Tormented (36 page)

“I don’t know how long I can hold this,” Benjamin said, licking his lips, looking at the blond man across from him for something, anything. Approval, maybe. He got no response, so he shifted his attention to the lady doctor, accidentally looking her straight in the lingerie-clad bosoms. He jerked his gaze away like he was burned and it landed on the kind, brown eyes of the man next to him.

The man smiled at him, and Benjamin felt a surge of hope. “You’re doing just fine, Benjamin,” he said, and it was like someone had put a load of tinder on the guttering flames of his heart, an encouragement that gave him the strength to go on.

“Well, all right, then,” Benjamin said, nodding, as Sienna Nealon began to flare up once more. He stuck his hands out and drew the fire to him for all he was worth.

I laid into the jaw of Zack Davis, listened to it shatter as he burst into dust, and knew he’d be back. No matter how many times I hit him, no matter how many times I was forced to beat him into oblivion, this version of him kept coming back.

The same went for my mother, for Breandan. They’d shatter like glass, like dust, and I’d send them off into the darkness, where they’d be reconstituted and come back at me like Ultron drones, infinite and really, really annoying.

“Good times, huh?” my dad called out, sending some shadowy figure that looked a little like Athena off into that dark perimeter that surrounded us.

“It’s a real family affair,” I said, punching my “mother” in the face. “I actually pictured our family life in my head, like, a thousand times when I was a kid.”

“Oh?” my father asked, turning his jet of wind loose on my faux mother, sending her spiraling into the dark with a look of utter rage on her face. “What was that like?”

I thought about it for a beat. “It was kinda like this, oddly enough.”

He laughed, and the winter storm blew through again, swirling snowflakes as it brought the cold up a notch. “Your self-loathing is coming.”

“Gah,” I said, “why do I have to be such a clearly self-actualized person, creating my own guilt constructs and everything?”

“Probably because you have enough mommy and daddy issues to make the Menendez brothers look well-adjusted,” he said.

“Also, even my constructs are smartasses,” I muttered. “And really good at it.” Something occurred to me. “Wait. If this is in my head … how the hell do I get out?”

“I don’t think you’re in charge of that,” he said, whipping a wind of his own through our little spot of light. It did nothing against the cold. “But I don’t think retreating into yourself and giving up would be a good thing, you know, psychologically.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it’d probably result in me waking up a drooling vegetable, right?”

“Another safe bet,” he said.

“Like villains who monologue and reality TV stars who overshare on social media, right?”

“You know how the world works,” he said sagely. “Here he comes.”

When Winter finally showed, I wasn’t expecting him in the form he took. I’d seen him like this once before, but it had been a very long time. Also, that time, he was smaller.

He came stomping out of the darkness, clad in a suit of frosted ice armor that stretched over his whole body. Ten feet tall and surrounded with a sheet of protection, he swept a hand down like ice was some malleable thing, like flesh.

And he grabbed my father.

“Sienna!” Dad called.

“What have we here?” Winter asked, his voice a low rumble. “An interloper. An intruder in the cold. Someone providing aid to a lonely soul who does not deserve it.” Tiny pieces of ice flecked and crumbled from his massive fist. “We cannot have this.”

“Sienna,” my father said, voice firm and quiet, his eyes on mine. “Don’t give u—”

With a snap, Winter closed his massive hand on my father, and his eyes went as dead as any photograph I’d ever seen of him: cold and lifeless, staring into space, and I shrieked in furious reply to a soul that I hoped was still listening, was still somewhere within, for a help I could only hope was coming.

“Gavrikov … let’s burn this bastard to a screaming death.”

“Last words? You’re an asshole,” I said to Anselmo, and I started a wind half an inch beneath the earthen side of the pit to the right and left of my head. A
whoosh!
shot past my ears as dirt flew through the air like Augustus himself had thrown it, straight into Anselmo’s waiting eyes.

I followed it with a short punch right in the throat, then again, not enough to do any damage to his invincible skin, but enough to ripple into the not-so-invulnerable parts beneath it. He grunted and dropped me, and I flung myself into the air with the aid of a well-aimed gust, coming to a rolling, rough landing on the concrete sidewalk above.

My skull ached like someone had pounded on it like a drum, which—hey, someone had. My arm was a little numb from the landing, from the hits I’d taken thus far, and my throat was destined to have some finger-shaped bruises on it, I suspected. I coughed as I crawled to my feet in time to see Anselmo leap out of the pit, his eyes tearing.

“Are you weeping silently for your lost and found manhood, Anselmo?” I asked, twisting the knife, “or is it something deeper? Something more … sensitive?”

He caught that I was insinuating he was being feminine, which I knew he hated more than anything. “What, I wonder, will it take to make you weep, Treston?”

“Remember that cologne you used to wear?” I asked. “That used to bring tears to my eyes.”

“You cannot handle the smell of a greater stag,” Anselmo said.

“That kinda makes you a big, horny bastard, doesn’t it?”

He smiled. “I have miscalculated.”

“Got that right,” I said, preparing another burst of wind. “Shouldn’t have come here, Anselmo. Especially not right now.”

He shook his head, tears still streaming down his face from where dirt had gotten into his eyes. “No, no. I failed to consider my plan before coming at you. It was foolish not to go after the ones you cared about first.”

I felt my stomach drop. “Like I’d let you—”

He was off in an instant, slamming through the doors and back into the headquarters. I gave up at least a five-second head start to him by the time I realized what was happening and sprinted after him with all I had, afraid of what I’d find when I got back to the infirmary.

“Trouble coming,” the man at his left, the encouraging one, said. The way he spoke was so smooth, so kind, that Benjamin was instantly captivated by it. He wanted to follow this man, to follow Reed Treston. The way they talked, the way they acted … it was worlds different than Anselmo. So … encouraging.

Anselmo. The name sent shivers of a disgusted sort down Benjamin’s back, crawling along his skin like spiders. How could he have been drawn in by the man? Certainly, he’d felt angry. Attacked. Marginalized. But how could he have brought himself to do what Anselmo told him to? It was madness, like listening to that little rage-filled voice that tore out of his skull sometimes, like taking advice from an idiot.

all fools

Shut up, already
, Benjamin said to himself.
I need to focus.

“Heat’s rising,” said the blond man across the bed from him. “You got this, or do you need a little water on the situation?”

“Got quite enough water, thank you,” Benjamin said politely. The sprinklers were still drowning him, still pouring down. They should have cooled the situation off, but all they were doing was steaming up the room, causing him to have to siphon the heat out of the air before it burned anyone. He kept his hands above Sienna Nealon as though he were some sort of spirit healer, trying to drag the dark humors from her body.

“Oh, shit,” Director Phillips said from over Benjamin’s shoulder, but he had not the time nor the inclination to look, not with the flames rising off Ms. Nealon again. He focused, kept his eyes on his job, mind on the task at hand, eliminated the distractions—

look up look up look up

“Shut up,” Benjamin muttered, and then he heard the cry, and his concentration broke.

Anselmo was there, and he had the lady doctor by the throat, on her knees, looking down at her. “You understand, doctor, I would prefer to keep you forever, as my concubine, to show you what a true man is like, but unfortunately,” his face darkened, “Mr. Treston needs to learn the error of his ways.”

if ever someone deserved a jet of flame right to the eyes

it’s that guy

“Glad we finally agree about something.” Benjamin muttered. He rechanneled the heat coming off Sienna Nealon, redirected it to his left, and it was a lark as far as these things went. Considerably easier than just absorbing it into himself, which, he felt certain, was probably not good in the long term. The fire shot out in a long pillar, so hot it practically ignored the water falling all around, and caught Anselmo Serafini squarely in the face.

The reaction was immediate and obvious. Anselmo scrambled, clawing at his face, dropping the doctor, who scrambled away on her hands and knees. Anselmo’s cries of pain filled the air as he stumbled back, the roar of the flames undiminished as Benjamin kept pouring it on, following the Italian with unerring accuracy until the surge of flame from Sienna Nealon stopped.

“Whoa, damn,” the man in the hospital bed said. “Better start calling him the Red Skull.” He paused, and when no one said anything, he added, “All right, fine, I’ll quit.”

“Anselmo!” Treston said as he burst into the room. His eyes scanned the infirmary wildly, until they finally came to rest on Serafini, who was bent over, still holding his face.

Anselmo’s hands moved aside, and the sound of gagging laughter, not dissimilar to retching, filled the room. It was liquidy and raspy, like someone with a terrible cold hacking up phlegm. “Fooooolshhhhh.”

“What?” Reed Treston asked, adopting a defensive posture. He circled Anselmo warily, moving gradually toward the corner where Benjamin stood with the others around Sienna Nealon’s bed. The room smelled of char and burn, and not only from what had happened in the hallway. The water still poured down, though in lesser volume, from above, though now it smelled much fresher than when it had started.

“Burrrrrrning fooool,” Anselmo said, lifting his face, now devoid of flesh and nearly of any muscle. There was a thin layer of skin around his eyes, blackened slightly, in the shape of his hand. Benjamin figured he must have gotten a hand up in front of the attack, that was all—

Anselmo leapt at Benjamin without warning, knocking Reed Treston aside like a toy as he came. Benjamin felt the surge of heat coming from Ms. Nealon, but couldn’t do anything about it. Anselmo’s hands closed around his neck and he felt a hard snap.

Then the world dropped around him, he heard a heavy thud, and all the color bled out of the walls, out of the faces … and everything faded to—

black

I watched Anselmo kill Benjamin Cunningham, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him. I was too far away, bowled over by Anselmo’s attack as he leapt at the man.

A few panicked thoughts raced through my head once I’d seen what he did. First of all, I reckoned one of my problems was solved. Unfortunately, it was the least worrisome of my three major problems, and one that might have been resolved anyway, so … that was not so helpful. Also, it was kind of assisting me with one of the biggest problems (i.e. exploding sister) and so it was actually kind of a big minus.

The second thing I thought was that if not for Cunningham, Anselmo would have killed Isabella just to spite me. Just to hurt me.

Just to make me feel the pain.

And that was the moment when I decided I’d finally had enough.

Oh, I’d vowed it before, I know, but there was some part of me that was always holding back, always hoping for another way. Call it the Batman syndrome, that desire to never stoop all the way to the level of a guy like Anselmo. I wanted to live out my moral code, my idea that killing wasn’t good, wasn’t necessary, that in time of peace like we were living in now, that maybe I wouldn’t ever have to kill again.

Watching Anselmo break Benjamin Cunningham’s neck convinced me that I was being a delusional fool, and I had been all along.

Because Anselmo Serafini was going to be at war with me until one of us died.

He stood over my sister, letting Cunningham’s broken body slide out of his grasp like he was discarding a card in a game. I saw the flare of Sienna’s fire starting to act up again, watched Scott Byerly trying to channel all the water in the room her way. Zollers was similarly occupied, eyes closed, focusing his will on something. Dirt flew through the air and past Anselmo, sealing Sienna into another earthen tomb. This time, though, the fiery fissures appeared immediately.

I caught a glimpse of Isabella, getting back to her feet after Anselmo’s attack, and a very simple thought ran across my mind, one that finally moved my ass back into action:

Never again.

I leapt at Anselmo, my fingers tightening into a fist. I hammered him in the face as I landed, and his grinning skull took it without any sign of pain. Not that he could give a sign of pain, what with his face being dissolved.

“You cannotttttt—” he started to hiss.

I shoved a hand into his face and poked him right in the eyes with two fingers. While he reeled from that, I dropped my hand mere inches and held it there, steady, right in front of his mouth.

And called forth my power.

I ripped the air from his lungs with all the force at my command. I commanded the air to flee, to create a vacuum in the square foot of space he occupied, holding the atmosphere behind him at bay, keeping it from rushing in to fill the void.

Blood squirted out of his unpressurized and faceless head, a wash of red liquid as his veins exploded. He couldn’t even scream, because I’d torn the breath out of his body. He made a wet gagging, retching noise, and I saw part of his lungs surge up into the back of his exposed throat.

I let the air rush back in once I knew his airway was plugged and destroyed, and he clawed at his bony face with helpless hands. He stared at me with bloodshot, bulging eyes, silently screaming at me to help him, help him survive, help him draw another breath, help him any way I could.