Badder

by Robert J. Crane

  An astonished tourist gaped at me. “You’re—”

  “In a big damned hurry,” I said, pushing past him without doing him injury. Sounded Italian.

  I ran down the wall at a furious clip, trying my best not to look back too much.

  I failed.

  Rose was easily keeping pace with me, just floating off about twenty feet, looking at me pityingly as I bolted along. There wasn’t so much as a fortification in sight, but there was a bridge ahead a little ways, and maybe I could—

  “You can’t be serious with this,” Rose called to me, just drifting along, watching me. “Where d’ye think you’re going to go?”

  “Well, I’ve made it to York,” I said, wondering if she was going to close in on me or just deliver color commentary until I died of boredom or exhaustion. It was feeling like it could go either way.

  “I let you make it to York, darlin’,” she said, almost piteously.

  “Yeah, okay,” I shouted. I was still heading for the river bridge. If I could make it…

  Well, I didn’t know what I’d do next if I made it. But if I could submerge, slow Rose’s momentum down, take her fire out of play…

  That’d just leave her with off-the-chart energy projection skills and the strength to squeeze me to death without much effort. Totally even odds.

  Sigh.

  The wall was curving to an end, heading to the right up ahead where it returned to ground level to meet up with the bridge to allow pedestrians to cross the river. Rose was easing closer, but I decided to liven things up and add some destruction of public property to the charges against me, so I launched a kick against the tooth of the wall fortification, the crenellation archers would duck behind while shooting arrows in the days of yore.

  I hit the crenellation with gusto, and it shattered the old stone, sending a chunk flying right at Rose.

  She moved right out of the way, dipping slightly as she did so. “You remember when you used to be the most powerful meta in the world? Sad to think those days are gone.” She made a tsking sound, then laughed, loud and high and kind of like a mean girl from the high school I never went to but always imagined.

  “I mean, what are you supposed to do, now that you’ve peaked and are on the downhill slope?” Rose asked, putting the fear in me that she was, indeed, going to color commentate me to death. If I wanted to go out that way, I’d watch ESPN. “I’d imagine a prideful girl like you…you’ve got to be just stinging right now. Feeling the burn of your ego being hit hard. Speaking of—”

  She launched in at me and clocked me in the jaw so fast I didn’t even see it coming. One minute I was ready to round the corner and get on the downslope to the bridge, the next I flew into a crenellation, and hit it a lot harder than the one I’d just kicked at her. It impacted along my back, stars flashed in front of my eyes, and I swallowed a tooth.

  I staggered up, hearing the gasps from visiting tourists, or maybe from me trying to get my wind back after she’d knocked it out of me. Rose was at a distance again, and I couldn’t see her very clearly, because she was blurry from the hit I’d taken, but I knew she was smiling. “Oops,” she said with much glee.

  Dragging myself forward, I didn’t bother to launch a counterattack, because now that I didn’t have my other souls or a gun, my only long-distance offensive weapon was basically to throw shit at her, and I was all out of shit to throw. A gorilla in a zoo with a handful of its own feces had more effective means of holding off Rose at this point than I did, which was a sad thing to admit.

  “Did you really think your little friends were going to come swooping in at the last second and save the day for you?” she asked, and it turned my blood cold to hear her reference Reed and—others, I presumed, people he might have brought with him. Augustus. Scott. Jamal. Maybe Kat.

  I slowed, not that I was moving very fast anyway. An old lady with a cane down the way was escaping more quickly than I was, and it took me a second to realize that my left ankle was broken and screaming at me anytime I put weight on it. That was bad: I was hobbled, and healing instantly was a thing of the past. I was also pretty sure I had a few broken ribs.

  Rose moved a little closer, but not so close I could have even spit on her. Her leer was apparent now. “Oh, yes, I know about your little friends. They’re the reason I’ve let you go so far, that I let you run away like this. They’re out there at the airfield right now, getting surrounded, getting shot, probably—I told the lads I sent to be careful, but you know how hard it is to find good help.”

  I didn’t say anything to that, but she must have read the fear in my face. “Oh, come now,” she said, leaning on the Scottish. “You didn’t think you were actually beating me by just running away, did you? I’ve been one step ahead of you all this time, darlin’.”

  I kicked out at the wall again in rage and sent another chunk of stone at her. It hurt like hell, and I keeled over after it was done because I had to put all my weight on my broken ankle for a few seconds to pull it off, but I sent a piece of block right at her smug face—

  And she gravity’d it off, sending it shattering to the ground below like it had been snagged by the event horizon of a black hole.

  I threw myself to my feet again and started forward at a hobbling run, which was still faster than anything a non-meta could have pulled off. There was a massive building behind her with a white facade and a bunch of small windows. Maybe if I could get inside, hide, evade her—

  She swept in front of me and crashed into me again, this time striking a glancing blow against my belly that felt like someone had popped my stomach.

  I staggered back again, and Rose had inched a little closer this time, now only about ten feet away from me, but still hovering off the ground. Her red hair caught the wind coming off the river, and the malicious joy in her eyes now that she was revealed was completely unlike her persona when she’d pretended to be my sidekick.

  “I think it’s about time to finish this up,” Rose said as I wobbled, my legs weak beneath me, my head swimming from the beating I’d taken. “Give her the goodnight kiss, will you, darlin’? So I can go deal with her little…family?”

  I wondered what she meant by that, and then I saw a blur that slowed down right in front of me. I caught sight of a beanie and bright eyes that locked onto me like a missile.

  Colin Fannon.

  He was coming right for me.

  I wanted to let out a breath of relief, but didn’t want to tip her off. She was about to see, anyway, when he caught up to me and I disappeared. Then she’d know that we’d—

  Colin blurred at me, not slowing down. I braced myself, figuring he’d grab me and off we’d go—

  But instead, as he came to halt, I caught motion at his side as he lifted his arm—

  And leveled me with a punch to the face that put my lights out.

  The fact that he was here had seemed such a relief; a friendly face come to aid in my salvation.

  The fact that he’d just turned on me at Rose’s command?

  That was…so not good.

  I lost consciousness, slamming into the wall behind me but only dimly aware of it.

  The last thing I managed to think was that Reed was here…in York…that he’d brought Fannon here to save me.

  And if he didn’t know Fannon had turned…

  Then he was in even more danger than I was.

  I passed out into the dark of unconsciousness, thinking only of my brother.

  38.

  Reed

  My decision was a split one, born of the fact that Veronika was bleeding in front of me, a ton of advancing gunmen had just gone down outside because of Augustus’s assault, and Colin Fannon was MIA somewhere in York.

  Stay to save Sienna, whose whereabouts we didn’t even know?

  Or—

  “SHIT!” Jamal shouted, thundering through the cabin. “Sienna’s clashing with this other succubus in York, and it’s—shit!”

  I stole a look over his shoulder as my brain r
aced with what to do. “What?”

  “She’s getting torn apart,” Augustus breathed, hanging over the seat. Scott, next to him, looked grey in the face.

  “NO!” Jamal shouted again, matched a second later by a similar imprecation from Augustus. Scott remained utterly silent.

  Jamal looked up at me, eyes a little teary. “Fannon just turned on Sienna.” He swallowed visibly, and looked to the floor. “She’s down.”

  “What the actual…?” Veronika said, struggling to her feet. “Bullshit. Fannon wouldn’t do that.”

  “He just did,” J.J. said, and turned his own laptop around to show Veronika.

  “Reed,” Scott said, and he looked more pained than I could recall ever seeing him.

  “We have to get down there,” Augustus said, pushing off the back of Jamal’s seat and ripping the leather in the process.

  The sound of a bullet spanging off the body of the aircraft seemed to pressurize the cabin.

  “We fight our way out—” Augustus said.

  “Come out swinging, lightning in hand—” Jamal said.

  “I’m gonna pulp some heads,” Friday said, already swelling. He’d been silent for a while, and I’d thought him asleep, but his eyes were cross and furious.

  “I’ll rip up every blade of grass between here and town,” Kat said, and looked at J.J. “What’s that thing you say when I start using trees to fight?”

  “The Ents are going to war,” J.J. said solemnly.

  “I’m gonna plasma-burn some mofos,” Veronika said. “To ash.”

  “You guys,” Scott said, and he was so quiet. “We can’t.”

  A moment silence fell in the cabin, marked by another booming shot outside that made a ringing noise when the bullet impacted the body of the aircraft.

  “What do you mean we can’t?” Augustus asked, bearing down on Scott with a brow curved in anger. “I know you’ve got your issues with Sienna—”

  “This isn’t about issues,” Scott said, almost whispering. “We go out there now, we all die. Bravado aside—this is a suicide scenario.”

  “Then let’s make it the charge of the damned light brigade,” Veronika said.

  “If it would do an ounce of good,” Scott said, voice rising, “yes. I would make a glorious end of it.” He turned to me. “But it won’t. We will all die, and Sienna will still be the prisoner of that—that kilted bitch.”

  “She’s not wearing a kilt,” J.J. whispered to Abby. “Do women wear kilts?”

  “They’re called skirts, dear,” Abby said.

  “If you’ve got one shot,” Scott said, and he was still speaking to me, “you don’t pull the trigger when you’re fifty miles from your target. Sienna would tell you that. She’d understand.” He looked right at Augustus. “And she wouldn’t want us to die, stupidly, right here, running out into gunfire so they can pick us off from a mile away.”

  “Who’s going to rescue her if we don’t?” Augustus looked like he was about to lose his mind.

  “Who’s going to rescue all of us if we’re trapped together?” Scott asked. “This succubus, Rose…I think she’s got it in mind to hurt Sienna real bad.” He looked at each of us, in turn, coolly. “Can you think of a better way than peeling the souls out of the only people left on the planet who still care about her?”

  That cold notion washed down me in a sickening torrent.

  Sienna was trapped.

  And we were bait.

  No…not bait.

  We were the human sacrifices that this Rose intended to use to bring Sienna to hurt, to pain, to…

  To agony, basically.

  To her knees.

  “Not today,” I whispered, and gathered my wits about me even though my skin was cold and my hands threatened to shake. I tried to get the wind, and it took me a couple tries to summon it up properly.

  The plane rattled as I started the winds beneath it. It lurched as it took to the air, my plan all along being not to worry about the tarmac below, because I could just lift us up and start the engines—or simply pump out a few hundred mph of air in their place if need be.

  “No!” Augustus looked at me, eyes flaring in disbelief. “Reed, she’s your sister!”

  “And you’re my team,” I said, straining as another bullet hit the fuselage. “I won’t sacrifice your lives in vain, Augustus. Not when we’ve walked right into a trap.”

  I thought he was going to lunge for me for a moment, but he didn’t. He looked like he wanted to.

  Jamal just sat there, staring at his screen, but I don’t think he saw anything of it. Friday shrunk, his muscles reducing down to their regular size. He collapsed in his chair like his knees went out from beneath him.

  I righted the plane and jetted high-powered air out the back of the engines, creating an artificial draft. The plane shot forward, one last parting bullet hitting us in the underbelly as we rocketed away from the airfield at several hundred miles per hour.

  “We…we just lost her, didn’t we?” J.J. asked. It sounded like defeat. Abby just touched his hand.

  “Get on ground radar, J.J.,” Scott said, issuing a command I might have thought of if I hadn’t been propelling a plane toward the stratosphere with nothing but my will and my powers. “Look for missiles. We don’t know what kind of control this Rose has over the UK military.”

  “Yeah, that’s not the sort of thing I can just do—” J.J. started to say.

  “I’ve got it,” Jamal said. “I’m tapped into their comms, too—throwing that over to you, J.J.”

  Kat was still holding her hand over Veronika, who was standing in the middle of the aisle, staring past me, eyes unfocused. Chase stood just behind her, quiet relief slipping out on her face.

  “Rose definitely has at least local control over the military,” J.J. said. “They’re coordinating a response.”

  I turned the jets up harder, and motioned to the cockpit. “Someone needs to start the plane so I can go from flying to just giving us a good tailwind.”

  “I’m a pilot,” Chase said.

  “I’ll ride shotgun with you,” Veronika said. Her voice sounded like it was ground out, full of menace and anger at the fight not going as she planned. She and Chase vanished toward the cockpit.

  “You left her behind, Reed,” Augustus said into the silence that followed.

  “What else was I supposed to do, Augustus?” I asked. “Sacrifice all of us to this Rose? Because I don’t think she had intentions to do anything with us but maybe torture us to death in front of Sienna for her own kicks.”

  Augustus slumped back in his seat, staring out the window. “We could have saved her, man.” But he didn’t sound sure.

  “We’ve got missiles in the air,” J.J. announced.

  “I’m taking us low,” I said, trying to orient the plane. I thought I’d been sending us west, but I couldn’t really be sure. “When they get close, I’ll feel them. Veronika,” I called warningly to the cockpit.

  “She’s working on it,” Veronika called back. “I don’t think these things are meant to be cold started while in flight.” She threw one of the pilot bodies unceremoniously back into the aisle, then the other.

  “This sucker is gonna hit us in like thirty seconds,” J.J. said. “Wait, maybe less.”

  I floored the wind currents behind us, maintaining the ones beneath us. The plane shuddered, hitting a speed its engines were not rated for. I felt a little like I was donating blood, my very life running out of me as I pushed the plane forward.

  “Relax, Reed,” Scott said, easing up next to me. “I’ve got this one.”

  I could feel the missile as it started to close, cutting through the air faster than we were. I couldn’t tell what kind it was, just that it was there. “How are you going to do this, Scott?” I asked, my voice straining as I tried to concentrate on keeping us aloft and moving forward while still mentally tracking the missile that was coming to kill us.

  “Easy,” Scott said. “It’s raining.”

  I c
ould actually feel it now that he said it, the water coming down outside the cabin. It was a light one, but enough that I felt it when a ball of liquid condensed and pulled together, streaming toward the missile. I could feel the wind running over its surface, and then, suddenly, for a second I didn’t.

  Scott had flooded the missile with water, the additional weight messing with its ballistic characteristics, and then it dragged down, losing us as it fell to the earth below, engine puttering out.

  “Uh, bad news, guys…like ten more incoming,” J.J. said.

  “One at a time, partner,” Scott said as I drove us for the coast even faster. The smart move would have been to dive us for the deck, but I wasn’t sure I could keep us low against the total resistance that being at that altitude would provide. I would have liked to have pushed us higher, to the open skies and far from the higher air pressure below, but that wasn’t realistic given what I was combating.

  Which was fatigue from lack of sleep, and flying a plane without any engines across the north of England.

  “Bringing the engines online now,” Chase called from the cockpit. “Not sure how well this will work…”

  I rolled my eyes and killed the airflow into the engines to essentially recreate their grounded, at rest state. It was a lot easier than continuing to thrust us forward, which I was having to do, or keeping us aloft, which was mostly being done by our forward momentum and the wings now, thankfully.

  “Engine start!” Chase announced. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it for a few seconds while I get ‘em warmed up.”

  “Sure, no problem,” I said, straining a little. I’d dispelled hurricanes, and lifting a plane wasn’t too difficult, but the missiles flying toward us from behind were a little concerning.