Tormented (28 page)

“Winter,” I said, standing before him with something just short of horror.

“Hello, Sienna,” Erich Winter said, rising from his chair to look me right in the eye. His voice was deep and smooth, with a Germanic accent. “It is so pleasant to see you again.”

I was between the metaphorical rock and the hard place, and both my choices sucked. I talked with Isabella for hours, and we went round and round between the answers, boiling them down to two choices.

Hang around here and wait for Anselmo in order to stop him from killing again or go north in hopes that I could maybe, just maybe, find out where Sienna had gone missing.

Like I said, both choices sucked.

“If I go north, I may find nothing,” I said. “I might end up driving hours and hours to get there and never see a single sign that Sienna had ever been there. And then Anselmo strikes here, kills people—and boom. I’m shit out of luck. Or has the Brain track me on the road and bushwhack me up north somewhere—like Sienna.” We already knew that Anselmo and Cunningham had ditched the car they’d made their attack on the agency with. We’d found it in a nearby carpool park-and-ride where we had agents standing by to catch the third-shift workers when they got off in a few hours, hoping to identify what kind of car had been stolen in exchange for it. That’d at least give us something for Harper and J.J. to look for through their digital eyes in the skies.

“Or you could find her quickly,” Isabella said. “Perhaps she simply decided to go elsewhere. It could be as you have said, Anselmo merely referenced her obliquely. Anselmo is not a subtle man. He would have taunted you more if she were dead or dying.”

“He wants her to suffer,” I said. “He wants us all to suffer. And we have no idea what the Brain is like. She could be unleashing hell on Sienna right now for all we know.”

“What are you going to do?” Isabella asked, after pausing a moment to allow the thoughts to percolate.

Dammit, this was where the choice really started to suck. Because I knew what Sienna would say to do.

The job. She’d led by example in this regard. Say whatever else you wanted about her, she’d blown up her own relationships for the job, pushed everyone else away to be the shield she thought she should be. Whatever her motives, she did the job like no one else, and she let nothing interfere with it.

“I have to stay,” I said. “With Anselmo and Cunningham out there working together, I need to be near the cities. They could try almost anything.” And really, while I suspected Anselmo was going to confine his crazycakes revenge schemes to me and my most dear, Cunningham had proven himself a wild card on multiple occasions now. If he’d been accidentally drawn into this by a failure to control himself in the Minneapolis airport, since then he’d shown that he was moving toward intentional killing by both choice and his associations. Even if I sliced it in the most favorable way possible and gave him the benefit of many doubts, he’d somehow killed his co-worker and come along with Anselmo on the man’s attempt to kill Isabella.

My understanding had reached its limit with him. He was dangerous, and it was clear that for whatever reason he had put himself in cahoots with a man who had proven himself power-mad and perhaps even more explosive than Cunningham himself.

I couldn’t leave Minneapolis and St. Paul nearly defenseless against that.

“What are you going to do about Sienna?” she asked, with a little more emotion than I would have expected, even after her talk about them being a kind of family.

“I’m going to do what I can,” I said, trying to figure out what that was. “I’ll send agents up there to try and track her down. They won’t be of much use here, and maybe I can get them working out from underneath Phillips’s nose.” I knew for a fact he wasn’t going to give two shits about Sienna being missing. He wouldn’t even give one shit if it was plugging him up for days and getting rid of it meant he’d be comfortable at last. “Hopefully Hannegan can find some sign of her.” And hopefully wouldn’t get killed by whatever was responsible for her disappearance. I looked straight at her. “When’s the soonest you can get Augustus back in the fight?”

“Tomorrow perhaps,” she said, shaking her head. “He could probably walk now, but he is weak. I fear a reinjury would set back his progress significantly, or may lead to spinal scar tissue of the sort Anselmo carries on his body. It could paralyze him for life.”

“We’ll play it safe, then,” I said. “We’ll hold off for now, hoping that Anselmo moves soon.” I felt my mouth grow dry as I circled closer to the grim pronouncement of the decision I was making in my soul—one I didn’t think I’d have to make. “I’ll deal with him first, and then—”

“How will you deal with him?” Isabella asked, but forcefully this time. Her hand found my arm, snaking around it and squeezing me tight. “You can’t fight him like you did before.”

“I know,” I said, swallowing hard. “I know. And I won’t. Because this time … I’ll do it.”

“Do what?” she asked. She knew. She knew what I was saying, but she pushed me anyway, because if I couldn’t say it, I probably couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“I’m going to kill him,” I whispered. And so help me, I was going to do it.

Fever dreams are absolute hell, and even knowing somewhere inside that I was dreaming, Erich Winter didn’t help. I could feel the spin of unreality around me, of a world moving too quick by half to be real, of my forehead burning and my eyes pressed closed, the color of things not quite right. It wasn’t reality; it was surreality, and the vision of the man who had most hurt me in my life standing in front of me just added the extra dash of crazy it took me to buy into it for the moment.

“This isn’t real.” My words slurred, like I was drunk.

“What is real?” Winter said in that low voice. I hadn’t heard him speak in years, and I hadn’t missed it. “Is life real? Matter, real? Liquid, solid, gas? Are any of them really real?”

“You’re leaning pretty hard on the ‘gas’ part of it right now, arentcha?” I asked, being just as much of a smarty to him dead as I would have been in life. But with less face punching. I never really did get to face-punch him to my heart’s content. “As in filling the air with your useless gas.”

“There was a time when you listened to every word I said,” he turned, exposing his back so invitingly to me, “searching for the truth and meaning as though all of it were a revelation handed down from above.”

“You pining for the good old days when I respected you?” I stood my ground but my knees felt weak. “Maybe you shouldn’t have killed—”

“I did not kill anyone.” Winter turned, piercing blue eyes as shocking in their cerulean as if they’d been CGI’d into a White Walker’s eye. “You did.”

“Oh, screw you,” I said in disgust. “I’m arguing with a specter. A dead man who doesn’t seem to know he’s dead.”

“Of course I am dead,” he said. “You killed me as well.”

“If only,” I said with false regret. “Sovereign pulled your card. I didn’t much regret him turning you into a human flambé, though. The smell was a bit much—”

“You are responsible,” he said, as forbidding in death as he ever had been in life.

“Uh huh,” I said. “I’m totally responsible for you holding my boyfriend against my skin until he died, and I’m also responsible for you getting flash fried by a supervillain. Okay. Sure. Let’s go with that.”

“Don’t you know?” I turned my head at the sound of the voice behind me. “You’re responsible for everything.”

“Sarah,” I said, watching the dark-haired woman walk into sight behind me. It was surreal seeing her here in the ruins of the old directorate, which looked way different from the agency in all the tiny details. “Of course you’d show up to taunt me now, when I’m hallucinating.”

“You’re almost of sound mind,” Sarah said, easing into the room. I couldn’t tell whether I was imagining her or if she was effing with my mind from within the room, honestly. My stomach was quivering, though, and the nausea had followed me.

“You’re messing with my head and accusing me of diminished capacity,” I said. “Nice. There’s an irony there.”

“And you’re all about the irony, aren’t you?” Brant asked, appearing behind me. I jumped and backed away from him, but I was unintentionally caught between the three of them in a sort of rough triangle. The way he spoke, that strange accent I’d been hearing was creeping back into his words.

“I do find it fun to play with,” I said, trying to figure out how to put my back against a wall.

“No one else finds it fun when you do it,” Sarah said, standing there with arms folded. “We’re all tired of it.”

“And you’ve only known me a few days,” I said, “imagine how people who have known me longer feel about it.”

“They can’t stand you,” she said, dark eyes boring in on mine. “No one can. It’s why you’re alone now.” It did hurt, even though I knew she meant it to, because it had the ring of truth to it. “And let’s face it, no one sticks around you very long because of it.”

“You drive away everyone you don’t kill,” Brant agreed, doing that voice thing again. It was driving me nuts, like an itch in the back of my head that I couldn’t reach to scratch.

“But you kill most,” Winter said.

“Man,” I said, “this is fun. I should do this more often. Come to confession with the dead,” I nodded to Winter, “and those I’m soon to kill. Good times.”

“You have no idea.” Another voice entered the picture, causing me to whip my head around yet again. This time it was Z, and I was prepared for him. Because of course they’d add another log to this particular fire, now that it was already burning hot and painful.

“Oh, boy, it’s Zebulon,” I said. “Yay for Zebulon, and that awful name. How much did your parents hate you?”

“My parents loved me,” he said, completing the little circle around me. Now I was surrounded literally as well as figuratively, in this dream as well as this town. “You’d have known that if you’d ever met them.”

“If I’d ever met them?” I blinked at him. His hat was gone, his blondish hair styled in a very … very familiar way. “Sorry, I don’t guess I care to meet the parents of strangers. My stomach was gnawing at me again, but this time it was different. This time, it wasn’t the nausea, it was a sense that something else was wrong. A sense that I was about to have the rug jerked out from beneath me again.

I hated this feeling of exposure, this circle of heaping judgment being thrown at me. I wanted to protect myself, to find a wall to put my back against.

Sarah noticed my discomfort first. “You want to run, don’t you?” She seemed to derive a grim satisfaction from it, lips twisted in bitter triumph. I’d seen that look before.

“Not so much run,” I said, “as put my back to the sea and take you all on until you’re dead.”

“She’s got a real fire in her,” Brant said. He ran his fingers over his upper lip, playing with his mustache.

“You have no idea,” I said, thinking how much fun it’d be to have Gavrikov to unleash right at this moment.

“Must be nice,” Z said, dragging my head around to look at him again, “to live without the guilt of those you’ve left dead in your path.”

“Well,” I said, readying myself in case Winter decided to say something suitably prickish next, “it’s hard to feel guilty when you’ve killed so many classy people. Like, for example, the entirety of Century, a band who was trying to take over the world.” I had a feeling I knew, now, where they were coming from, and it was time to start drawing them out with smartassed jabs. If I could figure out their angle, I could maybe goad them into making a mistake. After all, taunting and witticisms were a power that they couldn’t take away from me.

“How noble,” Sarah said. “But you know they’re not the only people you’ve killed.”

“You’re right,” I said continuing my fishing expedition, “there was also Omega, a criminal organization of metas that wanted to squeeze the world for all it was worth. I might have killed a few of them as well. Were any of them your mommies and daddies?” I made my faux sad-face for them. “Because if so … I’m not sorry.”

“Your victims are legion,” Winter said.

“The trail of human death you’ve left behind you is staggering,” Z said.

“The cost in lives abundant,” Brant said, and now I knew that I was delusional if they were all talking as one voice in one steady sequence.

“And you—” Sarah started, but I headed her off by throwing myself at her with all the strength I had left.

I passed right through her like she was a cloud. I hit the ground and rolled, coming up on my feet and feeling the weakness of my body as my intestines quivered at the movement, threatening upheaval once more.

Sarah’s form was blurry, insubstantial, the colors of her body and clothing dissipated like a cloud blown by a strong wind. I watched as she pulled herself back together, the black leather jacket first, the dark hair gaining focus and coherence as she reconstituted. Her face remained blurred, though, even after her body had reformed, and she stared at me through the only feature that was sharp—those blue-green eyes, filled with a fury that was obvious even without a mouth to compliment it.

“You little fool,” she said, “as if you could kill me.”

“I hope you don’t think I’ll stop trying just because you vanished on me once,” I said. “Because I tend to get a lot of people who tell me that I can’t kill them, and I just keep proving them wrong.”

“You can’t kill me,” she said, shaking her head.

“And so says half the other people I’ve killed.” I made a fake yawn. “I’m way past tired of it.”

“You can’t kill me, either,” Brant said, drawing my gaze back him. I blinked when I saw him; his face had gone blurry like Sarah’s.

“Nor me,” Z said, and I looked, knowing what I’d find: the same thing, his face was featureless, like it was vibrating so fast I couldn’t discern any of the detail.

“Really?” I tried to sound unimpressed, but the truth was … this was new. I mean, I was still going to find a way to kill them, but it was at least kinda different. “Why is that?”

“Because,” Sarah said, “you cannot kill—”

“—what—” Brant continued.

“—is already dead,” Z said, and his face was suddenly clear as if someone had wiped the glass in front of it clean.