Anselmo is the hunter.
Diana is the prey.
Prey runs.
The hunter follows.
She does not disappoint him, catching sight of the two of them from her place in the center of the crowd, a ring of concerned onlookers gathered in a knot around her. There is no hesitation; she flees, knocking over pedestrians with all the force she commands. Bodies fall, screams fill the air, and the huntress is on the run.
“Carefully,” Anselmo says, breaking into a sprint of his own. He parallels Diana’s path down the middle of the road, mirroring it on the sidewalk, careful to avoid the breathless, mad sprint that she employs without care for the humans she runs over. Anselmo has patience and follows, knowing she will cross into an alley soon. It is inevitable, the hare diving into the rushes to avoid the hawk.
But Anselmo will not be lost so easily. For he is a hunter, and she is the prey, and no matter how long it takes, his pride will force him to wear her down. He can smell her fear, can sense her helplessness without her weapons. He will pursue her from one end of the city to the other, will keep her from doubling back to familiar territory. Will wait for her to move somewhere secluded, somewhere quiet.
And then he will show her just how weak she truly is as he ends her long life once and for all.
27.
Reed
I blast across rooftop gaps without much in the way of thought. I’m sprinting, charging in the direction I can hear the crowd. At the apex of my next jump I see the mob scene, the countless people gathered to protest whatever they’re protesting. I’ve been in crowds like that before and the energy is incredible. Even from this distance I can tell things are off, though. There’s an aura of uncertainty that makes its way through the crowd noise, faint screams that indicate something has gone awry.
I burst onto the edge of a major street and the full glory of the scene is laid out before me. There’s a gash in the crowd like someone has taken a razor and run it through, removing everything in the path. I follow it to its conclusion, about two hundred yards down the way, and I see Diana playing fullback and charging through the heart of the protest. My eyes catch movement across the street and I see why she’s running.
Lorenzo. That bastard.
He’s following behind an older guy, and I know I’ve found the boss. The guy looks like he’s in his forties or fifties. If he’s meta, that could mean he’s a few hundred years old or it could mean thousands. I don’t like the possibilities in either case, but I see them following her down the street, taking the slightly less crowded sidewalks, threading through people instead of plowing them down. I know their intentions are ill even if their methods are surprisingly gentle.
I take off after them, the sentry above, and try to keep a low profile as I leap from roof to roof in pursuit.
28.
Anselmo
She takes the path of most resistance, and this pleases Anselmo. Panicked, fearful—it means she is reacting rather than thinking. A fine state for her to be in. She has fought her way through some three hundred meters of crowd by this point and has yet to look back or make a move to run down an alley. Anselmo can predict it, though, especially as she turns to look at him for the first time since she took off. He sees the wild eyes, the instinctive terror. All good. All very good.
She elbow checks a young man and sends him flying ten feet into the air, and the crowd gasps as one. It is the hardest, most panicked hit she has made yet, and it fully reveals to everyone what she is. Anselmo picks his way through a gap as people scream and start to run in the opposite direction. The herd is spooked and is trying to escape now that they’ve recognized a true threat rather than a simple novelty.
Cutting through a crowd with precise motions comes easily to Anselmo. It does not require brute strength or any of the fearsome charging that Diana has employed. No, it is a simple matter to easily redirect the people flowing around him with concentrated strikes, gentle shoves that compel them out of his path without harming them or sending them flying. The struggle has slowed her down; his calm allows him to pursue easily. A sharp knife through soft meat; that is Anselmo. Lorenzo follows silently in his wake.
She makes the mouth of the alley but is not alone. Others are running from her in a panic now, running with her, a living mass of panic snaking its way into a space far too small for them. Diana goes into this place with none of the grace that might have allowed her to calmly move away. She writhes, she panics, she strikes, and the humans shriek and struggle back. The alley becomes a tight-knit crowd, a panic turned to riot in the confined space.
The strike of hand against bone, of flesh against weaker flesh echoes. The crowd on the street adapts, responds, sees the mayhem in the alley and runs the other way. Anselmo drives into the heart of the chaos, calmly redirecting the screaming strikers out of his path and to their own safety.
He smiles as he sees her at the heart of a bloody mass of people. They shrink from her in fear even as she freezes to look at him. It is a second where she knows exactly where she stands. The alley before her is crammed with people fleeing, crying, falling, stumbling, desperate to get away and blocking her easy retreat in the process. It is a solid wall of bodies between her and freedom, and an easy corridor between her and death.
Her flight instinct falters, and he can see her panic recede under her resolve.
She knows there is no escape.
He knows that she knows. And while this is hardly the private place he had hoped for, a quick conclusion to the business at hand is in the offing. “Hello, Diana,” he says, as amiably as the snake to the varmint it is wrapped around. Victory is assured; now there is no cause to be rude. “It would appear you are—”
The tornado hits Anselmo with the force of a bomb, bouncing him hard against the cobblestone alley. He goes airborne for a full second before crashing back to land on his face, nose smacking against the ground. It is a stunning sensation, weightlessness followed by the sense of power driving him to the earth.
“Howdy,” the man says as Anselmo raises his eyes to see Diana still standing there, a companion now at her side. The flare of wind around his legs tells Anselmo who the interloper is, why he is here, and that his own plan has gone just slightly wrong. The man holds a hand pointed at Anselmo as if making a threat. “I saw you guys picking on this woman, and thought I’d—”
There comes the sound of tearing, of something ripping, and Anselmo watches the light enter the man’s eyes in realization. It is a sweet one.
Anselmo rips a chunk of pavement five feet square off the road and has it in his hands, above his head, before the boy—Reed, he remembers the name—can do anything to react. It is heavy, perhaps a ton, but it holds together well, a perfect projectile, which he heaves at the two of them with something approaching irritation.
“Oh, shit,” Reed says simply, staring at his impending death. And Anselmo watches with satisfaction as Reed and Diana disappear behind a ton of thrown debris.
29.
Reed
I see it coming and want to kick myself for the lame response. It’s half the alley, the cobblestone all in a clump. I can taste the dry dust the guy raised when he pulled it up, billowing ahead in a cloud propelled by the force of his action. When he lifts it and I see he’s going to toss it at us, my customary response pops out without thought.
Metas who can lift heavy objects are a dime a dozen. Metas who can rip up a street and throw it through the air like they’re tossing a tennis ball are not, and it’s always cause for concern when you run across someone with that much power.
The adrenaline is already pumping through me, and I feel flush. The world slows down a little as the bricks come toward us in a low arc. If they hit, I have no doubt they’ll mash my upper body into a lovely jam that would nicely spread on whatever bread they serve in the nearest café.
I summon all my power, and I mean all of it. I throw up my hands, palms out, and gather my energy. It’s like sprinting, or lifting more weight than I�
��ve ever put up in my life, and I can feel it all down my arms. I set my feet without thinking about it much, lock myself as much into place as I can.
I propel all that force, every bit of it I can muster, down my arms, through my wrists, and out my hands. Taking a page out of Lorenzo’s book, I try something new and try to throw some wind using my head as a focusing channel. I can feel it working, adding a little to the gust that sweeps before me like the start of a tornado.
The flying stones catch in midair, hover for just a brief moment, and then I pour it on. Everything I’ve got, from the toes up, I put into this. I throw power I don’t even know I have into this. I see my efforts rewarded. A few bricks fall to earth, but the majority reverse their course and go flying back at that asshole who threw them at me.
I can see the surprise as the first cobblestones hit. He’s buried in a second, before he has a chance to respond. Dust fills the air, a cloud like a sandstorm has moved in, and I can tell by the dispersion that Lorenzo hasn’t even had time to think about volleying back. The street lands on my attacker, burying him under a ton of debris and hoisting the bastard on his own petard. Drink up on that irony, pal.
I can feel a smile creep onto my face even as the weariness hits, and I turn to look at Diana. I’m exhausted but celebratory, because I’ve just pulled off a miracle of the sort that really shouldn’t be possible. I feel like a king, like a badass, like Sienna, and I kind of want someone to acknowledge my triumph.
She’s not much into acknowledging though, because her face is still plastered with horror. Her lip quivers, and her eyes are still fixed on the alley behind me. The triumph flees in half a heartbeat and I turn, watching the last of the dust clear as somehow—somehow—this guy emerges from it, his expensive suit in tatters but looking none the worse for wear otherwise. His bronzed skin looks like iron, even with his slightly saggy man-tits, and I get the feeling that this is not going to go well for me.
I want to collapse but I don’t, instead letting my stomach sink as those same two lame words come back to me again.
“Oh, shit.”
30.
I hope for a monologue, for a chance to think. How does someone take a ton of bricks to the upper body and walk away? He doesn’t even look mad, though his face is a little pinched. He’s got the look of a man who moves with power, with confidence, and I kinda want to wilt away. The bastard just ripped the road right off the ground and hurled it at me, and didn’t even blanch when I sent it back at him.
This is so not good.
“So you are Reed Treston,” he says with a thick Italian accent, and I don’t even like the sound of my name coming from him. I’m standing there, a hand held protectively in front of Diana—as if it’d do a damned thing—and he’s just staring at us, slightly covered in the dust from a pile of rubble hitting him. Lorenzo is a few steps behind him, looking cautiously at us. Okay, he looks a little pissed, actually, but I’m ten steps past caring.
“And I here I don’t even know your name,” I say, at a loss for what else to say.
“My name is not something you should worry about.” He gives me that look, like he’s about to land on me like a ton of bricks, that whole “angry father” thing, and I’m just wondering how I’m going to get out of this. I give Diana what I assume is a panicked glance, and she returns it with one of her own. But there’s something else I catch, too, a slight motion of her right hand that’s obscured from that guy’s view by my body.
She rolls her finger, like she’s suggesting I stall him.
“What should I worry about?” I say as I turn back around. I can stall for time; this is not an issue. He’s not advancing very quickly, and he takes a moment to look back at the mouth of the alley, where the strike on the street beyond has cleared a little. Police sirens are audible as the Carabinieri make their approach known. I make a gesture to indicate his toplessness. “Because it looks like maybe you oughta worry about skin cancer, based on that tan. Did you know the risk factors—”
His eyes widen slightly at my stupidity, and I hear movement behind me. I glance back just in time to see Diana kick a chunk of fallen cobblestone straight up, directly into her hand. In a flash she throws it with unerring accuracy right into shirtless guy’s eyes, where it shatters into dust as he flinches, his eyes closed.
“Come on!” Diana shouts as she rabbits. She turns, taking off down the now-clear alley behind her without waiting to see if I’m smart enough to come along. I’m smart enough, though, dammit. I spare a glance to see our enemy brushing the crumbs of the broken stone out of his eyes, Lorenzo at his side like a concerned son, and then I’m behind a branch in the alley two seconds later, following Diana’s shapely form as we sprint away.
31.
To say a metahuman is fleet of foot is like saying a sports car can go kinda fast. Diana is one of the old gods, and she tears along like she’s a Ferrari on an open freeway. I’m hauling ass to keep up, the tan walls of the alleyway whizzing by at high speed, sweat from my earlier exertion dripping off my forehead. Thankfully, running exerts a different kind of power than hurling wind at people, but I’m still not as fast as she is, even on my best day. She’s got a lead of half the alley on me, bursting out onto a major road as I look back to see Lorenzo and the iron man coming after us. The older guy looks pissed, and I’m not so eager to get caught, so I put all thoughts of fatigue behind me and run faster.
I dodge past a street vendor set up on a white sheet, a ton of knock-off—or maybe stolen—purses spread out in front of him. He sees me coming and scoops them up in the sheet, just one giant bundle. I hate to be a dick, but I snatch it out of his hand before he can even react and toss the whole thing right at my pursuers.
Pretty much like I’d planned, Lorenzo strikes out at the sheet and it explodes into a rain of leather handbags that get blown right out of his defensive funnel. Net result on their pursuit? Pretty much nothing. But it makes Lorenzo blanch a couple of times as purses smack him about the face and neck, slowing him down.
His boss doesn’t slow down at all.
I make the mouth of the alley and see Diana has left me behind. She’s down the street now, disappearing into another alley, and I’m reminded about that old joke with the two hikers that run into an ornery bear in the woods. One of them stops to lace up his tennis shoes, and the other asks him why he’d bother; he can’t possibly outrun the bear. “I don’t have to outrun the bear,” he says. “I just have to outrun you.”
Well, Diana has damned sure outrun me. Way to go, hero, my mind tells me. Now it’s two-on-one, and not in my favor.
I’m halfway across the street when it occurs to me that this doesn’t have to remain two-on-one. Whoever this guy is, he’s a tough sonofabitch, but he looks pretty earthbound.
And even though I’m tired, I’m definitely not.
I look for the building of lowest height that I can see, and my eyes alight on a two-story apartment building about a block down the way. Unless the man of iron is also a jumping-bean-type meta, he’s not gonna be able to scale it easily. He’s fast—I confirm as I look behind me—but I’m guessing he can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Lorenzo can, of course, but I’m going to have to deal with him whether I stay on the ground or not.
I make it to just below the short building and leap, hoping that I’ve got enough juice to do this. I send out a blast of air just as I’m about to pancake on the side of the roof, and manage to get a few more feet of height before my jet stream falters. I throw up a hand and land four fingers on the side of the building’s crest. I’m left hanging there with one hand for a good two seconds before I manage to pull myself up.
A shadow sails over my head onto the rooftop just as I’m rolling to my feet, and I know I’m screwed even before I see Lorenzo there, blocking my way forward.
He’s got his hands up, ready to blast me—probably off the building—and a wicked smile that has about zero room for mercy. I start to brace myself but don’t even get a
half a chance before the gust comes, strong like a hurricane, and I feel myself go tumbling backward into oblivion, the world spinning around me as I fall back to the earth.
32.
Anselmo
Joy pervades Anselmo as the Treston boy hits the ground and bounces once, hard. It’s that same kind of pleasure he felt the first time he beat a man to death. That relentless happiness that came from hammering his flesh with fist, listening to the bones break and the hard slap of his knuckles as his victim cried out in pain. There was begging, and it was sweet. Pleading, and it was sweeter still.
The Treston boy hits the ground with a sound like knuckles against tenderized skin, and it is a sweet remembrance for Anselmo. He approaches the fallen form with no trepidation, even as he sees the lad stirring. He reaches in and grabs him around the neck in a chokehold, feeling his forearm lock into place around a soft throat. There is a choking sound, and Anselmo applies pressure, ripping the boy’s feet from underneath him, folding him over with superior strength, pushing him into a ball and dragging him toward the nearest alley.
The streets are filled with activity, with people rushing to and fro. A murder here, in public, might go unsolved simply from so many conflicting witness accounts. On the other hand, although it seems no one is paying attention to too much of anything in the chaos, it is also entirely possible that someone could be wielding one of those cell phone cameras that are now everywhere. Anselmo makes a face, pained and disdainful. The world has changed, and not always for the better. There had been a time when public murder was the easiest thing to get away with.
But this is Rome, not home, and the tourists and politicians find this sort of thing eminently objectionable.
In the Wind (Out of the Box Book 2) Page 10