“How do you cash in a reservation?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Scott said. “I thought it sounded cool.”
“Sounded like it didn’t make any sense,” Jamal said.
“Uh, incoming, peeps,” Reed said. “Serious business here? Reservations and cash ins and all else aside?”
“Cash me ousside, howbow dah?” Scott asked.
“Does that girl get a royalty check every time someone says that?” I asked.
“Probably be the only money she ever earns,” Jamal said.
“You better watch out, she’s feisty, she’ll probably come looking to kick your ass if she hears you talking like that,” Scott said. By now the three of us were totally ignoring Reed, his dark face turning redder and redder as the van drew closer.
“We’re ready for ’em,” I said to Reed, just to keep him from popping a vein out or something. “Just playing with you, Reed.”
“Good,” Reed said, “we wouldn’t want a repeat of what happened in Colorado now, would we?” He pointed that one right at me.
“Nah, we wouldn’t want me to save a whole town and fend off a bad guy,” I said under my breath. He didn’t look back, but I knew he heard me.
“Who wants to stop them?” Reed asked. The van was only twenty or so yards away now.
“I got the front tire,” I said and lifted a hand.
“I’ll get their alternator,” Jamal said, shuffling on his knees over to me.
“Say goodbye to your radiator, boys,” Scott said. “Also, those windshield wiper sprayers are about to go crazy.”
I waited a second, and when Reed didn’t reply, I said, “You should shut off their AC. Really show ’em who’s boss here.”
Scott and Jamal both cackled, and I reached up and crushed the van’s tire with a blast of gravel right out of the road. It popped in a burst of air, and then all three other tires blew out, too.
I caught Reed smirking. “There’s air in the tires too, Augustus.”
“Their electrical just fried out,” Jamal said.
“Doubt they can see much of anything now …” Scott said.
“Ooh, here comes one of them now,” Jamal said. “Dude looks pissed.”
The dude in question did indeed look pissed. He got out of the van and practically ripped off the door. There was meta strength there, no question. “I think that’s confirmation enough,” Reed said, rustling the bushes.
Our opponent looked right at us, and I knew Reed had made a serious mistake. “Oh, shit,” I said, “I think he—”
“Heard me?” Reed stood up. “I noticed.”
“No,” I said, using the earth I was standing on to launch me into the air. I did the same for each of them, but a second too late. “He felt it, Reed! He’s a—”
The bush rustled again, and I knew what was happening even as I propelled myself skyward.
This guy? This guy was a Persephone. He’d felt our presence through the plant when Reed touched it.
“Gahhhhh!” Scott said, branches wrapped around his neck like twisting fingers.
“Get … us … out …” Jamal struggled to say as I hovered over the van.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it—” I started to say, ready to uproot the plant and be done with it.
But I didn’t get a chance.
Because a blast of water like a knife sliced through the chunk of ground I was levitating on and it broke apart. I fell forward, narrowly missing getting chopped in two by the geyser of pain. I hit the roof of the van and bounced, rolling off the opposite side to where my friends and Mr. Persephone were. I vaulted back to my feet with the help of some gravel and dirt, and found myself looking at a very familiar face, positioned in the passenger door.
“Well if it isn’t my old buddy Omar,” I said, putting up my hands and getting ready for the fight that was about to come my way. Omar wasn’t smiling; he looked pissed as hell, like he was ready for round two to go different—and deadlier for me—than round one had. “Looks like you were wrong, Reed!” I doubted he was paying any attention to me now. “Looks like this is going to be Colorado all over again … ’cept this time I’m kicking your ass.”
52.
Sienna
“You got a bathroom around here?” I asked as I stepped off the plane and into Greg’s mighty, mighty fortress of hangardom/solitude/museum of plundered military history. He'd modified some clothing he had on board so that it fit me, barely – a shirt and pants that were kinda like capris, but they worked, albeit uncomfortably. I looked back up at him as I took my last step down off the ramp to find him staring at me blankly, and not because of my ill-fitting wardrobe. “Seriously? Fine, I’ll just go on the plane.”
“You can’t,” he held up a hand to stop me from going back up. “The lavatory shuts off when the plane does.”
I shrugged. “So start it back up again.”
“Well, it needs maintenance,” he said, “and I don’t want to strain the batteries.” He looked a little guilty.
I rolled my eyes, looking around the brightly lit hangar. It looked a little like the inside of an electrical box, the sort you’d install plugs in, but completely emptied out and with a giant vent placed over it that was completely shut against the wind. I figured Greg must have really shrunken us in order to get us and the Concorde between those plates, because there was no way his miniature menagerie would have held up very well if even a slight breeze got in here. “Fine. Where do you go?”
“Well, wherever I want,” he said, looking a little annoyed by the question. “I can shrink to the point where it’s such an inconsequential amount of volume—”
“Yuck. And I was just thinking it was a really nice place you had here, you know, considering it’s literally a hole in the wall.” I looked around again, hoping that maybe a Porta Potty would pop up, like magic. “What about in the house?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head violently, “that won’t work at all.”
“Well, if it flushes, it’d work just fine for me.”
“We can’t,” he said, still shaking his head like he was trying to expel Sam from hiding in his hair or something. “It’s too—dangerous.” He must have realized how lame that sounded, because he reddened more than I’d seen him do thus far.
“Dangerous?” I almost laughed. “Dude, you live in Shermer, Illinois. The worst danger you’d face around here is Emilio Estevez taping your butt cheeks together in the locker room, or maybe the Wet Bandits burgling your house.” I scowled at him, my need to pee rising. “Did Emilio Estevez tape your butt cheeks together, Greg? Is that why you’re so anal retentive?”
“Look, you can just go wherever in here,” he said, taking a step toward me. “I’ll shrink you so small I won’t be able to see you and just—go to town.”
“No,” I said. “Also, other than going dragon, which I’m pretty sure would return me to normal size and through the wall of your house—”
“It would, yes. Molecular change returns you to your original proportions.”
“—how are you going to get me back to—whatever pin-head size I am now after I get done taking a mini-pee on your floor? Still ewww on that, by the by.”
He spoke slowly, like he was spelling out for me, a clear idiot, the most obvious thing in the world. “I would wait a reasonable period of time and then check on you—”
“Peeing out in the open, in the middle of the floor here, while shrunken, and then I have to wait for you while dodging the puddle of my own pee, when I’m done?” I said. “A world of no, no and HELL NO. This ain’t happening. Show me to the bathroom in the house.”
“This isn’t—we can’t—” Greg started to stutter, which made me think I’d gone and blown a hole in his logic circuits.
“Sure we can,” I said, starting to search for the exit. There was a door way, way over on the far wall, and I had to assume that led somewhere. I darted over to it, opened it wide, and zipped out.
“Wait!” Greg called after me. “You can’t
just—”
I found myself in a human-sized office, and I was very much still not human-sized. I was guessing I was maybe the size of a gnat’s leg, which was kinda disquieting. “I can and I’m about to, Greg. Get me to normal size and find me a toilet before I pay you back for all these attempts to kill me by doing some suburban renewal I know your neighbors won’t appreciate.”
“But I saved your life!” he shouted after me, scrambling toward the door.
“And I appreciate it,” I said, “but my gratitude is balanced both by the realization that you’ve made my life—which you saved, thanks for that, again—so much harder by getting a nuclear incident blamed on me, and oh, also I’m about to pee myself because you’re being a dick about not letting me use your bathroom.” I looked at him with a blazing irritation. “Solve my immediate problem and I’ll forgive you for causing my other, longer-term, intractable one, okay?”
“Fine!” he shouted, stepping right up to the door to the office. There was a thousand-foot fall to the carpet awaiting him if he jumped out, but if I had to guess, he made that jump all the time, growing to full size before he hit the floor. It was probably like taking a normal step for him. “Fine, I’ll—hold on—”
He stepped out and touched my shoulder as he went. The world changed around us, everything seeming to shrink in perspective, the office appearing normal-sized within a second or so. My feet brushed the carpeting, and I went ahead and stopped my hover, my weight setting on the balls of my feet.
Greg was standing in front of me, looking severely put out at having to invite me into his home. He wasn’t just looking daggers at me, he was looking Scottish Claymores at me, such was the breadth of his irritation. “This way,” he snapped, and walked me to the door of his office, pausing to look out. It was cracked just a smidge.
“What the hell is going on in here?” A female voice said, opening the door before Greg could stick his eyeball up to the crack for a check. A woman shoved it open and Greg dodged so as not to end up with it planted in the middle of his forehead. She stepped in at meta speed, voice hushed as she took him in with a glance and said, “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I wouldn’t,” he said, “but—I—” Greg’s hands flailed uselessly as he tried to find the words to explain himself and failed in flustered uselessness. “—she—” He pointed at me.
The woman turned her head casually, like she was just following his pointed finger, and saw me, nodded, then turned back to look at him. A second later, it seemed to register with her that I was there, and maybe also who I was, because her head snapped back around, fast enough that I feared she’d go Exorcist and spin it all the way around in her haste. “What. The. Hell. Greg?” She whirled back on him, and then looked back at me like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Hi,” I said, “I was just looking to use your bathroom.”
53.
Augustus
We kicked it off right. Omar came at me with spears of water ripped right out of the air, and I threw up a dirt defense torn out of the ground as I did one of those gymnastic leaps sideways. Water- knives shot over and around me, one missing my thigh by about an inch. I landed low, my dirt shield obscuring me from Omar’s sight. That was going to be the secret of my success, making sure this dude couldn’t see me.
“Aug … gust … us!” Reed shouted from over past the van. I had forgotten about them already, all tangled up in my own stuff.
“Sorry!” I shouted, and ripped that plant out of the ground by its roots, carrying a small mountain of soil off with it. I shot it right at the last position I’d had for the Persephone driver. I heard a grunt and I guessed that he’d jumped out of the way followed by a thump that shook the van as I slammed that wad of dirt and plant into the side, knocking the van several inches toward me.
Flashes of lightning sparked and lit the night just out of my view on the other side of the van, but I was already focused back on Omar. I’d done all I could for my boys, now I was going to have to do all I could for me.
I took down my dirt shield for a second and caught Omar looking across the hood of the van, trying to see what was going on there. I got his attention back pretty quick with a buckshot blast of gravel right to the gut straight out of the roadway. He screamed as it hit, and then lashed back at me with a thousand needles of water.
I threw my shield back up and jumped high. It looked like a daggered rainstorm was going on beneath me, like the wind had blown it hard sideways. I knew if I’d been there to take it, it would have ripped right through me and left me looking like a pincushion.
Omar brought down a cascade of water from somewhere above, maybe up the hills, maybe from a creek nearby, I didn’t know. All I knew was that suddenly I was dealing with a lot more H2O than I’d planned on and jumped on top of the van as it roared down beneath me like an angry river.
Topside, I had a clear view of the fight on the other side of the van. Persephone Man was really giving it to Reed, Jamal and Scott, which might have explained why none of them had come to join me. Scott had a shield of water up, attacking from one side, Reed was ripping the wind at Persephone from another, and Jamal, separated from the other two, was fending off three plants that seemed to have gained sentience, coming at him and brushing off his lightning attacks like they were nothing.
“Uh oh,” I said as Omar jumped up on the hood of the van to face me. He was swirling the water around the van, and I had a feeling in about two seconds I was going to get overwhelmed, surrounded and slaughtered by it. And my boys weren’t going to be any help because they were too busy fighting for their own lives.
I felt out into the distance. There was good earth all around us; I could have made a golem, maybe an army of golems, fought it out with this guy from here to Durham and back again. But I’d done that once before and a city in Colorado had almost paid the price. Omar was a bad, bad man, and he wasn’t going to run away this time, I could see it in his eyes. He was grinning, knowing he and his partner had us on the ropes.
So I reached out a little farther, found the thing I was looking for, and summoned it toward me with all my strength.
“You can’t stop us,” Omar said with a grin as the water started to snake up around my ankles. I was going to jump, but it got me too quick, I was distracted for just a hair too long. “You’re going to die right now, because you’re not strong enough. Which is just as well for you.” He chortled under his breath, like he was privy to a real good joke he didn’t want to share. “You would never have survived the awa—”
The boulder I’d pulled from about two hundred feet away came sailing in right then, five feet wide by two feet tall. It made a whistling noise as it roared toward us like it was fired out of a piece of field artillery, and Omar didn’t even have time to turn before it struck him right in the upper body, turning his entire torso and head into a giant SPLAT! mark on the rock. His legs and hips stood there for a second, surreally standing on their own before gravity took hold and they went tumbling off the van like they’d gone all wobbly.
“I beg to differ on that ‘strong enough’ thing,” I said. “Guess we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.”
Omar’s water released around my ankles, flowing off the van now that he’d let loose of it. “Scott!” I shouted, and looked out for the blond man in the midst of the battle in front of me.
He was already doing his thing. Scott yanked the water under his control and sent it right around Persephone, encasing him in it. The plant man was freaking out, the entire forest up in arms.
“Quick!” Reed shouted, “put him out before the last march of the Ents kills us all!”
Jamal sparked a blast that surged into Scott’s water bubble, blue electricity coruscating around it. Within the lit sphere, Persephone Man jerked and spasmed until he went still, and the sounds of the forest died down around us.
“Is he still alive?” Reed asked as the chaos turned to silence, and the moon broke out of the clouds above to ca
st the entire scene in a pale, silvery light.
“I doubt it, man, I cut ol’ Omar in half,” I said.
“Not him,” Reed said, holding his throat where the plant had throttled him. “I meant Sir Poison Ivy. I can see your boy is roadkill.”
“Weak pulse,” Scott said, letting the water slip away from the Persephone. “He’ll probably heal fast, though.”
“Get a dose of suppressant,” Reed said, and I saw Jamal trot off to the car to fetch our medical bag. “Let’s wrap this up.” He sidled over toward me as I hopped down from the van. “So …” he looked at the severed lower body splayed out on the road. “… that was the guy that gave you hell in Colorado?”
“Yeah,” I said, “sorry if you wanted him for questioning. I get the feeling from how he played this, he might have been a higher up.”
“Well, he was going to kill all of us,” Reed said, still idly stroking his throat. “Speaking for my own ass, which has been saved because of you … I’m grateful. I think you made the right call.” He shook his head at the remainder of the corpse.
“Thanks, Boss,” I said, kinda sincerely and kinda sarcastically. “Can I get some PTO for this?”
“Probably real soon,” Reed said with the ghost of a smile. “After all, if we just smashed up the entire distribution network for these people piping fresh meta criminals everywhere in the US … seems like we’re bound to experience a precipitous drop in trouble, right?”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Seems to me if someone’s gone to all the expense and trouble of doing this once … we kinda need to strike off the head of the serpent in order to kill it good and dead, you know?”
Reed lapsed into silence. “Mark McGarry. That was his name, right?”
“That’s what Cassidy said.” I watched as Jamal came trotting back with a syringe, making his way over to the Persephone and giving him a stick with it. “Guess we have to rely on Abby and J.J. to dig him up, though, right?”
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