Lady Superior

by Alex Ziebart

  Too many moving parts. She’d have to play Nenet right, but she hadn’t even thought that through yet. Todd would have to grab Emma. Temple and the archer would need to show for backup, and neither seemed a sure thing.

  In the end, it was entirely possible it’d be her—alone—against Nenet and the changelings with Emma long dead.

  A wailing horn snapped Kristen from her thoughts. Her eyes snapped to the road. She’d drifted into two lanes. She jerked the wheel and merged back into her own lane. In her heart, she knew it was completely her fault, but that didn’t stop her from screaming at a closed window. “Hey, fuck you, buddy!”

  Kristen turned her rage to a bottle of vitamins in her cup holder and tore its cap off. She threw back a handful and washed it down with the last of her sports drink. Referencing her map, she dialed Jane and glued her eyes to the road.

  Jane answered. “What the hell, Kris? Where are you? What happened?”

  “I need you calm down and listen, Jane. Okay? That’s what I need from you right now.”

  “If you don’t have the best excuse I’ve ever heard, I’m going to be pissed.”

  Kristen explained everything. “So there. If I don’t do this, my sister is dead, and it’s because I decided to help you out. If that isn’t a good enough excuse for you, the Templars can eat a dick.”

  Jane groaned. “You should have told us. You should have told me. Delphi wasn’t my only problem. I don’t have time for this.”

  “I helped you, Jane. It’s your turn to help me.”

  “Do you realize how infuriating this is?”

  “Being left in the dark until it’s too late? Oh yeah, I know what that’s like. If you can’t help me, send Cole and Gabby. Hell, just one of them. I don’t care. I need backup. There’s one of me and a lot more of them.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. No promises, but...” Jane sighed, then repeated herself more slowly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Good enough.”

  Kristen ended the call. A few minutes later, she merged into the exit lane and pulled off the highway. Before long, she realized she was nearing her destination—too quickly. She’d arrive at Sam’s Salvage far too soon for Todd and the archer to get into position, certainly too soon for whatever reinforcements Jane might provide.

  She pulled into Gas’n’Go instead, filled up her tank, and went inside. She stepped up to the front counter. “Could I use your bathroom?”

  A bearded man in a turban looked at her with wide eyes; she guessed it might have been the owner who she’d heard on the radio. Sikh, probably. They had a temple not too far away. “Hello, my friend. You don’t look so good today.”

  Kristen forced a chuckle. She’d changed clothes, but knew she was still covered in blood. “Yeah, crazy day downtown. I want to clean up a little and I was hoping you wouldn’t tell anybody I was here.”

  The owner looked out over the store. Kristen followed his gaze; there were others there, of course. And they were all staring at her. Of course. Kristen waved. “Hey. Hi. I’m Maiden Milwaukee, though I really prefer Lady Superior. I just got done stopping a crazy lady from destroying the city. I’m tired and hungry and I still have things to do today. You’ll all be cool about this, right?”

  A low murmur washed through the store until one person, a young man in a red, backward baseball cap, called out over the rest. “Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t see anybody.”

  “Maiden Milwaukee?” An older woman offered an exaggerated shrug. “She isn’t here. Last I heard, she was downtown.”

  Kristen turned back to the owner, beaming a smile. “So can I use your bathroom?”

  He passed the brick keychain to her. “Take your time. I have to check on our cameras. They don’t work sometimes—very dangerous. Go, go.”

  Kristen took the brick and rushed to the bathroom. She washed blood and dirt from the face and hands, then wiped the bloody residue from the sink with paper towels for courtesy’s sake. When she was done, she pulled her phone from her pocket and sat on the toilet seat. She hadn’t planned a signal; how would she know when Todd got Emma? Too little time. Too many gaps. She started to realize her plan was awful, almost as awful as Jane’s plan of letting Delphi use the damned ring, even.

  Ring.

  Kristen turned on her phone and scrolled through her music. What seemed like a Todd sort of song? He was tall and handsome in a sasquatch sort of way. Todd was a rugged beast, an outdoorsman. A family man. The picture of Todd standing over Delphi with that revolver popped into her head. A cowboy?

  She scrolled to the seemingly infinite list of Johnny Cash on her phone. Not her sort of music, but she’d had an ex who liked it. The ex had insisted on Johnny Cash while they worked out rather than her girl power tracklist. That was part of why he was an ex.

  Kristen set “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” as Todd’s ringtone. She tapped out a text: When you have Emma, call my Temple phone. That’ll be my signal.

  He replied. Got it. Got my camo. Almost there.

  She shoved the phone in her pocket and flew from the bathroom. Crossing over to the front desk, she exchanged smiles with the patrons—all of the same people. Apparently none had checked out yet, all waiting for her to go first. She grabbed a Diet Coke from the cooler and set it on the counter, sliding the brick over to the owner. Atop the brick she laid the prepaid card from Jane. “I’m pump six.”

  “You don’t have to pay my friend. Like I say on the news, I pay for you.”

  “I appreciate that,” Kristen said earnestly, “but please let me pay. I don’t want to be that kind of person.”

  “Maybe you better to pay in cash, then.”

  “My name isn’t on that card. It’s fine. Thank you for watching out for me though.”

  He swiped her card, gave it back, and she was on her way.

  Kristen pulled up to Sam’s Salvage and put the car in park. She stared out the window at the scrapyard. To the far left and toward the back, she noted a faded blue garage—it matched Bernice’s picture of where Emma was being held. In case she was being watched, she didn’t let her eyes linger. She looked at every building in turn, then let her gaze rest on the one where she’d spoken with Nenet. Everything looking different in the daylight. At night, the rows of cars and the spotlights made it appear like something from a nightmare. Now, it was just a scrapyard: busted cars and piles of metal trash. She found that thought amusing; she thought it was a pile of crap, but it was probably the world’s greatest theme park to someone like Todd.

  She wiped away her grin and stepped out of the car. That act alone was sobering; the whole thing wasn’t likely to work. Someone, probably Emma, would die. The fight would be long and horrible, and by the time it was over, the authorities would arrive. With the airport so close, they’d react to anything as fast as possible.

  Kristen crossed the street and pushed through the front door, just as empty as before, and then through the back. Her eyes flicked back and forth through the yard but saw no sign of anyone. Not a sound, either. She’d expected an escort, someone to take her directly to Nenet, but that didn’t make sense either. They wouldn’t risk her taking them out one or two at a time. They wanted the long walk to be unsettling.

  It worked.

  Her nerves were on edge as she walked the rows of cars; she couldn’t help but look through the windshield of each one, unwilling to let them get a jump on her.

  She stopped when she reached Nenet’s garage—where she’d last seen Nenet, anyway. Uneasy on her feet, she tried to decide what to do. Wait? Call out? Open the door herself? She stood there for a minute, maybe two, before stepping forward and knocking. The garage door rose with a racket. The scene within wasn’t so different from how Kristen had left it; Emma sat bound in a chair, unconscious and surrounded by gunmen. Nenet sat on the hood of a car with only a rough base coat and no paint. She wore her satiny black robe and looked Kristen up and down with a Cheshire grin. “What gifts do you bear, Kristen Anders
on?”

  Kristen frowned at the assembly of changelings and stepped cautiously inside the garage. “It isn’t a gift, princess. I have your ring, but this is a trade.”

  Nenet performed a graceful hop off of the car to land on her toes. Gliding forward, she held out her hand. “Give it to me.”

  Kristen crossed her arms over her chest and stood upright, trying to make herself appear larger. “You can’t be serious. You want me to drop it in your hand while they’re holding her at gunpoint?”

  Nenet glanced back over her shoulder. Tension hung between the changelings, all of them rigid and eager to pull the trigger and blow Emma away. One false move, and Kristen knew they’d shoot. That wasn’t a problem, exactly—she knew Emma was in the other building—but she had to play along. Until Todd rang her phone, anyway. Nenet shrugged and turned back. “They do my bidding. No more. No less. Give me the ring and it will be my pleasure to free your sister.”

  Kristen paced back and forth across the garage, her eyes always on Nenet. “Sorry, but I just don’t have that much faith in you. Would you agree to the reverse? You give me Emma, and once she’s safe, then I give you the ring?”

  Nenet laughed. “Oh, that’s absurd. Completely disproportionate. I’m holding a life. You’re holding a ring. Given I’m the one asking for an item of lesser value, I have more to lose if I don’t get what I want.”

  “Really?” Kristen asked, brow arched. “How many of your people died for this ring? If it wasn’t worth a life to you, you’d have never come for it.”

  Nenet rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Where are you going with this? If you aren’t going to give me what I want, stop wasting my time. Leave and let your beloved sister die.”

  Kristen stopped pacing and changed tactics. “Wake her up first.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know it’s her. I want to know she’s alive. And I want to know what you’ve done to her. Wake her up, let us talk a little, and then we’ll make the trade.”

  “You are in no position to negotiate.”

  “I’m not asking much. Wake her up. Let me see Emma open her eyes, and the ring is all yours.”

  Nenet rolled her eyes harder, her entire upper body petulant and impatient. “Give me the ring before I get bored. When I get bored, hostages die.”

  Kristen glared at the gunman closest to Emma before swinging her gaze back to Nenet. “At least bring her closer. You shouldn’t be opposed to that if you’re playing fair. Then I can give you the ring and put myself between her and your triggermen before you can betray our arrangement.”

  “Or you can grab her and run without giving me the ring. I haven’t even seen it yet. I don’t honestly know that you have it.”

  Kristen reached into her top and extracted the ring. Hurry up, Todd. She held it up between two fingers. “There. Now you see it.”

  Nenet took a sudden step toward it. Kristen dropped it into her palm and squeezed her hand shut around it—solid as a vault door. She snarled. “Back up, princess. I can crush a truck with my bare hands. You think I can’t turn this ring into a little gold nugget?”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “You have no idea what I’d do.”

  “You don’t know what would happen if you did that.”

  “If you aren’t going to give me my sister, I don’t care what happens.”

  Nenet made a throaty, irritated noise. Kristen ignored it, looking beyond her to Emma. She knew that wasn’t Emma, but she knew, too, the real Emma was sitting just like that somewhere else: in her pajamas, her face utterly at peace, her head lolled off to one side. She’d wake up with a horrible ache in her neck.

  Johnny Cash began to sing from Kristen’s pocket. Kristen’s eyes went wide as she met Nenet’s gaze. She shoved the ring back into her top and readied herself to spring on the changeling, but stopped short.

  Nenet was smiling.

  “You poor thing,” Nenet purred. “You guessed wrong. She was here the whole time.”

  Kristen saw the gunman closest to Emma twitch. Kristen screamed and threw herself forward. Too late. He put his pistol to Emma’s head. A crack like thunder shook the garage. Emma toppled over, chair and all.

  Strength left Kristen’s limbs like water from a broken glass. She fell to her knees and crawled to see her sister’s body. The gunmen formed a barricade and blocked her line of sight. Kristen looked up at the dozens of weapons trained on her. She didn’t move. She’d let them kill her. It didn’t matter.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder. Nenet. Kristen looked up. Nenet’s smile widened. Then her face rippled. Her body rippled. She was changing, becoming shorter, lighter, wider. In an instant, Kristen was looking into a mirror. Nenet spoke with Kristen’s voice. “I’d like my ring now.”

  Every ache and pain throbbed at once. Kristen felt exhaustion wash over her. She had no gift. She was cursed. Kristen spoke in a whisper. “Just take it.”

  “You’re joking.”

  Kristen repeated herself through her teeth. “Just take it.”

  “As you wish.” Nenet’s fingers—Kristen’s fingers—plucked at the collar of her top and snaked into her shirt.

  Kristen snatched Nenet’s arm in one hand and reached up with the other, grabbing her around the neck. Kristen stood and heaved Nenet up and over her shoulder, slamming her into the concrete. The changelings’ weapons erupted in gunfire—she didn’t care. Strength surged anew within her, burning rage as fuel. She grabbed the closest changeling and broke him. She swung his body like a club, knocking away anyone trying to close on her. She lunged and grabbed another, spinning in place, absorbing bullets with his body. If she’d gotten hit, she hadn’t felt it. She didn’t care. The changelings scrambled to take cover behind cars and machinery. Kristen screamed in fury and chased them down. Her shirt rippled as bullets peppered her stomach.

  She didn’t care. She would kill them all.

  An arm wrapped around her neck. She jerked away, but the arm held fast—too strong for the changelings, she knew. They were pathetic compared to her. She realized it a moment too late: Nenet. Nenet, using Kristen’s body, lifted her from the ground and threw her clear out of the garage. Kristen soared through the air, unable to stop herself, and came crashing down through the hood of a wrecked car. She stared skyward in a daze.

  Her surge of strength evaporated, and the pieces fell into place. This had been Nenet’s plan all along, she supposed. Nenet had probably gotten her blood at the warehouse that first night. Kristen knew, then, that they’d pitted her against Delphi and taken Emma on such a short timetable to wear her down. She was strong, sure. But she wasn’t strong enough to fight herself after fighting all day already.

  Once Nenet killed her, Nenet would get the ring. And then everyone else would die, too.

  Kristen laid back in her cradle of steel and waited to die. She heard the crunch of gravel—Nenet’s slow, arrogant steps toward her—and closed her eyes.

  Get up. Don’t let her get away with this.

  Kristen jerked at the voice.

  Kristen Anderson had resigned herself to her fate. Lady Superior hadn’t.

  She heaved herself out of the Kristen-shaped dent in the husk of a car. Wearing her face and clothed in only the black silk robe, Nenet prowled forward. The cat-like grin didn’t look right on that face; Kristen shuddered at the sight of it, a deep revulsion screaming inside of her. That face was never meant to bear that expression. Kristen shoved down her aches, her pains, and her exhaustion, and hopped down to the gravel. Nenet rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. After all of this, you’re still going to bother trying to stop me?”

  With a roar, Kristen surged forward. She leapt with a wild swing of her fist, wind whistling with the blow. Nenet raised an arm and blocked it with ease. A cruel smile flashed on the changeling’s lips. She drove a fist into Kristen’s stomach. Kristen gasped at the force of the blow. She stumbled back, then fell into the dirt, the air driven from her. Gasping and sputtering, Kristen used her feet to dri
ve herself away from Nenet.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” Nenet taunted. She cracked her knuckles and continued toward Kristen, slow and implacable. “I bet you’ve never been hit like that before. Does it surprise you, knowing what it’s like to be on the other end of your gift? Of course, it isn’t quite the same. You’ll never really know what a monster you are.”

  Kristen rolled and scampered down the aisle of scrap. Nenet a sufficient distance away—though still coming—Kristen got to her feet and turned to face her. Was this what it was like? Seeing Maiden Milwaukee come toward you like an avalanche, terrible and inevitable? Kristen shook dust from her head and stole a glance at the garage. The other changelings had yet to emerge. Though briefly thankful for it, she knew that was another ability: the ones who survived her assault would come, and they’d come with guns. How many times had they hit her in that garage, anyway? She touched her stomach, and her hand came away bloody.

  Nenet saw the distraction in Kristen’s eyes and charged. Too slowly, Kristen tried to get her arms up like a boxer, trying to replicate Nenet’s block. Instead, Nenet drove her knee into Kristen’s stomach. Kristen doubled over, gasping for air again. Nenet seized upon the opening and punched down. Kristen caught the blow on the head. Her body was driven into the gravel face first. She groaned, groping blindly to grab Nenet’s legs, or do anything at all to slow her down. Nenet peddled away, then surged back in to deliver a solid kick to Kristen’s ribs. The raw strength in the kick sent Kristen rolling across the ground, gravel scraping her flailing limbs.

  “Are we quite done?” Nenet called out. Kristen’s head swam as she laid on the ground, but she heard the telltale sign of gravel underfoot. Nenet was still coming. “Believe it or not, I don’t relish the thought of beating you for hours on end until you’re wholly unrecognizable as a living thing. I’d like this to be quick and clean, but as you know, you’re a difficult person to kill. If you would sit still for a moment, I’ll end it.”