Broken (18 page)

It was where Wolfe had slaughtered dozens of people while trying to get me to come out and face him.

I stared at the spot in the parking lot where I remembered watching him cut through a SWAT team like they were wet sandwich bread being shredded by a hungry bird, and I felt a pang in my guts. Wolfe stirred within me, his dark excitement obvious as he relived his kills—the smells of the event, the sights of it, the screams. I could feel Bjorn as well, less excited and more indifferent. Gavrikov watched quietly, and though they were newly with me, I could feel Eve and Bastian back there, somewhere, acclimating to their new surroundings.

“
I’m never going to be able to undo all the damage that’s been done on my behalf, am I?” I didn’t know who would answer me, but I had hopes.

Not your fault
, Zack said.

“
It’s like a nightmare I can’t wake up from,” I said, and leaned against the steering wheel. “People die for me—because of me. I finally got to the point where I was trying to make a life, and I was trying to protect … the world, to be … I don’t know, what I thought Winter wanted me to be … and it turns out he just wanted to make me into one of you … “ I sent the furious word accusingly into my depths, and felt it reverberate there among the ones I cast it at, “ … and now I am. I’m one of you. I’m no protector. I don’t help police metas. All I am is a killer.”

There is no shame in killing to good cause
, Bjorn said.
Only in bad cause
—

“
As if you would know the difference.”

There is a threat growing
, Gavrikov said.
I put aside my worries for it to pursue rumors of Klementina, but it does exist. It is out there.

“
Century,” I breathed, and felt every last one of them agree with me. “Sovereign.”

They will destroy the world of metahumans, to the last
, Bjorn said,
and then enslave humanity, with Sovereign at their head.
I could feel his fear, tingling inside me, so powerful it almost made me quiver.
He is the most powerful meta on the planet
.

“
Why do you need me?” I felt the faux leather of the steering wheel against my forehead. “Why me? Why did all this have to happen … for me?”

There was a moment’s quiet.
I do not know
, Bjorn said.
But I know someone who does. And so do you
.

I felt a steely calm settle over me, and I sat back up, lifting my head off the wheel. I looked at that empty space in the parking lot in front of me, one more time. It was covered over completely with snow now, streaming heavily from overhead. I wondered if there was a stain underneath, something, anything to show what had happened there. It felt like there should be a reminder, so that others could mark the passage of my failures. The snow kept on, though, covering the place where more people had died for me while I failed to act, kept going and going, burying it like my sins, until I finally put the car back into gear and started driving—as if I could leave all those sins behind me.

23.

It was dark, and there was an aura of cologne in the room. It didn’t quite gag me, but it was close, and I tried to decide whether it was because I hated cologne in general or this cologne in particular. I leaned toward the latter but didn’t much care either way. My fingers ran across the smooth leather arms of the chair I sat in, waiting. I wasn’t in much danger of falling asleep, but by the same token I wasn’t exactly well-rested, especially lately. The dark living room sprawled out in front of me, and I had a clear line of sight to the front door.

I heard the key hit the lock and turn it, along with muffled talking, soft murmuring through the wood. When it opened, the front porch light cast a thin shaft of illumination into the room, almost to the foot of my chair. There was the silhouette of a man and a woman, entwined, his lips on hers. She broke away for a moment, and started to say something, but he went back in for another kiss and she acquiesced, staying locked with him like that for a few seconds until I saw her go limp in his arms. He let her hang like that while he shut the door. “Thank God,” I heard him mutter to her, “I thought you’d never shut up.”

“
You are such a charmer, James,” I said, and I saw him freeze in the entry. He flipped the light and I stared at him, gun in hand. “It amazes me that women continue to fall for your palaver.”

James Fries stood there, his best attempt at a brave, almost cocky smile on his face. “You did, once upon a time, as I recall.”

“
I was young and stupid,” I said.

“
It was like three months ago.”

“
Very good,” I said sarcastically, “keep insulting the woman who has a gun pointed at you and hasn’t hesitated to shoot you in the past. The sad thing is,” I said with a nasty smile, “you won’t even be the first person I’ve killed this week. And believe it or not, I liked all the others more than I like you. By a lot.”

There was a pause as he seemed to take stock of the situation, surveying his surroundings as if it were the first time he had seen his own home. “What do you want?” I saw his Adam’s apple bulge as he swallowed. I could almost hear the comical GULP as he did it.

The woman at his feet stirred, her eyes blinking. She had dark hair and bright eyes, ones that were barely visible as she slit them shut. “What … happened?”

“
You slipped,” I said, “and went home with a real dickhead.” I lowered the gun to the side of the chair, where she couldn’t see it.

She blinked at me, then frowned. “Who are you?” She looked up at Fries, then back at me. “Wait … are you married?”

I felt the burst of revulsion but ignored it. “Get out of here,” I told her coldly.

She dragged herself upright, swaying as she did so. She gave Fries a scornful, pissed off look. “Asshole,” she pronounced. She turned to me. “I’m sorry. He didn’t tell me he was married.”

I let my teeth grind together as she closed the door behind her, and then pulled the gun back into view.

“
You don’t need that, you know,” Fries said and tried a broad grin.

I let out a noise that I could only describe as loathing giving auditory form. “I hate you. I hate you so much, that I am indeed going to start filling you with bullets the next time you speak and say something I don’t want you to say.” I pulled back the hammer and his eyes got wide. “I’m aiming for your groin first, then your kneecaps, and then, eventually, when I’m bored, I’ll try locating that minuscule pea you use to think.” I pretended to give it a moment’s thought. “Wait, no, I said I was going to shoot you in the groin first, didn’t I?”

I could see the strain in his face; he didn’t doubt me. “What do you want?” His whole body was taut, his shoulders stiff under his snow-specked winter coat.

I took a breath and listened for the voices within. They were quiet, in agreement for once, total harmony, and I didn’t know whether to be greatly comforted or greatly disturbed by that. I let out a long, slow exhale. “I want you to call Janus,” I said, letting my finger play with the idea of just pulling the trigger and being done with it. I held back, letting whatever angels were left in my nature take the helm. I doubted there were many at this point. “I want you to call him and tell him to get his ass over here, right now.

“
I’m ready to talk.”

Epilogue

The office was wood-paneled, extravagant, something out of a bygone era, but the man who now inhabited it was, by his own reckoning, something very different. He took a deep breath of the air and smelled the remains of a thousand cigars that had been smoked within its walls. The old, leather-bound tomes one might expect in such an august setting lined bookshelves from one end of the office to the other and had undoutedly absorbed the smoky smell, taking it into the very fibers of their pages. The young man who sat in the high-backed leather chair behind the old wooden desk at the center of that office hadn’t read a single one of those books, but he knew they were old; some of them were first editions of great works of literature and historical pieces in their own right. A collector’s dream. He took another breath of the air—it just smelled old to him—and drummed his fingers idly on the desk.

The tall, dark-skinned woman who sat opposite him wore a faint smile. He didn’t know if it was genuine, but he assumed it was. Who wouldn’t be pleased at a moment like this, after all? It was a time of change, time for something new. And for an organization as old as Omega, that took some doing.

Street lamps shone in behind him, the dark of night broken by the quiet glow from outside. He knew the sun would be coming up soon. It was an adjustment for him, still living on Pacific Time and moving to Greenwich Mean Time, but he’d cope. It’d be worth it, after all.

“
Bastet,” he said. The woman across from him looked up at him with her dark eyes, and he caught a glimmer of a chastened cat as he looked at her. “It’s gonna be a great day, you know.”

Her reserve kept her from being as excited as he was. That was forgivable. “It certainly has the potential to be, Primus.”

There was a quiet ring of the phone on his desk, and he snatched it up, only fumbling it a little as Bastet watched him. “Yo,” he said into the receiver; it was an old thing, not modern at all, but at least it had a speakerphone. “Okay. Put him on.” He looked across the desk at Bastet. “Janus is calling. Won’t he be surprised?”

He punched the button for the speaker and waited, a subtle hiss filling the air. After a moment there was a crackle, and then a tired voice at the other end of the line. “Hello?” it said, thickly accented.

“
J,” he called toward the phone as he set the receiver down, “it’s Rick.”

There was a moment’s pause on the other end of the phone, and Rick caught Bastet’s eye—they both knew Janus was trying to reconcile what he’d just heard. “I need to speak with your father,” Janus said, his voice strained.

“
Got a bad news/good news situation for you there, J. Dad’s dead.” Rick kept his eyes on Bast, though he didn’t know what for. Janus and his father were oldest friends; it wasn’t like he’d be happy to hear that Rick was sitting in the big chair now, after all.

“
Dead?” Janus’s warm tones were knit with reaction, but it was subtle.

“
Yeah, he kicked off a couple days ago,” Rick said with calm assurance. “No one really saw it coming, but I jumped a jet from L.A. the moment I heard and came back. The ministers confirmed me as Primus this evening.” He let a little smile peek through; was it wrong to be a little excited? He’d been waiting to inherit this post all his life. It was all he’d ever wanted. The pause on the other end of the phone was annoying, though. “J? You still there?”

“
Yes,” Janus’s smooth cadences came through the crackling of the receiver. The old phone would have to go. So would all the old stuff—the books, the paintings of ships and old gods, the sculptures of things from the old world. Maybe even the behemoth of a desk that looked painfully large, as if a ship had sailed into the middle of the office and dumped it off. “I am still here, merely trying to … come to terms with the painful news you have just broken.”

“
He was old, J,” Rick said. “He’d lived thousands of years. This isn’t exactly a surprise.”

“
I spoke with him not two weeks ago,” Janus said. “He seemed to be in fine health at the time.”

“
Things change fast,” Rick said with a shrug at Bast. What was the point of dwelling on what was done? “Keep up, okay? Now, we need to talk. I know Dad had you working on this Sienna Nealon thing. This slow and steady crap plainly ain’t working. We need to get results now—”

“
About that,” Janus interrupted, and Rick felt his face go slack. Best not to show the hired help his irritation. He was a leader now, in charge. There’d be time to correct bad behaviors later. “I have received a call from our agent in Minneapolis. Ms. Nealon has requested a meeting.”

Rick laid his head back against the stuffed, padded chair. It was damned comfortable. Maybe the only thing from the old office he would keep. He let his eyes flit around, briefly. If the aesthetics allowed for it. If they didn’t, it’d be in the dump with all the rest of the stuff that didn’t belong anymore. “Really? Dad told me about your plans. I thought he was crazy to back that play.”

There was a hiss of static from the phone and a long hesitation before a reply came. “Apparently not,” Janus’s voice came through at last. “Though this did happen faster than I had anticipated.”

“
Well, how about that?” Rick said with quiet amusement. “All right, good on you. Never let it be said I won’t own up to it when I’m wrong; that’s not the kind of leader I am. So you’ve got a meeting with her. Good. Now get her back here.”

There was almost no pause this time. “I will do what I can, but we have to keep in mind that Ms. Nealon is particularly headstrong, and to rush ourselves in this moment would be foolhardy given how much effort we have spent cultivating our opportunities to lead to this. To have played so subtly up to now, trying to build trust and win her confidence so that she will listen and come to embrace our plans—I don’t wish to throw it away by becoming impatient.”