No, definitely not.
I set my jaw and grenaded the bastards twice as hard because I definitely was not anything like these soulless killers. “Enter Sandman” faded out somewhere around the chorus, my enthusiasm for singing just sort of dropping off.
There were certainly plenty of targets for me to choose from. People were running madly around the HQ, trying in vain to find cover from the machine-gun rain of grenades on their position. They hadn’t deployed sandbag barricades, which was turning out to be a really bad decision for them, because covering behind vehicles was not working out so well, and they hadn’t even deployed any of those forward to cower behind. Pretty arrogant move, assuming someone wouldn’t attack them just because they were in the middle of a civilian population center and part of the local army.
This day would have been a real learning experience for these guys. If any of them survived. Which I did not plan for them to.
I spotted a guy coming at me from behind a tent, at least a good two hundred feet away. I could tell he was trouble because he wasn’t running for cover, he was running at me. Never a good sign when you’re raining hell on people and someone decides to ignore it and cast angry eyes at you out in the open.
I swung the Mk 19 around, lining up the sights with him and let loose just as he chucked a blast of flame at me in return.
Damn. A Gavrikov.
My shells passed his flames in the air, and he exploded into a pattern of blood and bone, his days of chucking flames at an end. He managed to land a hit on the hood of my Humvee, though, a fire starting at the grill.
“That’s probably not good,” I said. Or thought. Couldn’t hear myself say it. But there wasn’t much I could do about the fire, so I just ignored it and kept plugging away at the camp. There was motion in the air, and I swung the launcher up, dusting the shit out of a flyer about twenty feet off the ground with a flawless shot that turned him into a rain of gore.
Turning my attention to an army truck that was not a completely burned-out shell, I pumped a few rounds into the canvas back. It blew, gas tanks going up, sending black smoke into the air along with a curtain of flames. I’d already set off one fuel bunker to spectacular effect, but I wasn’t going to rest until I blew up all their diesel. Napoleon said an army marched on its stomachs, but modern armies moved on their fuel bunkers, and I meant to deprive them of as much of it as I could. Somewhat out of spite, mostly out of necessity in case I had to run later. It was always helpful to prop open a back door in case of emergency.
A flash of motion caught my attention beneath the wing of the left-side metal shield that covered me from enemy fire. I spun, not bothering to bring the Mk 19 around. Someone had flanked, and fast, too. I drew up my rifle from its sling and tracked the movement—
It was a damned Speedster. He paused, coming out of his blur status for just a second—
I plugged him with three shots, walking them from his guts up to his neck, and he toppled over. His hand was over head, open like he was flagging me down.
He’d never even raised his rifle.
Something solid and metal hit me in the hip, bouncing down onto the platform I was standing on, making a clunk that vibrated through my feet as it landed.
I didn’t wait to do the careful mind work of figuring out what it was for sure. I already had a pretty good idea.
I bailed out of the turret, rolling off the back of the Humvee—
The grenade went off inside just as I hit the ground. I vaulted back to my feet and made a break for a car parked nearby, throwing myself behind it—
As the Humvee exploded, gas tanks going up from some combo platter of the grenade the speedster had thrown and the fire that the Gavrikov had started. Flames roared up within, completely consuming my beloved Mk 19 and cutting me off from the only thing that had been keeping the army in the encampment at bay.
“Well, damnation,” I said, peeking out from behind the car as soldiers started to flood out from behind—hell if I knew where they were all hiding, I thought I’d leveled the place pretty good—everywhere, it seemed. They were dirty, cut up, bleeding, disheveled—
And angry. Really, really angry.
Also? Converging on my position, rifles raised. They were marching down the street, heat of the Humvee fire deterring them not at all. They were coming around it, cautious, about thirty or so out, formed up in a disciplined rank that I wasn’t going to be able to just shoot my way through. Not without taking hundreds of bullets for my troubles.
Yeah. Damn.
I looked down the street from whence I’d come. There was nothing in the way of cover there, nothing but a stray parked car for the hundred yards to the next corner. Sprint for it and I’d get riddled with bullets for my trouble.
Nowhere to run.
They were coming up the side of my hiding place now. Close-knit formation. Another few steps and they’d be at me.
Likelihood of mercy?
Zero.
Nowhere to hide.
I huddled against the bumper of the little European car, rifle in hand, readying myself to go out in a blaze of glory.
Because it looked like that was the only option I had left.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Lethe
“I am growing quite tired of your granddaughter,” Hades said, watching the screen with obvious irritation. It was playing the news livestream, the one that her friend, Cassidy, appeared to be broadcasting to all networks. Lethe watched it calmly; Hades somewhat less so, though he showed only traces of his growing aggravation.
“I like how she’s mine now,” Lethe said, hands neatly clamped behind her back, keeping her voice as level as she could given what she’d just seen. “Now that she’s pissed you off, rejecting your overtures, surviving the tower collapse, running through your hired help like a pro running back through peewee-league third stringers.”
“Spare me your American football analogies,” Hades said. “They are lost on me in the best of times. And these are not, obviously, my best times.” One of his eyebrows quivered, a measure of his irritation.
“You’re watching Death come for the worthy,” Lethe said. “Isn’t that your ‘bag,’ as they say?”
“Nobody has said that since the seventies,” Hades stared at the table in front of him. “Get with the times, will you?” He moved a map of Bredoccia in front of him. “She is wiping out our army’s 1st Division.” His gaze flicked up to the screen; the surveillance footage showed her pinned behind a car, her Humvee destroyed, clutching a rifle as the mercenaries approached. “Finally. At last, perhaps I will be rid of this nuisance before she destroys the entirety of our forces in the capitol.”
“I wouldn’t go counting on it,” Lethe said, under her breath. As though he would miss it.
“I am unsure where from your loyalty to this obnoxious child springs.” Hades stood up, not even bothering to mask his annoyance any longer, “but it clearly goes beyond blood or familiarity, since you have met her but once before we began this endeavor.”
“Twice,” Lethe said.
Hades’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘twice’? When did you meet her before?”
“It was a long time ago,” Lethe said, too airily. “And hardly worth mentioning.”
“I somehow doubt that,” Hades said, squaring his shoulders. “I am beginning to doubt your loyalty, daughter.”
She shrugged. “Do you see me doing anything to help her along?”
A hint of mitigation cooled his anger. “No.”
“Probably because she’s got the situation well in hand,” Lethe said. She held in the smile, but only just.
“This is fascinating to me that you sit back and let this play out while merely cheerleading her,” Hades said, now draping his own hands behind his back. “You want her to beat us?”
Lethe shrugged again. “Perhaps I’m just enjoying watching her pull it off with nothing but a plucky attitude and a chip on her shoulder the size of a small moon.”
“She takes after my brother in that regard,” Hades said, shadow falling over his face. “Zeus never knew when to quit, either.”
Lethe couldn’t hold back the laugh at that. “Yes, blame your brother for her genetic predisposition to obnoxious arrogance. Or, conversely,” and she took a step closer to him, “remember, perhaps, that time when, after one of your granddaughters was murdered by a mob, you actively ripped the soul out of nearly everyone in the region and would have done worse—except that Mother put a tree squarely through your heart, effectively staking you.”
“I was trying to protect my family,” Hades said, brow darkening. “To protect the garden, you must kill every weed that threatens to strangle it.” He lifted a finger and shook it at her. “That is life, you see. A struggle, always, power matched against power wherever it sees an equal—a threat. It is much the same here, now.” He turned away, looking at the monitor. Sienna did not have long before the soldiers would turn the corner on her, but there was some exchange going on, making them hesitate. “The Americans finally see us as a threat. They will need to respond. And their response will provoke another from us. And so it will go, until someone gains the upper hand.”
Lethe watched the screen. “I wouldn’t have figured you for the sort that would fall into the philosophical wilderness of thinking everything that happens is simply one power move after another.”
Hades watched the screen. It certainly looked like an end was nigh. “Power … is all that matters, daughter. It always has been.” His hands were clasped tightly behind his back as he concentrated on the chaos unfolding before him. “And I suspect … it always will.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Sienna
“So, guys, I’m thinking … maybe we just call this one a draw?” I shouted as the soldiers kept creeping up on me. I couldn’t hear their footfalls, but I could—just barely—feel them, with the knee I had braced against the ground. I was huddled against the back bumper of a tiny Euro car, my rifle clenched in my white-knuckle hands, steeling myself. The sun was beating down from overhead, the air still and quiet after the massacre. It was stifling out here on the street, summer in full force and sweltering, no wind at all to at least redistribute the heat.
“You will throw out your weapon and surrender!” came the reply, stiff and certain, apparently not hampered by the hearing loss I was dealing with, that fierce ringing like someone had installed a school bell in my brain and was trying to let me, personally, know that I was super late for class.
Options, options.
One, come out shooting. That would end in about a quarter second in a blaze of glory. I checked under the car, and, sure enough, there were enough pairs of boots walking my way that I had less than a snowball’s chance in an angry Gavrikov’s hand to last more than a second before my brains went airborne in molecular form from about a million bullets passing through my skull.
Two, run, die running. Self-explanatory, no more valid than option one.
Three, throw out my rifle and surrender (call that 3A) or pretend to surrender (3B) and wait for something else to happen that might give me an advantage.
Four, wait. Die in a minute or so unless that something else happened to give me an advantage.
“Cassidy,” I muttered, reaching into my front pocket and lifting the phone. “Suggestions?”
Shit. The phone was busted all to hell from my landing when I’d jumped off the Humvee. “Did you really think I could carry a phone through this mess and expect it to stay in one piece?” I muttered to no one in particular. “Do you even know me, Cassidy?”
“Come out now or we kill you!” the lead soldier shouted again.
“3B it is,” I said and unslung my rifle, tossing it out. I raised my hands past the car’s edge, waiting to see if anyone would fire at them.
They didn’t, so a moment later, I stepped out myself to face the music. Or rather, the angry, soulless Russian mercs. Looking into the eyes of the nearest ones, I had a really bad feeling that my allotment of time for waiting for an advantage to present itself was going to be incredibly short, probably measured in seconds rather than minutes, because these bastards …
I could see from just looking them in the eyes that they were going to kill me. And it wasn’t going to be the nice kind of killing, with a mercy bullet to the back of the head. No, it was going to be the French Revolution kind of killing, where they tore me apart after inflicting maximum pain and humiliation, and I had a sinking feeling that these boys …
They knew how to inflict maximum pain and humiliation.
“Come on, Cassidy,” I said under my breath. “Gimme something.”
The lead soldier flashed a malicious smile and motioned for a couple of his underlings to move up. They were all pointing their guns at me. There wasn’t a chance in hell, short of getting a very concentrated bomb dropped on them, that I was going to walk out of this one with all my limbs.
“Shit,” I said, as they started toward me. Cautious, of course, because they weren’t stupid. Vicious and angry, but not stupid. They approached with an overabundance of care, the two he’d tasked to getting to me going extra slow.
“Take your pistol out of its holster with two fingers,” the captain said. “Make a move out of turn, and we shoot you in the legs and arms and make a mess of you.”
“I kinda get the feeling that’s going to happen regardless,” I said, lifting my right hand and slowly reaching with two fingers extended for the pistol in my belt.
I stopped halfway there when I saw something.
And then … I felt something.
A light breeze ruffled my hair, like a breath of cool autumn off the sea. It was a pleasant surprise after a long night and morning where the air had felt so close, so heavy. It blew gently at first, then began to whip the dark strands around my head as it got stronger.
I let out a little giggle as it blew all around, raising dust in the street, little eddies of dirt that swirled and moved like tiny tornadoes.
“What … what is this?” the captain asked, looking around, keeping his gun leveled at me.
“Is just the weather,” one of the approaching soldiers said, still slow walking his way to me. “Now we skin her alive and see how she does without her powers—”
“You ain’t gonna do shit to me,” I said. The wind was pushing up to full force now, gale-force, in fact, and my attackers were losing their footing, their gun barrels swept aside by the fury of it. They spun and twisted as it lifted them off the ground in a mighty tornado, sweeping them up with the detritus of the camp I’d destroyed, the winds kicking up to churn in a curtain of pure, furious hell, the back ranks of them being swirled into a sudden tornado with metal debris in one giant, deadly blender.
“What—what is this?” the captain shouted as he, too, was swept away by the fury of the storm, wind dragging him off, unable to so much as point his rifle at me. He disappeared behind the black curtain wall now hanging over the enemy camp, and blood flew out in buckets as the entire remainder of the Revelen 1st Army Division was thrown into a man-made grinder.
“That …” I said as a figure dropped out of the sky, dirt puffing as he caught himself a foot above the ground then landed gently next to me, his long, dark hair not unlike mine as it swirled in the winds he controlled—
That he’d just killed my enemies with.
“That is my big brother,” I said, staring at him for a long second—
Then I lurched forward on unsteady legs and hugged him tight, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“You missing me already?” Reed asked, the smartass. “It’s only been a few days.”
“What I am … is damned glad to see you,” I said, as I buried my head on his shoulder in relief. “Just … damned glad to see you.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
Lethe
“Arghhhh!” Hades said, sweeping the maps off the table in front of him. “Damn her! Damn her straight to—to—to me.”
“I’m sure that wou
ld be fun to watch,” Lethe said. “Her in top form, fresh off of killing an army of metas, you a few thousand years past your prime—”
“If there is one of us who is past their prime,” Hades whirled on her, finger up and extended in front of his face, “it is the girl who lost the souls that made her great.”
“I think taking out a division of mercenaries is not too shabby on the greatness scale,” Lethe said, “but maybe I’m missing something.”
“Her brother did that,” Hades said, dismissing the deed with a wave. “And he is empowered with the booster serum, or else he never would have been able to manage it.” He shook his head. “No. She is still weak. Unable to make the hard decisions—”
“She just threw herself into the teeth of an army—”
“Foolishly,” Hades said. “Stupidly, without any idea of how she could win that fight. She causes us damage, but little of it is fruitful. It is the tantrums of a spoiled child, angry that she was punished.”
“I think you might be underestimating her emotional drive,” Lethe said. “If she’s furious, it seems very directed—and potent. Hardly an indiscriminate tantrum. You, on the other hand, seem to be exhibiting all the signs of losing it … Father.”
“You think me on the edge, yet you missed all the fun, last time, when your mother stepped up and killed me,” Hades said, turning a cool gaze on her. “Perhaps you wish to follow in her footsteps?”
“If I wanted you dead,” Lethe said, “you’d know it because you’d be long dead by now. I’ve followed your lead. I haven’t intervened in your insane attempts to kill my granddaughter by throwing everything including the kitchen sink and every dish at her. If I have any worries at the moment, it’s for your state of mind.”
“I have long had goals,” Hades said, “to protect my family, my line. To build our future by embracing strength.” He raised a clenched fist. “Every alliance I made was in service of this aim, every petty threat I supported from Cavanagh to Harmon to Nadine Griffin to the bastard who dwells in our basement even now, I did because I thought it would move me—move us—closer to the world I envisaged.” His eyes were bulging. “I did it for me, and I did it for you, daughter. Because we were the strongest, the survivors. And I thought, perhaps, it might include her as well. But she has chosen her path, and with it, her fate.”
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