Power (2 page)

All signs of it were gone now. Healed by the power of Wolfe, that creepy and sadistic and magnificent bastard. One of the souls that lingered in my head, and now my new BFF.

That probably should have been cause for concern.

Hey
, he said again with a little bit of umbrage.

Sorry.

The blow to the midsection caught Grihm flat-footed. If he’d been surprised I’d broken down the door, he was almost completely unprepared for the world-ending blow to his gut that I struck him with. He grimaced in pain.

And flew into the ribbed steel hull of the plane twenty feet away.

The whole world shifted with the sudden impact of his body against the bulkhead, a tilt in gravity as though something heavy had just impacted the plane from the outside. I felt like I was on the bridge of the
U.S.S. Enterprise
during a space battle, and the world turned sideways while I lost my footing. I watched Frederick go tumbling with me as I scrambled to grab hold of the grating on the deck. My fingers caught hold while I watched that dark-haired bastard fall a few more feet before he managed to get a grip as well.

It took a moment for the plane to stabilize, and I returned to my feet before either of the other two, which was good. They still both had that look like they were shaking off surprise. Which was even better.

Because it made them prey.

Prey are unprepared
, Wolfe said, lecturing me.
They wait, they react, they try to fight back after the hunter has made his move.

Yes, thank you
, I said.
Really helpful
.
And kind of scary.

He was right about one thing, though, I reflected as stooped into a low crouch and readied myself to spring.

They were prey.

My prey.

I launched myself at Frederick in a low run, my center of gravity closer to the deck than his. I was average height for a woman, after all, five foot four, and he was a mountainous, towering beast who looked like he should have been hitched to a wagon in the old west, lashes falling across his back as he pulled his burden along a dusty road.

I actually giggled at that image as I slammed iron knuckles into his back and heard him release his breath. I’d hit him in the kidney, just the place where he’d hit me not ten minutes earlier. It had hurt. A lot. And I carried a grudge.

I hit him again as he struggled with his balance. He threw back an elbow to try and knock my head off my neck, but I was short enough to duck it. It caused him to lose his balance, and I was nimble enough to let his momentum carry him to the ground. With a little help, maybe.

I knocked one of his legs out from beneath him at the most vulnerable moment. “Timber!” I cried gleefully. When I’d fought these two only a half hour before, they moved like lightning and hit like … well, also like lightning, I suppose. I’m fast, but I’m not
that
fast.

Or at least I hadn’t been. Things had changed.

I landed on Frederick’s back as his face hit the deck. I heard his roar of rage on impact and knew that it hadn’t hurt him one bit. I planted another painful blow to his kidney and this time he howled. These creatures were on such a level of strength, their skins so resistant to damage, that they could shrug off bullets like they were BBs and brush aside punches from powerful metahumans like they were wet cardboard being slapped against them.

I drove another fist into Frederick’s kidney and listened to the roar mingled with pain—real pain—and grinned. I was going to turn him into wet cardboard by the time I was done—

I saw a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye and it set my predator’s instincts into motion. Grihm was charging at me, and he looked like a rhino loping its way across the plains. Huge. Powerful.

Well, if the plains were a confined cargo plane’s hold, and the rhino was a subhuman beast barely a step above a wild dog on the evolutionary chart—

HEY
.

Oh, hush up, Wolfe, we’re busy here.

Grihm was coming at me without thought, without logic. He was all out on his run, uncaring about what he hit behind me, so long as he turned me into a greasy smear on the deck in the process.

Big and dumb, that’s what these boys were. Just like—

HEY
—

SHUT UP, WOLFE.

I propelled myself low, taking advantage of Grihm’s absurd height advantage. He may have been charging at me, but his center of mass was still several feet off the ground. I greeted his left knee with a booted foot. His joint didn’t give out—he was still obscenely tough, after all—but it didn’t have to.

I knocked his damned leg right out from underneath him.

Grihm collapsed, coming down in an absurd triangle, with his ass making up the apex, his feet being one point, head being the other, and the deck making up the bottom of the shape. Well, sort of. I was beneath him, after all, so technically, I guess I was the bottom of the triangle. And since having one of these obtuse, moronic mules landing on me wasn’t in my plans for the day—
Shut up, Wolfe, stop taking my insults to them so personally, you wuss
—I kicked up and landed a foot in Grihm’s crotch and changed his downward trajectory back to up.

That dumb son of a bitch flipped ass-over-teakettle and hit the wall behind the metal box I’d been trapped in so hard that the plane rocked again. My fingers snapped into the grid on the deck and held fast, keeping me from sliding. Frederick was not so lucky, and I watched him face plant into a cargo pallet. I doubt it hurt him, but it was fun to watch.

A screeching of metal against metal greeted my ears as the plane leveled out. The door to the box that I’d broken open had skidded across the deck, and it came to rest only inches to my right. It was heavy, it was metal, and it was like getting an express delivery of awesome, right to my fingertips.

I watched the Wolfe brothers get to their feet as I stood waiting for them, watching to see which of them would get up first, which of them would be less wounded. Neither of them were significantly injured yet, and even if they had been, they healed fast. I mean, with Wolfe’s power at my fingertips I was pretty sure I’d healed a ruptured liver and kidney in less than a minute. My meta healing was fast, but not that fast. These boys were absurd; not only could they take punishment like nothing else on earth, but even when they did get hurt, they healed from it faster than most people could have even imagined inflicting damage on them.

Fortunately, I was not “most people” when it came to imagining damage. And now I wasn’t even “most people” when it came to actually inflicting it.

Just for kicks, I shouted, “Heads up!” at Frederick as he stumbled to his feet. He was wobbling a little, still holding onto his back like it hurt. I swung the door of the box like I was a WWE wrestler and it was a metal folding chair. I aimed for his face and I heard it hit solidly. I saw at least three teeth fly into the air above the door and Frederick smashed through the cargo pallet as if the wooden boxes stacked on it were Styrofoam packing peanuts. Pieces went everywhere.

And Frederick went through the hull of the plane with a crash that drove us sideways once more.

The lighting in the cargo hold went dim, flickering from the impact. The remains of the cargo pallet hammered into the hole in the side of the plane and wedged there, partially closing it off. There was a roar of air from outside as the pallet tried to work its way out the hole, but it remained lodged in place as the plane centered itself once more.

I could feel the plane descending, and I wondered when that had happened. If the pilot was smart, he’d have started the descent when we first began rocking around. If he was dumb, he’d have started it just now, I supposed.

I was back on my feet and I cast a look around for my other quarry. Grihm was behind the box, still working to get his balance. I think I might have disoriented him with all that flinging him around. Guy like that, his inner ear probably wasn’t used to all the ups and downs. It’s not like he got tossed around every day.

I hit him from behind with an epic sucker punch. It drove his face into the metal side of the plane and—I swear—left an imprint like an iron mask. I ripped him out of it and saw his lips were bleeding. A little cry of joy escaped me, and I punched him squarely in the face, watching the cut widen on his lip.

His long, red hair was blowing in the wind that was rushing around the cargo hold, and his eyes were glazed. He blinked at me, and I hit him again without mercy or remorse. I hit him so hard that his shirt ripped, pulling him free of my grasp and sending him flopping toward the back of the plane. He rolled head over ass twice, his limbs unresisting. He landed at the rear of the hold, where the decking rose in a forty-five degree angle to indicate the ramp where they loaded the cargo.

He came to rest splayed out, supine, a human body formed into an X. It didn’t take much more than a gentle reminder in the form of memories of what he and his brothers had done to me to coax me forward again. Mercy was for the weak and stupid, so I ran up and stomped his groin as hard as I could. It produced the sort of reaction you might expect, complete with a scream that made him sound like he was about to burst into tears.

“Not so much fun when someone does it to you, is it?” I snarled. He was curled up into the fetal position, and I planted another kick to his lower back, aiming for kidneys again. It’s a good place to hit, lots of pain involved. “How do
you
like it?”

I didn’t even recognize my own voice as I asked him.

I was so focused on monologuing like some old-time movie villain, that I didn’t even see the punch that downed me. I felt my face hit the deck, leaving an impression of my own there, and I hoped it wasn’t quite as ugly as Grihm’s had been. I heard metal grind and gravity shift once more. The deck lurched beneath my feet and face, then lurched again. The faint howl of the hole in the side of the plane became a much closer—and much more frightening roar.

My hands grabbed instinctively for the metal grid. I opened my eyes and lifted my face to see that the impact of the blow that had sent me against the deck had broken open the rear cargo door of the plane. It dangled, bobbing gently, the wind ripping at me as I held tightly to the only purchase my fingers could find. I looked left and saw Grihm there, hanging on with one hand and up in a crouch. His lip was still covered in blood but there was no sign of a wound.

I glanced up the ramp and saw Frederick standing, just outside the reach of the wind that was whipping around his brother and I. He glared down at me with a fury that made my stomach go flip flop. Neither of them were injured anymore. Both of them were mad as hell—at me—

And to top it all off, I could feel the descent of the plane steepening and had a vague intuition—named Roberto Bastian—telling me that we were, without doubt, on an angle of descent so steep that we were certain to crash.

I kept one eye on each of the two beasts before me and steadily rose to my feet, watching my balance in the rapidly descending—sorry, crashing—plane. Not that it mattered for much longer.

“Little girl, all alone,” Frederick said, and I could hear him over the roar of the wind. “No one to save you now.”

I saw them both coming, charging at me. The impact would surely be bad, would guarantee injury, pain. It was not something I wanted to get hit with, not only because of the impact, but because I’d be close at hand with the two of them. Close enough to work their claws. Close enough to let them rip and tear.

Oh, and the plane was going to crash. Couldn’t forget that.

I took two steps down the ramp and leaped backward, Grihm and Frederick behind me. I wrapped my arms around myself and turned my body like I was completing a graceful dive. I could see shadowed ground somewhere below, shapes of trees, and branches, and then a glint of light on water.

I twisted and brought my legs down as the wind rushed past me, the night air swallowed me up, and the darkness and gravity dragged me down, down to the earth.

I slammed into the hard ground with the fury of gravity—

Chapter 3

—and came right back to my feet like I’d stepped off a curb and not a falling airplane.

I can’t say I didn’t feel it, and I can’t say it didn’t hurt, but I can say I didn’t care. I was still fuming over the beating that Grihm and Frederick and their boss had laid on me earlier in the evening, aided by a telepathic bitch named Claire. I don’t think it was just the fury of Wolfe that made me want to push through any pain until I had flayed them all alive.

Okay, well, maybe it was Wolfe driving on the flaying bit. I was okay with just killing them with a modicum of pain and violence and terror.

I felt my joints popping and cracking as they realigned after the impact from my landing. I could see the outline of trees around me, could hear the lapping of water and the sounds of wildlife at night. Light glistened on a pond to my left, and I felt hard sand under my feet. The smell told me I was in a swamp, probably just south of Minneapolis and St. Paul, outside the city loop. Somewhere below Bloomington, I guessed, but I had no time to find evidence to support that hypothesis—

I heard two thumps close by and knew that the brothers Wolfe had joined me on the ground. I hoped they had landed on their stupid, ugly faces—

Grrrrrrrrrr, Little Doll—

—but I doubted it, since they’d been around for a while longer than me, and I’d already gone out of a plane without a parachute once this year myself. Odds were good they’d done this before at some point in their millennia of experience.

“Little girl, all alone,” came Frederick’s voice out of the darkness.

My teeth grated as he said those words again, and my response was quick and to the point. “I haven’t been alone since the day I killed your brother, asshat.” Since the day I found out what I was.

“Sounds like the Wolfe is riding along in your head,” Grihm’s voice came from a different direction. My ears perked up, and I could feel newfound instincts that I hadn’t developed listening hard, taking sniffs of the wind—