Some stared around as if they’d never been in a football stadium before, gaping up at the stands. Others wore the trademark boredom of the entitled, while the rest focused on glad-handing with the stars around them. Marley counted twenty-three in all. After the last one stepped onto the grass, Divonne closed and locked the gate. One kid noticed and frowned, nudging his friend, who looked over his shoulder and shrugged. The first dragged his feet a little as he followed his friend into the group.
They mingled for a few minutes with general chatter. Marley heard one guy mutter about the lack of refreshments. They’d talked about whether they should have any, for authenticity, and decided to minimize the potential weapons. Even a red Solo cup could hurt when full of liquid and flung at fifty miles an hour by an enraged goddess.
Five minutes ticked by, every second thundering in Marley’s ears. She shifted from foot to foot, one hand clenching around the chill metal in front of her. Finally, Darren’s guys started organizing the Deimons in front of the makeshift stage and podium. Marley closed her eyes, envisioning herself gliding along the rows. Brief, fast touches around the perimeter, so she didn’t get trapped between them. The ones down the center would be the most difficult. By then, everyone would know what was happening.
The sound system squealed. Marley opened her eyes to see Darren smiling apologetically from the podium, adjusting the mic. Tapping into the main sound system was probably overkill, but the volume would help disguise Marley’s efforts.
“Good evening,” Darren said. “You’ve been asked here today to be part of an exciting new phase of the program. But first, I want to talk about what Cressida Lahr has done for me.”
“You ready?” Gage murmured near Marley’s ear. His body was warm and hard behind her. She didn’t want to move. Wanted to stay just like this, with both of them whole, unbroken…mostly.
She turned and stepped away, desperate enough to kiss him that she could blow everything. “I love you,” she whispered. He reached out, but she moved farther back, not trusting herself. She zeroed in on his signature, locking on so she’d know where he was on the field at every second.
But it was different from before, jarring her. Riley had given him her power while Marley nullified Darren’s friends, and it had altered his signature. It drove home how far they still had to go.
“In this new world,” Darren started, his voice booming overhead. The words were Marley’s signal, but she didn’t move. How could she leave Gage? He stared down at her, the glow in his eyes sharpened with sorrow.
“You have to get out there,” he told her. “We’ll be okay. I promise.” The words rang with conviction, and she remembered that she’d promised to give him no less.
She whirled and slipped through the curtains. Most of the Deimons had worn short sleeves, bless them. Or bless LA’s perfect weather. Determination firmed her jaw and made every step decisive. With a few strides, she was behind her first target.
Step one of the plan had been difficult because of her fear and resistance, but not this time. The faster and easier this process went, the better it would be for everyone. For Gage.
She shook back the soft, heavy robe from her hand and swept down the back row, brushing against the Deimons in the first half of the row so quickly they didn’t even notice. Kudos to Darren for his riveting speech. One, two, three-four-five. The flux snapped into Marley and solidified.
She’d reached the end of the row. No one had shouted yet, but a couple of gasps and mutters reached her ears. She turned the corner, quickening her step. The mutters got louder, but the ones in the back couldn’t see her, so the ones next to her weren’t prepared. A heavy oiliness slithered into her belly, making it harder for her to reach out, but she forced herself to keep going. Only three on this side.
Three more stood in front, with one in reach in the row behind. Eyes fell on her, shocked expressions, anger. Now came the shouts.
“Null!”
“She’s here!”
“Traaaap!” came a high-pitched shriek as pandemonium struck.
Marley lunged for one young kid staring at her with his mouth in an O, frozen. Nine. Two of Darren’s guys moved in, bumping the three in front together. Marley slapped her hands against two elbows and a jaw. Twelve.
But that still left nearly half of the group to go, and no one stood still anymore. She whipped off her robe, now more an impediment than an aid. The Deimons closest to her tried to escape, but ran right into Darren’s guard. Marley had to stick her hand down the shirt of the first, one of the few who’d worn long sleeves and was smart enough to pull his hands up into them.
She got him, but oh, it hurt. The wriggling sensation had barbs now, digging in while it tried to get to the main mass inside her. She took a deep breath to combat the sting, but a cloud of aftershave choked her. She couldn’t breathe. It, too, turned solid, dragged her lungs down, crushing her heart.
No. She staggered and forced the illusion away. Everything was chaos now. Ten left. Some had run, both the nulled and the fluxed. Marley struggled to focus, to pinpoint who she still needed to get. A roar thundered in her ears, and she spun just in time to block a punch with her forearm. The blow reverberated through her bones, a shock but the only pain on the surface. This guy was already nullified. That was why he’d dared come after her. Marley didn’t have time for him. She swept her left foot behind his ankle and jerked his leg out from under him, moving on before he’d even hit the ground.
“Over here!” Vanrose shouted, gripping a struggling weenie by his collar. Marley shoved between two nulls and touched the kid’s face. He collapsed, crying, and Vanrose let him go.
Some of the Deimons had rallied now, blocking Marley’s way to the interior of the group, where six of the nine remaining huddled. She closed her eyes for a second. The other three were scattered. She’d have to rely on the locked gates and her allies to catch them. This batch was right in front of her.
The three biggest Deimons bared their teeth at her, fists clenched and muscles bulging. These were some of the first she’d touched, so they, too, had nothing left to lose. She had a brief flash of admiration for their loyalty, and then she stepped forward.
A couple of even bigger bodies cut in front of her. She had to stop so quickly to avoid hitting them that her toes crunched into the front of her boots. Sam flung one guy out of his way, while Nick cheered and landed a right hook on another. Marley dashed through the gap. A hand scrabbled at her arm. She twisted away and reached out.
Touch. Touch. Touch.
Bodies surged against her, overbalanced, and they all collapsed in a slow-motion pile. Limbs and tiny alligator logos on polo shirts blurred. Marley grit her teeth and strained her body, stretching, reaching. Someone had lost a shoe, and his smelly, socked heel caught her on the jaw. An elbow dug into her ribs. But one by one, her fingertips stroked skin, and the remaining faint signatures blinked out.
Three left. She wasn’t sure where they were. The pile around her surged and grabbed. Her damaged awareness turned into a sea of writhing snakes, biting her, wrapping around her. No. Not real. She rolled to her back, still on top, but couldn’t get to her feet. Someone’s hip banged against the back of her head, and she sank into a gap.
“Sam!” she yelled. Seconds later he had her by the wrist and hauled her up.
“Thanks,” she said, breathless. She blinked through the now-familiar green haze. “Where are the rest?”
“Over here.” But he didn’t just point the way, he hauled her up by the waist and freaking carried her to where Gage and Riley stood over three disheveled boys. They slumped on the ground, each with one wrist zip tied to the curtain frame.
“Nice,” she approved. “Sorry, guys.” She reached down to nullify them.
“Wait!” One of the young men flung up a hand but then recoiled so fast his head smacked the post behind him. “You don’t want to do this.”
Marley blinked at him through the green film over her vision. Every word he said echoed in he
r ears. She could hear some kind of bird of prey up in the rafters and the scrape of feet outside on the pavement. Every part of her body felt simultaneously heavy and strong enough to handle the weight. So no, she didn’t want to do this. But she was almost done. Three more, and it was over.
“Why not?” she asked anyway.
“It’s not yours to take. It’s not fair for you to have all the power.”
“Wrong answer.” She bit back a cry when his nullification burned its way into her body and did the other two at the same time, just to get it over with.
Nick caught her when she would have sunk to the ground next to the despondent Deimons. “Not yet,” he murmured. “Hold on.” He held her up and shifted to look out across the field.
“We did it,” she said, stupidly. Because that was just phase two. “They’re all nullified.”
“You did it.” Gage handed Nick something wet and cold that he pressed to the back of Marley’s neck. “You were amazing.”
Amazingly tired. She leaned against Nick, wishing he were Gage.
“Status?” Gage’s voice rumbled into Marley’s body, even at a distance. She shifted to take her weight off Nick. The green film, visible against the back of her eyelids, was fading.
“Pettle and his guys are moving them out.”
The plan was to get them all out of there before Lahr arrived. Marley had something to say about that, but her mouth was glued together. She sank away from awareness.
Until it smacked her so hard she gasped, her body stiffening her upright, away from Nick. She twisted to face the entrance to the field but couldn’t see it through the curtained frames. “No. Oh, no no no no.”
“What?” Gage called behind her, sounding frightened.
But Marley was already halfway across the space, trailing the last few nulls being nudged out by Darren and two others. She reached for the barrier in front of her, but she never made contact. A wail echoed through the stadium, accompanied by a wave of energy that blew the makeshift walls across the grass. And Marley with them.
She flew through the air, stars spinning, and landed hard on her back. She screamed when a metal bar came down on her right arm, pinning it to the earth before tumbling away behind her.
Gage. She had to find him—and Sam and Riley and Nick. They’d been close, too close to the blast. She forced her head up off the turf, using her abs to pull herself up to sit because she couldn’t use her numb, limp arm. She didn’t see Gage or her friends anywhere.
But she did see Cressida Lahr. The goddess stood twenty yards away, her hair waving wildly behind her. Her entourage stood along the sideline. Brad and Tony on the outside, Christopher and Aiden on either side of Cressida. They stood with their hands up, palms outward, feet braced. And they shimmered. A heat illusion, but it was tinged with yellow and practically crackling with energy. Protected by the goddess.
But that wasn’t all. They weren’t clean anymore. Flux penetrated so deeply into them that Marley could no longer read their Numina signatures. She’d never seen that much stolen power in anyone, even Anson. Cressida had fluxed them and turned them into weapons.
And they were aimed at the people Marley loved.
Chapter Eighteen
Rendering of value to zero.
—Definition of nullification
M
arley’s fatigue disappeared. Any desire to panic faded. She stopped being aware of the pain in her body and called upon every ounce of control she had to rise slowly, but without giving away any of her deficiencies.
She strode forward, glad she’d worn the boots that gave her a couple of inches and made her feel powerful. Illusions—or delusions—could work in her favor as well as against her. Hands loose and open at her sides, she squared off with Cressida with less than ten yards between them. Christopher and Tony were on Marley’s left, and Aiden and Brad on her right. She detected the same level of flux in all of them, as if the goddess had used a measuring cup to dole it out. A house-sized measuring cup.
The guys didn’t seem to be suffering any ill effects from that much illicit energy. In fact, they practically glowed with good health and exhilaration. They stood strong and sure, albeit in ridiculous superhero poses that betrayed their immaturity and video-game habits. If she were facing them on her own, without her ability, she’d be scared, but they couldn’t attack her directly. She’d just nullify them.
Which meant they’d attack her friends. Yeah, that was scarier.
Movement flickered in Marley’s peripheral vision. Wouldn’t it be great if Nick darted Cressida now, and in the confusion, she was able to nullify everyone without a fight?
But everything was too open. He’d never get the dart prepared without someone spotting him and interfering.
“Hello, Cress,” she said.
The goddess narrowed her eyes at Marley. Her mouth tilted in a very unnatural smile. “I thought you were smart.”
“Never said that.”
“I thought you’d have some sense of self-preservation.”
Marley laughed. “I’m far too dysfunctional.”
The goddess sank back on her heels, her hair settling, and tilted her head a bit. “Okay. I really thought you’d be too scared to be this stupid. Don’t you understand what you’re up against?”
Hell, yeah, she understood. The birds of prey she’d heard had turned into six-foot smoky dragons perched on the rails in front of the stadium seats. Rage bubbled inside her, but unreal, detached from the part of her locked on Gage’s location and the shredded remains of her sanity.
“Of course I do. You’re the most powerful goddess on earth, and now you’ve made these guys the most powerful Numina.” Letting them get overconfident couldn’t hurt. “We don’t want to fight you, but we have to protect people who are being hurt or who could be hurt.”
The outside gate clanged—probably Darren getting the last of the kids out—and Cressida seemed to swell with renewed anger at the sound. “You’ve taken every receptacle, deliberately and maliciously. You’ve doomed me!”
“Not every one,” Marley contradicted. “We’re missing…” She turned to look over her shoulder. “How many didn’t come tonight, Sam?” She was relieved to see him standing alone a distance away. He didn’t look hurt, but he did look pissed.
“Six that we know of,” he answered. He stood like a gunslinger poised to whip out his revolver, but she knew he didn’t have a gun. He did, apparently, have a plan. Always did.
She craned her neck a little farther and spotted Riley to Sam’s right. A thin trickle of blood had traced its way along her hairline and in front of her ear. No wonder Sam was pissed.
Marley faced front again. She wanted to look over her other shoulder, confirm that Nick and Gage were ranged out on her right side, but putting Cressida in her blind spot again would be a bad idea. She could assume Nick was where he was supposed to be, and Gage was like a beacon in her awareness. Not just the Numina part of him, or the boost he’d gotten from Riley, but the man who’d become everything to her.
“Six that we know of,” Marley repeated. “I’m sure you have other guys in other places, but we did what we could.”
“It’s not just them, and you know it. You broke my most important partnerships.”
She had to be referring to Darren and the others. “They chose to be nullified.” Marley clenched and stretched her right hand. The numbness burst into pins and needles all the way up to her shoulder. She liked the pain—it was real. And now she wasn’t giving any more attention to things that weren’t.
“You were killing them,” she said. “They didn’t think the prize was worth it.”
“Liar!” Cressida made a sharp movement, and Brad swung into action. He wound up like a baseball player and whipped a ball of energy at Marley. She turned into it, arms out to her sides, chest up, and laughed when it struck and disappeared. She had to laugh to hide the pain, this time so searing she almost looked down to see how big the hole was. But she refused to let it show.
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“Keep it coming,” she taunted the disgruntled-looking lackey. But he didn’t try for her again. He ripped an aluminum bench off the concrete where it was bolted to the ground behind him and flung it across the field.
Marley gasped, spinning to watch the bench flip toward Nick, helpless to stop it. But it halted in midair and crashed to the ground, folded in half.
“Gotta do better than that,” Riley said with a grin.
And the battle was on.
Cressida’s four took off across the dry grass, each aimed at one of Marley’s allies. Marley chomped down her scream, knowing it would do no good, just like she could do no good. She circled to Cressida’s side so she could keep both the goddess and the action in view but also try for an opportunity to use the sedative. Cressida didn’t make a move on her, just folded her arms and watched, smiling.
Marley wasn’t worried about Riley, who had comparable power and a lot more experience using it than the Numina did. Sure enough, she sent Christopher flying up into the stands. The seats clattered when he fell against them, leaving her free to defend her husband, who was doing surprisingly okay on his own. He’d ducked and dodged most of the energy sent his way, and what did hit him didn’t appear to have done much damage.
Tony, the fool, kept on coming. Sam met him partway and knocked him out with a thunderous punch. Marley couldn’t help a surge of pride. She could nullify Tony while he was down, but she’d barely flinched in that direction when Cressida’s hand closed around her wrist, long nails digging into the tender flesh on the underside.
“Leave him.” She pointed her chin to the other side. “This one’s interesting.”
Brad was faring better than Tony had as he and Nick slugged away at each other. Brad had to be putting flux behind his punches, but Nick shook them off while every one he landed sent Brad staggering.
What Cressida was talking about, though, was Aiden and Gage. Aiden approached his brother with bravado, but even with the other fighting going on, Marley could hear him cracking his knuckles. Gage stood tall and steady, the anguish in his eyes obvious.
Sunroper (Goddesses Rising) Page 29
