The helicopter appeared, a spotlight shining down on us. Veronique tossed some of the bullets at it, but to no avail.
I heard the whir of a weapon, and just as the chopper was about to fire on us, and Angel was about to mop up whatever mess was left, Dorian appeared, out of breath, with a small case in her hands.
Veronique ran to me, and I scooped Grace into my arms. Dorian grabbed hold of us, and we flashed away in an instant, reappearing on the roof of the house.
I swear it happened in slow motion.
The helicopter pilot looked at us and I caught his gaze. In an instant, I had taken over the man’s psyche and suddenly, I was mentally flying the helicopter while still in my own body, trying to come to grips with what was going on.
I tipped the fuselage toward Angel and crashed into him before he could zip away, causing an explosion that launched dirt, rocks, and hunks of steel into the air.
“Did you just fly the helicopter into Angel?” Dorian asked, the vein pulsing on her head. It had only been about forty minutes since she left; she’d hauled ass back here. “Gideon. Please. Gideon. Can you hear me?”
She touched my cheek and I snapped out of it.
“You’ve got to install this on Grace and Veronique,” she said, handing me the key and my smartphone. “Do it on Grace first; Veronique and I will continue the fight.”
“Are you okay to fight?” I looked over the edge of the rooftop. I didn’t know how I was going to get down, but that was answered a second later when she teleported me to the ground.
“I’m ready,” Dorian said, paintbrush in hand.
I took a deep breath, smoke, fire, and the taste of metal in my mouth.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Everyone Needs a Little Head
Dorian wasn’t lying. As I plugged the key she’d given me into Grace’s neck, the punk rock teleporter conjured up a man with a huge buster sword. She sent the sword-wielding energy creation running toward the next group of soldiers who were approaching with their weapons drawn.
They fired on it, and as they did, she conjured up a muscular, two-headed giant with an energy cannon on its shoulder. It was weird to see her construct something so tall; it was all in the way she used her forward momentum when making the creation. The more exaggerated she became, the larger it grew.
On the other side of the fight, Veronique was tossing anything metal she could get her hands on, figuratively and literally. She was also losing steam, and I saw her drop to one knee, pulling a downed soldier in her direction.
Dorian teleported in front of Veronique, covering her with more creations while she fed. When Veronique finished, she touched Dorian’s hand, and the two of them disappeared, only to reappear down the hill behind enemy lines.
I returned my focus to Grace.
The key in her neck was still loading. There was a liquid crystal display on it, light blue, and of all goddamn things, it was showing me the hourglass symbol. If there’s anything that has come to represent the shittiness of the twenty-first century and first world problems that many of us face, it was the hourglass symbol.
This would have bothered me less if it weren’t for the fact that Grace and I were sitting ducks, and the smoke around the helicopter hadn’t cleared, so I didn’t know how Angel was doing over there.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I whispered as the hourglass continued to load. A green light on the key flashed, and I took that to mean it was done. I plugged in my smartphone and did the reboot, just as Dr. Kim had instructed.
It was Veronique’s turn.
I stood, hyper-aware of what was going on around me. I could still feel Grace’s powers coursing through me, and I could still sense movement nearby. I turned just in time to see a female in MercSecure gear raise her assault weapon.
She shouted for me to raise my hands, and then her eyes flashed white. It had taken me a split second to completely take over her mind, and once I’d done so, I turned her back toward the fight, instructing her to take out anyone in MercSecure gear.
Dorian appeared beside me, her face red, chest heaving as she took deep breaths.
“Grace is finished. Now I need Veronique.”
She wiped her face. “Okay, I’ll bring her.”
Dorian flashed away, and they were back in a matter of moments. I told Veronique to be as still as possible while I loaded the information.
She crouched, and I plugged the key into her neck port. Her eyes were trained on the horizon, ready for anyone and anything to come in our direction.
There was another helicopter approaching, but they didn’t scare me as much as they used to.
It took a moment for the hourglass to appear, and I reminded Veronique to stay still while it did its thing.
As it loaded, I tried to focus as hard as I could on our surroundings, especially the smoke clearing near Angel’s downed body. I was able to catch one of the men crawling toward us and turned him on his colleagues. There was some gunfire, the sounds of a few people crying out as they either died or Dorian’s energy creations burnt through them, but the battle was winding down.
And we were winning.
“You did great out there,” I told Veronique as she continued scanning for anything that could be construed as metal death coming in our direction.
The helicopter drew closer, but she didn’t need to take it down. Dorian had already flashed inside the chopper and left a small energy bomb before bailing out, sending the bird crashing down into the cacti, debris, and bodies at the bottom of the hill.
She appeared next to me, completely out of breath, two veins now pulsing on her forehead. “That’s all of them,” she panted.
“Come the fuck on,” I said to the damned hourglass.
“We have to make sure he’s dead,” Veronique said.
“We will. Just let this finish loading.”
Once the program finished, I pocketed the key, ran the reboot, and we began searching the wreckage. We should have just teleported away, but if Angel was dying or dead, knowing that would aid us in the future.
This was something that usually isn’t covered in comic books and superhero action-adventure movies: the aftermath. Sure, they pan across it or show it for a brief moment before switching to the next scene, but actually seeing the carnage firsthand is something that still gets to me, even after everything I’ve been through with the Cherry Blossom Girls.
But that wasn’t on my mind as we searched the wreckage.
I knew that Angel may still be alive, and I was using every part of Grace’s power to make sure we weren’t blindsided by an attack.
There was a charred body not too far away, which I assumed was the helicopter pilot, mostly because of his helmet. I moved past him and saw another body under one of the helicopter blades, its legs still covered in flames from the burning wreckage.
Metal lifted off the body as Veronique finished moving debris to the side. She dropped to her haunches and began draining the rest of the life force from what I now saw was just another random private military operative.
I needed a new noun to call these guys, because they weren’t soldiers – well, not soldiers in the traditional sense – but calling them ‘private military operatives’ or ‘security detail’ or ‘security personnel’ or ‘paramilitary unit’ or ‘assholes with guns’ didn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
The search for Angel continued.
I found part of another body, which is gruesome to say and was gruesome to experience, and I found a clump of something that seemed like it used to be alive, but still no Angel.
His body shouldn’t have melted away; even if he was burned to a crisp, there would still be something left, I thought as I walked around the wreckage site.
Veronique was just turning around when she was tackled by a man wearing a pilot’s helmet.
The man was on his feet in a matter of seconds, ripping the helmet off and throwing it over his shoulder.
Angel.
His skin was blackened, and there was a
large swath of his hair that had been torn away and was now scabbing up, but he was still formidable, and my fuck, was he pissed.
He brought his leg back to kick Veronique, but she rolled away just in time and struck him with one of the helicopter blades.
Dorian’s form flashed to Veronique’s left and she began drawing a lance in the air.
Angel recovered almost instantly. He brought both fists back, only to have his forward momentum thwarted by Dorian’s energy spear. It struck him in the shoulder, burnt a hole right through him, and came out the other side. He cried out in anguish and flung himself into the air in an effort to escape, only to be slammed back down to the ground by Veronique’s helicopter blade.
His muscles bulged as he lifted the blade off of him and threw it in her direction. She was able to stop it in midair, but by the time she did, Angel had reached her.
Dorian flashed behind him, one of the small frag pouches in her fist.
Boom!
She was gone before the pouch exploded, sending bits of shrapnel into Angel’s back and throwing a nail right past the side of my head.
Goddamn, was I glad I was wearing a ballistic helmet!
Realizing what Dorian had done, Veronique reached into her fanny pack and came out with one of the circular saws. Neither of them had used much of our makeshift weaponry this time, so they were fully stocked and prepared to take on the superpowered motherfucker.
Angel recovered from Dorian’s attack and pick up his speed, rocketing toward Veronique and grabbing her by the neck. He lifted her into the air and slammed her hard into the ground.
Dorian teleported behind him again and he swiveled around just in time to connect his fist with her chest as she zipped away.
She appeared on the other side of me, stumbled forward and fell to one knee, gasping for air.
“No!” I shouted.
Grace’s ability surging through me, I swept Angel off his feet with a wave of telekinetic energy. My borrowed power pushed him back about ten feet, leaving a mark in the soil as he was dragged and scraped across scattered bits of debris.
Angel jumped to his feet and glared at me, his fists curling at his side.
And then his head flew off his body.
I watched in what seemed like slow motion as Veronique’s circular saw continued on over the side of the ridge, and Angel’s headless corpse tumbled to the ground.
Silence passed between the three of us. Well, four of us if you count Angel’s head. Or, five of us if you count Grace’s comatose body.
“What now?” I finally asked.
But Dorian had already staggered back to her feet and was moving toward Angel, unzipping her backpack as she went.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Cherry Blossoms
Our bodies took shape on the other side of Santa Fe. I mean, I guess it was the other side. It looked kind of like a neighborhood, so that meant it may have been near our last hotel. I really had no idea, but Dorian seemed to know where she was going.
She was exhausted, and her abilities were pretty much depleted. From what I could tell, we were in a cul-de-sac, which was a strange place to transport us, but I didn’t think we were in any condition to try to check into a hotel.
By ‘we,’ I meant Dorian, Veronique, Grace, Yours Truly, and Angel’s fucking head, which was in Dorian's backpack.
Look, there are a lot of situations I never thought I’d find myself taking part in, and carrying someone’s decapitated head with me probably topped that list. No, it definitely topped that list, but as I would find out on this continued adventure, expectations and my increasingly demented reality rarely coexisted.
And even though she was relatively light, Grace was starting to get heavy in my arms. This was likely due to exhaustion and hunger.
But if I was exhausted and hungry, I could only imagine what Veronique and Dorian were going through.
“So here’s the plan: We find a house, and I do Grace’s thing with the owners; Veronique, you drain one of them; we sleep and shower in their place and leave in the morning.”
“What about the people?” Dorian asked.
“We’ll send them somewhere. How about Texas?”
She nodded. While she still looked like she was overheating some, she’d recovered from having the wind knocked out of her by Angel. Veronique, on the other hand, was still limping a little.
Dorian helped Veronique walk while I carried Grace. We made our way to yet another Pueblo-style home with a big truck in the driveway and an SUV next to it.
I walked up to the front porch, and a light came on. I rang the doorbell and waited.
We were in the South, and the chance of someone opening the door with a shotgun was high. I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to hear a man call out on the other side of the door that he had a weapon, and he wanted to know what I needed.
“I was jogging in the area, and I found this woman’s body.”
I realized then that I was still wearing my ballistic helmet and a bulletproof vest. But maybe he couldn’t see clearly enough through the peephole to tell. So I changed my story.
“Sorry, not jogging … biking, and seriously, I just need a way to contact the authorities. Something’s wrong with her, and I don’t have my phone with me.”
“You just stay right there, and I’ll call the police.”
I looked over my shoulder at Dorian.
She flashed away and flashed back, the man now with her. Before he could raise his gun or figure out what the hell was going on, I had him under my spell.
Or, Grace’s spell.
This was odd, because he was actually looking at us – or at least, Veronique and me because Dorian was at his side. I saw myself in that moment, even though I was also viewing him through my own consciousness.
And what I saw frightened me.
This was what I look like in a bulletproof vest, a ballistic helmet, a melty-faced shifter in my arms, and scratches and dirt all over my body. Veronique was next to me, also looking like she’d just been put through the wringer, her short blonde bob tangled and messy, blood on her forehead, and clearly suffering from pain in her lower back, evident in the way she stood.
But the man no longer saw that.
He let us into his house, where we found his wife standing with another gun. He told her to relax, even though he didn’t need to because by that point I’d already taken over her mind as well, which added yet another perspective of us to my pane of vision.
I asked them if they had any kids and they said yes, in college. I told them to go ahead and pack their things, that they were going to visit one of their kids.
“Which one?” he asked me, a hint of white to his eyes now.
“Which one is closest?”
“Well, Michael is at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I guess he’s closest.”
I considered the distance. I was pretty sure Colorado wasn’t too far away from here, so I asked him which one was the farthest.
“Lucy is at the University of Arkansas.”
“Sounds like a great place to go,” I said. “Pack your things and meet me down here before you leave.”
“You got it,” the man said as he and his wife went upstairs to their bedroom.
We cased the house and found it to be pretty damn comfortable. There were several bedrooms, but what really interested me was a huge, fluffy sheepskin rug in the living room.
Lots of pillows too. A perfect place to sleep, even if it was on a hardwood floor.
“I need to shower,” Dorian said after we made our second sweep of the place. I’d already set Grace down in the living room on one of the leather couches. Angel’s head was still in Dorian’s backpack.
“By all means,” I said. “And put that backpack in a closet or something.”
The couple rejoined me in the front foyer.
Veronique drained one of them – the woman – until she was on the verge of passing out. I told her not to take the man’s energy because he was going to be the one
driving.
Once the couple left, we retired to the living room and collapsed onto one of the other couches.
“What a fucking day,” I finally said.
“Yes, it has been a fucking day.”
“I believe that was yesterday,” I told her with a grin.
“Maybe your superpower is being clever.”
“I wish!” I yawned, and as I did, I got a whiff of my armpit. “I need a shower.”
“So do I.”
We locked eyes and stood at the same time.
Figuring it would be a good idea to save water, we decided to use the downstairs bathroom together. No sex this time – both of us were too exhausted – but we at least cleaned each other, which was always a good experience.
We were blessed by the fact that this couple happened to be good hosts; there were actually bathrobes in the guest bathroom. I slipped into one, and Veronique donned the other.
We went back to the living room and found Dorian sitting with her legs crossed on one of the couches, also in a bathrobe, watching a home improvement show.
I laughed.
I laughed long and hard, thinking of how odd it was that one could act so leisurely after all that had happened.
I plopped down beside Dorian, Veronique sat next to me, and as if nothing had happened that night, we watched a couple purchase a fixer-upper and rebuild it from the ground up.
Toward the end of the episode, I decided to bring some pillows over and get down onto the sheepskin rug. Veronique came with me, and after getting a blanket from one of the bedrooms, Dorian joined us.
It was the best sleep I’d had in years.
I woke the next morning surprisingly refreshed.
My initial thought was to get on my phone and tell Luke about what happened and also let Dr. Kim know we were safe. But my phone was out of battery, and it needed to be charged.
So no phone for now.
Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set Page 42
