dealing, furiously yelling into the receiver to try to sort this whole mess out.
Bureaucracy ain’t gonna do shit for you this time, Welf.
Need to put the legwork in, need to force the issue.
“I’m going to find Pocket and Jesus,” I announced, “I can’t sit around any longer.”
The guards didn’t stop me, but one did keep pace, about five feet behind wherever I headed. “You Coyote?” I asked him once we were in the elevator.
Nothing bad ever happens in elevators.
He didn’t want to answer, but when I gave him a hard look that promised retribution if he wasn’t cooperative, he gave in. “We all are. King Vega thinks the werebull killing the mancer will strain relations between our kinds and within the Nations themselves. He’s being proactive in defending against new threats arising, if you will. For now, Coyotes are the only Weres you should trust, Mr. Price.”
The Curator plays his own game and it disrupts the board for everyone else in the Ouroboros. Maybe it did make Vega weak. He was supposed to be the sheriff of this event, he said so himself. “Let me guess, since Vega might be weaker now, that means the Nations thinking about killing me to earn his favor feel they might have more of a reason to go ahead and do it? Show his strength? Prove their usefulness? All that political shit?”
The Coyote guard grimaced. “It’s a possibility.”
“Lucky me. Now, where are my other friends? The floromancer and the faunamancer that were with Jackson before his match?”
[CLICK]
Pocket and Jesus had gotten beat down at some point in the evening.
“You two look like shit,” I announced my presence.
“El Rey to the rescue,” Jesus mumbled into an icepack. “An hour too late.”
“Been a little busy, Jesus.”
His shirt was torn and his already not-so-pretty face was even less pretty, bruised and puffy like he’d taken a few punches of his own. “Too busy to save Jackson? Too busy give us more than a stupid phone call? The big man was so pumped up for that fight, showing off for the crowd, repping Class ’09 on the big stage . . . and then he goes down like that. It’s some fucked up bullshit, El Rey.”
Next to him, Pocket had a swollen lip and a black eye. He wasn’t as angry as Jesus, but his expression was concerned. “What happened up there? We saw the explosion.”
“You saw it,” Jesus grumbled, “I already had three putas on top of me holding me down.”
“Tyson said the werebull was a hitman,” Pocket explained his own side of the event, “I tried to find Mr. Black, but he wasn’t backstage. Then we rushed the guards to try to get on the arena floor. That was a mistake.”
The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5) Page 33