The Girl in the Box 03 - Soulless (12 page)

“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.”