Power (18 page)

I landed feet first on the top of the Century agent’s head and slammed him into the ground like I was a sledgehammer and he was a watermelon. His skull exploded when it hit, a cascade of red spraying in a ten-foot cone across the cracked and ragged pavement. It was icky on my nice boots.

And it made a noise, too. Like a
SPLAT
.

Four heads wheeled to look at me, and the gunfire stopped for a moment as the little battlefield caught its collective breath.

I looked at each of them in turns over the next few seconds, caught the stunned looks on their faces as I stood there, one of their people already dead at—or, actually, under—my feet.

“Hi,” I said with a little wave and smiled enough to bare my teeth, channeling my best Wolfe impression. “Let’s play.”

Chapter 30

There were two women and two men remaining, all dressed reasonably well, all of them standing in utter shock at my entrance. I had to say, it was one of the more dramatic ones I’d pulled.

Their shock lasted about another second after my quip, and then the one who had been throwing fireballs tossed a big one at me.

I started to dodge but a voice in my head told me to stop. Gavrikov shouldered his way to the front of my mind.
You may not be able to control the fires within without practice, but this one thing I can teach you to do easily.

I held out my hand and absorbed the fireball into my skin like a vacuum sucking up a loose plastic bag. Just WHUUUMP! and it was gone like it had never even been there. I turned my palm toward me and there was no sign of burns or blackness, not even a hint of smoke to indicate the passage of the flame from existence. “Well,” I said, “how ’bout that.”

There was another moment of collective silence and then things erupted. The same woman who’d cast flame at me seconds earlier chucked another ball of it, bigger this time, while a big guy who’d been lingering to my left seemed to grow a couple feet in height. I started toward him, pegging him for a Hercules-type, but Wolfe spoke:
Atlas-type. Similar, Little Doll, but not exactly the same.

“How bad?” I asked as the big guy headed for me. There was another guy lingering back, who looked like he might have been from India, watching me kind of cagily. There was also an Asian woman, probably the one with the commanding voice who’d somehow picked up on the laser.

Bad
, Wolfe said.
The bigger they get, the stronger they get.

Like a Hercules, then.

No
, Wolfe said.
Much worse.

“How does it get worse?” I asked, below my breath.

Ask and ye shall receive.

The Atlas kept growing, his muscles staying in proportion to his body, the way it had been when he’d begun. His clothing started to rip when he reached eight feet of height, and I could see that although he was muscular, he wasn’t like a Hercules where it grew to ridiculous, beyond-steroid proportions. He looked like a well-built guy, just … well … taller.

And then he grew past ten feet, and I started to worry maybe a little.

I saw something long and black that reminded me of an arrow shooting by, but it sounded like a swarm of bees as it passed. I caught a glimpse of it and had a sense of plague as I watched it, a sense that I realized was coming from Wolfe.

Rudra-type
, he said, like that was supposed to mean something to me.
Fires arrows of disease.

“Lovely,” I said, and turned my gaze toward him, letting it drift over the last of the four metas arrayed against me, the Asian woman. “And her?”

While I was watching her, her skin began to glow subtly. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before; when Gavrikov had started to glow, he just caught on fire. In her case it was as though her skin was the sun, and after a second I was forced to look away from the harsh gleam.

Amaterasu
, Bjorn supplied.
Japanese Sun Goddess. The real one, I think
.

“Century must have run out of flunkies,” I muttered under my breath.

The woman throwing fire
, Gavrikov said, drawing my attention to her. She was cold and pale, had a Norwegian look about her.
She is the last of my kind.

Friend of yours?
I asked.

No
, he said rather definitely.
Most certainly not.

The Atlas came at me hard. He was nearly fifteen feet tall now, a giant the likes of which I hadn’t faced before. He was reasonably fast, too, operating at a speed which—for most metas—would have been impressive.

I wasn’t most metas.

I shot toward his knee with my power of flight, turning myself into position for a side kick as I went. I hit his knee with the force of a speeding Maserati, just at the point between the bones on the side of the kneecap. My foot tore into his flesh and and ripped through, his femur and tibia bowing apart as I blew through.

I landed on the other side and rolled back to my feet, still moving. There was a mighty thump as the Atlas hit the ground, but I was already coming around in a dead run toward my next target, Ms. Gavrikov. I felt a harrumph of annoyance from Aleksandr as I called her that.

“What the hell is going on down there?” I heard Harper mutter over the comm link.

“Something magical,” I said as Ms. Gavrikov sent another burst of flame my way. I saw the look in her eyes and it was pure panic. I sensed she’d never had someone go all fire-eater on her before. She’d probably never met anyone she couldn’t at least slow down with a timely bit of flame, and it was freaking her out. I saw the whites of her eyes as she froze, deer-like, in my path while I bore down on her. She’d seen what I’d just done to Atlas, after all …

I slammed into her, and freight train doesn’t adequately describe my momentum. I led with a front kick this time, and it folded her in half so hard that her face actually hit her feet as they were ripped off the ground. She flew in a straight line, and hit a lamp post with her back. The crack was short and significant, followed by the sound of her arm being ripped from her body at the point of impact—the shoulder—as she and the pole continued their journey another forty feet before they both came to rest. Her arm? I’m not sure where it landed. Poland, maybe.

Krakow, wench.

I saw a blur of light come at me from the right and turned in time to get blinded. It was as though I’d looked directly into the sun, and I wondered if I still had corneas. Based on the scalding feeling in my eyeballs, I would have guessed not. I couldn’t tell whether it was tears running down my cheeks or blood. Amaterasu hit me and I could feel the heat. I tried to absorb it with Gavrikov’s power but I failed, and the searing pain that hit my arm told me I’d had skin burned off.

No, no!
Gavrikov shouted in my head.
It won’t work! Different kind of heat energy!

“Helpful,” I gasped out in the midst of the pain. I gritted my teeth.
Very helpful
, I muttered in my head as the agony nearly overwhelmed me. The smell of burning flesh filled my nose, and I realized it was my own.

Something sharp and painful struck me in the back, and I realized I’d forgotten Rude Rod or whatever his name was. All the air rushed out of me at the sharp sensation of the impact, and feverish chills spread out from my flesh at that point. I sagged to my knees, all the strength leaving my legs in a rush like fans at a concert bailing after a no-show.

“Sienna Nealon,” Amaterasu said. She sounded eerily calm. Calmer than I would have been if I’d been in her shoes. I had just taken out at least three of her crew. I felt my arm burn and blacken, the flesh burning down to the muscle, and I realized where her confidence was coming from.

I fell to my back, which hurt, surprisingly. Something was happening to it, and it burned in its own way. I rolled slightly and my good hand traced its way up my shirt to find blisters and pustules clustered along my spine. I jerked my hand away at the touch, but not before it caused a howling pain down my back.

I lay on my bad arm—assuming it was still there. I couldn’t feel it, except for the pain. My eyes were firmly squinted closed, and though I tried to open them, they failed to respond. I could faintly see a glow, though, and wondered if I was imagining it or if the light of Amaterasu was simply the last thing I would see.

“Should we keep her alive for Claire?” It was a man’s voice. It was high and accented and sounded not at all pleasant.
Rudra
, Wolfe told me.

“I think not,” Amaterasu answered. I could tell by the sound of her voice that she was above me, and then I felt the soft glow of a sun coming to life. My skin began to burn, and the smell of it filled my nose, even as my body started to quiver in the rising, scorching heat.

Chapter 31

Knowing you’re about to die brings a certain amount of clarity. It eliminates the extraneous worries for the most part, the random thoughts, the idle nattering of all those voices in your head telling you to do this, do that, finish your homework, go to school, get a job, do your work, be responsible—

Oh, wait. I never had those voices.

I had one voice in my head (absent those mental hitchhikers that were giving me assistance nowadays). It was my mother’s voice, and it only said one thing, ever.

Survive
.

I drew upon Aleksandr Gavrikov’s power and snapped my speed of flight from zero to maximum in two seconds, heading straight for Amaterasu’s voice. I felt myself impact against her, shoulders checking hard against her legs. She registered the pain with a “Hngh!” noise that was followed by her face and upper body smacking the pavement. I could feel the ground beneath my back, less than an inch below as I dragged along blind, then shot skyward to escape the situation.

Wolfe!
I called out, the pain clawing at me. I could feel the wind against my face and then my sight began to return. I didn’t dwell too hard on whether I’d just regrown my eyes. Instead I focused on regaining my sensation. My jacket was scorched and sleeveless on one side. I watched the flesh return with my newly restored eyesight and struggled to keep my mind on what needed to be focused on—flight and my health. I had a feeling that Gavrikov and Wolfe were giving me a hand with both, because the pain was making it insanely difficult to concentrate.

I halted in midair and looked down. The city looked like a tiny model beneath me, the figure of the Atlas barely, barely visible lying far below. There were clouds, and suddenly I realized that I was having a harder time breathing. “Too … high …” I gasped and let myself drop into a dive again.

The oxygen returned shortly and I felt my head start to clear. My eyes narrowed against the wind and I felt a seething rage. I could still see the Atlas, clawing at the stump of his leg. He was probably out of action for the moment. Probably. Which still left me with the Rudra and Amaterasu.

I could still feel the cold chills that the Rudra had given me with those disease arrows, whatever they were. I flew hard left and took myself out of the center of their sky, hoping they hadn’t seen me. I came low, around the corner of the warehouse, and saw them both near the wreckage of the town car. Amaterasu had Janus slung over her shoulder, and I didn’t have to wonder very hard where the agents were that I’d sent with him. I could see at least one corpse near the wreckage of the car, blood seeping across the pavement.

Rudra and Amaterasu looked deep in conversation. They were heading back to the warehouse. Amaterasu’s clothing was torn and burned where she’d used her powers. She wasn’t even bothering to look around; I guess she figured I’d run off after the fight. Which made sense, because she probably thought my recovery time from the injuries she’d dealt was best measured somewhere in hours or days, not seconds.

It was going to be the last mistake she ever made.

I sped sideways, looping around them at top speed. Within seconds I was directly behind them. They were spaced just far enough apart that I couldn’t get them both in one, but that was okay. I didn’t want it to be all that quick, honestly.

I sent myself to high velocity and flying side kicked Rudra from behind at top speed. I landed the blow at the small of his back and heard the compression from impact break vertebra all the way up the line before he flew forward as if I’d hit him with a semi truck. I didn’t know if I’d killed him, but I’d definitely put him out of the fight, and that was enough for the moment.

I spun on Amaterasu and she dropped Janus like he was nothing. Which he wasn’t. He was actually either a hostage or an impediment to her fighting, depending on how you looked at it; it seemed her instincts ran to defending herself before thinking to barter with the life of the man I’d come here to rescue. I could respect that.

I mean, I was still going to kill her, but I’d at least try to make it quick.

She started to flare and I interrupted her with a punch to the face that would have put a hole in concrete. I actually felt my knuckles break upon impact, but Wolfe knitted them back together for me as I followed up with an inside elbow to the back of her head. It would have killed a human, but it just knocked her to her knees.

I saw the glow start on her skin again, and I kicked her in the chest hard enough to send her flying a few paces away. It was a sloppy kick on my part, rushed, but it killed the glow for a moment. Mom would definitely not have approved of the technique, but I was all about getting the job done at this point.

“Aldkngh ahhawa—” She said, her jaw moving unnaturally, as she got back to her knees.

“Can’t understand you,” I said, launching into a kick that hit her in the sternum and sent her flying. That one wasn’t sloppy. I could hear her ribs break upon impact. All of them, maybe.

Amaterasu lay flat on her back on the pavement, head hanging half off the curb onto the street. We’d been battling in the dirt of a vacant lot outside the warehouse, but now we were on the street beside it. She was bleeding from a half dozen different places—eyes, nose, mouth, assorted cuts—and her eyes were glazed. I sauntered over to her, trying to be a little cautious and not just cocky. Probably failed at the latter.