Power (4 page)

I should probably get him a raise, come to think of it.

“It’s me,” I said, raising my arms as if I were surrendering. “I promise. Pinky swear.”

“You can’t pinky swear with your hands up like that,” Reed said, and his bravado almost masked the slight crack I heard in his voice.

“It’s her,” Zollers confirmed, and I felt the unease in the room drop, along with all the gun barrels. Which was a relief, because even with Wolfe powers, I wasn’t sure my skin was conditioned to resist bullets like his had been. At least not yet.

Was it bad that I was already thinking ahead about that?

“How’d you get away?” Scott said, and his voice cracked too, big time. “I mean, you got dragged off by Weissman, didn’t you? How did you—?”

“He stuck me on a plane,” I said and caught a glimpse of red hair as Ariadne shouldered her way through the crowd, Agent Li a pace or two behind her. “With the brothers Grihm—and Frederick, hilariously enough.”

“The what?” Scott asked.

“The big guys at Como Zoo,” I said. “They were Wolfe’s brothers.”

“Holy shit,” Reed breathed. “And did you …?”

“They’re dead,” I said. “I’d say it was sudden and tragic, but it took me a while. They, uh …” I swallowed hard, “… Weissman is still out there. He …” My voice trailed off and I felt a lump in my throat.

“No, he’s not,” Ariadne said, entering the conversation as she crossed the floor toward me in slow steps. “His body was found at the airfield in Crystal, north of Minneapolis. Along with …” She hesitated.

“My mom’s,” I said and felt a cool trickle of sadness run over me, causing a shiver down the back of my neck. “I saw him stab her, knew she was …” I blinked and the world got blurry. “We should … we should go to the conference room.” I snapped my hands at the guard detail still filling the room, their black tactical gear a wall of ebony across the lobby. “Dismissed.”

Security didn’t waste time carrying out my orders, dispersing to their posts and filing away down the white hallways with military precision. Ariadne, Scott and Reed made their way toward me in the bustle of activity, and I watched them come with a reluctance born of the last ounces of denial I had in me.

My mother was dead.

And seeing the look in their eyes—Reed, my brother, Scott, the man who wanted to be my lover—that last ounce of doubt—of hope—was erased.

It wasn’t either of them that took hold of me, though. They held their distance, the strong men they were, uncertain of what to say, of how to deal with the warring emotions I’m sure were raging across my face. It wasn’t like I had them often. I could see the indecision.

There was none of that in Ariadne. She knew, just knew, and I felt her delicate arm find my shoulders as she steered me. I could smell the faint hint of her fragrance as I walked along numbly. I could sense Kat and Zollers and Janus around me as we stepped into the elevator, but I didn’t even notice when it dinged and we stepped out on the top floor.

I let Ariadne steer. Let her guide me.

We stepped into my office and I noticed the squishing of my shoes, still wet from my plunge in the river. It was chilly, but I didn’t care. I felt nauseous and strong bile threatened to burst out of me. My shirt was clinging, which I was pretty sure was the main reason that the guy who picked me up on the side of the road bothered to stop at all. It was also the reason I rendered him unconscious seconds after getting into the car. The shirt felt clammy against my skin.

“I got your suit dirty,” I said to Ariadne, realizing that her pinstripe suit was sodden where she’d wrapped an arm around me.

“It’s okay,” she said as I sat on my couch.

“My mom,” I said, and my face felt strangely paralyzed, like it wasn’t capable of motion, “did she … was she the one … who … Weissman?”

“It looks that way,” Ariadne said, and she sat down on the couch next to me. Reed was next to the door, and so was Scott. I saw Zollers there, too, barely in the frame.

“She took him out,” I whispered. “How would she have …?” The suspicion came to me, and I glanced at my desk to see the bonsai tree that I’d left there, with a fresh envelope in front of it. “A debt repaid.”

“Shhh,” Ariadne said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

I leaned back against the soft cushions of my couch, and the weight of everything that had happened that evening hit me. My meeting with Akiyama, my fight with Weissman and the Wolfe brothers, my imprisonment, and my discussion with Adelaide … with Andromeda …

Remember.

My eyes felt weary. It had been a long day.

Mom.

I felt my eyes get heavy, again, and I fought back against their urge to water, fought back against the lump that threatened to rise in my throat. I pushed down on myself, flexed my inner muscles and thought of frigid cold until the heat of the emotion faded to a manageable level.

“Weissman’s dead,” I said. “Maybe … maybe without him running the program … maybe Sovereign will change his mind. Call the whole thing off. I’m not sure he has the stomach for doing what he’ll have to now that his right-hand man is out of the game.” I swallowed hard, the mere thought of what had been sacrificed to remove Weissman threatening to make me well up.

“Maybe,” Ariadne conceded. “We don’t have to think about that now. There’s nothing more to be done at this moment.”

“She’s right,” came Zollers’s gentle voice from the doorway. “You should rest.” His words carried the weight of wise suggestion, and I wondered if he’d suggested it with more than just his voice.

“I don’t know if I can sleep,” I said and put my head against the couch. The world tilted sideways.

“You should at least try,” Zollers said and gestured toward the door. “You’ll be right here in your office, and if anything happens, we’ll wake you.”

“I’ll be right outside,” Reed said with a sharp nod, his long, dark hair swaying in agreement with the Doctor’s pronouncement.

“Me too,” Scott said. I looked at him for just a moment, and in his flushed cheeks I saw none of the uncertainty that had plagued him so badly in the last few days. Washed away, I suppose, by the knowledge of what our enemies were doing—had done—to his family. “We’ll keep an eye out and let you know if anything …” His voice trailed off.

“Thank you,” I said, as he disappeared through the door. Zollers followed with a gentle smile, and I knew without him saying anything that we would talk later.

Later. When I could handle it.

“Just call if you need anything,” Ariadne said as she stood, smoothing out the lines of her rumpled skirt. “I’ll be in my office next door.” She pointed a thumb, as though I were too discombobulated to recall where her office was.

“Thank you,” I said, voice a whisper. “Ariadne …” She paused at the door. “Thank you for … everything. Everything since the day I met you. You’ve been … kind to me, even when I wasn’t to you.”

She flicked the light switch, and the scant illumination from the fluorescent bulbs shining through the door and in the cracks of the blinds of the window above the couch where I lay cast the entire office in faint light. She started to open her mouth to say something but stopped. Her face went from a hint of a smile to a moment’s discomfort and settled into unease. “Just rest,” she said, and closed the door as she left.

She’d acted like a mother to me since the day we’d met, protecting me more than once from the machinations of Erich Winter when she could. But she wasn’t my mother.

My mother was dead.

I lay on the couch, and the tears I’d held back for so long came out in small, muffled sobs, hot liquid burning as it ran down my cheeks. I kept on that way until I had no more tears or sobs left inside, and some time after that I fell into a deep, restless sleep.

Chapter 5

Apiolae, Roman Empire

280
A.D.

No one touched him and no one wanted to be near him, and for Marius, that was just the way it was. By age six, he’d worn out his welcome nearly everywhere in town, and skeptical eyes followed him any time he was around. You could only engender extreme pain with your touch and talk to yourself so often before they got wary, and they were wary of him and more.

He’d been fortunate enough to have found a mean old man of the village who suffered him to live with the animals in the barn, always with a wary eye on him. He kept a stick to poke at Marius to keep him at length, but that was fine. It was rarely employed and never needed, because Marius had learned to keep his hands to himself at a very young age.

He lay in the fresh hay that he’d just placed in the bottom of the barn in his own little paddock that he’d claimed when he’d come here. He lay there and ate quietly, a meal of cheese that he’d made from goat’s milk and honey he’d collected from the bees out near the cliff. The old man had taught him much, enough to survive if he had to.

The smell of the barn was strong, though not much stronger, in his opinion, than that of the old man’s house, on the few occasions he’d had to go in there. The old man’s musty stink was different than the animals and less palatable to Marius’s nose. Here, things were familiar.

There was a rustle in the goat pen and he looked up. They were always a little restless around him. They could almost instinctively tell that his touch was not good for them and kept their distance. It wasn’t as though he tried to touch them, and their fur protected their skin some even when he did.

Because you’re a murderer, and they know it. You’re a demon, a spawn of Pluto—

“No, I’m not,” he said, almost casual about it. He nibbled on the piece of cheese in his blackened, calloused hand, tasted the sharp tang of it on his tongue. “You keep saying that, but I’m not.”

Everybody thinks it. Everybody knows it. You’re a dark child, a destroyer of everything you touch.

This was how it always was. Every day. Marius tried to ignore her, but he knew eventually she’d get through to him, provoke him.

She always did, somehow.

“The animals seem fine,” he said, swallowing the piece of cheese. “I haven’t destroyed them.”

Yet.

He sighed and took another nibble. He was getting older, nearing his late teens. He was a man, by all rights, and should have been seeking his own fortunes, his own house. His own family—

You can’t have a family. You’ll destroy them, just like everything else
. The voice was harsh, near-screeching, and so deep in his head that it felt as if his ears rattled with each low word spoken.

“I won’t—” He felt a sharp surge of anger and then paused to let it subside. It was like this, always. Every day. He soothed himself and took a drink of the goat’s milk in the skin next to him. It was refreshing on a hot day like this. It gave him a moment to compose himself before he ranted into the barn air. It wasn’t as though the old man cared as if he were crazy, but the old man wasn’t always the only one wandering around.

And it wouldn’t do to give any more of the locals fodder for stories about him, more reasons to hate him. No, that wouldn’t do at all. It wasn’t like they needed the excuse.

You’re a disgrace,
the voice came again. Harsh and grating, filled with rough anger that flowed through every word and drove out any happiness.
A worthless beast, useless to anyone and so limited in your skills as to be nothing more than an animal yourself. You’re a goat herder, and you’ll never be more than that or a whelp of little aid to some poor old bastard so blind he can’t afford to be picky about the help he gets.

Marius felt the hard lump in his throat. “Well, at least I’m useful for something.” He felt his eyes burn. “Unlike you. Unlike you, who dig at me and lash at me and do nothing but burn in my head like a low-ranging fire.”

You destroy like fire, burn everything and everyone around you like fire. All you need do is show up at a place and—

“
Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!
” Marius was screaming, the rage taking over as he squinted his eyes closed. Every day it was like this, every day it happened, and it always built to this finale. He sat there shuddering, hands shaking in front of his eyes as he hoped against hope that this would be the day that she didn’t come back. That this would be the day that the voice was gone forever from his thoughts.

Marius smacked his dry lips together and then licked them before taking up the piece of cheese again. He’d dropped it in his frenzy. His breathing had almost returned to normal, and he could swear he smelled the faint hint of smoke from the old man’s fire.

Every day was like this.

See you tomorrow
, the voice whispered in his ears, fading as though the speaker was going into the distance, walking over a hill toward the horizon. She’d be back, though. She always came back.

“Yes, Mother,” Marius said, low enough that he hoped not even the animals could hear him.

She always came back. That was her defining characteristic. Mostly it seemed to happen when he was around people, this constant, grating sense in the back of his mind that she would be there. She would always be with him. She would continue to make him look mad, provoke him, drive him into scorn and scrutiny.

He looked around the barn, took a deep breath of the air of his home. “I need to leave,” he whispered, and deep inside he knew the truth of it. Here he was unwelcome, in this small place, where everyone knew him and his madness. But perhaps somewhere else, where no one knew him …

The answer came to him, just like that. Somewhere big. Somewhere that no one would know him, no one would see him.

Rome
.

Chapter 6

Sienna

Now

I drifted in dream, feeling heavy in thought and mind. It almost felt like I was experiencing fever dreams, as if an excess of thought was causing my head to spin and my body to break into the waking world every few minutes to turn over on my couch.

The world was dim around me, and that tired feeling just stretched over me. Everything held a familiar, dreamlike quality, and I pushed my toes against resistance beneath them and felt something grainy. It felt like dirt, and I looked down in the darkness to see that it was indeed dirt between my toes.