He did not skip over them this time, though, and was rewarded with a view of a street sign as the car carrying her to her destination rounded its last corner in the vision in his mind. He saw her dark hair as she looked around her before ducking inside, and over her shoulder was the house number.
“I’ve got it,” he said with a faint smile. Liliana was there when he opened his eyes, her own hungry at the thought of what came next.
Not many more now, he knew. Janus’s ability to resist was waning by the day. Soon, he’d have it all—a plan fulfilled, in spite of a thousand obstacles in his path.
Soon. He looked at Liliana’s uncultured face as he rose and met her smile with one of his own.
Chapter 46
I found Omega HQ right where I’d left it, down a back alley I was surprised I knew how to get to after all this time. It had taken a little work on Webbo’s version of Google maps, but I did it. I would have been happy with a congratulatory hug—or something—but he gave me a grunt and that was about it.
The place looked run-down, which wasn’t a huge surprise given it had been well over two years since I’d last been here and the building had (presumably) been unoccupied for most of that. Omega had owned it, I thought, probably through shell corporations and the like, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it completely undisturbed.
Well, it wasn’t undisturbed.
“Someone’s been here,” Webster said, drawing his baton. I gave him a shake of the head and pulled my pistol. I stared at the side of the barrel and cursed at the indentation in the smooth, shiny metal. “What?” he asked.
“My gun got damaged in the explosion,” I said, frowning at the Walther. “I really liked this weapon.” Not as much as I liked the Sig Sauer I carried as my primary, but still. I hadn’t noticed the damage when I’d reholstered it under my arm, which was probably a good indication of how tired I was.
“Looks like a ding,” he opined.
“On the slide,” I said. “Might have impinged the barrel.”
“Looks superficial,” he said with a shake of the head. Like he knew anything about guns.
“Here,” I said and spun it around to offer him the grip. “Try firing it and let me know how it works. Of course, if the barrel is damaged, it could blow up in your face, but you’re right, it’s probably superficial.”
“Ah… maybe try your backup,” he said, looking away from me.
“This is my backup,” I said.
His face creased. “Where’s your main one?” He stared at the silver, palm-sized piece in my hand. “That big, black beast of a gun.”
“The knife lady took it away from me,” I said, sliding the Walther back in my holster. It hung loosely in the leather casing meant for the bigger Sig.
He looked apoplectic for a second, probably pondering the thought of our enemies with another destructive weapon at their disposal. I wasn’t happy about it, either, and I had no one to blame but myself for chasing after them when I was plainly not in a good state for fighting. I wished—not for the first time in the last couple years—that I wasn’t damned near completely on my own in this.
But I pretty much was, other than Reed.
“Right,” he said, his anger diffusing. “I guess you’ll just have to get by on your natural charm. And the ability to throw balls of fire at people.”
I pulled Eve Kappler and her nets of light to the forefront of my mind. “I told you I don’t like to burn things to the ground.” I slid ahead of Webster and his collapsible baton before he could answer me. I could have used one of those for myself; in my hands it would have been lethal. In his, it was probably just enough to get him killed. He held it awkwardly, over his shoulder, like he hadn’t deployed it in years. I started to wonder if he’d ever used it in battle and then I remembered: normal people don’t get into battles.
Casual, everyday warfare was the province of the military or lunatics like me.
I slipped into the hallway under the Omega parking garage. The place had cars that had been here for years, their tires looking like they were rotting beneath the vehicles. I figured them for company cars, moldering here because their masters had all died or run away.
I slipped into the entry hallway. A plastic cage where a security guard had once sat was to the right, spiderwebs crossing inside as if Shelob and her closest friends had taken up residence within. I shuddered and Webster caught me.
“Don’t fancy spiders?” he asked.
“No, I don’t,” I said. “They creep me out.”
“You can get your innards shredded, get thrown into a dumpster and crawl out under your own power, but an arachnid puts the fear in you?” He shook his head. “You’re a mite peculiar, Sienna Nealon.”
“Thanks,” I said with sarcasm.
“It’s not an insult,” he said.
“Well, it wasn’t exactly a compliment.” I thumbed the elevator switch at the end of the hall and was surprised by the sound of electricity thrumming through the installation. I shouldn’t have been surprised; the servers may have been offline, but it was a fair guess that Omega would have had backups for everything, including the power.
The elevator dinged and opened, spilling light out into the hall and nearly blinding me for a second. I flinched against it and forced my eyes open to find the elevator car empty. I sighed. That had been dumb, closing my eyes, but the overwhelming light had been… well, overwhelming.
“Where do we go?” Webster asked as we got in the elevator.
“Top floor,” I said, pushing the button tentatively with my index finger. The doors closed slowly, and I prepared myself. “Right to the place with the answers.”
“All right, then,” Webster said and adjusted his feet like he was ready for an attack. I glanced at him. He did look a bit ridiculous, but it was best to be prepared for anything in this situation.
The elevator door dinged to indicate our arrival at the top floor, and I prepared myself. The doors started to slide open—
And something hissed, a cloud spraying in before the doors even had a chance to finish opening.
It was a thick fog, blinding my senses, shrouding the light from above. I could see no more than shadows moving around within it, as it increased in volume, and I felt myself start to cough as an accidental breath entered my lungs and I began to choke.
Chapter 47
I fought through the fog, trying to expel the poison out of my lungs even as I stormed forward. I saw a shadow in the cloud and beelined toward it, hitting it straight in the middle as I charged—
And flew right out the other side without making contact with anything.
I slammed into a desk on the far side, though it took me a second to recognize what it was. It was set upright, on its side, like a barricade forming a perfect channel, a defensible position in what had been a giant, open-air room when last I’d been here. Clearly someone had done some rearranging since I’d left. And not for the better. At least not for me.
I hit the desk and caromed off, my shoulder aching where it had hit after missing the shadow in the cloud. I blinked my eyes and fought to keep them open in spite of what I’d just been sprayed with. It didn’t feel chemical, there was no burning, just a feeling that something was in my eyes and lungs that wasn’t meant to be there. I coughed and sucked in a breath of oxygen, felt the stars begin to disappear from my vision.
That’s when I got hit, something smashing into me from the blind side like a kick to the head.
I hit the ground and rolled, coming back to my feet even though my head was swimming. I shook it to try and clear it (that never worked) and didn’t even have time to recover before something hit me full on, tackling me around the midsection.
I hit the ground with a hard thump, my head smacking against the wood floor. It sent an echo through my ears, a skull-splitting noise that wasn’t quite bone cracking but resonated like it. I was so stunned I barely had the instinct to fight back.
But I did fight back. Of course.
> I caught my assailant with a punch to the side that did break bones. I heard them. I pressed my advantage (okay, it wasn’t so much of an advantage as it was a lucky shot) with another hammering blow to the same spot, and this time I got a cry of pain for my troubles. Whoever I was up against was a tough son of a bitch to take a hit like that and not even yell about it the first time.
I decided to test their strength by raising my knee to their groin, but he twisted out of it with a grunt as I landed my attack on his inner thigh. I could tell by the noise he made that it was a dude, and while he was distracted trying to keep me from turning his balls into a pudding, I slammed my fist into his ribs a third time and sent the bastard flying through the air with the force of the blow.
“Okay,” I said, wobbling to my feet, still blinking the cloud of out of my eyes, “now you’ve got me pissed off, Mystery Man. There are only so many sucker punches I will accept before I start hitting back without gloves, and you’ve just earned your way onto my shit list—”
“Sienna?” came a familiar voice. The cloud and the dark together had left me near-blind. I blinked, three times in rapid succession and my vision started to clear a bit.
“Yes, congratulations,” I said, narrowing my focus onto the shadowy figure leering at me from out of the dark, “you’ve successfully identified the person who’s about to lay the most heinous damned beating of your life upon you—”
“Sienna, it’s me,” came the thickly accented voice. I blinked again and I could barely see his figure as he stepped out of the shadows, hands up. He wore a dark beard over his dark skin, and he looked worlds rougher than the clean-shaven man I’d known who dressed habitually either in tactical vests or suits, depending on what he was doing that day. Now he looked like he’d last shaved a hundred years ago.
“Karthik?” I asked, squinting into the dark. “Karthik, is that you?”
“It’s me,” he said, dropping his hands to his side. “It’s me. And I have to say… thank the deity it’s you.” He let out a sigh that left me in no doubt of his sincerity.
“What the hell is going on here?” Webster said, stepping out of the cloud around the elevator. There were tears down his cheeks, and he looked a little askew, like someone had sidelined him.
“That’s a really good question,” I said and looked at Karthik, who was deflating before my eyes, looking for all the world like a man who was weary from running for entirely too long, “and I have a feeling we’re about to get an answer to it.”
Chapter 48
Philip saw her come out of the flat. She was nervous, like a cat that had been beaten around by a larger predator for entirely too long. He saw her emerge at a distance, moving tentatively, as if she knew it was possible she was being watched at all times.
It was a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood of London. Not a bad place to hide, Philip would have conceded, even for an ex-Omega rat. But this was her, foolishly stepping outside her hole. Outside her safe place.
And she didn’t even know what the predator that was after her looked like.
They followed her at a distance, walking side by side like a couple. Liliana was wearing jeans and trainers, for once, convinced of the import of this mission. Antonio was waiting in the van. Circling the block slowly, in the opposite direction each time.
Angela Tewkesbury was shorter than Philip had pictured her. It was an imprecise thing, what he saw when he’d touched the necklace chain that had once been hers. His ability gave him a misperceived image of the height of things, sometimes. Hazard of the power, he supposed, but it wouldn’t have been very interesting if he’d just known it all.
On second thought, who cared about interesting when you have the all-knowing power of God at your fingertips?
He feigned a laugh at something Liliana didn’t even say; she was practiced enough in this fieldcraft to go along with it. He didn’t even have to say anything.
The street traffic was sparse; one car every two minutes, by his reckoning. Pedestrians darting here and there, heading for the corner shop, heading back their homes, a few scattered children on bicycles on their way to the park just down the road.
Angela Tewkesbury was alone in the middle of all of them. She looked alone, apart. Scared. Philip felt the thrill of following after her. Being the breath on the back of her neck that she felt but could not see the source of. It was his teeth that descended on her even now—metaphorically speaking, of course. His teeth were Liliana’s blades.
The teeth of the tiger.
They closed the distance slowly, letting her aimless shuffle gradually get overtaken by their steady forward progress. The girl was trying to take her time. She probably only allowed herself to go out once per day, and this was her time to see life, something she probably wasn’t getting much of a view of, being stuck inside all the time.
There was weakness in people. Everyone had their blind spots, their points of vulnerability. He knew this Angela, had looked into her future and seen the bare basics. She was in for pain, which meant that their efforts would surely succeed. Now all he had to do… was make it happen.
Their pace was such that they would surely catch her in just a few seconds. Philip laughed again, just slightly, and Liliana echoed it, pitch perfect save for its empty quality. He doubted she could laugh, at least not truly, all the way to the depths of the heart, reaching up from a soul she didn’t have. This small detail didn’t matter, though. Not here. If timing was everything, he was the master of it. He’d seen this, studied it, planned it out.
Now it was just a matter of execution.
He gave a nod to Liliana as his eyes swept the street. It was clear, everyone looking in different directions. He could hear the van easing up behind them. He looked back and saw Antonio in the driver’s seat slowing the vehicle.
Liliana took two long steps forward and punched Angela Tewkesbury in the back of her head with vicious force. Philip admired the strength of it. He stood motionless and watched the girl crumple. Liliana caught her, of course. Caught her the way a spider catches an insect, delicate and predatory all at once. A morsel saved for later.
Philip kept his lookout as he made his way through the cars parked on either side of the street to the back of the van. He opened one door as Liliana dragged the girl past. They watched carefully for any sign of trouble. Philip knew there wasn’t any; all the probabilities were against it. Still he watched. It was habit more than anything.
As soon as the girl was loaded, he hopped in himself and slammed the back door of the van. There was not a sound, not a scream, not a hint that anything untoward had just happened on this quiet London street.
Philip looked at the girl on the floor of the van as Antonio accelerated—not ridiculously, just enough to get them going and avoid the suspicion of the police. He felt the sway of his weight as the van went round a corner.
The screaming would start soon. Back at the warehouse, as soon as she woke up. Or maybe she’d wake up before the warehouse. Soon, though. The path of vengeance he’d begun was like a train rolling out of the station. It was certainly picking up speed now, and soon it would be roaring so quickly and loudly that anyone in the path would be forced to move out of its way—
Or perhaps not even have the chance. He thought of Sienna Nealon again, another dark contemplation, and let his gaze drift back to the girl on the floor of the van.
Helpless.
They were all so very helpless.
Chapter 49
“It’s good to see you, Sienna,” Karthik said, wiping sweat off his dark brow. He spoke with a British accent that was inflected by his native Indian, a resonant voice that I’d always thought was attractive and soothing.
I wasn’t feeling very soothed at the moment, though. “What the hell did you spray in my face?”
“Ah.” He looked a little embarrassed. “Fire extinguisher. It’s non-toxic, I just wanted to provide maximum distraction for whoever was coming up. I didn’t expect it would be you.”
�
��Who did you think it would be?” I asked coyly.
“I’m not sure,” he said, annoying me with his lack of specificity. “Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” I asked, tossing that one right back at him.
He sighed. “This is not going to go anywhere fast, I see.”
“Last time I saw you,” I said, brushing the white powder residue from the extinguisher off my sleeves, “you bugged out back to England when things got a little too heavy in the war. And here I find you, two years later, still hiding?”
“I’ve only been here for a few weeks,” he said, sweeping a hand to indicate the massive, open-air room of Omega’s headquarters. “But yes, I’ve been hiding.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because someone is kidnapping former Omega members,” Karthik said. “And I don’t wish to be among them.”
“Well, I knew that much,” I said. “This is Detective Inspector Matthew Webster.” I threw a gesture at Webbo. “He summoned me over here to look into this mess you’re up to your neck in.”
“Detective Inspector,” Karthik said with a courteous nod. “Young for the title, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I have a good case record,” Webster said, still coughing.
“I’m sure you’re a veritable Nicholas Angel,” Karthik said.
“So you’re Karthik?” Webster asked. “I guess we can scratch off one of those disappearances as self-inflicted.”
“Kind of an obvious place to hide, don’t you think?” I asked, looking around the room. A series of offices ringed the place, glass windows obstructed by blinds. When this was Omega HQ, the peons worked in the big room and the muckety-mucks in the offices, closing the blinds when they didn’t want to be seen.
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