Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change (16 page)

“Power does that,” I said. Maybe a little deadpan that time. “That’s not exclusively an LA thing.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. Humble, smart … I mean, the guy was just—he was the real deal. I ate up what he was saying like it was ice cream being spoon-fed to me. “But I’m familiar with LA and with small town Alaska, because those are the two places I’ve lived. People with a platform to stand on—people that have this much authority, this much attention paid to their every word and action—it’s not healthy, psychologically, for most people. It gives them an outsize sense of importance, I think.” He sighed. “And ultimately, it’s a competitive business, and … that’s the other problem.” He frowned. “I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“You’re fine,” I said. Meant it, too, in every way possible.
Please tell me more, handsome man.

Uh oh.

“I don’t know who said it,” he went on, “but I once heard that there are two ways to have the tallest building in town—to go out and
build
the tallest building, brick by brick.” He shrugged. “Or to tear down all the buildings taller than yours. In my business—show business—it’s competitive like nothing else. Whether it’s because everybody thinks they’re vying for a limited number of great roles per year or just because—I don’t know, they want to feel important by knowing things others don’t—a lot of stuff gets said behind your back that’s … not flattering.” His eyes glimmered. “You know what I mean?”

I watched him with a flutter in my stomach and on my skin. “Strangely enough … why yes. Yes, I do.”

“I knew you did,” he said quietly with a soft smile that did not help my flutter. “Kat plainly would love to go out with me.”

“That is true.” I tried to keep my voice even.

“I don’t really know her,” he said, not daring to look her way, keeping his eyes fixed on me, “but would I be out of line in assuming she might marry me just to drive up her ratings?”

“Well …” I said, feeling a little twist of uncertainty, “… I mean, I don’t know, probably not ‘marry’ …” She slept with Taggert, FFS. She’d marry this dude for ratings in a heartbeat and film the conception of every one of their children as a bonus.

“I don’t like that feeling of doubt,” he said, frowning. On him, it didn’t look unattractive. “Worrying if someone’s just wanting to be on your arm in order to get something out of you, you know?”

I thought about Kat calling me back in January and again in the summer, just to try and boost her own profile at my expense. “I think I know what you’re saying, yes.” What the hell was I doing here again? Did I really turn down a drink with this guy last night in order to protect
THAT
? I found myself turning to look at Kat, who was now standing, very alone, in the lake, not another soul anywhere close to her.

Here she was, super famous, a crowd of people here struggling to get a look at her, but other than the manager who was basically trading her fame for sexual favors … I doubted she had even a single friend she could call on in a pinch. I felt more right about my assessment made in the cool green light of the pool last night by the minute.

“You know what?” I said, turning back to Steven, who was still looking surprisingly nervous, “I’d love to get a drink with you sometime. Soon, I hope, in fact. I just—I don’t want to leave Kat exposed to possible death just so I can … uhm … hang out with a—well, an awesome guy.”

“I commend you for your loyalty,” he said with a nod. “Pretty sure we could work something out—”

The screams tore across MacArthur Park, and I was left to turn in a flash, and as I spun I realized that there were definitely cameras here, now, both for Kat’s show and for all the paparazzi watching.

Dammit.

There he was, standing in the middle of the fountain, red hair and beard hanging wildly around his face, the color bleached by the sunlight so that it looked strawberry blond. “Now’s the time,” Captain Redbeard said, his legs insubstantial, like ghosts in the water as he stood opposite a fearful Kat, who looked too stunned to move away from the man who wanted to kill her.

“Oh, shit,” Scott breathed at the appearance of the man with the red hair. At least he was standing in the middle of a fountain, so there was something to work with, instead of choosing to stage a fight in a dry gulch or something. Or … pretty much anywhere else in LA.

“Time to rumble,” Guy Friday said, bulking up even bigger, like he’d just gone Bane or something.

“Wait—” Scott didn’t even get a chance to get out the full sentence before the big man went rushing forward, leaping into the fountain.

“Sonofa—” Sienna said over the screams of the crowd. The air smelled faintly of smoke and water, all the stronger for the minor humidity that the fountain put into the air. The grass around the park was a little brown, but not totally dead, but the hot sun was beating down on the back of Scott’s neck as he sprinted toward the fountain, toward Guy Friday and Kat.

Sienna made it first, flying in a hard hover that caused a stream of water to split in her wake as she shot protectively in front of Kat. “Not so fast, Captain Redbeard,” she said.

The red-haired man glared at her. “That’s not my name.”

“Well, since we haven’t been formally introduced,” she said, “I’ve gone ahead and nicknamed you Captain Redbeard. You’re welcome.”

He looked offended. Really, really offended. “For what?” he asked, his voice thick with outrage.

“For not calling you something worse, like ‘The Disappearing Man,’ or ‘Dirty Ginger,’ or ‘The Red Lebowski’—” Redbeard kicked his foot in fury, sloshing water that Sienna easily dodged. “Hey, I’m just saying what we’re all thinking. If you want to control your own supervillain name, you really need to get ahead of things, maybe issue a press release after your first attack, I dunno—”

“You people are the worst,” Redbeard said, his eyes shining with fury. “The absolute worst.”

“You seem to have lost all connection with reality, like it was dial-up internet or something,” Sienna said. “Let me re-introduce you: you’re trying to kill people because you think we’ve wronged you in some way.” She pointed to herself then to Kat. “We haven’t really met you before this, but even if we had, here are the rules of polite society—you don’t get to just kill people who piss you off.”

Kat coughed loudly, drawing Sienna’s attention to her. She shot Sienna a pointed look. “Well, it’s true,” Sienna said. “I don’t make these rules, trust me. I mean, I chafe under them, too, like, they give me a rash, but seriously—” She stopped. “Anyway, killing people who wrong you? Inappropriate response. Unless they try and kill you first. This lesson in polite society has been sponsored by—”

“You think you’re just so damned funny, don’t you?” Redbeard asked, looking at her with pure, furious spite.

“I try to make the best of bad situations,” Sienna said, still hovering between him and Kat. “Like this. You’ve got a murderous grudge against people who haven’t actually done anything to you. Most people might find themselves disturbed to be in that situation. Might call it unnerving. You know what I call it? Sunday.” She paused, thinking about it. “It is Sunday, isn’t it?” She glanced at Scott for support.

“Uh, yes,” he said, jarred into speaking. “It is.”

“So,” Sienna said, staring him down, “Captain Redbeard … is this how you want to spend your Sunday?” Guy Friday was standing in the fountain a good ten feet from Redbeard, and Sienna was closer still.

“You think you have me outnumbered?” Redbeard said, voice louder, playing to the rolling cameras. “You can’t stop me.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised what I can do when I put my mind to it,” Sienna said, playful as ever when she was bantering. She always did this, smarting off to people just before a fight. The thing that amazed him was that they just stood still and took it, like they were psychologically working themselves up to fight her.
I guess by now people have seen her beat down enough people that it’d give even the man who can walk through walls a moment’s pause
, Scott thought.

“Everybody’s watching us now,” Redbeard said. “Everybody can see.”

“Yeah,” Sienna said, and now she was tense. “You won’t be quite so jazzed about that when my friends and I beat your ass all over this park and it makes the national news tonight.”

Redbeard smiled, and it was cold. “Do you think that’ll play well this close to the election?”

Sienna tilted her head, looking at him. “What did you just s—”

The first explosion behind them distracted them all. It was louder than the one the night before, and the human mind was psychologically predisposed to looking toward whatever the most immediate threat was. Scott turned, watching a billow of dust fly into the air, the explosion once again lacking the pyrotechnics of a movie bomb and relying entirely on force and debris. He couldn’t tell exactly where it came from; there were trees in the way, but it was at the far end of the park and the shockwave came a moment after, toppling the people in the crowd like it had happened just behind them.

He watched the crowd of humanity fall over and braced himself just in time, kneeling to lower his center of gravity and taking the force of a fierce blast of wind following a moment later. Reed might have been able to dispel it, but Scott was almost powerless against that particular threat. Debris showered down around them. Scott’s ears rang like someone had slammed a hammer on a bell next to his head.

Somewhere at the far end of MacArthur Park, something had exploded. Something big, something loud, and the force had been such that the whole crowd was feeling it. For his part, Scott watched the dust swell over him and hoped that wherever she was in this mess, Sienna was all right.

Captain Redbeard was a sucker-punching, bomb-laying little asshole, and when he did both those things within about two seconds of each other, it really challenged my new resolution about trying not to kill people. It was a flexible resolution, I told myself. After all, hadn’t I started out all sweetly naïve, unwilling to kill, before Old Man Winter showed me how stupid it was to draw that line? Sure, I might have pulled back from that later when the government lawyers suggested I stop leaving quite so many dead bodies behind me. I’d gone with that until a guy named Philip Delsim in London had reminded me what a proper villain looked like. My enemies weren’t out to take me prisoner; that much was certain. Captain Redbeard wasn’t just going to knock me unconscious and go about his business. Unless he was lying, he definitely planned to kill me. And since he’d just bombed people and sucker-punched me, I was inclined to take the low-down bastard at his word on this one.

The point is, holding back with this guy was starting to look like a bad idea, especially given his enthusiasm for explosives.

Also, he landed his punch a quarter inch inside my jaw before turning his fist solid again and pulling it out. Bone, blood, skin, all of that came ripping off. I may be the world’s foremost badass, but that kind of thing staggers even me for a step or two.

And stagger I did, Gavrikov fleeing from my mind in the cacophony of pain and screaming nerve endings. I fell to the earth, knocked back from the lake’s edge by Redbeard’s attack. I landed badly, twisted my ankle (not that I really felt that, given I’d just had part of my lower face forcibly ripped off) and came to rest on my side, dust and debris from the bomb sweeping over me like a low-flying cloud.

Stupidly, I tried to speak and felt nothing but pain, like someone had—oh, I don’t know—shoved a fist into my jaw and ripped it the hell off. Because that’s what he’d done. My mandible was hanging like it was operating independently of the other side of my face, and I couldn’t help but feel that this particular injury, if left untreated, would derail my fantasies about giving Steven Clayton a good kissing. He looked like he needed one, didn’t he? Let’s go with yes.

Wolfe
, I said in my head, because my mouth was unable to produce so much as a noise other than a gross sucking sound as I bled profusely all over my fancy new suit.

On it
, Wolfe replied. Not the squeamish sort, that one.

Bjorn
, I said, and he answered me by shooting a burst of the warmind in every direction. It was a short, focused pulse, and I heard cries of pain that gave me my first hint of joy as the pain of my jaw started to fade. Because one of them was Redbeard and the other was Kat, and if anyone in this park deserved a murder of psychic crows pecking around in their heads, it was those two.

I lashed out blindly in the direction of Redbeard’s cry. He was close, way too close for comfort, as he’d apparently left his dreams of murdering Kat behind to climb back on dry land in order to finish me first. I hit him as my jaw pulled tight to my face, the skin lashing it back where it belonged. New nerve endings formed, and they screamed at the incompleteness of my jaw line. Blood gushed, squirting into the murky cloudiness with every beat of my heart.

Yeah, it was gross. I also didn’t care. I saw red, and not just from being bloodied up. I was ready to kill right here, end this threat to humanity—or at least Los Angeles—once and for all.

My forearm slammed into his calf muscle and hooked his leg out from under him with meta force. I heard another scream, high-pitched, then felt the gentle impact of a human body against the ground next to me. I rolled over to him like I was trying to dodge for my life under a passing streetcar, and ended up straddling Captain Redbeard.

Anyone who has ever suggested a primal link between violence and sex would probably have been able to write reams about the position I occupied on Captain Redbeard. I pinned his hips to the ground, my knees against the hard, packed dirt under MacArthur Park’s browning grass, and I started to just work out my frustrations on the Capn’s face.

I broke his nose on the first punch.

I drove the cartilage into his face on the second.

I smashed his right orbital socket with the third.

Any psychologist not studying the link between sex and violence by watching this particular tableau would probably have shifted to the spectacle of just how much I was enjoying the very specific injuries I was inflicting on him. Enjoying would probably be a strong word, though. I’d enjoy sitting on my balcony with a cup of hot cider and a cinnamon stick back in Minnesota more than this. This wasn’t enjoyment.