In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2 (12 page)

I wander out into the living area to find Dr. Perugini in the kitchen. The smell of something cooking fills the air, and it looks like eggs. I wonder where she got them, and then I realize it’s a TV dinner of some kind. A breakfast dinner? A TV breakfast? Whatever the case, she’s stirring the meal and the microwave door is open. The TV is playing softly in the background, the volume down presumably so that she doesn’t disturb me. Crowds are moving around on the screen, brandishing signs in Italian. “What’s that?” I ask.

She sighs. “Another strike. This is normal in Italy.” She turns to me. “You want something to eat?”

I smother the smartass reply that comes to mind, something about being in the mood for Brazilian. “Sure,” I say instead, but the way her eyes glitter, I think she knows I just stifled myself.

“Everything is for sale,” Anselmo whispers as he walks down the poorly lit hall of an apartment building, which might have been built during the post-war construction period of the 1950s. There are protests just outside, and for once he is gratified rather than annoyed by them. The noise of the crowd is audible throughout the old building, a low roar that masks the sound of his movements. Lorenzo follows close behind him, a stiff look of discomfort and annoyance plastered upon his face.

“How did you find her?” Lorenzo interrupts to ask the question Anselmo was about to answer, unbidden.

“As I said,” Anselmo says, squashing his impatience with the boy, “everything is for sale. When you know who to look for, then all you need to know is who to ask, who will know the details.” Anselmo straightens his tie and suit as he halts in front of a wooden door. “And there is no shortage of people in Rome who will gladly pay attention to details in exchange for money.”

Anselmo delivers a sharp kick to the door, shattering it off its frame and sending into the apartment. As it falls he sees movement behind it, across a dimly lit room that has every curtain drawn.

It takes only a moment for him to confirm that yes, it is Diana, by both the speed of her motion and the precision of her movements. He begins to dart into the apartment after her, but a rush of wind blasts past him.

It sweeps hard into the small apartment, knocking over a sofa and striking the dark-haired woman. He sees her bow and quiver propped against the wall. It is plain to him that she is going for them when the wind strikes. It rips her feet from beneath her, but she curls into a ball as the blast hits her.

Anselmo watches as the strength of the wind and her reaction carry her through a window, shattering it. Light floods the darkened apartment as his quarry is hurled into the sunlit street below. The roar of the protesting crowds enters the room, louder now through the broken window, and Anselmo feels his patience dissolve as Diana disappears from view, falling onto the avenue below.

“You imbecile!” he spits at Lorenzo, and then sprints for the stairs without caring if his protegé follows.

The change of tone on the TV is immediate. Even though I don’t understand much Italian, the difference in the way they are speaking is enough to turn my head. I look in time to see a woman with long, dark hair come cannonballing out of a window to land in a stunned crowd. I estimate she fell two or three floors, thrown out of a window in a nearby building.

The commentators go into a shocked silence, but only for a second. Her fallen form is stretched out on the pavement, and then she staggers back to her feet with meta speed, and I catch a glimpse of her face.

It’s the Goddess of the Hunt, and she’s bleeding from cuts on her back and forehead. She looks like hell—wary and pissed, with a tinge of fear. She’s lacking any weapons, and she looks staggered, which is not a good sign.

I can hear Perugini take a sharp breath behind me, as dumbstruck as I am by what’s happening on the TV. “Where is this?” I ask, turning to look at her.

Wordlessly, she points at the wall behind me, and I remember the dull roar of the strike in progress. “Three blocks,” she says when she regains her power of speech.

I run for the balcony, thankful that I took a moment to get dressed before joining her for breakfast. I burst out the double doors and use my power to leap up onto a rooftop, not really thinking as I spring into action.

She is still in the street when Anselmo comes out of the building, and this is all good news as far as he in concerned. She looks unsure, the huntress turned into prey. Her doubt is exquisite, and he knows that while this is not the first time she has suffered this reversal of roles, it is very probably the last.

“Stay back,” he says to Lorenzo as they step onto the sidewalk. Anselmo is ready for this, sees the news cameras, and knows how to play it. The young buck, though, has already proven that he is too busy swinging his balls around to be trusted with the most basic of decisions. Anselmo throws up a hand to halt the boy, to keep him from charging in and making even more of a spectacle. This is a delicate maneuver, and made all the simpler by the roles dictated.

Anselmo is the hunter.

Diana is the prey.

Prey runs.

The hunter follows.

She does not disappoint him, catching sight of the two of them from her place in the center of the crowd, a ring of concerned onlookers gathered in a knot around her. There is no hesitation; she flees, knocking over pedestrians with all the force she commands. Bodies fall, screams fill the air, and the huntress is on the run.

“Carefully,” Anselmo says, breaking into a sprint of his own. He parallels Diana’s path down the middle of the road, mirroring it on the sidewalk, careful to avoid the breathless, mad sprint that she employs without care for the humans she runs over. Anselmo has patience and follows, knowing she will cross into an alley soon. It is inevitable, the hare diving into the rushes to avoid the hawk.

But Anselmo will not be lost so easily. For he is a hunter, and she is the prey, and no matter how long it takes, his pride will force him to wear her down. He can smell her fear, can sense her helplessness without her weapons. He will pursue her from one end of the city to the other, will keep her from doubling back to familiar territory. Will wait for her to move somewhere secluded, somewhere quiet.

And then he will show her just how weak she truly is as he ends her long life once and for all.

I blast across rooftop gaps without much in the way of thought. I’m sprinting, charging in the direction I can hear the crowd. At the apex of my next jump I see the mob scene, the countless people gathered to protest whatever they’re protesting. I’ve been in crowds like that before and the energy is incredible. Even from this distance I can tell things are off, though. There’s an aura of uncertainty that makes its way through the crowd noise, faint screams that indicate something has gone awry.

I burst onto the edge of a major street and the full glory of the scene is laid out before me. There’s a gash in the crowd like someone has taken a razor and run it through, removing everything in the path. I follow it to its conclusion, about two hundred yards down the way, and I see Diana playing fullback and charging through the heart of the protest. My eyes catch movement across the street and I see why she’s running.

Lorenzo. That bastard.

He’s following behind an older guy, and I know I’ve found the boss. The guy looks like he’s in his forties or fifties. If he’s meta, that could mean he’s a few hundred years old or it could mean thousands. I don’t like the possibilities in either case, but I see them following her down the street, taking the slightly less crowded sidewalks, threading through people instead of plowing them down. I know their intentions are ill even if their methods are surprisingly gentle.

I take off after them, the sentry above, and try to keep a low profile as I leap from roof to roof in pursuit.

She takes the path of most resistance, and this pleases Anselmo. Panicked, fearful—it means she is reacting rather than thinking. A fine state for her to be in. She has fought her way through some three hundred meters of crowd by this point and has yet to look back or make a move to run down an alley. Anselmo can predict it, though, especially as she turns to look at him for the first time since she took off. He sees the wild eyes, the instinctive terror. All good. All very good.

She elbow checks a young man and sends him flying ten feet into the air, and the crowd gasps as one. It is the hardest, most panicked hit she has made yet, and it fully reveals to everyone what she is. Anselmo picks his way through a gap as people scream and start to run in the opposite direction. The herd is spooked and is trying to escape now that they’ve recognized a true threat rather than a simple novelty.

Cutting through a crowd with precise motions comes easily to Anselmo. It does not require brute strength or any of the fearsome charging that Diana has employed. No, it is a simple matter to easily redirect the people flowing around him with concentrated strikes, gentle shoves that compel them out of his path without harming them or sending them flying. The struggle has slowed her down; his calm allows him to pursue easily. A sharp knife through soft meat; that is Anselmo. Lorenzo follows silently in his wake.

She makes the mouth of the alley but is not alone. Others are running from her in a panic now, running with her, a living mass of panic snaking its way into a space far too small for them. Diana goes into this place with none of the grace that might have allowed her to calmly move away. She writhes, she panics, she strikes, and the humans shriek and struggle back. The alley becomes a tight-knit crowd, a panic turned to riot in the confined space.

The strike of hand against bone, of flesh against weaker flesh echoes. The crowd on the street adapts, responds, sees the mayhem in the alley and runs the other way. Anselmo drives into the heart of the chaos, calmly redirecting the screaming strikers out of his path and to their own safety.

He smiles as he sees her at the heart of a bloody mass of people. They shrink from her in fear even as she freezes to look at him. It is a second where she knows exactly where she stands. The alley before her is crammed with people fleeing, crying, falling, stumbling, desperate to get away and blocking her easy retreat in the process. It is a solid wall of bodies between her and freedom, and an easy corridor between her and death.

Her flight instinct falters, and he can see her panic recede under her resolve.

She knows there is no escape.

He knows that she knows. And while this is hardly the private place he had hoped for, a quick conclusion to the business at hand is in the offing. “Hello, Diana,” he says, as amiably as the snake to the varmint it is wrapped around. Victory is assured; now there is no cause to be rude. “It would appear you are—”

The tornado hits Anselmo with the force of a bomb, bouncing him hard against the cobblestone alley. He goes airborne for a full second before crashing back to land on his face, nose smacking against the ground. It is a stunning sensation, weightlessness followed by the sense of power driving him to the earth.

“Howdy,” the man says as Anselmo raises his eyes to see Diana still standing there, a companion now at her side. The flare of wind around his legs tells Anselmo who the interloper is, why he is here, and that his own plan has gone just slightly wrong. The man holds a hand pointed at Anselmo as if making a threat. “I saw you guys picking on this woman, and thought I’d—”

There comes the sound of tearing, of something ripping, and Anselmo watches the light enter the man’s eyes in realization. It is a sweet one.

Anselmo rips a chunk of pavement five feet square off the road and has it in his hands, above his head, before the boy—Reed, he remembers the name—can do anything to react. It is heavy, perhaps a ton, but it holds together well, a perfect projectile, which he heaves at the two of them with something approaching irritation.

“Oh, shit,” Reed says simply, staring at his impending death. And Anselmo watches with satisfaction as Reed and Diana disappear behind a ton of thrown debris.

I see it coming and want to kick myself for the lame response. It’s half the alley, the cobblestone all in a clump. I can taste the dry dust the guy raised when he pulled it up, billowing ahead in a cloud propelled by the force of his action. When he lifts it and I see he’s going to toss it at us, my customary response pops out without thought.

Metas who can lift heavy objects are a dime a dozen. Metas who can rip up a street and throw it through the air like they’re tossing a tennis ball are not, and it’s always cause for concern when you run across someone with that much power.

The adrenaline is already pumping through me, and I feel flush. The world slows down a little as the bricks come toward us in a low arc. If they hit, I have no doubt they’ll mash my upper body into a lovely jam that would nicely spread on whatever bread they serve in the nearest café.

I summon all my power, and I mean all of it. I throw up my hands, palms out, and gather my energy. It’s like sprinting, or lifting more weight than I’ve ever put up in my life, and I can feel it all down my arms. I set my feet without thinking about it much, lock myself as much into place as I can.

I propel all that force, every bit of it I can muster, down my arms, through my wrists, and out my hands. Taking a page out of Lorenzo’s book, I try something new and try to throw some wind using my head as a focusing channel. I can feel it working, adding a little to the gust that sweeps before me like the start of a tornado.

The flying stones catch in midair, hover for just a brief moment, and then I pour it on. Everything I’ve got, from the toes up, I put into this. I throw power I don’t even know I have into this. I see my efforts rewarded. A few bricks fall to earth, but the majority reverse their course and go flying back at that asshole who threw them at me.