Power (12 page)

I could taste the exhaust from the cars around me, and the ground was rising to greet me. I knew it would hurt, knew that I’d bounce and probably break something. But there was nothing to stop it now—

SIENNA …

The familiar voice called to me. Jarred me out of the reverie of my slow fall to oblivion. I closed my eyes and I could see the speaker in the dark space in my mind where I greeted the souls I’d taken.

Sienna
, Dr. Zollers said, his voice urgent.
I’ve driven her out. Sienna!

I blinked in my own head, coming back to myself. “Driven her … out?” I felt memory flood back. “Claire,” I said, remembering. “Oh, God, she was in my head—”

She was attacking you
, he said, quickly.
She didn’t get into your mind, just kicked you around a bit. I’m keeping her at bay now. But, Sienna, you’re falling—

My eyes snapped open as I reached within and felt myself clutch hands with Gavrikov somewhere inside. The pavement was inches away—

I lifted off and soared again, matching speed with the white van that lingered behind the battered SUV that Reed was still driving down the highway. I looked and saw it in front of me, looking as if it had been driven straight out of a junkyard and onto the road.

I was flying inches from the ground and I made myself ascend, bring myself up to the side of the van. I caught another look at Claire in the van’s rearview.

This time, her eyes were wide. And the smile? All gone.

I swayed to the right and then swooped left, hitting the van in the side and sending it hard against the concrete divider in the middle of the highway. The side door opened as I flew right and prepared for another attack. Instead of slamming into the van again, I flew inside with a spinning, twisting maneuver that knocked both of the gunmen waiting inside the doors right off their feet.

I didn’t hesitate, stomping on one while punching the other. Their bones cracked and broke, screams came flying from their lips, and all the while I saw movement ahead with every stolen glance I sent to the front seat. Claire was moving now, her stout form crouched between the two front seats, eyeing me as I finished the two gunmen. Both humans, I was pretty sure.

“Sienna,” Claire said, glaring back at me from where she’d perched.

“Claire,” I said, twisting a certain enjoyment from seeing her like this. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Well,” she said, “you know how I like to harass and annoy you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’ve followed me from Vegas. It’s almost like you’re stalking me.” I clenched my fist at my side.

“You killed Weissman,” she said, and I caught a hint of danger in her eyes. I didn’t worry too much about it since I knew she was mentally crippled.

“Did not,” I said. “That was my mom. But I did kill the Wolfe brothers and crash the plane. So … there’s that.” I watched her warily, just savoring the moment. “I talked to your boss last night. He was pretty pissed at Weissman for that whole deal, he said. So I’ve just gotta ask, between you and me—has he finally wised up to the fact that he doesn’t have a chance with me? Because trying to assassinate me and my friends on the freeway like this—”

“Oh, this isn’t Sovereign’s doing,” she said, and I caught a hint of a smile. “And what he doesn’t know … will only hurt you.”

“You’re crossing him?” I almost laughed. “For what?”

“I’ve got my reasons,” she said, and nearly snarled.

“Tell me it’s because I broke your leg,” I said. “Because if it’s to avenge Weissman in some misguided attempt to bring me down, I’m just going to die of laughter.”

Her hand emerged from behind her seat, pistol clutched in her chubby fingers. It almost looked like a single-barrel shotgun chopped down to a handgun. “It’s for Weissman, yes.”

I blinked at her, dully. “Seriously? For that greasy, sorry-ass—”

She fired and it felt like the world exploded around me. I burst out the back doors of the van in a haze of smoke, coughing and feeling the sting of burning pain in the center of my chest. I hit the ground hard and rolled, feeling Wolfe’s psyche brushing against mine.

The smell of something burning filled my lungs and my throat even as my arms and legs hit the ground. I rolled and felt my clothes tear, felt my skin give way as my body bounced. I had no will left to summon forth Gavrikov; the pain in my body was everywhere, down every limb and in my torso, too.

After a few moments that stretched into a few years, I felt my body roll to a stop. The sky hung overhead, and I could taste acrid smoke in my mouth. I tried to cough and it hurt. I moved my arm slightly and it screamed at me in such pain that I gave it up.

I heard tires screeching, people screaming, all in the distance, like they were miles away. Sirens sounded, voices called, and I cared about none of them.

I could see the blue sky over me, and faint dots checkered my vision. There were faces around the edges—J.J., I thought, maybe, and Kat. Reed was there, too, and I saw his dark eyes staring at mine from a million miles away. They got darker and darker, and it felt like I fell right into them as I lunged into the blackness of oblivion.

Chapter 19

I awoke without waking, and in the darkness I saw the outline of the construction site take shape once more. I wanted to sigh, but I didn’t, instead staring into the hazy night surrounding me and waiting for him to appear. I glanced down and found myself dressed in slacks and a blouse with a leather jacket to cover it all. At least it wasn’t pajamas this time.

“All right, come out,” I said with that same feeling of weariness. “If you’re going to go to the trouble of dragging me here, you could at least show up promptly.”

“Just trying to give you a moment to adjust,” he said, stepping out of the shadows. He looked much less young this time, furrows in his brow as he stared at me. He seemed taller, too.

“Yeah, well,” I said, and ran my fingers over the leather jacket I was wearing, “I don’t need that much time to get used to this. It’s not like I get a ton of dreamwalk action … errr …” I adjusted my jacket to cover the indignity of misspeaking. “Err, I mean I don’t really dreamwalk that often, or with many people, or …” I sighed. “Never mind. What do you want?”

“I wanted to see if you were all r—”

“If I was all right,” I said, cutting him off and finishing the sentence for him after he stopped speaking. “If that isn’t becoming a familiar refrain …” I folded my arms in front of me and listened to the leather squeak on my jacket as I did so. Nice detail. “I’m fine, I assume, though I won’t be sure until I regain consciousness. You see, I landed on the highway after your friend Claire shot me with a hand cannon and sent me flying out the back of a van doing about sixty on the freeway.”

His expression darkened. “I didn’t order that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Wow. I couldn’t have predicted you singing that particular song again. It’s almost as familiar as asking me, ‘Are you all right?’ after your thugs have just attacked me.” I let my gaze settle on him. “And just as tiresome.”

He pushed his lips together and caused them to subtly turn white from the pressure. “I did not send Claire after you. I ordered her explicitly to stay away from you.” He hesitated. “And your friends,” he added after a moment.

I looked at him, watched him for a response. I had my own ideas about what had happened here, and he didn’t need to know them. “She did mention something of that sort.”

He looked as though he wanted to speak but said nothing for a long moment. “I know I don’t deserve your trust—”

“You nailed that one,” I muttered.

“—and that I’ve done things you … despise,” he said, and his emotions looked closer to the surface than I’d seen from him so far, “and I don’t expect you to believe me right now, but I had nothing to do with what just happened to you. I had to hear about it through … other sources.” He straightened. “Not from Claire, in this case.”

I shrugged. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.” He almost flinched. “But if what you say is true, you’ve got some serious problems in your organizational structure. You might want to worry about them rather than starting your much-vaunted ‘phase two.’”

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “But you should watch your back just the same.”

“Because more of your flunkies are going to come after me?” I asked, twisting the knife a little. “They must have been awfully loyal to Weissman to be so willing to throw their lives away to get back at me.”

Sovereign pursed his lips again. “Yeah. They were. He had this whole … inner circle put together before he even came to me. They’re the ones who started the ball rolling, who began the recruiting process to build the one hundred that they eventually got to. They believed in his vision long before I bought in, and they were all about carrying it out.” He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Maybe a little too enthusiastically.”

I rolled my eyes again. “Let me guess. This is the part of our conversation where you demonstrate how uncomfortable you are with the partners that you’ve thrown yourself into bed with for this endeavor.”

There was a flicker of emotion that tightened every line of his face, and then it fell. “Like I said, I don’t expect you to believe me. Or understand.”

“But you keep talking anyway.”

“And you keep listening,” he said, looking at me. “Is it just because you’re hoping I’ll give something away that will give you a tactical advantage in a fight?”

“Mostly,” I said.

His eyes met mine, and I sensed a streak of hope within him. “Just ‘mostly’? What’s the rest of your reason for listening?”

“I enjoy a good monologue from time to time,” I said, and I could feel my palms sweating on the leather of my jacket. Yes, in a dream. I still don’t know how that works. “It’s not just about you giving something away. It’s about you constantly overestimating your chances, showing me how arrogant you really are.”

“Maybe I’m just hoping you’ll come around,” he said softly. Sadly, really.

“Don’t bet on it,” I said, still staring him down.

He didn’t say anything, just stared at me. After a moment, he started to fade again. “Take care, Sienna.”

“If I can avoid your thugs,” I said, driving the knife home as he disappeared into the shadows of the dreamwalk, “maybe I will.” I waited for another moment to see if he would respond, but by then the dreamwalk had started to lose its clarity around me, and I fell into a mercifully quiet sleep.

Chapter 20

I woke with the sour face of Dr. Perugini hovering over me, her dark hair gathered back on her head in a bun. Her lab coat was bright white and went marvelously with the ceiling and her olive skin. She was frowning, as she frequently did in my presence.

As far as wake ups go, I think I preferred Sovereign, actually.

The faint beeping of medical machines and my slow, rhythmic breathing reached my ears a moment later. The place smelled of sterile antiseptics, like Perugini had spilled grain alcohol on the floor and never bothered to mop it up. Smelled like whiskey to me, for some reason. Probably because of a bad night I had with—

Never mind.

“Ah, good, you’re awake,” she said.

“Now ‘get out’?” I asked, helpfully filling in her next words for her.

She did not look amused. “You are still missing quite a bit of skin and have several fractures in the process of healing, so no, I would not advise getting out of bed just yet.”

“Gimme a sec,” I said, sitting up uncomfortably. I hurt. A lot. She was probably dead on about that skin being missing, because it felt like it had all been scraped off along my arms from my wrists down to my elbows. I moved with nothing less than a full grimace on my face.

“What the hell are you doing?” Her eyes lit up with anger, and she started to reach for me, probably to hold me down.

“I said give me a second.” I held up a hand and noticed the bandages stretched along my wrist, along with angry red marks down the back of my hand. I closed my eyes, tried to ignore the pain and failed. Still, I managed to muster enough mental discipline to make a call.

Wolfe
.

He came forth when I beckoned, and I heard a gasp from Perugini. I opened my eyes as she recoiled from me. Skin was growing along the red wounds on the back of my hands, and I could feel the pain of regrowth beneath the bandages as well. New skin crawled across the red and ragged mess, eliciting a noise of disgust from Perugini. You’d think, as a doctor, she’d be pleased to see her patients healing, but no, apparently not.

The entire process lasted about ten seconds and it was done. Thin trails of blood marked the points where the regrown skin had met up, soft, crusted lines that dotted my pale flesh. “Well, that ought to do it,” I said.

Perugini stared at my newly mended arms and then looked up at me dully before snapping her latex gloves off with a little more gusto. “Well, what do you even need me for?”

“For all that trouble I keep bringing down on others.” I threw back the discolored sheet that lay across my abdomen, ignoring the red-brown blood stains that dotted it and put my feet on the cold floor. “You know, that thing you’re constantly bitching at me about.”

She made a glottal stop noise deep in her throat, a sound of disgust, and then stormed off. She paused only briefly to throw her gloves into the medical waste can before slamming the door to her office.

We had a special relationship, she and I.

I looked down at the hospital style gown that covered my body and made sure to tie the straps in the back before getting out of bed. I wasn’t super enthused at the idea of showing my ass to anybody. Literally, not metaphorically. I metaphorically show my ass to people all the time. It’s fun and usually takes the form of sarcasm.

I sighed and my eyes swept the nearby area. There was a faint beeping in the corner and I glanced over to see Agent Li with an IV tree, lines running toward him. He was either asleep or faking it, and I didn’t want to converse with him badly enough to probe which it was. I saw a bandage on his upper arm and wondered idly how badly he’d been hit. It wasn’t immobilized, so I guessed it wasn’t bad, but I made a mental note to inquire when next I saw someone who would know.