Limitless (27 page)

“I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.” He straightened his tie. “Because you know what they say.” He lowered his voice. “Fortune favors the brave.”

“In America we say the bold,” I said, “but either way, it doesn't favor the clinically insane who tear the skin off living people and bomb entire blocks in order to kill police officers.”

“I will destroy everything I have to,” he said with that smile. “Blow up anyone. Tear the flesh from all in my path. I’ve proven that.” He made a motion like he was pushing a wheelchair. “You are the last touched by Omega, which is why you are last in my calculations.” Something in the way he said it rang hollow to me. “The fact that you are a hero—yet sullied, dirty—fascinates me to no end and will make your inevitable fall all the more glorious.”

He looked at the dumpster and fixed his gaze on it. “No matter what you do, I can see every move you will make. I have plans for you. When it comes to gods, the old ones may have been fallible, but I have a will of iron.” He pointed at the dumpster. “So, prepare yourself—hero,” he said it with such scorn it dripped, “because that is your past, and your future is dimmer still.”

“There’s just one thing you forgot,” I said, staring at him with a seething fury of my own. “You may be able to see the future, but you don’t control it.” He actually rolled his eyes at me on that one. “And you definitely don’t control the world of dreams we’re in right now.”

I took two strides toward him before he could move, before he could react, and I tore his mask right off his face like it didn’t exist. Because it actually didn’t, not in this dream. It dissolved into smoke and he let out a cry of pain at my touch. When the black smoke cleared I was left staring down at a pale man, with long dark hair, a tall forehead and a small, pointed nose.

The face of my enemy.

“Now let me show you what else I can do in a dream,” I said and applied my hand to his face. I could feel the burning anger in my touch, and he screamed in absolute pain, his shrieks not manly in the least.

“Philip!” I heard somewhere in the distance and knew that I had only seconds left.

“So long, Philip,” I said, and brought my touch of agony back to him for a farewell stab of pain. He screamed again, and then he disappeared as someone woke him, shouting his name again. He looked at me with those hateful, hateful eyes as he disappeared.

I awoke in the bed in Marjorie Webster’s house moments later, my breath coming in long, uncomfortable gulps. My skin was covered in a sheen of perspiration and the sheets were tangled around my body.

“Philip,” I murmured aloud and stared at the ceiling as my mind prickled at me, filling me with the sensation that I’d forgotten something very, very important.

Chapter 62

Philip felt the shaking, and his first thought ran to the idea that it was pain, pain, that glorious bitch’s pain from her touch. As the next slap descended he realized it was not her, but Liliana who was slapping him awake, the sting knocking his jaw asunder, the stale air of their new hideout hitting him in the face as he awoke in the darkness.

Liliana raised her hand to him again and he caught it this time, the descent halted in midair, her fingers inches away from making contact with his jaw again. “I’m awake,” he said with a searing anger.

“Nightmare?” Liliana asked, staring at him from those black eyes. “Or succubus dream?”

“That latter, I’m afraid,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “She has my name and she knows my power.”

“How did she get them?” Liliana asked, her voice tinged with fear.

“Because you shouted it so loud it bled into the dream,” Philip said, letting the sting of his cheek carry into his words. “I think it’s time we sever her connection to the Metropolitan Police Department. Do you have Antonio’s detonator?”

“I took his spare before we fled the warehouse,” she said, producing a small black object from underneath her coat. “It’s limited by range.”

“Go do it,” he said. “I’ll watch our guests.” He could taste a hint of blood in his mouth where she’d slapped him hard enough to break his lip open. He watched her walk toward the open door, the faint light of distant illumination casting her in silhouette in the doorway. “Do hurry.”

Chapter 63

My head hurt, but I put it through its paces anyway, trying to review everything Philip had said.

He was a Cassandra. He could read the future. His name was Philip, no middle, no last name to work with. He had a mad-on toward Omega for personal reasons. He was irritated at the UK government for presumably also personal reasons. He hated me. He hated that I was a hero. And…

And…

Perhaps you need a repeat of the lesson in order for it to sink in.

It didn’t even take my sleep-addled brain more than a few seconds to process a nasty possibility on that one. “Marjorie!” I shouted as I threw my pants on.

I heard the light click on down the hall as I opened the door to my bedroom, hobbling down the narrow, darkened hallway. I thumped against the wall and dislodged a picture, sending a glass frame shattering to the ground behind me. I heard her door open in front of me and wondered if Marjorie had meta instincts.

“What is it, dear?” She wore a bathrobe and clutched it tight in the front. Dressing gown? Whatever. “You look as though you’ve seen a—”

“Villain,” I pre-empted her. “I think he’s going after Matthew. I need to get to his apartment
now
.” I put all the urgency into the last syllable.

She rushed for the stairs and I followed behind her. She was moving pretty quickly. Not as quickly as I could, but as quickly as her older joints and human reflexes could carry her. She ran for a door on the far end of the hallway and grabbed a set of keys off a ring as she threw open the door to a garage.

“Get in!” she shouted as she hit the garage door opener. It started to creak as it lifted automatically. I threw myself into the passenger seat, still buttoning my blouse, and pulled my shoes after I slammed the door so hard I shattered the window glass.

She was going before the door was all the way up, and I heard the top of the car scrape as we passed underneath it. She hit the road and the car bounced, the bottom scraping the road. We were in a little Volkswagen of some sort, and she did not spare any of the horses as she streaked down the street into the night.

Chapter 64

To her credit, she didn’t ask me any of the stupid questions like, “How do you know he’s in danger?” Maybe it never crossed her mind; maybe she just didn’t care. Maybe she ascribed to me mythical abilities that were no more in evidence than a tail hiding in the back of my pants. (I don’t have one, just FYI.)

Whatever the case, “bat out of hell” was an apt descriptor for how she drove, taking side streets and going down alleys with a precision and ability that would not have looked out of place in the footage of a NASCAR driver but looked ridiculous from an older English lady in a dressing gown.

We came out of the mouth of an alley in a drifting slide that made me worry she was going to roll the car. She hit the curb and I heard the hubcap pop off, flying into the night and caroming off a nearby tree like Captain America’s shield. I saw it in slow motion and then it was gone, and we were onward, making our next turn.

“How far?” I asked. I still hadn’t quite caught my breath after the dream, and part of me wondered if that was the point. Maybe Philip was idly threatening. And maybe he’d give up his life of crime if I asked politely.

Sarcasm. I haz it. All the time, not just when it’s appropriate.

Marjorie came around one last bend and brought us to a screeching halt, mounting the curb and stopping in the middle of a patch of lawn outside of an apartment building. I was out of the car a second after her, and she was already running toward the entry, gown flapping behind her.

“Which floor?” I asked.

“Ground,” she replied, breathless. She pointed to a sliding glass door just around the side of the building. “Right there!”

I veered off course without missing a beat, taking flight and crashing through his sliding glass door like a cannonball. It hurt. A lot. But I didn’t care, using Wolfe to pull my skin back together and healing the otherwise serious lacerations that resulted. I could feel the trickle of blood running down my skin in various places as I stood there, in the still living room, night air flooding in around me. The place smelled faintly—very faintly—of sweet tobacco smoke, like Webbo liked to have a cigar or a pipe every now and again.

I heard movement in a room off to my right. I flew through the open door and surged into the dark of the room. The light clicked on and there he stood, in his underwear, a flat-headed cricket bat clutched in his hands. As he registered who I was, his expression changed.

“What the hell—?” He let the bat drift downward. “Is this that same argument again?”

I stared at him in weak disbelief. And a little relief. “What?”

“About the whole gun thing?” He shook his head. “Because I would have shot you just now, if you’d have been anyone else—”

“We have to get out of here,” I said, clamping a hand on his wrist.

“Why’s that?” He stared at me. I was briefly distracted by his well-muscled chest. Well. Muscled.

“I think Philip is coming after you,” I said, getting ahold of myself.

He glanced at the bat in his hand. “Well, I might need more than this if that’s the case, so point taken, I guess—”

“We have to go,” I said and pulled him forward.

He took stumbling steps as I jerked him toward me. “Hey, I do need that arm—”

“No time for this,” I said, and picked him up,
An Officer and a Gentleman
-style. I wrapped my arms around his bare back and lifted him up, reversing my course and flying through the bedroom door.

“What, like this?” I felt him squeeze tighter to me, like he was afraid to be dropped. “Can I at least put some trousers on, first? This isn’t quite how I imagined I’d end up naked with you—”

I passed over the threshold of the sliding glass door a second later, and saw Marjorie coming a little more slowly toward me, crossing the lawn as—

The apartment exploded behind us, and it felt like a great hand struck me in the back, swatting me out of the sky to the ground. Webster hit first and I landed on top of him, my conditioning allowing me to roll out of the impact with him still pressed against me.

The world was echoing around me, a sharp ringing in my ears. I realized I was lying on something and I pushed off quickly, landing on my back, the black night sky hanging above me like a blanket of darkness. The smell of something burning filled the air, and I saw the crackle of flames in the wreckage of the building behind me.

There was a crater in the side of the building where Webster’s apartment had been, extending three floors up, like someone had taken a God-sized pickaxe and just brought it down and out, removing that section of the brick facade. I could see every floor where the concrete hung out of the gash, where bedrooms and kitchens had once stood and were now replaced by empty air and smoke.

I could see Marjorie, pulling herself up from the ground, her dressing gown hanging limp around her. She wobbled as she drew herself to her feet and staggered toward me, reminding me what—who—I’d come here to protect.

Every part of my body ached, but I pushed myself up to one elbow and looked over at Webster. There was a layer of blood running down from his scalp, and his skin had a dirty, scraped look to it. I put my hand against his cheek and felt the hints of life there, but as I shook him and shook him, he did not even once stir.

Chapter 65

I sat in Commissioner Marshwin’s office, staring across the desk at her sullen façade. I knew I was in deep shit. Not just because it was the wee small hours of the morning and not just because Alistair Wexford was there looking utterly defeated, but because Ryan Halstead, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, was sitting the chair across from Mary Marshwin’s desk, and he had a look on his face that told me he was the cat that had eaten the canary.

“I know silence is supposed to be golden,” I said, staring at each of them in turn, “but it’s more like turds spray-painted a yellowish color when this ass has that look on his face.” I pointed to Halstead, who didn’t look any less self-satisfied. I waited to see if Marshwin would crack first and break the silence, but she did not. “Fine, I’ll just guess. The law passed Parliament.”

“Got it in one,” Halstead said, snapping his finger at me and then pointing it at me. What a cool guy.

“Awesome,” I said, “it’s always fun to watch people flail ineffectually about. When does the removal start and where are you sending them?” I caught the stricken look on Marshwin’s face. “Tell me you’re not setting up concentration camps.”

“Incarceration, then deportation,” Marshwin said. “Though we haven’t found a country that will take them yet.”

“So, basically incarceration for now,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Camps. Why does that sound familiar? You’re not going to give us a symbol to wear on a patch, are you? Like a yellow DNA helix in place of the Star of David, are you?”

Marshwin looked utterly revolted. “I am not in charge of this. I am in the charge of the Metropolitan Police Force.”

“So what are you supposed to do if a metahuman crosses your path?” I prodded her.

“They’re forming a unit for that,” Marshwin said abruptly. “Again, not my department, not my concern. Mine ends with enforcing the laws of London and the surrounding areas. To that end—”

“You want me to leave,” I said and watched her deflate as I said it.

“I want no such thing,” she said. “But I am in charge of law enforcement, and as much as I don’t like it, this is now the law.”

“It’s a good law,” Halstead opined, clearly gloating. “I wish we could get one like that in the United States. Once again, Europe leads the way—”

I slapped him in the back of the head just hard enough to send his head into the desk. He hit it and bounced back, flipping over backward in his seat as his body recoiled from the force of impact. I glanced down at him and he was limp. I wouldn’t have bet he was unconscious, but I would have bet he was smart enough—or at least averse to pain enough—to quit while he was only slightly behind.