New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet (25 page)

“I did want to kill them all,” she said. “After I saw the stuff they’d done…”

“I know. I would have. But I like killing assholes. And doing it changes you, and not in a good way. That’s why I stopped you.”

“Thank you.”

“And since when did you start reading minds?”

“I don’t, not really. I was using my empathy-thingy on them, and I caught glimpses of stuff beyond emotions. They were angry and scared, so I got angry, scary images. I don’t know if I could go much deeper than that. I went inside John’s head that one time, but that was with the Dreamer basically showing me how, and I’m not exactly sure how I did it last time, and I don’t know if I want to do it again anyway.”

“Probably for the best. The inside of people’s heads can’t be a nice place to visit.”

“Yeah, it tots wasn’t. So we ganked a bunch of Russian mobsters, I got to see some really nasty crap, and we got nothing to show for it. Yay.”

“Well, not exactly nothing.” I pointed at the bags of cash in the rear seat. “Half of that is yours. Your take is probably forty, fifty grand, if my quick count is right.”

A dead girl whispered in my mind.
Halfsies?
I ignored her.

“Fifty thousand dollars? Holy crap, I can almost pay off my student loans!” She opened a bag looked at the money in disbelief. “Of course, I don’t think this money would be any good in my universe, so probably not. Even if the bills were identical, the serial numbers would be duplicates, and I’d have the Secret Service or IRS after me. Probably both.”

“Worst case, you can use the money in this universe to buy gold or diamonds or whatever and sell that when you get back home,” I told her. I tried not to let the thought of her leaving bother me, but it did, enough that she picked it up with her empathy.

“I’m sorry. I mean, I do want to go home, if only to let Mom know I’m not dead or in some alien mothership getting probed and stuff. But that doesn’t mean…”

“Hey, don’t sweat it,” I interrupted her. “Let’s not worry about it right now. Let’s deal with the urgent stuff for now. We can figure out the rest afterwards.”

“Okay. Of course, we’ve got a whole lot of Not Much so far.”

“Hopefully Condor and Kestrel are doing better.”

Chapter Eleven

The Twisted Twosome

New York, New York, March 17, 2013

The Russian ran full-tilt for the exit, but Kestrel caught up with him in two leaps. She grabbed him by the hair and casually threw him face-first into a wall. His squeals of pain made her smile.
Just the way I like it
, she thought,
chasing down new toys and playing with them
. Her mind delivered a brief flashback: herself, lying face down on cold concrete, the smell of her own flesh burning in her nostrils while she screamed in agony. Her smile wavered for a second. It was going to take a while before those images faded away, but they would. She knew all about old nightmares and how time would smooth their rough edges off. Time, and doing unto others the things done unto her.

“Where are you going, little Russian boy?” she asked her new toy. He was crumpled against the wall, blood and drool dribbling down his chin. He coughed and spat out a couple of broken teeth His eyes weren’t focusing, half-blind with terror. Kestrel couldn’t blame him; what she’d just done to his buddies had been a bit much, even for her tastes. Unfortunately for them, she had some pent-up rage she needed to work out. And unfortunately for this little Russian boy, she wasn’t quite done working it out. She grabbed him by the throat with one hand, grasped one of his ears with the other, and started twisting it off, taking her time. If you did it too quickly the pain wouldn’t be too bad; shock would mute much of it. A slow twist really ramped things up, the gradually increasing agony and the knowledge of what was about to happen would maximize the torment until it skin and cartilage finally ripped and...

“Kestrel, stop it.”

Kyle’s voice cut through her joy and drowned it in shame. She knew she’d been bad and she needed to be punished. “Sorry, lover,” she purred, and let go of the Russian, who collapsed back to the ground, rubbing his ear as if trying to reassure himself it was still there.

“Take it easy, K,” Kyle said as he stepped closer behind her. He looked pale; he must have looked in the other room and seen her handiwork. His fingers reached behind her neck and rubbed her skin; she closed her eyes and shivered. A few moments later, his grip shifted, became a fist around a handful of her hair, and he brutally yanked her head back, forcing a moan through her lips. “We’re not here to play,” he hissed, but the slight tremor in his voice belied his words.

Kyle had seen what Melanie had done to the three Russians in the other room. It’d been too much. Nobody deserved to go like that. He’d kept her under control for a good while, but she was slipping back into her old habits. What could he do, though? He hated how much he liked her, but he loved the way she made him feel, like a sweet poison that burned through him and made him feel alive even as it slowly killed him. Love and pain, anger and lust. Around her, he could reveal his hidden self, the urges and desires he’d kept under wraps for so long.

Kestrel pushed her hips against him. He yanked on her hair again, hard. The Russian watched the byplay from the floor, his terrified eyes showing he understood he was in the presence of something terrible. Kestrel smiled at him again, Condor glared at him over her shoulder, and he flinched from them.

“She’s in a bad mood, buddy,” Condor said almost apologetically. “Tell me where Khrystafor is hiding, or I’ll leave you two alone.” She grinned at the Russian and slowly licked her lips.

The Russian talked.

* * *

Khrystafor Iwanowski was a Belarusian pimp who operated out of a converted warehouse in Brooklyn. Said warehouse had been Archangel’s base of operations during his search for Christine Dark. As he and Mel surveyed the location from the rooftop of a nearby building, he saw plenty of confirmation the base was still operating. It was late at night but the lights were on and people kept going in and out, many of whom he recognized from rap sheets and wanted posters. No johns or girls were around, just tough-looking men; the warehouse-whorehouse had become a barracks for the Russian mob and its collateral Ukrainian and Belarussian branches.

Two men were positioned on the warehouse’s roof, armed with sniper rifles. Kyle made sure he and Kestrel were out of their line of sight. He spotted a few men carrying crates just the right size for rifles and other military weapons. It looked as if the gangsters were getting ready to go to war.

All their preparations would be useless against what was about to befall them, though.

Mel wanted to go in right away, but Kyle insisted on waiting for Face-Off and Christine. She didn’t argue; when it came to work she usually followed his lead, unless she had good reasons to disagree. And while they waited, hidden in the shadows, she thought of a way to help pass the time.

Melanie grinned at him as he pulled his tights back on. “That was nice,” he whispered to her in the dark.

“Next time it’s your turn.”

“We might just have time now…” His wrist-comp flashed twice with a UV light his helmet goggles picked up but which were invisible to anybody else. “They’re here already. Dammit.”

“Next time, then,” Mel repeated, putting her helmet back on. Just minutes before, Kyle had held on to her hair while she pleasured him, but he was already craving more of her. Later. Later her thighs would be pressing on either side of his head while he tasted her, and he’d strap her down and… Later.

He carefully moved to the other side of the building and saw Face-Off and Christine down below. Kyle quickly lowered a plastic and metal-wire ladder down to them while Mel kept watch on the Russians across the street. Face-Off arrived first and offered Christine a hand as she came up behind him.

“Thanks, but I can do it,” she said, a smile on her face as she pulled herself up. “It’s amazing how much more fun P.E. stuff is, when you have muscles and coordination and stuff.”

Christine Dark wasn’t beautiful as Kyle judged such things, but she was cute, very smart and enormously endearing. Before Mel, he would have cheerfully tried to pick her up. He’d have gotten bored with her in short order, but it would have been fun while it lasted. Even now, he wouldn’t mind having her join him and Mel for some games, but he knew the girl was too straitlaced for that kind of thing. And of course, Face had laid a claim on her, which made her off-limits. Too bad.

Kestrel watched Kyle watching Christine out of the corner of her eye. The little redhead was certainly appealing, much more so now that she’d toughened up a bit. At first the girl had been pathetically weak and Kestrel had enjoyed keeping her intimidated and off-balance. From the start, she’d known Face-Off was attracted to Christine. He loved to save people, the heroic idiot, and the girl had needed a lot of help. Face had even tried to save Kestrel once, and found out the hard way that she didn’t need saving. Kestrel had pushed the girl around to see if she was worthy of Face-Off’s time. The jury was still out. Christine was tougher than she first appeared to be, but she was still a sheltered girl who hadn’t seen much of the real world. Kestrel guessed she would end up running back home as soon as she could. Face would be hurt, but he’d deal. He’d dealt with worse stuff.

Of course, all of them could get killed in the next few minutes. The universe didn’t give two shits about romance or the plans people made.

“What’s the situation?” Face-Off asked.

“I got some news about the Legion first,” Kyle said. He’d been trying not to think about that while he and Melanie went about their business, but his buddies needed to know. “It’s been confirmed. Ultimate was captured yesterday, but not before he allegedly murdered Doc Slaughter. Janus was with Ultimate, and he managed to escape. They kept the news under wraps until about an hour ago. Hyperia just gave a press conference spilling the beans.”

“Fuck. Doc Slaughter’s dead?”

“John wouldn’t kill someone, would he?” Christine said. “Unless maybe he was the traitor?”

Kyle shrugged. “Damfino. I only met Doc briefly a few times, but he always struck me as the real deal; I’d never have pegged him as the traitor. Who knows, though? In any case, Ultimate is down, and they’re still looking for you, Christine.”

“We have to rescue Ultimate, you guys! They are going to execute him, aren’t they?”

“He’s being held at Freedom Island,” Kyle told Christine. “We don’t have a prayer of getting in there and getting back out.”

“If we can unmask the assholes, it doesn’t matter,” Face-Off added. “If the truth comes out, Ultimate will come out of this mess smelling like roses, as usual. So let’s get it done, okay?”

Christine looked unhappy, but she nodded. “Okay. Let’s get the Big Bads and save everybody.”

Face-Off turned back to Kyle. “What’s the situation?” he repeated.

“We’ve got four guys by the front door, about two dozen inside, and two on the roof with .50 caliber sniper rifles,” Kyle reported. “Haven’t seen any of the power disruptors, but I bet they’ve got some inside. There’s no easy way to get in the building. Unless,” he added, looking hopefully at Christine. “Unless you can fly us there.”

“I’d love to,” she replied. “But since
somebody
, cough, you guys, cough, neglected to give me any flying lessons, I’m as likely to land us in Queens as on top of that building.”

“In all fairness, we didn’t have a lot of time to figure out what you were capable of,” Kyle protested weakly. “Are you sure you can’t get us there?”

“I can fly in a pretty straight line. I guess I could just fly us all through a window. Would that work?”

Kyle smiled. “Yes, that would work just fine.”

“Okay. Let me take a look, make sure I pick a spot without innocent people, or people in general. We’re not going to go all Tarentino and kill every mother-frakker in the building, are we?”

Lucky thing you weren’t around to see Melanie in action
, Kyle thought as he helped her find a place she could use to watch the building without getting spotted by the snipers. “We should be able to disable most of them without doing permanent harm. But if any of them have disruptors, we’ll have to take them down quickly. We’re talking about two dozen heavily armed gang members. There’s bound to be some fatalities.”

She grimaced. “That sucks. Please try, okay?” She peered at the building. “Okay, there’s… uh, twenty-nine people. Three of them are Neos.”

“Neos?”

“Yeah. They aren’t very strong. All three of them are… searching, I guess. It’s hard to describe, but I can see them sending out something like radar waves, trying to find something. Trying to find me, I think, but they can’t see me, not even now, when I’m just across the street from them. Those guys aren’t exactly the Eye of Sauron.”

“Snoops. Clairvoyants, telepaths, finders. They probably won’t be worth much in a stand-up fight, but you never know. Where are they?”

“They are on the top floor.”

“Can you get us there?”

“I think so. You guys will need to get pretty close together so I can move us as a unit. If I try to grab each of us individually, I’d probably scatter you all over the place. Plus we’re gonna hit the building pretty hard, so staying behind my shield would be a good idea.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Face-Off said. “We’ll make a Christine sandwich.” Christine smiled at him. “Just watch where you put your hands, Condor. You too, Kestrel.”

They made a comical picture, a short girl surrounded by three taller people holding tightly onto her. Kestrel thought of several choice comments to make about the situation, but held her tongue. Things were about to get serious now. She licked her lips, thinking about the pain and fear she was about to inflict. Things were about to get serious, sure, but a girl could still have her fun.

“Here goes nothing,” Christine said. A second later they exploded from the rooftop as if shot from a cannon. Christine was supposedly aiming for a window, but they hit a wall instead. The brick and mortar caved in under the impact. Burst pipes began spraying water everywhere, and Kyle found himself kneeling over the remains of a toilet bowl. They’d smashed their way into a public restroom, a none-too clean public restroom at that. The smells of stale urine and cheap disinfectant made that pretty obvious.