Scales (Avery Rome Book 1)

by P. S. Power

  Eve was gone already, meaning Avery had to scramble to keep up with what was going on. There was a single shot from her left, as she ended up on the roof top. Rather than look, she leapt in, slamming the palm of her right hand into the helmet of the prone man before he could do more than look over at where the Vampire line walker was.

  Something inside the man’s neck popped. Hopefully it was just a free neck adjustment and not a shattered vertebra. Avery had tried to slap him hard enough to stop any action, while not ripping his head off all the way. From the way he flopped around, she kind of thought that the man, who was wearing an FBI jacket, as well as body armor, might not be breathing any more. That was bad. Enough so that she started to feel sad about it.

  She always seemed to kill people. Things went wrong, then whoever she was fighting died. It wasn’t the truth, but in all the real fights she’d had, three of them, people had died at her hand twice. The only saving grace this time was that she hadn’t accidently eaten the fallen man. Not yet.

  The three snipers had been on a single rooftop. It was a horrible placement, but there was only the one building that was high enough to work that way in the area. It wasn’t exactly the tall building portion of the city. Zack walked over quickly, carrying an unconscious man who looked to be about fifty percent larger than he was. Leaning down, the other body over his shoulder still, as if it weighed nothing to him, he touched the exposed cheek of the man that she’d hit.

  There was a nod.

  “He’ll live. This was… Interesting. The first man, the one here,” he wiggled the leg he was holding to show which one he meant. “His orders were to fire only if something happened. Your man had been told to kill Bey if possible. Regardless of anything else. Doing that would have started a blood bath. The thing is, they had different orders. Let me check the other one. Eve!”

  The attractive pale woman jogged over, carrying her own unconscious man easily. He was breathing, coughing from being jostled as they moved.

  Zack moved in, clearly reading his mind as he made contact.

  “He’s like the first one. Fire if an attack started, but otherwise just listen to orders. We missed a position though. There’s a command and control crew about four blocks from here. Eve and I will go and get them. Avery, you can guard these three. We’ll use their handcuffs on them. Nice of them to bring those. Just make sure we get their keys, or things could get messy.” There was a grin then, but it didn’t take long at all for them to have stripped the men of armor and weapons, then secure them together, arms interlaced as they sat back to back. The idea was Zack’s, though he didn’t say why they needed to do it.

  Then Eve and the Demon left her there, standing around as the man she’d slapped woke up.

  “Wha? What da fuck?” He tried to stand but that didn’t work for him. Even rolling away didn’t, being connected to two other adult men like he was.

  “Easy there. Calm down. You and your friends were here to kill foreign dignitaries. The other guy, um, the one on the left of you? He had orders to assassinate Bey. The Vampire Council member? So we had to stop you. I don’t know what happens next, but for now you’re a prisoner.” Assassination was nearly always frowned upon, after all.

  The man wasn’t in a good position to argue, so tried to tell her about his family. His name too, which was Larry. Avery didn’t get it, until the other men came to and started doing the same thing. She had the information inside her brain, after all. If you were taken prisoner, the idea was to make the person doing it think of you as being a regular person.

  “Quiet. I’m not here to kill you. You’re the murderers here. We’ll deal with this, later.” After the shooting stopped, from down the street. At the van location. The panel vans, not Clyde’s, thankfully. That was held back safely still. So far. The fighting intensified for a bit, but ended after a few minutes. Hopefully that meant her side had won. That should be the way it went, but in a fight, things could always go differently than you expected.

  Interestingly, a very deep voice called out, after a bit. It was such a low rumble that Avery doubted anyone other than her was going to understand it.

  “Cleared and controlled at the attack groups.”

  Her best guess was that it was Ang. Her fellow Dragon.

  She answered in kind, making her voice as deep as it could go. Much more so than any Human would have been able to hear, much less mimic.

  “Situation controlled on the roof. Three snipers contained.”

  After a moment, a third boomingly low voice came, from the direction Eve and Zack had supposedly gone.

  “Annnd, we’re good here. That should be everyone. This is a bit of a messed up situation. All of these men are FBI. Not all of them are in on it, but enough are that it’s kind of clear this is a real attack by the government. Specifically, Cremo, over at Homeland.”

  Avery swallowed then, since it wasn’t a great thing to hear.

  “If this is the government, then those other deaths? The random seeming people?”

  There was a pause, then a low laugh.

  Zack sounded angry now.

  “I think so. We’re missing data for that presumption though, so keep it in mind, but also keep looking for the truth. It isn’t all of them, but enough of the people in charge were in on this to make it a real problem. We need to secure the restaurant. They have an agent inside. Mitchel. Eve?”

  His voice started to shift on the last word, going higher so the Vampire woman would be able to hear him. Avery took a breath and then shook her head.

  “We can get Bey to do that. Let me call that out to him? He’s already there, so…” It made sense to her. A bit of residual, phantom no doubt, pain rang out from her head as she thought about what the Vampire could do to a person.

  Zack spoke deeply again, the sound carrying all the way to her.

  “Set that up? Great plan. Ask him to leave the man alive. He’s clearly more in charge than the rest of these stooges.”

  Avery had to clear her throat first, to get her vocal cords to tighten back up to something approaching normal.

  “Bey? We’ve secured the attackers out here. We need to stop Agent Mitchel. Can he be left alive, please? As far as I know, Borden isn’t in on this, but she’s probably armed and will fight. As soon as that’s done, we can…” She didn’t know what to say to that.

  Thankfully Avery didn’t have to this time. After about a minute the little Vampire man carried a clearly unconscious, if not dead, Agent Mitchel out of the place, cradling him in his arms like one might with a baby. Lars was right behind him, with Agent Borden being held by the giant man. Like she was a sleeping child as well. It was nearly sweet, compared to what could have been happening. Bodies tossed out the door with force came to mind.

  Avery was basically stuck on the rooftop, herself. At least until they found some way to get the men down. She could have carried them, if she were willing to change shape and fly to the ground. Otherwise she was going to have to drop them over the side of the building to get them to the earth below. It was only a four story drop, but the truth was, the men wouldn’t survive that. Not tied together like they were.

  She could, of course. Just hopping down to the ground would work for her. At least as long as she rolled when she hit. That had come up in training, fairly regularly, so her confidence in that kind of thing was pretty high. She was strong enough that even a drop from an airplane was possible for her without too much damage being taken. It was certainly survivable for her.

  Avery just stood there, holding a rifle on the three men, since they’d understand what being shot might do to them. Using a threat that the being could comprehend was important when controlling prisoners. It had been in that section of her training, several times.

  Waiting for someone to come and retrieve them was her job for the time being, however. That took a long time. Nearly an hour. Avery was nearly certain that everyone had forgotten about her, when she thought about it. No one was even looking up at the roof she
was on, to let her know they still understood she was there. It was annoying of them, but she held her place, not interacting with anyone. Feeling bored, but tense at the same time.

  At least until the FBI descended as a group, coming along with the local police with lights and sirens blasting to the world.

  Given how dangerous that really was, Avery was pretty certain that she was in a better place than the adults who were standing out in front of the restaurant. Especially when the fighting started.

  Chapter eleven

  The area in front of the restaurant, which was a decently high end place, ran with Human blood after a few moments. There was really nothing else that could have happened, given how the police and FBI had come in firing their weapons at the innocent people standing there. The victims of a government murder plot, who had managed to get the main conspirator out of the attempt alive. In fact they’d gotten all the attackers out that way.

  Not that it worked past the new engagement with the police.

  Avery sighed, then moved behind the low wall that ran around the edge of the flat roof. One of the FBI men spoke softly, high voice strained.

  “What’s going on?” He sounded worried, which made a lot of sense.

  Between the accurate shots Avery was taking, hitting uniformed people in the back of the neck, since they were too busy to understand why they were dying at the moment, she tried to explain it all.

  “Your people tried to kill mine. It isn’t working. You’ve probably just started a war. One that…” She sighed, glancing at the world below her. Several government fighters had hidden behind cars, as if Bey and Lars weren’t going to simply walk up and tip the things over on them. She did her part, killing one of the remaining attackers every minute or so.

  She shook her head once she had a chance, then tried to recall what she’d been about to say.

  “Right. We don’t have the numbers to win a war with you Humans. The thing is, we’re pretty much going to win every battle. Right now I’d guess that out of the fifty or so FBI and police down there, eighty percent of them are dead. Dying at least. On the good people’s side…” She looked and noticed that Lang wasn’t there. A white wolf was however, which ran around behind the cars, nearly getting shot as she tried to tear out a man’s throat.

  Shooting the gunman in time took some skill, but Avery had practiced for that kind of thing a lot. Even with people shooting back. That meant she did a better job holding her position while three of the remaining five or so officers tried for her. One of the sitting FBI prisoners was hit in the head while the fighting went on. Thankfully that was one of the two that hadn’t been ordered to kill Bey. Glancing over it was kind of clear that the man wasn’t that badly injured or anything. True, he bled all over the place, a red curtain running over the side of his head. That smelled warm and coppery, which wasn’t a problem for her.

  The flashbacks to having killed her clan did, again, but Avery didn’t allow herself to become distracted. Shooting as the others tipped police cars and trucks, or did other, equally lethal things. Except Eric. He was cleverly hiding behind a vehicle near the restaurant. Talking on his cell phone. To whom Avery couldn’t work out. Probably his own people.

  Not that they could do much at the moment. It was sort of clear that things had suddenly gone very wrong. That meant they needed to get out of there, since fighting an endless stream of bodies would only work so long. Probably to the point where the Federal Government decided that fuel air bombs or nuclear weapons were the only thing that would work. Which wasn’t wrong.

  A big enough explosion killed most things.

  There was more than one location for the fighting. The other places didn’t last that long either. It got loud for a bit, but after ten minutes, or maybe less, there was calm to the world again. That no one was screaming or yelling in pain meant something in particular, however. They didn’t have a lot of prisoners left. Everyone else was either truly injured, or they were dead.

  “Fuck. You morons.” It was tempting to kill the handcuffed men, but her mission was to keep them alive. For the time being. That was the job, so Avery did it, holding her rage in, letting it pass before it became a problem for her.

  Which didn’t mean that dragging them bodily down three flights of stairs wasn’t outside of what could happen. On the last set of steps, she just pushed them over, instead of shuffling along, fighting with them. That worked better. From her perspective. She had to guess that the newly broken limbs that two of the fellows had probably seemed inconvenient to them.

  When she worked them outside she put the tan strap of her rifle over her shoulder, then pulled the men, dragging them, over to where Bey, Wolf Lang and Lars the giant all stood. The Trollienkeine’s jacket was covered with blood. Along with other things from the fighting. There was simply no way the brown corduroy wasn’t ruined.

  Eric, possibly wisely, was still on his cell phone. Next to him was a rather lifeless seeming Agent Borden. She wasn’t tied, but from the angle of her legs and arms, shown in translucent blue to Avery, the woman wasn’t going jogging with them any time soon. On the good side there didn’t seem to be broken bones, just a loss of muscle control. She didn’t ask who’d done that. It was a quick way of protecting a person from themselves, bruising the large muscles so much that it was hard to move for a bit. That meant it had probably been Lars that had done it. The others would have just killed the annoying woman. It could have also been magic. Eric was there and had weapons that did something. It was hard to tell, for her at least.

  “We need to get out of here, before more people come. Can everyone move?” Avery glanced at them, but her people seemed fine. Alive, if a bit shaken up by the events and what they implied for the whole world. Eric stood up a bit shakily, moving over to the group at a run, phone still pressed to his right ear.

  “We have transportation out? Avery Rome… Right. I’ll suggest that. Later perhaps? If we don’t have to flee the country as a group?” He stopped for a bit then and barked a laughed. It was dark and bitter seeming. “Understood. I’ll try to do that. Goodbye.”

  Placing the phone away, into the inside pocket of his jacket, the man looked at her. He was a bit manic seeming, but that worked for the moment. They were still standing in the kill zone, surrounded by enemy corpses. Not all of them would be dead yet, either. That placed them all in danger. Particularly the soft and easily killed Mage in front of her.

  She moved to her collection of future informants, pulling one of them toward her by the broken arm to knock the other two from their feet. Not that running was going to really be happening any time soon. The best they were managing in a collective group was an injured hobble.

  Bey smiled at her, as if things were truly different than they really were.

  “Ah! Excellent, Miss Rome. I see that you preserved witnesses for us. Do you know what the plan is, as far as egress?” The bald fellow was calm and sounded like he was requesting a cup of tea from a friend, more than anything else.

  Avery had to stop anyway, feeling stupid suddenly.

  “Egress?”

  Bey nodded.

  “Exit? It’s a very old term for the idea.”

  “Oh. Yeah, get everyone back to the van. We can get to a node from there pretty easily. I can lead you there so that won’t be hard. The others should all know where it is, unless they get lost.” In which case they were going to need to hide until something could be worked out.

  Bey nodded, bowing a bit.

  “I shall endeavor to see to that duty? Summoning the others. We shall arrive as quickly as the slowest person?”

  That was the general trick to life, as far as Avery knew, so she started to get the others to move, carrying her rifle at the ready, still on single fire. About half of her ammunition was gone, after all. It could be a while before more would be available as well, so she needed to go carefully. They left Agent Borden on the ground in a boneless seeming heap, since it was clear she didn’t know anything of note. At least Eric
figured that to be the case.

  “These others might know more. I fear that Ms. Borden was put in with us due to her fear and bigotry of people that are different than herself. Can we move with them quickly enough?” He meant the FBI prisoners, which it turned out they could move with decent speed. That was done by Lars taking over and dragging them along awkwardly for two blocks. At a decent jogging pace the whole time. That was pretty much dragging the three with them, but it functioned nicely as long as they didn’t care about the health of their prisoners’ feet and legs. Eric was gasping by the end, having the hardest time keeping up. Avery was fine herself, since they’d gone slow. The hardest thing for her were very long marches and runs. Her sprints weren’t bad, but nothing that would really impress someone like Bey. He’d vanished, moving so fast that it seemed nearly like teleportation.

  When they got to the van, she grimaced. There was a node link right there of course, but the police and feds would eventually bring in more people. Clyde was a Shifter and as an Ambassador he’d be known by the Federal Government. Meaning he’d be blamed for the deaths if his vehicle was found there. Ignoring that, not having a clever trick ready to go, Avery moved people through to Australia. Where she just left them. It was a different governmental system there, which might make it harder for the FBI people to find them.

  When Bey got there she smiled at him, feeling dismal.

  “What are the odds that the government will accept that we were the ones attacked here today?”

  He patted her gently on the arm then, his face sad.

  “Not great, I must fear. It seems that we were lured here, for a purpose. Starting a war. Now it is our task to find who did this. If possible, we must stop it. That may not be within the powers of such as we.” He stopped and looked up, his face relieved as the last of the people got there, ready to go through the line with the others to Australia.

  Anyplace else they wanted to go as well, given that it was mainly line walkers of one kind or another left. That and a single gray wolf standing with her back to them, ready to protect them all from whatever might be coming.