Power (32 page)

“I know you don’t know me,” he said. “And … if I’m right … you probably still don’t want to know me. But I’m also guessing you see the weight of what’s chasing you right now and you’re more than a little afraid.

I stared back at him, not saying anything.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I’d be scared, too. You poured your life into stopping me, into stopping all the bad guys that crossed your path, and you’ve done a damned fine job of it. I mean, you killed the top one hundred strongest metas still alive. That’s … that’s pretty big. And you did it in service of a government that’s … uh … well, they’re turning on you. No easy way to say it.”

I kept looking at him, waiting to see if he’d get to the point.

“I don’t think you want to suffer for your crimes,” he said flatly. “Do you?”

“What I want doesn’t matter,” I said. My voice sounded weak to my ears, filled with the tiredness that had settled in on me in the last hour or so. Maybe it even went back further than that, to the explosion. I felt it, though, and a kind of weariness that reminded me of what I’d heard about runners in mile twenty of a marathon—the mile where most of them quit because all the hope was gone.

“You don’t want to suffer for this,” he said, voice tinged with sorrow. “Your friends are leaving, getting away because you wanted them to. You wanted them to be safe, to not suffer like this. Why didn’t you go with them?”

“Because,” I said, almost whispering, “I have to deal with you.”

There was a flicker of emotion behind his eyes. “Fair enough. You have to deal with me.” He spread his arms. “Here I am. I am your prisoner. But do you really think they’ll let you watch over me if you’re in jail?”

I shook my head slowly. The logic was obvious in that one.

“Sienna,” he said quietly. “They wouldn’t be able to stop me. Only
you
can stop me. I won’t stand still for them. I will for you, because I care about you, because I want to be able to spend the time with you that it takes for you to see who I am. I won’t do that for anybody else, and if they take you away, I will not be a prisoner anymore.” Each word came flatly, and there was a menace hanging with them. “I will not submit myself to any man or government. That’s not who I am. I surrendered to you because I trust you.”

“I can’t let you hurt anyone else,” I said and lowered my head into my hands.

“Then I have a perfect solution for you,” he said, and his voice was strong, commanding. “Your friends have already left. Why don’t you come away with me? We can go somewhere safe, somewhere like they did—and you can keep an eye on me for the rest of my life if you want, as my jailer—and you’ll never have to worry about me hurting anyone else again.”

Chapter 54

Minneapolis, Minnesota

January 21, 2012

The car rattled along, tires slipping on the turns as they drove away from the supermarket. Marius—though he hadn’t been called that in so many years he barely thought of himself in that way—could still feel the ice sliding down the collar of his shirt from where Wolfe had manhandled him.

“Urk,” Weissman said in some sort of complaint from the driver’s seat, “I haven’t been hit like that since grade school.”

Marius cocked an eyebrow at him. “Someone as strong as Wolfe beat the holy hell out of you in grade school?”

Weissman flushed, his skin going nearly purple under his greasy bangs. “No, I just meant that I hadn’t gotten my ass kicked like that in a long time.”

Marius stared Weissman, who had turned back to focus on the road ahead. It was coated intermittently with ice, heavy snow piled high on the median and both sides. A thick layer of grey clouds lay overhead, something he knew was not unusual here in the Midwest.
I bet she’s never seen the sun
, he thought to himself.

SHE IS A CHILD, came the voice from within, a flexing, moving thing in his head. It had so many voices now, and he could barely hear his own among them any longer.

But Mother’s was still in there.

He looked over at Weissman once more and called forth the power of the telepath he’d absorbed so long ago. He tunneled into Weissman’s mind without effort, tasting the fresh stock of pain and horror there. He found a memory with little effort, a juicy one, of a child in grade school taking painful hits to the face, the chest. Blood ran down his face and coated the inside of his mouth, and the screaming that filled his ears was his own. One word stood out from it all, one word repeated over and over—

Daddy
.

Marius shook the horror from his mind, wanting to spit it out as though it were something foul he’d taken a bite of. “That explains a lot,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” Weissman asked.

“Nothing,” Marius said, and looked back out the window. “The girl—”

“I’ve got a guy already in at the Directorate,” Weissman said. “He was one of the first I put in place. Him and a few others with the big powers. Eyes on the big meta farms in China and India—they need to be our first targets. Anyway, this guy can keep an eye on the girl for you.” Weissman spoke in a staccato rhythm, his excitement inflecting his tone.

“All right.” Marius frowned. “Her mother was stubborn. We may need to play some games with her if we’re going to pull this off.”

“What kind of games?” Weissman asked.

“Manipulation,” Marius said casually. “I can’t be the bad guy to her. She’s young, probably prone to fits of idealism. I don’t want to be the villain. I have to be the natural choice, the solution to her problems and not the scary guy who’s destroying the whole world.” He paused “Unless she’s so cut up inside she’s into that, in which case I’ll swoop in as soon as possible.”

Weissman shrugged. “Women want power. You get enough of it, she’ll come around.”

“Maybe,” Marius said. “But in any case, for our purposes, in this endeavor, you’ll be the stick and I’ll be the carrot. If I have to deal with someone, they need to die.”

“I have no problems being the enforcer,” Weissman said, and took his hands off the steering wheel to crack his knuckles. He smiled. “It’s gonna work.”

Marius shook his head. “This plan of yours …”

“I’m telling you, it’s brilliant,” Weissman said. “And its success is its simplicity. We just have to eliminate the threats, right? The metas, the armies? Once we break their will, we’re in charge, and with your powers, we just … hold back the tide. Make it obvious that certain things are not acceptable, that this plague of people being complete and total shits to each other is going to end.”

Marius stared at him. “What you’re outlining is impossible in conventional terms.”

Weissman shook his head. “Not with a meta army.”

Marius put his head back against the headrest. “Yes, even with a meta army it’s still impossible.”

Weissman broke into a grin that did not look pleasant at all. “I found a Hades.”

Marius felt a mild surprise run through him. “Did you? That’s interesting. That line was supposed to be wiped out.”
Or at least that’s what Janus told me, the liar.
“Still,” he said, carefully turning his expression back to neutral, “that’s not going to be enough. A Hades can kill a lot of people, but we’re talking about a need for a two-stage plan here.”

“Oh?” Weissman sounded more than a little snotty as he said it. “How would you do it, then?” A challenge.

Marius thought about it for only a second before answering. “First, you kill the metas. Quietly, behind the scenes. You kill them first because no one is going to notice or care that they’re gone, and once they are, you can’t exactly resurrect them to fight for you. Second, you kill the armies of the world, the police—anyone who would raise a weapon to do harm to us.”

Weissman’s eyes were large, hiding behind those greasy bangs. “That was a fast answer. But I’m detecting a mighty big flaw in your plan.”

“Oh?” Marius waited for it. “What’s that?”

“Uh, namely that we don’t have a way to wipe out every single army and violent person in the world.” There was a snippy self-satisfaction in the way Weissman said it.

It was Marius’s turn to smile. “Actually, I do.”

Weissman’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Oh, you just do? Just like that? A simple method by which to snap your fingers and BAM! There goes all the opposition in the world.” He leaned slightly. “If you have this, why haven’t you used it until now?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Marius said, and he drummed his fingers along the armrest built into the door, pleather thumping with each touch of his fingertips. “In truth, I’ve thought about it every day for the last two thousand years.” He sighed. “But I never had a coherent reason to until now. No plan. And, as you know, I’ve just been content to stay the hell away from humanity as a whole and run my own life apart from them.” He pictured her again, the girl he’d just seen.
Sienna Nealon.
“Now you’ve given me a reason.”

“All right,” Weissman said grudgingly. “So what’s this way of destroying all opposition you’ve got? Does it have a name?”

“It does indeed,” Marius said. And he felt something shift inside him, a voice in the throng in his brain.
I am ready to assist you,
it said, only faintly resembling the fearsome man he had met on the hilltop outside Rome all those years ago. “I think you would know him as … Ares.”

Chapter 55

Sienna

Now

I stared at Sovereign and he stared back at me. He had warm eyes, somewhere under the crazy stalker ones. Or at least he was trying to present that aura. I could still taste the drywall dust floating in the air, and though the sun had started to sink lower in the sky, light shone through the cracks between the mechanical armored shutters. He waited for my answer and I could see the hope on his face.

And then I crushed it.

“Just exactly how stupid do you think I am?” I asked.

“Wh–what do you mean?” His whole demeanor changed, caught completely off guard.

I put aside the weariness I was feeling, dragging Wolfe to the forefront. A predator urge shot through me, along with adrenaline. “You killed and absorbed Ares back in Gaul.”

“Wha …” He shook his head, shut his eyes for a second and they shot back open wider than ever. “What does … I don’t know what you mean—”

“You are a terrible liar,” I said, shaking my head. “Thanks for confirming it.” He looked at me dead on. “I suspected it,” I said, “after Janus mentioned how he died all mysteriously, knowing that the threat we were waiting to get hit with was a long-hidden Ares type. But I didn’t know until you answered it for me just now.”

“Ohhh,” he said, and he looked first annoyed then resigned. He knew he’d been had. “Come with me.”

“I think you know I’m not going away with you—”

“Not away,” he said, and stood up, taking a couple steps back. “Just a little ways. Back. Back to the beginning.” He flew up, out through the hole in the roof.

And me? I was after him in a heartbeat.

I did have that final duty, after all.

He was already close to sonic speed when I cleared the hole in the roof. I angled after him and took off, racing to catch up. He poured on the speed once he knew I was following him, and I heard him break the sound barrier. I followed, feeling the cold air race over my body, causing the dress I was wearing to flutter in annoying ways. This is why I don’t wear dresses. Well, it’s one of the reasons, anyway.

We shot over the 494 loop. Houses passed in a blur underneath me. He slowed and started to descend moments later. He clearly wasn’t hotdogging it, so I followed slow, making sure he wasn’t setting a trap for me.

He wasn’t.

I recognized the street when he came down. The trees lined either side, the late summer heat shining on us from above. I was about a hundred yards behind him as he set down under one of the giant maples that shrouded the house in front of us. He disappeared under the cover of it and I took my time coming down, finally landing in the middle of the street. I had to use my hands to keep my dress from billowing up like a parachute as I descended. What a pain in the ass.

I saw him waiting at the front door, and he cracked the knob and stopped there. “Like I said, back to the beginning.” And then he disappeared inside.

Great. I stared at the house, low annoyance thrumming through me.

It was
my
house.

I crossed the yard, halting by the front door to peek in. “I’m not waiting in ambush,” his voice came from somewhere deeper inside. “I’ll be in the basement if you want to change first.”

I couldn’t argue with that idea.

I slipped inside and found he wasn’t visible at all. I walked through the living room and stopped by the glass coffee table. “Where are you?” I called, cautious. The place smelled like it always had, minus the aroma of bad cooking that I was pretty sure hadn’t been here before mom and I moved in.

“I told you, in the basement,” his voice came back, and I could tell he was exactly where he’d said he was. I took a breath and headed toward my room, shutting the door behind me.

I dressed quickly, pulling on jeans and a t-shirt and grabbing a spare holster out of my closet to change over to. I’d been wearing an ankle holster before and, with the length of the dress I was wearing, could just about get away with it. The gun didn’t quite fit, being a little smaller than one you’d normally wear at the hip, but I wasn’t in a mood to be picky.

I exited my room, thinking briefly back to the day I’d left it, and kept going out the front door. It hadn’t been that long ago, really, but it felt like forever.

I walked toward the basement, remembering a very different day. Of all the times I’d had to fear the basement, the one I would always remember most was the day I faced Wolfe down there, sure that it was going to be the end of me.

Something about that memory gave me a spark of confidence. Because that day had not been the end of me.

It had been the end of Wolfe.

Not the end, Little Doll.

“You’re non-corporeal now, so it was kind of an end.”

“Did you say something?” Sovereign’s voice came from behind the door to the basement stairs.