Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven (27 page)

“Holy shite,” came Breandan’s voice from behind me, and I turned, giving the museum battlefield a look of cold fury that I had lately reserved for Kat. He was ragged but still standing next to Kat and Janus, who were attending to the fallen Madigan. Reed was glaring at Bast, who was glaring right back, trapped between him and Karthik. The suits were all down, as were the four ministers of Omega and Hera. “I appear to have lucked out in my choice of guardian angels,” he breathed then flipped his hand toward Bast, who was sitting very, very still, as though trying to decide whether or not to pounce. “Give it a go, if you want. See if your luck holds out.”

Janus looked up at me from where he sat next to Kat and Madigan, his face drawn but serious. “You have become something very different than the girl I met in the basement of the Directorate.”

I felt a wash of emotion through me and pushed it aside. “Is that good or bad?”

Something tugged at the corner of his mouth as he forced a weary smile. “For the rest of the world, I think it is a good thing.” The smile evaporated as suddenly as it had appeared. “For your own sake, I think the opposite.”

I looked over the carnage and my eyes came to rest on Bast, who watched me through narrowed, predatory eyes. “I need answers,” I said to Janus. “I need to know why Century wants me alive. I need to know why you’ve been after me this entire time.” I cut my gaze over to him. “I need the truth.”

Janus gave me a slow nod then looked to Hera, who lay on the ground, dazed and bleeding, and she nodded. “You deserve the truth,” he said softly, and turned back to look me in the eyes. “If ever there was someone who deserved to know why everyone has been vying for your attention since day one, it is you.” His gaze softened. “I am sorry for not telling you earlier, but the truth of your situation is possibly the most closely guarded secret in the entire old world of meta civilization, and one that threatens to destroy us even now. No one knows this but the oldest of our kind, and it is information sealed away by a pact so ancient that most of us were little older than you when we made it.”

He reached out to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “The truth is this: you have the power to save the entire world, or destroy it. And it is not something that should be used lightly, as—”

His eyes froze in place then bulged, and his jaw fell in shock. His mouth moved open and closed several times, and I saw him gasp for air. A slow drip of something red fell on his shoulders, and it took me a moment to realize that it was blood. It flowed freely, turning into a drift that ran down his suit on either breast, dripping from the back of his head where something had appeared behind him, hazy, and only for a moment before it was gone again.

“NO!” Kat screamed and lunged at him from behind. She caught him in her arms as he folded at the knees and dropped. There was a gaping wound in the back of his skull, I saw, as he fell forward and I caught him. I took care not to touch his skin as he lay, supported by Kat and I, his face slack.

“You killed Eris,” came a voice from my left and I turned, in shock, to see Weissman sitting there with a knife in his hand the size of my forearm. He shrugged lightly. “Saved me some time.” I tore my gaze off of him to look to Aphrodite. Her throat was slit, her eyes glassy and lifeless. Hephaestus was dead too, similarly cut, his head nearly off from the savagery of the attack. I tossed a look back to Bastet, but she, too, was lying in a pool of her own blood, dead, as was Heimdall where I had left him in a broken heap. I looked to Hera for any guidance, but she, too, was finished, the last of her kind. Her empty eyes rested on me, her blood ran red across the tile floor, and I could see by the angle of her neck that there was no hope for her, either.

“I heard Heimdall say that he’d only been beaten by two people in his whole life,” Weissman said, looking down at the edge of his knife. “You were number three, huh?” He smiled, and looked at me over the edge of the blade, which dripped dark red on the white tile. “I guess this made me number four.”

I made a move toward him and he pointed the knife at me. “Ah, ah, ah,” he said as he wagged the blade. “I’m running short on time, but don’t think I won’t gut you and leave you in a pile to heal while I kill every last one of your friends.” His eyes flashed, and I could see he wasn’t lying. “Don’t test me right now, because if I have to push the bounds and use my powers more, I will make you—and them—suffer.” He waved the blade over the gory mess that was the courtyard floor, the marble floors slick with blood. “My part here is done, as far as I’m concerned. I spoiled your sweet revelation scene,” he waved the blade toward the body of Janus, “killed anyone else who might tell you the truth—” He grinned. “It’s a shame. If they’d just been honest with you earlier, you know? We’d all be screwed. Trust the powerful to protect that power at all costs, even if it means their own lives.” His smile was so heartfelt I could tell he was enjoying the hell out of himself. “Good thing I was here to stop them from screwing everything up.”

“How did you get here just in time?” Breandan asked the question that was on my mind.

“It’s easy when you’ve got a spy reporting everything back to you,” Weissman said with a casual shrug, as though it were no big thing. “Isn’t that right, Eleanor?”

I turned my head to see Madigan pulling herself up from the ground. Reed’s eyes met mine. He was a little bloody, but otherwise all right, standing not far from Eleanor, where he’d been standing off with Bast. I saw a hint of frustration from him, and I shook my head subtly. Not yet.

“So,” Weissman said, looking around at the carnage before us, “it looks like this is it for now.” He gave me a salute with his knife blade. “Don’t try and follow us,” he said with a voice of amused warning. “Because … blah blah blah, gutting, pain, intestines used as party streamers.” He waved the blade at us. “You know. Just don’t. I’ll get creative in ways to make you suffer but not die.” He shrugged. “Til we meet again, Miss Nealon. You keep running, though. You’re like a little hamster on a wheel, trying to stop us. It’s kind of fun to watch—til it gets boring.” He grinned. “Good thing I’m not in charge of deciding your fate, because I think you know what would happen when you got boring.” He turned, and Eleanor followed him, casting nervous looks behind her on their way out, watching to see if any of us followed.

She needn’t have worried.

“Dammit,” Reed said as he sagged to the ground, resting on his haunches. He lay back, and I watched him close his eyes as he stared up at the dome above us, the wire-frame ceiling that was holding back the sky from falling on us.

There was only a moment of silence before Breandan spoke. “I don’t mean to be the downer—not that we need any more of those—but we need to be getting out of here, and fast.” He waved a hand about. There were a few humans left cowering behind displays. I saw one girl quaking as she watched us from behind an overturned table. “I don’t fancy explaining to Scotland Yard how I came to be acquainted and associated with all these bloody corpses.”

“Who gives a damn?” Reed asked, still tilted toward the ceiling. “We’re done, now.”

“It’s not over yet,” I said, sounding stronger than I felt. I made my way to my brother’s side, and he sat up to look at me. His eyes were nearly squinted shut. “It’s not over. Call your headquarters, get them to send some more help.” I looked to Kat, then Karthik. “We can rally with Omega, what’s left of it—”

“Don’t you get it, Sienna?” Reed said, and he let out a hysterical laugh. He bit his lip and sniffed, and I got the feeling he was only centimeters from losing it. “This
was
Omega.” He waved to indicate the bodies on the floor, and it came to rest with his finger pointing at Hera’s corpse. “And she
was
Alpha.” He looked ghostly, pained. “Our headquarters in Rome was destroyed by Century three days ago. She was the last of the surviving leaders of Alpha. I’m all that’s left, except for the mercs at our safehouse. Not one of them is a meta.” He rested his hands on his knees, and sat with them in front of him, like I used to sit in the box. I thought maybe he’d rest his head on his legs, but he didn’t. “It’s over. Everyone who had any chance of organizing metakind to fight Century just died in this room.”

“Not quite,” Kat said, her voice soft. She lifted Janus up in her arms. “Close, but he’s not dead yet.”

“He got stabbed in the back of the head,” Reed said from his sitting position. “You can’t tell me he’s going to be of use to anyone.” His words were bitter, rueful.

“Maybe,” Kat said, and I caught her hesitancy. She licked her lips as she cradled him. “But I won’t know until we give it some time.” She nodded toward Breandan with her head. “Your criminal friend is right—”

“Oh, well, thanks for putting it that way,” Breandan said.

“We need to get out of here,” Kat said. “I suggest we go back to Omega headquarters, since it’s the most well-equipped location to serve as a base of operations.”

“I really want to go strolling into the heart of enemy territory,” Reed said. “It’s high on my list of priorities, getting murdered.”

“Reed,” I said gently and then yanked him to his feet, letting the gentleness go. “Get your ass moving.”

He blinked at me in surprise. “Okay,” he said, and I could hear the chagrin in his tone. “Okay, then.”

I looked around again, quickly, taking stock of what we had left. “Karthik?” I asked, and the young man seemed to come out of a stupor. “You with us?”

“Sorry, yes,” Karthik said, nodding. “I am. Let’s regroup.”

“Maybe you should let Breandan drive,” I said to Reed.

“We have a van,” Karthik suggested. “Parked in the rear of the building. May I suggest we use that exit? More cover for us, perhaps less likelihood of running into the police on their way in here.”

“Fine,” I said, and Karthik took the lead, Breandan a few steps behind him. They headed to our left, following the courtyard and the curve of the white tower until it opened into a new section of the museum. We tromped through empty halls, Kat carrying Janus in her arms like a baby, and made our way down stairs and through hallways until we reached the back exit. The smell of the place was heavy, almost musty, though I couldn’t shake the sense that there was blood coming with us, blood on everything, filling my nose and mouth like I could taste it.

Tastes good,
Wolfe said.

“Shut up,” I whispered.

“What?” Karthik asked, turning back to look at me.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Talking to myself.”

As we burst out the back doors we found a police car waiting. The sirens were flashing in the dimming light of the day, and two police officers were waiting in carefully crouched positions.

“Look out!” Karthik called, “there are men with guns behind us!”

I paused for only a second before I realized he was lying. For a moment I actually thought he was telling the truth, enough to get me to look back through the brass doors to see that there were, in fact, men with guns inside, standing just in front of the glass.

“RUN!” I shouted as I dodged to the right and out of the line of fire. I saw the cops dive behind their car as Reed turned to see what I saw.

“Keep going!” Karthik shouted, and I felt him come up behind me. He grabbed my collar and pulled me back to a run then did the same to Reed. “Trust me!” he shouted, and took off with us. “They’re just illusions that I created with my power to distract the police while we escape.” This he said at a whisper, low enough the police wouldn’t hear him.

We cleared the back courtyard and found Kat already opening the doors to a navy blue panel van. She was gingerly sliding Janus into the back with Breandan’s help. As soon as he was in, Breandan jumped into the passenger seat as Karthik slid into the driver’s side. Reed leapt into the back, neatly avoiding landing on Janus, and I followed, managing the same feat. I also managed not to crack Kat in the back of the head with my elbow, but it was a near thing on that one.

The van’s engine roared to life as the sound of sirens filled the air around us. “We might need to take a detour or two,” Karthik said as he slammed the vehicle into gear and started it forward. “You know, to avoid the police.”

“They’re gonna have us on surveillance cameras,” Breandan said nervously. “Our pictures will be everywhere, won’t they?”

“With Omega’s connections, I think we can minimize the fallout,” Karthik said. “At least for now. Possibly not much longer, though, not with the ministers dead.” He ran a hand over his forehead and then through his dark hair before bringing it back to the steering wheel. “They were the power behind Omega. Without them, we’re going to be out in the cold with the government soon. They’ve always managed to keep a lid on these type of incidents before.”

“Looks like the whole nasty cake is about to collapse on itself,” Reed said with a sneer that vanished quickly. “If this was any other time, I’d be positively ecstatic about it.”

“Like to glory in the fall of your enemies?” Karthik said from the front seat as he weaved the van through traffic, shaking those of us in the back from side to side. I braced against the wheel well as Karthik eased us into a turn.

“Omega is a criminal cartel,” Reed said with a laugh. “You people own half the organized crime in Europe, using your metas as muscle to keep the rackets in line. Yeah, forgive me if I don’t weep on a normal day if you guys get kicked over.” His amused smile came to an end. “The fact that we’ve come to this, to the point when your organization is basically all that’s left in Europe between us and the end of our species …” He let his voice trail off, but everything he’d said up to that point had been laced with contempt.

A silence settled over us as we weaved through London’s rush hour. It wasn’t desperately packed; it kept a good flow, save for the few times I heard ambulances go rushing by. I felt the change as we headed down a slope and realized we were entering Omega’s underground garage.

We pulled to a stop a minute later and I cast Reed a look. “Are you gonna be okay with this?”

He gave me an inscrutable one in return. “Allying with Omega? No.” He paused and looked over at Kat, who was still ministering to Janus, keeping her hands clear of him. “But I’ll keep my objections to myself, since all I’ve got left at the safehouse are hired guns who will probably be in the wind the moment they find out Hera’s dead and thus their paychecks are at an end.”