by Alana Melos
“In Axis, I didn’t make much of a dent, and then you had to break me out of city lock-up….” What else would it be but weak?
He shook his head, “You’re not weak. You’re anything but weak.”
“I didn’t… the shield there, you know.” I kept looking at him and scanning him with my telepathy, searching for signs of deception, but his thoughts were as guileless as his face. “I failed.”
“Failed?” Rory laughed outright, a large whoop as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “You held it for what, five, ten seconds? Long enough to scare them, and to let us regroup. Are you forgetting the missile, girl?”
“Don’t call me girl,” I snarled on reflex. He held up his hands to show he meant no offense, and I shrugged. “I only barely got that turned around.”
He hooted loudly. “‘Only barely’,” he snorted, his wise ass grin plastered over his rugged face. “What do you expect from yourself? Godhood? Ultimate power?”
“Well, perfection,” I said, my tone indicating anything less was unacceptable. “Anything I do I should do well.”
“And that’s not well? You have got a warped sense of things, Caprice,” Rory said, shaking his head. “You saved a lot of us, maybe all of us. If they’d blown the portal up, maybe the vamps would have escaped and maybe not… it was close to sunrise, remember. The rest of the pack… we’re wolves. We’re strong and we’re fast, but we die like any animal.”
“I… I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, mulling over his words.
“And if that’s not good enough for you, you saved me in particular, remember?” The big guy nudged me with his foot and, when I looked at him, he waggled his eyebrows at me, making me laugh to break the tension building in me.
“We carried each other,” I said as I turned away smiling, but he was right. I knew he was right on that. If not for me, he would be a dead wolf. Of course, if not for me he would have been perfectly fine conquering worlds for the Reich. I blinked at that, shocked at myself. Was I… taking responsibility because I felt guilty about ripping them from their homes? Aghast at the thought I might have a conscience, at how deep these changes were becoming, my better mood vanished and I stamped my feet on the floor, seating my boots properly. Oh my god. Was I turning into some milk sop heroine in a Harlequin novel? The thought made me nauseous for the second time today.
“Aye, that’s true enough, so we’ll call that a draw,” he said while I put myself together. “But no, I don’t find you weak, and neither do any of the pack. I shouldn’t say this, but we’re beholden to you, both for our freedom and for guidance. Though we’re learning our way around pretty good.” I heard a rustle of cloth as he got up, and the soft pad of his feet as he crossed to sit down on the other side of the bed next to me. “You’re… acting kinda strange. You alright?”
Turning, I flashed him a huge smile. “Just overcome with the thought of being the Big Bad Wolf’s hero,” I smirked, though I didn’t feel it. On the inside I was rooting through my head, trying to figure out what in the hell was going on. Maybe I could just turn it all off for now. Or maybe I should just stop what I was doing and deal with it. All of my procrastination hadn’t helped. Things had been bubbling while I hadn’t been paying attention. Thoughts of Gerard came to me and I sighed. I couldn’t leave him and the more time passed, the harder it would be to find him.
“I wouldn’t say that now,” he grinned down at me. “I thought I was pretty good, not bad at all.”
His easy humor made me smile for real. The urge to kiss him came to me and I repressed it. I didn’t have time for any more fooling around. “I do have work, though. Is it alright if Rebekah crashes here? It seems safe enough,” I said.
“I guess,” he replied. “If it wasn’t, I think we would have heard something by now.”
I raised a brow at that, but he was likely right. Rebekah would have yelped if anyone gave her too much hassle and come looking for me. “Take care, Mauler,” I said as I gave into my urge and brushed a kiss over his lips. “Maybe I’ll be back tonight but I doubt it. Too much to do, too little time.”
“You’re always welcome, now that you know the way,” he said. “I don’t think Freyja will give me too much grief about keeping the invitation open for a friend o’ the pack.”
“It’s appreciated,” I said, and meant it. It never hurt to have allies.
When I left him, I was practically jumped in the common room by Rebekah. “Oh jeez!” she exclaimed. “I thought you’d never get out of there!” The younger woman tugged on my jacket sleeve, “Can we get out of here? All of these… well, not all, but a lot… well, they started freaking out and you know… doing it, just out of nowhere!”
Whoops, I thought. I must have been broadcasting while Adira, Rory, and I were having our fun. Of course she wouldn’t pick up on it, but everyone else had. “I was thinking about leaving you here while I went to see if I could find some leads on Ger,” I said. “You’ll be safe here.” Even as I said those words, she shook her head repeatedly in negation.
“I don’t want to stay here,” she replied. “They don’t like me; I can tell. I mean, they’ll tolerate me, ja? But they won’t like me, not ever. I just want to come with you.”
“Alright, fine, but I don’t know how long this will take,” I replied as I glanced at my phone to check the reception. It was shit. I shook my head. “Let’s get outside. It’s either the building or the distance that’s messing with the signal.” When she nodded, I took the lead and guided us out. Still dark, the streets were illuminated with the reflected lights of the city on the cloud cover above and the snow lay heavy and thick on the streets. It glowed in the dim light, giving the impression of being surrounded by a soft grey fog as the snow continued to fall. At least there wasn’t any wind, though it was cold enough. When I checked my phone again, I had a signal, then lost it.
“It’s weak… let’s try on top of one of these buildings,” I said, pointing. “If you don’t mind…?” I lifted the both of us in the air with my teke and flew us to the top of the next building. The snow lay up here just as thick, coming to the middle of my calf. If this kept up, we’d have a full blown blizzard soon enough and the snow showed no sign of letting up. When I landed, I smiled to myself. The emotional pull blew chunks, but the power in the vamp blood worked wonders. I almost felt a hundred percent again, but the cold was sapping it, fast. With a shivering sigh, I checked the phone. The bar flicked to life for a moment, then was gone. “Dammit… next couple over. I don’t think they’ve maintained the cell towers around here.”
“They wouldn’t, if they abandoned this part of the city,” Rebekah observed. “Can’t you try to find him with your, erm, mind?”
“Maybe,” I said. “If they still have him in town and he’s alive. And he’s not in a shielded room.” I chewed my lip for a moment as I thought. It was a safe bet they knew he was a telepath and had neutralized his power somehow. It could be with anything… drugs, another meta human, technology, magic. I bet whatever shielded him would prevent me from finding him that way, but it would be worth a shot to at least try, especially now that I had Adira’s blood boosting my powers temporarily. “We’ll see. The safest bet is to get the word out on the street.”
As she nodded, I thought again about Alistair. That would be my next safest bet and by far the most effective. I hadn’t left him on great terms last time and with Rebekah with me, he more than likely wouldn’t see us. It was worth a shot. Then, I could say I tried everything I could to find the bastard.
I flew us a couple of buildings over and checked my phone. I had a bar and it remained on. Phone calls would probably drop, but text messages would get through OK. I brought up my list of fixers, and started texting them, stating that I was looking for a missing telepath, a strong one, who had gone missing tonight. I put what information I had--save for his name--and offered cash incentives for information… the better the information, the bigger the reward. Once I finished, I looked to Rebekah, who was
looking behind us, her face stamped with awe.
“What?” I asked.
“What is that?” she asked in return, pointing behind us, past the pack’s lair.
I followed her gaze and saw part of skyline blotted out by a huge, rounded structure. I knew what it was immediately, though I’d never seen it this up close before. “Ah, that,” I replied as I stuffed my phone back in my pocket. “That’s the remnants of Uptown.”
“Uptown?” she asked, glancing to me.
“Yeah, you remember that big floating platform on the screen in the Underground? It used to be part of Old New York,” I explained. “A big floating city above this one. It was part of the United Nations or something, like… neutral ground.” I curled my lip up, “Bunch of white hats used to work out of it, til it got crashed.” By my parents and many others. “Last stand of the Blackguard and all that, last push for freedom.” And anarchy, which had never really materialized. Things were crazy, true, just not crazy in that particular way.
“I didn’t think it was so big,” she said as she took off her cap and brushed the accumulated snow from it.
“It pretty much took out Queens and … well, the eastern part of Old New York,” I replied with a shrug, shivering. “Some of the outside lines too, I think. I saw a map once.”
We both gazed at the curving edge of the disk. The rest of it had been broken and buried when it crashed and the resultant crater had flooded with seawater making the land marshy. They’d tried to retake the land initially, but no construction people ever stayed on the site for long. They were chased away by crazies living in the ruins or by the wildlife, some of which was rumored to be genetically enhanced… descendants of experiments which had been released during the Fall of Uptown. The foliage past the lines of apartment buildings had grown thick and lush over the many years since. People just… ignored it now. It seemed weird so many people lost their lives, their homes, hell, a part of their city and they just ignored it, but that’s what happened. The rumors of ghosts and ghouls haunting the place didn’t help either.
Still, over the years, brave scavengers had picked much of it clean of anything of value. I was pretty sure if you dug hard enough, you’d still find something there worthwhile, but there were far easier ways to get paid. It was weird they didn’t try harder to reclaim it and I strained my brain to think of the reason why, if there was one. Coming up with a blank, I shook my head.
“It’s ancient history,” I said. “We should get someplace warm, in the middle of the city. Dunno where the contacts are going to send us, and I have an idea that might work.”
“Oh?” she asked, looking to me eagerly. “What is your plan?”
“Less a ‘plan’ and more a grasping at straws,” I replied. “I can try scanning for him, but there’s a mage I know who specializes in finding lost things--”
I would have said more, but the building we stood on shook and we were knocked to our feet as something hard and heavy landed behind us. A thought with my telepathy told me it was Bluecoat… and friends. Again. That was all I got from the quick mental scan though as they’d brought another telepath with them and as soon as I reached for more, she ran interference. Rebekah and I climbed to our feet. I drew my sword as she raised her gas mask.
“You’re under arrest,” Bluecoat said, snarling the words.
“Third verse, same as the first,” I quipped, dodging to the side as she lunged for me. I hadn’t gotten much from the scan, but I knew how many there were. “Vier,” I said for Rebekah’s sake, meaning four in German. Bluecoat, the telepath, and the ice and fire twins… not that they were twins, it just always seemed that blasters came in packs of two: fire and ice, always.
“Wir können nicht vier nehmen,” she said, her voice sounding hollow and metallic through the mask. ‘We can’t take four’, she had told me and she was right. Her with her powers and me hopped up on Adira's blood, it wouldn’t have been much of a challenge. As it was, we had to rabbit.
“Nein,” I said. Instead of attacking, though Bluecoat sent punch after punch at me as the telepath shut my scans down, I concentrated on the snow. Using my teke, I threw up the mounds of snow into the air and kept it there, as a type of a smoke screen. I ducked and rolled away from Bluecoat, trusting in the snow screen to keep me covered as I grabbed Rebekah’s hand. “Over,” I said, and jerked her backwards to go over the edge of the building. We fell, but not for long. I caught us before we hit the ground and flew along the street.
Where could we go to lose them? We could head back to the pack’s lair, but we’d have to make sure we killed them all… and if they radioed it in--which they would--the lair would be a bust and they’d have to move. I didn’t want that on me. The other close by buildings were all empty, so the psychic would be able to trace me easily until we hit a populated area, but considering how fast they could move and two of them (possibly three) could fly, we wouldn’t hit a populated area in time. That left one choice which was a gamble: the ruins of Uptown, the tangle of overgrowth and ghosts.
I flew us into the half-assed jungle and, almost immediately, any light from above was cut off. I had to slow down, but Rebekah started guiding me verbally since she could see via her night-vision goggles. “Where do we want to go in here?” she asked, her voice fretful and fraught with worry.
“Deeper,” I said. “I’m trusting they won’t want to enter with the rep, and if we have to fight, it’s a smaller area. They won’t be able to blast.”
“I don’t want to enter it!” she said. “What if there are ghosts?”
“Don’t be stupid, there’s no such thing,” I replied. Of course, I was pretty sure I was wrong, but I had to project the image of confidence. “Besides, ghosts are just thoughts which haven’t gone away yet. I can handle them.”
I didn’t miss the skeptical look she gave me, but she didn’t say anything about that in response. As she continued to call out which way to go, we fell into an easy rhythm. From behind us, we could hear crashing behind us faintly. I brought in my psychic shields tight, making myself small mentally speaking so the other telepath would have a harder time locking me down. She didn’t try to attack me… just block me. That was just as well. I didn’t want to get into an extended telepathic battle with my mind upset as it was now. If I had been focused like normal, I would have told her to bring it on and enjoyed decimating her. Right now, the result would be uncertain since my emotions were see-sawing back and forth in my head.
After a couple minutes of slow flying, I started to get tired, especially since I swerved around so much to avoid brush, trees, rubble, and the remnants of old buildings. I set down in a clearing and waited, listening for any signs of pursuit while I took the opportunity to put my mask on. I wasn’t too concerned with how they found us. More than likely, they followed our tracks through a pre- or postcognition meta, to either see where we would be, or to follow our tracks in the past and follow them up to the present. There were ways to get around meta powers like that, but the easiest of which had been cut off for us: the Underground. Whatever mojo Malech had working there shook any sort of trails. To be truthful, I hadn’t even investigated other options since the Underground was so quick, cheap, and easy. Might have been time to reevaluate that position.
Above us, I saw the fire thrower fly overhead, catching glimpses of him through the dense foliage. The rest of it was dark, dark as midnight. No reflected light reached here; the trees seemed to soak up any of the ambient light around, as if the darkness hungered for it.
“What was that--” the Siren said, and I hushed her.
“Nothing,” I whispered. “I need to concentrate.” Confidence surged through me. So long as the telepath didn’t ding me, we were safe. There was no way they could find us in the dark. I couldn’t even see my own hand in front of my face.
A great fwoosh above us erupted as the trees burst into flames and light spilled into the clearing. “Here!” cried the fire meta.
“Crap,” I said. I hadn’t felt the t
elepath ping off my shields, so they were tracking us another way. When I got a good look at the clearing though, I couldn’t have picked a better spot. It was small and cramped and even though the light from above illuminated the area more or less clearly, there were still plenty of shadows to hide in.
How did they find us? My mind raced, thinking of all the possibilities… then I examined my sword. Sure enough, underneath the tang was a small bump which hadn’t been there before. I peeled it off with my teke and crushed it, destroying the electronic tracker. So much for Septimus’ good will. Either the cops figured out I would have escaped, knew he was going to help me, or had put it on there for another reason altogether, though I couldn’t think of what that might be. It could have been a tag for evidence; I’d have to look into that later. It was good to be caught up on all police procedures when they made changes. All the better to sneak around them.
In the meantime, the fire blaster threw down a couple of small streaks of fire through the clearing he’d made in the tree tops. They didn’t come close to hitting us, but they did prevent us from moving too far away. I think his intent was just to keep us here until the rest of the team arrived. Now that the tracker was gone, we could try to slip into the shadows, but every time we moved more than a pace or two, he cut off our line of escape.
The ground shook close by and I grimaced. It didn’t take a genius to recognize Bluecoat’s heavy landing. The others would be with her. I looked up at the blaster and narrowed my focus. “Watch my back,” I said. He moved around quite a bit, having tasted my teke before. He knew what I could do if I caught him. I cast a wide net and, with the strength of Adira’s blood flowing through me, snared him. Once he jerked to a stop, I pulled him down. He raised his arms to throw his flames and I pinned them to his sides. Once I had a good view of his head, I simply imagined spikes being driven through both of his eyes. The sockets erupted in blood and viscera and his flames went out as the body went limp.
Just as I let go of him, Rebekah jerked me over to the side. Her foot caught on something and she slid, falling and taking me with her. Just as well since the tree behind us exploded as Bluecoat punched it. Wooden shrapnel rained down around us as the clearing grew slicker with the ice meta concentrating on freezing the ground.
