Soulless

The Girl in the Box, Book Three

Robert J. Crane

Chapter 1

Someone Else

I wondered how many cops were within a hundred miles of me as I slammed the convenience store clerk’s head into the counter. It made a satisfying thump and rebounded as he spiraled to the ground, his head hitting the shelf behind him before it made contact with the tile floor. He didn’t move, which was fortunate more for his sake than mine, as I took the bills out of the register and stuffed them in a plastic bag. I fiddled around behind the counter for a minute, tidying up loose ends, then broke his cell phone and the landline, smashing the plastic into pieces. It’d be a long walk to the next one.

The smell of day-old hot dogs wafted around me as I walked past trinkets and tourist shirts that proclaimed See South Dakota! The slow hum of the air conditioner working overtime to keep the building cool in the prairie summer heat thrummed around me. I ripped open a candy bar and took a bite, savoring the sweet taste of the caramel and chocolate mingled with the salt from the peanuts. It was the first thing I’d eaten since I made a stop outside Gillette, Wyoming a few hours after sundown. I wondered if the clerk at that store had woken up yet. Probably. He wouldn’t remember anything. Just like this one.

I walked to the back of the store and paused when I opened the cooler to grab a drink. The bitter chill of the freezer air overpowered the air conditioning, sending goosebumps up and down my arms. I threw three bottles of soda on top of the piddling amount of money I’d taken from the till; I’d thought it would be more. I considered trying to wake up the attendant to get him to open the safe but decided he’d had enough excitement for one night.

I stepped up to the door that led to the space behind the freezers. Locked. I rolled my eyes and kicked, sending it off its hinges and into the room. It wedged in the back wall, sticking out as though it was a tombstone buried in the brick. The symbolism was obvious, at least to me. I reached over and ejected the DVD that was recording from the camera feeds all over the station, put it into my plastic bag and pondered the safe in the corner. Wasn’t worth the time. I only needed petty cash for this trip and it was better to remain as off the radar as I could. Not that robbing convenience stores was going to keep me off the radar, but let’s face it: it was a means to an end, not an end itself.

And the end was ahead. Far, far ahead.

Everything on the shelves looked good as I wandered back out into the store, but I didn’t need much. I threw a couple packages of chips into the bag and three boxes of white powdered donuts. Way better than the chocolate ones. I took one last look around and decided to try one of the hot dogs. Sure, they looked old, but I’d been eating food that came in a plastic wrapper since I left Casper, Wyoming yesterday. And before that, other canned and plasticized food. Laying low wasn’t pleasant, but living off gas station food wasn’t much better.

After I finished fixing my hot dog, I took a bite and stepped outside, the flavor of the ketchup and mustard masking the chewy, rubbery consistency of the meat. The convenience store was right off Interstate 90. The nearest town, Draper, South Dakota, was a few miles away and probably deader than a prairie dog on the freeway by this time of night.

I felt the hot summer air of the planes, my little bag in one hand, and a half eaten hotdog in the other, as I walked back to my car, an older model Honda. I’d stolen it before I left Casper, but I acquired some new license plates in Rapid City so I wasn’t real worried about the cops taking an interest in me. By the time the sun came up tomorrow I’d be in southern Minnesota. I could melt away onto the back roads, pick up some new tags, maybe even a new car. This one smelled like the previous owner had a problem with Mary Jane. Actually, not so much a problem as a deeply troubling relationship.

I watched another car pull into the parking space just down from me. I caught sight of the lights mounted on the roof and realized my earlier question about cops was answered: there was one here, now. The lights weren’t on, no siren was blaring and once the officer parked his car he sat there, looking at a clipboard in his lap. I sighed; the minute he walked inside he’d discover what had happened and I’d have the cops after me. I needed time.

I walked to his window and rapped on the glass with my knuckle. He made a motion for me to step back, which I did, and he opened the door. Tall, heavily built, and in his early forties, he clicked on his big, heavy flashlight before he started to speak. “Is there a problem—”

He didn’t have a chance to see it coming. It wasn’t his fault; he followed procedure flawlessly, but I was possessed of strength and speed far beyond a normal person. His hand had reached his holster when mine broke his nose. I brought his head to my knee, giving him something else unpleasant to deal with when he woke up. He hit the ground and I stooped over him. After I was done, I grabbed his pistol, his pepper spray and taser. I smashed his cell phone to pieces, broke his radio, then picked him up and stuffed him back in his car. He’d live, but suffer for the inconvenience he’d placed on me by driving up at this particular moment.

I got back in the Honda and caught another whiff of the reefer that permeated the seats, the upholstery, the dashboard, everything. I looked at the map sitting on my passenger seat and traced my finger along the line I’d drawn to my destination. From the money I stole this time, I might actually be able to pay at the next convenience store. That’d throw ‘em off the trail.

I stepped on the accelerator and took off, back to the freeway, back to the long ride. I was over five hundred miles from where I was going and it’d take me at least a couple more days to get there. But it’d be worth it; I’d show them all. I let a little smile of triumph float onto my face as I broke open the pack of donuts and pulled out the first powdered. I took a bite then spit it out the broken window.

Stale. I felt a flash of rage and had a fantasy about killing the convenience store clerk instead of letting him live. I threw the rest of the package out as I hit seventy, not a car on the road ahead of me. This time…this time they couldn’t stop me.

Chapter 2

Sienna Nealon

My heart thudded in my ears as I ran, the green of the woods surrounding me. My breath caught in my throat; I was gasping from the exertion of running, and that wasn’t easy for me. I’m a metahuman, with powers that include far more strength, speed and agility than humans. But apparently I needed more cardio in my workout.

I heard the footsteps behind me, pounding against the hard ground. I stopped, pressing my back against a tree. Scott Byerly ran past and did the same while Kat Forrest trailed a little behind him.

“Thanks for slowing down,” Kat said, huffing as she came to a stop. She was taller than me, with long blond hair and green eyes. Her face was usually tanned but it was red now, spots of color standing out on her cheeks. She wore a simple T-shirt and gym shorts which seemed far too short, and socks and tennis shoes far too low for my tastes. Her long, smooth, tanned legs almost blended in with the backdrop of old pine needles on the forest floor. “Thought you were gonna leave me behind.”

I grunted. It wasn’t for lack of trying; we were on the run for a reason, and I had no intention of getting caught because Kat couldn’t keep pace.

“Any sign of him?” Scott didn’t bother to complain. He was tall, with short dark hair and a nose that was a little rounded. Kinda good-looking. Like me, his eyes were scanning through the trees around us, watching for the unseen threat that was somewhere out there. His eyes halted for a second on Kat’s legs, causing me to snort, then they kept going. He wasn’t breathing as hard as she was, but close.

“Not that I can see.” I pushed off the tree, trying to steady myself. We had been running for over an hour before this, full tilt. I was tired; my legs hurt, my lungs hurt, and I was cranky. “But the way the three of us are gasping for air, a tractor trailer could sneak up on us and we wouldn’t know it until we felt the treads on our backs.”

“I’m exhausted.” Kat stood up straight and her hair hung in strings over her shoulders as she joined us in looking around. “I’m in no condition for a fight; I’m not sure they’re paying me enough for this.”

Scott shot her a half-smile. “You don’t think it’s worth it to be the next generation of M-Squad recruits?”

“Not sure I wanna be an M-Squad anything,” Kat said under her breath.

I had been offered a position as a trainee with the Directorate, an organization that helps track and police metahumans – metas – like me. They hoped to position me to help their agents in hunting down dangerous metas. Shortly after I’d gotten an offer, so had Scott and Kat. Their offers might have had something to do with the fact that the three of us almost single-handedly stopped a very dangerous meta who had threatened to blow up Minneapolis. I thought it was a signal that the Directorate was looking to expand their reach because of some growing threats.

“So are we gonna keep moving or wh—” Kat got cut off mid-sentence as something hit her from behind. I saw a flash of white fur, heard the WHUMP! as she went down, her hair a solid streak of blond. I was already in motion. My foot lashed out at the ball of white as she hit the ground, her shriek drowned out and muffled. I missed clean; the creature that attacked her rolled through and landed on all fours, ready to strike. I was off balance and it was impossibly fast. I stared at it, the red eyes of a wolf glaring back at me as I tried to recapture my footing.

It was long, bigger than the dogs I had seen, and the fur was stark white, the faintest reminder of the last winter, when snow blanketed the ground in the same shade. I saw it tense, watched it shift weight from its hind legs to its front as it moved to pounce again. I had no easy defense; my leg was almost down when it left the ground and I flinched, already anticipating the pain as I saw it leap, mouth open and focused on my neck.

A solid wall of water hit the animal, causing it to yelp and hurtle sideways, knocked off course by the pressure of the blast. It slammed into a tree trunk and I lunged, foot extended in a running jump sidekick. I aimed at the neck, hoping to put the beast out of the fight. When I was a foot away from my target the hair changed color, shifting in a ripple down the fur like the summer wind had stirred it, and as it went brown the neck grew wider and longer and the shape of the creature began to change.

It stood on its hind legs, leaving all fours behind as its limbs grew longer, paws sprouting long claws. My foot hit it behind the shoulder and I heard bones cracking; a roar came from the mouth of what was now a bear. The brown mass twisted and batted at me with a paw and I dived, trying to avoid the swipe. I felt one claw hit me, raking behind my ear and drawing blood.

“Let’s coordinate our attack,” Scott said from my left, loosing a stream of water that missed the bear wide.

I ignored him as I rolled to my feet, already in a defensive stance. The bear reared up on its hind legs, standing an easy four or five feet taller than me. I glared at it, my hands raised, ready to try and counter whatever it tried. “You got blood in my hair.”

The bear cocked its head at me, distracted, for just a second. Long enough for the blast of water to knock it over again, taking it off its hind legs and down to all fours.

“I had him!” I said. A hot flush of irritation ran through me as I watched the bear stagger from the stream.

Scott had both hands out, the air around him shimmering as he drained the humidity from it. It was Minnesota in July; he had plenty to work with. A jet of liquid shot from his fingertips in a pressurized burst, splattering against the brown fur and driving the bear back. I’d been on the receiving end of it before; he could make it hurt, if he wanted to. “Sorry, I thought we were supposed to work as a team.”

I ignored his jab and pounced while the bear was distracted, jumping on its back. I didn’t pull my punches, and I landed three of them in rapid succession behind the ears. If it’d been a human, it would have been dead, I think. The bear, with its thicker skull, started to wobble and tried to bring up a paw to bat me off. I slid lower and wrapped an arm around its throat, locking it in tight while I hit it thrice more. It collapsed under my weight and fell to the ground. I hit it again and watched the tongue fall out of its mouth, unrolling on the ground as it went limp in my grasp.

“Is it over?” Kat brushed herself off as she got to her knees. “Can I get up now?”

I stared at the bear underneath me. “I don’t think s—” I stopped when I heard a whizzing noise; something was coming toward us, something fast. I felt something brush past me and threw myself down. Something soft grazed my cheek and pulled at my arm as it passed. I caught a glimpse of Scott out of the corner of my eye; he went down hard, something pulling him off his feet, a net made of beams of light, shining and intertwined. It pinned him to the ground, the energy forcing his hands and arms down, mashing his face as it cut into him. Kat was similarly pinned to a tree in a sitting position; I could see her feet sticking out the bottom of the net as she hung there, limp, a foot off the ground.

“You think it’s over?” A blond woman hovered in the clearing above me, her outfit a kind of shameless riff on things I’d seen people wear when riding bicycles, minus the helmet. Her hand extended, pointing at me, and I lunged as I felt another net fly past me, disturbing my hair as it missed, passing down my back. It stretched in a four foot square, holding tight to the earth like a web made of light.

My shoulder hit the ground, little pieces of rock pushing up into my clothes and skin as I rolled back to my feet. I ran, not bothering to look back as I made for the cover of the forest. I heard a laugh from behind me, heard the air move around her as she pursued me. I dodged around a tree and chanced a look back; she was lower now, only a few feet off the ground, and not far behind me.

I could smell the fresh air, feel the sun on the back of my neck as I ran, dodging past the trunks of trees and hearing the whoosh of the little nets she was sending my way. Scott and Kat were both down; they’d be okay. I just had to get away long enough to turn the tables. I had to beat her, had to win, more than anything.

I came upon a small ravine and let myself drop. I hit the ground, absorbing the impact along my legs. I had fallen next to a huge rock, at least three feet across. I smiled as I hefted it in both hands and readied it to throw. A normal person couldn’t have done this; the rock was huge, almost a boulder – the kind you’d use for decoration in a garden.

I heard sound overhead as she overflew me. I watched her disappear past, and waited, my muscles straining as I held the rock at the ready. I could hear the flutter of wings, and she came back around, her head visible through the boughs above me. I waited until I had a clear view and I let the stone fly. It soared and hit her in the chest with an awful cracking noise. I pumped my fist in victory until I saw her flip over and fall from the sky.

I felt a sick sensation in my stomach as I watched her drop. She followed a lazy arc as she fell; I heard her body hit the ground, the impact reminding me of the time I’d dropped a steak on a counter; a kind of wet slap.

I ran over uneven ground, feeling the dirt kick up as I raced toward the place where she had landed. I pushed aside tree branches to find her in a creek, the water running over her. I cringed and hurried over. I felt the cool water splash into my boot (black, pleather, fairly nice until I got them wet) and soak my socks, felt the chill of it on my hands as I reached down and grabbed her under the arms to drag her to the bank. My gloves were leather and not meant to get soaked, but I dared not take them off; her shirt was sleeveless and her pants were short. My touch as I pulled her out of the water would be much worse than the damage she’d already taken.

Her hair was wet with water and just a little blood, I noticed as I pulled her onto the stony bank of the creek. She snorted and choked out clear liquid and bile as I pulled her onto the rocks. I felt the dampness make its way through my jeans and my long sleeved shirt. It was desperately hot, I was sweating, and the cool wetness was a kind of sweet relief from the heat.

“Woo hoo hoo,” came a catcall from the other side of the creek. “Look at that; Sienna and Eve, getting all wet and clingy.” A low guffaw came after it and I felt a bitter pang of annoyance. The speaker was a little taller than me but still short for a man. He wore a cutoff tank top and ragged blue jeans, and his hair was thinning on top, obvious since he wasn’t wearing his usual baseball cap to cover it.

“She’s hurt pretty bad, Clary,” I said. I looked down at her and her eyes fluttered. A thin trickle of blood ran down her forehead.

“She’ll be fine.” He dismissed us with a wave, turning his head away and puckering his lips in amusement. “It’s not every day I get to see the two of you rubbing up against each other. I might have to watch for a bit.”

I picked her up and carried her off the rocks to the trail. She was wet, an unconscious, dead weight that wasn’t fighting back. I set her on the dirt, long strings of her hair tangled. They touched the ground and I saw the little granules of sand cling to them. I felt guilty; she was going to be super pissed when she woke up.

I heard Clary splash through the creek behind me as I knelt next to Eve. Her hair had gotten long; it was short when I first met her. She was very thin, her chest flat, heaving up and down with great effort; her breathing was ragged. When I pulled her shirt back to look at the damage, I heard a moan of pain from her and a deep breath of interest from Clary. I shot him a dirty look and turned back to Eve.

Her sternum was broken, a hideous blackish blue bruise had begun to spread from the center of her chest. I didn’t dare unzip her shirt to look closer (especially with that pervert Clary behind me) but I knew enough that I was certain I’d have to call—

“Dr. Perugini is on the way,” came the voice from in front of me. Roberto Bastian came toward us at a jog, his buzzed black hair dripping with sweat. “She’ll be here in five or less. Until then, let’s just assess the damage—” He halted and dropped to a knee next to Kappler. “Damn.” He shot a look at me, but there was a surprising lack of guilt in it. “You’re playing a little rough for a training exercise, Nealon.”

“The rock kinda got away from me,” I said. “It’s not exactly easy for us ground-based types to take down a flyer. She was throwing her nets at me and I just…” I searched my memory, trying to make my vicious ambush seem not quite so vicious. “…figured out a way to take her down and did it.”

“Boy, did you,” said Glen Parks, splashing across the creek with Scott and Kat in tow. Parks was an older man, his long hair gray, mustache and beard matching it perfectly; not quite ZZ Top length, but close. He brushed the beard to the side and I could see a contusion across his neck that looked like my wristwatch. “I’m not upset that you took this exercise seriously, but next time be more careful with the neck. Even as a bear I’m not immune to your strength.”

“Sorry,” I said, somewhat abrupt. I turned my attention back to Eve as Kat eased down beside me, her hands already brushing against Eve’s neck. The German woman was rasping and her eyes were still rolled back in her head. “I was just trying to win.”

“Damn, you sure were, girl,” Clary said. “But you’re gonna catch all kinds of hell from—”

“What is going on here?” The crackling of an Italian accent was laced with thunderous irritation. I blanched at the sound of it, and after examination, wondered why I was more afraid of the reaction of a human doctor than the metahumans I had been sparring with only minutes before.

Dr Isabella Perugini stopped on the bank opposite us, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, her white lab coat falling below her knees. She slid off her high heeled shoes and began to pick her way across the stream, trying to balance on the rocks jutting out of the water. Her dark complexion was more flushed than usual, her eyes narrowed at me. “You again?” She said it as she executed a hop from one rock to another. “I thought I sorted you out!”

“I got carried away,” I said.

She made her last jump and flinched as her foot caught the edge of the rock she landed on. She cursed loudly, then covered the ground to get to us. She knelt and looked to Kat, who had unzipped Eve’s shirt to expose her bruised and misshapen sternum. “How is she?” the doctor said to Kat.

“All the problems you’d expect her to have.” Kat ran a hand through Eve’s hair. “Fractured skull, presumably from the landing, broken sternum.” She gave the doctor a wan smile. “I’m working on it. The broken bones will be mended in just a minute.”

Perugini turned back to me, one eye cocked and twitching, the other narrowed. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

“Training’s rough,” Bastian said as I avoided her gaze. He looked at me, expression neutral. “It’s gonna be fine. We’ve got Forrest; she’ll fix it.”

Perugini’s mouth became a thin line. “What happens on the day she isn’t around?”

Kat let out a sharp exhalation and fell back on her haunches, then lay down on the rocky shore. “That day is not today,” she said with a gasp as I watched little blades of grass and weeds spring up from between the rocks she lay on, reaching up to stroke her exposed skin. “She’ll be fine.” Kat lifted her head to look at Dr. Perugini. “I might need a minute, though.”

I heard the sound of feet splashing in the water and looked up to see Ariadne Fraser making her way across the water. She held her high-heeled shoes in her hands, and her black jacket and skirt were taxing her balance. I raised an eyebrow in surprise when she made it across the bank, her pantyhose having developed three runs along her thighs and two holes in the toes from her crossing. Her red hair was the only splash of color visible on her as she made her way over to us, serious as ever. “Situation?”

Perugini answered, frost under her words. “She’ll be fine. Training exercise got out of hand.”

Ariadne dropped to her knees next to Eve, looking down at the German woman, who was still unconscious but now breathing easily. “Why is she out?”

“She landed on her head,” Perugini said, her eyes glancing at me for a brief second. “Kat has healed her skull fracture but I suspect she won’t be awake for several minutes, possibly an hour.” The doctor put on her stethoscope and placed the metal end on Eve’s chest. “There doesn’t appear to be any lasting damage but I’d like to do an MRI just the same.”

“You’re sure she’s all right?” Ariadne looked back up at the doctor, her eyes slitted, her hand clutching Eve’s in a way that caught my attention. I looked up and saw Clary looking back at me. He gave me a subtle nod, a wide grin on his face.

“I’m sure.” Perugini wrapped her stethoscope around her neck. “Have someone come out here with a Humvee to pick us up with a stretcher. I want to get her back to the medical unit for tests and observation until we’re certain she’s fine.”

Ariadne hadn’t taken her eyes off Eve the entire time Perugini was speaking. “Okay. Bastian, do it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Roberto stood up and took a few steps away, speaking with his hand up to his ear.

“How did this happen?” Ariadne’s voice was quiet, but it crackled with accusation and left a silence no one seemed eager to fill, least of all me. I started to speak, but was interrupted by Clary.

“Sienna hit her with rock while she was flying and she came crashing down into the creek.” Clary’s tone was purest joy, as though he were a kid tattling on his wicked sister. “She put some heat on it, too, took Eve right outta the sky like a friggin’ plane comin’ down—”

“Thank you, Clary.” I don’t want to say I was frightened of the icy edge in Ariadne’s voice, but it was probably the harshest I had ever heard her sound. I didn’t back away, but my eyes locked onto hers and I caught an undefinable hint of something that made my heart beat a little faster. Ariadne let go of Kappler’s hand and stood. “You’re all dismissed.” She locked eyes with me. “You too. We’ll discuss this tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was an accident—”

“Did you intentionally knock her out of the air with a boulder?” Ariadne’s voice came out low, almost whispered. When I nodded, she followed with, “Then that tends to rule out the possibility of it being an accident.” Her eyes were dark and they watched me. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow. Just go.”

I paused and started to reply – something about them pitting me against unfair odds, since Eve could fly and had been a member of M-Squad dealing with dangerous metas long before I even showed up, about how maybe I was doing her a favor by pointing out a pretty big vulnerability in the way she did battle – but every one of those arguments died on my tongue. I nodded and turned away, forcing one foot in front of the other as I walked out of the clearing and into the trees.

Chapter 3

I heard the sounds of conversation die down behind me as I grew further and further from them. The heat in the woods was oppressive, even under the shade of the trees. The air didn’t feel like it was moving, even when a brief gust of wind shifted more hot air in my direction, turning the sweat that was already trickling down my back into a tepid river that slid down the crease of my spine. I took a deep breath, sucking in the warm air, feeling it seem to stick in my nose and mouth, felt the perspiration drip from my forehead into my eyes, mixing with a little of the moisture already there.

Dammit. I got so caught up in the training exercise, in winning, in beating the others, that I let myself get carried away. For years I’d had no one but Mom to spar against, and now, only a few months out in the world, was testing myself against people that tracked and caught metas for a living. I felt a twinge of relief at the knowledge that Eve Kappler was going to be all right, and a little bit of pride knowing that I’d knocked her out of the sky.

Kappler was a severe woman by nature: she was thin, austere, too dry in personality and reserved in her manner to draw much attention. She had never really been nice to me (not that I’d smite her for that; there were a lot of people in the Directorate that had never shown me kindness; I’d be smiting for a long time to get to them all) but that didn’t mean I wanted to hurt her. It was practice. Mom had never intentionally hurt me during practice. Well, most of the time, anyway.

I ran my sleeve along my cheek, slopping off the salty mix of sweat and the first annoying hint of tears. I wanted to believe they were from all the perspiration that was in my eyes, but I suspected they might also have been from the pride stuck in my throat, that burning feeling that I couldn’t swallow away even though I wanted to. I had just gotten called out on my performance in the midst of my peers and fellow trainees. I hated that.

I took another breath, in and out, then another. I had stopped walking and was just standing, feeling the hot air gathered around me in a wall, like some sort of fortress of heat that had enshrouded my body. My long sleeves, gloves and pants didn’t help, and even though I wore tennis shoes, my socks were long. They were all soaked, some from sweat but most from wading into the creek to recover Eve. Every single article of my clothing was starting to stick to me, even as the water that had taken up residence within had matched my body temperature; only a little dash of coolness was running down and surprising me every once in a while. The rest just felt like sweat.

The first days of brutal summer had started only a couple weeks ago; before that it had been a beautiful, sunny-skied and cool-aired spring, all the way to the last of June. Since then, it was as though the weather had decided to get hostile. I had to say I preferred winter as a season to summer; it was colder, but even factoring in the number of times I’d landed in the snow while fighting, I didn’t get as wet as I did sweating during these training exercises, which were an everyday thing, in one form or another.

“Hey.” I had missed the footfalls behind me, caught up in my own thoughts. I turned without drying my eyes, hoping that the sweat would mask the other, marginally less stinging liquid. I doubted it would. Scott was there, along with Kat, who was leaning on him. They walked like I envisioned a couple would, her arm around his waist, her face looking more drawn than it had a few minutes ago. She rested against him, leaning her weight against his muscular chest. If we had been in a different place, and different people, she could have been a drunken sorority girl, leaning on her boyfriend for support.

And I could have been a…I dunno. Something else.

“You took down Eve pretty hard.” Scott stopped, repositioning himself as Kat pushed off him to stand on her own two wobbly feet.

My hands came up to cover my mouth as I wiped the sweat that was beading on my upper lip. “Yep.” I let them rest there, as though I could cover the lies that were bound to drip out when he asked the inevitable question.

“Why?” It was Kat who asked it, her hair looking stringy because of the humidity, but without a hint of the frizz that was afflicting mine. Thanks, humidity. It’d take a miracle and an hour with the flat iron later to get the kinks out.

I didn’t move my hands away from my mouth. “Why what?”

“Why’d you take her down so hard that I had to fix a skull fracture, a broken sternum and three ribs?” Kat let go of Scott and dropped to her rump, sitting with her legs in front of her. “I know we don’t do these kind exercises where we beat the hell out of each other for real very often, but we’ve done it enough to know you don’t lose control like that.” She laughed and tossed a blond lock over her shoulder. “I mean, when it comes to the training, you’re like the queen of control; it’s why you’re Parks’ favorite—”

“I just didn’t think.” I was sweating even harder now, my lip pressed up against my hand, more perspiration trailing down my forehead from my hairline. I felt my shirt sticking to me and all I wanted was a shower. “It got away from me, the rock. The adrenaline was pumping after we took down Parks—”

“After you took down Parks, you mean? When you left us behind?” The accusation came out of Scott, his arms folded but his manner cool.

“I drew her away from you,” I said. “I don’t know what else I could have done to help you. I wanted to win, and it was just…” I pulled my hands away from my mouth and licked my lip, tasted the salty residue of sweat.

“It’s not Wolfe, is it?” Scott stared me down. His T-shirt had been white when we started, but now it was gray in the places where he had sweated through, and bore the stains of dirt and grime from where he’d been pinned to the ground. “He’s not breaking out or whatever—”

“He’s not,” I said. “I haven’t heard from the rogues’ gallery in my head in months. I think Zollers and I have that under control.” That was mostly true. The medication Zollers had given me was working, but I had other help as well.

“I guess it was hard for us to tell by the way you acted back there,” Kat said, sarcasm oozing through her words, which were laced with a kind of bone-weariness. Her eyes flicked down, and they were lacking the brightness that was ever-present in them. “I didn’t mean that. Accidents happen, especially when they’re trying to train us for all the possibilities that could happen out there. It’s just not like you.”

“It happens.” Another voice joined our conversation. My head swiveled and I saw Glen Parks, shifting out of the shape of a wolf again. “You get reckless after playing this like it’s a game for too long.” He got taller as he walked, leaving behind all fours as his fur receded into the long beard and hair that I was accustomed to seeing. “Too much of this type of training’s not good. We need some real world experience for you three.” He halted behind me. I didn’t look away, even though my eyes were burning, this time from the sweat. “Especially for you, before your killer instinct gets away from you.”

I felt a burning again in the back of my throat. “I…do not…have a killer instinct.”

Scott coughed. “Um…haven’t you already killed three people?”

My tongue seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth and my jaw fell open. “I didn’t…I mean, Wolfe was unintentional and Gavrikov…he was gonna nuke Minneapolis.”

“And the other guy?” Scott stared back at me. “Henderschott? The one you tried to teach to fly?”

The angry red settled in my cheeks, burning me as I took a breath before answering. “That wasn’t me.”

Scott looked back the way we had come, back toward the creek, which I could still hear running in the distance. “Yeah, well that was all you. And Eve wasn’t an enemy.”

“This is a pointless discussion.” Parks’ voice was rough, like a flint striking a rock or a knife running over a sharpening stone. “Byerly, help Forrest back to her room. And let her rest, will you? You know how using her power takes it out of her.”

The burning in my cheeks got a little worse; I was pretty sure that Scott and Kat were sleeping together, but I didn’t really want to know for fact if it was true. Most of that was because there was someone I wished I could be sleeping with, but it wasn’t possible for me to touch him for more than three seconds without causing him excruciating pain followed by death. They walked away, Scott half-carrying Kat toward the dormitory building, which was quite a distance.

“What’s your problem, Sienna?” My head snapped back around to find Parks still looking at me, the rough, wrinkled skin around his eyes folded more than usual. They weren’t quite slitted, but they were a lot closer to closed than normal. It was the same look he got when we’d go to the firing range for weapons practice and he had to focus on a target at some distance. Parks was blunt to a fault, but he didn’t mean anything bad by it. He just said what he thought and let you sort it out.

“I’m just tired.” I couldn’t get a hand up to cover my mouth without Parks knowing I was lying. Hell, he probably knew anyway because his eyes grew more closed and he nodded. For the last six months he’d watched me as he trained all of us. We were a class of three, so it’s not like he had a ton of people to pay attention to. “We’ve been at a higher tempo of training lately, early mornings, late nights, all that. Like you said, it just wears on me. I’m ready to get to it.” I tried to hold my head higher, look him in the eyes, all that point-the-chin-in-defiance stuff. “I’ve had enough of the games. I want to get out in the field and go to work chasing down rogues.”

His gaze softened, the wrinkles spreading out. “Ariadne says you’re not ready.”

“That would matter to me if Ariadne was my training officer and worked with me every day.” I found I no longer needed to fake the defiance, the chin jutting. “I’m ready. Like it or not, me and the Junior League just took out two members of M-Squad. What do you think?”

He played it cool, too damned cool, not looking away but not registering a thing until he kicked his old, brown cowboy boot into the dusty ground. “We’ll find out soon enough if you’re ready. I must be getting old and senile to have taken down Kat first instead of you.”

“She’s easier to sneak up on.”

“Don’t get cocky.” His eyes found me again, his fingers stuck in the loops of his old jeans. “Fast way to get yourself killed, underestimating the people you’re fighting – or did you not learn from my example today?”

“I got it.” I cleared my throat. “I won’t underestimate anybody.”

“Bold statement to make. Hope you’re right about that. You need to trust your teammates though, watch their backs, because they’ll be the ones watching yours, not anyone else.” He got a sour look and turned away from me for a second. “Get on home, then. Looks like you got the rest of the day off; might want to take your liberty when you can get it. Not much time off around here, you know.”

“I know.” Believe me, I knew. It’d been six months since I had a day off. I walked back to the dormitory thinking about how different training to be an agent of the Directorate had been from what I thought it would be when I started. Looking back, I felt naive, like I was a kid when I began, wandering in because I had no idea what else I should do with myself. I had, after all, been cast out into the world after the ultimate sheltered life. Sort of.

It was only a couple weeks after first leaving my house (for the first time in over ten years) that I decided to enter the training program. I hadn’t even come close to living a normal teenage life when I decided to really leave normal behind and become what amounted to a paranormal cop. The Directorate paid me a lot of money to do this, all in hopes that someday I’d be a useful member of their policing force. And I was good, at least if we went by the training results. I put Scott to shame and made Kat look like a helpless little girl by comparison in every exercise they threw at us, from martial arts to weapons to chase and apprehension.

It was the “soft skills” that I lacked. Diplomacy, presenting a kind face and sympathetic ear to a metahuman who has just manifested their powers or to a human witness, freaked out by something they’ve seen that defies explanation. That was part of the job I was training for, being what they called a “Retriever” – trying to convince the newly powerful to come to the Directorate to get some purpose and direction in their abnormal lives. I sucked at that. Probably because it was foreign to me.

Maybe it was because I left home at a dead run with only the clothes on my back, being chased by two guys with guns and then, shortly thereafter, a crazed homicidal meta who nearly killed me. I guess after my own experience, it was hard for me to feel a ton of empathy for someone who gets a gentle knock on their door from someone without a gun who explains that they’re different, they’re special, and that there’s a place for them, then offers them a chance to join a training program to channel their powers. It’s a little different than my first real encounter with powers, which involved me being nearly choked to death in a grocery store parking lot after watching a maniac kill two innocent people.

I entered the dormitory building and felt the beautiful bliss of the air conditioner unit working overtime, sending a sweet chill across my body. The smell of the air was even different in the dormitory than it was outside, holding some kind of magical scent, like the processed and machined smell of the indoors, so much different than the overpowering, heated and wet atmosphere of the outside. By the time I got to my dorm room all the sweat on my body had congealed, evaporated or turned to a freezing layer of moisture.

I closed the door behind me and peeled off the layers of sticky clothes. I grabbed a bottle of water out of the mini fridge by the desk and drained it on the way to the bathroom. As I stepped under the shower head I reflected that this wasn’t so bad; the cool water washed down, rejuvenating me. I was in there for about thirty minutes, which was a short shower for me. When I stepped out I heard someone out in the room, and brushed open the door.

Zack was standing in front of the windows, looking out on the sun-beaten grounds. The sprinklers were going just outside, spraying the thirsty grass with water. I leaned against the bathroom door when I saw him, a smile spreading wide across my lips as I felt the wood of the frame through my bathrobe. “You’re watching sprinklers water the lawn instead of me in the shower?” My smile turned wicked as he spun to face me.

Zack was tall, at least six feet, which was a bit of a stretch for me. His hair was a darkish blond, and he usually wore a self-aware smile. He was impassive now, though, with a hint of hesitation. I didn’t like it when he wore that expression; it meant he had bad news. “I didn’t want to gawk.” I knew him pretty well by this point; he was my boyfriend, after all.

“You’ve got bad news?” I stepped out of the bathroom door, taking a couple steps closer to him, waiting for him to break it to me.

“I’d call it ‘disappointing’, not ‘bad’,” he said, crossing the distance between us and carefully placing his hands on my hips as he pulled me closer. He kissed me, but only for two seconds. After three, he’d stagger and get lightheaded. At five seconds, it’d start to burn. He broke away, but kept his hands where they were, avoiding any other flesh-to-flesh contact. The effect of my powers is cumulative, so if I kissed him again, it would start to drain him. “I have to cancel our date tonight.”

“Oh.” I tried not to show my disappointment, but it was definitely there. We had planned to go into Eden Prairie to eat at my favorite Greek restaurant, and after that see a movie. It was my favorite kind of date night.

“Kurt and I have to go to Michigan to track down a meta that’s causing a stir in Detroit.” He looked pained as he said it, his handsome face pinched with the regret of having to tell me. “Not sure when I’ll be back.”

“Hopefully soon?” He rested a hand on my shoulder and I wished I could pull him closer, kiss him again. And again. “Maybe tomorrow?”

He grimaced. “Maybe, but I doubt it. This one sounds complicated – a couple of assaults, a robbery. Might not be that quick.”

I rested my head on his shoulder for a second, smelling his cologne, then remembered my hair was wet and pulled away, my hand feeling the cloth of his black suit, where I’d left a damp spot. “I’m sorry.”

There was a twinkle in his eye as he laughed. “It’ll dry on the way to the airport, and if it doesn’t, I’ll probably be glad when Kurt and I have to haul our bags through the parking garage to the terminal. I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s kinda hot out there.”

I ran a hand through my hair, trying to untangle it. “I noticed. The most comfortable part of my training exercise was when I ended up having to drag Eve out of the creek.”

His brow lowered as he frowned. “Out of the creek? What happened?”

I felt my teeth click together and my jaw tighten. “I…um…kinda knocked her out of the air with a rock.”

“That must have been a helluva a rock.”

“It was a helluva throw, actually. The rock was just average.”

“It’s always a helluva throw if you’re doing it, Miss Meta.” He found his way back to a smile. “Why did you have to pull her out of the creek, though?”

I flinched at the memory of Eve, broken, lying on the rocky shore of the stream. “I kind of…broke her sternum…and ribs…and maybe fractured her skull a little.”

His right eyebrow crept up until it was an inch higher than the other. “A little? I’ve had a fractured skull before. It’s not a minor injury.”

“It was an accident. Things just got a little out of hand.” I took a deep breath.

He chewed his lip, opened his mouth and started to say something, then stopped. He blinked, then started again. “It wasn’t Wolfe?”

“Ugh.” I turned away from him, exhaling sharply. “Why does everyone keep asking me that? It’s not Wolfe, okay? He’s buried, safe and sound, way in the back. It was just me, slipping the leash a little, sick of training and thinking I was actually fighting someone. It’s kinda been a while since I felt a real threat and peril, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” I felt his hand on my shoulder and it took everything I had not to put mine on top of his. Passing out on my floor wasn’t something that would make him very happy. “Not much longer and you’ll be done with training and into the real world.” I turned to look at him over my shoulder. “Then you’ll long for the good ol’ days of training.”

I hung my head. “I doubt it. I just wish things were easier sometimes.”

His eyes watched me. “With training?”

“Like…with everything. With training, with us…everything.”

“With us?” His hand dropped to his side and he cocked his head. “What’s wrong with us?”

“Let’s see…I’d like to be able to touch my boyfriend for more than two seconds without stealing his very soul.” I spat the words out like they were some kind of foul venom. He took a step back and I closed my eyes and took a breath. “I’m sorry. That’s my issue, not yours.”

He stared at me, almost a blank look, and I caught the subtle calm of his gaze. “No, it’s an issue for both of us.”

“Yeah, but it’s my fault.” The full meaning of his last sentence made its way through my warring emotions and I felt a sharp drop in my stomach. “What do you mean by that?”

He perked up, his mouth forming an oblong “o” as he recoiled slightly. “I…nothing.”

“It meant something.” I could feel the tension in my face. “It’s because we can’t—”

“No, I told you, that doesn’t matter—”

“It matters to you like it matters to every guy—”

“—there’s more to us than just—”

“ It matters! ” My shout ended his protest and he took another step back, as though he were afraid of me unleashing Wolfe on him. “It matters. I know it matters to you. I may have to wear heavy clothing but it doesn’t mean I can’t feel anything through them—”

“I was out of line.” He held up his hands. “We knew getting into this that it was going to be different, because you’re different. That’s not bad, it’s just…” His eyes went to the side as he searched for the word. “…really inconvenient at the end of the night.”

“Yeah. Well.” I looked at the floor. “You’re not the only one it’s inconvenient for.”

“I just meant that—”

“You think I don’t want to?” I was back on his eyes again and he grimaced, balled up a fist and looked away. “You think I don’t think about it all the time? You’re not the only one that feels the effects after a date. We can’t even sleep in the same bed without worrying that I’ll roll over and press my cheek against you in the middle of the night, making you another ghost in my head.”

“I didn’t come here to fight.” He was focused on me, his eyes earnest, face oddly blank. “I came to say goodbye. I have a plane to catch in an hour and a half.”

“Well, you better get moving, because the airport’s at least a half-hour away at this time of day.” I pulled my arms tighter against me and narrowed my eyes at him.

He started toward the door and I watched him go. He stopped and started to say something, his fingers and knuckles white as they held the edge. He made it through a half-spin and halted, and I heard him breathe deep as his head dipped down. Whatever he had on his mind didn’t come out, though, and after a minute he turned back and walked out the door, closing it much gentler than I would have expected.

My hand went to my forehead and covered my eyes from the light. I hoped he’d be all right on his trip, but I didn’t have the guts to call him and tell him that. I heard my smartphone beep – the one the Directorate had given me – and felt a thrill as I ran to where I’d left it on the desk next to the computer. I turned it on and swiped the screen to find I had a text message waiting. It appeared and I sighed – it wasn’t him. My eyes played across the words and my hand went back to my forehead, blotting out the light, as if that could make the world, all my troubles, and that damned text message go away.

I’m back in town. Come over so we can talk. - Charlie

Chapter 4

About an hour later I shifted my car into park in the driveway of my house. The tree-lined streets provided a little shade, but when I opened the car door, I felt the blast of warmth and hurried to get inside. The soles of my shoes seemed to stick on the driveway as I walked to the front door, pausing in the closed-off porch to shut the outside door before I opened the door to the house. The light was dim and mostly came in from gaps in the boards that covered all the windows, just the way Mom had set them up, screening me, the girl in the house, from the world outside every time she left.

I took a deep breath and slid my key in the lock. While Mom had been missing for the past six months, Ariadne had checked the records and told me that there wasn’t a mortgage on the place. I had used my ample earnings to keep the property taxes and homeowner’s insurance paid and a lawn and maintenance service helped keep the place up for me. I stopped by every week or so, just to make sure everything was okay, but otherwise the house was empty.

Except when Charlie came to town.

The smell of something cooking on the stove hit me as I shut the door. The air conditioner was running and I felt the effects, the cool air filtering in like a sigh of relief after holding my breath. The alarm was deactivated; no reason to keep it active since no one was living here. When last I had left, the place was clean, a little musty, but otherwise all right. I had left all Mom’s clothes in her closet, the dishes in the cupboards, but cleaned most of the food out save for the things like Ramen Noodles that didn’t have an expiration date looming.

I heard her clanging some pots in the kitchen before I saw her. She peeked a head around the wall and flashed me a smile. Her hair was dark, long, and stood out against her tanned skin and white teeth. Her lips were curled, and painted the deepest shade of red the cosmetics companies made. “Hey there.” She emerged from the kitchen and I almost blinked in surprise. I shouldn’t have; nothing about my aunt Charlene – Charlie, she liked to be called – should have surprised me by now.

She wore a white tank top that was partially sweated through, and jean shorts that were cut off way too short. Her bare feet were leaving moisture spots on the linoleum floors as she stepped, walking delicately on her toes over to me. Her midriff was bare where her shirt didn’t quite reach the waistband of her shorts, which was frayed badly and washed out, white threads where there might once have been blue, the button at the top of her fly a clash against her belly. I shook my head and she smiled wider. “Your mom didn’t like how I dress, either.”

“I don’t care how you dress.” I walked toward her, suddenly self-conscious in my heavy jeans and t-shirt that covered me to the neck.

She spread her arms wide, prompting me to give her a careful hug, avoiding the prodigious amount of skin she had exposed. “Be careful,” she said in whispered caution, “you know the stronger succubus will drain the weaker.” I pulled back and she made to muss my hair, but I pushed her away with a gloved hand, drawing a laugh from her.

“What brings you back to the Cities?” I asked, using the local slang for the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. I walked my way to the couch as she leaned against the pillar at the edge of the kitchen.

“Just passing though.” She said it breezily, like she did almost everything, not a care in her world. She smiled. “Figured I’d drop in on my favorite niece.”

“Your only niece, to hear you tell it.”

“That too. You know, you could do a better job of stocking this place. All I found was Ramen.”

“Want to go out to eat?”

“No plans with your boyfriend, the agent, for tonight?” Her leer was suggestive, in a way that if my mom had ever let slip onto her face, would have freaked me out. They were so different.

“No.” I didn’t look away, exactly, but neither did I look toward her.

“Uh huh.” She bored in on me and stepped back into the kitchen, peering through the tiny pass-through that looked out into the living room. “You guys break up?”

I sat down and tugged at my jeans, which felt tight, restrictive and hotter than they had any right to be considering how low the air conditioner had been set in here. I’d feel the electricity bill this month, I bet. “No. Not exactly.” She stared through the little square hole at me, not looking away. “We had a fight.”

Her face disappeared, but her voice was still loud. “Lemme guess: about touching.”

I felt my lower lip jut out, puckering. “What else would we fight about?”

“Couples fight about lots of things, sweetie.” Her voice came from the kitchen, over the clanging of a pan. “But succubi tend to argue about one, if they’re crazy enough to be part of a couple.”

“You calling me crazy?” I said it with an air of amusement.

“Little bit. You are just like me, after all.” I caught a grin through the pass-through and then I heard water pouring down the drain in the sink. A minute later Charlie emerged from the kitchen. “I mean, there’s a whole world of men out there. You don’t really have the luxury of sleeping with the ones you like and expecting them to be alive in the morning, so…”

I looked away from her. “Yeah. I know it, he knows it, but it still makes us both crazy.” She sat down on the couch next to me, splaying out and putting her bare feet on the glass coffee table I’d bought as a replacement for the one broken months ago. “How do you deal with that?”

She had her mouth open, her tongue rolling over her molars, the very picture of disinterest. “You don’t sleep with the ones you don’t want to die, and you don’t get close enough to anybody to have it matter.”

“I just…I’m sick of being the world’s greatest tease to my boyfriend. He’s a good guy, and…” I stopped as her chest jerked in a case of the giggles. “What?”

“You don’t have to be a tease. I mean, there are other ways to—”

“Well, yeah, I mean, I know but—” I stuttered as I answered her.

“Just making sure. I wouldn’t have expected your mom to teach you anything.”

I blushed. “She didn’t. But I mean, I know stuff—”

“Sure you do, sweets. Sure you do.” Charlie slapped me on the thigh and clicked her tongue against her teeth. “So are we going out to eat or what? ‘Cause I’m starving and I poured the Ramen down the sink.”

“What?” I blinked, still thinking about what we’d been talking about a sentence before. “Oh, sure.”

“Your treat, right?” She gave me a wide grin. “Not all of us have high-paying gigs with the meta cops. The rest of us have to make our money honestly, and I blew the last of my cash getting back into town. Haven’t had a chance to stop by the…ATM…yet.”

“Sure.” I nodded at her and reached for my purse, which was hanging at my side. “My treat. There’s a Greek place over in Eden Prairie that’s really good—” My attention was caught by the sudden ringing from my bag. “Sorry.” I grabbed my cell phone and answered it while Charlie looked on with an eyebrow raised. “Hello?”

“Are you off-campus?” Ariadne’s voice was clipped, urgent, washed out slightly by the connection.

“Yeah.” I looked around the living room. “I’m just at my house, checking to make sure everything’s still all right.”

“I need you at Headquarters immediately.” Her voice was pinched, more hurried than usual. “The Director and I need to speak with you.”

“Umm.” I swallowed, heavy. “Is this about—”

“I’m not going to discuss it on an open line. Report to the Director’s office in forty-five minutes.” I heard a click and looked at the screen of my phone. She’d hung up on me.

I looked up to see Charlie staring at me, her head slanted to the side. “About this Greek place?”

I felt the tension in my guts and wondered if I was about to get a thorough ass-chewing back at the Directorate. “I can’t. I just got called back to work.”

Charlie’s jaw dropped slightly and then twisted to a kind of cold disbelief. “I just threw out the Ramen.”

“I’m sorry.” I put my phone back in my purse and my hand pushed my hair behind my ears before it fell over my eyes. “I have to go.” My hand came out with ten crisp twenty-dollar bills and I handed them to her. “This should cover dinner and a little more. I’m sorry to leave so abruptly, but—”

Her eyes lit up and she took the money a little quicker than I would have thought. “It happens.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and bit her lip as she counted the bills.

“How long are you in town this time?” I tried to catch her eyes, but they were on the money still.

“Not sure.” Casual indifference. Great. “A day or two, maybe more, maybe less.” She smiled, oddly infuriating me. “You know how it is. Sometimes I get the call and I have to get outta town.”

“Yeah, maybe you can explain how that works to me sometime.” I laced it with irony. “I need some help, when we get a chance, you know, keeping them under wraps—”

“Pfffff.” She turned her exhalation into a full-blown insult by rolling her eyes at the same time. “We’ve been over this. You absorbed them, not vice versa. It’s not that hard. You just make them do what you want them to do. It’s your body, not theirs. If they give you any flack, tell them to sit down and shut up, that it’s your head and you’ll run it however you please.”

I pondered how to explain to her how powerful Wolfe could be when he wanted to assert himself. The drug that Dr. Zollers had put me on helped keep him on a leash, along with some other pointers about building a wall in my head that Charlie had given me over the last few months, but I didn’t feel like it was enough. He was still back there; I could feel him sometimes, and I hated it. “All right. I gotta go.”

“Call me, kiddo. We’ll do lunch sometime.” She winked at me and started toward the bedroom.

“Just make sure you do the dishes before you leave.” She stopped in the hallway and shot a look back at me, a little frown with a slanted down eye that made me wish I hadn’t said anything. “You left them in the sink last time and I didn’t find them for a week.”

“Ugh, fine, yes, Mom.” She said it with a laugh and another roll of the eyes. “Tell your bosses I said hi.”

“Yeah, right. Because you want the Directorate to know about you.”

“Hell no. I’d like to remain far off their radar, if you please.” She tugged on her waistband. “They’ve probably got a file on me. You should check sometime.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “They don’t have any record of my mom having a sister.”

“Uh huh. If you were the suspicious sort, you might think something of that – like I was lying?”

I started toward the door. “I don’t think you’re lying, Charlie.”

“Why’s that? Doesn’t everyone in the meta world want a piece of you? Having someone pretend to be your aunt when you still don’t totally know who to trust? Seems like kind of a winning strategy to get close to you, if it worked.” She was stock still, waiting for me to respond.

“You’re right.” I opened the door. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” I smiled at her and a puzzled look crossed her face. “You may be my aunt, but I don’t trust anybody.”

I caught a flash of a smile from her as I backed out the door. “Heh. You really are just like me. See ya later.”

I closed it behind me, stepping out onto the warmth of the porch, and felt the heat pervade me again. “Guess it runs in the family.”

Chapter 5

I wondered if I was in trouble the whole way back to the Directorate, pondering if the man in charge (Old Man Winter, we called him, because he was old, a frost giant, and his name was Erich Winter) was going to run me through the mill for what I’d done to one of his stars. I parked in the Headquarters building and took the elevator straight from the garage to the top floor, where his office was. It was still sunny out when I arrived, in spite of the fact that it was nine o’clock at night. And ninety degrees. I love Minnesota.

It was damned quiet when I knocked on the door, and a muffled call of “Come in,” was followed by the door swinging open to reveal Glen Parks, his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. I checked to make sure I was in the right place. Old Man Winter was sitting at his desk, his back to the window, gray hair and cold blue eyes visible even at this distance. Ariadne was at his shoulder, but her clothing had changed since I had seen her on the grounds earlier. Her red hair was pulled back and her blouse was white.

Parks moved aside for me to enter and I blinked as I stepped into the office. Scott Byerly and Kat Forrest were seated in the chairs in front of Old Man Winter’s desk, Kat still looking slightly washed out, and Scott was quiet, his fingers resting on his chin, eyes forward. “Looks like the party started without me.” I clutched the strap of my purse a little tighter, wondering if I was about to get smacked down. No one said anything.

Scott stood as I approached the desk, offering me his seat. I smiled and shook my head, then turned my concentration back to Ariadne and Old Man Winter, who both stared at me, Old Man Winter with his usual stoic calm, Ariadne intense, her eyes almost on fire. Scott found his way back into the seat and the silence continued, unabated, as I shifted my weight between my feet for the next thirty seconds or so, hoping someone would say something before I had to resort to small talk.

“I suppose you’re wondering why we called you all here.” Ariadne was the one that spoke, the lines visible at the corners of her eyes.

Kat and Scott exchanged a look with each other. Kat sat up straighter in her seat, her eyes a little wide. “Um…because Sienna nearly killed Eve?”

“I didn’t…” I stopped myself just in time. I didn’t look at Old Man Winter. “It was an accident.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have time to hash over training accidents at the moment.” Did I detect a note of regret and acrimony in Ariadne’s voice on that one? Her mouth remained a severe line. “We have other business.” She looked over Kat’s shoulder to Parks.

I turned to look at our trainer and he stepped forward, a folder in his hand. “In the last twenty-four hours there were a string of convenience store robberies from Gillette, Wyoming across the Interstate 90 corridor in South Dakota that have caught our attention.”

Scott snorted, and when we all looked at him, his face went red. “Sorry. It’s just funny to hear I-90 described as a corridor. It’s a big, long stretch of dusty plains and nothing.”

Parks stepped between us and set the folder on the desk, opening it to reveal some photos. “Corridor or not, this could be a problem. No fatalities so far, but there were assaults during each of the robberies. The one in South Dakota included an assault on a local police officer. Several concussions for the store clerks, some trouble remembering what happened, including the assailant, who,” he coughed, “appears to have overpowered all the victims without a weapon.” He pointed to one of the photos. “This clerk was lucky: his head nearly went through the counter, but he lived.”

I stared at the picture he indicated. The shelves behind the counter were trashed, the glass broken, and blood stains ran in a circular splatter down the surface. It looked like whatever had happened had been painful. “You think it’s a meta.”

Parks paused before answering. “Yeah. It’s the Sherriff’s Deputy in Draper that puts it over the top for us. He was knocked out before he could draw a weapon or react. That’s not normal. Assuming he was following procedure, he wouldn’t have let someone get so close to him.” He looked at each of us in turn. “We’ve seen this sort of pattern before. It’s probably a young meta, a junior hellion who’s getting hold of his oats, thinks he’s a badass, not quite ready to cross into the realm of killing just yet, but getting there.”

“Probably dangerous if cornered,” Ariadne said, leaning on the desk with both hands. “M-Squad is being dispatched to help some of our agents from the Texas branch deal with a severely dangerous meta that’s wreaking havoc in western Kansas, and our other agents are on assignments, which leaves us with no one to follow up on these incidents.”

I perked up and saw Scott and Kat do the same. “No one?” My question was tentative, and I was reminded of the times when I would get Mom to break her rigid and inflexible rules. I called those occasions miracles, because they didn’t happen very often.

Ariadne’s mouth became a thin line. “We’re strained. Meta activity is up – way up. We’re spending a lot of time chasing ghosts lately – things that don’t pan out.” She brought a hand up to push her hair back and I caught a glimpse of something, written hard across the faded lines of her face. Ariadne wasn’t old, more like middle age, but in that moment she sure as hell looked it. “We have no one else to send, and this needs to be followed up on. Congratulations.” Her eyes bored into each of us in turn. “You’re up.”

“This is serious business,” Parks said, his arms folded as he stood apart from Ariadne and Old Man Winter. “You’re not kids anymore and I vouched for you, told ‘em you’re ready to give it hell. Don’t take any stupid chances, and watch each other’s backs.”

I swallowed my excitement. “What do want us to do, exactly?”

Ariadne exchanged a look with Parks. “The last robbery was about three hundred miles south of the Twin Cities, at six o’clock this morning, in Owatonna, Minnesota.”

“I know where that is.” Scott was awake with a little excitement. “They’ve got an awesome outdoors store down there—”

“You’re not going down there to go shopping.” Ariadne cut him off without mercy. “You’re going down there to ask questions and establish a direction to head.” She opened a packet and slid the contents across the desk to us. I saw my face on a driver’s license, as well as one for Scott and Kat. There were also three leather holders that looked a lot like wallets, but when I picked one up and flipped it open it held the credentials of an FBI Agent named Katrina Ahern, with a picture of Kat.

I held it up and dangled it in the air in mild surprise. “Impersonating a federal agent is a felony.”

Ariadne met my stare, grim and serious. “It’s real. Your names and pictures are in the FBI database and you’ll pass muster unless you do something deeply stupid. My advice?” She let a little half-smile loose as she said it.

“Don’t do anything deeply stupid,” I said, staring at the FBI ID with my picture in it. “You said these are real—”

“They’ll even get you into an FBI field office if you had some reason to go there,” Parks said. “I wouldn’t recommend it, though, because you’ll likely have to answer questions you won’t want to. These are so you can bypass local law enforcement if they give you any guff, and to get civilians to answer your questions. Now, you all look like friggin’ kids, but we’ll dress you up professionally and that oughta take care of most of the problem.”

I stared at the Driver’s License with my picture on it. I wondered idly why I’d been given it, then realized it fit my new name, Sienna Clarke. I also noticed it added about five years onto my birthdate. I tried not to think about the implications of being twenty-three years old in a single stroke.

“All this is part of your cover story.” Ariadne’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “You’re rookie agents, chasing down leads on a robber that’s crossed interstate lines.”

“What happens if we run across the real agents who are investigating it?” I asked because I was curious. I had a feeling it would be bad.

Parks smiled. “According to the FBI’s computers, agents Clarke, Green and Ahern,” he nodded at each of us in turn, “are the only ones assigned to this case. Your only issues will be the ones you make for yourselves, which is why Ariadne was cautioning you not to make a spectacle.”

“So you want us to track this guy down?” Kat looked a little confused. “Catch him or kill him…?”

“Capture, please.” Ariadne’s tone turned to ice. “If things escalate, we’ll examine other options, but for now it’s capture only. While the robber has used brutal means, as yet he or she hasn’t caused serious, lasting harm to any of the victims. Like Parks said, we suspect a teenager, manifesting their powers and getting out of control with the taste of freedom they’re experiencing.”

She drew herself up, removing her hands from the desk and tucking them behind her back. “This is their tipping point. If we act quickly, we can save them and bring them back here. If you screw it up, they go the other way, become a criminal for life and either spend time in our Arizona facility or end up dead.”

“You’ll draw weapons from the armory in case things get out of hand.” Parks was stern as he said it. “Just make sure you aren’t the ones who make it go that way.”

Ariadne shot a look at Parks. “They’re all qualified to carry a sidearm?” After he nodded, she went on. “Remember that your best weapon is yourselves. You’ll leave within the hour. Pack a bag and be prepared to be gone for a week or more. Any questions?” She waited for us to ask anything, but none of us did. “Keep your cell phones on you at all times. I expect progress reports every three hours while you’re awake, even if it’s only something as mundane as ‘We stopped to pee at a gas station’. If we suffer from anything on this excursion, it will be overcommunication, not under.” She glared at each of us in turn. “And no fighting amongst yourselves.”

“It’s been like…months, since any of us fought,” I said.

“And keep your temper in check.” Ariadne looked daggers at me. “Are we clear?”

“Like Saran wrap, but without the flexibility.” I smiled at her.

“You are being entrusted with a responsibility that is most serious.” Old Man Winter finally broke his silence, leaving behind the role of set piece that he so often cultivated during meetings and gracing us with his deep, thickly accented voice. It was so smooth he could have been on the radio, but it was intimidating too, the way it spilled out, with more authority than anyone else I’d met. “This is your first step out of training. Agent Parks has assured us that the three of you are ready, but remember that you are still being tested, that you are not yet agents. Succeed and follow the rules and this can be a significant mark in your favor; fail and we will have to evaluate how effective your training has been.”

His ice cold gaze fell on Kat first, causing her to shudder, then on Scott. “Be careful and achieve your objective. This is your chance.” His eyes fell on me last of all, and I felt a freezing chill as he looked through me. “Do not fail us.”

Chapter 6

“Can you believe this?” Scott slapped the steering wheel as we cruised out the front gate of the Directorate an hour or so later. “This is it! Finally, the big time!”

Kat gave him a weak smile from the passenger seat, but she didn’t say anything. I was stretched out across the seat behind them, supposed to sleep first so I could drive later if need be. It had been a long day, filled with more emotion than I had wanted it to contain. I checked my phone for the thousandth time since Zack had left. Still not a word, a text message, anything. We’d had fights before, but this one was different. He’d never not talked to me afterward. I chalked it up to him catching a flight and hoped he’d call me when he landed.

“Isn’t anybody else as excited about this as I am?” Scott’s disbelief was edging into his enthusiasm. He looked at Kat, who shrugged, then turned to me. “What about you?”

I yawned. “It’s a hell of an opportunity. Let’s not screw it up, lest we get six more months of running around the woods, trying to subdue members of M-Squad without hurting them badly.”

“About that,” Kat said, turning to face me. “You got your head on straight? Not gonna go crazy and flatten this meta we’re chasing, are you?”

“Let’s catch him first,” I said, “then I’ll worry about whether I’m gonna put the severe hurt on him or not. After all, we’re basically heading to some town in the middle of nowhere hoping there’s a clue that will lead us on to the next place this person’s gonna strike.”

“Criminals are dumb.” Scott turned the SUV onto US Highway 212, heading east. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“You think he left a note that says, ‘Next I turn south and drive 400 miles to Ankeny, Iowa, where I will rob a convenience store and stop to use the potty’?” I rolled my eyes.

“Why do you think they’re sending us to Owatonna if there’s not going to be any clues as to where he’s going next?”

“He or she,” Kat said.

I yawned again. “Because half of what the Directorate does is gather evidence so they can justify locking these criminal metas up when they actually catch them. I’ve seen the files. We’ll pick up the evidence and get whatever info the locals have, and when the Directorate hears about the next attack, we’ll haul ass to catch up.”

Kat and Scott exchanged a look and then she turned back to me. “Wow, you’ve given this some thought. But what makes you think that the, uh…the meta…the criminal—”

“Suspect.” Scott said it businesslike, as though he were trying to play the part of a real FBI agent. “Or perp. That’s what they call them on the TV shows.”

“Anyway,” Kat said, “what makes you think the perp will have a destination? Couldn’t they just be on a drive, or maybe running from something?”

“Maybe.” I felt the cool air from the AC, slowly flushing out the humid heat that lingered even now, after the sun was down for a couple hours. The temperature display for outside still read 83 degrees. “It could be a Bonnie and Clyde-type situation, where they’re just bopping around from place to place, but it seems a little odd. I’m kinda surprised there’s not more information on who the perp is.”

“We’ll ask some questions when we interview the victim.” Scott sounded self-assured.

I looked over at Kat. “You have the details on this one?”

“Um…” She fumbled for her phone and clicked it on. Peering at the screen, she tapped it a few times and then started to read. “Yes, okay. Daniel Lideen, age twenty-five, of Waseca, Minnesota. Looks like he’s worked at the store for about six years, assistant manager, was alone on the night shift…a patron found him at around 6 A.M., looked to have been knocked out for a while before he got rousted by this customer, who’s a regular.” She looked up. “Nothing spectacular there. Multiple contusions to the head from getting slammed into the counter, maybe a concussion or brain injury; the last report indicates they weren’t sure.”

“Hm.” I got lost in my thoughts. “You can take a peek inside, though, right? Figure out what’s wrong with him?”

She nodded. “I can probably take care of any memory loss. Was that what you were thinking?”

I smiled. “I was thinking it’d be nice to help the poor guy out since he got the crap kicked out of him, but that’s not a bad idea either. After all, if he can give us a description of the perpetrator, that would make our job easier.”

It got quiet for a while after that. I sat with my head leaned against the window, staring out at the darkened fields passing us by until we got into the suburbs. I recognized the familiar lights of Eden Prairie as we passed through and got onto the 494 loop, skirting the southern edge of the city. I could tell Scott was still excited, and he chattered occasionally about how great the assignment was going to go and his certainty we’d achieve success and start building a reputation within the Directorate. I was sure he was right, but was privately hoping that it would be a good reputation rather than a bad one.

We caught Interstate 35 and headed south as the clock clicked 11 P.M. The traffic on the road was light and Scott kept us well above the speed limit. Parks had mentioned before we left the Directorate that the plates for the SUV were flagged as an FBI vehicle, and there were flashing lights and a siren in case we needed them.

The land flattened out and the buildings became more scattered as we passed out of the southern suburb of Burnsville. Shopping centers gave way to fields and forests, the trees becoming havens for shadow as the headlights of our SUV chased the blackness off the road ahead. Forty miles passed in the blink of an eye – I closed my eyes and was jarred awake what felt like seconds later, but I knew wasn’t after I smacked my mouth and it was dry, my tongue finding a layer of film over my teeth.

I rubbed my eyes as I pushed myself off the window. Kat and Scott were talking in hushed voices in front of me. I heard him chuckle, saw her giggle and bat her eyes, watched her hand reach out and stroke his forearm. I started to ask them where we were but stopped myself. There was no reason for me to interrupt their moment.

I watched a sign pass that indicated that Owatonna was only a few miles away. I quietly pulled the water bottle I had left in the cup holder and drained it, rehydrating my mouth. Kat and Scott took no notice of me, still chatting in low voices. I could have heard them if I tried, but I made an effort to tune them out. I focused on Zack and checked my phone again. Not a text message, a missed call, a voicemail, nothing.

“You’re awake.” Kat’s voice contained a hint of surprise and I looked up from my phone to find her tight smile looking back at me. Her eyes were slightly squinted and she appeared to be chewing on her lower lip. I felt a little bad for her, because it was obvious nerves were working on her at least a little. “The GPS says we’ll be there in less than five.”

I nodded as I took another drink of water and popped a piece of gum in my mouth. I had left the purse behind when I changed into a gray suit with a white blouse underneath, placing my wallet and FBI ID into the pockets of my suit jacket. I could feel the lump that was my pistol under my left arm, the weight of it against my side in my shoulder holster. I knew Kat and Scott were carrying as well, but I doubted that they knew I was carrying a backup in an ankle holster on the recommendation of Parks. The two of them had been uncomfortable with the firearms portion of our training. I reveled in it, like I did all the other parts that involved fighting.

Parks drilled it into our head over and over to use every tool at our disposal. “Your powers set you apart from others,” he’d said. “In ancient times, people with your powers could rule entire countries. In modern times, one man with a gun can hurt you more than an ancient army. The gun is mankind’s great equalizer and you’re a fool if you don’t recognize it.” He talked like a drill sergeant when he was training us. I knew he’d done a stint in the army because he’d told me so. Parks knew his stuff. He’d been with M-Squad for almost ten years, since he and Bastian had basically built the unit from the ground up.

I also carried a knife strapped to my calf on his recommendation, but that was another thing I wasn’t likely to mention to the squeamish Kat especially, nor Scott. No use making them edgy. I was glad Scott was excited. I was skeptical. I hadn’t done this before, and I didn’t want to get into a situation I might not be prepared for while hunting down a meta I had no knowledge of.

Scott guided the car onto the exit ramp as the gentle voice of the GPS told him to turn. I could see the Kwik Trip lit up just off the freeway, a fifty foot sign out front with the price of gas in red as an enticement to save a cent over their competitors across the street. We turned into the parking lot and stopped in front of the pump. Kat and I both looked at Scott, questioning, until he shrugged. “We need gas. We can look around here and then head out to the hospital to interview Lideen, if he’s awake.”

Kat walked alongside me toward the door while Scott pulled out his Directorate issued credit card to swipe it in the gas pump. “Talk to the clerk while I go to the bathroom?” She said this to me as I pulled open the glass door so she could go in.

“Uh, okay.” I shook my head as she veered toward the back of the store. I watched her pass a bakery case with a wide selection of donuts. I felt my stomach rumble and realized I never did get my dinner, but I shook it off. It felt like my metabolism had slowed in the last few months, in spite of the training routine. I had to watch what I ate.

I approached the counter as the Asian kid behind it stared at me, the only person in the store. I reached for my FBI ID and flipped it open, trying not to feel nervous. After all, he was most likely going to be paying attention to the ID, not me. “Sienna Clarke,” I said, just barely remembering my assumed name. “FBI. I’m here to ask some questions about the robbery.”

“Uh, yeah.” He nodded, his acne seeming to have reddened. “I wasn’t here when it happened.”

“I know that.” I pulled out a small notepad and pen I was carrying in my pocket. “The victim was a Daniel Lideen, right?” He nodded at me. “You work with Dan very often?”

“Nah,” he said. “He was usually mornings or overnights. I work evenings; this is only part-time for me. Dan’s a full-timer. I was here before he took over last night at eleven, though.”

“See anything unusual?” I was asking mostly out of general interest. I wasn’t planning on spending a lot of time interviewing this kid, since he hadn’t been around for the robbery, and based on our information, the perp had been in South Dakota during his last shift.

“Not really.” He shrugged. “We get a lot of traffic from the interstate, so there’s more strangers that come in here than regulars.”

“All right, well, thanks for your help…” I looked down at his white nametag, standing out on his blue shirt. “…Shaun.”

“Sure.” He nodded again. He seemed to let out a deep breath and I suspected he might be a little nervous talking to the law. Couldn’t imagine why.

“I’ll take these.” Kat appeared at my shoulder and plopped a plastic bag onto the counter. I looked down and saw she had filled it with a half dozen donuts from the bakery display against the far wall. She looked up at me innocently. “Want one?”

“I don’t think I can,” I said. “They go right to my hips.”

She picked up one with white frosting and multicolored sprinkles and took a big bite. “You sure?” Her mouth was full, and the glorious smell of sugary dough was in the air. “It’s really good.”

I blinked and shook my head. “I can’t.” I looked down at the bag then back up at her with a suspicion. “Are you going to eat all of those?”

“Unless Scott wants one, yeah.”

I sighed and pushed my way out the exit with a forced smile for Shaun, who blanched because I caught him checking out Kat. It figures; not only does she have a body that draws the attention of every man that crosses her path, but she doesn’t have to work that hard to maintain it.

Scott was screwing the gas cap on when I got back to the car. “How’d it go?”

“Fine. Your girlfriend will be back in a minute; she’s buying out their entire bakery.”

He frowned. “I didn’t expect to turn up much here, but I kinda hoped…” He let his words trail off.

“That we’d find the meta hiding out in front of the store, wearing a trench coat, a backward baseball cap, and rapping profanities?” I cast a look back toward the entrance as Kat made her way across the parking lot toward us, a donut in one hand and the bag hanging from her fingers in the other.

“Guess this is where the real detective work begins, huh?” He opened his door and climbed in while I got into the backseat behind him again. I watched him start to fiddle with the GPS. “Let’s hope the victim or the local cops can shed some light on things for us, or else we’re gonna be hanging out in this town until we pick up another incident. Hospital is an exit back, police station is east of here a little ways.” He shrugged. “Hospital first?” I nodded and we were off.

When we arrived at the nurses’ station and flashed IDs, a middle-aged overweight woman in pink scrubs showed us to Daniel Lideen’s room. He was sleeping, his long face tilted to the side. The nurse left when Scott asked her to and I looked to Kat. “You should get a feel for his injuries before you wake him up.”

She put her hand on his forehead, causing him to stir slightly. “Not a bad idea.” She closed her eyes and her breathing slowed. A light glow appeared under her hand and the clerk’s skin started to shine. A black and purple bruise under his eye began to fade along with a thin scab that ran the length of his cheek. I saw Scott shutting the door as Kat took her hand off the clerk’s forehead and his eyes opened, blinking at the two of us. “That should do it,” Kat said.

“Hello, Daniel,” I said as I leaned over him. “My name is Sienna Clarke and I’m with the FBI.” I halted to give him a second to process that information. His eyes blinked a few times as he tried to focus on me. “I’m here to ask you some questions about your assailant.”

“Oh…okay.” His voice was a little scratchy, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was more asleep than awake. “I already told the officers what I remember.”

“I know.” I tried to make my reply as soothing as possible. “But they’re local cops and we’re here to ask because the same thing that happened to you happened to some other folks in Wyoming and South Dakota. Can you tell me anything about the person that robbed you?”

He screwed up his face in intense concentration, staring over my shoulder, then went blank. “I don’t…I can’t remember.”

I shot a look at Kat, whose eyes widened as she put her hand on his upper arm. I saw the glow from her as I asked him another question. “Tell me what you do remember.”

“Um…I came into work at about eleven…and I did some restocking in the freezer.” He squinted, as though he were trying to recall. “I remember eating my sandwich and drinking some coffee at about five.” His face relaxed and he shook his head. “After that…I don’t know.”

I looked sidelong at Kat, who was taking long, ragged breaths and whose hand was at her side. She shook her head. “Can you tell me anything else, Dan? Anything could help.”

His eyes were blank. “That’s all. That’s all I remember.”

I gave him as warm of a fake smile as I could. “Excuse me while I talk to my associates.” I beckoned to Kat, who followed me, shuffling along in slow steps to the hallway outside. I looked left and then right; the corridors were white, with dingy tile and little color, but empty. I honed in on Kat. “What’s the matter with him? Has he got brain damage?”

“No!” She shook her head with more emphasis. “I checked him over again after the first time, and this guy is healed; he’s in perfect condition. His skull is fixed, his scars are gone and it doesn’t look like there was anything wrong with his brain even when I touched him the first time, let alone now.”

Scott looked back at the door to the room, which was drawn. “Is it possible he’s lying?”

“Possible.” I nodded at him as I chewed that one over. “But I don’t think so. I was looking in his eyes as he answered, and he didn’t show any of the obvious signs. He was working last night, so it seems unlikely he’s secretly the meta doing all this, unless he can somehow teleport to Wyoming and South Dakota on his breaks.” I shook my head. “I don’t think he’s lying. I think there’s a simpler explanation.”

“What?” Scott looked at me. “You think he has some kind of neurological damage that Kat can’t detect?”

I looked back at him, then to Kat, before I answered. “No. I think that whoever attacked him…” I took a step back and looked through the semi-open door to see the clerk sitting upright in bed, blinking, looking around the room, disoriented, even though he had just been healed by someone who could fix nearly any ailment. “…took his memory.”

Chapter 7

We cleared out of the hospital after some perfunctory goodbyes and thank-yous to Daniel, and checked in with Ariadne. We sat in the car, engine running to give us air conditioning to offset the heat (still almost eighty even though it was nearing midnight) while we listened to Ariadne.

“You think whoever attacked him is responsible for his memory loss?” There was a slight fuzzing in the speaker, probably the result of the air conditioner operating near full blast to keep the three of us from sweating through our suits, but otherwise it almost sounded like Ariadne was in the car with us.

“Which guarantees that it was a meta that attacked him.” I was almost glum at the realization. I was kind of hoping it was going to be some petty criminal that we could slam dunk and leave to the local authorities. Part of that might be because I was checking my phone every few minutes for a call or message that I had yet to receive. I wasn’t going to be the first to break the silence, that much I knew. “Any idea what kinds of metas can cause memory loss?”

“There are a few,” Ariadne said. “Let me talk to Dr. Sessions and get back to you with a list.”

“Any other incidents?” Scott cradled the phone in his hand, holding it just below his chin when he was talking, as though it were a tape recorder.

“Nothing at present. You still need to meet with the local cops, but the Police Chief for Owatonna is out for the night, so it’s best if you wait until tomorrow to make that stop.” There was a pause and a hiss on the phone before Ariadne spoke again. “Check into a hotel and get some sleep. If there aren’t any incidents tonight, check in tomorrow morning after you’ve stopped by the Owatonna PD.”

“Understood.” I tried to keep the fatigue out of my voice as Scott punched the end button on the phone after the two of them added their responses to my own. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m exhausted.”

Scott grew a curious grin, one that cracked his ruddy face and made his eyes dance. “You can’t go to sleep just yet.”

“Pretty sure I can.” I rubbed my eyes. “And will.”

“No, no, no.” The smile was getting kind of creepy. “Do you realize what we’re carrying with us?”

“Guns and teenage angst?”

“Ha. No.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, dangling the new Directorate-issued driver’s license in front of my face. “Fake IDs that aren’t really fake.”

I let my jaw drop in disbelief. “What are you thinking?”

He smiled again, then turned forward in his seat and fastened the seatbelt with one hand while fiddling with the GPS with the other. “I’m thinking we find a hotel with a bar.”

I leaned back in my seat and draped my hand over my eyes. “Right. Because there’s no possible way this could go horrendously wrong.”

I kept my peace on the drive, even though I was questioning not only Scott’s level of responsibility but also his sanity. We found a hotel (with a bar across the street) and I shook my head as we pulled up.

Scott must have sensed my discomfort. “We all agree that the meta who’s doing this is probably far from here by now, right? If he keeps to the pattern?”

“Mighty big ‘if’,” I said with a shake of the head. “But probably.”

“So if we check into the hotel and then have maybe one or two drinks…”

I could tell by his smile he was already reveling in the freedom and there was little I could do to sway him. Still, I had to try. “What if Ariadne calls us after we’ve been drinking with a lead we need to pursue immediately? We’re screwed. We won’t even be able to drive anywhere.”

“I can drive.” Kat spoke, turning to face me. “I’m pretty drained from healing that clerk; I don’t think it’d be a great idea for me to drink right now. So if we get a call, I can drive while you guys sober up.”

“See?” Scott gave me a shrug of unworry that did little to assuage my concerns. “Got it covered.”

I grabbed my bag and opened the door. “Got it covered like what? Like you had Gavrikov covered?”

“You’re never gonna let me forget that, are you?” He was following behind, and I caught a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Not so long as he’s stuck in my skull, no.”

We checked in, getting two rooms. I started to suggest that Kat and I could stay in one room while Scott stayed in the other, but when I handed him the cards for his room he handed the other to her and I didn’t bother to argue. I preferred to stay by myself anyway.

We went up to the third floor where our rooms were side by side. “Meet out here in five and we’ll head down together,” he said.

“I think I’ll pass,” I said. “You guys go have a good time. I’m just gonna turn in; might as well have one of us be rested for the morning.”

“Come on, Sienna. We’ve been working our asses off for months, had Parks and Ariadne breathing down our necks, had all manner of shit go wrong, and now we have a chance to unwind. Don’t be so uptight.”

I took a deep breath before answering so I could avoid ripping his head off while we still had potentially weeks’ worth of road tripping ahead of us. “I’m not being uptight. I just don’t want to screw this up, okay?”

“I get it.” He let the smile recede into a smug, almost taunting expression. “It’s okay. I admire your restraint. You probably don’t even wonder what it feels like.”

I tensed, felt every muscle from my lower back up locking into place. “Wonder what what feels like?”

“Drinking.” His half-smile dissolved into a real one. “You haven’t wondered what it’s like? Your boyfriend goes out drinking sometimes, doesn’t he?”

I felt myself relax, but only a tenth of a percent. Dammit, I had thought he was talking about something far different, and it had let a wave of acid loose in my stomach, sending it roiling. “Yeah, Zack goes out drinking every now and again.” Usually when I’m busy, but he does it. Because he’s old enough.

“And you never felt curious or left behind?” He smiled, a little too innocently.

Damn his smile. I knew what he was doing, what he was suggesting. Any other day, it might not have found its mark. After all, my boyfriend was mature, responsible, secure in his job, and if he went to the bar with his college buddies, he did it on his time off (and usually when I was training.) I’d never felt left behind, not really, because I was too busy doing other things. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and lit up the display. Still nothing. “Fine.” I looked back up at him. “One drink.”

“Attagirl.” He shot a look at Kat. “This’ll be fun. The three of us, on our first assignment, blowing off steam, hanging out at the bar.” He draped a thick arm around Kat and drew her close, giving her a peck on the cheek. “It’s kinda like…” He thought about it for a minute.

“Being grown-ups?” I offered it sarcastically, but it only widened his smile.

“Five minutes.” He turned and his hand fell to grab Kat’s, and they walked toward their door. “We’ll head down together.”

I nodded and slid the card key into my door and turned the handle. When I walked inside, I flipped the switch and waited for the lights to come on. The carpet was a deep maroon and it was a simple setup – two beds, desk, dresser and TV.

I threw my bag on the dresser and retreated to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror at myself. I looked older, mostly because of the suit, but also because I had my hair back in a ponytail. I held up a gloved hand and heard the leather stretch as I clenched a fist and then relaxed it. Grown-up indeed. I pulled the glove off and started to splash water on my face to help me wake up, but then remembered that it would probably destroy the careful amount of makeup I had applied earlier, before I left the Directorate. I rarely wore the stuff, but in this case it seemed important for the role I was playing.

I looked again at myself in the mirror and wondered what I was thinking. We were on a serious assignment, the first chance we had to prove ourselves, and we were going to a bar at midnight to have some drinks even though we weren’t anywhere close to done with our assignment. I sighed and looked at the faceplate on my phone again. The LED indicator that let me know when I had messages or missed calls wasn’t blinking. Screw it. Screw him. We’d been working our asses off for months, Kat was going to stay sober, and Scott and I would just have one or two and call it a night. An energy drink or coffee tomorrow and we’d be ready to keep going.

I tried to remember that reasoning as we walked in the doors to the bar. The light was orange in the room, with flatscreen TVs suspended from the ceiling around the bar itself. Tables were set up to the left and right of the bar area, with a small dance floor in the far corner. Music was playing, a modern pop tune, but not a soul was dancing. I scanned the room as we walked in and the place was only slightly packed, which surprised me given it was Saturday night.

We made our way to the bar, Scott leading us, his grin reaching an infectious stage. He bellied up and Kat sat next to him. I took the seat on the other side of him, mostly because he was more likely to talk than Kat. She was always tired and quiet after healing someone.

The bartender made his way over to us, a guy in his forties that had more than a few extra pounds. He had long brown hair in a ponytail and was happy enough after he checked our IDs. “Whaddya want?” he asked in an accent that was as far from midwestern as I could imagine.

Scott looked over to me first and I shrugged, so he turned to Kat. “Just water for me,” she said. “Designated driver.”

“What’s good here?” I picked up the mixed drinks menu that he had proffered and thumbed through it.

“Honestly? I got some strengths; I make a pretty good Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Rusty Nail, Dirty Martini…my Fuzzy Navel is the stuff of local legend—”

“You don’t need to show us that,” Scott said.

The bartender smiled and his face split into jowls. “I also make a pretty good Cherry Bomb.”

I shrugged, without a clue. “I’ll try the Whiskey Sour.”

“Straight up or over ice?”

He looked back at me and I felt the fatigue of the day edging in. “Surprise me.”

The bartender nodded and Scott ordered a beer, a local brand, and went to the other end of the bar to prep our order. Once he was out of earshot, Scott turned to me. “What do you think so far?”

“He seems like a nice enough guy. Kinda big, though. You think that’s glandular?”

“About the case.” Scott shook his head.

“I think we should not screw it up.” I tried to give him my most serious look. “Right?”

“Right.” He looked back at Kat, who was resting her face on her palms. “Right?” She gave a lethargic shake of the head, pulling it off her hands to spread her palms with indifference. “It’ll be fine. Just a drink or two, and we’re off to bed for the night, and back to work tomorrow.” He smiled again at me and I caught the first hint of nervousness. “But come on, admit it – we’re out on our own, on the road, we’re in charge of this thing, and we’re sitting in a bar after a long day of chasing down a meta. Tell me this isn’t how you imagined it.”

I felt a charge of amusement. “First of all, it’s been like four hours, not a day, and most of it we’ve been driving, so I don’t know how hard it’s been.” I saw his nervous happiness start to evaporate and stopped myself. “Yeah, it’s kinda how I imagined it. Freedom, right?” The bartender returned and set down a napkin and placed my drink on top of it, complete with a maraschino cherry, put a beer bottle in front of Scott and slid a water glass onto the bar beside Kat.

“I’ll drink to that,” Scott said, raising his beer up and angling it toward me. He waited for me to pick up my glass, which was a lot shorter than his; kind of a midget glass, I thought, like they didn’t want me to have a grown-up’s cup. I clinked it against his bottle as he said, “To us! To freedom!” and then reached around him to click my glass against Kat’s. Even she was wearing a smile, as wan as it was.

“Pretty sure it’s bad luck to toast with a water glass,” I said to Kat as I took the first sip of my drink. Whatever she said in reply, I didn’t hear. I felt my face contract as the full flavor of the whiskey hit my mouth. It was only mildly sour. What caused me to make a face like I’d swallowed battery acid was what I could only assume was the result of the alcohol. It was pungent, powerful, and I immediately wanted to spit it out and throw the cup far, far away from me. They had given me poison, I was sure of it.

“Are you all right?” Scott was looking at me with his brow furrowed. He took a swig and set his beer back down on the bar.

I swallowed the vile mixture and wondered where the barman had gone. I assumed he’d wanted to be as far away from me as possible when I discovered that his idea of a good drink was far removed from what I had thought it would be. “Is it…supposed to taste like I took a swig of household cleaners?”

Scott laughed and looked back at Kat, who feigned a smile of amusement as she rested her face on her hands. “A little strong, huh?”

“It’s a little strong in the same way that compared to normal humans, we are a little strong.”

He picked up my drink and took a sip. “Not bad. It’ll probably take a little bit for you to get used to the flavor, that’s all.”

I wanted to tell him that the only way I could ever get used to the flavor would be to take a blowtorch to every taste bud in my head first, but I refrained. I stared down at the drink, looking at it like it was an adversary I was facing off with. “Acquired taste, huh?” I picked up my little kid’s glass, suddenly thinking it was a lot bigger now. I didn’t want to waste a lot of time on this, and it certainly didn’t bear sipping, prolonging my disgust for an hour or more, a little shot of revolting nastiness at a time.

I threw it back like I’d seen on TV, trying to ignore the strong, nearly gag-worthy reflex it caused as it passed my tongue and drained down my throat. I felt the ice on my lips, and that was good, the last lingering aftertaste of the liquor still remaining on the cubes. I set the glass down on the bar and shook my head, as though I could rid myself of the tang that was still on my tongue.

The bartender made his way over, and just as I was about to ask him to make my next round a water, he set another Whiskey Sour in front of me. I looked up at him, frozen, like I had gotten caught flashing him a fake ID, except this was much worse. “The gentleman down there sent you this.” I looked at the barman, and he lifted a pudgy finger to point to a man down the bar.

He had brown hair, spiked a little in front, with a thin face and intense eyes that caught my attention even from twenty feet away. He raised his glass to me and I could almost feel the ice cubes melt in mine as I picked it up and raised it in a silent toast across the distance between us. He took a drink of his and I took a deep sip of mine, taking care not to make the face that was struggling to get out, that mixture of putrid desire to spit and horror that drinking so vile a liquid was socially acceptable.

“Picked up an admirer, huh?” I turned back to Scott to find him with a second beer in front of him, and his words were drifting a bit as he talked, slurring. I looked past him at Kat, who was shaking her head as if to keep awake, not paying much attention to us.

“I guess.” I looked back to the man to find he had turned back to the bar, nursing his drink, attention focused on a soccer game on the screen in front of him. “Or maybe he just figured I was the only unattached woman in the bar.” I swiveled on my stool to look around and confirmed my suspicion; most of the people in the bar were plainly coupled up.

I looked to Scott and frowned. “Why didn’t he assume I was your girlfriend and send a drink to Kat?” Scott got a blank look, then hemmed and hawed. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter,” I said. He took a breath and lifted his second beer, draining it.

“Take it easy.” Kat leaned over, crossing Scott’s body to weigh in over the blaring music that filled the bar, now a classic 80s rock tune that had more metal than an orthodontic patient’s mouth. “You’re not going for a third, are you?”

“I’ve been drinking beer and wine with my family since I was like…thirteen,” Scott said, his words curling as he answered, his tongue sounding like it was getting heavy. “I can handle it.”

“Uh huh.” Kat looked from him to me, her eyes narrowed slightly. “How much does your family usually let you have?”

“One.” He swayed on the stool. “We’re social drinkers, not alcoholics.” He laughed, as though it were the funniest thing in the world.

She rolled her eyes and then whispered something in his ear. He straightened on his stool and turned to me. “I think we’re gonna turn in for the night.” He pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and laid some on the bar. “You coming?”

I felt a flush of red as I imagined what Kat had said that got him to change direction so quickly. I didn’t want to be in the room next to them, certainly not for the next half-hour. “I think I’ll stay a little longer.”

He grinned, a goofy one. “Heh. Well, you might wanna stop after that one.” He pointed to my drink. “After all, if this is your first time drinking, you need to build up a tolerance.”

I felt a sway of my own in my head. “I’ll work on that.” I shot him a dazzling smile. “Have fun.”

Kat rolled her eyes at me but smiled, a weary look that I knew contained at least a grain of indulgence; her making an accommodation she normally might not have made when she was this tired, only for the purpose of getting him out of the bar before he became too trashed to walk.

As if to illustrate my point, Scott started to stand and his legs buckled. Kat caught him with an arm around his back and I could see her help him regain his balance, her meta strength enabling her to keep him upright. They walked to the door, her steering, him along for the ride. I chuckled under my breath and was dimly aware that the room had a gentle bob to it that could have been my head rocking back and forth. I knew that my best bet was to avoid drinking even one more drop of the suddenly much tastier drink in front of me.

When I turned back to the bar, I started because there was someone in the vacant seat to my left. He caught my eye, those intense blue eyes locked on mine, and he gave me a disarming smile that somehow got me to giggle, which came as a great shock to me. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I didn’t mean to be startled.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, shaking my head that I’d said that. “Sorry, I just didn’t expect—”

“Do you mind some company?” He caught my gaze and held it, and his smile went beyond the realm of disarming and into charming. He was wearing a button-up shirt that was unbuttoned at the top, giving me a glimpse of the beginning of some well-defined chest muscles.

I caught my breath and it held for a minute before I could squeeze out my answer. “I don’t mind.”

“My name’s James. James Fries.” He held up his drink, a tall, clear glass with some sort of garnish being the only hint it wasn’t water, and took a leisurely sip, not breaking eye contact the whole time he was drinking. “And you are?”

“Sienna.” I thought about it for a second, remembering that my identification had a drastically different name on it than the one I’d grown up with. “Sienna Clarke.”

“What brings you to the mighty town of Owatonna, Sienna Clarke?” He leaned against the bar, the angle of his body making him look very cool, his laid back attitude drawing my interest.

I took another breath and caught a whiff of a musk, something that left me wanting to take another breath so I could smell it again. “I’m here for work.” I blinked a couple times and the room swayed pleasantly. “You?”

“The same.” He took a sip and I admired his lips as they caressed the glass. “What do you do for work?”

“I’m…” It took me a second to remember my cover story. After all, I wouldn’t have wanted him to think I was some sort of person with super strength and powers that defied reasonable explanation. “I’m with the FBI. I’m doing some…investigating.”

“Investigating. How mysterious.”

My hand found its way to my glass, which found its way to my lips for another sip. “I do like to keep a certain mystique about me.” This time it didn’t taste too bad. In fact, it was almost good. “Do you live around here, James?”

“No.” I watched the sweat drip from his glass, leaving little blotches, like inkblots on the napkin as the dark wood of the bar bled through. His hand swirled his glass, slow. “I live in Minneapolis. I’m here for work.”

“I see. What do you do for work?”

He smiled. “Recruiting.”

I laughed, light, and I had no idea why. “That was vague.”

There was a glimmer in his eyes. “I have a mystique to keep up, too, you know.”

“Fair enough.” I put my empty whiskey down and watched as the bartender slid by and snaked it, replacing it with another. I started to protest but he had a wide grin on his fat face and nodded at James as he headed back to the other end of the bar where someone waited with a hand raised in the air. I looked at the new drink and felt a certain pressure in my chest at the realization that this could not end well. “I can’t drink this,” I said to James and watched him half-smile.

“Why not?”

“I’m a lightweight.” I said it with the air of someone making a confession. “And I have to work tomorrow morning, which means I kind of need to call it quits for tonight if I’m going to be at all able to think or drive tomorrow.”

“Acetaminophen and ibuprofen are your friends,” he said. “And lots of water.”

“I think moderation might also be a swell idea.”

“Much less fun.” His hand moved, very casually, across the bar and came to rest on my own. I could feel the gentle weight of it through the glove, the very slight warmth, and it caused me to redden, a heat rising in my cheeks that might not have been noticeable had I not been drinking. He watched my reaction. “Is that too much, too fast?”

“What?” I had been in a little bit of a daze, staring at his hand on mine. “No. Not really.”

“No?” He picked up my hand and cradled it in his, rubbing it. “Not this either?”

It felt strangely good, even through the glove. “No. That’s fine.” His eyes were on mine, staring, with a warmth that I found compelling, drawn to, and I couldn’t quite explain it. I found myself leaning closer to him.

He leaned in and kissed me. It was sudden, and caught me by surprise. My eyes widened when he did it, but it felt so good, the pressure, the warmth of his hand as it touched my cheek, and rested there, his lips on mine. I kissed him back, the haze in my mind so agreeable, and I felt his tongue part my lips and swirl. I let him hold my face in his hands and he kept them there, pressing his lips on mine so firmly—

I opened my eyes in shock and with the realization that I couldn’t, wasn’t able to—

I pulled away, broke from him with sudden violence, standing so abruptly I knocked over both my stool and my drink, trying to get backward, away from him, him who didn’t know what I was—

He looked at me with vague amusement. “So that was the line, huh?”

“What?” I looked around to see everyone in the bar staring at me, and turned back to him, still sitting on his stool, the same little smile crooking his lips. “No, it’s fine, I just…can’t…” I let out a breath in frustration. “Are you okay?”

His eyebrows arched upward. “I’m fine. Are you?”

“Yes. I’m fine. I’m sorry.” I cocked my head and tried to give him my most regretful expression. “Thank you for the drinks, James. You’re a really nice guy – and a fantastic kisser, by the way – but I have to go.”

He stood and tossed some bills on the bar. “Why don’t I walk you out?”

He took a step toward me but I held a gloved hand out and rested it on his chest. I let it linger there; damn, it was firm. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, for a lot of reasons.”

He seemed to be suppressing his grin, but nodded. “Fair enough.” He reached into the pocket of his pants and came back with a business card. “If you’re ever in Minneapolis, give me a call.”

I straightened my blazer and nodded, feeling the holster against my ribs. “I’ll keep that in mind.” I nodded toward his stool. “You might want to sit down for a few minutes.” He gave me a quizzical look. “Just a suggestion. Nice to meet you, James.”

I walked from the bar and tried really, really hard not to look at him as I pushed my way out the door. It didn’t work, and he gave me a sizzling smile that made me want to go back to him, and kiss him until his eyes rolled back in his head and his face melted off. I shook my head in disgust at that thought and walked out into the parking lot. It felt like I was being weak when I thought it, weak and casual and flippant, endangering James’s life so I could feel…something. I was lucky that the eternity that it felt like he kissed me was less than I thought it was, or he would have made a hell of a scene pitching over in the bar.

The parking lot lurched as I was about halfway across it. I stopped, regained my balance, and kept going. Once I reached the elevator after passing through the hotel lobby, I leaned against the wall and felt my head spin. Those Whiskey Sours weren’t so bad.

When the elevator door dinged I opened my eyes to find the doors still closed. I heard another ding and stared, waiting for them to open. On the third ring I realized it wasn’t the elevator: it was my phone, and I scrambled to grab it out of my pocket. I thrust it up to my ear after hitting the talk button, not even looking at the caller ID. “Hello?”

The elevator dinged, the door opened, and I heard Kat’s voice on the other end of the line as well as in person. She stood in the hall and turned her head in surprise when she saw me stagger out of the elevator. “Get packed.” She pulled her phone away from her ear and I got a good look at her face, which was still drawn, but now more serious, her blond locks twisted and mussed around her. “Ariadne called. There was another robbery.”

I dropped the cell phone back in my pocket and my hand went out to the wall automatically to support me. “Where?”

“Red Wing, Minnesota.” She started to hold out a hand to help me but I waved her off. “It’s north of here, a little over an hour, on the Wisconsin state line. We need to move now.” A little hint of a smile peeked at me, understated, on her tanned and pretty face. “If we hurry, we might be able to catch up with them.”

Chapter 8

A few minutes later our SUV was back on the highway, doing about a hundred miles an hour, barreling north on the interstate with the siren blazing. Kat was at the wheel and I was in the passenger seat. Scott was passed out in the back seat, his head against the window. We hit a bump and he didn’t stir. I rolled my window down and let the warm night air blow in my face.

“How are you holding up?” Kat didn’t take her eyes off the road. I could tell she was tense, white-knuckling the wheel. I would have been too. Scott had learned to drive years ago. Kat and I had learned in the last six months, with Parks as our instructor, in an intensive driving course that the Directorate gave us to teach us how to drive both offensively and defensively. Now I could run a car off the road at eighty miles an hour easier than I could parallel park.

“My world is in motion,” I said, as I swallowed heavily. I didn’t quite feel sick, but I certainly felt the first strains of it. “I could do with a little less of that.”

A tight smile made its way onto her face and a few of her teeth peeked out from between her lips. “At least I didn’t take the back roads route the GPS suggested. All those twists and turns…”

“Bleh.” I shook my head. “Drinking is bad for you. Also, I think I came close to kissing a guy to death in the bar.”

“What?” Her head snapped over to look at me.

“He’s fine.” My eyes pointed straight ahead, and I was trying to watch the road in order to avoid getting motion sickness. “I mean, he seemed fine, so we must not have kissed for very long.”

“Um, wow.” Her eyes were not on the road, which became obvious a moment later when she had to swerve after the tires started bumping on the strips at the edge of the highway. “Sorry. Wait, so what happened? I mean, aren’t you and Zack…”

“I don’t know.” I pulled out my phone and pushed the button again. The screen flared to life, giving me a perfect view of the background, but there were no missed calls or waiting text messages. “We kind of had a fight.”

“Oh.” She turned to look at me, then swiveled her gaze back to the road. “What about?”

“Pretty much about what you and Scott were doing just before we left.”

“Sleeping?” She turned to me and then reddened. “Oh. Before that.”

“Yeah.”

She let the silence hang for a minute. “Because you guys can’t…?”

“Yeah.”

I think the edge in my response put her off, because she got quiet before she spoke again. “Not even a little? Like maybe being really careful, with some clothes on, and—”

“No.” I tried to end her inquiries, but I felt my frustration bleed over. “I don’t have much margin for error, Kat. A little unnoticed skin contact in the throes of passion and a few seconds later he’s dead.” I felt the breeze run through my hair. “That’s not really how I would want it to go. It’s not a turn-on, having impending death hanging over you during sex. Especially…” I swallowed heavily again, this time unrelated to that slightly sick feeling that was growing in me. “…you know. The first time. Or hell, any time.”

“I guess it sort of kills the romance, huh?” She looked at me again, and her face turned sympathetic, her eyebrows arched in concern. I found it annoying, especially since I knew she and Scott were having plenty of sex; scads of it, loads of it, probably every single night of the week, and I couldn’t even get a kiss in without worrying about hurting someone. “So, did you and Zack break up?”

“I don’t know.” I frowned. “We didn’t really resolve anything, and he hasn’t tried to talk to me since we fought, so maybe.” I looked over at her. “Why?”

She didn’t look at me, just shook her head, and when she answered, her tone was completely casual. “No reason. Just wondering.” She chanced a glance at me, then half-shrugged. “Well…you were kissing some other guy in a bar…”

“Oh.” I felt a dull pain in my head, and then I slapped myself right on the forehead. “Oh, damn.” How could I have been so stupid? “I didn’t even…it didn’t even occur to me about Zack. Damn, I have a boyfriend. Damn damn damn.”

“Well, maybe.” Kat wasn’t exactly reassuring, even though I knew she meant well, so I spared her the glare.

The trip passed uneventfully, though by the time we reached the sign indicating Red Wing’s city limits, I was feeling a little more ill and had the beginnings of a headache. We pulled up in front of a gas station that had a police car parked outside, lights still flaring. My feet hit the pavement and I steadied myself, my FBI ID already in my hand as I crossed the pavement to talk to the two cops that were standing behind the yellow tape that cordoned off the door.

“I’m Agent Clark and this is Agent Ahern,” I said, my ID wallet unfolded as I ducked under the tape and joined the officers behind the line. “What can you tell us about what happened here, Officer…” I let my eyes find the silver nameplate of one of them. “…Olmstead?”

The one I had spoken to was a bald guy, dark skinned. “We responded to a 911 call a couple hours ago from a customer that came into the station and found the clerk unconscious behind the counter. The guy had been smacked around pretty hard. We sent him to the hospital and started looking over the scene, but we didn’t find much of anything.”

“No forensics?” Kat chimed in, catching the attention of both officers, drawing it away from me. I hated how she could do that, but it was the least of my problems now.

“Nah,” Olmstead answered. “The store serves a couple thousand people a day during the summer, more on a weekend like this. There’s enough hair and fingerprints in this place to start a new civilization in a petri dish, but nothing we can tie to anybody.”

I looked over his shoulder and saw a camera hanging from the awning above the gas pumps. I pointed at it. “What about that?”

“Nothing,” he said with a shake of his head. “Perp took the recording and smashed the system. Most of these smaller stations don’t bother with off-site data backup because they use the cameras more for people who drive off without paying for their gas.”

“Thanks for your help, Officer Olmstead.” I smiled at him and he nodded back, slightly tense from what I presumed was being questioned by the FBI. “We’ll need the name of the victim and which hospital you sent him to.”

“Sure.” He pointed to the road we had just been on. “Hospital is that way. We only have one. Follow the signs and you can’t miss it. Victim’s name is Roger Julian. He was pretty messed up when they carted him away. Couldn’t remember a damned thing.”

I exchanged a look with Kat. “Nothing?” When I turned back to the officer, he shook his head. “How bad was he hurt?”

“Not bad,” Olmstead said. “Scrapes and bruises, lost consciousness for a while. Paramedics said he looked like he’d be just fine, but they wanted to get him an MRI because of the disorientation, the loss of consciousness and the head wound. Thought he might be concussed.”

“Uh huh. Thanks for your help, Officer.” I nodded at him, and Kat and I walked back to the car. I heard him say something under his breath to the cop that was with him about the FBI recruiting toddlers, but I pretended not to hear it. Once we were in the car, I turned to Kat. “Sounds like this one might have the same issue.”

“Yeah.” Kat started the car and put it in gear. “I’m not healing this guy unless he’s got major problems, but I’ll take a look and see how hurt he is. I’m guessing if he can’t remember anything about the attack, he’s suffering from the same kind of memory loss as the last guy.”

“You sure you can’t heal him, just to be safe?”

She let out a slow breath. “I don’t think so. I don’t want to push it. After we get to the hospital, we seriously need to find a place to crash for the night or else you need to take over driving.”

I did a little head shake of my own. I couldn’t tell if I was sober yet, but I doubted it. “We should just find a hotel. I’m not in any condition to drive yet.”

We went a little further down the road, turning when we saw a blue sign with a white H on it. After another mile, the hospital came into view and we parked. It was a predominantly brick building with white trim and an enormous, multi-story octagonal entry. I felt the warmth of the air as I stepped out onto the pavement. I looked into the car before I closed the door; Scott was still passed out in the back, snoring.

I shook my head to clear the cobwebs as I followed Kat across the parking lot and through the sliding doors. The hiss they made as they moved, coupled with the cool air conditioning hitting me in the face, gave me a half-second of disorientation. I’d started sweating, just a little, on the walk from the car. I wished this damned state would come to some sort of happy equilibrium in regards to the weather; but no, she bitterly clung to her extremes.

After inquiring at the check-in desk we were routed up a couple stories to the critical care unit. The tile floor clicked under Kat’s heels and I heard the squeak from the soles of my flats as we walked along. She had slowed her pace so that I would trail behind her. The air bore the familiar smell of disinfectants and I heard raised voices ahead of us. We came around a corner and found a nurse’s station with three security guards surrounding someone.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to—” One of the security guards stepped forward, blocking my view of the person that the three of them had surrounded. A couple nurses were behind the desk in the station, backing away.

“I don’t think you realize the depth of your mistake here.” The voice was familiar, but I still couldn’t see the speaker.

“Sir, we’re going to have to call the police.” The lead guard’s hand rested on his holster, and I could see that he was tensing on the grip.

“That’s a shame.” Cold, bitterly ironic, the speaker didn’t sound at all regretful. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew that voice and I adjusted my position, crossing in front of Kat. I caught a glimpse of him over the security guard’s shoulder.

He was in profile to me, looking at the guard closest to him, and didn’t see me. His hair was long, brown and hung almost to his shoulder blades. I saw that his face was red, though it was hard to tell through his swarthy skin. I knew his eyes were brown, though I couldn’t see them from this distance. I quickened my pace and drew my FBI ID.

“Gentlemen,” I said, holding it open. “Sienna Clarke, FBI. This is Agent Ahern.” I nodded to Kat. “What’s going on here?”

“Ma’am.” The lead security guard peered hard at my ID while the other two watched their subject with undistilled suspicion. “This man was trying to access patient rooms long past the end of visiting hours.”

I turned to the man they held captive. “Is this true?”

He folded his arms and stared at me with barely disguised disbelief. “I just came here to talk to the guy who got robbed.” He nodded at the lead guard. “This clown gave me the party line and I was about to give him the party platter.”

Kat squinted. “What…what that does even mean? Is that a threat?”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “A party platter filled with meats and cheeses is a generous gift, and he should be damned happy to get it.”

“Ma’am?” The head guard got my attention turned back to him. “What is the FBI doing here in the middle of the night, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“The same thing your troublemaker is doing,” I said. “We need to have a conversation with the patient. He’s a witness in a series of robberies that have crossed state lines.” I nodded to Kat. “If you could show Agent Ahern to his room while I deal with your interloper…” I gestured with my hand toward the man standing between them all and he rolled his eyes and nodded back, with the greatest reluctance. I locked eyes with Kat. “We’ll be outside when you’re done.”

“Ma’am?” The head security guard spoke up again. “Would you like us to come with you, keep an eye on him?” He said it as the troublemaker walked past me, already on his way back to the elevator.

“Him?” I turned to follow him as he walked past. “If he gives me any problems, I’ll just shoot him.”

I heard the security guard behind me, a warble of uncertainty as he whispered to his colleagues. I followed the long-haired man back to the elevator, stopping in front of the door after he pressed the down button. “I didn’t need your help,” he said, stepping into the box.

“Of course you didn’t,” I said with an easy nod. “You were about to lay waste to three local rent-a-cops and probably a couple nurses because you had it all well under control.”

“Damned right.” His sullen look finally cracked and I caught the shake of his head that was followed by a grin. “How have you been, Sienna? I haven’t seen you in my dreams lately.”

I blew air noiselessly between my lips. “Honestly, I’ve been too busy to think about you, Reed.”

“Ouch.” He ran a hand through his long hair. “So you’re a full-on Directorate agent now, huh?”

“Nah. I work for the FBI. Longer hours, worse pay.”

He rolled his eyes. “Sure. Should we play the game of denial about why each of us is here, or can we cut the crap and get right to the truth?”

“I will if you will.”

“You’re here because of the guy, right?” He stared me down. “The guy going around treating convenience store clerks like he’s Chris Brown?”

I started to lie, but he was watching me. I’d known Reed longer than just about anybody, though I hadn’t spoken to him in months. “Yeah. We figure this is a new meta, just manifesting, that needs a serious reining in.”

“Yeah?” He tugged on the front of his shirt. He was wearing a nice one, a white dress shirt that was untucked, with a suit coat over it and dark jeans. “You talk to the guy in Owatonna?”

“You mean the guy with a big hole in his memory?”

“He was kind of a dead end, wasn’t he?” Reed smiled. “The ones in Wyoming and South Dakota had the exact same problem, oddly enough. How big of a believer are you in coincidence? Because I’m not much of one; and head traumas don’t typically cause that much memory loss.”

“What kind of meta would be able to do that?” I folded my arms, felt the familiar lump under my left arm as I rested my hand on my pistol.

He shrugged, looking for all the world like he was a man unconcerned with anything. “Well, the beatings could be caused by just about any type…as for the other, there’s a few that could cause that, but one in particular I’m thinking of.”

I waited a minute for him to answer. “I thought we weren’t gonna do the mystery game.”

“I said we weren’t gonna do the denial game – I never said I was gonna tell you everything I know.” He turned and pushed the button to call the elevator and stared at me, puzzlement brewing on his face. “Why Clarke? Why not just go with Nealon?”

I rolled my eyes and lowered my voice. “Because if you’re going to commit a felony, it’s best not to use your real name, especially if said name is being entered into the FBI database as an agent. That tends to leave a pretty exact record if anything goes wrong.”

He frowned. “Well, wouldn’t they have had to put a picture of you into the database in a personnel file?”

“I—” I stopped and thought about it. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not planning on making a major problem of it.”

“Huh.” He stared back at me with cool amusement. “I might worry about that a little bit if I were you, especially given who you work for.”

“Oh yeah?” We both looked up as the elevator dinged. “Care to share what you mean by that?”

He smiled as he stepped into the elevator. “Nope.” His hand reached out to hold the door as Kat came up to join us. “What’s the word, blondie? Does this guy have a swiss melt for a memory too?”

Kat had the rarest of expressions cross her face, irritation, as she shot me a look, as though she were asking permission before speaking in front of him. I nodded at her. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s perfectly healthy, his brain is fine, but the memory’s just gone, like it never existed.”

“Same old story.” Reed pulled his hand back and the elevator door started to close. “See you ladies down the road. Oh, and Sienna? You smell like whiskey. Just FYI.”

The elevator doors closed before I could snap back a reply. I looked to Kat, who was slightly flushed. “Of course I smell like whiskey,” I said. “I’ve been drinking whiskey.” Kat shrugged as I pushed the elevator button to call another one. “Ass,” I said, lowering my voice.

“Who was he?” Kat waited until we were walking across the parking lot to ask.

“Him?” I chucked a thumb toward the hospital building. “When Zack and Kurt came to my house for the first time, they ended up drawing guns—”

“What?” She looked at me with incredulity. “Really?”

“Really. I kinda got into a scuffle with them first. Anyway, I ended up running when Kurt started shooting, and Reed was waiting outside and offered me an escape route, so I took him up on it.”

“They shot at you?” She stopped and grabbed me by the arm. I felt the strength in her grip; it wasn’t quite as much as I could bring to bear, but the girl was no slouch. “With real bullets?”

“Tranquilizer darts. But I didn’t know that until later.”

“So who is he?” She stared at me evenly, and had the slightest smile. “He’s kinda cute, you know.”

“I had noticed that, yes.” I pulled my arm gently from her grasp. “And if he’d ever stick around for more than five minutes without disappearing, that might matter.”

“Oooh,” she said in a somewhat high and floating voice. “A man of mystery?”

“The very definition of it.” I opened the passenger door to the SUV and climbed in, tossing a glance back to confirm Scott was still snoring softly in the back, head against the window and mouth open wide. “I bet you could do with a little bit more of that in your life right about now.”

“Huh?” She cocked her head at me, question written on her face, then swiveled to look when I indicated the backseat. She saw Scott, shook her head and stuck the key in the ignition. “So what did he tell you?”

“Not much. Said he’d interviewed the victims out in Wyoming and South Dakota, that they had the same memory gap as the guy in Owatonna.” I leaned back against the headrest. “So now we’ve got four people who got the holy hell beat out of them and they don’t remember a thing about it. We’ve got no idea where they’re going and no clue who’s doing it – except…” I frowned.

“What?” She was at rapt attention, looking at me.

“Reed confirmed one thing.” I chewed my lip. “He said a meta was definitely causing the memory loss – and I think he knew which kind of meta it was.”

Kat looked at me blankly. “So what kind of meta causes memory loss when they attack you?”

I looked out into the black night, and I racked my brain for something, anything, I’d learned in my studies, anything at all about metas that could make memories disappear. Without that clue, we were without anything to do or any lead to investigate until the next call came in. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.”

Chapter 9

Someone Else

The heat was near unbearable. Somehow I’d done it again, scored the crappiest possible car I could get my hands on. I’d stopped in some half-assed town called Ellsworth just over the Wisconsin line and stolen an old Dodge that was sitting overnight in a grocery store parking lot. The reeferhead’s Honda had started making gawdawful grinding noises in southern Minnesota. I tried to make it last, filled it up in Red Wing, but no, it started going into catastrophic failure mode after I crossed the river. This is what happens when you have to choose between buying weed and performing regularly scheduled maintenance, I suppose.

I thought maybe I’d get lucky this time, but I wasn’t. The Dodge was older and the air conditioner didn’t work, which might explain why it was left in a parking lot. It was after midnight, and still pretty damned stifling out. I wished for the millionth time that I had made this little trip in winter, then remembered what winters were like in the upper midwest. Spring would have been the time for this. Or fall.

My shirt was dripping with sweat by the time I hit the first exit ramp in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The home of pretty near nothing, the city of Eau Claire had still somehow managed to attract over sixty thousand people to live within its limits. I’d been here before; I couldn’t see the appeal.

The night was dark, but the yellow light of the moon was in the sky as I rolled through a commercial district. There were a line of little stores and I followed the thoroughfare until I reached Fleet Street, where I turned left. I was going by directions I had memorized before I left Gillette, but they were as fresh in my mind as if I had them with me on a piece of paper. I eased the car down the road, squinting to read the house numbers by the moon and the streetlights.

8453. I stopped when I saw them on the front of a white house, the little bronze numerals barely visible in the dark. I climbed out of the car two blocks down and started to walk back. I felt a grin split my lips and I barely restrained myself from wanting to run.

The house was older, built in the seventies, a little one-floor rambler on a city lot, the grass now overgrown by a week or more, weeds sprouting up all over. The aged wooden siding looked like I’d get splinters just from touching it, and I had a suspicion that the dark lines on the roof meant that this place couldn’t hold its water. A red door was the single spot of color on the exterior and a wooden fence higher than my head partitioned the backyard off, hiding it from view.

I cleared the fence with a jump, felt the shock through my knees as I landed and cursed under my breath. I’d been jumping through a lot of hoops the last few days, had been on the receiving end of some rough luck, and whoever crossed my path next was going to be the recipient of all my frustrations for those setbacks and reversals. It was going to be sweet.

I walked slow, letting my eyes make sure the path in front of me was clear. I could see a light on in the back of the house as I came around the corner, crouched in a defensive posture in case someone was waiting for me out back. It never pays to be surprised.

The back of the house was one long, straight line, and I could see a couple people in the kitchen window, having a conversation. Both were men, one older than the other. The younger one looked to be in his late teens, while the older appeared to be in his forties. Looks could be deceiving, though, because I knew he was at least a millennium old if not older. Franklin Beauregard, he was named. He was the reason I was here.

I ducked under the kitchen window and crawled through the grass on my hands and knees. The wet of the dew was the only coolness I had felt since I left the Honda in Ellsworth. I felt it on my knees and the temporary pleasure of the temperature change gave way to annoyance at getting wet – those fellas inside were really gonna suffer for all this crap.

I stood once I was clear of the window and climbed the step to the back door. I braced myself and took a deep breath before lifting my foot and kicking. I hit the door and felt it splinter as my momentum carried me through, breaking it into four pieces. They should have used a steel door; that would have at least slowed me down as I ripped it from the hinges.

I heard raised voices and the young man who I assumed was Franklin’s son entered the back hallway first. He uttered a cry of warning when he saw me and whipped a fist through the air. I reached out, caught it and tugged him forward, ramming his head into the wall.

I was past him in a half a heartbeat, looking through the narrow kitchen at Beauregard, a smirk on my face. “Hello, Franklin. What brings Omega to Eau Claire, Wisconsin?”

He clasped one hand over the other at his midsection and I watched his face become calm resignation. “As if you don’t know.”

“Oh, I know. I just wanted to hear you say it.” I took two steps toward him. He didn’t move. “Tell me where Site Epsilon is.”

His eyes widened and I watched his aged hands turn white as they clenched each other. “How…?” His face went back to relaxed. “You…are batting at shadows.”

“Nah, I’m batting at the things that cast shadows.” I took another step. “Site Epsilon. Andromeda. Where? Last chance.” I angled a hand toward him in warning. “And don’t even think about coming at me with those—”

His battered jacket burst open, the ripping of the fabric like a thunderclap in the quiet summer eve. I jumped forward and hit him three times in the face before he landed the first attack, a hard bite on my shoulder. I grunted in pain and slammed his head against the wood floor. Two gargantuan snakes extended from his body, one from behind each of his shoulder blades. I snatched a butcher knife from the block next to the sink and cut into the first as it struck at me, splitting the head from its body. It went limp and dropped, flopping on the floor behind him.

I got to my feet, knife in hand as Beauregard struggled to his knees, the remaining snake head giving him license to do so. It extended five feet from his body, keeping out of range of the knife, hissing and striking every time it got close to me. I feinted toward him and it snapped and came at me. I reached out with my free hand and wrapped my arm around it, trapping it in a headlock as I drove the blade through the top of its skull, slicing the head off. Without so much as another sound, it fell still and quiet, and I turned to Franklin, who was on his knees, both snake bodies limp and hanging from his shoulders.

“Andromeda,” I said as I dangled the knife before his eyes. “Would you care to guess what you lose next?”

He bowed his head, and I heard a whisper. “Decorah, Iowa. It’s in Decorah.”

I knelt and dropped the blade to the ground, clucking my tongue. “Why do you have to lie to me, Franklin? It demeans us both.”

“I’m telling the truth.” He looked up at me, his fingers resting on the floor as though he were drawing strength from it.

I reached up and my hand wrapped around his neck, applying only the slightest pressure, forcing him to look me in the eye. “Site Epsilon is not in Decorah, and we both know it. You’ve certainly got an Omega safehouse there, but that ain’t where Andromeda is.” I smiled at him. “So…the hard way, then.”

He gasped as the pain began, my other hand holding him tight on the cheek. “But…you…would have done this anyway…”

“Of course,” I said, my hands holding him as he started to grunt, then let out his first scream. “It’s not like I trust you.” I felt the surge begin as his life, his soul, drained out of him, my hands pressed tightly to his cheeks. His memories flooded into me, into my mind, causing it to swirl, a fresh infusion of life into my brain. I let his body drop to the floor and I stood up, looking down on him in pity. “Now that you’re in here,” I tapped the side of my head, “you can’t lie to me anymore, Franklin.”

I heard something move behind me and I turned. His son (I knew because of his memories now in my head) was stirring, moving from where I had put him down against the wall. I walked to the back door and knelt next to him, flipping the boy over. He still looked young, but I’d put a nice gash on his forehead. His eyelids fluttered and he mumbled something. “Shut up,” I said. I stared at him for a minute, then shook my head, letting out a sigh of impatience. Too young.

“This is your lucky day,” I said as I pressed my hand against his face. Even unconscious, I felt him squirm when the pain started. I held contact for another couple of seconds and then pulled my hand away. I could see the rise and fall of his chest, the regularity of his breathing a sign of the mercy I didn’t even know I had in me. “Don’t worry,” I said. “You won’t remember any of this.”

Chapter 10

Sienna Nealon

I awoke to a headache that felt as though a lumberjack had decided to chop down my skull. Light was shining through a window and there was a faint rattling that I was sure was between my ears, the remnants of my brain trying to escape its own stupidity for drinking too much last night. I groaned and realized that the buzzing was not in my head: it was in fact to the left of it, on the nightstand next to the hotel bed I was sleeping in.

I rolled over and grabbed my phone, slapping the talk button without bothering to check the display. I wondered for a half-second if this was what life had been like before Caller ID. “Hello?” My voice was little more than a croak.

“Hey.” I heard the quiet voice of Zack on the other end of the line and sat up, far too fast for my own good.

“Owww,” I said, my hand rushing to my temple, which felt as though it were about to explode.

“You okay?” Zack sounded a little resigned. Or cautious. Actually, it was hard to tell because the pain in my head was so sharp.

“Yes. Just…have a headache.”

“Hm. First night on a mission, away from the Directorate…” He sounded like he was brainstorming. “Let me guess, they gave you cover as an FBI agent, complete with an ID that said you were over twenty-one.”

“Should I worry that you immediately assume the worst about me?” I tried to cram some reproach into my words, but I’m pretty sure it failed. I dangled my legs over the edge of the bed. Apparently I hadn’t managed to shed my suit before I passed out.

“You should assume that I’ve been a college student at roughly your age. My fake IDs weren’t as realistic as what the Directorate can produce. Also, I’ve been on some of those ‘sit around and wait’ assignments. They’re moments of excitement followed by long stretches of boring nothing.”

“That sounds familiar.” I stood up and hung my head, because it felt better for some reason. I paused, trying to string together some thoughts. “About last night…”

“It’s all right, you don’t have to apologize. I know it’s been tense for you lately.” His voice was soothing.

“Yeah, I…wait, what?” I bristled, every muscle in my body tensing as the meaning behind what he said made it through my fog-addled brain. “What did you just say?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “I…I said…”

“Did you just say ‘I don’t have to apologize’?” I felt my jaw clench. “I know damned well I don’t have to apologize. I was just minding my own business in my room when you came in and we had a lovely conversation about how you secretly resent the fact that I can’t put out, which is something that you’ve never had the balls to say to my face.”

I waited for a response, and when it came, there was a little heat on it. “This isn’t the time to have this conversation.”

“Really?” I almost yelled at him. “When’s a good time to discuss the fact that we’ve been dating for months and can’t touch for more than two seconds per day? Wedding night? Golden Anniversary? When would be the appropriate time to talk about the fact that we can’t have sex, Zack? Please, tell me so I can write it into my schedule!”

There was the barest gap of silence on the other side. “Fine, you want to do this now? Yes, it’s grating on me, okay? But that doesn’t mean—”

“It’s grating? Grating?” I let fly with my disbelief. “Just say it, okay? It’s frustrating and it’s never going to get any better! Unless you really love the touch of heavy leather gloves, you’ll be enjoying a nice embargo of skin-to-skin contact for the rest of your life.”

“I – what? Touch of leather gloves? You mean, like—”

“I mean it’s never going to get better, Zack.” I was firm, final.

“So, what?” He didn’t even sound real on the other end of the phone. “You want to be done? Finished with me?”

It felt a little like someone was choking me, and the pain in my head was splintering, telling me to say something I didn’t really want to. “I think we’ve gone as far as you can go with me, Zack. If you ever want to have anything approaching a normal life, yeah…I think we’re finished.”

There was a smoldering quality about the way he said his next words, like there was a fire underneath every single one of them. “If that’s the way you feel—”

“It’s not the way I feel, Zack.” I should have been on the edge of panic, ending things like this. It’s not like I set out to do it the day before, when I was content on the campus, in training, and with my boyfriend. “It’s the way it is. You’re too big a boy to keep holding back; time to grow up. My life is solitary confinement – it’s a prison sentence, and you don’t deserve it, even if you do act like an ass sometimes.”

“That’s it?” I could hear the edge in his voice. “It’s over?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t have an edge in mine. I was just tired. “It’s over. Be safe in Michigan.” I pushed the end button on my phone without waiting for his reply and sagged back onto the bed, taking a deep breath. I felt a burning at the corner of my eyes, and I couldn’t believe what I’d just done.

In a way, I was sorry I hadn’t done it sooner. I mean, I kissed another guy at the bar last night, and almost got carried away. That’s not the strongest sign that things were going well in my relationship with Zack. In fact, it was probably a sign that there were some deep, serious, underlying problems. Well, one anyway. And just because I had to live the rest of my life to less than the fullest didn’t mean he had to.

There was an insistent knocking at my door and I levered myself back up and opened it to find Kat waiting. “Ariadne wants us all on the phone in an hour to make our report.”

“Fine.” I massaged my temples. “You want to come to my room or what?”

She shrugged. “Sure. I think I can have Scott up and moving by then.” She looked down at my attire and made a face. “You might consider showering and changing your clothes. You look—”

I looked down at myself, at what I was wearing. “A little ragged, yeah. I’ll do that. See you in an hour.”

I shut the door and got to work. I rummaged in my overnight bag and found pain relievers and the other drug I was taking. I popped the acetaminophen, then an equal dose of ibuprofen, then got my syringe ready for my morning injection of chloridamide. The injection was critical because if I didn’t take it, the souls of the people I’d absorbed tended to get a little…feisty…in my head. I took a deep breath and plunged the needle into a vein. I was fortunate in that I was a meta; if not for my continuously regenerating vein structure, I’d likely be out of places to inject the drug by now.

The shower brought me back to life, and after I spent a few minutes getting my hair straightened and had changed into a fresh suit, I felt worlds better. The pain was still lingering behind my eyes, but it was in the recesses of my mind rather than front and center. And it didn’t hurt to blink.

An hour later, there was a knock on my door and I opened it to find Kat, who was as sunny in her disposition as ever, and Scott, who wore sunglasses and looked as though he’d had an anvil dropped on his head. He grumbled some sort of greeting as he slouched into the room and flopped in a chair at the table. Kat sat across from him, a small smile seeming to be her only defense against laughing at both of us.

When Kat’s phone rang, I caught a nearly imperceptible twitch at the edge of Scott’s eyebrow. I might not have noticed it but for the fact I felt one myself. “Just a second,” Kat said to whoever was on the phone. She pulled it away from her ear and pushed a button. “You’re on speaker, Ariadne.”

“Get packed and get moving,” came Ariadne’s voice over the phone. “Early this morning a car was reported stolen from a parking lot in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, just across the river from you. We flagged it as a suspect vehicle on a hunch and it was found abandoned an hour ago by a police patrol in a neighborhood in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I’m sending you the address.”

“How do we know that the stolen car is linked to our mystery robber?” The question occurred to me even through the haze in my head.

“We don’t.” Ariadne sounded tense. “But we’ve got nothing else to go on and car thefts aren’t exactly a common occurrence in Ellsworth, where the dairy cows outnumber the people twelve to one. Get moving, all right? I’ll check in with you in a few hours; we’re managing a crisis with M-Squad so I may not be quite as quick to respond right now. Stay out of trouble.” There was a click and the phone shut off.

“Ah, words of confidence and encouragement,” I said, lighter than I felt.

We were in the car and moving a few minutes later, leaving the town of Red Wing behind. We rode through downtown, which seemed to be mostly brick buildings, and got on a bridge that stretched across a wide river. On the other side a sign proclaimed that we had entered the state of Wisconsin. If I hadn’t been so hungover, I might have rejoiced at crossing my first state line. As it was, I sat in the back and tried to keep my eyes hidden behind my dark sunglasses.

After a few minutes we cleared the low lying river country and found ourselves zipping down a road with farms on either side. Cattle grazed in the pastures as the sun beat down overhead. One cow was lingering so close to the fence I could see her jaw moving while chewing her cud as we passed.

Towns and fields streaked by as I thought about Zack. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what he was doing right now, facing off against some meta in Detroit. I truly cared for him, which was why I had to let him loose. At least, that’s how I justified it as I stared out the window, watching the endless fields of green go by. I felt like a glutton for pain, like I wanted to clutch the misery close to my heart and let it sit there. It was all for him, I told myself, and somehow that made it hurt all the more.

We took Interstate 94 east to Eau Claire, Kat driving the whole way. She didn’t have the siren roaring for this trip, though she did strategically flick it on a few times when we were caught behind slow moving cars on two lane roads. And once for a tractor.

When we got off the freeway, we followed a main thoroughfare into a stretch of commerce, and then turned onto a side street. It was past noon, and the sun was directly overhead, bright and glaring. Kat kept the car under the speed limit as we followed the GPS to the address Ariadne had sent us. There was a car, an old Dodge, parked on the curb. We came to a stop behind it and I looked around. There was no sign of movement, nothing.

I opened my door and stepped out into the boiling midday heat. The humidity once again gave my skin an immediate sensation of moistness and I felt the beads of sweat start to gather on my forehead. “Never thought I’d wish the sun away,” I muttered under my breath. I caught a chuckle of appreciation from Kat. Scott just grunted.

The three of us approached the Dodge the way we might have approached a corpse; slow, tentative, and with undue caution. “No one inside,” I said. “We’ll need to check the trunk.” I looked around the street once more. The residents of Eau Claire clearly had enough sense to stay in during this awful weather, though a lawn sprinkler was going off a couple doors down.

“You think there’s anything here?” It was Kat that answered. Her blond hair was up in a tight bun today, and her petite frame and dark sunglasses coupled with her black jacket really did make her look like an FBI agent. I felt another tingle of annoyance; the girl could just look good regardless of circumstances.

Scott leaned over the passenger window and reached his hand through. “Glass is broken here.” He pushed a button on the dash and I heard the locks disengaging and the trunk springing open.

I walked to the rear of the car, my hand hovering just over my gun. I edged around the trunk lid and sighed when I looked down. “Nothing. A blanket, a spare tire and a jack.”

“Sounds like all the ingredients for a redneck first date—” Scott said with a smile that was cut short by a sizzling sound. His body jerked, his face drew tight and his sunglasses flew off as he spasmed, a peculiar blue light dancing over him like little bolts of lightning running across his suit.

“Kat, down!” I shouted and barely had time to hit the pavement before a bolt of electricity shot past me and hit the car. I rolled across the lawn and came up with my pistol, a Sig Sauer P250. I loved my meta powers, but they weren’t a hell of a lot of use at range – or against something that shot lightning bolts.

“Too late.” The voice was low and gravelly. I saw Kat lying on the street behind the car, splayed out on the ground with three guys in black tactical vests huddled around her and Scott. Two others stood at either bumper of the car, covering me with weapons of their own, big shiny silver ones that reminded me of the kind the Directorate used to bring down stray metas. Their leader was standing over Kat, an assault rifle in his hands and pointed at me. “Now are you gonna give yourself up or are we gonna be leaving your body to go rancid in the heat?”

Chapter 11

I stared him down, my gun aimed at his comrade who was standing to my right. Assuming they were human, even my meta speed and my skill with the pistol wouldn’t be enough to save me from getting blasted by at least one of them. I took a closer look; their vests were bulky, which told me that they were likely kevlar. I considered trying to aim for their heads instead of center mass, but dismissed it as a bad idea. Aiming for a small target in my first combat shoot seemed like a recipe for failure. Besides, even with a vest the bullets would put a full grown man on the ground in a world of hurt.

“So what are you gonna do?” Their leader spoke again, and I saw the others flick their eyes toward him. “Live or die, your choice.”

“I’m somewhat attached to the former,” I said, keeping my gun trained on the rightmost enemy.

“Then you might wanna put the gun down, real slow.” His voice was rough and used to issuing commands. “Otherwise we’re gonna have to cut that loose, pretty quick.”

On one knee as I was, I couldn’t see Scott or Kat, and I wondered if they were still alive. I had seen what hit them, and I hoped that the weapons they’d been shot with were no more fatal than the Directorate equivalent. “All right,” I said, not really sure if I was going to follow his command or shoot, but knowing I didn’t have much time to make a decision.

“Put the gun on the ground in front of you. Go slow.” There was that command again.

I felt my jaw tighten and I started to inch the gun lower, keeping the bearing on my target. I’d be less accurate firing from this position, but I still felt confident I could put him down. The other two…well, that was the problem, wasn’t it? That was why I was even considering surrendering. I started to say something but I heard the squeal of tires at the end of the street to my left and it took all my training to keep from jerking my head to look in the direction of the noise.

They were not so well trained, and all three of them turned, giving me an opening. I fired a double tap on my target, two quick shots that sent him over backward, gun skittering away. I changed targets quick, drew a bead on the leader and fired twice more. I knew they were bound to be less accurate than my first shots, and one of them went wide, but the other hit him in shoulder and knocked him over. I started to change targets again to the last guy, but he had heard me firing and had drawn a bead on me. I knew I wouldn’t make it in time.

A car slammed into him, bumper smashing him against the stolen car. I watched his body fold at the knees, a scream from him faint in my ears after the echoing of the gunshots nearly deafened me. He was pinned between the cars, legs crushed, and his upper body had fallen into the open trunk. I could hear little cries coming from within; likely the sound of him screaming, but from where I stood it was muffled. I opened my mouth and closed it, trying to restore my hearing after the trauma of firing a gun repeatedly with no ear protection.

I knew there were two more enemies behind the car where I couldn’t see them, and I wasn’t about to stick my head up to see. I looked at the car that had crashed into the stolen one, but the front window was spider-webbed, the cracked glass obscuring the identity of the driver. I thought I heard the sound of fighting from the other side of the car, where Scott and Kat were laying, but I couldn’t be sure through the ringing in my ears. I edged toward the hood, away from the crashed rear, and raised myself up, gun pointed. My eyes widened at what I saw and I hesitated.

“You’re just like me; you know how to get yourself in trouble,” came the soft voice of the woman standing in front of me, holding the bodies of the two remaining assailants by the back of their collars. Both appeared to be unconscious. She was wearing a red tank top, cut off jeans again, and flip-flops. Her dark hair was hanging around her face and she dropped the bodies to the ground. “What would you have done if I wasn’t here to save you?”

“Charlie?” I stared at her in near disbelief. I heard a grunt from the first guy I had shot, laying about a foot to my right, lanced out a foot and kicked him in the head, causing him to go limp. “What are you doing here?”

She shrugged. “I was bored in Minneapolis, so I came looking for you.”

I stood slowly, looking around the street, which was quiet save for the ticking sound from the engine of the car that had crashed. “And you decided to go looking on a random street in Eau Claire, Wisconsin?”

She laughed. “No, I absorbed the mind and soul of a tech geek a few years ago. I tracked your cell phone’s GPS.”

I looked down reflexively at my pocket. “Really?”

“It’s not as hard as you’d hope it would be.” She shrugged. “Looks like my timing was good. What’d you do to provoke an Omega sweep team?”

“Omega?” I felt a thrill as I made my way around the car to check on Kat and Scott. “These guys are from Omega?”

“Uh huh.” She leaned down and grabbed one of them by the chest, ripping open his collar to reveal a small tattoo of the Greek letter Omega. “See?”

“Curiouser and curiouser.” I bent over Kat, trying her pulse (not an easy task with leather gloves on). She stirred at my touch, causing me to sigh in relief. I reached out and shook Scott, causing him to groan, his eyes fluttering. “Omega must be tracking our robber, too.”

There was a sound from behind me of metal stressing and squealing and I was back to my feet, gun drawn again. The door of the car that had crashed was opening. “I thought you drove that?” I asked over my shoulder to Charlie.

“Nuh-uh,” she said without concern. “I parked down the street and hustled up when I saw these guys ambush you. I thought it was one of your guys driving.”

“Whoever’s in the vehicle, hands up and come out slow,” I said. “No sudden moves.”

“Uggghhh.” The moan was not subtle, and was followed by the sound of a body hitting pavement. I saw the head and shoulders of a man, his long, dark hair tangled around his face. “I save your life and this is the gratitude I get?”

“Reed?” I stared at him before holstering my gun and running to his side. I rolled him over once I reached him; his nose was bloody and he had the start of a bruise forming under his right eye. “What are you doing here?”

He coughed, then grimaced. “There’s an Omega safehouse just down the street. I was surveilling it; figured it might be a nice, boring place to keep an eye on while I waited for word on another robbery. Then you and your pals go and get bushwhacked by an Omega sweep team, and suddenly my life gets really interesting.”

“Can you walk?” After I said it, I heard Charlie approach behind me, her flip-flops smacking against the pavement. The ringing in my ears had begun to subside.

“I think so.” He took my hand and I pulled him to his feet. “We need to get out of here before the law arrives. Doubtful they’re gonna ignore a scuffle this big.”

“I need to get a look at this Omega safehouse,” I said. “Preferably before the cops get here.”

Reed waved his hand in the direction that his car had come from. “Down the street. 8453 is the house number.” He clutched at his side and his face was a mask of discomfort.

I looked at him, then Charlie in turn. “Can you get Kat and Scott into my car and meet me in front of the safehouse?”

She got a lazy grin on her face. “You just need all kinds of help today.”

“Can you do it or not?”

She shrugged. “Sure. Keys?”

“Kat had them last,” I said, already turning to run down the street. “Check her pockets – and, Charlie…” She turned and I shook my head at her attire. “Remember to touch them only on the clothing.”

“No problem with the blond girl,” she called back. “But the boy…I might touch him some other places.”

I ignored her and ran down the street at full clip. I saw faces staring out of the windows of houses, saw curtains rustle in others as I passed. I watched the house numbers decrease until I reached 8453, a nondescript single story white house. I decided to avoid the front door and instead jumped over the wooden gate to the backyard. I listened over the slight ringing that persisted in my ears as I came around the corner and saw the back door kicked in.

I drew my gun, changed to a fresh magazine and stepped inside. The door led into a small hallway. I could see a kitchen to my left, along with a body and a lot of blood. Straight ahead was a family room, and off to the right was a hallway leading to several bedrooms. I went into the kitchen first, which had a nasty green tile backsplash over orange countertops and beige linoleum floors. Those were distracting, but the body in the middle of the kitchen was more bizarre than the horrific 70s color scheme.

First of all, it was obviously dead. There was enough blood on the floor to fill three bodies, and his face was frozen in anguish. He was elevated slightly off the floor by something on his back.

Worse than him were the remains of two enormous snakes lying on the kitchen floor. I shuddered. I do not care for snakes. I kicked at one of them to make sure it was dead. It didn’t move, but that didn’t make me feel much better. While I knew logically that they weren’t slimy, I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I touched it, it’d be slick and disgusting. I leaned in to look at the dead man, adjusting the body to see what was causing his corpse to incline.

When I lifted him, I almost retched. I saw what was holding him up, and it looked as though the snakes had been growing out of his shoulder blades. I dropped him and stood, stifling an urge to vomit. I kept my gun in hand and stepped over him, coming around the corner of the kitchen into the dining room to find another man on the couch, this one much younger, and with no obvious signs of snakes growing out of him.

He was also quite alive, though he was limp, arm hanging off the edge of the sofa. His chest moved up and down, eyes closed. I heard the faint sound of sirens outside and walked over to him, shaking him with one hand while keeping the pistol pointed at him with the other. He didn’t stir, and after two more attempts I left him and took a quick look around the rest of the house. Two bedrooms were pretty simple and a cursory look under the beds and in the closets didn’t reveal anything. The third bedroom seemed to be set up as an office, and I grabbed the laptop computer for later analysis by someone who’d know what to do with it.

I started to leave but paused as I headed toward the front door. There had to be a basement, didn’t there? I started to set down the laptop when I heard an urgent series of honks from a car horn, just outside. I clutched the laptop tighter and with a last look at the young man unconscious on the couch, I ran out the front door.

The Directorate SUV was next to the curb, and another violent blast from the horn issued forth as I went down the front steps. I saw Charlie in the driver’s seat and Reed’s long hair through the tinted window in the backseat. I jumped in the passenger side and Charlie gunned the engine, not even waiting for me to shut the door. She slowed the car at the corner, which was fortunate, because two cop cars went shooting by, sirens blaring, and my aunt gave me a grin. She made the car take a leisurely turn to the left, and off we went.

Chapter 12

“Where to?” Charlie asked as we headed down the road. I saw a couple more sets of cop cars, lights flashing, go past.

“I don’t know.” I held the laptop tight, almost as if I were afraid to let it go, lest it vanish. “We need to lay low.”

“I thought you were with the FBI?” Reed spoke up from the backseat, his voice laced with sarcasm. “Why didn’t you just stay on scene?”

“Because while I and my colleagues might well be from the FBI, I’d have had a hell of a time explaining you two.” I looked from him to Charlie, who still wore a grin. “If I’d had to, I would have, but let’s just say I wanted to make that Plan B.”

“That coulda been a lotta fun,” Charlie said. I shot her a look of disbelief and she shrugged. “Come on, lying to the cops? Talk about a thrill.”

“So is this your aunt?” Reed asked.

Charlie looked back with a faint smile of pleasure. “You know me?”

“Charlene Nealon, A.K.A. Charlie,” Reed said. “Didn’t know you were still around, but yeah, I’ve heard of you. I particularly enjoyed reading about your exploits in Nevada.”

I saw a subtle change in Charlie’s persona then, a subtle clamping of her jaw as her smile disappeared and she turned back around to focus on the road. “That was a while ago. I barely remember Nevada.”

I watched Reed, and he smiled. “There’s some other people that could probably say the same.”

“How are they doing?” I caught Reed’s attention and nodded at Kat and Scott, both unconscious next to him. Scott was leaned up against the window like he had been the night before when he passed out, and Kat was lying gracelessly across his lap. I would have cringed for her, but, frankly, it wasn’t as though she’d never been in that position before.

“They’re out.” Reed illustrated his point by reaching over to give Scott a gentle slap across the face. Scott moaned, but did not wake. “The sweep team hit them with an amped-up version of a taser. No wires needed. I’m told they got the design from the Directorate after you guys left one behind at your house.”

“One of those things put Wolfe down on the ground,” I said. “I can’t imagine it felt very good for either of them.” I turned around to talk to him. “Who is Omega?”

He kept a cool dispassion as he stared back. “You don’t know?”

“The Directorate knows next to nothing about them.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Old Man Winter knows something, but he’s…not telling.” I frowned. “It’s above my pay grade.”

Reed shrugged. “I can’t help you, then. Sounds like something you’ll figure out when your pay grade goes up.” He gave me a maliciously self-satisfied smile. “Of course, if you want to leave the Directorate and join me, I could answer your questions instead of keeping you in the dark like they do—”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Charlie said. “They’re the gods, okay? The old ones, the ones from the myths, or what’s left of them.” She turned from driving to focus on me. “The Greek gods, the Roman ones? Persians, Norse, all else? There’s a reason there are some commonalities: it’s because they were all part of the same group. They ruled the planet for thousands of years, through their intermediaries, and vassals, and kings, and whatnot.” She turned back to the windshield as she made a turn, then glanced back at me. “You’ve gotta at least know that much, right?”

I squinted at her. “You mean…like Zeus and Poseidon and Thor and Odin and all that jazz?”

“Well,” she said, “Zeus and Poseidon are good and dead; so’s Odin. Not sure about Thor…but anyway…yeah, those guys. What’s left of the originals, and quite a few of their descendants. It’s kind of a cabal.”

I let out a snicker, more from disbelief than anything. “And they’re…what? Out to take over the world?”

Charlie shrugged, and I turned to Reed, who rolled his eyes. “Probably not in a literal sense,” he said. “Not anymore, at least. But yeah, like she said, they’re a cabal, and they have a ruling council and a pretty strong organization. At this point they’re collecting metas, building their strength, and…given their history, probably up to no good.”

“No, seriously.” I let out a short laugh. “What are they up to? What’s their objective?”

Reed sighed. “I don’t know. No one does. We just know they’re making power moves, collecting metas…kinda like the Directorate, but even more shadowy, if that’s possible.”

“I don’t love the sound of that,” I said.

“You’re telling me.” Charlie spoke up, bringing the car to a squealing stop at a red light. “I’ve tangled with their sweep teams before – they’re the ones they send out to bring in metas they want to talk to.” She laughed. “They’re a fun bunch, but they oughta stick to catching newbies; kids that have just manifested and don’t know what they’re doing.”

I stared at the laptop cradled in my hands. “Why does Omega have a safehouse in Eau Claire?”

“Because the Twin Cities is too hot for them.” Reed’s answer came with a cringe in his voice. “Minneapolis or St. Paul would be too close to the Directorate. Eau Claire’s only an hour away, and a few hours from Chicago, where they have a lot bigger presence.”

“But why?” I asked. “Why have a presence up here at all? What are they hoping to accomplish?”

“Tracking metas,” Charlie said. “Just like you guys. Track ‘em and collar ‘em, recruit the ones that seem promising. It’s all anybody does nowadays, keep snatching up every unattached meta out there.”

“What’d you find in the safehouse?” Reed leaned forward and I felt his hand on the back of my seat.

“A guy with a couple snakes lying on the kitchen floor, dead.”

Reed frowned. “The guy or the snakes?”

“All of them,” I said. “Looks like the snakes grew from his shoulder blades. Kinda creepy.”

“Sounds like a Zahhak,” Reed said, exchanging a look with Charlie, who nodded.

“What’s a Zahhak?” I wrinkled my forehead.

“Look it up on Wikipedia sometime; it’s a pretty scary meta to go up against.” He entered a pensive state, his fingers resting over his mouth. “They’re pretty rare, but I heard Omega has one – or had one, I suppose.”

“Why have they been after me?” I turned to question Reed on this one, and when I looked at him, his expression was suddenly pained, a twisted grimace. “You know, don’t you?” He nodded, slow, not looking away. “Why are they after me?”

“They’re not after you, specifically.” He took a deep breath. “You’ve never been the end to them, always the means. They’re after your mom.”

I exchanged a look with Charlie, who seemed surprised. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but I think she knows something…something from when she was with the Agency – you know, the government group that was destroyed before the Directorate came onto the scene?” I nodded. I knew Mom had been at the Agency with Old Man Winter before I was born. “Anyway, something happened that has a lot of people scouring for her.”

I turned back to Charlie. “Do you know what it is?”

She let out a long cackle. “Your mom and I aren’t on what you’d call ‘speaking terms’. I haven’t talked to her since way before you were born.”

“What happened?” I asked.

She turned the steering wheel to bring us into the parking lot of a hotel that was shaped like a giant, round cylinder. “She didn’t like the way I did things and I didn’t care for the way she told me to run my life.” She pulled the car into a parking spot just outside the lobby and gave me another lazy shrug. “So I told her what she could do with her opinions and we didn’t really need to talk after that, cuz it’d all been said.”

“Can’t imagine what she might have taken issue with,” Reed said under his breath.

Charlie shot him a searing look and jerked her head toward the lobby. “We should get rooms here for the night, unless you want your friends to continue sleeping in the back of the car.” She turned around and saw Kat’s head in Scott’s lap. “Although she seems comfortable there.”

I checked us in to four rooms, using the Directorate credit card for two of them and my personal card for the other two. As I swiped it through their reader, I was reminded that I needed to call Ariadne and make a report, since Scott and Kat were unlikely to do so in the next few hours. Once I was done, I hurried back to the car and Charlie drove us to the outside entrance nearest to the rooms. She and I each grabbed one of the unconscious members of my team and dragged them into the building while Reed walked ahead to make sure we didn’t run into anyone. Fortunately, the hotel seemed quiet.

We made it to our rooms without incident, and after depositing Kat and Scott onto the king-sized bed in their room, Charlie grabbed the key for her room and left. Reed lingered, watching the door to the room until it shut. After it did, he remained silent for almost a minute, listening. When I started to say something to him, he held up a finger to his lips and then opened the door, looking up and down the hall. He shut it and walked back to me, stopping only inches from my face. “How well do you know your aunt?” he asked in a low whisper.

“Not well.” I looked into his concerned eyes and felt a tremor within. “I met her about six months ago when she tracked me down, and we’ve been in contact on and off ever since, meeting whenever she’s been in town.”

“Do you trust her?” He didn’t break eye contact.

“Only a little,” I said. “I don’t exactly know her well.”

“She didn’t come on the mission with you?”

“No.” I shook my head. “She said she tracked my cell phone GPS.”

“Uh huh.” He licked his lips, thinking. “Sounds a little funny.”

“Why so suspicious? You think she has something to do with Omega?” He stared back at me, as though waiting for something. “What? What am I missing?”

He turned a slight smile, and looked at me with expectation. “Come on,” he said. “You know.”

“Come on, what?” By this point I was just annoyed. Kat and Scott were passed out on the bed behind me and who knew when they’d be coming back to consciousness. I had to report to Ariadne that we’d gotten in a violent clash with Omega forces, ending with two people not associated with the Directorate getting involved to save our bacon, in an incident that would certainly have drawn more than a little attention.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m gonna go…recover for a bit. Let me know if anything major happens.”

I shook my head, feeling my annoyance fade at the remembrance that he’d wrecked his car to save me from the Omega sweep team. “Reed…” He looked back over his shoulder, almost out the door. “Thanks.”

He nodded, a little smile breaking on his face, and left.

Chapter 13

I tried to reach Ariadne, but her cell phone went straight to voicemail. I tried her office, but her assistant told me she was out and unable to be reached for several hours. When I asked her to connect me to the Director, she informed me that he, too, was unavailable. I sighed, told her to have them call me urgently, that I had run afoul of Omega, and left it at that.

I stayed in Kat and Scott’s room, watching the light fade outside the beige curtains as the day ended. I looked at a clock when the last rays of sunlight were still visible, and it was just after 9 P.M. Neither of them had moved, but their pulse was regular, they reacted to prodding and other stimuli; they just…didn’t seem to want to wake up.

There was a knock on my door and when I looked through the peephole, Charlie grinned back at me, her smile overlarge and distorted by the glass as though I were looking at her in a funhouse mirror. Her cutoffs and tank top were gone, replaced by a red dress not unlike the one I had seen her wear when we first met, something with very little length and quite a bit of cleavage exposure. I tried to smile, but inwardly grimaced as I opened the door. “Hey.”

“Hay is all around us; this whole damned place is a farm town.” She made a slight gyration, as though she were dancing to music only she could hear. “What do you say we go find a couple cowboys to while away the dull hours with between now and morning?”

“Sounds like a great idea,” I said. “Because we don’t have enough carnage on our hands already without killing a couple of poor locals that are just out for a good time.”

“It’s not about killing,” she said in a soothing voice, “it’s about having some fun. Unwinding.” Her smile was oddly infectious. “You’ve been watching these vegetables all day. You need to get out and let loose. Have the other guy watch them for a while.” She strolled over to Scott and brushed his cheek with her hand, letting it linger a moment longer than I would have, and a slight shudder ran through her body. “Ooh. Is he a Poseidon type? Tastes like the ocean to me.”

“Tastes?” I’m pretty sure my face was locked into disbelief. “You touched him.”

“Yeah, it’s a sense you start to develop with maturity.” I felt a rough swell of annoyance as she walked to the other side of the bed and let her hand drift onto to exposed cheek of Kat. “Mmmm. Persephone type? If you ever get a chance – you know, maybe tangling with one that’s a ‘bad guy’,” she used air quotes, driving my eyebrows up almost to my bangs, “you need to take a drink of a Persephone. They are double yum.”

I closed my eyes and felt a throbbing in my temple. “I know you did not just suggest that I drain—”

“A bad one,” she said, her voice suddenly higher. “I’m saying that if you run across a bad one cuz I know how focused you are on that sort of thing, catching ‘bad guys’ – you should definitely drain them dry, because they are all kinds of tasty, let me tell you.” She did a pirouette and came around the bed, then brushed my hair out of my eyes, careful not to touch my face. “Come on, get the other guy and get ready. We need to go out, niece.”

I sighed. “Go out where?”

She leaned her head in close to me and gave me a mischievous smile. “The bar, here in the hotel.”

“I went to a bar last night. It didn’t end well. I almost killed some guy.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Was he cute?”

I felt a pang as I remembered, not for the first time in the last few hours, that I had broken up with Zack only this morning. And had kissed James last night. “Yes. He very much was.”

“Sounds worth it to me.” She looked me up and down. “You change and get ready, I’ll go knock on the other guy’s door and get him to watch the kids.” She turned and headed for the door.

“His name is Reed, you know.”

She waved a hand carelessly behind her as she walked out. “I’ve already forgotten it again.”

I stood there in the middle of the floor for about ten seconds, pondering my options. I could sit in my room, avoiding the horror that was drunkenness, the searing pain of a hangover and the loss of judgment that resulted from it, or stay here and stare at the walls. I had almost convinced myself that that was the wisest course, the soundest of ideas, when Zack wandered across my mind again, and I realized he’d be doing that for the rest of the night – just like he had been all day – and I’d have only the unconscious bodies of my two colleagues to keep me company.

There was a knock at the door, and when I looked through the peephole, it was Reed, looking a little cross.

“Your aunt just told me to get my ass over here and watch over two sleeping Directorate agents,” he said, nonplussed. “You can’t be serious.”

“I need to get out of here for a while,” I said. “We won’t be gone long.” I started toward the door, my bag on my shoulder, intending to go to my own room, which I hadn’t yet seen.

“What am I supposed to do if they wake up?” He looked at me in near astonishment, mouth slightly agape.

“If Kat wakes up first, explain the situation to her,” I said. “It’s not like you haven’t met before.”

“And if he wakes up first?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Get creative.”

I closed the door, which muffled his reply. I’m pretty sure it was a curse, and I’m equally sure I didn’t care. I went to my room and took a shower, a long one. When I was done, I dressed in a slightly looser suit, the most comfortable one I’d brought with me, straightened my hair and applied some makeup. When I came out of the bathroom, Charlie was waiting, lying on the bed, watching TV. She perked up when she saw me, and I stared at her, question on my face.

“They gave you a spare key,” she said. “I pocketed it when you handed me the packets. Figured I might need it later.” She smoothed her dress, which didn’t show even a sign of wrinkling, and smiled at me. “Ready to have some fun?”

“Sort of.”

“But not too much fun, because that’s probably against a Directorate rule of some kind.”

She dragged a little smile out of me with that one, and we were off. We crossed the lobby, an open air, ornate space with leather couches and decor that looked like it might be just as appropriate in a manor house as it was here. As we walked, I couldn’t help but notice heads turn to watch Charlie. Male heads. Lots of them.

We bellied up to the bar, and after I’d shown my ID, the bartender, a skinny guy this time, asked us what we wanted.

“What do you think, daahhhhhling?” Charlie said it with an exaggerated English accent, like she was a duchess or something.

Why break a winning tradition? I only knew one kind of drink, anyway. “Whiskey Sour.”

The bartender nodded and Charlie said, “Make it two.” He walked off.

“So,” I said. “What now?” I swiveled on my stool to take in the whole place. It was Sunday night, and there weren’t too many people around. There was a cluster of guys dressed professionally in the corner, ties loosened, sleeves rolled up, lots of laughing going on. I caught a furtive glance from a couple of them at Charlie, who, unlike me, was facing away from the bar and leaning back, her legs crossed and cool indifference beneath her slight smile.

“Now, my dear,” she said after a long pause, “we have fun.” The bartender set her glass at her elbow and she grabbed it, slow and smooth. “Keep ‘em coming.” She pressed it against her lips as she stared at the guys in the corner, taking a long, measured drink.

I picked up my whiskey and felt the chill of it in my hand, then took a sip. It still gave my mouth an involuntary spasm, but not as bad as the night before. I almost enjoyed it this time. It burned, though. I took another, and when I finished, I caught Charlie looking sidelong at me with amusement. “First time?” she asked.

“Second. I did this last night, too.”

“Ah.” She finished her drink and signaled to the barman. “It’s my second time, too.” Her eyes fixated on the guys in the corner. “Tell the bartender to send my drink over there.” She blinked, then looked at me as though she’d forgotten me somehow. “Actually, just come with me; he’ll figure it out.”

I looked over at the men she was talking about. Not a one of them was under thirty, and I doubted more than one of them was under forty. “I, uh…think they might be a little out of my age demographic.”

“Older men have their advantages. Experience, patience…” She grinned at me wickedly.

I stared back, and I felt the flush come to my cheeks. “How can you…I mean…you could kill someone.”

“Pffffft.” She waved her hand at me. “First of all, it takes a while for your touch to kill someone; you oughta know that. Second, you just have to be careful, making sure that things are as covered as you can get them…after that, it’s all about using strength and muscle control.” The bartender set another drink next to her and it was in her hand, then in front of her mouth, hiding her grin. “Just because you’re a soul-draining succubus doesn’t mean you have to live some kind of virginal life as a nun. I mean, even your mother didn’t buy into that idea, and she was the most stiff, serious—”

“Ah, okay.” I cringed, interrupting her. “I could have done with a little more exposition and a little less color commentary on that one.” I let my expression soften. “But thanks for the info. I was…struggling with some of that.”

She pulled the glass from in front of her mouth after taking a long drink. “That’s what I’m here for, niece: to teach you all the things that Mommy can’t.” She giggled. “That’s why I’m the coolest aunt. Now, how about we take your newfound knowledge over to the table in the corner and you can find out what I mean?”

I looked back at the guys she was indicating. I felt a reaction, a wave of no, no and hell no. “Um, no. There’s not one of them that’s my type.”

She shrugged, indifferent. “Suit yourself. Sit over here and be a black hole of excitement. In a place like this, you take what you can get. Sometimes it surprises you what you’ll find.” She stood, draining the last of her drink, and walked over to the table with the guys. When she was a few feet away, they all sat up and took notice of her, especially when she leaned over once she reached the table. I heard her tone, not her words, and it sounded conversational, almost confessional, like she was telling something to an old friend she hadn’t seen in a long time. One of them got up and dragged a chair over for her. She sat in it, giving him a smile and running a hand along his exposed forearm, eliciting a shiver from him.

I turned back to the bar and stared at my drink, wondering why I couldn’t do what Charlie could. I wasn’t that outgoing, that confident, that fearless. Sure, I didn’t have any interest in any of those guys because they were way too old for me, but even if they’d been a table full of guys my age, all hot, I still wouldn’t have had the guts to do what she did. I turned and watched the easy manner with which she wrapped them all around her finger, with a joke that had them all laughing, with a gentle caress on the back that left the man on the receiving end wanting more.

All I’d had thus far was Zack, and he wasn’t exactly wrapped around my finger. I mean, I’d pretty much driven him away because I was afraid I’d hurt him. Even the revelation that Charlie had given me, that there were ways we could be intimate without him getting hurt, sounded awfully risky (not to mention fairly devoid of any romance), maybe moreso to me because I wasn’t really sure how it all worked. I mean, I’d only ever kissed him for three to four seconds before I had to stop, and she was talking about protection and muscle control – it was bizarre and exciting and scary as hell all at once, but I didn’t know which feeling was heaviest.

Also, I’d let him go. I felt a twinge of guilt and pain, and took a drink to bury that feeling under the rush that the liquor granted, that heady sensation that would be making me drift oh-so-pleasantly in just a few more minutes. Of course the aftereffects would suck, but since when do teenagers worry about consequences? I took another drink, trying to banish that thought. Self-awareness was a curse, a terrible curse. The ice clinked in the bottom of my glass and I realized I had downed the whole thing without noticing.

I started to wave over the barman, but he was already coming with another. His face was almost gaunt, his eyes sunken when he set the Whiskey Sour in front of me. “Here you go,” he said.

“Okay, but after this I’m done.” I picked up the drink and took a swig.

“And your friend?” He nodded toward Charlie and I turned to see the whole table laughing again, every one of the men paying rapt attention to her, leaning over each other to tell her something, to catch her attention. I watched the way she twirled her hair, the way she laughed at them, smiled. “You gonna keep paying for her?”

I handed him my credit card, the personal one, not the one from the Directorate. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess she can probably convince those guys to buy her a round or two, but give her one more on my tab, then close it out.”

He smiled at me. “Done deal.”

I looked down at my drink, studying the amber liquid in my glass broken by the white of the ice cubes and the red of the maraschino cherry that floated on top. I pulled out the cherry and popped it into my mouth, leaving the stem on the napkin that held my drink. I took another long sip and thought again about Zack. Maybe I’d been hasty. Or maybe I’d been sane. I looked back at Charlie and wondered how she could be so cavalier, so quick with her touch when it could be so harmful, so deadly if she wasn’t careful.

“You’re prettier than her.” There was a voice at my elbow and I looked to see a familiar face. His hair was spiked, and his handsome features looked slightly more rugged tonight, though his shirt was still unbuttoned at the top. James smiled at me, and I couldn’t help but smile back. “Don’t doubt it for a second; she may have the attention of those geezers, but you’re the knockout in this bar.”

“James.” I said his name with a certain amusement that was probably fueled by the drinks that I was starting to feel the effects of. A little tinkle of suspicion was present too, far back in my mind. I think I might have let slip the barest hint of a smile as I looked back at him again.

“Sienna.” He dazzled me with his in return. It started slow, but got pretty powerful pretty quick. I ignored the flutter in my stomach. “Mind if I sit with you?”

I waved a hand vaguely at the stool. “Yesterday you’re in Owatonna, today you’re in Eau Claire. Are you following me?”

“Can I be honest?” He took off his suit jacket and hung it on the back of the seat before sitting down next to me.

“I’d prefer it, actually. What kind of a girl says, ‘No, please lie to me’?” The suspicious part of me was gaining traction.

“A surprising number, actually,” he said, keeping it cool. “Though usually not in so many words. Anyway, I’m here because of you.”

“Oh?” I took a sip, a very small one, and kept my hand ready in case I had to reach for a weapon. “I have a stalker?”

The bartender set a beer in front of him and he took a long pull. “Nah. I told you I was a recruiter, didn’t I?”

“Hmmm.” I thought about it. He probably had, but all I remembered was his lips. “I believe you did. So you’re here to recruit me?”

“If I can.” He had stopped paying attention to the beer.

“You recruit a lot of people away from the FBI?” I turned on my stool to face him, letting my arm rest on the side of the bar.

“No,” he said. “But I’ve recruited a few people away from the Directorate.” He kept his body facing toward the bar, but his eyes were on me.

I felt a chill, a little one, and I knew my eyes widened. “How did you find me here?”

He looked away. “Not the hardest thing to do. Go to a town where an Omega safehouse gets hit in the morning, go to all the hotel bars and look for the prettiest succubus around.” He looked back at me, and was smiling again.

“You are quite the charmer,” I said, vacillating between confusion and feeling flattered. “What will you do if I do say no to your offer?” My hand clenched tighter around my drink, and my breath caught in my chest.

“You haven’t heard it yet.” His smile took on an otherworldly quality, getting brighter. Or was that the alcohol? “Listen, this is just like Red Rover as a kid. You picked the wrong side and I’m just asking if Sienna can come over.”

I looked at him and cocked my head. “Red what?”

“Never mind,” he said with a shake of the head. “To answer your question: if you say no, I’ll learn to live with my deep, bitter disappointment and hope that you’ll still be okay with me trying to seduce you.” His smile grew wider, and I found for a flash that I wanted to slap it off him. But just for a second, because damn…he said it with a hell of a lot of charm.

I let go of the breath I had been holding and turned back to the bar, allowing myself just a sip of the whiskey. “You might not be glad if I go along with that. Don’t you know what a succubus does to a person?”

He chuckled dryly. “I do. I’m very familiar with it, in fact.”

I reached down and pulled off my gloves, slowly, as he watched, then took my drink in my hand and felt the perspiration of the glass mingle with my own and slide down my fingers as I pressed it to my lips and took another swig. “Then are you really sure you want to try that?” I set the glass back on the bar.

He moved fast, faster than I would have given him credit for, probably because I could feel the second whiskey already taking effect. His hand slid across and grabbed one of mine and I felt his skin against mine, slightly warm, mine a little sticky from the light layer of sweat that came from always wearing a glove. I didn’t pull away and he cradled my hand in his, bringing his other around, holding it.

“Please,” I said after a moment. I started to tug my hand away, but he held onto it, staring into my eyes. I started to count in my head, knowing it wouldn’t be long before he’d get weary and pass out. 1…2…

I pulled at it again and he didn’t surrender it, instead leaning closer to me. “It’ll be all right,” he said, bringing my hand to his lips for a gentle kiss….3…4…5…6…my eyes widened as he looked back up to me, cradling my hand in his….7…8…9…

“You should let go,” I said again, more urgently this time, but I didn’t pull away….10…11…12…

“I don’t want to,” he breathed, his face next to mine, the smell of his cologne mixed with the beer on his breath in a medley of strong and sweet, and he brought his lips to mine….13…14…15…16…17…18…I couldn’t remember what came next and it didn’t matter: there was just the smell of him, the taste of him…

He pulled away for just a second, looking me full in the eyes. “I’m like you…and you can’t hurt me. We…are made for each other, you and me.”

I took a breath, a word filling my mind with possibilities, with a legend I’d only heard of and never given much thought to; of a type of meta, my equal and opposite, the only one who could keep my powers at bay. I felt it in my head, in my heart, and on my lips, and it was beautiful; a breath of hope for someone who’d been hopeless for far too long.

“Incubus.”

Chapter 14

He didn’t let go of me, not across the lobby, not in the elevator, when the passion was rising and we kissed again, a roaring chorus of excitement building in my head and body. We didn’t part when it opened to my floor, nor when we hit the wall of the hallway. I fumbled for my room key as we staggered, blindly, one of us walking backward nearly all the time, to my door. I threw it open and we were in, the lights already on dim, as though they were set in anticipation of our arrival.

My jacket was shed instantly, so seamless I hardly noticed it come off and wondered if it had been he or I that had done it. I tossed my gun and holster onto my open bag, followed by my shoes as I ran a hand over his smooth chest, reveling in the fact that I could touch him without fear. We broke apart, breathing heavy, and he smiled at me as I fumbled to undo the buttons on his shirt. He reciprocated, much more smoothly than I, and we hit the bed, lips once more intertwined.

I felt the weight of him on top of me, his chest pressed against mine, his fingers working on the snap and zipper of my pants. No sooner had he gotten them undone than my jacket began to ring. Loud, musical, the tones a perfect distraction to the symphony of touch and sensation that was going on a few feet away. He caressed me, running a hand along my side, making me shudder while I wished he would finish what he had started and get my pants off. I let the tips of my fingers slide over the smooth skin on his back, holding him in place, pulling him closer to me.

His lips pulled from mine for a second. “Is that your phone ringing?”

I craned my neck to kiss him again. “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” My hands reached up to the back of his neck and pulled him closer. I felt his tongue in my mouth, tasted the beer flavor, and then he pulled away, running gentle kisses onto my chin and then down my neck. I felt his hands as they ran over me, the touches a delight, all different kinds of pleasure running through my skin. The phone had stopped ringing, wherever it was, and I couldn’t be happier as I lay there, breathing heavy while he touched me.

The first heavy knock on my door jarred me, causing me to jerk in surprise. I looked at him, locked eyes, and I shook my head. “Just ignore it,” I said, running a hand through his hair. A second knock came, louder and more insistent than the first. I leaned back, letting my head fall against the pillow as some of the heat left me. “Oh God, why now?”

He chuckled and lay his head on my belly. “Because it’s the worst possible time.”

The knocking came again, sustained, persistent and louder. “Sienna?” I heard Kat’s voice, then knocking again. “I know you’re in there; your phone’s GPS is still transmitting.”

“Go away!” I cried. “Come back in an hour!”

“I can’t!” she shouted back. “Ariadne just called, and we’ve got things to deal with!”

I felt a kind of surly whine come from my lips as James laughed softly against my stomach. He kissed me on the belly and rolled off me, allowing me to get to my feet and stagger to the door. It took all my restraint, once I had opened it just a crack to see Kat, not to reach out, grab her by the head, and slam it in the door for interrupting my efforts to lose my virginity. “What?” I felt the acid drip from my tongue, looking daggers at the pretty cheerleader who didn’t have any problems at all sleeping with her boyfriend.

She looked paler than usual, but then again, she had looked like that a lot on this trip. “Ariadne called.”

“Yes, I heard you the first time.”

She looked to either side down the hallway, then back at me. “Can I come in so we can talk?”

“No,” I said. “You can leave so I can get back to doing what I was doing!”

Her brow crinkled and she looked mildly offended. “What were you doing?”

I let out a heavy exhalation and felt my hand go to my forehead as I bowed my head. “Ugh, never mind. What did Ariadne want?”

“She got your message and was calling you back.” Kat looked at me with wide eyes. “Also, leaving us with that Reed guy while you went to the bar? Not cool. You’re lucky I woke up first.”

I felt a wash of chagrin. “What did Scott say when he woke up?”

“He’s still kind of out of it, but he didn’t seem too happy.” She shook her head and glanced past me, suddenly stiffening. “Is there someone in there with you?”

I opened the door wide enough to show her that I was in my bra with my pants unzipped, then shut it back to only a crack. “Yes,” I said with some urgency.

Her eyes widened in alarm. “Won’t that…you know,” she lowered her voice to a bare whisper, “kill…whoever you’re with?”

“Apparently not,” I said. “But the mood? The mood is officially dead, thanks to you.”

“I’m sorry, but Ariadne wants us on the phone right now.” She stared at me, and I knew the firmness in her voice didn’t come from her.

“Just give me half an hour,” I said, pleading. I started to shut the door.

“Now.” She reached out and grasped my wrist, giving it a squeeze, then letting go immediately. “She’s in Kansas, and things have gone very, very wrong. She only has a short window to talk to us. She’s waiting for you.”

I buried my face in my hands and took a deep breath. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

I closed the door and felt James’s hands slide across my hips, teasing and promising more touches, more caresses. He kissed the side of my neck and I squirmed; it hit the right spot. “I have to go,” I said, my eyes closed, my words heavy with the regret I felt over every inch of my body – some inches more than others. I slid free of his grasp and turned to kiss him again on the mouth. I broke away after a moment. “I promise I will be right back after this call is over.”

I saw his eyes go cool in the half-light. “All right. I can wait.” He cracked a smile as his fingers stroked my bare arms and grasped my hands in his. “I think you’re probably worth it.”

I pulled away, giving him a coy smile before I stooped to pick my blouse off the floor. “Probably?”

He gave me a noncommittal shrug and went back to the bed as I threw my arms through the sleeves of my blouse. “I guess we’ll see.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and he leaned over my shoulder, kissing the back of my neck as I buttoned my shirt. “You never did tell me who you work for.”

“I doubt you’d have heard of us,” he said, nuzzling, his tongue on the side of my neck. “But if you’re interested, I can give you the whole pitch of why you should join us…after.”

I felt a little amusement as I slipped on my shoes. “So recruiting me isn’t your first priority anymore?”

“Nuh-uh,” he grunted. I gasped as his fingers tweaked me.

I stood and brushed his hands off. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I picked my holster up off my suitcase and put it on, followed by my jacket. I took a last look at him once I was at the door, gave him a weak smile, and closed it behind me.

I leaned against the wall in the hallway, trying to catch my breath. After taking time to compose myself, I walked two doors down and knocked. The door cracked open to admit me and Reed stood there, looking much less beaten up than he had a few hours ago.

“Is that Sienna?” I heard Ariadne’s voice crackle from the speaker of the phone sitting on the bed.

“It is,” I said. “Sorry for the delay; I was just—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ariadne cut me off. “I only have a few minutes. Our operation in western Kansas has gotten complicated; M-Squad has been ambushed by some heavy-hitting metas, and we’ve lost half the team from our Texas facility. The Director and I need to manage the fallout from this, but I wanted to get back to all of you first.”

“Things have gotten a bit complicated here as well,” I said, feeling a little catch in my voice.

“Yes,” Ariadne said, “Kat and Scott have explained. We’ll have a conversation later about how you’ve been keeping quiet about your aunt, but for now let’s talk about your friend Reed.”

I locked eyes with Reed, who looked unconcerned. “You know he’s standing right here, don’t you?”

“He’s offered to help us,” she said, “with some additional resources from his organization. He’s also shed a little light on what we’re dealing with down here in Kansas.” I heard the tension in Ariadne’s voice. “Omega seems to have chosen this moment to launch a surprise attack against the Directorate. We think they drew M-Squad down here for the express purpose of putting them out of commission.” Ariadne’s tone was flat. “I’m afraid this little chase we have you on, trying to track down this meta that’s robbing convenience stores, is going to have to wait. Reed told me you’ve captured a laptop from Omega?”

“Yes, I have it right here.” I pointed to Kat’s overnight bag, prompting a quizzical look from her. I pointed again, and she went over to it, opening it and digging around until she came out with the laptop. “It’s password protected, though, and I didn’t want to chance digging around in it because…well, because I’m terrible with computers. Figured I’d leave it to the pros.”

“I want that computer in the hands of our techies right now,” Ariadne said. “How fast can you get it back to the campus?”

I looked to Scott, who cleared his throat. “If we drive fast, with the sirens on, we’re a little less than two hours away.”

“If there’s any hint of what Omega is up to or what their next move might be, we need to know now,” Ariadne said. “Get that computer in the hands of our tech support immediately. Do whatever you have to do.” She paused. “Reed, is there anything else you can tell us?”

Reed looked like he’d been disturbed from slumber, moving after being still for several minutes. “I can’t tell you much about what Omega’s up to down there because it’s out of my territory, but I can tell you that there’s at least one more facility they have here in Wisconsin, something that’s a lot more secret than the Eau Claire safehouse. One of our sources called it Site Epsilon, and it was where they were working on something called ‘Project Andromeda’. Our agent was tasked to find it and get inside, but they, uh…” He shrugged. “…disappeared.”

“Where is this?” Scott asked, his arms folded in front of him.

“Eastern Wisconsin, not far from Eagle River.” He shrugged. “I took a preliminary look around after our agent didn’t report in, but there was no sign – no trace of his cell phone, nothing. Of course, I’m the only meta my organization has in the upper midwest, and I’ve got about a million things to do, so it hasn’t been something I’ve been able to get to; Wisconsin’s just been too quiet in terms of Omega activity to make it a priority.”

“If Omega has a secret facility here in the state that far off the beaten path,” Kat was thinking out loud, “that means it’s probably something important, right? Something secret?”

“How sure are you about the location, Reed?” Ariadne’s voice came off a little tinny, and I heard something in the background over the speaker, some kind of commotion.

“The search radius is about 100 miles,” Reed said. “But I have to be honest, we don’t know what’s waiting, which is another reason I haven’t checked it out. I mean, it could just have an Omega sweep team or two, or it could have one of the guys that used to be called a god hanging around, working security.”

I heard silence from Ariadne, as though she were pondering her response. “Omega’s made a very bold move in their attack on us in Kansas. It’s already bad enough that we’re not going to be able to keep it quiet from anyone – not the government, not the press and not the public. I doubt they would have made this move if they weren’t prepared to follow up with additional attacks, and frankly, we still don’t know a damned thing about them.

“We need something, anything. I want one of you three, Kat, Scott or Sienna, to rent a car and get the computer back to Headquarters for analysis. The other two, go with Reed and Sienna’s aunt, if she’s willing to help, and find that Omega facility, infiltrate it if it looks lightly guarded. If not, put it under surveillance and we’ll hit it as soon as we get M-Squad out of this fight in Kansas. We’re completely blind here, fighting an enemy we know nothing about.”

There was a stark silence broken only by a little static from the phone’s speaker. “And if we can’t? Can’t find anything, I mean?” Kat asked.

“Then we’ll need you back at Headquarters as quickly as possible,” Ariadne said, voice taut. “Because I think we can safely say that Omega has declared war on the Directorate – and we have no idea where and when they’ll strike next.”

Chapter 15

There were a few seconds of quiet after Ariadne had hung up, as the four of us stared around the room at each other. Kat was withdrawn, staring into space, while Reed and Scott were watching each other out of the corners of their eyes, occasionally looking like they were going to throw down right there, glares in the quiet speaking louder than anything else.

“All right,” I said. “Who wants to take the computer back to the Directorate?”

“I can do it,” Kat said, stirring. “I’m the least useful in a battle anyway, at least from an offense perspective.”

“Yeah, but having someone who can heal fatal wounds is sort of a nice card to have in your hand,” Scott said.

“I agree with the waterboy on that,” Reed said, drawing a scathing look from Scott. “We’re going into an uncertain situation against potentially deep odds and gods know what kind of metas.”

I put my hand on my head, massaging my temples. An hour ago, I hadn’t pictured things going this way. I thought of James, still in my room, and my head spun from the ten thousand questions I had no answers to. I needed to know things, and I needed to know them now. My eyes snapped open and I focused on Reed. “Who are you working for?”

He tensed and a pained expression grew on his face. He nodded slowly, and spoke. “I guess if we’re gonna work together, I have to explain a few things, don’t I?”

“Yeah, playing the man of mystery isn’t gonna do much to endear you to us at this point,” Scott said.

Reed seemed to consider that very carefully before he spoke again. “I’ll give you some basics. The organization I’m with has one purpose: countering Omega. That’s it. We know who the Directorate is because they’re a big player in the meta game, but we’ve got no quarrel with you. The only reason I was after you,” he said with a nod toward me, “is because Omega was and we were trying to beat them to you.”

“What about a name?” Scott looked at him expectantly.

“I’m Reed, and you?” Reed shot him a smarmy smile, then rolled his eyes when he caught my glare. “Fine, but don’t laugh. We call ourselves Alpha.”

“And the prize for originality goes to…someone else,” Scott said, his lips crooked in amusement.

“I didn’t come up with it,” Reed said. “Our founders are former Omega, but they got disillusioned with what the old gods had done and decided to band together to stop them. We’ve been around for a few hundred years, and we’ve kept them in check during that time.”

“Alpha and Omega,” I said under my breath. “So, what? They’re the end and you’re the beginning?” He gave me an oblique nod. “Of what?”

Reed let out a sharp exhalation. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve seen what Omega does, and it’s not been pleasant. This little war they’ve started with you, it’s nothing compared to some of the dirty tricks they’ve pulled. They’ve got people working for them that are worse than Wolfe. That should give you an idea of what they’re like.”

“And what could I tell about you by seeing who you work for?” I stared back at him, watched him stiffen, a resigned look on his face.

“You could see that we’ve got a common enemy,” he said, “and if you keep watching what they do, you’ll see why.”

“All right,” I said. “So what powers do you have?”

His eyes closed and he bowed his head, shaking it like a kid who was asked to give back a toy he really didn’t want to let go of. “You’re killin’ me, Nealon. Can’t I keep any secrets?”

“You can keep all the secrets you want,” I said, not taking my eyes off him. “You just can’t keep them and expect to go into the fight with us at your side.”

His eyes came up, burning, finding mine. “Let’s get this straight: right now, you need me a lot more than I need you.”

“And if we’re going into a battle,” I said, keeping my tone even, “how are we supposed to work together if I don’t know what you bring to the table?”

He squinted, as if he could shut out my damned, unreasonable request, then relaxed and opened his eyes again. “I’m an Aeolus, okay?”

“A what?” Kat asked.

“Like on a breast?” Scott looked at him in confusion. Kat buried her face in one of her hands.

“Like a windkeeper, you jackass.” Reed stuck a hand out and I felt the currents of air in the room shift, my clothing starting to flap in a growing breeze. Reed pulled his hand back and the air stopped stirring. “I can control the movement of air, attracting it to me or pushing it away.”

“That could be really useful,” Scott said, “if we’re on a sailboat and the wind dies.”

A flash of annoyance crossed Reed’s face. “And I’m sure your power is only useful if a small fire breaks out.”

“All right, boys, enough of that,” I said. “I think we have to send Kat to the Directorate.” I looked between the three of them. “We’ll need all the offensive power we can get if we’re going to assault what could be an Omega base.” I looked to her. “But you should get any additional help you can from the Directorate and rendezvous with us as quickly as possible. Depending on how our search goes, you may catch up with us before we even find the enemy.”

She nodded. “All right. I’ll need a car.”

Reed shot her a cool look. “I can help with that.”

I took a deep breath and looked to Kat. “Hurry.” I shifted my glance to Reed and then Scott. “Bring the car around and meet me outside the lobby in ten minutes.” I turned and walked to the door, Kat and Reed a couple steps behind me.

I parted ways with them in the hallway, sliding the card key into my room door. I paused and took a breath before I pulled the handle, wondering if I’d find James still inside.

I did. He was lying on the bed, the covers pulled up to his waist, his shirt still off. He greeted me with a warm smile which I didn’t quite match. “I waited,” he said in an enticing voice, something that called out to me, urged me on. I wanted to throw off my jacket and blouse and crawl under the sheets with him and stay there for the rest of the night. To hell with the Directorate, Omega, Alpha and all else; forget metas and humans. I wanted them all to go away and just leave me alone with James. Maybe not forever, but at least until morning.

I breathed in deep, and let it out slow. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

He sat up, an awkward discomfort on his face. “What?”

“My office called, and I have to leave on an assignment right now.” I tried to convey regret, but I couldn’t tell if it was getting across, because his face had gotten red.

“Wow, that’s dedication,” he said, voice tight. “But you know, there are alternatives.” He pulled back the sheet and I looked away. He wasn’t wearing anything beneath it, and I was suddenly very uncomfortable. I became even moreso when he walked around the bed, rested his hands on my cheeks and gently pulled me in for a kiss.

I returned it, but without the heat, the passion that had consumed us earlier. This one was slow, methodical – enjoyable, sure, but without the possibility of going anywhere. He increased the pressure of the kiss, and I felt the heat from his side, the desire, and broke away, turning from him, groaning as I did so. “I’m sorry, I can’t. I have a job to do. I have responsibilities, commitments.” I was breathing much harder than I would have thought I would be after one kiss. “I have to go.” I looked back at him, and he seemed so solitary, standing naked in the middle of my room. “When I get done with this, I’ll call you, I promise. I’m…” I searched for the words. “…I…want this. I wish I could stay right now, but I just can’t.”

He was silent for a moment, then turned and stooped to pick up his pants. I watched. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“I…can’t really get into it. Secrecy and all that.”

“I could help, maybe.” He stared at me as he put his pants on, then zipped them up. I felt a tremor of regret. Trying to be a responsible adult and do my job really sucked right now.

I sighed. “I don’t think so.”

“I’m pretty strong,” he said with a teasing smile. “You probably know something about that.”

“I do know something about that.” I tossed the clothes I’d left out into my bag, then pulled my syringe and a vial with my daily dose of psycho-suppressant out.

James’s eyes caught the syringe as I injected the vial into my arm. “What’s that?”

“That,” I said, tossing the empty vial in the trash, “is how I curb the voices in my head.” I felt the familiar rush of sleepiness that followed an injection, and shook it off. It barely affected me anymore. “How do you do it?”

“Not like that,” he said with some disapproval. “You do it with your mind, not with drugs. If you’ve got a strong will, you barely feel it with most people, and it gets easier as you learn to control it.”

“Ah,” I said, slightly sarcastic. “That’s where I went wrong. See, when I first absorbed someone, it was a crazed psycho beast who was bent on killing me. I shoulda picked a weaker target I guess, worked my way up to the monstrous, but I didn’t really have an option at the time.”

“You absorbed Wolfe?” He shook his head and let out a small gasp of amazement. “Wow. I did not know that. I heard you beat him but I assumed you did it some other way.” He cringed. “That’s a rough way to start out.” His face slackened and was overcome with genuine curiosity. “How old were you when that happened?”

“Seventeen,” I said. I thought I caught a flash of surprise from him, and I gave him a reassuring smile. “I’m eighteen now. Don’t sweat it, okay?”

“Eighteen and headed into trouble,” he said. “You sure I can’t help?”

“I think my bosses at the Directorate are going to be upset enough with the people I’ve already dragged into this,” I said with a short laugh as I closed my bag and hefted it onto my shoulder. While I did that, I felt his arms wrap around me at my waist, slipping under my untucked blouse and touching my skin, giving me a thrill that ran up my spine.

He kissed my neck again, then whispered, “Surely one more won’t matter to them; but I might make all the difference for you if you get in a tight spot.”

I pulled away. “Pretty sure it would matter to them.” I smoothed the wrinkles in my pants and pulled down my shirt to cover my midriff. I hesitated, staring at him, his muscled chest catching my attention. “I could certainly use some more help, but I can’t…” I sighed again. “You seem pretty resourceful, so I’ll tell you this much. I’m going east. If you show up, I won’t be upset to see you there.”

He smiled, a growing, widening one that made me feel a warm flutter. “You might just see me there, then.”

I walked toward the door and opened it, casting one last look back. “I kinda hope so.”

Chapter 16

I suspected Reed was stealing a car for Kat to use since there wasn’t a rental place I knew of that would be open in the middle of the night, at least not in Eau Claire. I crossed the lobby of the hotel with my bag on my shoulder, heading toward the bar. I hoped that Charlie would still be there; no one had answered her door when I knocked.

The five of them were still clustered around the table, still laughing. I checked the clock on my cell phone; it was close to 3 A.M. One of the guys had passed out, his head down, and another was leaning heavily on his arm, eyes shut, keeping his face propped off the table. “Another round!” one of the two that was still fully upright called out to the bartender, and he stepped into motion behind the bar, his skinny hands grabbing bottles off the shelves.

I made my way through the tables and over to them. My aunt was laughing, hard, when I got there, but I hadn’t caught the set-up or the punchline, so I was still serious. She caught my eye as I approached, and stopped laughing when I got close. “This is my sister,” she said to the two men who were still awake. They both turned to look at me, and at least one of them came up with an idea that was so obvious it was written all over his sodding-drunk face. His leer made me uneasy, as though I were being undressed by his eyes. “Come on! Drink with us,” she said.

Oddly enough, being literally undressed with James, a near-stranger, had been far more comfortable than this.

“Hey,” I said, leaning over to Charlie. “I have to go.”

“Go?” She looked around in confusion and laughed, a deep, drunken laugh. “You just got here!”

“I have to go to Eagle River tonight,” I said, keeping my voice low. I heard the men muttering to themselves, something about me that I ignored, otherwise I might have had to smite them. “Will you come with me? I could really use your help.”

She met my gaze, her eyes looking into mine, and I caught a fleeting hint of concern that passed in about a second. “I don’t think so, sweety.” She reached up and patted me on the cheek twice. “I’m not done here yet.”

I knelt down next to her. “Charlie,” I said, catching her attention again as she was reaching for the glass the bartender had just set in front of her. “I’m serious. This could be really bad and I need all the help I can get.”

“I said no.” She took a drink, draining half her tallboy glass in one gulp. “God! You’re all work and no fun, Sienna.”

I felt the sting of her words curiously more given what had happened only minutes before, with James. “All right. I’ll leave you be, then.” I stood and started to walk out.

“Hey, wait!” She stood, almost turning over the table, and staggered over to me, shaking her head as though she could get rid of the effects of her drunkenness that way. “You’re just gonna leave me here? In this town?”

I stared back at her, dully. My aunt, my blood. The person who I thought would be in my corner for sure, especially heading into this mess. “Yeah. You said you didn’t want to come with me.”

Her head rocked back and she looked offended. “Well, I don’t have any money to get home.”

I stared at her in disbelief and shook my head before reaching for my wallet. I pulled out five crisp hundreds and handed them to her. She flashed me a bright smile. “Good luck,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll knock ‘em dead, kiddo.” She rolled up the bills and slipped them down the front of her dress, then turned and walked back to the table, where she was greeted with laughter and cheers.

I was still feeling burnt as I walked out the doors of the lobby into the stuffy, hot air of outside. The SUV was only a few feet outside the entrance, already running. I walked over to the passenger door and got in, took a quick look to confirm Reed was in the back seat, and nodded at Scott, who put the car in gear.

“I take it your aunt’s not coming?” This from Reed, who was bathed in the shadows behind me.

“No,” I said, voice tight. “She decided she’d rather drink with her new friends.” I rubbed my face, still feeling the effects of the whiskey I’d had earlier in the night. Maybe one of these days I could actually go out and have a couple drinks without it backfiring on me, but apparently now was not the time in my life when I could pull that off.

The road went by, on and on as the GPS guided us onto the freeway and we headed north. My head swam with thoughts of James and Zack, Zack and James. I had been so close with James, so close to something I doubted I’d ever be able to have with Zack. Or anyone, actually. On the other hand, I knew almost nothing about James; in fact, all I knew about him was that he seemed to be the only man I’d met that I could touch without harming.

Plus, I knew how he looked naked. And it was…not bad. Not bad at all.

I cursed my responsibility again, and thought about Charlie, sitting in the bar even now, doing what she wanted to do when she wanted to do it. She blew through town when she felt like it, hung out with me when she wanted to, and, like some kind of idiot, I gave her money pretty much any time I saw her. Maybe I felt guilty because I thought I had it so much better than her, like I’d gotten lucky. Hell, I probably had. But she didn’t even seem like she was trying, just doing whatever she wanted.

Meanwhile, I had just put off something I wanted more than almost anything else in favor of doing something I had to do.

I fell asleep sometime after passing a sign that read Chippewa Falls and when I woke up there was light on the horizon. Reed was talking to Scott in a hushed voice, and I heard them both share a chortle. “Where are we?” I asked.

Scott looked over at me. “About five miles from Eagle River. Directorate analysts went over property records in the area and found a few anomalies for us to check out.”

“Oh?” I blinked my eyes. “How far behind us is Kat?”

“At least four hours,” he said. “She’s got some agents with her, and they’re going full tilt with the sirens on, but they’re just west of Eau Claire now.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and come up empty the first few places,” Reed said from behind us. I looked back at him in askance and he shrugged. “It could happen.”

We followed the GPS, passing through the town itself and out a side road, stopping at an old building on the outskirts, an aluminum shed that looked a little like a barn. After taking a hard look around inside, we found nothing. The next stop was an abandoned farm on the other side of town. By the time we got out of the car, the sun had been up for a little while and it was already hot. I left my jacket in the car and rolled up my sleeves, shedding my gloves. Reed and Scott shared a look and steered well clear of me as we walked up the dirt road toward the farmhouse.

My holster was solid against my ribs, and, I realized about halfway up the drive, quite visible since my jacket was gone. I felt for my FBI ID and remembered I’d left it and my wallet in the jacket. I shrugged and looked at Scott. “Got your ID?”

“Yep,” he said, patting his back pocket.

“Good. I’d hate to get shot by some old farmer because I couldn’t properly identify myself.”

“As a fake FBI agent, you mean?” Reed cracked a grin when he said it.

We walked up the dusty road, my shoes picking up an accumulation of particles as we went, a fine sheen of light brown earth on the black surface. “How many more of these property anomalies do we have to check?”

“Three more,” Scott said as we reached the farmhouse. The screen door was open, hanging off its hinges. The door behind it was cracked and didn’t look to be in much better condition. The white paneling that was wrapped around the house was in shambles, and looked like it had been there since the early 1900s, gray in some places, cracked and peeling. The shutters were off all but a few windows and the glass was broken out of those that I could see. “I don’t think we’re going to have to deal with anyone living here,” Scott said in dark amusement.

“I don’t know about that,” Reed said. “This looks like a fine place for some snakes to nest; or maybe a posse of angry badgers.”

I looked at him in confusion. “Badgers form posses?”

“They do in this state.”

Scott led the way through the door, his hand extended in case trouble presented itself. He paused and looked at Reed. “You want to check the barn?” Scott turned back to look into the house. “It’s not looking like much in here.”

“Sure,” Reed said, and looked at me. “You?”

“Yeah, I’ll go with you,” I said.

Scott frowned, looking back over his shoulder at us. “That’s okay. I’ll just check out this creepy old farmhouse all by my lonesome.”

“That’s the spirit.” I gave him a barehand slap on the back, causing him to jump and then look at me with a stern face. “We’ll meet you outside.”

Reed and I walked to the barn, an old, decaying structure that looked to be in just about as good a repair as the farmhouse. The silo looked as though it had collapsed years ago, now nothing more than a bed of concrete blocks laid out across an overgrown field, green grass sprouting around the white of the blocks like tombstones in a graveyard.

“You think this is it?” I looked at Reed to see how he was holding up. He looked calm enough.

“Probably not,” he said as he opened the barn door wide, letting loose a foul, disgusting smell that caused me to cover my nose and gag.

“What is that?” I asked

“I think something died in here.” He tucked his shirt over his nose and walked forward, looking around until he stopped in front of one of the animal stalls. “Yep. Something died here.”

“Ugh.” I retreated from the barn, moving back to a comfortable distance where the smell started to fade. I could still see him looking around within, but after about a minute he came back to me, popping his head out of his shirt and taking a deep breath. “Why did you think this wasn’t the place even before you opened the door?” I asked.

He pointed to the ground in front of the barn. “No sign of vehicle tracks or footprints, here or in the main driveway. I don’t think anyone’s been here for a long time. Now, it could have been Omega doing a really excellent job of covering things up, but now that I’ve looked around, I’m inclined to believe it’s just an old farmhouse.” He wrinkled his nose. “Complete with remains of an old farm animal.”

I stared off into the distance, where the sun was up off the horizon, casting its light on the green, rolling fields that surrounded us to the trees that covered the horizon. “We’ve got a few more to check. I kinda hope the next one is it, though; I’m sick of these dead ends.” I turned and started walking back to the farmhouse, where I saw Scott emerging from a side door, brushing his shoulders off with enough emphasis that I suspected spider webs might have entangled him.

“I don’t know,” Reed said, taking one last look at the barn. “It might be the next one, it might be the one after that, but I kinda hope it’s none of them. I know Omega, and I shudder to think about what kind of secrets they’re hiding out here.” He made a face. “I suspect it’ll make us long for an abandoned farmhouse with old rancid animals.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But whatever they’re hiding, I need to find out.” I took a deep breath, trying to enjoy for just a moment the feel of the sun’s rays beating down on my arms and my hands. I felt like I was soaking them up, taking in the heat. “There’s a lot riding on this, a lot we’ve sacrificed to be at this point, to take the assignment this far.” I tried to hold my chin up. “Whatever’s waiting for us, we’ll find a way past it.”

“You sure about that?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re talking about the organization that threw both Wolfe and Henderschott at you. I doubt they’re gonna just let you waltz into one of their most closely guarded secrets.”

“I doubt there’ll be much waltzing, at least not until afterward,” I said. “But whatever they’re going to throw at us, whatever’s waiting, we’ll get through it.” I smiled. “After all, how bad could it be?”

Reed rolled his eyes at me. “Jinx.”

Chapter 17

Someone Else

It was bad. Worse than I expected. Guards walked the perimeter of their so-called Site Epsilon, black-clad figures that wore tactical vests and hid behind tall chain-link fences with barbed wire stretched across the top. They probably weren’t visible to the naked human eye, but a meta would see them if they paid close attention, their black standing out against the green of the woods like tar smudged onto a painting of a summer field.

There was a fairly obvious cluster of them hanging behind the trees just off the driveway, behind the gate. I watched them for a little while, saw them with their underslung submachine guns, and worse, knew they were probably itching for a fight after being stationed out here for so long.

The main gate looked abandoned. I had parked my stolen car a good distance down the road, out of sight. This one had a decent radio but no air conditioning, and I had resolved that the next car I stole would be a new model Mercedes, if possible. The good news was, I had enough money that I didn’t have to rob any convenience stores on the way out here. Progress at last.

I took another look at the gate, trying to figure out what their game was. I assumed that they were aiming for the abandoned look, but the gate was too well kept up, without rust. The gatehouse had dark tinted windows, but the paint was peeling. Based on the size, I had to guess there were at least three human guards inside at any given time, plus others lurking nearby. Every last one of them that I could see looked to be geared like a sweep team, not rent-a-cops with batons and pepper spray. Omega was taking their security here very seriously, unlike the safehouse in Eau Claire. They’d even made sure this property was a half-mile off the nearest road.

I slunk through the grass, keeping close to the ground. I hate getting dirty, but this was one case where I had no choice. I had other suspicions about what kind of security I’d find behind the fences; motion and heat sensors, cameras, and a bunch of trigger-happy sweepers who probably had a very aggressive kill order, one that probably transcended attempts to surrender.

I stared at the seemingly impenetrable fortress and it stared back at me. I hoped not literally. If they were watching me already, this was going to be even tougher than I thought.

I was a half-dozen yards off the driveway when I heard the sound of a vehicle. I crouched lower and saw an SUV approaching. I huddled even closer to the ground and tried to hide my face as they passed. They were headed straight for the gatehouse, and I watched as movement started in earnest on the other side of the fence. The squad of guards I’d seen earlier were moving through the underbrush, coming toward the gatehouse. I waited for the SUV to turn around, to throw gravel and spin out, hauling ass out of there, but they didn’t. The guards crept closer in position, weapons raised, and I wondered how long it would be before they opened fire.

Chapter 18

Sienna Nealon

We rolled down the driveway of the next potential base for Omega, this one an old factory. We’d turned off the road almost a half-mile back, and were surrounded by tall trees and heavy underbrush. I was trying to keep an eye out for whatever might cross our path next, but I kept getting distracted by movement in the forest. After the third time, I chalked it up to sunlight coming through the trees in the distance, but I couldn’t quite go along with that explanation, not wholeheartedly anyway. We came up on a gatehouse, with a fence that was at least ten feet high and ran as far as I could see in either direction.

“It would appear they’re serious about keeping us out,” Reed said from the backseat. “Of course, we could almost jump over the fence…”

“I don’t know that I could jump that,” Scott said, staring straight ahead.

“Well, some of us could jump it,” Reed said, prompting Scott to turn and shake his head, amused. “I’m kidding. I could help you clear it.”

Scott raised an eyebrow. “And my landing on the other side?”

“As gentle as being tossed over a fence by a tornado.”

I watched out the windshield. The gatehouse was in bad shape, looked to have gone years without painting, but the windows were tinted and I couldn’t see anything inside. “Something’s different about this place.”

“It looks pretty abandoned to me,” Scott said.

“No, she’s right.” Reed was leaning between the seats, looking forward. “There are fresh tire tracks leading up the drive, the fence looks like it’s in pretty damned good repair, and some parts of that gatehouse look like they’ve been artificially aged.” He pointed at the windows. “Look at those. If the rest of the place is cracked and peeling, why do those windows look new? They’re tinted so dark you can’t see in them.” He squinted. “I think I see some really small security cameras, too. Why wouldn’t they remove those if the place is abandoned?”

We had come to a stop about a hundred feet from the gate, just looking. “Well,” Scott said, a little tense, “if we want, we can go check it out nice and slow, or we can start our trespassing with a little breaking and entering.”

I caught movement off the path behind the gate, but I couldn’t tell what, just a black blur. “I think we’re gonna need to start with a bang.”

Scott looked across at me, then back to the windshield. “Okay. You might wanna brace yourself.”

I heard Reed buckle his seatbelt in the back as Scott gunned the engine with his foot still on the brake, the sound of gravel hitting the back of the SUV drowning out any possibility of further conversation. He let loose the brakes and we surged forward, racing toward the gate. I saw it get larger, saw a head peek out of the gatehouse and then dodge back in as we collided with the chain link fencing. I heard the smash of metal on the hood, and the top of the gate whipsawed down and hit the roof of our car with a clash so loud I ducked in fear that it would buckle.

We continued to drive, the gate lodged on our car. I saw men in black uniforms on either side of us, diving for cover. I watched as two of them were hit by the edges of the gate and flew through the air as Scott continued to push the car forward, his teeth gritted and his hands clenching the wheel as he tried to steer.

We came around a bend and I had to catch my breath. At least a dozen guards were in the road in front of us, but that wasn’t what got me. It was one of them, with a long tube slung over his shoulder, down on one knee, the tube being fiddled with by one of the other guards as the man stuffed something onto the tip – a roughly potato-sized object. I watched him start to pull his hand away, his task completed. I yelled and my hand flew to my seatbelt, unfastening it. I could hear Reed in the backseat, already moving, doing the same.

“RPG!” I shouted and reached over to Scott, slapping the release on his seatbelt. “BAIL OUT!” I waited a half-second to see him grab the door handle and start to open it before I did the same. I saw Reed going out the back on the same side I was, and I hit the ground at a roll. There was an explosion as the car was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade as it sped forward, the chain-link gate still on the hood.

The explosion was loud and it felt like my hearing cut out when it happened. I felt the sting of rocks and sticks stabbing through my blouse as I rolled across the dirt sideways, a fern catching me in the face and blinding me. When I came to a stop I spit out leaves and pushed to my feet. The first time I had decided to roll up my sleeves and not wear gloves, I had to bail out of a vehicle into the woods at high speed. Ouch.

“You okay?” I heard Reed’s voice and nodded, still trying to get my bearings. We were slightly down from the road and I could hear distant shouting.

“Yeah,” I said, ignoring the ringing in my ears, “but we need to get to Scott.”

“And cross the open road where the men with guns have a clear line of sight on us?” Reed looked at me in disbelief.

“We’ll be careful,” I said, moving toward the embankment that led to the road. I bent over and climbed, poking my head up and looking the direction the car had gone. I hoped that it had wiped out the roadblock of guys they’d left for us, but when I looked I realized we weren’t that lucky. I saw guys swarming all over the SUV. It was still mostly intact, though it was burning, a small fire on the hood keeping the guards from going into the front seat, which looked to be filled with smoke.

The gate hung off the front about four feet on either side, but it had bent badly upon impact and mangled it further. One of the guards was barking orders at another, but my hearing had suffered from the explosion and my ears were ringing enough that I couldn’t tell what he was saying. I watched three of them point in our direction, and I heard the whistle of gunshots over my head.

I reached down and drew my pistol, firing two quick shots, more to discourage them than anything; I wasn’t likely to hit them at this range. Something big moved to my left and I realized with a shock it was Scott, running across the road. He jumped, sliding down the embankment next to me and I was following him a second later, running away from the road, Reed just behind me.

By unspoken agreement, we cut a ninety degree path away from the road for a couple hundred yards before halting. None of us were breathing heavy, and I stopped to listen. Behind us, I could hear the shouts of guards; with our superior speed, we had left them behind. Also, I could have sworn there were some coming from our right, toward the perimeter fencing. “We need to head this way,” I said, pointing away from the fence.

“You don’t think maybe we should get out of here for now?” Reed’s head was swiveling around and suddenly his eyes widened. “Never mind, I hear it now. Guard squad coming from that direction.”

“Yeah,” I said. “If we’re gonna escape we’ll need to run parallel to the fence for a while. But I don’t want to try and get out of here until we know a little more about this place.”

“This place has some stiff security,” Reed said, pointing back the way we came. “That’s not just a sweep team; they don’t get armed with rocket launchers. This is a serious installation, and they clearly mean to keep whatever’s here protected. We may want to retreat and come back with more forces because with just the three of us, this could get really ugly.”

I heard the logic behind his words, knew he had a good point, but I heard Ariadne’s words echo in my head, about Omega and fighting blind, and as I thought about it, something occurred to me. “If M-Squad is stuck down in Kansas, our only backup will be human agents. Not good enough to assault this place without a lot of casualties.”

“Yeah,” Reed said, “but it would be us plus them. Right now, it’s just us.”

I thought hard about what he said. “But it’s our responsibility.”

He let out a long sigh. “I get the feeling you’ll be the death of me, Nealon.”

“There are worse reasons to go,” I said to him with a wink. He grimaced and I shrugged; guess I can’t pull it off like Charlie can.

“You got your gun?” I asked Scott, who stood behind me, looking dazed. He nodded, reaching under his jacket to pull out his Beretta. “You might be able to take them out at range with your powers; I can’t.”

“Gun’s gonna be more effective than a blast of water at the range we’re dealing with,” Scott said. “But they look like they’re carrying submachine guns and rifles, so they’ve got the advantage over us.”

“Yes, let’s all not get shot,” Reed said. “That sounds like a winning strategy.”

“I have a backup gun.” I looked at Reed. “Do you want it?”

“Nah,” he said. “I’ve never used one; I’d probably end up shooting one of you. Besides, I’m gonna see if I can make things a little more hostile in here for gunplay, maybe level the playing field.” He closed his eyes for a moment and the wind picked up around us, howling through the trees. I heard the branches stir and bend, and a strong gale nearly knocked me over. Reed’s eyes opened. “Sorry about that,” he said to me. “I can control it well enough if I’m paying full attention, but since we’re gonna be running, you might get hit by a few unintended breezes.”

The wind was roaring now, I heard branches cracking and falling through the forest, and the shouts of the guards were inaudible under the rushing of the tempest. “This way,” I said, struggling to be heard as we headed away from the fence. The rattling of the trees and force of the winds blowing past us was an absolute contradiction to the blue, sunny skies above us and the sweltering heat that pressed in as tightly as the countless turtleneck sweaters I’d worn since discovering my powers. It was almost otherworldly, being in the midst of a veritable hurricane in the middle of a hot summer’s day.

I could feel the sweat running down to the tip of my nose and rubbed it against my shoulder, trying to dry it. The heat was intense, the humidity drowning me. The beads of salty liquid were springing out on my forehead more from the weather than the exertion. The winds that Reed had stirred were hot, like the breath of hell itself was chasing us through the woods.

The smell of the greenery was carried on the wind. I could taste the salt from the sweat that was dripping onto my lips as we tore through the woods, three metas outpacing the humans that were pursuing us. I hoped that there weren’t any of our own kind hunting us; that would suck. A break in the trees ahead of me gave way to a view of a concrete wall. As we emerged from the trees, I saw that the wall was part of a sprawling building in front of us. It was two or three stories tall, though it was hard to tell because there were no windows. There was a loading dock to our left, pavement running all the way around it. To our right, a smooth, empty wall was unbroken by anything but a small, square vent cover.

“There,” I said, pointing to the vent cover. “Entry point.”

“So in we go?” Scott asked as the wind howled around us. “Maybe we should contact HQ and wait for reinforcements.”

“Whatever this Andromeda project is,” Reed said, “it’s sensitive. Omega will either evacuate it from here or destroy it by the time we get back. Hell, they may already have started to do so.” He wore the look of a man doing something he desperately didn’t want to. “This is it. We do it now or it’ll be gone.”

“I guess it’s now, then,” I said. “But we do this as a team and stick together, coordinating our attacks.”

Before they could respond, I heard the squeal of tires and a Jeep came to a halt about a hundred feet away from us, not far from the loading docks. I counted four guys that jumped out, every one of them carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. The winds around us started to whip harder and I looked over at Reed, who was deep in concentration. Rather than powerful, straight line winds, I watched the dust on the pavement begin to swirl in circles, gathering power as it made its way toward the Jeep.

The twisting currents of wind formed a funnel cloud just in front of the Jeep, catching it and swirling it around within. I watched the vehicle buck and twist, hitting two of the men taking cover behind it, hard. One pitched over, blood splattering on the ground next to him. The other went flying, landing on his neck. The other two seemed to be holding onto the sides of the Jeep as it spun into the air, higher and higher, cresting at almost a hundred and fifty feet before the tornado dissipated and the car came crashing to the ground with joint screams from the men holding onto it. I didn’t watch.

I looked back to where it had landed and saw red on the pavement, then turned away and started toward the vent. I heard tires squealing in the distance and hesitated.

“Go!” Reed gave me a gentle push. “We’re committed now, we can’t go back!”

“At some point we have to deal with all this security,” I said, my feet pounding against the asphalt. “They’re not just gonna assume we left, they’re gonna keep looking until they find us.”

“Or until we kill every single one of them,” Scott said, exchanging a look with Reed. “And it seems like you don’t have much problem with that option.”

“Omega’s at war with you guys,” Reed said as we came to a halt in front of the vent, which was a rectangular solid metal panel that fit into the wall flush. “They’ve been at war with Alpha for years, so I’ve learned not to show a lot of mercy, because they’re not renowned for showing it to us.” He held out his hand and the panel started to rattle, then burst from its mounting. “Ladies first,” he said with a cocky smile.

“Ass,” I said, but didn’t argue. “I’ll go first because the range of my powers is limited, not because I’m a lady.” I bent nearly double and stopped. A long metal duct ran in front of me, and off to my left. I felt a flash of familiarity, looking down the metal tunnel, and my breath caught in my throat. It was like the box.

But it wasn’t, not really. I could feel air circulating through, and over it I heard more tires squeal and looked back to see two big trucks full of guards, unloading on the pavement about a hundred feet in front of the panel. “Let’s go!” I called to Reed and Scott.

“Shall we hold them off?” Reed said to Scott, who had his gun in one hand and his other fist extended.

Scott fired a couple shots. “Seems the gentlemanly thing to do. Got any ideas for that?”

“Elementally, dear Watson,” Reed said, another tornado forming in front of him. “Elementally.”

I heard Scott give off a cackle and I started to say something smartass and join them, my gun drawn. I stopped when I saw one of the guards on the truck aim an RPG launcher right at me.

“GO!” Scott shouted, launching himself to the left. I saw Reed go right, leaving the RPG pointed at me. I saw the flare of the tube as I dived into the duct, running as fast as I could whilst bent double.

The RPG exploded behind me, the force of it yanking me off my feet. The ductwork took an abrupt, ninety degree right turn that I couldn’t quite make as the explosive force drove me forward into the metal. I burst through the soft aluminum, my head ringing, and realized I was hanging, suspended in mid-air for almost a second before gravity caught me. I fell, dropping, down, down, down into the darkness of the room below me.

Chapter 19

I hit cold metal, my shoulder landing first, then my torso, and all my breath left me. I gasped, pain shooting through me. I couldn’t hear anything but ringing in my ears, again, only worse this time, like someone had set off a fire alarm in my brain, rattling the damned bell so hard I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. One by one, little agonies began to work their way into my consciousness; a searing pain in my shoulder, a feeling in my knee like I’d been hit with a hammer, and the taste of blood flowing in my mouth.

I worked my way to my knees and opened my eyes. I’d landed on a metal catwalk and below me was inky blackness. I looked above, to where I’d come from, and far up there I could see a smoking bit of ductwork, mangled by the explosion and my passage through the metal. Tracing it back toward the wall, it was ballooned comically, as though someone had pushed the sides out with all the ease of crumpling tinfoil. I wondered if Scott and Reed were all right, but something told me that even if they were, I wasn’t going to be seeing them come down the way I had.

I gripped the railing of the catwalk, trying to force myself to my feet. It seemed to be harder this time than I could recall it being in the past. I had pains everywhere, but after a minute of solid effort I made it to my feet, leaning on the railing for support. I looked both directions the catwalk extended, and decided I needed to pick one. I finally decided on right, not totally at random, but close. Why? Because it was the right way. I couldn’t bring myself to even chuckle at my horrible pun, such was the pain in my body.

I staggered along, my right leg starting to numb the more I walked. I didn’t think it was broken, but I knew I was going to have one bitch of a bruise on it later. I kept my right arm close to my body because the shoulder cried out in anguish anytime I moved it. I had lost my main gun in the explosion and fall, but I had pulled my backup, a much smaller weapon with a smaller magazine, a Walther PPK. Unfortunately, all I had was the seven shots it gave me, and then I’d be out.

My shoes clanked on the catwalk, and I hoped there was no one hiding below that could hear me. It was so dark underneath that it would be near impossible to tell. I took a fragment of duct that had blown loose from the explosion and dropped it over the side of the catwalk. I listened, but either because of the ringing in my ears or the distance it fell, I didn’t hear it land.

Ahead I saw the outline of a door, a big, heavy metal one. I urged myself forward, resting more and more weight on my wounded leg. It still stung, but I knew now that nothing was broken, which meant that all I needed to do was fight through the pain. The bad news was, there was quite a bit of it to fight through.

I reached the door and grasped the handle, turning it slowly. I pushed the heavy metal with my shoulder, trying not to rush or fall through. I cracked it and looked inside, finding a concrete room with some lockers along one wall and a set of double doors that went on into the room beyond.

I led with my gun, limping into the room. Some caution signs were posted on the double doors, but they didn’t stop me. The doors swung open for me, and I found myself in another room, walking on metal catwalks that led to a center platform with something sunken in the middle. I felt a chill; the room was like nothing I’d seen before in anything other than a movie. Large, cylindrical metal tanks were clustered below in hexagons, ominous chemical configurations written on the sides with warnings not to disturb the contents.

The whole room was cold, bitterly so, as bad as winter, and I wished for the first time that day that I’d been wearing my gloves and jacket. I felt goosebumps rise on my arms as I approached the center of the room. The catwalk gave way for the circular platform, which looked like it had a segment of metal in the middle that was removable. Exactly what it slid away for, I wasn’t sure, but it was obvious that it was patterned differently than the rest of the platform.

“Sienna?” The man’s voice caught my attention, turning me around. He was behind me, in front of the doors I had just come through, his face barely visible in the dim light of the room. He was wearing a tight shirt, no buttons, and jeans that would have stirred my imagination even if I hadn’t seen him naked the night before.

“James?” I let out a deep breath, all tension. “You found me.”

“It wasn’t that hard,” he said. “There’s only one Omega facility in eastern Wisconsin – or anywhere east until New York.” He walked down the catwalk, approaching slowly, his hands extended. “God, it looks like they tore you up…what happened?”

I brushed a strand of bloodied hair out of my face. “They fired an RPG into the duct I was using to enter the building.” I laughed under my breath, a dark chuckle without any real humor. “I wish I’d stayed in Eau Claire with you. I think it would have been less painful.”

“No kidding.” He was only a few feet away now, easing closer, when he came to a stop. “I don’t mean to be rude, because I know we’re in the middle of kind of a hostile place here, but are you gonna keep pointing your gun at me?”

“For now, yes,” I said, and the playfulness was out of my voice. “Sorry, James. I don’t really know you all that well, do I? You turn up in an Omega base at a convenient moment, and although you may genuinely be here to help me, I can’t rule out the possibility that you’re working with the enemy.”

He flushed but managed to keep his expression under control. “Ouch. So our time together doesn’t count for much, does it?”

I stared at him evenly. “Our time together was less than a cumulative hour. So, no…I don’t entirely trust you. I’m sorry if that offends you. If you turn out to be on the level, I promise I’ll make it up to you in spectacular fashion, but you’re going to have to forgive me if I don’t trust you with my life yet.”

He looked at me in cool amusement, hands at his sides. “You were going to sleep with me not twelve hours ago.”

“I was. I might still, depending on how this turns out.”

“Do I need to point out how screwed up that is?” he asked.

I cocked my head at him. “I’ve yet to touch another human being for more than ten seconds without killing them. Just because I wanted you badly doesn’t mean I unconditionally trust you. My life is on the line here. Respect that, and we can see what Omega is up to together.”

“I’m afraid I can’t respect that,” he said, one of his hands coming to rest on the railing. His face was calm, still, almost a mask compared to the sly, seductive man that had been unable to keep his hands off me for the last two days. “It hurts, Sienna.” He turned his face away, clutching the railing with both hands. “It really hurts.” He looked back at me and I caught a glimmer of something that scared me. “But not as much as it’s going to hurt you.”

The railing snapped off in his hands and he whipped it at me. I fired, missing him twice before the metal rail hit me in the hands, jarring my gun out of them and sending it spiraling away. The end of the rail hit me in the side of the face as I tried to dodge, drawing a cry of pain and causing me to fall down, landing on my back, the metal of the catwalk clattering as I landed.

I felt the pain running down my spine, but I only had a moment to feel it before he was there, grabbing both my arms and forcing me down. He was strong, and his face was twisted with rage. All the handsomeness that I had admired was gone as he put his weight and strength into holding me against the catwalk. He slammed my head into the hard metal and I felt the room spin. “You should have stayed with me in Eau Claire.” He was spitting as he said it, little flecks dropping onto my face.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am that I didn’t,” I said as I brought my leg up and hit him on the side of his thigh. I aimed for the groin but he had angled himself so that I couldn’t. He grunted and slapped me, hard. I gasped at him in surprise and bucked my entire body, flexing the muscles in my abdomen, bringing my forehead up fast. I felt it make contact with his nose, and I heard the break, felt warm blood wash down my face as he rolled off, shouting and cursing.

“You bitch!” He was clutching his face, a splatter of red smudging his mouth as I struggled to my feet. He rose, a few feet away, glaring at me, his eyes on fire with rage, a world of difference from when he had been kissing and caressing me only the night before.

“So, you’re with Omega?” I kept my distance; my right shoulder still in agony, my leg hurt unbelievably and was slowing me down. In addition, I had a host of aches and pains that filled my body, and made me want to just lay down and die. “They sent you to sleep with me?”

“No, they sent me to recruit you,” he said, holding his nose with one hand while he watched me. “The sleeping with you would have just been a bonus. I usually don’t get to take my time with a woman, you know. They all die so quickly, and it’s not much fun then. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the rush from the absorption is amazing, it’s like a drug, but when that’s done they just lie there—”

“You’re quite the disgusting pig.” I felt a shudder of revulsion run through every part of me. I wished I could parboil my skin off and replace it with a new set. For all I knew, I could and it would just grow back.

“I preferred the sweet nothings you whispered to me last night,” he said, jumping at me, swiping out with his hand to grab me. I dodged and maintained my footing, just barely, but my leg screamed in pain. He came at me again, grasping with his hands, and I caught one of them and pulled, taking him off balance. He started to fall and dragged me down with him. Had I been in peak condition, I would have been able to avoid it; as it was, I just tried to land with a knee in his belly. He grunted and slapped me again. I felt a sharp pain and blood started to trickle down my lips as I landed on him.

I tensed my guts, trying to protect myself, and tucked my elbows close, using my left to hit him across the face. He took another swipe at me but I fended it off, keeping my elbows locked and my hands up, guarding my face. I hit him in the nose twice, causing him to cry out, then his whole body heaved as he bucked and threw me forward. I tried to catch myself and roll out of it but my head hit the metal of the platform and I saw stars. My body came to a landing, pain racing down my back, and while I was trying to shake the colors out of my vision he got on top of me and punched me in the face twice.

I was stunned and he grabbed hold of me by the front of my blouse, holding me up while he hit me again. I heard the cloth tear and felt my head hit the cold metal, a fog surrounding me. “It could have been really nice between us, Sienna, but you just had to go and screw it all up.” He was pacing around me now, and I saw him raise a leg and then felt a searing pain in my ribs. “Now you’ve exposed our location, you’ve ruined any chance of us having a pleasant evening, and what am I supposed to tell my bosses when I bring you to them? I was supposed to deliver you alive, but honestly, I don’t think that’s gonna happen now.” He kicked me again, and I heard a scream, and it took my sluggish mind a minute to work out that it was my voice doing the screaming.

“I mean, look at this.” He grabbed me by the face and shook me, forcing me to look at him. “You broke my nose. Sure, it’ll heal, but nobody does that. Not to me. Especially not some little teenage bitch that should have been grateful I even took the time to pay attention to her.” He punched me in the face again, but I could barely feel it by this point. “I mean, it would have been good between us. Better than you’d ever have again, that’s for sure. But you had to go and—”

I had steadily inched my left leg up, resting the bottom of my foot on the ground. I hoped he would just assume I was trying to curl up in the fetal position. I wasn’t, although I was sure that’d feel better than the way I was laying presently. My hand reached down, grasping, trying not to be obvious, while he was directing all his hatred at my face. I pulled the knife Glen Parks had told me to carry as a backup out of its strap. I was grateful, not for the first time in the last few minutes, that James had never gotten me out of my pants, or he would have seen it.

I brought the knife across his face with a blind stroke. I had aimed to land it in his temple, but he moved at the last second and I caught him with a jagged slash just under his left eye and punctured his nose. He let out a cry and screamed as he dropped me, my shoulders hitting the metal catwalk again, but without much pain this time. I rolled to my hands and knees, still clenching the knife. “I had to go and what? Save myself from doing something I’d regret?” I spit blood in his face as I got to my knees. “Thank God. I can’t believe I let you touch me, you soulless piece of filth—”

He yelled and jumped from where he lay to come at me, grabbing my hand that was holding the knife before I could attack him with it. He slammed me down again and I struggled, but I felt him reversing the grip. I poured the last of my strength into it, but he was too strong, too vicious. I stared into his scarred face as blood dripped down from his nose onto my forehead, smelled his breath, the foulness of it, all trace of sweetness gone. I felt the very tip of the knife against my belly, felt the first sting of pain as it pierced me, just a centimeter, as I fought to keep him from killing me.

He wore a satisfied leer, and the darkness and shadows made him look demonic. “You could have just had me inside—”

Something hit James in the side of the head with devastating force and he flopped off, unconscious. I was breathing deep, panting, and a gloved hand reached down, offering me help. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Charlie said, looking at the little bit of blood running down my belly where he’d stabbed me. “I’ve been with him; you’re not missing anything.”

Chapter 20

“Charlie,” I said, breathing the word like it was the sweetest thing I’d ever said. She helped pull me to my feet. “Please tell me you’re not with Omega too.”

She laughed. “I’m not with Omega. I’m not with anybody.”

I found the strength and balance to stand on my own, and she let me go. She was wearing a man’s jacket, which she had kept between us while she was helping me up. I saw a watch on her wrist, a shining, gold one that looked like it was at least a couple sizes too big. As I stared closer at it, I realized it was a man’s watch. She caught me looking and glanced down. “Oh, yeah, this? From that guy in the bar last night.”

“Oh?” I didn’t really care. My head was still spinning. “That was nice of him.” I looked around and saw a small control panel a few feet away, built into the railing, almost nondescript. “I thought you were gonna stay in Eau Claire?”

She shrugged. “I did, until I got bored. Then I just looked you up through your phone’s GPS and headed this way. Things got a little dicey when I found your flamed-out vehicle, but the guards were all pretty distracted by something going on over on the other side of the building. Sounded like a tornado or something.”

I hobbled to the nearest railing and leaned against it. “Sounds like Reed. How long ago was that?”

She shrugged again, uncaring. “I dunno. Ten minutes? I came in through one of the unguarded doors while it was going down. Looked around the building until I stumbled in here. Looks like my timing was good. What are you doing here?”

I wondered how long I had been down here. I looked at the panel again, sliding down the railing toward it. “Omega attacked the Directorate. We came to find out what they were hiding here.”

“Oh?” She made her way over to me, leaving James unmoving in a pile on the platform. “So what is it?”

“Something called Andromeda.”

“Huh,” she said, disinterested, as she looked over the edge of the platform. “Sounds boring. And old.”

“I don’t know what it is, honestly.” I stared down at the panel, trying to make sense of it. There was only one button lit up, and it was an option to unlock something, a thought which made me uneasy. I took a deep breath and thought it over. I was here to find out what they were doing, but what if it was a monster of some sort? Between Wolfe, Henderschott and James, Omega certainly loved their monsters. I stared at the unlock button until a finger came down from behind me and pushed it.

I turned and Charlie was there, smiling at me, impish. “No guts, no glory, kiddo.”

A slight rumble ran through the room and lights came on, casting it in blue and orange light. There were four different catwalk bridges that led to the central platform we were standing on. Below us, there had to be at least a hundred chemical tanks surrounding an oversized apparatus that was circular, and lined up perfectly so that something could be raised from the top of it into the center circle of the platform.

The control panel lit up, giving me a host of options. I stared at it, trying to take it all in. Charlie peered over my shoulder, her breath heavy and kinda sour. “What’s this one do?” She pushed a big red button, and I heard a rumbling from below us as machinery sprang to life. The circular grate in the middle of our platform squeaked and retracted to the side, leaving a hole in the middle of the floor.

“Stop,” I said.

“Soooo cautious,” she said. “Boring, boring, boring. You need a little metal in your life, kid, a little action.”

I felt the result of all the action I’d experienced today in my bones, in the pains, the aches and blood that still ran freely from different places on my anatomy. “Actually, I could do with a little less action at this point.”

“Boooring,” she said again. “Why must all you people lead such mundane little lives? I thought maybe you were different than the rest. I thought you were like me.”

“Umm.” I tried to focus on the panel, tuning out her prattle, ignoring the fact that she sounded almost offended. “I don’t know what to tell you. I have a job to do, and it’s pretty serious—”

She grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, causing my head to wobble, as she slammed my back against the railing. “Hey, kid! Wake the hell up!” She slapped me for good measure, not hard, but enough that I felt it and it pissed me off. I stared back at her, at the intensity in her eyes as she glared at me. “We’re at the top of the food chain, darling. Ain’t nobody can stop us: not Omega, not the Directorate, nobody. Women want to look like us and men want to grind up against us. You can have anything you want, take what you want, and nobody can stop you, and you’re killing time with these white hat Directorate wankers.” She let out a sigh of disgust. “Stop wasting your time doing all this crap when you could be having fun.”

She slackened her grip on me and started to back off, but I grasped the watch on her wrist and held it tight in front of her. “Ow! What are you doing?”

“What happened to the man who had this on last night?” I twisted her arm to put it right in front of her face. “Where is he now?”

“Who cares?” She said, ripping it out of my grasp. “They’re all interchangeable, men. They only last a very short time,” she got a wicked grin that I found damned unsettling, “so you have to use them wisely – and I do mean use . I keep looking for a man who can last longer, but even he couldn’t—” She waved at James. “Though obviously for different reasons, in his case.”

I felt a pit of disgust in my stomach. “You’re like…you’re a serial killer.”

“You’re so immature.” She made a noise of disgust, waving her hand as though she were dismissing me. “We’re succubi, Sienna; draining men’s souls is what we do. They’re there for us; it’s why we have the thrall, the dreamwalking, all of it. The world of men is our cup: we’re supposed to drink it, and you’re afraid to even take a sip.” Her face twisted into a humorless smile. “Just like your mom.” Her dark hair fell around her shoulders, framing her face in a different light than I’d seen before; she looked almost cronelike, emaciated. “Well, I’ll drink enough for all three of us, I don’t care. I’m not scared. I’m ready for all of it.”

I leaned on the railing for support, trying to edge away from her. “Why?”

“You know. Haven’t you ever felt the rush?” She looked at me in disbelief. “I know you’ve taken souls; haven’t you felt it? When you take them, how they scream and rattle in your head at first, how it spins you around? It’s the greatest high you’ll ever feel, trust me, way better than anything else. I mean, I know it’s tough the first few times, like losing your virginity, but it gets so good, so powerful, it feels so right.” She let out a little sigh and had her eyes closed. “You have no idea.” Her eyes opened and she focused on me.

“I don’t want to have any idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’m not a murderer.”

“Don’t play games with me,” Charlie said, a smile on her lips. “I know you’ve killed.”

“Twice,” I said. “Once to save my own life with Wolfe and once to save the city of Minneapolis from Gavrikov.”

“Oh, right.” She pirouetted and sent me a mischievous glance. “Why would you bother doing a thing like that?”

“Because I owed them,” I said, trying to catch my breath and push the pain away. “Because it was the right thing to do. I don’t kill in cold blood. I might not even have killed Wolfe, but I was so afraid of him I couldn’t let him go.”

“And what about the other guy? The one you sent for a long fall off the IDS tower?”

“That wasn’t me.” I grabbed a segment of rail in my hand, wondering if I had the strength to rip it loose and use it as a weapon like James had. I looked around for my knife, but it was far behind Charlie; she’d kill me long before I reached it. “That was Wolfe.”

“You’re weak,” she said, spitting the words at me in disgust. “You’re supposed to control them. They’re your souls, your puppets, but you can’t even keep what you’ve got in line. No wonder you can’t bring yourself to do what’s fun, what you should be doing. You’re pathetic.” She kicked out faster than I could have anticipated and knocked my legs out from under me, sending me to my back. I looked up and saw her face, nothing like the easygoing Charlie I’d seen; her eyes were wide, her mouth twisted in cold disdain. I felt a deep, powerful dose of fear as she said, “You’re nothing like me.”

“Thank God for that.” The voice came from behind her, strong, fearless, and I saw Charlie’s eyes widen in fright, her expression chilled as she turned to face the new threat, a woman standing at the edge of the platform, staring her down. Her dark hair was long, but pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore a simple t-shirt and jeans that had some dirt on them, as though she had been crawling around on the ground. “Get away from her, Charlie, or so help me I will crush the very life from your body the way I should have years and years ago.”

I felt a swell of emotion deep inside at the sight of her, something I didn’t even know I still had in me. Little tears sprang up in the corners of my eyes and I blinked them away, blinked again to be sure what I was seeing was true. It was. She was there. I opened my mouth, and amazingly, a single word fell out.

“Mom?”

Chapter 21

She attacked Charlie without warning, reminding me of a thousand sparring sessions in the basement. My aunt staggered back under the fury of my mother’s assault, kicks and punches blurring through the space between them so fast I couldn’t count. I saw Mom jump-kick and catch Charlie underneath the chin, sending her reeling, and followed it up with a flurry of punches that brought my aunt to her knees.

“Wait…” Charlie gasped. “Sierra, wait…” My mother stood above her, hands still raised, ready to rain down a killing strike while looking down at her sister with cold indifference. “I was trying…trying to help her…” Blood ran freely from Charlie’s nose, and one of her eyes was already swelling shut. I didn’t think she’d even managed to land a blow on my mom.

Mom reached down with a gloved hand and picked Charlie up by the neck, holding her out at a distance, as though she didn’t want to get to close. “Help her what? Die?” She threw Charlie to the ground, her face scraping against the grated metal platform as she landed.

Charlie lifted her head and rolled over, holding a hand out as though she could ward off my mother’s cold fury with it. “Please…please, Sierra…please!”

My mother halted. “One chance, Charlie. Why should I let you go?”

“Please.” Charlie propped herself up, both hands behind her back. “I won’t come anywhere near her again, I swear. I swear on my life.”

My mother’s face twisted in disgust. “You picked the right one to swear on. Heaven knows you’ve never cared about anyone else’s.”

“That’s not true!” Charlie shook her head, her normally calm or sly expression completely consumed by fear, stricken by the uncertainty of whether she’d live or die in the next moments. “I came to help her, Sierra, I came to teach her because I knew you weren’t around! I knew she needed help!”

My mother halted her advance, hovering menacingly over her sister, her face a mask. She stood there, staring down, her expression impenetrable, for a very long moment. “Get out of here,” she said, growling. “If you ever come near my daughter again, Charlie, I will kill you. You know I will; and it won’t be pretty, or quick.”

I saw Charlie slide back, pulling herself to her feet, then turning to see her sister, and she nodded, quickly, all trace of the carefree, cocky woman my aunt had been gone as though she had never existed. “I swear. She’ll never see my face again.” Charlie turned and began to walk out, down one of the catwalks toward a door on the far side of the room.

“She better not see any of you again, Charlie.” My mother’s voice was hard, sharp as glass, and unforgiving. “If she sees so much as an eyelash of yours, you won’t have time to blink before I drain you into nothingness.” Charlie stiffened but did not turn back at my mother’s threat.

I watched her leave, the doors swinging shut behind her, and then turned to my mother to find her looking at me, her face the same mask of fearful indifference that she wore when talking to my aunt. “Mom,” I croaked. She took a few steps toward me, then stopped at my side. I looked up and saw she was using the console next to me. “Mom?”

“It looks like you haven’t been following the rules,” she said, voice hollow. “You’re not in the house, you’re not wearing gloves, a coat.” Her gaze hardened on me, leaning against the railing. “Actually, it looks like you’re wearing hardly anything.” My mouth opened and I tried to say something, but nothing came out. “You’re a Directorate Agent now, you’re living on your own and you’ve had a boyfriend.” Her eyes narrowed and focused in on mine. “Yeah, I heard about that. You’re a big girl, in other words. Big enough to deal with the consequences of your own mistakes.”

She knelt next to me, her face hovering a foot away from mine. “You’re going to make more mistakes, I know it. But that’s your problem.” She stood. “Not mine. Not anymore. Time to grow up.” She punched a button on the console and a deep rumbling filled the entire room. She turned her back on me and started to walk away.

“Mom, wait!” I tried to use the railing to stand again, pulling myself up. “Wait!” I slumped, putting all my weight on the console as the rumbling noise that filled the room centered on the middle of the platform. A cylinder rose up, sliding through the hole, black, sleek metal that extended six feet above the platform before it stopped moving. “Mom? Help me,” I said, my words coming out in a tumble, desperation lacing every one of them. “Help me, please, Mom.”

She didn’t stop, didn’t turn around, didn’t even slow her walk as she moved toward the doors I had entered through. “I just did.”

The doors swung shut behind her.

Chapter 22

“God, am I glad she’s gone.” The voice was solid, strong, and so damned alarming. I turned my head to see James pushing himself up onto all fours. “Both of them, actually.” He shook his head as he got to his feet. “Now…” His face was bloody, his nose a shattered mess with a hole in it, crimson running down his cheeks and lips. “Where were we?”

Something clicked in the cylinder in front of me, and a hissing sound came as it seemed to depressurize, fissures appearing in the surface of it. I watched James, whose eyes widened when he saw it, and his face snapped back to me. “Dammit, I guess I’ll have to make this quick—”

The cylinder opened, a door sliding back, light shining out of it in a pale yellow across the platform. A face appeared first, followed by the rest of a body. James didn’t watch, he didn’t delay: he came right at me and I reached out to grab hold of him, struggling as he pushed me to the ground, his hands trying to grip my neck. “Stop fighting me!” he raged, forcing my arms down. “This will all be over in a few seconds.”

“That’s what you tell all the girls.” I rocked my hips to dislodge him, but to no avail. I was too weary, too beaten. Everything hurt, every part of me now, and what didn’t hurt just felt weary. All I wanted was to sleep, to not be a big girl, to just be back home with Mom and not have to worry about any of this—

A screech came from behind James and he paused, a look of panic crossing his wrecked face. “Uh oh,” was all he had time to say before a woman came out of the cylinder, her eyes tightly shut, a scream on her lips. She was staggering, naked, trying to catch her breath, her dirty brown hair tangled in wet ringlets around her shoulders. Her eyes opened and caught sight of him and me, on the ground, and she screamed again, this time not from fear but rage, and she attacked him, her hand coming down in a hard swipe that caught him by surprise and sent him flying over the edge of the railing, down into the darkness below.

I turned my gaze from where he had fallen to her, glowing brown eyes giving me a sense of deep unease. I had no defense against what she’d done to him; I only hoped that if she sent me over the edge I’d be able to land 1) softly and 2) on him, because I didn’t know if I could take any more pummeling.

“Are you okay?” she asked in a throaty voice, a little hoarse, like she hadn’t used it in a long time.

I flinched at the sound of her voice, mostly because I was expecting an attack instead. “Do…do I look okay?”

The naked girl studied me, her eyes assessing. “Not really.”

I worked my way to sitting again. “Who are you?”

She looked lost in thought, far away, drifting, and I almost thought maybe she’d passed out on her feet, as though the trauma of being released from a big black cylinder was too much for her. She paused, looked across the room, then turned back to me, still almost uncertain. “Andromeda,” she said finally. “My name is Andromeda.”

I heard voices, raised, from behind me, and crooked my head to look. Andromeda tensed, as though she were ready for battle. The doors on the far end of the room burst open and Reed and Scott came through them, followed by two guys in tactical vests carrying submachine guns. Neither wore masks, and I knew them instantly. One was Kurt, the other was Zack.

“Sienna!” It was Scott who shouted, his hands pointed at Andromeda, who pointed her hands back at him. “We thought you were dead.”

Reed matched Scott’s position, though his expression was a bit more wary. Both Kurt and Zack had their weapons pointed, and I held up my hand to stop them, and felt myself sag against the railing as they came onto the platform. “Me? Not so much. Everybody calm down,” I said. “This is Andromeda.” She looked at me, then at them, and began to relax. “Andromeda, this is…everybody.”

Scott inched his way around the platform, still keeping his hands up, eyes fixed on her, though they looked down more than once to take in her nakedness. “So Andromeda is not a project…it’s a person?”

She cocked her head at him, her pale skin giving off a briny smell, now that she was closer to me. “Perhaps it’s both.”

“We don’t exactly have the perimeter secure here,” Kurt said, scanning the room. “We need to find what we’re here for and leave.”

“She’s it, I think.” I said this as Zack made his way forward, easing past Andromeda, and grasped me under the arms to help me stand. “She’s the reason we’re here; though I’m not sure how much she can tell us about Omega.”

Her eyes followed mine, and I caught a hint of deep intelligence in them. “Everything,” she said. “I can tell you everything about Omega. Who they are, where they started, why they’re here and what they’re after.”

“Then we need to get her out of here,” Scott said. “Back the way we came?”

“No,” Andromeda said. “This way.” She looked at me. “Let me help.” She put her hand on me and I started to protest, but something in her eyes silenced me. Her hand was on mine, and a second passed, then five, and nothing happened.

“What…are you?” I asked, staring back at her.

Her eyes glowed and I felt strength course through me as she pulled me along, almost effortless. “Something new. I am a sacrifice made by Omega to bring about change.”

“Oh, good, cryptic,” Scott murmured from behind me. “You’ll get along well with Old Man Winter.”

“Are you all right?” Zack whispered next to me, trying to keep up as Andromeda pulled me along. I noticed that all my pain had receded; the wounds were still there, but they seemed not to hurt.

“I think I’ll be fine, once I get a day to heal,” I said. “Did you drive here from Detroit?”

“All the way through the Upper Peninsula at about a hundred miles an hour.” He gave me a tight smile. “Ariadne said you were headed into trouble.”

“I was.” I tried to smile at him. “I found my way out again, with a little help. What about you?”

His smile disappeared. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“No, wait,” I said. “They sent you after a meta, didn’t they?”

“They did.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Omega jumped ahead of us, bagged ‘em.” Kurt was the one who answered, and I got a glimpse of him behind me. He had a bandage across the back of his head, and it was bloody. “Happened all across the country last night. The Directorate got a big fat sucker punch to the side of the head.”

“Sucker punch?” I shook my head, trying to clear it. “I mean, we heard about Kansas, but you’re saying they tried to what? Catch your target before you could?”

“They tried to kill us, Sienna.” Zack’s eyes were serious. “They damned near did. They’ve killed a lot of our agents in the last twenty-four hours. Kansas was a war zone; the west half of the state is on fire from the battle.”

We made our way down a hallway and through a set of doors to find ourselves in a loading dock. “Your vehicle is just outside,” Andromeda said. “It may be a tight fit to get all of us in it.”

Kurt looked at her in suspicion. “How did she know that?”

Andromeda’s voice dropped to a hushed whisper, and her eyes seemed to focus on something in the distance. “Because I see.” They dropped back to looking at Kurt. “It is one of my talents.”

Scott rushed forward and hit the loading door, causing it to slowly clank open. Sure enough, when it was up a small SUV was sitting in front of us, the road to the gate visible behind it, complete with the wreckage of the car we drove, gate still mounted on top of it. A few black-clad figures were visible around the yard and I watched Zack and Kurt unload on them at distance, dropping a couple while Reed stirred the winds and sent another tornado toward the largest concentration of Omega agents.

“I think we’ve worn out our welcome,” I said as Andromeda guided me to the car and pushed me into the back seat, squeezing in next to me. Zack and Kurt got in next, firing rounds all the way up until they shut the door. Kurt rolled down his window and pulled a pistol, discharging a half-dozen shots.

Reed slipped in next to Andromeda and Scott piled in after him, slamming the door as Kurt hit the gas. “Might want to call Kat and the others,” Zack said as we sped toward the gatehouse. “Warn them off. We can meet them in town and convoy back to the Directorate together.”

“Okay,” Scott said, already dialing his phone.

“I hope nobody minds if I sit in the hatchback,” Reed said. “It’s nothing personal; I just feel weird squeezing in this close to a naked girl I don’t know.” He blushed as he looked at Andromeda, and I realized that I hadn’t even noticed that she was still wearing nothing. Of course I also felt very close to passing out now that she had taken her hands off me.

Reed went over the seat into the hatchback, giving Scott and Andromeda a little more room. Scott pulled his phone away from his ear and looked down, messing with the touchscreen. “I can’t seem to reach her.”

“Think she’s out of cell phone service?” Zack said, looking back at him.

“It is a little spotty through here.” Scott stared down at his phone. “I’ll try again, but take the quickest route back to town. They should be nearly here by now.”

Zack turned to talk to me. “What happened in that room?”

I searched my memory and tried to come up with a coherent explanation. “Um, well…one of Omega’s lackeys got the better of me after I got blasted through a wall by an RPG. Then I got saved by my aunt—”

“Your aunt?” Zack squinted at me in the backseat.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Then she turned on me when I figured out that she had been killing people just for the rush of absorbing them.” I took a breath. “Then my mom saved me from her and unleashed Andromeda.”

Zack’s jaw dropped. “Your mom?” He looked at me with great uncertainty. “Are you sure you’re all right? I mean, no offense, but it kinda sounds like you’re hallucinating. Maybe we should call Perugini or Zollers.”

I shook my head. “She was real, and she was there.”

He got that look on his face that he puts up when he doesn’t want to argue. “If you say so.”

“What the…?” Kurt slowed the car as we approached the end of the dirt road, ready to turn onto the highway. Off to the side, a car was wrecked against a tree, the hood crumpled, smoke pouring from underneath. “Hope they’ve got AAA.”

“Look further,” Andromeda said, “and you will see.”

“What’s she talking about?” Kurt asked.

“Over there.” Zack nodded his head in the opposite direction, where there were two bodies laying on the ground, wearing black suits. “Are those ours?”

He was out of the car, Kurt and Scott a few steps behind him. Scott ran the fastest, pounding across the pavement and off the road. I followed, aided by Andromeda and Reed. When I came up over the edge of the road, I could tell it was definitely Directorate agents, prostrate in the grass, tire marks in the dirt around them. One of them was stirring as Zack slapped him gently across the face.

“Jackson!” Zack shook him, and the agent blinked his eyes a few times. I recognized his face, but didn’t know his name. “What happened?”

The agent named Jackson blinked again, staring up at him. “Zack? Where am I? What are you doing here?”

“You were supposed to be backing us up at the Omega site,” Scott said. “What happened?”

The agent looked surprised, then pondered that. “I…don’t know. I don’t remember.” He looked around, startled. “I have no idea how I got here.”

“Where’s Kat?” Scott was looking around, frantic. “Where is she?” He went back to Agent Jackson. “Where’d Kat go?”

Jackson stared at Scott blankly. “I don’t know. Was she with me?”

“Wake the other one,” Kurt said.

“It won’t do any good,” Reed said. “He’ll have had his memory drained too.”

Something vague and totally improbable caused the wires in my brain to cross. “Just like those convenience store clerks.”

Reed raised an eyebrow at me. “Finally getting it now?”

Scott stared back and forth between the two of us, impatience on his face. “So who did it? What kind of meta can steal memories out of someone’s head?”

“A succubus or incubus.” Reed stared back at me, not breaking eye contact. “But only one that’s disciplined enough that they don’t want to kill.”

I thought about it again, about the whole trail. A willingness not to kill innocent people even when it was inconvenient. Discipline. That ruled out Charlie, and James as well, actually. Only one left. The rest of them were staring at me, but Reed was the only one who did it knowingly.

“Mom.”

Chapter 23

Someone Else

I kept calm all the way out of the room, able to keep myself from looking back at Sienna only through years of ridiculous, rigorous discipline. After I was through the doors, I started to run, making my way through Omega’s labyrinthine base. I burst through the exit and smashed the window out of a car that was parked outside. This one looked like something one of the Omega guards might drive, a sedan that didn’t look too old. I hotwired it, and it started without a bit of fuss. The engine roared to life, and I paused, taking a breath after what I’d just accomplished.

“Good luck, kiddo,” I whispered as I put the car into reverse and made a three point turn, angling it toward the road that would lead me off the premises. “If anyone can do it, you can.”

I gunned the engine, scaring the hell out of a few guards. I picked up a few bullet holes on the way out, but nothing too serious, I thought. Then I felt the pain in my shoulder. I looked down, and sure enough, blood was streaming down my arm. Dammit. I hoped my daughter had better luck than I’d had. She should. After all, now she had Andromeda looking out for her.

I swerved as I made my next turn; the wheel was getting harder and harder to control and I felt a little faint. I shook my head, trying to clear the little sparkles of light from my vision. Something was in front of me though, big and black, and very close. I jerked the wheel to the right and my car went off the road. After all this time, I finally had a decent car and I ended up—

I woke up after a few seconds, I thought. I was still bleeding out of my shoulder. I forced the door open and pulled myself out, to my feet. I snuck a quick look in the rearview mirror; at least I didn’t look as bad as Sienna had when I left her behind.

I walked across the road in as close to a straight line as I could manage. I recognized the car when I got closer; government plates, men in suits in the driver and passenger sides. The first one was getting out as I got close and I used my meta speed to cut the distance between us, putting my hands on his face. I heard a scream from the back seat, and I could see the other agent pull his gun, aiming it at me, too scared to shoot through his partner. I pulled the pistol out of the holster of the agent I had in my grip and shot the other in the chest, twice, aiming for the kevlar vest I knew he was wearing.

He slammed against the door behind him with each shot, and I let the first agent drop. The door to the backseat of the SUV opened and a blond girl stepped out, flushed and angry. She was tall, willowy, pretty in that annoying kind of way a cheerleader is. I rolled my eyes when I saw her, and she put up her hands, as though she was ready to fight. I grabbed her fist when she threw her first punch, and held onto it until her expression changed.

It was kind of funny to watch. She grunted and strained, and even with my shoulder oozing blood, I still managed to keep a grip on her until her eyes rolled back in her head. I felt good after, which was normal, but when I moved my shoulder, I realized it didn’t even hurt. “Persephone,” I whispered as she dropped to the ground.

I went to the passenger side and pulled out the agent I’d shot. He was still breathing, so I touched his face, draining him until I was sure he wouldn’t remember anything. “Sorry,” I said to his unconscious body, “but it’s best you don’t remember running into me.” That done, I pulled the blonde girl into the passenger seat and slid into the driver’s seat myself. I started the car and let it run for a second before I put it in gear and pulled back onto the main road.

When I went to make the turn to the right that would take me back to town and eventually an interstate, my eyes caught on the Persephone. I didn’t owe her an explanation, not really, especially since she was unconscious, and it was pretty unlikely she would remember. Still, I looked at her, and she reminded me a little of Sienna, mostly in the age, and I told her anyway.

“Sorry, kiddo, but I need you.” My eyes traced the lines of her face, the slack, relaxed musculature that reminded me of a little girl who used to be so innocent…but most of that was gone when I’d left her behind just minutes earlier. I wondered when it had gone away, and who had done it. I felt a flash of anger, and knew who to blame. “He doesn’t give a damn about human agents, you know, but I bet he’ll care about you. That’s how he always was. Metas first.” I shook my head. “Not that you care, but that’s it. That’s why I took you with me. You’re my insurance, for when we collide…because it’s coming soon. I can feel it. Real soon, and after all, I’m just one girl, alone against the whole Directorate. So I’m gonna need some help, and that’s you, blondie. You’re it. My fulcrum.

“You’re my leverage for Erich Winter.”

A Note to the Reader

If you enjoyed this book and want to know about future releases by Robert J. Crane, you can CLICK HERE to sign up for my mailing list! I promise I won't spam you (I only send an email when I have a new book released) and I'll never sell your info. You can also unsubscribe at any time.

I wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading this story. As an independent author, getting my name out to build an audience is one of the biggest priorities on any given day. If you enjoyed this story and are looking forward to reading more, let someone know – post it on Amazon, on your blog, if you have one, on Goodreads.com, place it in a quick Facebook status or Tweet with a link to the page of whatever outlet you purchased it from (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, etc). Good reviews inspire people to take a chance on a new author – like me. And we new authors can use all the help we can get.

Thanks again for your time.

Robert J. Crane

Acknowledgments

Third time around, and thrice charmed I have been as an author of this particular series. There are again thanks aplenty to be doled out, and here are the responsible parties:

Heather Rodefer, my inestimable Editor-in-Chief (she keeps earning that title) once more deconstructed this manuscript from top to bottom, from left to right. She has my thanks for keeping me between the (electronic) lines.

Shannon Garza gave me feedback on the emotional highs and lows of this piece (in addition to searching tirelessly for all those pesky errors I sneak in to give her something to hunt for) and helped it achieve whatever emotional resonance it may have (for me it held a lot, your mileage may vary).

Debra Wesley once more assisted me in finding errors, eliminating inconsistencies, and picking up little details that I hope my more eagle-eyed readers find (hints for the future, so read close).

Calvin Sams also read over this particular work, giving me some notes on his thoughts, and for that, I thank him.

Robin McDermott also provided a great deal of editorial input, helping to shape the way this manuscript was written, and helped me catch some very important errors.

Wendy Arnburg took time to help me figure out exactly which guns Sienna would find most comfortable. She would want me to tell you that the choice of Sienna’s back-up gun (a Walther PPK) was totally the author’s choice, and a nod to the world’s most famous fiction user of said firearm, and was against her advisement.

Janelle Seinkner took time to answer a few medical questions about things that I wondered about (for Sienna, not for me). That help was much needed, and my thanks go to her for it. Any medical errors that remain are probably there because I should have listened closer to her rather than tried to go with what was best for the story.

The cover was designed by Karri Klawitter (Artbykarri.com). Exceptional covers, exceptional prices.

Thanks also to Nicholas J. Ambrose of www.everything-indie.com, who did the edit and format work here once more. Nick is truly a titan, and one of those most responsible for my work upholding the level of professionalism that it does. During the final phase of publication of this book it was driven home to me in a very obvious fashion how much Nick has contributed to every one of my books, and for that, I thank him.

And in the last part of the roundup, thanks to my mom and dad, wife and kids. You know who you are.

About the Author

Robert J. Crane was born and raised on Florida’s Space Coast before moving to the upper midwest in search of cooler climates and more palatable beer. He graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in English Creative Writing. He worked for a year as a substitute teacher and worked in the financial services field for seven years while writing in his spare time. He makes his home in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.

He can be contacted in several ways:

Via email at cyrusdavidon@gmail.com

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Content

Soulless
The Girl in the Box, Book Three
Robert J. Crane

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

A Note to the Reader

Acknowledgments

About the Author