18.
“Shit, what if that guy has a car?” Cassidy was the first to ask the question I’d been ignoring for the last five minutes as we boogied up the freeway at high speed, the speedometer needle buried against the right side of the instrument. Harry was keeping very careful control of the vehicle, sliding in and out of traffic brilliantly.
“Oh, he does,” Harry said, breaking his silence. He lifted a hand and something dangled from within his fingers. “Where do you think I got these spark plugs?” He shot me a grin.
I just stared at him. “Wait … you sabotaged his car?”
“Damned right I did,” he said.
I thought about it for a second, then my voice went frosty as I watched Harry stiffen, subtly. “You knew he was going to bushwhack us before you stopped at that Waffle House, didn’t you?”
Harry just sort of shrugged, and I hit him on the shoulder. Not too hard, but enough that he cringed, and suddenly I knew why he’d tensed a moment earlier. He’d been anticipating the hit.
“Yeah, okay, I knew,” Harry said.
“How?” I asked. “Who is he?”
Harry shook his head, not looking at me. “Don’t know. But he’s tied up in this whole thing somehow, so this was a necessary meeting and also …” he seemed to be deciding how best to say it, “… your best chance for survival.”
I hit him again, and he grimaced. “Dammit, Nealon … sometimes, I swear … associating with you definitely brings its own sort of pitfalls. Pain being one of them.”
“I haven’t mangled you beyond repair yet, Graves,” I said, which was about the most charitable thing I could manage after he’d just copped to walking me into the worst beatdown I’d experienced … in three months. “Count your blessings given what I just went through in that Waffle House.” I seethed in silence for a moment. “What the hell are you playing at?”
“Me?” Graves kept his eyes on the road for once. “I’m just the driver.”
“The driver who can see into the damned future and just walked me into an ambush. Try again.”
“I told you—this guy was going to cross your path regardless. I just tried to engineer it so—”
“A warning would have been nice!” I hammered Harry’s arm. “‘Hey, Sienna, this stop isn’t so much about waffles as it a chance for you to get your skull beaten in by some superpowered goon with the personality of a freaking android’!” I thumped him again and again on the bicep, and he just took it.
“My arm’s gone completely numb,” Harry said, shaking it out as soon as I delivered the last blow. “I hope you’re happy.”
“I was happy on the beach in Florida,” I said, crossing my arms in front of me to keep from physically abusing Harry any worse than I’d already done. I could have broken bones and done so much worse, but I kept a lid on it.
“Bullshit,” Harry threw back at me, a little angry, probably from the pain.
I chewed on that one, gritting my teeth. “Fine,” I said at last, “I wasn’t happy happy. But I had scotch, and I was safe, and—”
“Yeah, you were living the high life in your little dog run,” Harry said, now more animated than I’d yet seen him. “Make sure you don’t go any farther than your shock collar comfort zone would allow. And keep diving into that bottle, Nealon, eventually when you hit the bottom maybe you’ll find an answer to how pathetic your life has become.”
“I already have an answer for that, Harry,” I shot back, “I’m on the run from the frigging law, and I got my ass beat and my powers stolen by some ginger with a mad-on for me. I’m entitled to sit back and tip a few—”
“Bull. Shit.” Harry thumped the wheel and the car shook as he took us slightly over the bumps at the side of the road, then got us right back on the straight and narrow. He turned to me with blazing eyes. “You can sit and drink and feel sorry for yourself all you want, but don’t turn around and tell me that it’s because you were happy wallowing.”
I wanted to hit him again, but I didn’t, because I wasn’t sure I could restrain myself from using lethal force. Hell, I didn’t even know what lethal force was for me anymore, without Wolfe strength.
“Looks like I missed some good times,” Eilish said woozily from the back seat.
“I didn’t ask for you to come along and become my cryptic asshole shaman spirit guide,” I said, trying to ignore the distraction.
“Well, I needed your help, so—here we are, anyway,” Harry said. “All part of the service.”
“Me getting my ass kicked by the Terminator is part of your service? Your service sucks. Like—Comcast bad.”
Cassidy chuckled, and we all turned to look at her. “That was funny,” she said, blushing. “Their service is bad-award winning. If there was a J.D. No-Power award, they would get it.”
“I don’t need your damned help, Harry,” I said, still steaming.
“Yeah, you were doing great without me,” he said. “Just keep a little something in mind—you may have just run across this guy now, in my company, but he’s been hunting you for a while. So he would have found you down in Florida, eventually, and then you wouldn’t have been in a position to at least outrun him when he knocked your ass sideways.”
That annoying little factoid had an infuriating ring of truth to it. I’d been hunted by the best, and this Terminator guy—he was right up there. If I’d had my old powers, sure, he might not have been as much of an issue. A few fire blasts, boom, he’s pre-cremated and my problems with him are over.
Now, thought? His super-speed punchy powers damned near caved my freaking head in, and my own punches were not nearly so lightning fast.
How had I fought guys like this before?
Oh, right. I cracked my back, and felt for that empty space where I used to carry a holster. Well, I had a Walther in my travel bag, a gift from one Manannán Mac Lir, and it still had a few rounds left in it. “Cassidy,” I said, “be a not-pain-in-my-ass and hand me my bag, will you?”
She shrugged, put aside her laptop, and reached into the back, pulling up my bag and one of Eilish’s countless candy bags with it. She tossed it to me lightly, between the gap in the seats, and the candy bag broke loose and showered the rear floorboard with Twizzlers and Almond Joys.
Eilish moaned. “My head hurts so, I don’t think I could stomach any more of your American candy right now.”
I reached back and grabbed an Almond Joy, furiously ripping the paper off it and then throwing the wrapper back in her face. “Fine, then! Our candy is too good for you anyway.” And I took a big bite of almond coconutty goodness as I unzipped my bag and pulled out the Walther box.
“Please don’t shoot me,” Harry said, and I froze, contemplating it for just a second before I tucked the gun into my waistband. “It was long odds, but it was a possibility,” he said when he caught me frowning at him.
“Throw me into an unexpected fight with an unstoppable ass kicker again and the odds are going to get a lot less favorable for you, bucko,” I said after I practice-drew the gun and then checked to see if it had one in the chamber. Of course it did; they were pretty damned useless without one in the chamber. At least that old habit died hard.
“Oh, good,” Eilish said, leaning forward so I could see that she was sporting a big bruise across her pale forehead. “The angry, drunken American is now armed. You people are crazy.”
“Why?” I asked, not particularly perturbed about Eilish’s characterization of me, unflattering as it was.
“Because you just tucked a gun into your waistband,” Eilish said.
I stared back at her. “I got this gun in Scotland.”
She started to open her mouth to protest, paused, then said, “Yeah, but, you’re carrying it in America now.”
I just stared, still. “And …?”
She stared back, apparently trying to construct her argument and not having much success. “You people are gun crazy.”
“Well, in this case, it’s a problem solver for me,” I said, shaking it off and turning back to putting away my bag. That done, I tossed it to the back of the hatchback area. “As in, if I can, I’m totally going to blow the brains out of that asshole the Terminator, and then my problems with him will be over.”
“But is that really the way you want to be solving all your problems?” Eilish asked, like that was some kind of compelling argument.
“The ones that involve people wanting to harm or otherwise kill me? Hell yes,” I said. “That is how I want to solve them. With bullets to the head for all who threaten my wellbeing in a serious manner.” I looked sidelong at Harry, who let out the thinnest smile. “Judgment reserved on where you fall into that category, Graves.”
He didn’t argue back. Which was wise.
We passed a sign warning us that the next major city ahead was Nashville, somewhere in the near distance, and I quietly seethed about getting my ass handed to me—this was becoming a habit—by some rando meta in a Waffle House who apparently had beef with me. What was his deal? Kidnapper for unknown parties? He didn’t seem like a government stooge, since they usually came in teams, a swarm of stinging pains in my ass.
I’d have to file him under mystery for now, which left me with two to unravel—three, counting Harry “I might be trying to low-key kill you” Graves. Why the hell was he hiding behind my skirt (metaphorical, not literal—I don’t wear those)?
“Uh, Sienna?” Cassidy piped up from the back seat.
“Tell me you have a read on who that asshole was,” I said, turning, my hand brushing the soft cloth seat. “And that we can go to his house and just wrecking ball it to the ground right now, so that when he comes home he finds himself in a rough approximation of my old house, burned and—”
“No,” Cassidy said, shaking her head urgently. She spun the laptop around toward me so that I could see the screen, and when I did …
My freaking guts felt like they’d fallen out of my body and dropped through the floorboard and onto the highway, left behind as the wheels spun on through the night and carried us away.
METAHUMAN MASSACRE
Cute lede, I might have thought any other time, but the subhead gave me chills in its dense simplicity, and it took my brain another second to process through the information.
Veronika Acheron had been attacked. Outside her house.
And suddenly it started to feel … so very clear.
I knew Eric Simmons.
I knew Jamie Barton.
I knew Veronika.
This guy who flew, who had fire … he was targeting people I knew. And the guy in the Waffle House? He’d come for me, personally.
Somebody was sending a message to me, loud and clear.
This was war.