“When was the last time she made an appointment to see the low-paid help?” Zack stood and pulled his coat off the back of his chair. “Yes, now.” He looked back at the three of us still seated. “You guys take it easy.” Hannegan followed him out, a taco clenched in his chubby fists.
“Congratulations on your offer,” Kat said, her eyes shining. “That’s really amazing. Not too many metas get asked to go through the training program. You should be proud.”
“Why?” I took a bite of my burrito and then wiped my glove on a napkin. “I didn’t do anything except be born a meta.”
“Well, you killed that psychopath.” Her smile glittered like a spotlight shining directly in my eyes, annoying me.
“Yeah, you did,” Byerly said, then leaned closer. “How did you do that, by the way?”
I felt still, as though a great slab of ice had frozen everything inside me. “I told you—I’m death.”
“What does that mean?” He leaned even closer, almost whispering. “You’re an efficient killer? You’re super strong?”
I felt an ugly thread tug at me inside, felt Wolfe doing something, though I couldn’t tell what. I ignored him. “It’s none of your business.”
“Are you a human time bomb? Like the guy that blew up the science labs?” Byerly kept pressing, and I could feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek, he was so close—too close. “Can you throw energy or maybe—”
“What I can do—” I started to scoot my chair away from him but he landed his hand on my arm, stopping me. “If you really want to see, just keep your hand where it is. If you don’t, move it.”
“Maybe I want to know.” His eyes were focused, boring in on me and I saw something else in them, an intensity.
“Scott, let her go—” Kat’s plea went ignored.
My glove was already off. Wolfe had moved my hand without me even knowing it and it was on Scott’s cheek. He started to recoil, but I anchored my thumb and forefinger, gripping him on the neck. Not hard enough to choke him, but enough to let him know I had a good hold on him. His eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in anger, and he brought a hand around, maybe instinctively, to hit me. I knocked it aside and jerked him to his feet.
I saw the anger vanish, replaced with creases in his forehead from the first stirrings of pain. “Ouch,” he breathed, consternation knitting his brows together. “Ow...oh...” He sucked in a sharp breath and grunted. After another second he let out a squeal that drew even more attention from those around us and then he let out an earsplitting, agonized scream that started a scramble for the cafeteria door, people falling over each other to get the hell out of there.
“Put him down!” Kat was on her feet, shouting at me. I strained, trying to regain control of my hand, but Wolfe was in charge, holding the rest of me still. I lifted Scott Byerly off his feet and he shuddered in the air, convulsing, his eyes rolling back in his head. I looked on, horrified, unable to stop it.
I felt a blow land on the back of my head and I flew forward, releasing my grasp on Byerly. I plowed through three tables, heard some things break that sounded like it could have been me or the furniture, I wasn’t sure which. I came to rest twenty feet away from where I had started, a medley of other peoples’ lunches smeared on my clothes. Kat was already at Scott’s side and Clyde Clary stood not far away, his lips twisted in an amused smile. “Clyde,” I said, using my sleeve to mop some blood from the back of my head where he’d hit me.
“Girl, ain’t no one calls me Clyde,” his pudgy face went angry quickly.
“I think I just did.” I stood up. “But if you’d prefer, I could just call you fatass prick—”
He charged at me, broad shoulders flashing underneath his shirt, the skin around his neck rippling, turning into something different. It looked like metal in the brief glimpse I got before he put his shoulder down and stormed at me. He moved fast, especially for such a big guy.
I grabbed the nearest table, heavy and metal, and heaved it at him. It spun, hit him in the face and ricocheted off at high velocity, flying through one of the upper windows of the cafeteria. He moved off his course not even a millimeter, his head now the same dull metal that I had seen beneath his shirt. I dodged out of the way just in time as he shredded the tables behind me, shards of them flying through the air.
“You’re dangerous. I like it.” He smiled and grabbed a table of his own as I rolled to my feet and he chucked it at me. It skipped off the floor, a hubcap of spinning death that grazed my shoulder as I dropped below it and heard the shattering of glass behind me. He threw another, then another, and I dodged them, executing some gymnastic evasions I wouldn’t have been capable of even a month ago—before my powers manifested. I looked around for a weapon—any kind of weapon—that might be effective against a hulking slab of metal.
He stomped toward me, malice in his eyes. I met his attack, ducking his punch and grabbing his arm with my ungloved hand as he started to pull it back. I gripped onto the slick metal and held tight, waiting for a reaction; it was cool in my grasp. The big jackass looked at me, then down to my hand, then back at me and split into a broad grin. “Your succubus trick only works on flesh.” He pulled his arm back, yanking me off balance and lifting me from the ground. I managed to hold onto him, but only just.
A second later I realized what he was doing. As soon as he pulled me toward him, he set me up for a punch with his other hand. His fist made contact with my midsection and I felt all the air leave my lungs in a rush, worse than any physical pain I’d felt since Wolfe had near-gutted me. I flew through the air, landing with a crash on a metal chair that promptly upended. I heard more things break when I landed and this time I knew it was me, not the furniture.
I sat up, clutching at my ribs. There was blood in my mouth, the metallic taste unpleasant enough that I spit it out. Clary stalked toward me from across the room; his punch had thrown me almost a hundred feet, from the middle of the cafeteria to near the kitchen.
“Any suggestions to keep us from getting pummeled?” I muttered the words under my breath, but Wolfe was silent. If ever there had been a time when I could have used the help of the world’s most brutal infighter, this would have been it. I looked around and my eyes widened as I remembered something, a possibility. I made for the kitchen, hobbling as fast as my wounded frame could carry me, Clary not far behind.
I jumped over the cafeteria line and the serving stations with one good leap. As I reached the kitchen doors I heard Clary crash through them behind me. “You can run girl, but you can’t hide!”
“You can spout cliches,” I said, “but you can’t find a woman who’ll enjoy your company.”
I plunged into the kitchen and heard the screams of the serving ladies, who had all run inside to hide after the altercation started in the dining area. There were a half dozen of them, all wide-eyed. “Get out!” I said as I pushed past them. I stopped next to the freezer and swung the heavy door open, then checked my placement. He would have to charge through a preparation station in order to get to me, with an obstructed view, and if he wasn’t paying much attention (which I assumed was his usual state) he’d go charging into the freezer where with any luck I could shut the door behind him.
Clary stopped at the entrance to the kitchen. “Come on, now, girl.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said, holding my arm. It was actually the least of my pains, but the others weren’t easily reached and pulling it closer seemed to ease the torment in my chest.
“Have it your way, then.” He lowered his head. “I’ll let Old Man Winter decide what he wants done with you once you’re good and out.” He barreled toward me, not bothering to use the aisles, charging right through the prep station, tearing the vent hoods out of the stove, destroying a cook top and counters, metal flying in every direction.
I watched him for as long as I could, but once the debris started flying my way I dodged sideways, behind the heavy door of the freezer. I hit the ground and my chest and side scr
eamed at me. I watched him run past me into the freezer, hit the wall and bounce off, then heard the crashing of a side of beef and cartons of God knows what hitting the floor. I kicked the freezer door and it swung closed. I wrenched myself up and yanked the pin off a shelf nearby and plunged it into the lock.
I took two steps back and fell down, breathing a sigh of relief. Everything still hurt, but at least that idiot was contained where he couldn’t do any harm—
That thought lasted less than the second it took for the door to the freezer to come exploding off its hinges. It flew through the air above me, skipping across my left shoulder and leaving a gash over an inch deep. I was pretty sure it broke my collarbone, but it was hard to tell among all the other agonies.
“Nice try.” Clary sauntered over to me as I squirmed on the floor. I heard a hissing that I thought was in my head until I realized that the idiot had severed the gas line to the stove when he charged through. “Ain’t nothin’ can hold me.”
“I think you’ve confused ‘can’ with ‘want’,” I said through gritted teeth. “For example, a woman ‘can’ hold you, but none of them ‘want’ to—”
He grabbed me in a clawlike hold around the neck and picked me up in a manner that reminded me of the way Wolfe had manhandled me, beaten me, abused me. Clary’s piggy eyes leered at me from behind his smug smile and I hated him, wanted to crush him, but now I couldn’t breathe.
The eyes.
I stared down at him. Sure enough, Wolfe’s voice was right—his skin was metal but his eyes were the same white as always, the blood vessels visible on the sides.
My fingers lanced out and I stabbed him with my thumb right in the socket. I did not hesitate nor pull my strike and he screamed in uncontrolled misery. I fell to the ground, unable to catch myself. A lancing pain ran up my entire upper body after the impact, and I floundered on the floor, holding onto my sides.
“YOU BITCH!” Clary stomped and I bounced a few inches into the air before landing again. It hurt more. “YOU TOOK OUT MY EYE!”
“Honestly, it wasn’t one of your best attributes,” I muttered. “Not that you have any good ones.” I managed to get to my hands and knees and looked for something to use as a weapon since it had become obvious that he was unlikely to present me with an opportunity to stab out his other eye. There was a ringing in my ears that went along with the hissing. I saw a fire extinguisher and it dawned on me that it was probably a better choice than anything else. I grabbed it and crawled along on my hands and knees, trying to avoid his blind rage behind me.
I had reached the door when he finally realized I wasn’t near him anymore. “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”
I used a countertop to pull myself up and turn back to him. “Me? I think I’ll go for a quiet drink somewhere. Care to join me?”
He had started towards me but stopped, his head snapping back, his jaw opening slightly. “Really?”
I grimaced. “No. Not really. I’m going to get medical treatment. You? You can burn in hell. Literally.”
He stomped his foot again and his jaw made a scraping noise as he ground his teeth together. “Damn you, girl! What am I supposed to do with one eye?”
“You could be huge in the kingdom of the blind.” I reached back and flung the fire extinguisher with all my much-vaunted metahuman strength.
And it missed him.
He smiled as it sailed by. “You missed—”
It hit the side of the metal countertop, hard, and sparked. I had the intense satisfaction of seeing him look back, confused, before the fireball blew me out of the room.
Chapter 14
“You!” I awoke to the sound of Dr. Perugini’s less-than-dulcet tones. I stared up at her when my eyes opened. Her dark complexion was flushed, her eyes on fire as she glared down at me in the hospital bed. I took in the medical bay around me and saw Clary in the bed next to me, a bandage over his eye. Scott Byerly was across the way, Kat at his side, casting the occasional furtive glance at me.
The doctor poked her thin index finger in my face. “You keep causing me so many problems!” She let out a string of curses in her native Italian. “I used to have a nice, peaceful life! Since you get here I have nothing but bodies all the time! Before, I work on my novel and clean my instruments. Since you show up, all I do is fix hurt people!”
I coughed and tried to sit up. “Your job description includes that, I believe.” Her eyes blazed and she pulled her finger out of my face and grabbed a tongue depressor out of her jacket pocket. Without a word she poked me in the side. “OW!” She did it again. “OW OW! What the hell?! Were you absent the day you were supposed to take the Hippocratic Oath?” My fingers found my wounded side where she had poked me. “Pretty sure it includes something about not doing harm.”
“Not doing harm?” She thrust the tongue depressor in my face and wagged it at me. “You are a fine one to talk! All you do is harm—to yourself and others! All I do is clean up your messes! You are a menace!” The way she said it made me chuckle, which did not improve her mood. She whirled and marched away from me, back to her office. She slammed the door and dropped the blinds, giving me one last glower before her face disappeared.
“You awake, girl?” Clary’s stupid drawl drew my attention to him. He was laying on his back one bed over, a bandage over his eye.
“No, I’m talking in my sleep.” I tilted my head to look at him. “What do you want?”
“That was a cheap shot, blowing me out the back of the building. Hurt a lot too, when I woke up.” He blinked with his one good eye.
“Oh, yeah?” I adopted a disinterested tone. “I’m so not sorry.” It took a minute for him to register what I’d said.
“Yeah, well, I’m not sorry I busted your guts.” He guffawed. “That was the best tussle I’ve had in a long time. Cojones. Girl, you got ‘em.”
“Actually, I don’t.” I turned away from him and stared straight up. “But it doesn’t surprise me that you wouldn’t know that about women.”
He looked at me, blank. “That was a good fight, you hear me? That was good.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned back and smiled like he’d just won a prize.
I was about to tell him just how dumb I thought he was when the door clicked open. “I can assure both of you that what you did in the cafeteria was not good.” Ariadne stood silhouetted in the entry to the medical bay, a paper in her hand and a fury in her eyes that was only a couple degrees shy of what I’d seen from Dr. Perugini. “Thirteen people with minor injuries, Byerly—” she seemed to be flustered, searching for a word, “—soul drained or death touched or whatever, Clary lost an eye, Sienna with a host of broken bones and severe blood loss, and OH, let’s not forget! Over a million dollars in damage to the cafeteria!”
She made it across the medical bay and slapped the folder in her hand down on Clary’s tray. “She’s not even eighteen, Clary! Did it not even occur to you that she might have made a rash decision—a mistake—in attacking Byerly?”
“Well, no,” the big man said. “She was draining him pretty hard. I just wanted to put her down, you know—”
“Rhetorical question, Clary!” She thumped her hand on the tray, stunning him into silence. “Try to pretend you’ve never assaulted anyone before! It’s not your job to break up a cafeteria altercation by bludgeoning the offender to death; it’s your job to pursue the dangerous metahumans we send you after.” She pulled back after delivering the last directly to his face, causing him to flinch. “Get it straight. You’re not a four-year-old. Keep your damned hands to yourself and stop looking for a fight everywhere you go.”
“But—”
“If the next words out of your mouth are anything besides ‘Yes ma’am, I’ll never do anything like it again’ then I will personally have Bastian come down here and deal with you.” She faded. “He wanted to, desperately.” Clary shrank away, almost seeming to recede into the bed.
I snorted and instantly regretted it. Ariadne turned her withering sta
re on me. “Don’t get me started on you.”
I coughed and tried to look contrite. “I’m sorry. I...overreacted when Scott put his hand on me.”
She continued to stare for a second longer then shook her head in disbelief. “Overreacted? You nearly killed him. How is that an overreaction?”
I thought about it for a moment and shrugged. “Because it sounds better than the way you put it. He wanted to see what I could do in the worst way. So I showed him. In the worst—”
She let out a noise of disgust. “Is that how you’re going to operate if we train you to be an agent?”
Clary looked up in surprise. “You’re gonna make her an agent?”
“Shut up,” Ariadne spat at him and whipped her head back around to me. “You wrecked the cafeteria and blew up the kitchen. You could have killed somebody.”
“Um,” I shook my head, “I believe that the persons most likely to have gotten killed today were myself and Byerly, in that order.”
“What about me?” Clary’s face was puckered, as though he were insulted by what I said.
“You don’t count.” I looked to Ariadne, who was steaming. “He was trying to kill me! I just repaid the favor.” I looked down. “If it’s going to be a...um...an insurmountable obstacle—”
“It’s not an insurmountable anything.” Ariadne’s withering stare turned to a simmer. “But if this is what we can expect from you as an employee—”
“I didn’t mean to.” I said it low, almost under my breath. “It just got out of hand, I’m sorry.” An ugly thought occurred to me. “Oh, God. If I take the job, does that mean you’ll be my boss?”
She folded her arms in front of her. “Yes. Why?”
“I think that might be a dealbreaker.” I tried to sit up. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to not make insubordinate wisecracks about you.”
“Tell me about it,” Clary said, nodding his head.
“I said wisecracks, not dumbasscracks.”
“I think we can typically overlook incidents of...” she paused, “...over-exuberant verbal witticisms. However, failure to follow orders is looked down on, as is destroying campus property.” She frowned. “Or in your cases, the whole damned campus.”
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