“You have to hold still!” he cried again, turning his panicked face to look at me. His eyes were warm even though they were wide, and I had my mouth clamped shut by now, unable to say a word. My lip was bleeding from where I’d caught my teeth on it biting down.
“Just give me a minute,” I said, forcing my mouth open. My voice did not sound nice, just agonized.
“A minute?” Webster looked at me, agape. “You need medical attention. I need to call for an ambulance.”
“Just give me… a minute,” I said, shaking my head. The bad guy, whoever he was, had been brighter than I would have given him credit for. He’d dodged two bullets and run, catching me in a trap that actually worked. That never happened anymore.
I watched the bones of my foot extend as they grew, muscle and fibrous tissue chasing behind them. A layer of pale skin crept down my calf, pink and fresh as it settled, turning back to the snowy white color of the rest of me as it finished wrapping around my foot. Toenails sprang from each toe, and I wiggled them one by one.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, Webster caught on and stared, dumbfounded, at my newly grown foot. My pants had been shredded to mid-thigh by the explosion, exposing way, way more skin than was really appropriate. Partially protected by the explosion hitting my right side, hints of my left pant leg fluttered down to my knee like a tattered flag. The denim was soaked with blood, probably from where my femoral artery had been severed by the blast.
“My God,” he whispered. I was surprised he got that much out.
“I said give me a minute.” I flexed my new foot and worked my way to standing. My left boot was still mostly intact, whatever debris the explosive had used missing it from about mid-calf down. The top looked a little dog-eared, though. I hobbled into the next room, feeling the press of splinters and drywall fragments on the plantar surface of my foot.
I found my other boot in the hallway beyond. I picked it up like it was nothing, and turned to see Webster still staring at me, openmouthed.
“What?” I asked, dumping the severed foot out of my boot. It landed on the floor with a loud thunk that I suspected even he could hear.
His jaw moved up and down several times before he got a word out. It was kinda cute. “You… you can do that? Regrow a leg?”
“I can do a lot of things,” I said, slipping the boot back on. “Right now I’d like to catch the bastard who just made it necessary.”
Webster shook his head. “He’s gone.”
I stared at him. “How do you know?”
“I went running outside to check once I saw you’d lost a leg. Saw a grey car going ’round the bend too fast for me to read the plate or get a make.”
“Hmm,” I said. Blood squished between my toes in the boot I’d just recovered. I turned over my severed foot, looking for my ankle holster and backup gun.
“What are you doing?” Webster asked. He was almost back to normal volume now.
“Trying to find something.” The Walter PPK I habitually carried strapped to my ankle lay underneath it, the band a little dog-eared but still mostly intact. “Here we go.” I pulled the pistol out of the holster, examined it to make sure there was nothing blatantly wrong with it, and made a mental note not to fire it until I was sure the barrel was clear of debris and the weapon was undamaged.
“You brought two guns to London?” Webster looked sick—and not just from the display of gore, I’d wager.
“I would have brought more, but I can only carry so much across the Atlantic, y’know?”
He was not amused. “You’re in violation of our laws.”
I shrugged. “I can leave, if you’d like.”
“You can lea—” He looked near-ready to explode, but he suppressed whatever he’d planned to say a lot better than I would have in his situation. “You can’t do that.”
“Leave?” I asked, looking down again at my tattered clothes. He didn’t know it, but I wouldn’t have left now if I’d had to surrender both guns and one of my hands to stay. Mr. Ski Mask had taken a leg from me. I had a score to settle. “Or carry a gun?”
“Both,” he sputtered. “I need your help. But you can’t carry a handgun around London.”
“If you need my help, then you’ll deal with the fact that I go everywhere armed,” I said. “Me and my guns, we’re part and parcel, one and the same.”
He made a noise of frustration. “You bloody Americans.” He placed both hands on his hips, squaring out his elbows and causing the trench coat to billow. “This isn’t my decision. It’s up to our commissioner and the Foreign Office.”
“Great, why don’t you bump that up the chain of command?” I pushed past him, heading toward the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I figured you wouldn’t want me contaminating your crime scene any further,” I said, stopping at the entry to the kitchen and keeping my hands to myself to avoid doing just that. “I’m going to wait in the car until your crime scene unit gets here and you’ve had a chance to sift through the place for clues.” I shot him a smile and hoped it was dazzling.
I got a look back that told me it was anything but, and I ducked around the corner to head out of the house, grimacing in discomfort that was not just physical.
Chapter 10
Philip slammed the door to the warehouse shut after the car had pulled in. The door slid on a rail and clattered like a train on tracks as he closed it. The grey daylight of the London afternoon vanished as he did so, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He could feel the smile on his lips, though, as he turned to look at the car’s boot.
“Mr. Waterman,” he said, taking slow, joyful steps toward the back of the car. It was practically a dance. “Your moment is coming swiftly, and I think you should prepare for it.”
Liliana opened and closed her door, watching him as he made his way over to the boot and opened it. Angus Waterman was still inside, still unconscious, black bruises layering the side of his face. Even a weak meta such as he would heal from them in little time, but unfortunately for Angus Waterman, it was not time he had. “Can you see his future?” Liliana asked, those dark eyes looking even blacker in the low light of the warehouse.
“Indeed I can,” Philip said, staring at Waterman. His pudgy body was angled in such a way that Philip felt certain he would awaken with a severe pain in his neck. “It will be gruesome and it will be short. Though not nearly short enough for Mr. Waterman’s taste.”
Liliana hissed, this time in apparent pleasure. He’d seen the knives at work and knew what she could do with them. He gestured, and she reached into the trunk, dragging Waterman’s unmoving form from it and placing him into a fireman’s carry. She walked as if he were no more of a burden across her shoulders than a mink coat. The fat oaf likely wasn’t.
“String him up next to the old man,” Philip said, passing one of the supporting struts that held the corrugated metal roof on the warehouse. “Let him wake up to a glimpse of his future.”
Liliana did not nod, just headed toward the far corner of the room, to the door of the soundproofed chamber where the old man currently resided. It made Philip smile, just thinking of what was to come. “Oh, and Liliana?” She turned to look back at him. “Give him a poke or two to… get the juices flowing, will you?”
That drew a smile out of her.
Philip sashayed his way up the nearby metal stairs, his leather shoes making a sound with every step. He opened the old wooden door to the offices in the middle of the warehouse, listening to the window rattle in the frame as he did so. He stepped into a room lit by a single dull bulb shining overhead, which cast illumination down upon a man hunched over a desk, hard at work on something.
He had tanned skin and dark stubble that extended up his cheeks and across his bald head. Though his back was turned, Philip could picture the nightmare-black goatee that rested on his unsmiling face. Philip approached carefully, not making any loud noises or sudden moves as he walked, thumping his fe
et gently against the concrete floor to announce his presence to Antonio Ruelle.
“You don’t have to do that,” Antonio said, not looking up from his work. “I could hear you come in.”
“I don’t like to chance surprising you when it’s possible you could be working with something delicate.” Philip mimed an explosion with his hands. “Not that I don’t enjoy seeing your fine pyrotechnic work; I just don’t want to see it quite that close.”
Antonio grunted, though Philip was hard-pressed to tell whether it was in amusement or simple acknowledgment. Philip could see the man’s hands now, and the burn scars that gave the skin a rippled look caught his attention once more. To see a metahuman with scars was an odd thing. Antonio wasn’t a particularly strong one; still, whatever had done that to him must have been truly magnificent to leave such marks.
“I found good use for your makeshift claymore,” Philip said, and he could hear a touch of singsong happiness in his voice as he said it.
“Did you?” Antonio did not look up from his tinkering.
“I did,” Philip said. “We just happened upon Sienna Nealon and an officer of the Metropolitan Police.”
That got Antonio to look up. His eyes flashed and the hands ceased work immediately. “Are you sure it was her?”
Philip held up a hand to his chest, faux-wounded. “How could you doubt me?”
“Of course,” Antonio said, clearly chastened. “Did you kill her?”
“I think I’ll need something a bit… stronger for that, don’t you?” Philip asked. He bared a smile. “Besides, I don’t think it’s her time. At least… not yet.”
Chapter 11
I probably looked like hell, but I didn’t care. I sat with my legs exposed, hanging out the side of Webster’s car. My boots reached up to mid-calf, partially shredded at the top, long-sleeved jacket covering my upper body, arms folded across my midsection. If I took my jacket off, I’d probably look a little like the palest cowgirl at the rodeo because my jeans were now cut-offs. And I really didn’t have the thighs for that.
I watched the police swarming all over the place with their distinctive yellow vests and funny hats. I looked at their belts as they passed back and forth and saw nothing but those batons and some pepper spray. I studied them through slitted eyes, like a huntress watching prey. I had the “Don’t talk to me” vibe in full effect, though at least part of that was motivated by a deep desire for a nap.
They are all of them prey, Wolfe’s voice said in my head.
I didn’t bother agreeing with him. When you feed a stray animal, you just encourage it to come back for more.
Besides, sadly, in this instance, I couldn’t find fault with his opinion.
Webster was milling around, bouncing back and forth between conversations with a few other plainclothes officers on the scene. One of them came up to him and greeted him with a smile. This guy was a little over the weight limit, if you know what I mean. His stomach over hung his belt by a couple inches. He looked young, like late twenties, similar in age to Webster, and when I saw the grin from the DI that indicated familiarity, I could tell even from fifty feet away that theirs was more than a casual acquaintance.
So I listened in. Because I can do that. Powers, you know.
“Can’t believe the carnage in there,” the big guy said to Webster. “An actual bomb?”
“It was,” Webster said with a sharp nod. “Took her bloody leg right off.”
The big guy glanced over at me and I looked away. “She looks all right now. Fit, even. Very fit, actually. Bit chunky ’round the thighs and trunk, but not bad.” Just the way he said it, with drool running over the words, left me with little doubt about what fit meant to him. “Is she the one—”
“Yes,” Webster cut him off. “She’s the one from the news.”
“I saw her on that interview from the American network, talking about powers and people and all that. It’s all a bit mad, innit?”
Webster’s reaction was not so subtle. “I’ve just seen her get a foot blown off and watched it grow back in seconds. Mad is not quite the right word, Dylan.”
“Bloody hell,” Dylan said, and I watched the blood drain from his face. “Like, grown from a stump?”
“Like magic,” Webster said. “Bone stretching out, muscle and skin coming back, like watching a time-lapse video.”
“I should get her to talk to my brother,” Dylan said, pensive. “He’s a git. Lives in council housing on account of losing his leg to a train—”
“I don’t think she can teach your brother to grow a new leg,” Webster said with a hint of impatience.
“I look at her like that, I can just about feel one growing on me—”
What. A. Pig.
“Oh, God,” Webster said, turning his back so I couldn’t see his expression. “Will you just leave it out?” It was at this point I got up and started toward them.
“Oh, honestly, mate, don’t get so worked up. She’s just a piece of arse—”
I arrived a second later, to the surprise of Dylan, whose mouth gaped open at my sudden blur of speed. “The only piece of ass I see around here is a hole, and it’s you,” I said.
“Bollocks, you heard that?” Webster asked, turning to me incredulously.
“Uh, yeah. It’d be hard to miss Sir Bacon Fatback here calling me ‘very fit’ and talking about how his little twig is stirring into motion for the first time in years.”
“Oh, shit,” Dylan said, hands falling to cover his groin. “You got the bloody x-ray vision, too?”
I glanced at him with a look of pity. “No. I just assumed you had a tiny, tiny penis because of the way you talk about a woman whose clothes have been shredded by a bomb blast.” I gestured at the crusted blood that had dried on my knee. “Clearly the thought of red wings doesn’t even turn you off, you’re so hard up for—”
“Okay, well, let’s just veer off that topic,” Webster said, adopting the pose of a conciliator. I scowled, and he blinked away. “We’re… uh… almost done here. Dylan was just coming over to tell me what SOCO found.”
"SOCO?" I said it back to him, because it made not a damned bit of sense to me.
"Scene of Crimes Officers," Dylan said helpfully. And snottily.
“Well, Dylan,” I said, turning my attention back to This Little Piggy Who Trod on My Nerves, “tell us what your British equivalent of CSI found that could aid in our murder investigation, and do so without looking at my chest.” That snapped his eyes north again.
“Right,” Dylan said, sounding slightly professional. Slightly. “Ah, not much. No mobile phone, no calendar or computers in the house—”
“You think the kidnappers took them?” Webster asked.
“Or Angus never had any,” I said.
“There is a phone in the house, a landline,” Dylan said, taking a notepad out of his trench coat pocket. As the sky started dribbling on me, I started to realize why they were both wearing coats. My leather one looked especially beat up next to my cut-offs. I wasn’t much for shopping, but I’d need to do some, and soon. “I’m getting the calls to it traced.”
“That’s making yourself useful,” I said. “What else can we find out about this guy?”
“We can ask the commissioner to make some introductions at the Foreign Office,” Webster said. “Perhaps get some answers from them on any other travel records, but I’m not hopeful.”
“Forensics are going over the remnants of the bomb,” Dylan said, shrugging as he closed his notepad. “I don’t know what they’ll be able to give you, but it’s at least a few hours off.” He glanced nervously at me. “Um… about that foot… do you want it back?”
“Why?” I asked. “Are you going to do something perverted to it if I leave it here?”
“What?” He looked offended at that, eyebrows arching up even as his pupils dilated. “No, I’m asking because I know you Americans get bloody paranoid about people watching you, and I didn’t know if you didn’t care about leaving it behi
nd or you just can’t be arsed to get it.”
“Can’t be what?” I asked with a laugh. “Arsed? What does that even mean?”
“Bothered,” Webster said, looking a little chagrined.
“No, I don’t care,” I said, looking evenly at Dylan. “I left enough of my blood in there that if your government wanted to clone me or whatever, they won’t have any problem getting a sample.”
“This is without a doubt the oddest conversation I’ve ever been involved in,” Webster said, shaking his head.
“It is a bit surreal,” Dylan said.
“That’s a big word to come from such a small mind,” I said.
“Oh, piss off,” Dylan said, and before I could take his advice, he turned and did it for me, dodging into the crowd of officers milling about.
“He’s a charmer,” I said.
“That’s just Dylan,” Webster said, still shaking his head. “He doesn’t mean anything by it.” He had a hand planted on the back of his neck, like he had an itch where his hair started. “He just doesn’t know what to make of you, that’s all.”
Dressed like this, I couldn’t totally blame him. Still, he got no points for anything he’d said. “I need clothes.”
Webster’s eyes dragged south before coming up to meet mine, and I caught more than a hint of discomfort. “We can stop at a—”
“Great,” I said, heading toward the car. Didn’t even bother for him to finish. I didn’t need eyes in the back of my head to see him looking as I walked away. But only because I could see his reflection in the bumper of a nearby car.
Chapter 12
“Still think you need my help?” I asked as we cruised through the streets of London on our way back to New Scotland Yard. The rain had let up, thank the heavens. I didn’t remember it being quite this bad when last I’d been here.
“Now more than ever,” Webster said tensely from the driver’s seat. His fingers were white-knuckling the steering wheel. “Without you, I’d probably have been butchered by our suspect.”
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