Heaven's Queen (7 page)

His face was all sincerity, but the quiet anger in Rupert’s voice made me wince. I was used to him being cold, but Rupert pissed was something new. I opened my mouth to tell Anthony he didn’t know what he was messing with, but before I could get a word out, Anthony said, “Kill him.”

After that, everything happened at once.

The soldiers fired first, but they were still miles too slow. Rupert was moving the moment Anthony spoke, and it was only because I was used to symbiont speed that I looked fast enough to see what he did.

He sidestepped both shots, coming up directly beside the soldier on Anthony’s left. The boom of the gunfire was still ringing in my ears when Rupert’s arm reached out to grab the man’s shoulder. After that, all I saw was a flash of black before Rupert’s claws ripped the man’s suit straight down the side.

The soldier fell with a surprised yelp, using the last of his busted stabilizers to try and grab his attacker, but Rupert was already gone. He slipped around Anthony like water, coming up behind the soldier who’d come in the back door. The man was still trying to turn around in a last-ditch effort to land a shot when Rupert lashed out, ripping out the back of the man’s suit from the base of his helmet to the motor at the small of his back.

Rupert must have fought armor before, because that was a pro shot. The soldier didn’t even have time to squeeze the trigger before his suit went black. By that point, though, Rupert was back to where he’d started, standing in front of Anthony with his hands perfectly normal again as both soldiers toppled over.

Anthony’s eyes went wide as the armor crashed to the kitchen’s plastic floor, but he didn’t fire again. That struck me as odd, because the Anthony I knew would have been emptying his clip into Rupert’s chest by this point. But other than that first missed shot, Anthony hadn’t used his gun at all. He was just staring at Rupert like he was seeing him for the first time, and then he tossed his gun away.

“It’s you,” he said, reaching up to grab the handle that was sticking out over his left shoulder. “
You’re
the one she was talking about!”

I always knew the letter I’d sent Anthony about symbionts would come back to bite me in the ass, but I don’t think I could have foreseen it playing out like this. Rupert glanced at me in surprise, but before I could say anything, Anthony pulled a thermite sword off his back and fired the blade. I jerked back, temporarily blinded as the kitchen lit up with white fire. By the time my eyes had recovered, Anthony was swinging for Rupert’s head.

Rupert dodged easily, but I didn’t hang around to watch. I was already scrambling to find a weapon,
any
weapon, because with that move Anthony had just taken this fight to a new level. I hadn’t actually been worried about Rupert getting shot, but that thermite blade was another matter. I still didn’t think Anthony could take Rupert in a straight-up fight, thermite or no, but neither Anthony nor Rupert looked like they were going to back down, which meant unless I did something soon, one of them was going to end up dead. Probably Anthony, which I couldn’t allow, because even though he was being a dick about it, he’d come here for my sake, and I couldn’t let him get killed for that.

Unfortunately, my options were limited. Both soldiers and Anthony had dropped their guns, but they were all serious armor-rated pistols that kicked even harder than my Sasha. I’d be lucky to hit anything firing one barehanded, and I didn’t even want to think about what it would do to my arm. Also, the rapidly escalating fight was quickly forcing me into the corner of the kitchen, cutting me off from the living room where my armor lay tantalizingly out of reach. I was about to try jumping out the window and going around that way when I saw Rupert’s disrupter pistol sitting on the kitchen counter.

I lunged for the gun, my fingers closing on the smooth pearl handle. As before, the weight surprised me. It felt more like I was holding a lead model of a gun than an actual working weapon. But it was what I had, so I picked it up and whirled around to find my shot.

I’d only looked away for a few seconds, but that was enough for the fight to turn ugly. Rupert was a symbiont, but Anthony was a captain. His suit was as nice as my own Lady, and it was keeping pace with Rupert’s lightning-fast dodges. Anthony was no slouch either, his skills still top-notch despite his years behind a desk. Plus, he was pissed, and every time Rupert dodged, he only got angrier. He was going for Rupert’s legs when I came around, and though Rupert dodged with room to spare, Anthony changed direction instantly, pivoting on his heel to follow Rupert’s retreat.

For Rupert’s part, he seemed to be trying to get Anthony into a submission hold, which was probably the only reason Anthony was still alive. If Rupert had been serious, I’m pretty sure Anthony’s head would have been off before he’d pulled his blade. But while Rupert clearly didn’t want to kill Anthony, I could tell from his scowl that the effort to keep him alive was quickly becoming more trouble than it was worth, especially when he ducked a fraction too slow, allowing Anthony’s thermite to singe the tips of his hair.

Between Anthony’s suit and Rupert’s speed, there was no way I could take time to line up a shot without my targeting system. Even with my computers, I’d probably have been too slow. But I’ve never needed a computer to shoot straight, so I took a deep breath and watched the fight, trusting my instincts until, in a flash, I saw my opening.

I fired before I could think, squeezing the trigger on reflex. I braced for the kick a second later, but it never came. The disrupter pistol didn’t even twitch in my hands. What it did was get fantastically hot, singeing my hand so fast I couldn’t have dropped it if I’d wanted to. But though the pain was intense, I was too distracted to care, because a second after I fired, Anthony’s thermite sword exploded.

Ignited thermite was a finicky thing. There was almost nothing you couldn’t slice with the stuff, which was why I loved it, but its power was also its weakness. In order to keep that crazy cutting edge, the thermite had to maintain an even temperature: too cold and it went brittle, too hot and it got unstable. But I remembered from Rashid that a disrupter pistol was a heat weapon, and though I’d known it wouldn’t do shit against Anthony’s suit, his thermite blade was another matter entirely. One shot of extreme heat was all it took to shatter it completely.

Both Anthony and Rupert jumped back at the blast, and I took my opening, elbowing my way between them before the smoke had a chance to clear. “Show’s over,” I snarled, putting my hands on their chests so that I was a brace between them. “Anthony, back the hell off. Rupert, stand down.”

Rupert obeyed at once, stepping back. Anthony, however, got right in my face. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted. “Get out of here!”

“No,” I said, whirling to face him. “I don’t take orders from you. But if you want to fight someone, fight me. I’m the one you came out here for.”

Anthony’s face went scarlet and he leaned in, looming over me. But though he was dressed in several hundred pounds of advanced Paradoxian engineering and I didn’t even have a proper shirt on, I held my ground, glaring straight into his eyes like I was just waiting for him to give me an excuse.

Stupid as it seems sometimes, dominance is an animal game, and it was one I played very well. I’d learned a long time ago that it doesn’t matter if the other person can technically kick your ass all day long so long as you can make them doubt. I had an edge with Anthony, too, because we had history together. He knew exactly what I was capable of in armor and out, and though he had every advantage in our current situation, he was the one who dropped his eyes and backed away, retreating toward the door. I would have glared him right out of the room if Rupert hadn’t chosen that moment to butt in.

“I believe this is over, Captain Pierce,” he said calmly, speaking Universal now, like he was putting the whole situation back on his terms. “You will remove yourself and your men from this house. We’ll be out in fifteen minutes. Have your ship ready for us by then and I won’t report your insubordination.”

Anthony blinked at Rupert’s voice like a man waking up from a spell, and then his mouth pulled up in a sneer. Whatever he was about to say, though, he didn’t get a chance, because Rupert cut him off. “You’re very young to be a captain in the Home Guard,” he said, his voice smooth and sharp as a knife. “I would hate to ruin such a promising career.”

Anthony looked so livid I thought he was going to try another swing. But pissed as he was, he was still a soldier, and he knew when he was beaten. He threw his broken sword on the ground with a curse and stepped back, putting his hands up in surrender.

“Thank you, Captain,” Rupert said, sliding his arms around my waist from behind. “We are much obliged.”

The words were unfailingly polite, but Rupert’s message was aggressive and clear, especially when he leaned down to press a kiss against my hair, keeping his eyes on Anthony the whole time. I wanted nothing more than to plant an elbow in his stomach for goading the poor man with such a blatant display, but it was important to present a unified front until the enemy was fully routed. Also, it would have killed my elbow.

I did pull out of Rupert’s hold, though, stomping toward the living room door. I stopped when I was right next to Anthony. “We need to talk,” I said, glancing pointedly over my shoulder at Rupert. “Alone. Give me a moment and I’ll meet you outside.”

Anthony didn’t look happy, Rupert even less so, but neither of them dictated to me, so I didn’t stick around to hear their opinions. I just stepped over Anthony’s downed guard and stomped up the stairs to the bathroom, slamming the door behind me.

My hands were pitch-black by the time I reached the sink.

The sight of the virus I’d pulled up with my rage only made me angrier, because I didn’t
want
to calm down. If anything deserved my anger, it was this shit. Anthony barging in and ordering me around like I was one of his Home Guard rookies was bad enough, but Rupert’s little possessive display was the absolute last straw. He might be the one with the authority, he might even be on my side like he claimed, but neither of those gave him the right to call the shots with my life.

But as much as I wanted to be furious,
deserved
to be furious, I couldn’t be, because the black stuff was spreading before my eyes. It was over my elbows now, working its way up my biceps toward the edge of my tank top. But while the stuff wasn’t spreading nearly as fast as it had back on the xith’cal ship, it wasn’t stopping either, which meant I needed to get a goddamn grip before I
died in a bathroom
from my own stupidity.

With that grim resolution, I sat down on the edge of the tub and held my stained arms out in front of me. The sight got my fear going nicely, and the resulting chill helped me rein in my temper. Even so, it took an embarrassingly long time before I calmed down enough to stop the virus’s spread, halting the black stuff just before it crested my shoulders.

I let out a frustrated breath. Forget the lelgis,
this
was going to be the death of me. It’d be fitting, too. My mother had always said my temper would get me killed. Of course, she’d been talking about picking fights with bigger kids, but the idea still stood, and I hated it. From my earliest memories, my rage had been my ally, my power, the strength I could draw on when everything else was gone. Now it was working against me, and I felt like I’d just gotten stabbed in the back by my lifelong partner.

That thought made me angry all over again, sending the black stuff over my shoulders before I could stop it again. By this point, my resentment over the whole situation was so deep I was shaking. It was just so unfair. I couldn’t even be angry that I couldn’t be angry. The goddamn virus had me by the throat, and unless I either got rid of it or learned to control it, I’d be its slave forever.

Strange as it sounded, that was the thought that actually gave me hope. If there was one thing rooted more deeply in me than my temper, it was my autonomy. I obeyed two authorities: my officers and my king. I was a loyal subject and a good soldier, but I was no one’s slave, and like hell was I going to let this virus make me one. It was just like what my first armor coach had said back home when she’d taught us how to use our suits’ engines: if you don’t control the power, it ends up controlling you. I’d mastered my armor that same year, and I would master this, too.

With that, I turned my focus inward, concentrating as hard as I could—not on controlling my anger, but on mastering my response. I could beat this. I
would
beat this. This virus was my prisoner, not the other way around. And as that resolution settled into my bones, the tingling in my arms began to fade.

I looked down to see the mark receding, the blackness vanishing from my skin like an ink spill in reverse. When the final traces disappeared from my fingers, I stood up, grinning like a madwoman as I shook my hands to get rid of the last of the pins and needles.

Considering how close I’d just come to dying, you’d have thought I’d be feeling pretty depressed about all this. But now that it was over, this incident actually made me more positive about the virus than I’d been since Maat had first predicted I’d kill myself through my own lack of control. I hadn’t been able to make much of an argument at the time because she’d been pretty much right. Now, though, things were different.

It had taken me far too long and way too much thinking, but the fact remained that I’d turned that black shit around, and I’d done it without cheating and finding a new outlet for my anger or getting distracted away from my rage. I’d beaten it back all by myself, on my own power, and if I could do it once, I could do it again. All it would take was practice, dedication, and work, and unlike plasmex, those were all things I understood just fine.

But though I was riding high on my victory, I had a bigger challenge coming. Namely, I had to go back downstairs and confront Anthony without turning myself inky again. I actually considered chickening out and skipping it, but even though I hadn’t asked him to, the truth was that Anthony had come all this way out of care for me. He didn’t deserve my obedience, but he did deserve an explanation, and like hell was I going to cheat him out of one because I was scared of my virus.