by W. J. May
There were three courses of action when one found oneself in such a situation. Taught to every inked child from a young age. Deny, distract, dismiss. When the first two didn’t work—
“Well, that really sucks for you.”
Molly’s sharp voice cut through the air as she came to stand by the others. To the rest of the world, it must have looked strange. Not only that the pint-size girl was standing fearlessly in front of such a monster, but that the two tall men by her side let her do it. They had learned long ago not to underestimate her, and Molly Skye had learned long ago how to take care of herself.
“Feel free to ponder it in that revoltingly large head of yours,” she continued, tossing back her fiery hair, “but my friends and I have actually got to be...”
Her voice trailed off as no fewer than forty men peeled themselves away from the bustling crowd, taking up position by the giant’s side.
Unlike the men they’d encountered at the racetrack these ones were tall, disciplined. They moved with a synchronicity that suggested a certain amount of training, and judging by their general build Rae would guess that they spent most of their time working down in the mines. A few were armed, but most didn’t feel it necessary. They simply stood behind their leader, biding their time.
“...leaving.” Molly finished her sentence with a gulp, then shrank back towards the others.
The giant gave her a long, unblinking stare before turning once more to Julian. “I’ll ask again.” He slowly crossed the space between them, stopping just an arm’s length away. “And I’d appreciate an answer this time. How did you know which horses?”
For anyone who’d grown up with ink, it was the classic nightmare.
Trapped in the middle of a public place. One hundred eyewitnesses at your back. No place to run. No place to hide. Nothing but that unanswerable question staring you in the face.
Julian didn’t flinch. He was too practiced for that. But he was out of moves. The man had orchestrated the confrontation perfectly, giving him no way out. Instead, he simply stood there, not saying a word as another man detached himself from the crowd and ambled towards them.
This was one was all limbs. Twisted and gnarled with a prematurely aged face. He took one look at Julian’s long, dark hair then spat on the ground, muttering a derisive word.
Cigány.
Rae was surprised to realize the man was speaking Hungarian. Cigány meant gypsy, though it was a derrogatory term. She was even more surprised when Julian recognized the language as well.
“What?” He was surprised enough to break character, if only for a moment. “I’m not—”
“ENOUGH!”
The giant’s voice boomed over the street. Frightening a passing horse to the point where it threw its unsuspecting rider to the ground. The friends cringed, then stood tall. Ready for anything.
“I’d hoped this would be easier.” The man rubbed his temples, as if they were all causing him a great deal of strain. “That you would have some sort of basic survival instinct.” He lifted his eyes to Julian, who stared back. “But I can see now that’s not the case.”
For a moment, all was quiet. Then he snapped for his men.
“You’re coming with us.”
In a flash, a hand wrapped around Julian’s sleeve. But it didn’t belong to the giant. Nor did it belong to any of the seething troops standing behind him.
No matter how things had changed within the group of friends, some things would always remain the same. Angel might have married him. Gabriel might have become his legal brother.
But Devon and Julian were family. Always had been. Always would.
“Touch him and I’ll kill you.”
It was a simple threat, a quiet one. But there wasn’t a single doubt he’d do exactly as he said.
There was a second where nobody moved. A second where the entire world seemed to balance on the tip of a knife. One wrong breath, and it would all be over.
Then the giant threw back his head with another booming laugh.
“Such nerve, this one!” He actually turned to his companion, gesturing to Devon with a grin. “He struck me in the face at the race track. Might have broken a bone...”
Rae inched forward, reaching out to take her husband’s other hand. Something was about to happen. Something not at all good.
“No, dear boy. I was not sent to collect your friend.” The giant’s smile suddenly cooled, leaving something rather sinister in its wake. “I was sent to collect all of you.”
Well... crap. Crappity-crap-crap-crap.
The man took a step forward, and all pretenses fell away as the gang took a step back. The angry horde was hovering just behind him, like a swarm of bees just waiting for the order to attack.
“What do you mean, you were sent?” Gabriel asked in a strained voice. His eyes swept quickly over the crowd and it was clear he was counting—calculating their odds. “Who sent you?”
A sudden chill swept up Rae’s body as she thought back to the man’s cryptic warning at the race track. About how they didn’t realize what it was they’d done. Whose money they’d stolen. A strange emotion had swept over his face, one she couldn’t identify. She realized now what it was.
Fear.
The giant smiled again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Those eyes were still fixed on Devon, the upstart who’d dared to oppose him. The one he intended to take down by force.
“I thought he’d be satisfied,” he replied, ignoring the actual question, “when I recovered what you’d stolen. But, as it turns out, he’s actually quite interested in meeting all of you.”
There was a beat of silence, then the friends shared a grimace as Julian turned and gave them a dark look. So the money was recovered, was it? No one dropped it?
Devon winced apologetically, but kept hold of his arm.
“I don’t know who your employer is, and I don’t care.” There was no fear in his voice, but there was a great deal of caution. “We’re not going anywhere with you. Leave us be.”
Again, the giant smiled. This time, it brought a spark of life to his eyes.
“I have to admit, I was really hoping you’d say that.”
Those were the last words anyone said. There was no trigger. No unseen signal. Just those final words, then the streets of London dissolved into chaos, right in front of Rae’s eyes.
She leapt back with a gasp as the horde of men exploded forward. Each one yelling at the top of their lungs. Streaking over the stones. Half a hundred pairs of hands reaching towards her.
Normally, she wouldn’t have leapt back. Normally, she would have leapt forward. But there was a far greater concern than the people running towards her. The people watching from the street.
All of them a potential casualty. All of them watching the gang’s every move.
All of them, a risk of exposure.
So she fought against muscle memory. Lowered her deadly hands and battled down every instinct and piece of training she had. She didn’t fight. Instead, Rae Kerrigan did the unthinkable.
She began to run.
“MOLLY,” SHE CRIED, dodging a swinging plank as it was leveled toward her. The city was streaking past, and she didn’t dare look behind her. “Where are—”
“I’m here!”
A small hand latched onto hers and the two girls shared a quick, desperate look. In times of crisis, most people turned to their spouse. In times of crisis, PC agents turned to their partner.
“What are we—”
“We’re going to run,” Rae panted, answering the question before it could even be asked. “I can’t believe it either, but we’re going to run.”
The word run didn’t seem to compute. Molly’s face froze as she thought it over, considering it from every side, before rejecting it outright.
“But can’t we just—”
“No, we can’t fight.” Rae grabbed a hammer off a work table as she streaked past, hurling it over her shoulder at the people giving chase. “We can’t fight
because we’re not allowed to win. Not with all these people watching. Imagine how it would look.”
Molly didn’t seem to care much how it would look. At the moment, anything beat out the prospect of tearing through the streets of London in petticoats and a corset.
“I can’t believe you’re making me say this,” she hissed through gritted teeth, ducking under a swinging pail of water as the two darted up a side alley, “but I wish I wasn’t wearing a dress.”
The sound of light footsteps echoed around them, and Rae turned to see that the rest of the friends were right on their heels. They, too, had resisted the urge to beat back their attackers. They, too, were forcing themselves to run instead.
And they weren’t very happy about it.
“Just ten,” Angel pleaded, flying through the alley like a ghost. She had left her shoes behind, but was still managing to keep pace with her brother. “Just let me take out ten.”
Gabriel clenched his jaw, golden hair whipping about his face as he sprinted full-tilt in the opposite direction. “I said no, Angela. Do you not understand the concept of a witness?”
It was silent for a moment.
“...just five.”
“Honey, are you all right?”
Rae glanced over her shoulder to see Devon running by her side. Though the world had exploded into chaos, he hadn’t taken his eyes off her for a single moment. As it stood, he was covering their retreat while managing to keep watch over her at the same time.
“No,” she tugged uselessly at the strings lacing up her back, the ones that were making it increasingly difficult to breathe, “I’m most certainly not all right. The second I figure out this ink, I’m going back in time all over again to kill the man who created the corset!”
“Rae Kerrigan, don’t you dare!” Molly cried.
She was about to yell something else, when a heavyset man in his mid-fifties burst out of a store front just ahead and grabbed her by the waist. The sheer force of it knocked all the wind out of her, but before she could even open her mouth to scream a shadow blurred in between.
Rae turned around just in time to see Julian grab the man by the back of the neck, pulling so hard that Molly went spilling from his arms. The brute turned around with a swinging fist but Julian flipped him over and hurled him into a water trough, sending a small tsunami into the air.
And people are protective of HIM?
Rae flashed him a grin, impressed enough to applaud, then watched with comedic horror as he tilted dizzily to the side and stumbled into a nearby wagon.
Devon grabbed his arm, pulling him from the hay with a carefully concealed smile. “How’s the head?”
Julian considered for a split second before gesturing up the road. “Are there two ladders leaning against that house, or just the one?”
“Just the one.”
The psychic bit his lip. “Not so good, then.”
Devon opened his mouth to reply, but then whirled around as a heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder. There was the sound of a weighted impact. A muffled crunch. Then he was running with the friends once more. A smear of blood streaked across his knuckles.
“You okay?” Luke started to yell, before he was waylaid by assailants of his own.
This time there were too many to be believable. This time the others leapt in to help.
Rae threw all her momentum abruptly backwards, flipping through the air with a spinning kick. Molly somersaulted gracefully across the ground, knocking one man’s legs out from under him and using him to trip the other. Luke caught the man who’d been grabbing him in a headlock, squeezing for only a moment before throwing him into a stone wall.
It happened too fast for anyone to really see it. Too fast for the individual motions to make sense. But what did register was the steady body-count building up in their wake. The sea of broken bodies, while every single one of the friends was getting away free.
Rae saw a look of disbelief flash through the bystanders at the same time as Devon. Felt the same surge of panic as they propelled themselves forward through the crowd.
“We need to get off the main street,” he panted.
They had been trying, but the London they were familiar with hadn’t been built yet. The city they knew like the back of their hands was still in its early stages. A series of winding roads and zig-zagging corridors. Each more convoluted and confusing than the last.
“Here—this way!” His face lit up as he found something he recognized, and with a burst of speed he sprinted to the front of the pack. “Around the corner is a loading bay that leads down to the river. If we can just get out of the city, maybe we can—”
The friends skidded to a stop. Staring at the same dead end.
“—lose them.”
For a second, all was quiet. Only the sound of their shallow breathing echoed off the stone wall. Then Julian shot him an accusatory look and Devon flushed.
“This leads somewhere different in our time.”
It was quiet for a split second more then Gabriel grabbed both by the jacket, shoving them back towards the road. “We need to keep moving.” His face stilled as he heard the rest of the horde barreling their way. “...and we need to split up.”
It was a terrible truth, but he was absolutely right.
With the citizens of London leveraged against them, they couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. And no matter where they went or which way they turned, the people chasing them would always know the streets of the city. Would always be one step ahead.
The hair on the back of Rae’s neck stood on end as her eyes flickered back towards the growing crescendo of noise. Then she put on a forced calm and turned back to her friends.
“That little bridge where we ate lunch the other day,” she said quietly. “After the spectacle in the square. We’ll meet there. If anyone doesn’t come back by nightfall, we’ll go looking for them.”
There were hasty nods of agreement, but not much time for anything else. The ground was already beginning to shake, and the echoes of shouts were ringing up the alley.
This time, when it came time to divide the friends paired up differently. Moving quickly, with the beginnings of true panic flickering in their eyes. Never had the stakes been so high without the promise of a safety net. Never had they been so far away from home without their powers.
Rae split off immediately and went with Devon, racing down a side corridor that emptied back out onto the main street. Molly and Luke shared a quick kiss, then took off running in the opposite direction, drawing as many men away from the others as they could. Julian and Angel hopped over the wall and sprinted down into the river district. Gabriel had tried to go off on his own but his little sister grabbed him by the sleeve, pulling him along.
It was a classic strategy that had one obvious flaw. None of them had any way of knowing if the others were all right. Until they made it to the bridge, they were completely on their own.
Not completely. In fact, it looks like we have some company...
“Dev—look out!” Rae cried out just as a man appeared out of nowhere, swinging what looked like the blunt end of a sword. If he’d had his tatù, he could have easily dodged the blow. But it caught him just below the ear, sending him sprawling into the middle of the road.
People scattered as he let out a sharp cry, clutching the side of his neck as his eyes watered involuntarily with pain. They flashed instinctively to his stricken wife before fastening back on the man walking slowly towards him, still brandishing the bloody sword.
“They said we had to bring you back alive,” the man muttered, eyes locked with laser focus on Devon’s face. “But they didn’t say we couldn’t rough you up in the process...”
A spark of anger flashed in Devon’s eyes as he pushed to his feet, prepared to forget the rules and give this man the beating he so richly deserved. But, as it turned out, he would never get the chance. Someone else had claimed the honor for herself.
“Rough us up, huh?”
S
he spoke up loudly from just behind the man’s back, startling him into turning around. He either hadn’t seen her or hadn’t considered her a threat. Either way, he was surprised to see her now.
“You’ll get your turn, love.” He looked her up and down, licking his lips in the process. “For now, it’s your fella I want—”
He choked off suddenly, then spat out a mouthful of blood. Then another. Some teeth were soon to follow. By the time he finally fell to his knees, clutching his face in shock, Rae was standing over him with a chilling smile. He hadn’t even seen her move.
“Yes, but you see—that’s the problem.” Using only the tips of her fingers, she knocked him back into the dust. “He’s my fella.”
There was a gasp from the people around her and she turned to see Devon standing behind her, arms folded with a chiding smile on his face. She tried her best to ignore him, fastidiously wiping the man’s blood from her hand, complimenting herself on the force of the punch. But when his piercing eyes became too much to ignore she whirled around in exasperation, throwing up her hands.
“What?” she demanded, waving people away at the same time. “I weighed the risk and decided to do it anyway, okay?”
He didn’t say anything. He only grinned.
“Oh, come on,” she said bitingly. “Like you weren’t about to do the same thing yourself.”
This time he laughed softly, taking her by the hand. “Maybe not with as much... flair.”
A little blush stole across her face as she fought back a grin, following him down the alley once more. “Haven’t you heard? We Kerrigans are rather known for our flair...”
THE GANG CONTINUED running for the better part of the afternoon. At least, that’s what Rae assumed. All in their own separate groups. Growing more and more tired with each passing hour. They fought back the people chasing them whenever they could. Even put a few permanently out of commission. But whoever this mysterious patron was, he seemed to have an endless supply. And whenever any of them got even close to the bridge by the river, they’d be spotted and have to turn around lest they lead the rest of them straight to their friends.
