Stiletto (64 page)

“Again?” she said.

“Don’t worry, ’Dette, it’s not poison.”

“You — you are going...” And she collapsed into his arms. He hoisted her over his shoulder easily and set off down the street.

“No,” said Felicity weakly.
No.
Even through all the pain, a simple fact presented itself: There was no way she could let that man take her charge. Not unless Felicity herself was dead. She dragged herself to her feet.
The gun, where’s the gun?
She scraped away at her eyes, but they kept weeping. Everything was a blur.

“Help me, help meee,” moaned one of the people near her, and that spurred others, those who were still conscious and capable, to call out for help also.

“Help!”

“My eyes!”

“Please, oh God, pleeease.”

It turned her stomach, but Felicity forced herself to ignore them and take a step forward. And another. The figure of Simon was a distant blurry shadow in the mist, and it was fading.
Follow.
Half blind, she shambled after them and stumbled into the road. Her feet were heavy and awkward, and she leaned on the cars that squatted along the street. Something shifted limply under her shoe, and she realized that she had trodden on a person.
Hurry!

She could barely see the shape of the Antagonist as the fog closed around him and the body slung over his shoulder. They were gone, and she could no more track them down than she could find a missing set of keys in the Indian Ocean.

“No!” She groaned. “Bloody fuck shit
bastard!
”

She’d had doubts about Leliefeld. Hell, she’d had doubts about all the Grafters. To her, the excuse of the Antagonists had seemed too convenient. It allowed for strikes to be made even as the Grafters insinuated themselves in the heart of the Checquy. She’d been prepared to believe that Odette was secretly an agent of the Antagonists and that the Antagonists were secretly agents of the Grafters. The strategist in her had mapped out all the possibilities.

All those options should have been dismissed when she was given the order to kill Leliefeld. She was a soldier and she followed orders. And yet, they had remained in her mind, including the possibility that Odette — the girl with whom she’d spent the past week, the girl she’d seen at her best and her worst, the girl who’d bickered with her brother and worried about her hat and had brought her an apple — was innocent. And so she’d hesitated.

But the conversation she’d heard between Leliefeld and Simon had wiped out all her doubts. The Antagonists had no reason to leave Felicity alive and lots of reasons to kill her. No one could have known that she would be conscious during Odette and Simon’s argument or that she would be able to understand them. That conversation had not been staged for her benefit.

Felicity now believed, now
knew,
that Odette was innocent and that the Antagonists were working against the Grafters. The problem was that no one else would believe it. The attack was bad enough. But if Odette Leliefeld, the most loathed member of the delegation, vanished without a trace into the fog that had harmed hundreds of British civilians in the center of London, then all of Rook Thomas’s efforts at reconciliation would be swept away. The hate was there. War would ensue. The Antagonists would win.

“Damn it!”
She fell to her knees, scraping her hands on the asphalt. Her Sight expanded out of her skin like ripples in water. All around her was the wreckage of a terrorist attack. Abandoned cars. Spilled purses and shopping bags. And people, lying helpless. She shuddered away from them and pulled her Sight back in.

Then she took off her shoes and socks.

*

Felicity ran through the streets.

She couldn’t see with her eyes anymore, they had swollen completely shut, but with every step, she drank in a fleeting impression of the area around her. She read the road beneath her, letting the images well up through the soles of her feet and into her mind.

The world was strobing. For a brief moment, she had an image of the space around her as her Sight spread out to read the present and the past, and then she had to snap back into her mind so as to keep herself running. The pain of her skin and eyes flickered in and out of her senses as she flickered in and out of her body. She was conscious that as she ran, she was gasping in big lungfuls of the fog, and it grated in her chest.

It was not a situation that lent itself to analysis. If Felicity had stopped to think about how she was doing it, she wouldn’t have been able to do it. The conscious, meticulous part of her mind had stepped back, and instinct and sensation were controlling her.

She was tracking. Images from a few seconds ago of Simon the Antagonist guttered in front of her. He walked tall, with Odette over his shoulder, her hair hanging down his back. Felicity saw him pick his way down the road, fastidiously stepping over bodies and litter, talking on a mobile phone. She followed in his footsteps.

Other ghosts bled in and out around her as she took in the very recent past. She saw men and women looking up at the cloud as it erupted and then falling down, clutching their eyes. She saw a car crash into another car ten minutes ago, and then she vaulted over the wreckage in the present. She flinched as a man with blood dripping from his eyes staggered in front of her, only for him to vanish when she plunged back, blind, into her own skin.

Then, in the here and now, Felicity heard the Antagonist ahead of her say good-bye and put his phone away. She held her breath so that he would not hear her gasping approach and slowed so that her foot remained on the ground a second longer. She drank in the picture and knew exactly where he was, just a few feet in front of her. Then she screamed out and threw herself at him, driving her shoulder into the small of his back and sending him flying.

Felicity rolled and came to rest down on one knee. For two heartbeats, her hand was flat to the ground as she mapped the scene — Odette lying
there
and walls
there
and the Antagonist sprawled
there
— and then she pushed up like a sprinter in the starting block and moved toward him.

The Antagonist had barely opened his eyes and turned over when he saw the heel of Felicity’s bare foot hammering down toward his windpipe. His instincts flared, and he flailed his hand in front of him and swept her leg away. She was thrown off balance and fell on him but managed to drive her knee into his rib cage. He howled and shoved her off. She rolled and came up into a crouch.

“Gruwel!” he snarled.

Felicity didn’t answer, but she paused, flexing her toes on the ground. Then she darted forward and struck out with her fists. He stepped back hurriedly, out of reach, and she jabbed at empty air.

She dipped into the past again and saw him in the moments that had just occurred. Her powers could not see him in the present, but a second ago he was standing in front of her, two steps back. He was wheezing, but he smirked at her blind flailing. She saw those long spurs slide out of his wrists and he was stepping forward to attack her
now!
She jerked her body back and heard the movement of his attack missing her. Felicity reached forward and caught at where his arm should be. She felt his forearm and braced herself automatically, then gripped and twisted and pushed. She sent him staggering.

You can see him only in the past,
the analytical part of her mind observed from the backseat.
You’re operating with a delay, so you’ll need to act faster than he does. A second, half a second, can make all the difference in this game.

“So, you’ve got a few little tricks up your sleeve,” she said. She flinched at the feeling of droplets spattering across her face.

“I’ve got a few up my throat too,” said the Antagonist.

What the fuck is this stuff?
she thought, and she scruffed at her face with her sleeve. She looked into the past and saw him breathing out a spray into her face.
He
spit
on me?
That can’t be good.
She wrenched herself back into the present. The Antagonist was still speaking.

“...problem is that with your eyes already swollen, I don’t expect much got in. But it should be enough, eventually.”

What was he talking about?

“I’ve read your file, Gruwel,” said the Antagonist. His voice was moving, and she turned her head to try to follow him, to pinpoint where he was. “When we learned that they’d assigned a guard to Odette, we checked up on you. I know what you are — a soldier, a killer. My cousin is a scholar and an artist, and they put a beast like you behind her so that you could knife her in the back. But now you can barely see,” he gloated. “I’m actually mildly impressed that you caught up with us. According to your file, you don’t have any abnormalities that make you impervious to the fog, so you must be in a lot of pain. I certainly hope so.”

Don’t listen to him! Where is he? What is he doing?

A few seconds ago, she saw, he had been crouched, and then extending to leap for — he hit her, but she’d thrown up her arm so that his spur caught in the bunched cloth of her coat rather than slicing through her cheek. His weight made her left leg buckle, and she grabbed his shirt so that they fell together.

Good. If we’re grappling, then I know exactly where he is.
She clutched at his wrists and tried to deliver a knee to his crotch. She connected, but there was none of the squishing she’d anticipated, nor did Simon’s strength waver for even a moment.
Did I miss?
Then she remembered the white-skinned man from the row house and his novel approach to genital configuration.
So, he may have his willy tucked away
in his abdomen
, she thought.
Fine. I doubt he’s retracted his skull,
and she slammed her head forward in the hope that it would make contact with his nose or forehead.

Instead, her forehead glanced off his chin, which seemed to startle him, because he flinched and she shoved forward against his wrists. He fell back, and she scrambled up. A pause to read the situation as it was a moment ago, and she saw that he was also standing. Her back was against the wall and he was lunging forward, raising his left leg to kick at her.

Dodge!
She twisted wildly to the left and heard a crack like a detonation. A hand against the wall and a moment’s incredulous peek into the past gave her an image of the Antagonist kicking a hole through the bricks.
Cut his legs out from under him!
She swung around, crouched down, swept out in a kick that caught his ankle, and (his other foot still being lodged in the wall) brought him flat down on his back.

He’s got the weapons,
but no training. Take him down quickly, because he just needs to get one lick in with those spurs and you’re dead.
She heard the breaking of bricks as he wrenched his foot out of the wall, and her Sight strobed flashes of him pushing himself up and turning to face her.

It was ugly, awkward fighting. He had the strength and the spurs, but she had the skills and the Sight. They both had the kind of hate that meant they didn’t hesitate and they didn’t fight clean. They spat, swore, and slung litter. Again and again they came together and fell back. Felicity’s attacks and dodges became more and more rigid as the fog took its toll. It became harder to look into the past, but each time, she managed to get in a blow or twist out of his way. Finally, goaded and frustrated, the Antagonist rushed in toward her. His spurs were low and ichor dripped from them.

She twisted down onto the ground under the spurs and kicked up hard into his stomach. He fell, winded, and she rolled onto him. The Antagonist feebly tried to bring his arms up, but she was quicker.
End it!
She struck down at his face, her hand a dagger.
End it!

It would have killed a normal person, she was sure of that, but it didn’t kill him. He shrieked, and she pressed down, scrabbling and clawing until he flung her off. The bubbling, blubbering sounds that came out of his mouth were nothing human, and she braced herself for more, but instead he turned, clutching at his face, and fled away into the city.

I’m not following him,
she thought wearily.
No one could expect me to.
She shuffled over to where Odette lay and knelt down.
She’d better be okay,
Felicity thought. She was fairly certain that she had trodden on the girl at some point during the fighting, but there was no blood that she could detect.

What do I do now?
she thought.
Try to pick her up and shamble out of here?
It simply wasn’t going to happen. The adrenaline and rage that had helped her ignore the pain she was in were fading, and all she really wanted to do was lie down and pass out. Even dying didn’t seem like
that
bad an option. Then she remembered that Leliefeld also had a phone. Was it still on her? She was listlessly pawing through the girl’s clothes when she heard a distant sound.

“Felicity Clements!” came a faraway shout. It was curiously muffled, but it had a distinctly English accent.

“Here,” she croaked. “Here!
Here!
” She heard boots on asphalt and felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Pawn Clements, we’re here,” said a voice. It was muffled by a gas mask.

“It would have killed you to get here five minutes earlier?” She wheezed. A mask was pressed against her mouth, and she breathed cool, clean air.

“Well, you know how it is,” said the Checquy man. “Been a bit busy.”

“The terrorist who caused this,” said Felicity weakly. “He was just here, no more than a minute or two ago.”

“We can still catch him?” said the trooper.

“God, I hope so,” said Felicity. She put her hand down on the ground for a moment. “He went that way. Fuck him up if you can.”

“Can you describe him?” asked the trooper. “What does he look like?”

“Well, he’s not lying blinded on the ground,” she said testily. “That should make him stick out. He’s blond, has a pointy nose, and is wearing a blue designer suit.” She took in another deep breath of that glorious air. “Oh, and he’s missing an eye.”