37.
Sienna
I burst out of the safe house window pissed off, heart beating a mile a minute, reflecting on a few hard realities. First, it really wasn’t a safe house at all, was it, in either sense of the word? Like, it was a hotel, not a house, and it ended up being not safe at all, dammit.
Second…Rose was on my ass like white on Conan O’Brien, and that was, to understate things massively, not good.
I hit the ground and rolled, running toward a city wall that was just standing there in front of me. A few tourists were speckled along its length, and I didn’t even bother finding a staircase. I spider-manned my way up it with a good leap and by using the footholds provided by the uneven nature of the stones used to build the thing. My hands scraped and dug against the rough stone but I made it, vaulting above the crenellations at the top and onto a walkway.
An astonished tourist gaped at me. “You’re—”
“In a big damned hurry,” I said, pushing past him without doing him injury. Sounded Italian.
I ran down the wall at a furious clip, trying my best not to look back too much.
I failed.
Rose was easily keeping pace with me, just floating off about twenty feet, looking at me pityingly as I bolted along. There wasn’t so much as a fortification in sight, but there was a bridge ahead a little ways, and maybe I could—
“You can’t be serious with this,” Rose called to me, just drifting along, watching me. “Where d’ye think you’re going to go?”
“Well, I’ve made it to York,” I said, wondering if she was going to close in on me or just deliver color commentary until I died of boredom or exhaustion. It was feeling like it could go either way.
“I let you make it to York, darlin’,” she said, almost piteously.
“Yeah, okay,” I shouted. I was still heading for the river bridge. If I could make it…
Well, I didn’t know what I’d do next if I made it. But if I could submerge, slow Rose’s momentum down, take her fire out of play…
That’d just leave her with off-the-chart energy projection skills and the strength to squeeze me to death without much effort. Totally even odds.
Sigh.
The wall was curving to an end, heading to the right up ahead where it returned to ground level to meet up with the bridge to allow pedestrians to cross the river. Rose was easing closer, but I decided to liven things up and add some destruction of public property to the charges against me, so I launched a kick against the tooth of the wall fortification, the crenellation archers would duck behind while shooting arrows in the days of yore.
I hit the crenellation with gusto, and it shattered the old stone, sending a chunk flying right at Rose.
She moved right out of the way, dipping slightly as she did so. “You remember when you used to be the most powerful meta in the world? Sad to think those days are gone.” She made a tsking sound, then laughed, loud and high and kind of like a mean girl from the high school I never went to but always imagined.
“I mean, what are you supposed to do, now that you’ve peaked and are on the downhill slope?” Rose asked, putting the fear in me that she was, indeed, going to color commentate me to death. If I wanted to go out that way, I’d watch ESPN. “I’d imagine a prideful girl like you…you’ve got to be just stinging right now. Feeling the burn of your ego being hit hard. Speaking of—”
She launched in at me and clocked me in the jaw so fast I didn’t even see it coming. One minute I was ready to round the corner and get on the downslope to the bridge, the next I flew into a crenellation, and hit it a lot harder than the one I’d just kicked at her. It impacted along my back, stars flashed in front of my eyes, and I swallowed a tooth.
I staggered up, hearing the gasps from visiting tourists, or maybe from me trying to get my wind back after she’d knocked it out of me. Rose was at a distance again, and I couldn’t see her very clearly, because she was blurry from the hit I’d taken, but I knew she was smiling. “Oops,” she said with much glee.
Dragging myself forward, I didn’t bother to launch a counterattack, because now that I didn’t have my other souls or a gun, my only long-distance offensive weapon was basically to throw shit at her, and I was all out of shit to throw. A gorilla in a zoo with a handful of its own feces had more effective means of holding off Rose at this point than I did, which was a sad thing to admit.
“Did you really think your little friends were going to come swooping in at the last second and save the day for you?” she asked, and it turned my blood cold to hear her reference Reed and—others, I presumed, people he might have brought with him. Augustus. Scott. Jamal. Maybe Kat.
I slowed, not that I was moving very fast anyway. An old lady with a cane down the way was escaping more quickly than I was, and it took me a second to realize that my left ankle was broken and screaming at me anytime I put weight on it. That was bad: I was hobbled, and healing instantly was a thing of the past. I was also pretty sure I had a few broken ribs.
Rose moved a little closer, but not so close I could have even spit on her. Her leer was apparent now. “Oh, yes, I know about your little friends. They’re the reason I’ve let you go so far, that I let you run away like this. They’re out there at the airfield right now, getting surrounded, getting shot, probably—I told the lads I sent to be careful, but you know how hard it is to find good help.”
I didn’t say anything to that, but she must have read the fear in my face. “Oh, come now,” she said, leaning on the Scottish. “You didn’t think you were actually beating me by just running away, did you? I’ve been one step ahead of you all this time, darlin’.”
I kicked out at the wall again in rage and sent another chunk of stone at her. It hurt like hell, and I keeled over after it was done because I had to put all my weight on my broken ankle for a few seconds to pull it off, but I sent a piece of block right at her smug face—
And she gravity’d it off, sending it shattering to the ground below like it had been snagged by the event horizon of a black hole.
I threw myself to my feet again and started forward at a hobbling run, which was still faster than anything a non-meta could have pulled off. There was a massive building behind her with a white facade and a bunch of small windows. Maybe if I could get inside, hide, evade her—
She swept in front of me and crashed into me again, this time striking a glancing blow against my belly that felt like someone had popped my stomach.
I staggered back again, and Rose had inched a little closer this time, now only about ten feet away from me, but still hovering off the ground. Her red hair caught the wind coming off the river, and the malicious joy in her eyes now that she was revealed was completely unlike her persona when she’d pretended to be my sidekick.
“I think it’s about time to finish this up,” Rose said as I wobbled, my legs weak beneath me, my head swimming from the beating I’d taken. “Give her the goodnight kiss, will you, darlin’? So I can go deal with her little…family?”
I wondered what she meant by that, and then I saw a blur that slowed down right in front of me. I caught sight of a beanie and bright eyes that locked onto me like a missile.
Colin Fannon.
He was coming right for me.
I wanted to let out a breath of relief, but didn’t want to tip her off. She was about to see, anyway, when he caught up to me and I disappeared. Then she’d know that we’d—
Colin blurred at me, not slowing down. I braced myself, figuring he’d grab me and off we’d go—
But instead, as he came to halt, I caught motion at his side as he lifted his arm—
And leveled me with a punch to the face that put my lights out.
The fact that he was here had seemed such a relief; a friendly face come to aid in my salvation.
The fact that he’d just turned on me at Rose’s command?
That was…so not good.
I lost consciousness, slamming into the wall behind me but only dimly aware of it.
The last thing I managed to think was that Reed was here…in York…that he’d brought Fannon here to save me.
And if he didn’t know Fannon had turned…
Then he was in even more danger than I was.
I passed out into the dark of unconsciousness, thinking only of my brother.