Power (31 page)

“It’s all right,” I said and made a faint gesture with my hand. “I absolve you.”

He stared at me, and his eyes were full. “You truly were the bravest. After Adelaide …” He stopped. “I never wanted any of these things to happen because you … and she before you … you reminded me so much of my own—” He stopped abruptly then pulled me in for a hug that nearly strained my ribs. When he broke from it a moment later, he could not meet my gaze. “Fare well, Sienna Nealon.” He left with Kat on his arm.

“This is not goodbye,” Quinton Zollers said, making his way over to me, “this is merely ’til we meet again, as surely we shall.”

“Don’t get elaborate with me now, Doc,” I said. “I’ve got a job to do.”

“And you’ll do it well, whatever you decide it is,” Zollers said. “Be assured that whatever happens, I will always support you.”

“I know,” I said, nodding and drew him in for a hug as well. His arms were warm and heavy, wrapped around me. I felt a glistening in my eyes and held it back. “Be careful.”

He pulled back from me. “You know I will.” With a last smile, he too headed for the door, leaving me alone with Scott, Reed and Ariadne.

Ariadne looked at us, hesitated, and then shuffled forward. “I guess I’m next, then.”

“I hope you’re going to Bora Bora,” I said, staring her down.

“Or somewhere,” she agreed. “I don’t really fancy the thought of being your bitch in jail, assuming they even housed you with the normal inmates.”

“Fair enough.” I hesitated. “I know I’ve said it before, but—”

“I know,” she said, dismissing me. She hugged me lightly. “I know.” She pulled back and I saw in her eyes that she meant it, but there was still pain there, though not as fresh as it once was. “Safe journey, Sienna.” She paused at the door and drew back. “You’ve come a long way from the girl I first met in the Directorate interrogation room.”

I stared at the four walls of the conference room around me. “Not so far some days, I think. Pretty soon I suppose I’ll be just as confined as I was then.”

“You’re still different,” Ariadne said. “The environs may not be all that different, but you’re worlds apart from who you used to be. Nothing can take that away.” She said it, and she was gone. I watched her red hair retreat slowly outside the window.

“Reed—” I started to say, turning back. I ran into some resistance when he enfolded me in a hug that lifted me off the ground. I felt it, which is to say he was really damned strong.

“You don’t have to do this, dammit,” Reed said, and he set me down. “We go in there, we get Sovereign to turn around, we put a bullet in his head, boom. Job done. Then we exit, stage right, and head for wherever Janus calls rendezvous.”

“I don’t think it’d be quite that simple,” I said. “Assuming he did voluntarily turn around, which is kind of unlikely.”

“You walk in naked, get him to face away from the door, I follow in and boom, done,” Reed said.

“I don’t like this plan,” Scott offered. “Except for the naked part.”

“No,” I said gently. “No to the naked part, no to the idea of shooting him in the back of the head.” I was a little more forceful on one of those parts than the other.

“What are you going to do, Sienna?” Scott asked. “If you’re not going to kill him?”

“Maybe I’ll just guard him until the feds come,” I said. “Maybe we’ll have a conversation. Maybe I’ll turn him loose and run to catch up with you guys.” I felt my face harden. “Or maybe I will kill him and then come join you.”

“I’m all in favor of killing him,” Reed said, “but I’m not a huge fan of sending you in there alone.”

“I’m the only one that can face him,” I said.

“No,” Scott agreed, “you shouldn’t be alone in this.”

“Get past your egos, boys,” I said. “As much as I love you both, when it comes to a dance between me and Sovereign, you’re hostages or splatters and that’s it. This is my job, the one I signed on for, and I’m going to do it myself.” I looked at each of them in turn. “I won’t have you in the way, because if you hamper me and get yourselves killed in the process, even if I beat him, it would kill me inside.” I made them feel it, both of them, with a hard-edged look that made them each break eye contact in turn. “Do you want to put that on me?”

“No,” Reed said first.

“No,” Scott said a moment later.

“Then this is where we part,” I said, and opened my arms. They both hugged me, tightly and as long as they could get away with it. When I pulled away, I could sense Scott wanting to stay a moment longer. I shook my head at him. “I’ll see you again. Or you’ll see me at least, I think.”

“Don’t get yourself killed, Sienna,” Reed said. “If he’s willing to lay down the sword, let him do it. Just be done. You don’t have to do this anymore.”

“I never did,” I said. “That’s what makes me … me.” I smiled, but it was totally fake and they both knew it. “Take care of yourselves.”

Reed gave me a cursory salute and left before I could see him tearing up. Scott waited just a moment more, like he was going to say just one more thing, but I shook my head and he ducked out. I watched the two of them leave and knew that once again I was all alone.

Chapter 53

Once upon a time, Wolfe had held the city of Minneapolis hostage for my surrender. I’d gone out and faced him, knowing I would suffer and be tortured and die, because I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else dying in my place.

I don’t know exactly what it was about walking down the empty corridor of the dormitory that reminded me of that moment, but the feelings came flooding back to me as I went down the hall toward my room.

The campus was empty. I’d seen to that. I could feel it in the echoes of the footsteps I was taking toward my door. The smell of drywall dust was in the air, a smell that reminded me of new construction and new destruction at the same time. I saw the dust drifting in the sunbeams, lazily falling out of the air. It had probably been prompted by Sovereign’s exit to come to Terramara earlier, though this particular building had never really lost its new construction smell for me.

I thought about knocking, but it was my room so I just went in. The biometrics that had once secured the door were offline, another pointless precaution to keep Sovereign from trying to mind-control someone who could access them. He was the least kept prisoner ever, I figured, and I suspected he knew it.

“Hey,” he said, rising to greet me as I came in. His dark eyes looked worried. “Are you okay?”

“As much as I can be,” I said. “Why?”

“Well, I picked up on some things—”

“You sensed a great disturbance in the force, huh?” I sat down on the bed and faced toward the seat he’d been occupying only a moment before. He slowly lowered himself back into it, the remainder of the chains clanking as he did so. “Here, let’s get rid of these.” I gestured for him to come to me, and he did.

“Why now?” he asked as I unlocked the cuffs around his ankles. They were all broken anyway, and his limbs were able to move freely.

“What’s the point?” I asked. “You’re here of your own free will.”

“I’m supposed to be detained by you, remember?” He smiled, and it was full of irony as per usual. “I’m your big career-making capture.”

“I don’t have a career,” I said with a shrug. “The press has figured out about metahumans and the government is leaking like a sieve. All these years of closely holding the secret and now it’s busted loose in less time than it takes Shia La-whatshisname to unspool.”

He stared at me, and it felt like dawning comprehension came over him all at once. “You think you’re about to take the blame for … what? The explosion up north?” I nodded. “The extinction? Century?”

“Everything,” I said. “I figure I’ll catch everything that needs to be caught.”

He folded his hands in his lap, and I couldn’t read his expression for a moment. “They’re going to turn on you.”

I shrugged again. It was my expression of choice for the current state of events. “So it would seem.”

He looked deeply contemplative for a moment. “I wish I could say I didn’t see this coming …”

“Oh, please,” I said. “You didn’t see this coming.” I waved at him. “It’s obvious on your face.”

He frowned. “I … I think I’ve deceived a person or two in my time.”

“You haven’t needed to deceive anyone,” I said, dismissing him. “And why would you? Even when you were pretending to be Joshua Harding, you were practically begging for me to realize that there was more to you than I was seeing on the surface.”

I saw a gleam in his eye. “Maybe I just wanted
you
to realize there was more to me. Not everybody.”

“Still trying to impress me, huh?” I said, and it came out wary.

“Trying,” he said. “I don’t know how well it’s working, but I’m trying. Surrendering myself, aiding you in taking down Century even though you know I believed in the idea of what a better world could bring to us—” I rolled my eyes, just a little, before I could stop myself. “All right, well, you know, maybe we should just avoid that topic of conversation for a millennium or two.”

I put a hand over my face. “Won’t that be around the time you reach the end of your lifespan?”

“Could be,” he said. “Time starts to lose meaning for you after a while. We live a long time, our kind. Incubi and succubi have that going for them. Of course the downside is that even our own people hate us for our powers. I mean, metahuman vampirism isn’t as sexy as the movies make it look—”

“You’re rambling,” I said, and pulled the hand down from my eyes.

“I’m rambling,” he agreed, and I watched him rest both hands on his knees. “So … the campus is feeling pretty empty.”

“It should be totally empty.”

His eyes shifted left then up. “It is. You sent them all away.”

“Yep.”

“Alone at last.” He stared at me. “So … are you planning to shoot me?”

I stared back at him. “Not right now.”

He cracked a smile. “It’s a start. I’ll take it.”

I shrugged. “Would you even hold still if I told you I was going to shoot you?”

I could see the tension on his face in the form of his jaw halting partway open. He met my eyes and I could see the surrender. “Well, since you just told me I’m a horrible liar—”

“You proved it a second ago, incidentally, when you started to answer and froze up.”

“—no, I wouldn’t hold still and let you kill me.” He gave me a light shrug of his own. “I’ll submit to punishment for what I’ve done, but I’m not likely to sit still for the death penalty.”

“Well, then there we are,” I said. “I couldn’t shoot you if I wanted to. And I think we’ve already established it wouldn’t do any good anyway.” I glanced down. I was down to one pistol now anyhow, thanks to having to grab something in a hurry from the armory to replace the weapons I’d lost in the explosion.

“So why are you here?” he asked. “Now that everyone else is gone?”

“Because I have to deal with you,” I said.

“Even your friends left?”

“I sent them away,” I said. “And let’s get back to talking about you.”

“You want to talk about me?” He stared at me. “Why?”

“Because I’m secretly in love with you.”

He blinked in surprise. “Really?”

“No, not really,” I said and gave him a frown. “It’s because you’ve been a huge pain in my ass and the focal point for all my problems for the last year and a half, even when I didn’t know it. Wolfe and all the other Omega stooges came at me because they needed a succubus to try and bribe you with. Century came at me because you had Weissman steering them toward me. Winter turned on me because he was petrified you were going to kill him.”

“Which I did.”

“No points from me,” I said. “Indirectly, you’re the reason I had to leave my house for the first time a year and a half ago.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“How?” I asked. “Did you read someone’s mind?”

“No, I was there,” he said, never looking away from my eyes. If you’ve ever seen creepy stalker eyes, that was the vibe I was getting right then. “I was there in the parking lot of the supermarket when Wolfe grabbed you. Weissman and I jumped out to help. He touched my skin—”

“And you partially drained him,” I said and felt my stomach turn in disgust that I hoped was well hidden. “I should have known that a dart wouldn’t do squat to him.” I pictured the first time I’d seen Sovereign as Joshua Harding. “No wonder you looked so familiar.”

“I’ve been watching out for you since the beginning,” he said, leaning toward me. The stalker eyes were just a little self-aware, just a little more cunning than I would have hoped for. “I’ve done everything I could to try and organize things right, but I’ve made serious mistakes even so. Siding with Weissman was disastrous. Going with his plan was horrible. Reprehensible. I wanted the world to be a better, brighter place, somewhere that someone like you didn’t get abused by the people who were supposed to protect you.” He paused. “See, I know how it feels when a parent torments you. How it is when the person who is supposed to love and care for you turns on you, the harm it can do—”

“Yeah, I heard about your mom in your head,” I said, cutting him off. I was keeping myself as cold and aloof as I could manage. And I could manage a lot.

“She couldn’t hurt me physically,” he said, never looking away from me, “but she did everything she could to break me mentally.”

I looked at him without looking him in the eyes. It’s not like I was afraid I’d fall into him or something, metaphorically speaking. I just didn’t want to look him in the eye. “I can’t imagine what that would be like.”

“Probably like having Wolfe in your head,” he said with some humor. “Maybe a touch less horrific.” He paused. “Except in the teenage years. That was awkward.”

I couldn’t help but give him the disgusted look for the overshare. I tried to rein it in, but there are limits to how much yuck I could take. “Ugh,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said and dropped from the chair to his knees in front of me. I looked up at him and must have had another WTF look on my face, because he held out both hands. “Relax, I’m not about to propose marriage or anything.”

“Good, because the answer would be ‘no’ followed by a punch to the face for you.” That came out reflexively.