“This doesn’t seem to be going so well for you,” Owens said, finishing the job of rolling him off my legs. “You got a plan or something?”

  Now I sat up. And it hurt, a lot. “Kill, basically. That’s my plan. Kill and don’t be killed.” I eyed the three corpses in front of me. “So far it’s going really well.”

  Owens’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t say anything, just offered me a hand. I took it, and with her aid, I managed to get to my feet without screaming. That last part was actually more impressive than getting to my feet.

  I seemed to go out for a second, but regained consciousness on my feet, leaning against a wall, cradling my side. It felt like my ribs had been replaced with dynamite that had been lit and blown. My breathing was coming very unsteadily. “Okay,” I said as I swam through the haze of the world around me, “I think we need to move now.”

  “Can you … actually move?” Owens asked.

  I put one foot in front of the other, leaning against the wall. “Survey says … yes.” I did it again. It hurt no less, but I succeeded.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Owens asked, walking beside me, eyeing me with—no shit—great concern.

  “Still breathing,” I said, and it got easier the next step. Still hurt like hell, but that was normal. “They’re not.” I nodded at the corpses behind us. Another step. This time I got off the wall. I was hunched over, but I stood under my own power. Still hurt like hell. “That’s another win for me.”

  “You chalk up many more wins like this and I’m not sure you’re going to be able to declare any kind of victory this day,” Owens said. She was walking beside me, one hand at the ready to catch me. Probably a smart move.

  “Thanks, Pyrrhus,” I said, and took another step. Then another. I’d make it. I knew I would. “But I’m not the one you should worry about.”

  “I think there’s room enough to worry about you and myself,” Owens said, walking alongside. Very slowly. We made our way down the hall. “Because it doesn’t seem like we’re going anywhere very fast.”

  She was right about that, but I didn’t care.

  I was still going, in spite of the best efforts of … damned near everyone.

  I had a destiny in front of me.

  And I wasn’t going to let anyone keep me from it.

  44.

  Reed

  I let that tornado loose on the factory floor, and it roared against the corrugated metal walls, shaking them through into the hallways where I floated a few inches off the floor. The steel rattled, machinery inside broke loose and swirled within the vortex, and I—

  I kinda laughed.

  “Don’t get so caught up you forget the purpose here,” Augustus said, stomping forward, buried in his rock armor. He stood over ten feet tall now, looked like something straight out of a fantasy movie, and busted through the doors into the factory where my tornado raged. He didn’t even lose a step when the winds hit him—he was anchored solidly by weight. Probably ten tons of it, which he moved with ease, as fluid as if it were skin, but so strong that any of the lightning turned loose on his brother would just ground out on him.

  “Same to you,” I said, swirling in behind him. I figured I’d use him as my shield, let him soak up any voltage that came my way. If it was powerful enough to knock out Jamal, who could control lightning, I wasn’t sanguine about my chances.

  The factory was a swirling maelstrom. I’d done a pretty decent job of turning it into a tornado from hell, old machinery flying around within, enough debris sweeping through the air to make pretty much anyone uncomfortable. A piece of metal went shooting by at a couple hundred miles an hour, just a blur and gone, and I was suddenly thankful I’d automatically made a slipstream around myself.

  “You see ’em anywhere?” Augustus shouted over the roar. He’d turned around in his armor, opening a little face hole to speak to me. Probably closed up the one on the front of his armor. Hopefully.

  I tried to reach out with the winds, feel the factory and all within it … sense for anything human sized flying around in my tornado. “No. But …”

  There were some large pieces of manufacturing gear, factory lines that were just too big for my winds to move them. They rattled, they shook, components of them flew off and joined the grinder I was creating within this place. The ceiling tiles were even shaking, though my winds stopped abruptly a few feet below them. I wasn’t looking to tear the roof off the place after all.

  One of the old factory lines stood in the middle of the room, an immense machine anchored to the ground. I could see faint sparkling blue flickering off the wall behind it.

  Pointing, I said, “Over there, I think.”

  Augustus’s face disappeared, stone replacing it. I heard him shout over the winds. “On it!”

  His golem armor stepped right over the machinery and caught a splash of lightning that sent him stumbling back a step. Another zapped through his stone arm, causing two of the rocks that joined at the hand to blacken and drop off as their molecular structure changed to the point they were no longer in Augustus’s wheelhouse of control.

  “Whoa!” he said, summoning up more rock from the factory floor, ripping pits in it and throwing up a shield in front of him. It was soaking up voltage and peeling apart in carbon, black drifts that were hurled away by the winds as fast as he could summon up more.

  I blasted myself up toward the ceiling, trying to get over the machine, trying to get the drop on our quarry … or quarries. As I came over the machine, I saw him—definitely a him, singular, short, fair haired, one hand crackling as he held to the machinery, like he was using his electrical powers to magnetize himself to it and keep from flying off in the wind.

  Now that I saw him, I could feel my winds rushing around him, like a hand.

  And I could put a little more pressure on him.

  I turned the space around him into a wind tunnel, switching off the tornado in the rest of the factory, because there was no point. No one else was here, which meant this dipshit was our only priority.

  He couldn’t have known the focus had switched entirely to him; he was still in a whirling vortex of hell, just cranked up a notch as I brought in some of that debris that had been swirling throughout the factory, focusing it on him. If I could deliver a nice blunt force trauma to the skull—but not too hard—maybe I could knock him out and keep him from burning Augustus—who was running out of fresh dirt to draw on—to nothing.

  I brought a piece of corrugated metal around, ready to slam him. I needed to time this just right if I wanted to—

  “Would you kindly,” came a voice, soft, female, lilting—Irish, “stop fighting?”

  I stopped. Augustus stopped.

  The lightning stopped.

  The factory went quiet.

  I drifted to the ground. Augustus’s armor fell to a rocky pile.

  Our enemy … hit his knees.

  And stayed there.

  Eilish came striding in, around the machine, and found us all standing there, in a hash, still. “Sorry, boss,” she said, “you can move. You too, Augustus.”

  “I wanna be ‘boss,’” Augustus said, brushing dust off his shoulders.

  “I was just about to get this guy,” I said, getting back to my feet. I’d landed a little rough after Eilish’s command had hit me.

  Our strawberry blonde savior just smiled as she walked up to the Custis. “What’s your name, lad?”

  He struggled a little, blinking, face contorting, as though he were in pain. But he did answer. “Andrew—Andy.”

  Eilish beamed at him. “And would you kindly … answer any questions we’ve got for you?”

  He seemed to struggle with that … but only for a moment.

  “Yes,” he said at last.

  Eilish just smiled at me. “Good news … we got this guy.”

  45.

  Sienna

  “What the hell are you planning to do the next time we run into a prisoner?” Owens asked as I dragged myself along the corridor. The intersection connecting the exit with the cell block was ahead, and, thankfully, clear. “Fall onto them and hope it knocks them out?”

  “Maybe I’ll throw you at them,” I said, hobbling. I hadn’t used the wall for support but maybe every ten steps or so. Which was super full of win for me. “And keep your baton for myself.”

  “You tilt over any farther, you’ll need it as a cane.”

  “Hah,” I said, trying to flex my right hand and failing. Again. At least it was numb. “I’m not that short.” But I was pretty hunched over. All my ribs hurt. All of them. Front and back.

  The corridor crossroads loomed. All was pretty silent considering somewhere off to our right, now locked beyond heavy doors, were a bunch of guards with guns. And to our left, beyond another set of similarly heavy doors, were a bunch of prisoners with … uh … hostages. Thanks to me, I guess.

  “This isn’t entirely your doing,” Owens said, like she was reading my mind. I gave her a suspicious look. “That’s why you’re doing this, right? You feel like it’s your fault. It’s not. The tensions here? The way Bletchely runs this place? It’s been building for a while. Every guard knew it was going to blow sooner or later.” She shook her head. “Figures you’d be the spark to light it up, though.”

  “Yep, I lit it up. Lit it AF up.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite how you use ‘AF.’”

  “Listen, I kill people, which means using words however I damned well please is kinda the least of my sins,” I said. The intersection was only ten feet or so away, cast in the red glow of the emergency alert lighting.

  “Hey, I ain’t grammar Nazi-ing you, just—” Owens jumped back as I approached the intersection. “Whoa—hey—”

  But she was too late and I was too slow. Something lurched around the corner.

  Something huge. Floor to ceiling huge. Wall to wall huge.

  Gert huge.

  She snatched me up in a massive hand, stretching it around me as she grew, straining against the ceiling, bending double to accommodate her increased size. “Lookie what we have here!” Gert squealed with surprised glee as she shook me, causing my ribs to scream—screammmmmmm—in pain.

  Damn.

  I was boned.

  46.

  “Get back,” I said, waving Owens away.

  “Yeah, get back, guard girl,” Gert said, voice all husky as she squeezed and shook me.

  A choke of bile rose in my throat from Gert’s squeeze. I ached all up and down my flank, my ribs creaking under the enormous pile of living crap smashing them. Gert shrank slightly, in order to better fit in the space allotted, and raised up another arm as she pulled me close against her still-massive frame, going from the size of a dragon to the size of a big bear, and putting me in a hug as she did so.

  I did not feel loved in this hug.

  “It’s your brother’s fault I’m here,” Gert said, breathing a disgusting stink past my ear and into my nose.

  “Pretty sure it’s your fault for committing crimes,” I said, grunting through the pain. The pressure of her arms squeezing against mine—well they were the only thing keeping my ribs from popping completely. “If you could have just avoided those felonies, you wouldn’t be here. I mean, I can sympathize with impulse control and violence issues—look at me, killing all your friends—”

  She upped the squeeze quotient, and I shut up my smartassery not because I wanted to, but because my vision swam and I was in sudden danger of blacking out. My head felt like it was going to explode from the sudden wave of pressure on my head.

  Gert let off after a moment, and I sucked in a breath. “I’m just saying … killing … is kinda what I do … wherever I go …” I said. She brought her gargantuan head up next to mine, and I looked into her dark eyes, practically glowing red thanks to the emergency lighting. “I’m Death.”

  She snorted. “Not today, you’re not. Today … you’re going to meet death.”

  And she started squeezing again, her hands ginormous and clamped against my forearms.

  The pain was immense, my blood pressure rising in my face to the point where I felt like every vein was going to explode, every capillary blast out. My lungs burned, my head pounded, my skin felt like it was on fire, especially around my forearms—

  Oh.

  “Hey … Gert,” I managed to squeak out, “guess … what … we say … to Death?”

  She cocked her head at me, looking over my shoulder, still squeezing me in a crushing hug. “… What?”

  She gave me just enough room to take a breath, and I braced as best I could. This was going to hurt. A lot.

  “Not … today,” I said. Had it really been eight hours since I’d been in the infirmary last? Too long.

  I pushed back against Gert’s grip, shoving against her hold on me.

  My powers had returned.

  And … they did not … do me any good. I failed to free myself, and Gert snapped her arms tighter around me.

  A fresh wave of agony burned through my chest and back. I spasmed, this time voluntarily, letting out what was a probably a pretty loud caterwaul (sounds better than scream, but I totally screamed). Trying to use muscles that were attached to bones that were broken? Bad idea.

  “Hahaha, yes, today,” Gert said. “Didn’t realize you were quoting Game of Thrones to me. Should have caught that. You up on the latest season?”

  I looked at her out of the corner of my eye as she squeezed me to death. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t answer.

  “Don’t do this,” Owens. “Gert … don’t do this.”

  “Why wouldn’t I do this?” Gert asked. “You think I’m ever getting out of here? What are you and your little warden gonna do if I crush her like a bug? They’ll probably pin a medal on me for it. We all know what she is—what she’s done.”

  Except … I didn’t do those things. A surge of pain drove that thought out as quickly as it came.

  “… think it matters?” Gert was asking Owens. “Nothing we do once we’re in here matters. Why would I act different? Some kind of special treatment? Pffffft. What a joke. There’s no reward for being good ’cept you get to keep your powers and fight off other people who ain’t so good. Well, forgive me for not giving a shit. I’m going to be in here forever. Let ’em kill me. I should have had her brother kill me instead of take me in. That’d have been more merciful than this—ahhhhhh!”

  She finally figured out my succubus powers were working on her bare skin and dropped me. I wanted to strike back, hit her hard in the gut and make her pay for being such an ass to me this whole time, but unfortunately I was a little busy—uh … curling up into the fetal position.

  Man, I missed Wolfe’s healing.

  I managed to get my brain back around, and there was Gert, looming over me like the shadow of a hearse. “Looks like someone missed an injection—”

  I lashed out with a kick and clipped her in the knee. “Looks like someone’s missing a knee,” I said as I burst through and sent her kneecap out the back of her leg.

  Gert let out a scream and came tumbling down on me. It hurt about as much as you’d expect, having three or four hundred pounds of swole Hercules crashing down on your broken ribs and back and probably other parts that weren’t broken before but now were.

  I screamed and bench pressed her off of me, aggravating every single busted rib in the process but also hurling her into the ceiling. She made a thud, and then came right back down—on me.

  I screamed again. Then I kneed her so hard she flew over my head and down the hall, missing Owens by about an inch.

  “You okay, Nealon?” Owens said, creeping around to me.

  “I’m pretty damned far from okay,” I managed to croak out. I pushed on my ribs, experimentally. They sounded like Rice Krispies when the milk hits them. One of them must have popped back into place, because the pain in that area went from extremely agonizing to merely I want to die, now, please, zomg level.

  “Need a hand up?” Owens asked.

  “It would be better for your health … not to touch me now,” I said, managing to roll over.

  “It would have been better for my health to take a job at an infectious disease ward during an ebola outbreak,” Owens said, grasping me at the arm, where my jumpsuit safely protected her from skin to skin contact, “but here I am, in a damned supervillain prison riot …”

  “Yeah, you should really look into a better career path … with less danger,” I said. “Have you examined the exciting field of lion taming?”

  “I could do never be so cruel to those beautiful animals.”

  “They’re probably not so beautiful from inside the mouth,” I said as she got me upright. Gert was getting up about twenty feet down the hall, still bear-sized, braced against the wall, her leg completely useless where I’d kicked her knee backwards. Her face was dark, angry, and I could tell she was not in the greatest of spirits.

  A fresh wave of pain ran through me as I hit an untenable angle. I made a little squeak; I couldn’t even stand upright anymore.

  “Today,” Gert said, witnessing my pain, my weakness, and taking up a three-point stance like a football player as she rose, swelling, too tall to fit in the hallway upright, and leaning because she was standing on one leg. “Death is definitely coming for you, Nealon … today.”

  47.

  Reed

  “Let’s talk.”

  I stood in the guts of the ruined factory, machinery strewn all around me, looking at our fair-haired prisoner.

  Augustus loomed behind him, looking like he was ready to throw a punch that would wreck our captive. He was throwing the occasional worried glance at his brother, who was sitting down by the double doors back to the entry hall, cradling his head. He seemed to be suffering from a hell of a headache. Angel was sitting next to him, both hands bandaged by Greg, who’d pulled something that looked like a portable hospital kit from beneath a fingernail.

 

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