Hunters (Out of the Box Book 15)

by Robert J. Crane

  I flew hard for Calton Heights, lifting myself high above the city so that all could see me, and adding a little light from Gavrikov as well, burning my hands like candles as I crossed the sky. I figured there was no way they could miss me, streaking like a comet over Edinburgh, all majestic and glorious.

  And they didn’t miss me. At all.

  The rifle impact caught me in the shoulder and caused me to ditch the fire immediately, going dark as I tumbled. It wasn’t a small rifle, either, probably something in the 7.62x51mm NATO, or what we in the US knew as .308 Winchester. I’d been shot by one of these bullets not that terribly long ago, and I remembered it hurting about as much as it actually hurt now.

  I wasn’t going to make Calton Heights, I realized perhaps a little belatedly as I plummeted toward the old burial grounds below, a dark shadow lacking light sources in the growing twilight. My consolation was that the graveyard was uninhabited, a consolation that was not particularly comforting as I slammed into the earth, my fall mitigated only at the last second by Gavrikov.

  Any landing you can walk away from… Gavrikov said in my mind.

  “Do I look like I’m walking anywhere?” I muttered. My right arm was busted, my left leg had slammed into the earth and rebounded, breaking as it did so. Oh, and I had a not-trivial hole in my right shoulder. “Wolfe…?” I asked in what had become something of a standard invocation to me, like some sort of prayer to a deity I couldn’t see, or maybe a curse to a devil I knew all too well.

  Why do I even bother? Wolfe asked. You keep waltzing into these situations, asking to be killed.

  “Jaghole,” I said, “I was not asking to be shot any more than you were asking to be born with your ass-ugly face. I was just trying to get to Calton Heights so I can whip this guy’s ass without exposing an unnecessary number of civilians to death and maiming and possible mind slavery to a turdwad like Frankie.”

  Noble cause, Harmon said. Really, if someone’s going to enslave you to their mind, I think most people would like to be assured they’ve got a greater good in mind.

  “I think most people would rather just not be enslaved at all,” I said, “but I can see how you might have come to that dumbass conclusion given your history.” I started to pick myself up, my knee having realigned and my arm having knitted itself back together. My shoulder was still pushing out the bullet, an ungainly little piece of metal that was poking out of my skin like a lead mole. It landed on a piece of gravestone a moment later as I levered myself up to my feet. “Can I say…ouch?”

  I could almost hear Wolfe shaking his rattling head in my own. This is foolhardy.

  “Well…yeah,” I said. “And way to come off the bench with the advice now, team player.”

  Wolfe is not a team player.

  “So said every one of your performance reviews for Omega, I’m guessing.” I looked around the darkening graveyard, trying to keep my head somewhat low. “Anyone get a bearing on where that sniper was positioned?”

  Pretty far back, Bastian said. Almost like they’d positioned them to keep you from leaving town.

  “Clever,” I said. “Box me in.”

  It’s like old times, then, Eve said.

  “Har har,” I said. “Funny. Listen, you guys…Frankie here? He’s got a wealth of info and power at his fingertips.” I switched to speaking inside my head, listening for movement outside the graveyard. I could really use your combined experience here, okay?

  I’m with you, Harmon said. I’m not much of a strategist…and it doesn’t seem like my telepathic powers are much working at the moment on these enemies…actually, this has been a terrible day for me in general…I’m finally starting to understand how inadequate most people must feel as they go about their daily lives—

  Let’s focus on me here, okay? I said. I’m the one taking bullets and about to have to dodge ripper blasts and God knows what else when Frankie shows up here.

  Yes, well, I suppose I’m with you, Harmon said a bit archly. Since my alternatives are to die and…oh, yes, to die.

  Yes, yes, Eve said, and I could almost see her rolling her eyes. You have my support.

  Ditto, Bastian said.

  I have nothing better to do, Gavrikov said dryly.

  Let us drive our enemies before us and hear the lamentations of their women, Bjorn said.

  Pretty sure that was Conan the Barbarian’s line, Zack said.

  It was a good line, Bjorn said. It spoke to me. I am with you.

  Do you even have to ask? Zack asked.

  “Good,” I said, and then realized that once again, there was one lone, silent holdout. “Wolfe?”

  He stirred within me. What?

  I rolled my eyes. “Heading into death here. It’d be nice to know you’re on board for what’s about to happen, maybe thinking about how we can make ol’ Frankie die.”

  Rip off his head, Wolfe said. That will kill him.

  “Not quite what I was looking for.”

  Tear out his entrails and strangle him with them.

  “Not sure that’s—”

  Break every bone in his body and then shake him hard enough that the shattered pieces turn the rest of his tissues into liquid jelly.

  “Wow,” I said. “That sounds like a real crowd-pleaser. I’m just not sure it’s applicable to the moment.”

  Turning a foe’s internal organs into Jello with their own fragmented bones is always applicable, in every situation.

  “Look,” I said, trying to keep patience rather than alienating the surly maniac in my head right before I’d probably need him to heal me. A lot. “I know how to kill him once I’m close. It’s getting close that’s proving to be a problem thus far.”

  He was surprisingly quiet. I wouldn’t worry about it.

  “Uhmm, I kinda am worried about it,” I said. “And if you want to live, you should be, too.” Not that he was living, but these guys were strangely attached to the kind of half life they’d been experiencing in my head for these last few years, it seemed.

  I’ll give it some thought, he grunted, and then disappeared back into the recesses of my mind. I started to yell at him to get his head out of his furry hindparts, but something stopped me.

  Movement down the hill. The graveyard was on a natural slope, and I’d come down in the middle, between a patch of lines of tombstone. I’d stood out there having my little conversation, figuring trouble would be along shortly.

  And here it came.

  Frankie emerged from the darkness, stalking up the hill, a grin on his face, and the last light of day shining down on his bald head. He was headed right for me, had apparently seen me from a ways off.

  “No more running away,” I said, putting a hand on a grave, acting like I was steadying myself.

  This ended now.

  47.

  “What do you want?” I called out to him as he came up the hill, taking his sweet damned time, boots squishing in the wet grass.

  He paused, his pinched features smooshing even further together. “Whatever do you mean? I want to smite you down, of course. It’s why I called you out.”

  I stared at him over the darkening cemetery. He stood in the middle of the lines of graves, looking a little like one of them in the dusky, darkening twilight. The clouds overhead were lit a dark purple, the last light of day fading rapidly. “Bullshit.” He stood there, about thirty feet away, eyebrow raised, just a little too far for me to charge in and break his neck. “If you’d wanted to kill me, you could have done that at any time. You could have snuck up on me and struck me down when my back was turned. Hit me with one of those ripper blasts, zap my head off my shoulders. Hell, even have your sniper friends aim for my head instead of my shoulder. You could have killed me any time. So…what do you want, Frankie?”

  Frankie just smiled.

  The same thing any hunter wants, Wolfe said. Prey. A worthy hunt.

  I froze, my hand still clutching the cool tombstone, and I looked at Frankie. There was a certain animalistic cast to his f
ace, his teeth looking a little pointed.

  “I already told you what I want,” Frankie said. “I want you smited.” He paused, uncertain. “Smote?”

  “I get the point either way,” I said, and heaved the tombstone at him.

  I didn’t hesitate or wait for it to hit its target, either. I followed behind it as it was struck by a blasting red ripper that sprayed stone at me. I dodged sideways and rolled to my feet, crossing the path Frankie stood on, ahead on my way to another tombstone. I bound this one in light as I uprooted it and then flung it at him. It shattered as he rent the rising night with another ripper, the path and the very air splitting as he employed his power.

  “Is that the only trick you’ve got?” I shouted, whirling like a dervish and firing flame and light nets. I fully intended to blitz him with everything at my disposal, working to get close so I could beat his ass and…well, in the spirit of Wolfe, maybe rip out his spine and show it dangling in front of him. Assuming he hadn’t absorbed a Wolfe in his travails, because if so…whew, this fight was going to be a lot harder.

  “It works, doesn’t it?” I caught a glimpse of him waving his hands as the fire dispelled and the light nets vanished under the influence of gravity powers. He unleashed a searing beam of red that zinged past my head and I slid low. It passed over me, near missing a tall tombstone in the process.

  I kicked another stone in his direction, cringing at the pain in my toe as it sailed. I went low and laterally, grabbing a smaller one and sticking it under my arm. Lucky thing he chose to have his minions bring me down in a graveyard. I was only about ten feet away now, but he was firing a spectacular number of multi-colored beams at me. I saw a chunk of ice go shooting by and almost admired his kitchen sink approach. It mirrored mine.

  Sliding down under temporary cover of another tombstone, I kicked it at him (ow) and watched it sail into its own destruction only a few feet away. This one had dissolved, almost like Frankie had Augustus’s power over rock, which kinda screwed with my contingency plan. I threw the one I had under my arm right at his face and gave it a second to fly before—

  He dissolved it too, but I wasn’t planning on having it impact. He had a hand up, probably planning to dissolve the fire blast or light net he seemed sure I was going to send after it. Like I had in Asda yesterday.

  I didn’t send either of those things in the wake of the tombstone.

  I sent myself flying at him, fist first.

  Rocketing at a human being at high speed is always an uncertain thing, especially when dealing with a seasoned fighter. My biggest hope was that absorbing all these powers had made Frankie complacent, like so many of my other foes, and that he was leaning so hard on his ripper blasts because they were super powerful and could keep me at a distance.

  As my fist made contact with his already open-in-shock jaw…I took it as confirmation I might just be right.

  Frankie went flying back, partially dodging my attack. I came in with a hard sweep of his feet and caught one. He deftly lifted the other and spun, adjusting like a gymnast in midair to come in for a perfect landing. It was a cool move, but one that almost any high-powered meta could pull off.

  It was also really, really dumb, because he was just sitting there, twirling. Right in front of me.

  I grabbed him by the collar and brought him down, smashing him into the ground. He took a sharp landing across the asphalt path, head slamming as I waterwheeled his face into the hard aggregate. It made a sharp crack, sweet music to my ears, and he cried out.

  “That’s right, punkass,” I said, lifting my arm up. I was going to bring down a punch on the back of his head, one good blow to finish him off and end this. “You shouldn’t have messed with the—”

  A blazing red blast seared past me, catching me mid-thigh on the left side. I hadn’t even noticed him sticking a hand up in the air, hadn’t noticed him twisting his broken wrist to let loose a ripper blast.

  I damned sure felt it, though, as I teetered and fell over. The ground came rushing up and I landed beside Frankie, crashing into the earth, no arm or leg left on that side of my body to stop my fall.

  48.

  Losing an arm and a leg in this fight hurt a hell of a lot more than landing on my face, but without any sort of limb to break my fall, that was no peachy walk in the park, either. My nose broke, my face screamed from my cheekbone and orbital bone above my eye, the agony radiating out across my face like someone had lit the nerves on fire as though they were fuses that hissed and cracked across my face.

  Sienna, Harmon said roughly, I know you’re in pain, but—

  YOU KNOW NOTHING OF PAIN, I thought, really loudly, at Harmon. Was the sky blood red? It sure felt like it was.

  Tactically speaking, Bastian said—

  STFU, DRAGONBOY, I said. My freaking LEG—

  You— Eve started.

  Sienna— Zack said.

  I FUCKING KNOW MY ENEMY IS LYING NEXT TO ME, I said, writhing. Ever try to roll over with one arm and one leg missing while your body is screaming pain at you? It’s not easy.

  I did it anyway, my face scratching against the hard asphalt surface of the graveyard path, and I lanced out, slamming the side of my hand into Frankie’s throat. I could see him through squinted, teared-up eyes, and he was rolling toward me, fury in his.

  His hand started to glow as he brought it around. If he managed to get it in line with me, I knew I was toast, so I snaked my fingers around his neck and crushed his throat.

  That sent a shockwave of surprise through him that bought me a few seconds. I didn’t dare let go, figuring he’d probably heal quickly, and that this wouldn’t kill him. Wolfe, I said.

  Do you not feel your bones already regrowing? he practically yelled in my ear—quite an accomplishment when my nerve endings were already howling through my body.

  “I’m feeling kind of a lot right now,” I said. “Sensory overload.” I dragged Frankie closer to me and headbutted him, but since it was one-armed and I was fairly immobile, it didn’t do a lot but misshape his nose further. He was already bleeding profusely from it, and his eyes were blacked, one swelling rapidly. I guess he didn’t have an inner Wolfe.

  Lucky me.

  I kept my hand anchored on his throat, dragging him closer, and headbutted him again. Blood ran in my nose, thick and heavy, the smell of rich iron still coming through in spite of the screaming pain, giving an immediacy to my actions. I couldn’t let up. The world was getting hot around me, cool night receding in the heat of the moment, my fingertips tingling from all the trauma and blood loss I’d—

  Wait.

  No.

  My fingers were searing, screaming where they touched his skin, my powers working to drag his soul out of his body. His mouth was open but no sound came out, his windpipe crushed beneath my fingers. He choked, gagged, desperate for breath. He jerked on the concrete, so roughly it tore his skin, leaving bloody streaks across the pebbled walkway.

  But…a succubus’s powers couldn’t work on an incubus…?

  Frankie made a horrible, gurgling, screaming noise as air forced its way out of his crushed throat, and the crescendo of pleasure and tingling and fire rushed through my hand as my powers reached their crescendo. It was like a symphony of joy played through my phantom, painful limbs. His soul left his body with a great rush, burrowing into my head and knocking me over, my newly regrown left leg and arm keeping me from rolling completely over.

  I stared up at the dark sky, my brain unable to fully analyze what had just happened. Little details rushed in like a flood—

  Frankie…wasn’t an incubus at all.

  But…the bodies…the dead…?

  My head was whirling, swimming with the newfound soul that was lurking within me, floating in my mind along with the others.

  Well…what have we here? Bjorn said.

  Fresh meat, Eve said with a wide grin.

  “Wait,” I said, pain lancing through my newly regrown limbs. I pushed over and got to my knees. “He’s not an
incubus.”

  Well duh, Zack said, which is why he’s in your head now.

  “But he threw all those powers at me,” I said, staggering over to a tombstone. My pants were shredded, like I was wearing shorts from mid-thigh on my left leg, and short sleeves on my left arm. It was some seriously schizophrenic clothing, and I say that as someone who regularly burned off all her clothing. “How…?”

  I heard soft footsteps behind me, and I whirled to see the guy in the Euro biker jacket standing back a ways, toward the entrance to the cemetery down the hill, peering up at me.

  “You!” I shouted and he flinched back toward the massive wall surrounding the burial grounds, cordoning it off from the streets around it. “You did this!”

  “No, he didn’t,” someone said behind me, and I turned just in time to get clocked in the nose by a woman descending out of the sky, a flash of her red hair the only clue that told me who she was before she knocked me to the ground.

  Rose.

  “I did it,” she said, eyes gleaming in the dark, and her hands glowing, one with fire, the other with the distorted air from the manipulation of gravity…powers that no empath…no normal meta…would have…

  Powers that only a succubus could.

  49.

  Rose didn’t give me any recovery or breathing room; she came at me with speed unlike anything Frankie had, pounding me along the ribs and chest with a flurry of punches that seemed to be enhanced with meta strength and maybe even gravity, because they hit like a planet landing on me.

  I flew back through six tombstones, and then something seemed to grab me from behind, yanking me back like a rubber band around my waist. I crashed into one of the crypts at the back wall of the graveyard, bringing down the lintel archway with my back as I went through it. I realized, dazedly and a little belatedly, that it was the exact feeling of a gravity tether yanking me. Yeouch.

  Pieces of stone came down with me and one of them broke my arm. I didn’t really feel it, because it was already numb from going through the tombstones and the lintel.