Destiny: The Girl in the Box #9 (24 page)

I glanced at Zollers and he nodded. He knew what I was thinking, what I’d asked him:

If I run, will Weissman chase me?

His nod was all the affirmation I needed. I took a breath and turned to Reed. He was still standing there, holding Scott back with me. Our eyes met, and I could feel his hesitation. I wondered if we could communicate just by a look, if it would be enough. He shook his head, firmly. I could see his quiet refusal.

“Reed,” I said, and tried to send every ounce of emotion, of pleading, of begging. All of their lives were in his hands, now, and their fates were tied to what he did next. “Please.”

“You really should be begging me,” Weissman said. You could tell he thought he’d already won, and it grated. “If you think—”

A howling of the wind blew hard all around me. I looked back and saw four of them; four enormous, swirling tornadoes launch my companions into the air. I watched them fly, two hundred feet straight up, and on a long, lazy arc away from where I stood staring down Weissman and his cronies.

“Son of a …” Weissman said, and his voice was tinged with annoyance. I could see the scowl on his face in the shadow cast by his headlights as I turned on my heel and sprinted away, back toward the conservatory entrance. “You have got to be kidding me. Go ahead and run, kid! Just savor the fear a little while longer, because your friends can’t escape from me … and it’ll be a fun night hunting you down first.”

I had a head start, but not much of one. I could hear the two big guys following behind me. Something about them was entirely too familiar—not in a good way—and I wondered what it was.

I glanced back as I passed the conservatory entrance and kept going. The entry to the Como zoo was just a little farther, and my—admittedly limited—plan called for me to try and lose them inside.

The cool night air whipped across my face, and the faint smell of animals hung in my nose. My breaths were coming quick and sharp, more from the anticipation and fear than because I was winded.

I hung a hard right on the wide sidewalk that led into the zoo and pulled my gun, firing three times into the pane of glass to the side of the doors. The pane collapsed in big shards as I jumped through the empty space they’d left behind. I fired thrice more on the other side and shot through that pane as well seconds later.

I almost couldn’t feel my feet, I was running so hard. I charged toward an exhibit building up ahead and looked back. The two guys were just behind me. I wondered briefly why Weissman didn’t just freeze time and let them take hold of me before realizing the answer.

He wanted to hunt me. To spend the time stalking me, making me fear him. My friends were already as good as dead the minute he had his hands on me.

He was just savoring this.

I shot twice at the big guy following me closest. He had red hair that flooded off the top of his head, wavy and curly and flowing down his back, I could see that much in the torchlight. If the bullets hurt him, he gave no sign, just kept coming.

I swore and ran into the building ahead. It was shadowed, but I heard the faint sound of a monkey as I dodged inside.

I ducked into a dark area and realized I had, in fact, reached the monkey house. A chattering sound reached my ears from a nearby glass enclosure.

“Amazing isn’t it?” Weissman’s voice reached me from a few feet away. I turned and saw him in the shadows for a second, and then he was gone. “We evolved from them to become the dominant form of life on the planet.” Now his voice was coming from somewhere else, bouncing off the walls, echoing through the monkey house. There was more chattering now as the denizens of the house responded to his voice. “Now we look down on them—and rightfully so—even though we once might have been the same.”

“I don’t see much difference between them and you,” I said under my breath. “Though it’s kind of dark in here; they’re probably prettier than you.”

“Hahah!” Weissman’s laughter echoed. I suspected he’d found the most acoustically perfect place to taunt me from. He really was just playing games. “I find it a lot easier to bear your stupid insults when I know you’re cornered. When you’re caged. Like one of them.” Somewhere he rapped on the glass, and it echoed. “Humans are like this to our kind, they just don’t realize it. We’re superior in every way, but for some reason we feel a need to hide among them. Like the fact that we’re special, that we’re better, should ever be hidden?”

“I don’t see how you’re that much better than them, especially in the area of hair care,” I said, putting my back against a stone wall. The shadows were moving in here, but I couldn’t hear much of anything over the chattering. It smelled, the strong scent of animal waste blocking out all else.

“Again with the goading,” he said, and I thought I caught a twinge of impatience again. I wasn’t sure whether taunting him was going to be the key to making him draw this out or if it’d be the thing that would cause him to snap and put an end to it sooner, but I was having trouble stopping myself in either case. “But then again, you’ve always been blind to the truths right in front of your face. So busy coming up with the next smart thing to say that you miss all the obvious things you should notice.”

“Tell me more,” I said, looking around. I had a feeling the big guys were in here with me, but I couldn’t see them.

“You looking for my tall friends?” Weissman said. “They’re here. Closing in on you a little at a time.”

“Cool,” I said and pushed myself harder against the wall, trying to look left and right, keep my approaches covered. “Let me know when they’re ready for a fight. My hands were bared, palms sweating, but if I could get my hands on them for about twenty uninterrupted seconds, I could put them away.

“Oh, they’re ready to fight,” he said. “They’ve got a little bit of a score to settle with you.”

“Really?” I asked. “I don’t remember beating the shit out of Sasquatch anytime in recent memory. Pray tell, what did I do to offend them? Did I insult their mother?”

“No,” Weissman said with a chuckle. “You killed their brother.”

I felt the chill creep down my spine as he said it, and the memory slammed home. The shadow moved to my left, and then to my right, and they swept in on me from both sides before I could do anything to react. As their faces crossed into the light for just the briefest of seconds, I knew why they had seemed so familiar before.

Those teeth. Those eyes. They were just like him.

Just like their brother.

Just like Wolfe.

I dove hard, rolling into a shaft of light as I heard the Wolfe brothers behind me, stopping just before they plowed into each other. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead and flashed on, presumably thanks to Weissman monkeying with them somewhere.

I stared at the brothers Wolfe. The one on the left was the redhead, with a full, red beard and long, curly red hair coming down in strings around his face. He looked more human than Wolfe, but that wasn’t a high bar to clear.

“Elmo!” I said to him. “You’ve really let yourself go to hell.”

The other one was darker haired, but completely clean-shaven. He had short hair, but it was barely styled, just a mess that looked a little like he’d run his fingers through it to make it wild. I could see the hints of stubble across his cheeks. “And you, uh …”

“Save it,” the dark-haired one said.

“We’re not interested in your jibes, Nealon,” the red-haired one said.

“Hey, you guys can actually speak without using the third person,” I said, keeping on the balls of my toes. “Color me impressed.”

They glanced at each other, bereft of any amusement.

“I should probably introduce you,” Weissman said. “This is Grihm.” The red-haired one smiled, his pointed teeth revealed. “And Frederick.” The clean-shaven one nodded his head slightly.

I stared. “Frederick? Seriously?”

“I like it,” Frederick said, and I was surprised at how there was no growl in his voice. He sounded … almost normal. Almost. “It sounds cultured.”

“Also, it’s multi-syllabic, which is definitely bucking the family trend,” I said. I was surveying them and running my mouth off in hopes that we could delay the fighting just a little longer. If these two were anything like Wolfe, this was not going to be pretty. Wolfe was well nigh invulnerable to bullets, and I was pretty sure Grihm had proven earlier that it ran in the family.

That left me draining them to death, like I had their brother. But I had my doubts Weissman would let that happen without intervening.

I glanced around. Where was Weissman? I had heard him a moment earlier, and I knew he had to be just waiting to swoop in if things somehow went wrong with Grihm and Frederick. Plus there was Claire, still somewhere out there.

“So,” I said, trying to kill a little more time, “I take it you boys heard what I did to your brother?”

There was an utter lack of reaction from either of them at first, and then Frederick nodded slightly, a grim smile spreading over his face. “Drank him dry, didn’t you?”

“Something like that.” If they knew how I’d killed him, they were almost certain not to make it easy on me. I wondered how exactly I was supposed to kill them if they already knew to guard against the only sure method I had.

“Here’s something you don’t know,” Grihm said, sweeping his red hair out of his eyes with his hand. His fingernails were long and clawed, like Wolfe’s, but they were impeccably kept, like he went for regular manicures at the groomers. “We killed your aunt. And James Fries.”

“Uhm …” I thought about what to say to that. “Thank you, I think?”

They exchanged a look. Frederick spoke. “We assumed you’d be unhappy about that.”

I had a lot of emotions running through me; if I was unhappy about them killing Charlie and James, it was in way distant last place, somewhere past fear for my friends, for myself and for my entire surviving race. I was far more worried about how the next five or ten minutes were going to play out, frankly. “Well, you know what they say about assuming.”

Frederick frowned at me. Actually frowned. No growl at all. “You’re a very sarcastic person. I suspect it’s stunting your emotional growth.”

“What. The. Hell?” Did I just get psychoanalyzed by a Wolfe brother? I could feel some displeasure somewhere deep inside, from Wolfe himself. A choice comment about Frederick being a smug asshole floated my way from within.

Grihm crossed in front of Frederick, and both of them realigned to put me at the center of a ninety-degree angle. I knew they were going to leap, I just didn’t know when. They both tensed, but I was staring at them, one eye on each, trying to decide how this was going to play out. I suspected not good. The odds were not so much in my favor, after all.

They leapt and I pre-empted them, charging at Frederick. I went low, aiming to chop block his leg with my shoulder. It felt like an iron rod slammed into my collarbone as he landed a knee on me. I tried to muscle through but it didn’t work so well. He countered by bringing down a fist like a hammer on the top of my head, and I was forced to dodge right to avoid taking any more damage from him.

“Maybe you thought just because we seem smarter and more well-spoken than our brother, we’re worse fighters than him?” This from Frederick, whose blow to my head still had me seeing stars.

“I lived in hope, yes,” I said, keeping my distance. They were back to standing off, in balanced stances that told me they were ready to leap.

“Now you can learn to live in fear,” Weissman said from somewhere far behind me. I thought about looking back, but it was pointless to focus on him. He was going to let this play out. Let me get humiliated. “It’ll be good practice for you for what’s to come.”

“Ah, yes, my arranged marriage,” I said, glaring back at Grihm and Frederick. “I can’t tell you how excited I am about that.”

“Your emotional state is more or less irrelevant,” Weissman said, and I could tell he meant it.

“Clearly the key to every successful marriage,” I said. “Right up there with despising your intended’s friends.” I looked from Grihm to Frederick. “We’re really covering all the bases here.”

“You’ll get over it,” Frederick said, his dark head bobbing as he maintained his fighting stance.

“Given time, you’ll probably come to realize how perfect for each other you and Sovereign are,” Grihm added. He was smiling under that red beard.

“And if I don’t?” I didn’t really care what they thought, but I was delaying again. This fight was going to suck unless I could lay hands on a missile launcher. Hell, even if I could.

“That sounds like your problem, not ours,” Frederick said.

“We’re just here to help arrange the wedding,” Grihm said. “The honeymoon and everything that follows is between you and a counselor of your choosing. Though I’d suggest you avoid Dr. Phil.”

“Stall all you want,” Weissman said, his voice echoing down the hall. “Your campus is my next stop after I have you packaged and ready to ship, so don’t think you’re doing anything other than delaying your friends’ painful and impending deaths.” I could hear him chuckle from wherever he was perched. “I’m gonna have a lot of fun with that boyfriend of yours before he dies. Do you have any idea how much I hated his aunt and uncle? Enough that I made their murder scene unintentionally look like Wolfe’s handiwork, that’s how much. I figure I can do at least that much courtesy to him when the moment comes—”

I felt a surge of rage and leapt at Grihm, who was nearest to me. His eyes didn’t even widen as I came at him. I hit him in the jaw with my lead-off punch then landed another in his belly.

He did not even flinch. Just stood there and grinned through his feral teeth. “My turn.”

I had no time to dodge his offhand jab, and I honestly don’t know if I could have even if I’d had ample warning. Grihm was fast, faster than anyone else I could recall fighting, and his hand hit me in the nose like I’d had a piano fall on my head. I heard my nose break, felt it crack. Warm blood spilled down my lips as I staggered back.

“Don’t kill her,” Weissman said mildly, his voice seeming to come from all around me. “Or remove anything that won’t grow back. Everything else is fair game.”