Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8 (12 page)

“So he was like a good guy, back then?” Scott asked. “Breaking up protection rackets?”

Judy snorted. “Hardly. Sometimes it was warranted, sometimes I think he was just spoiling for a chance to bust someone up. Didn’t kill ’em most of the time, though, and that’s to his credit because he certainly could have. Just warned them off, told them to find an honest job. A lot of them learned to steer out of his way when he came to town. They’d give him a wide berth and he’d given them no trouble.”

“He seems to have changed his mode of operation,” Scott said.

“Yes,” Judy said pensively, a frown on her face. “He didn’t truck with anyone else that I knew of. Damned sure not anyone with as dumb a name as ‘Century.’” She looked over at Scott. “What does it mean?”

Scott almost gulped. “Like, a hundred years—”

“I know that, you dunce,” Judy said, and I almost thought she was going to reach across the table to take a swipe at him. “Why did he name his group Century?”

Scott looked at me, I looked back at him. “We don’t know,” I answered.

She frowned at me. “Might be something you ought to look into.”

“I’ll add it to the list of things to discuss when I meet him,” I said, trying not to let my voice carry too much sarcasm.

“So why are you here?” Judy asked, looking at me now. “Really. Because you didn’t know I knew Sovereign from before, did you?” She leaned in closer. “You know why he calls himself that? Sovereign, I mean?”

“Because he’s a man unto himself,” I said. “Like an island all on his own. Says he doesn’t need anything, or anybody.”

She gave me a curt, perfunctory and satisfied nod. “That’s what he always said.”

I watched her carefully. “You don’t believe him?”

She shrugged again. “Everybody needs something.”

I looked at her, she looked back. “Do you know what he wants? Or what he needs?”

She breathed in and out, thinking about it. “He needs food and water, I know that. Needs to sleep from time to time, because they say he’d find shelter in an inn for the night sometimes, and woe betide anyone who was dumb enough to wake him in the night for any reason. Just like the rest of us in that regard. But other than that ... no, I don’t suppose I know of anything else he needed or wanted. He never really talked to anyone, never visited a whorehouse while around here or showed any interest in any of the women in the area.” She got a glint of amusement in her eyes. “And I recall one even threw herself at him, stupid trollop.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Not a damned thing,” Judy said. “Just walked right around her like she was nothing more than a stone in the road he was stepping out of the way to keep from tripping on.”

I filed that away for later. If he wasn’t interested in women, maybe men were more his cup of tea. I was desperate for a vulnerability. After all, what could make a man as long-lived as that apparently not interested in anything or anyone? “You asked us why we’re here,” I said.

Judy didn’t blink, just gave me the flint-hard look back. “Yes?”

“We’re here to check up on the kids that fled the Directorate, for one,” I said. “But the other reason we’re here is because I’m trying to organize a fight against Sovereign. Against Century.”

Judy leaned back in her chair. “Well, that’ll be an interesting sort of slaughter, I suppose.”

I hesitated. “You don’t think there’s a way to beat him?”

She laughed but it sounded more like a cackle, completely bereft of any amusement. “Sweetie,” she said, but there was nothing sweet about her pronunciation of the word, “if he’s got a hundred metas at his disposal and they’ve already rolled through the cloisters of Europe, he will not have any trouble making you and anyone dumb enough to line up with you into a flat smear on the pavement wherever you’re standing when you meet him.” She turned to Scott. “You too, numbnuts. Might want to think this one through with your head, for once, instead of your crotch.”

Scott bristled. “You think I’m going into this fight because I’m running on testosterone? Like I’ve got some need to prove the size of my manhood?”

Judy didn’t back down, but now she was amused. “Oh, no, I’m sure that’s still as insubstantial as it was when you were a kid taking baths with your cousins.” She waved a hand in my direction. “No, I mean that you’re going into a battle that’s going to get you killed to impress your girlfriend here.”

“Oh, me?” I said after a moment’s pause allowed that to sink in. “I’m not his girlfriend. His girlfriend—well, ex, now—she’s ...” I looked down at myself. “She’s blond and leggy, and I’m ... so not.” She looked at me like I was an idiot. “No, really,” I said. “We’re not! I can’t even—” I halted myself and saw a flicker on her face. “Well, anyway, we’re not, in spite of whatever you might think. I mean, we couldn’t, even, because ... well, anyway.” I stopped myself short of explaining how my last boyfriend had died only a couple weeks earlier.

She had an even more suspicious look now and glanced down at my hands, my leather gloves tight around them. “It’s kinda warm in here, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said absently.

“Why do you still have your gloves on?” Judy asked, and she cocked her head at me with her eyes narrowed.

“It’s for—”

“She just forgot to take them off,” Scott interrupted me.

“—your protection,” I said, looking over my shoulder at Scott like he was a moron for answering for me.

I turned back to see Judy glaring at me, then she turned back to Scott, all hostility now. “Did you bring a soul eater into my house?”

Scott shook his head swifty. “Nooooo …” He stretched out the word to make it even more obvious he was lying.

“You’re as bad a liar now as you were as a kid,” Judy said, stating the obvious. Her face was flushed a bright red and I started to get an inkling that this was not the place to be. The image of a raven flashed in my mind and there was a stir in the back of my consciousness, a screaming from the place where I was keeping my hitchiking souls.

She is an Odin-type,
Bjorn shouted once I let him out.
Her ire is raised.

Tell me something I don’t know,
I shot back at him.

“Maybe I did,” Scott said, trying to cover for himself now. “But she’s a good person—”

“You got a death wish?” Judy said, and came to her feet. “You are as dumb as a box of rocks, boy. You got the hots for a succubus? Let me spell how this is gonna end for you—she’ll either get you killed in a fight with Sovereign or she’ll eat your whole entire soul before she realizes how much it would burden her to be weighed down with an idiot like you for all the rest of the days of her life!
Do you know how long these things live?
”

Her last words came out as a scream and I stood from my place at the table, not sure whether I should be offended or not. “I am not a
thing
, I’ll have you know, and the only souls I’ve ever willingly absorbed are the people who have tried to kill me.”

Judy’s eyes got wide and the raven flashed in my head again. “Get out of my house,” she said as the blood drained out of her face.

“I’m not going to make a snack of your consciousness—”

“You’re not eating my damned soul,” she snapped back.

“You got that right,” I said, and started for the door, “I don’t want you shrewing in my head—”

“Get out!” she screamed. “OUT!”

I held up my hands to try and be peaceable and went for the door. She was a few steps behind me, giving me my distance. “I didn’t come here for a fight,” I tossed back over my shoulder.

Scott was trailing behind and started to say something. “She’s not—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Judy said, following us across the carpet. “Bringing a soul eater into my house. I oughta—”

“What you oughta do is watch your mouth,” I said, stopping before I turned the handle. “I’ve eaten Odin-types before.” I fixed her with a sweet smile and turned on my heel. Scott just missed getting the door slammed on him as we stepped out into the cold of winter.

“I’m so sorry she treated you that way,” Scott said as we pulled out of the driveway. I was in the driver’s seat this time, and he didn’t say a word as we started back down the road.

“I’d heard metas hated succubi and incubi,” I said. “I hadn’t really ever experienced it until now.”

“Yeah,” Scott said as the car went slowly down the drive toward the edge of the trailer park, “it’s not subtle. You see it a lot in cloisters. Incubi and succubi are kind of like the bogeyman for meta kids.”

“Nice,” I said, not really feeling all that pleased about it. I reached up and put the tip of my right-hand glove’s middle finger in my mouth, and started to pull it off with my teeth, one finger at a time.

“Don’t take it too hard,” Scott said, and I could see the tentativeness in his posture toward me. “It’s a backward view, and it’s fading.”

“Not like there are a ton of my kind still out there, even,” I said, looking at the windshield wipers as they squeaked, sweeping powdered accumulation from the glass. I started on the second glove, biting on the leather as I removed it and then tossed it on the center console.

“No,” he said. “There really aren’t.” He waited just a minute. “Is there a reason you’re taking your gloves off? Are you about to off me?” There wasn’t a trace of fear in his words anywhere.

“Off you?” I asked, and sent him a sidelong glance. “According to your aunt, it’s more like I’d be getting you off—without the gloves, I guess, because you’re super dumb and want to die for a kinky thrill. No, I’m not about to ‘off’ you, I just don’t like driving with gloves on.” I looked back out the windshield and hit the brakes, hard, as a shadowy figure dashed out into the road from behind the last trailer in the line. The figure was small and wearing a black hoodie. The car went into a subtle fishtail, the back end going left about forty-five degrees before I managed to bring it to a stop. “Way to almost get yourself killed, kid,” I muttered, my hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. The headlights illuminated a boy, around twelve or thirteen, peering out at us, hands buried deep in his pockets.

“Hey, I know him,” Scott said. “That’s Rajeev.”

“He looks familiar,” I said, squinting out into the dark. “He’s from the Directorate, I assume?”

“Yeah,” Scott said, already reaching for his door handle and stepping out. “Rajeev! How you doing?”

I followed a moment behind, stepping out into the dark of the night, the snowfall lit by my headlights and the front porch lights of the nearby trailer. I got a look at Rajeev and he looked a little familiar, dark hair, the faintest beginnings of what would probably be a mustache in about five years lining his upper lip.

“Scott,” Rajeev said, and when they got close they shared one of those bro-hugs where their right hands met in the middle and pulled close, like a shoulder bump, but slightly more masculine. I didn’t roll my eyes, exactly, but it was only through epic self-restraint.

“Glad to see you made it okay,” Scott said.

“I’m glad to see I made it okay, too,” Rajeev said. “You were gone long before it happened, right?”

“Yeah,” Scott said, a little hushed. “I was far away when the Directorate went boom.” He shifted a little uncomfortably in his shoes. “Listen, we came up here—”

“I know why you came,” Rajeev said, nodding. “They had a meeting about it this afternoon, about this threat that’s coming.” He made a gesture to encompass the cloister. “They’re talking about leaving. Pulling up stakes, going to Canada.”

“Yeah,” Scott said with some discomfort. “I bet they end up doing it tomorrow, too, now that they know what’s coming.” He clapped Rajeev on the shoulder. “Listen, we could use some help. We’re going to take on this thing that’s destroying the metas. You should come with us.”

I gave Scott a searing look. “He’s like twelve.”

Rajeev looked offended. “I’m thirteen.”

I tilted my head at him. “Have you even manifested yet?”

He shook his head. “Well, no.”

“How old is the oldest of the kids who came with you?” I asked.

“Sixteen,” Rajeev said.

“Yeah, we’re not recruiting any of them,” I told Scott with great finality.

“Their lives are in just as much danger as ours,” Scott said.

“Still no,” I said. “I’m not taking a bunch of teeny-boppers into battle, unless I find out that Sovereign’s secret weakness is high levels of angst or a deep affinity for Justin Bieber.”

“Hey!” Rajeev said, “just because I’m young doesn’t mean I like Justin Bieber. Besides, we all want to stay with the cloister anyway,” he said, stopping Scott from what was looking like a really burgeoning argument. His face was red and everything. “We took a vote.”

“Smart kids,” I said.

“What?” Scott said, turning his red face to Rajeev. “The entire species is being wiped out, do you realize that?”

Rajeev gave a nod. “Yeah, and that’s tragic, but we’re not that old, and none of us want to die. This thing is killing metas thousands of years older than us and more powerful, and besides, we already had one brush with them outside Brainerd and barely got away.”

“What?” I asked, honing in on Rajeev again. “What do you mean you had a brush with them?” Scott turned his attention on the boy as well, fully attentive.

Rajeev hesitated, thrusting his hands deeper in his pockets. “We stole some cars to get up here. We were on the road and a helicopter dropped down on us, caused one of our cars to flip on the icy road.”

“Rajeev,” I spoke quietly, my mouth dry, “was everyone else all right?”

“Mostly,” Rajeev said. “We were lucky, none of them were metas. They shot up the cars, almost killed me. They would have, if not for—” His face bore a subtle hint of anguish. “We managed to get in the other car and speed away while—”

I felt a flash of fear. “Who was it? Who died?”

“They saved our lives, the three of them,” Rajeev said. “It was unbelievable. He took out all the men that were after us, I think.”

“Who?” I asked, more insistent. “Who died?” I had a sickening sense I already knew.

“Jeremiah Stevenson,” Rajeev said, hushed, the snow falling around him as he cast his eyes downward in the reflected light of the headlamps. “They shot him first, right through the head. He didn’t stand a chance. Sara Astley did much better, managed to take a few rounds in the body and still kill one of them with her strength.” Rajeev wore a ghostly smile. “And Joshua, he—”