Badder

by Robert J. Crane

  “You think she…?” I asked.

  Sienna closed her eyes. “She’s a succubus.” She put her head in her hands. “How could I be so stupid? She’s a Scottish succubus.” If there had been a wall around, she might have punched it.

  “It’s okay,” I said, trying to rally her back to the moment at hand. “We’re going to work through this.”

  “Thousands,” Sienna whispered. “Thousands dead. That she killed. Because of me. Because—”

  “Not now,” I said, seizing her by the shoulders, feeling the damp fabric of her shirt between my fingers. Whatever had happened to soak her to the bone, I bet it hadn’t been fun. “There will be time for guilt later. We don’t know for sure that…THAT…is why Rose is very, very angry with you—” She gave me a “you’re-an-idiot” look, which I ignored, because she was my sister, sarcastic to the nines, and I was used to it on all occasions. “And we can’t do anything about it either way. It happened years ago, Sienna, and there was nothing we could do about it at the time. We made the best choices we could, and now—now we have to…to keep doing that.” I took a breath, trying to breathe some conviction into those words, because I wasn’t necessarily feeling them right now. “Can you get to York?”

  She looked rattled, answered quietly, “Yes. I think so. I’ve evaded Rose for a hundred miles or more so far. York can’t be that much farther. I’ll find a way.”

  “Get to York,” I said, squeezing her shoulders tight. “Get to the airport.” My voice built in intensity, because something was happening around me, noise and fury, the quiet darkness fading as I returned to consciousness against my will. Sienna was right in front of me, scared, feeling like—like she was helpless, almost for the first time since I’d known her. My fearless sister, and here she was, filled with toxic fear. There was a roaring tempest around me, the sound of staccato shots being fired, the low whine of something sizzling its way, screamingingly searing through metal like a laser— “I will be there, waiting. Come to me, and together we’ll get you—”

  The darkness broke, and I felt like I was seized from this unconscious vision and hurled back into the light. The last thing I saw before I woke up was Sienna’s face, pale, ashen and afraid.

  And seeing my sister…my fearless sister…afraid, really, truly afraid, for the first time in years…

  It scared me more than I had ever been in my entire life.

  22.

  I awoke to the gunfire of a dozen Texas cops pouring it on, huddled behind cruisers and shooting at Peter. My head was against a curb, and the sound of the gunshots was like a heralding of the apocalypse. I blinked into the bright sunlight, shining down on me with the intensity of a heat beam, or maybe one of Peter’s lasers, and something shook me, shoving my shoulder.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake,” Angel said, smudged with sweat and some other black substance across her forehead. “You know what you were saying about a peaceful resolution…?” She looked significantly, almost theatrically at the chaos unfolding around us. “I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

  My head was hard against the curb, the endless blasts of gunshots painful to my meta ears. I blinked a few times into the sun, trying to recall what had just happened in the dream, way more vivid and real than this battle I found myself in. The police cruiser next to me, that I was hiding behind for cover, was scorched and blacked. A few more were on fire, flames crackling quietly, unheard under the gunfire.

  Peter was out there somewhere, blasts of red giving away his position behind me. I sat up, the ruined cruiser acting as cover between me and him, and I rolled to my knees, my dream now coming back to me, afresh.

  My sister was afraid. Scared. On the run. In a strange, foreign land.

  I had to save her.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Angel asked as she stared at me. “You must have taken a harder hit to the head than I thought. You should lie back down while I take care of this.”

  “Peacefully?” I asked, rolling to my knees and shaking my head. I couldn’t get the image of Sienna out of my mind. She just looked so…

  Afraid.

  “Like I said, I don’t think it’s going that way.” Angel was not trying hard to contain her distaste for this situation. “I’m going to try and flank him—”

  “Stay right where you are,” I said, reaching out with my powers. “I’ll settle this.”

  “Peacefully?” Angel said with a fair amount of mocking.

  I found what I was looking for on the side of the house: an air conditioner unit, intact, and several hundred pounds of steel and internal components.

  “To hell with peace,” I said, and concentrated.

  Creating a vortex was a tricky thing. I did it all the time, of course, with varying levels of strength. Before I’d been super-empowered—boosted, I guess you could say—I could create a hell of a tempest when pressed: walls of wind that moved a hundred or two hundred miles an hour in a pinch, sustained over the course of a few minutes. Maybe even create the kind of tornado that could lift a car.

  But since I’d gotten my power boost, that had become old news.

  Now, the new hotness was creating massive tornadoes, F5, F6 and over, a thing that didn’t exist in nature, and even—once—dispelling a hurricane before it landed on Haiti. The weathermen had looked stupid that day, at least as stupid as they did most other days, since they tended to be wrong almost as much as political prognosticators. Both still kept their jobs in spite of that appalling track record, which was one of the mysteries of the universe as far as I was concerned.

  I didn’t need a tornado, or a hurricane, to deal with Peter, though.

  I just needed that air conditioning unit.

  It wrenched free without me having to apply much power to it, a few hundred pounds of metal lifted into the air by a vortex under control of yours truly.

  And then I reversed the current, redirected it a few feet, and lifted my head up to make sure I knew where it was going.

  Peter was standing on the front lawn, aglow with laser light shooting out of his hands and chest. It was a stunning red beam, and he was howling, directing it any which way it pleased him. He locked his eyes on me, and I on him, and surveyed him with a cold fury worthy of…well…

  Someone in my family. Not usually me.

  “I gave you a chance to get out of this peacefully,” I shouted across the lawn, which was an apocalyptic wasteland of devastation. The house, fortunately, looked to be mostly intact, and I hoped the hostages were, too. “I tried to work with you, Peter, tried to help you get out of this alive.”

  “Get down here!” Angel was seizing at my pants leg, tugging it, but gently, probably realizing that if she yanked it, I’d just let her rip it and keep doing what I was doing.

  Peter cocked his head at me, like he was seeing me for the first time. He opened his mouth to speak, and a red glow started within it. Laser powers out of every hole in his body. Cute.

  “But you didn’t want peace,” I said. “Or you were too stupid to take it.” That got his eyes glowing, and I was speaking rapidly now, furiously. “I don’t care either way, but you missed out, bub. You wanted war? Fine. This is war.

  “Now reap the whirlwind, bitchnuts.”

  I brought that air conditioning unit down on him like the wrath of God itself descending from the heavens, a meteor out of the sky with no fire to streak behind it to herald its arrival. A few hundred pounds of air conditioner made its landing on Peter’s head and he disappeared beneath its bulk as I slammed it into the earth and stopped it there, walls of wind arresting its forward momentum so it didn’t go bouncing into the police barricade or the houses beyond.

  The only thing left to mark Peter’s passage was a splatter of blood and a couple of twitching feet.

  “So long to the wicked Witch King of the South, no?” Angel was beside me, staring at the end of Peter. He did look a little like something out of The Wizard of Oz, now that she mentioned it, minus the cool footwear.

  “
I have to go home,” I said, turning from her and looking for my ride.

  “Wait, what?” Angel was after me in a hot second. “Reed, you can’t just leave now that he’s dead. There are hostages—” As if on cue, a woman I took to be Elvira came bursting out of the shattered front door, two kids beside her and one cradled in her arms, squealing to beat the band. “And we’ve got—paperwork, and reports and—”

  “Screw it all,” I said, still looking for my ride. “I have to get home. Right now.” My jaw was set, and so was my determination, and Angel must have seen it, because she didn’t argue. “All that other stuff can wait. I have to go. Now.”

  “Home?” Angel asked. “Why?”

  I didn’t answer her. All I could think of was that look on my sister’s face. I needed to get home, right now.

  And then I needed to go to York.

  To save the only family I had left.

  23.

  Rose

  The silence might have been the worst part.

  It was in the still of the night that Rose seemed to feel it worst of all, the quiet stretching like a heavy, suffocating blanket over her. She lay in the darkness, looking up at the ceiling, and wondering if it would be like this forever. It had been months, and she’d wondered, based on Tamhas’s comments, if maybe, just maybe, the village would start speaking to her again.

  So far, though…it just hadn’t happened.

  Nighttimes were the toughest part. She would have figured it’d be walking down the street. But it wasn’t. The hardest part was to lie awake in the wee small hours, thinking about the future she didn’t have any longer, at least not here, where she’d expected to. Thinking about Graham, about her mam and granddad, and wondering what she could have done that was so wrong—

  Rose tensed. There was a sound in the night, faint and distant, like a bird hooting, or perhaps squawking. It was a bit of an odd noise, not one she normally heard at night. Birds slept at night, didn’t they? Unless they were owls?

  Perhaps she just usually wasn’t awake at these hours. That was the real challenge. She’d gotten into a pattern where, with nothing to do during the days, she’d sleep until whenever she felt like. And then take a nap in the afternoon. And why not? It wasn’t as though she had anything else going on.

  No friends.

  No appointments.

  No future.

  She rustled against the sheet, chasing sleep again and failing. She put her face against the pillow, seeking a cool spot and failing to find one, as though every inch of the pillowcase had been heated in the oven. Rose let out a little sigh, adjusting her thin white t-shirt and shorts. They rode up uncomfortably, and she considered simply tossing them given that it felt stifling in here.

  An idea occurred, and she got up on her knees, bouncing against the spring of the bed, feeling a little like she was on the moon from the bounce. She threw open the window a few inches, and the night air came in with real chill. Rose shivered, her skin instantly rising in gooseflesh, even from so small a gap as she’d made.

  A small trill of delight ran through her, and she slipped back under the covers with the closest thing to a smile she’d worn in months. Winter was on its way, she could feel it in the air, though it hadn’t come quite yet. There’d been a snowfall or two, sure, but they hadn’t stuck, and had melted away shortly after arrival, which was strange. It wouldn’t have been unusual for them to have a few inches by now, but all they had thus far was a nice, brisk chill to the air.

  The wind picked up and rushed into the room like an uninvited guest—except she had opened the window, so she supposed it was invited after all. Either way, she pulled the blankets up to her chin and shivered in mildest pleasure, the room infused with the scent of the outdoors, of the coming cold, of—

  Another high, trilling bird caw came, louder now, and Rose froze in her bed. It sounded closer, didn’t it? Or had opening the window just made it seem so?

  Rose took a deep breath and watched it appear in front of her in a heavy mist as she exhaled. This had always been her favorite time of year, going toward the days of frozen chill, heading toward Christmas, toward that time when everyone on the village street seemed to greet each other with a little extra joy, as though it were a reminder of how fortunate they all were to have one another—

  That didn’t seem likely to happen this year though, did it?

  This year she’d be walking the streets by herself, if this new tradition continued. No one would look her in the eye. They’d all rush away, grabbing their children—the few there were—and pretending she was a disease carrier in the street.

  No, it was best—

  The hawk trilled again, loud, almost earsplitting, and Rose stirred, craning her head back to try and look out the window. There was nothing but black and starry sky above, no sign of this bird that seemed to be continuously trying to—

  There it went again. Loud, like it was trying to—

  A door slammed. Then another.

  There was movement in the streets; Rose could hear it through the open window. Someone was out there—now another someone—more doors were opening, and voices melded together in the night.

  “What do we do?”

  “Is this it?”

  “—now come to us?”

  “—thought we had more time—”

  “—not ready.”

  It was a cacophony of action, like every house in the village was emptying its contents, its residents. Someone was ringing a bell, loud and clanging, and it hurt Rose’s ears. She’d only heard them ring it very occasionally, when there was an emergency, perhaps.

  What, then, was this?

  She got up on her knees and stuck her head out in the window, grimacing against the cold chill that caught her as she did so. The night’s darkness was nearly complete, a few exterior lights on houses casting shadows over the trees in her garden. The buzz of conversation was thick in the air, so thick it was like a stew of melted rubber, almost impossible to do anything with.

  Graham’s voice drifted to her through the din. “What do we do?”

  Rose frowned, the heavy lines creasing her brow. What was this?

  A door slammed closer to her, and she heard her granddad speak, audible by dint of his proximity to her. “All right, then, you lot—”

  “It’s happening.” Hamilton’s cool, calm voice split the night like an axe split cord wood.

  Her granddad hesitated, probably contemplating his answer. “Right now?” he asked. The conversational buzz was fading to silence.

  “Yes,” Hamilton said. “Right now.” A pause. “Where is she?”

  “Inside,” Rose’s mam answered, strong, resolute. Had she gone out with Granddad?

  Just what were they talking about? “She” was inside—?

  Oh.

  Rose.

  “Come on then, lads,” Hamilton said, grimly, and the quiet spurred to life once more. “And lasses,” he added, as though in apology to someone who’d taken offense.

  Rose could feel the change in the atmosphere of the house this time as the door opened, as though a groan ran through the entirety of her home from the change in pressure, the shift in the wood frame hidden inside those plaster walls. She was still half-out the window, listening, when she heard the footsteps coming toward her door.

  She scrambled, like an animal panicking at a predator’s approach. They were coming for her, many of them, strong, confident footsteps echoing down the hall like thunder on the approach of a storm. Rose’s mouth went instantly dry, and her skin turned colder than any blustery winter wind could have managed in the space of a second.

  Her feet rustled against the sheets as she started to propel herself out the window. Her only thought was of escape, and she knew not from what. There was only the threat of something, of the villagers coming after her, the target of their ire of late. Their scapegoat, they had alienated her so effectively that if she’d heard this entire conversation only a few months earlier, she’d have thought they wer
e planning a party for her.

  Now, her stomach roiled in blind panic as she lunged for the window. The only party she reckoned they were planning for her now was the kind where her neck would be at the end of a thickly knotted rope while her feet danced a good margin above the ground.

  Rose hit the window sill on her way out, lower back thumping as she slid roughly against the window. She hadn’t raised it high enough; it wasn’t as though she’d planned to do anything other than get a little breeze. She certainly hadn’t planned to use it as an escape exit—not when she was in her nightwear. Her chest scraped against the sill on the way out and her lower back ached from where it had made hard contact with the window at the squeeze point of her pelvis and her arse. She’d gotten just a little too deep at that part of her body, and she couldn’t turn it sideways to get out like she had her head.

  “What’s that?” someone said, muffled, through the door.

  Rose felt a note of panic. They were almost—

  Someone threw open the door, a booming noise that was like the arrival of death itself, and she looked back to see shadowy figures through the dirty glass. They were in her room now, standing inside, and Rose was here, briefly trapped with her damned arse stuck…

  “Get her!” someone shouted, and someone else shouted back inside, thunderously loud, “She’s trying to escape out the window!” There was a frenzy of motion inside as Rose tried to wriggle her way through, out, away from this shite, blind panic settling over her now even as strong hands grabbed at her legs, clamping on and trying to yank her back. She kicked out madly, trying to free herself, but they had grips like iron, and they were on her calves, her thighs, and holding on tight enough to bruise the skin.

  Someone yanked a hand away, and then another did, and a brief thrill of hope ran through her. Her powers! They couldn’t hold on, not if they wanted to—

  “She’s burning me!” someone shouted. The voice was low and deep.

  “Use the bloody sheets! Get a hand on her!”

  Footsteps were coming around the house now. Rose’s stomach seethed. She struggled against the window even harder, and it slid up a few inches, allowing a little margin for her to try and slip out, butt bumping it again as it hit the widest point of her arse cheeks, pelvis thumping against the sill on the down side. And then—