Hunters (Out of the Box Book 15) Read online

  But now he wasn’t going to get the chance.

  Charlie’s chest smoked, steam pouring out of the rapidly-expanding crater of a wound where my shot had hit him. He opened his mouth to scream and smoke poured out instead. The fire shot had been something like 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit; the human body couldn’t deal with that, not even in a musket-ball-sized dose, especially when it wormed its way inside the soft tissue in his chest and stopped there, forward momentum spent.

  I could have snuffed the shot right then, but that would have been cruel. Charlie’s body had suffered fatal damage already; what others might have perceived to be mercy would actually be unbelievably harsh and prolong his agony by another few crucial seconds. His blood was boiling in his veins, his metahuman body trying its level best to repair the damage surging through it even now, carried in his veins by blood evaporating to a superheated gas and a scorched residue—right to his brain and other tissues.

  He bucked a couple more times and his legs finally collapsed, keeling straight over, face-first, into the ruin of the car. He was still smoking, but dead, and I snuffed the fire out from within him. “Sorry, mate,” I said, in the inimitable British style. Which I imitated. So I suppose it’s actually imitable. “I tried to warn you.”

  “You bloody well killed him!” This from a cop who had padded up at a run, baton in hand. His shock was clearly overcoming his faculties, because usually these guys were trained to try and de-escalate a situation before it got really hostile. Accusing me of murder? Not going to de-escalate things. He spoke with a thick accent.

  “Where are you from?” I asked, keeping my hands firmly at my sides. I wasn’t going to escalate things any further.

  He just blinked at me, like he was surprised I was engaging instead of beating him or something. “Scotland.”

  “Ahh,” I said. “Sometimes my American ear can’t tell the difference between Scottish and Irish.”

  He glared at me, and apparently my vow not to escalate things had failed just as thoroughly as had my desire to not kill Charlie.

  “I left the other one alive,” I said, raising my hands in front of me in a posture of surrender. “This one, though—he tried to kill me. It was self-defense. These guys have been robbing a lot of shops. You know this. They’ve hurt quite a few people in the process.”

  “I bloody well know that, don’t I?” He was still steaming at me, that baton clutched tight. But he wasn’t making a move. “But you—ye’ve the power of a goddess of the old tales—and ye didn’t have to kill him, did ye?” God, he hit the, “ye’s,” really hard, the Scottish coming out.

  “If I’d knocked him out right away? Dealt with him way harsher on the upfront? Not provided him a choice on surrendering?” I asked, engaging in a rare moment of candor. “No, maybe I wouldn’t have. But I’m not death, officer, swift and sure. He made his choice, and his choice was—”

  Death, Wolfe whispered in the back of my head.

  “Death,” I finished, regretting that I was speaking the exact word Wolfe had just spouted, because coming to the same conclusion as his crazy, serial-killing ass, even after all these years and all we’d been through, was still appalling to me.

  The Scottish cop just stared at me. “I dinnae believe that. You could have stopped him. You had the power.”

  “He wasn’t exactly powerless, officer,” I said, and lifted into the air a few feet. “You know that by the trail of bodies he’d left behind him.”

  “Aye, his killing days are done,” the cop said, and he just seemed…sad. “What about yours?” That accent bled through again.

  “God, I hope so,” I said, lifting off into the air. “But every time I think I’m done…someone provides me another compelling reason to end their ass.” I shot into the sky, not waiting for what was, I was sure, bound to be another scourging reply that would fill me with yet more self-doubt.

  4.

  I flew over the City of London, watching the lights sparkle below. The city was all aglow, as it tended to be at night, and the cool night air was a marked contrast to the alternating heat and rain that had marked the summer days since I’d arrived in this place. I’d mostly avoided trouble since coming to the UK, but this…

  He needed a good killing, Bjorn, son of Odin, said in the back of my head. He challenged you, he lost. A natural course of events.

  You could have been tactically smarter about how you handled that, Bastian said, clearly trying to replenish my confidence. Not that it was utterly shaken, but my conversation with the Scotsman hadn’t exactly left me doubt-free. Then again, Charlie had been heading down a bad road.

  “Now he’s heading down the morgue road,” I said.

  But he won’t hurt anyone ever again, Eve said. Some people are just too bad to let live—

  “At what point does that include me, I wonder?” I spoke the words aloud, the night air blowing in my face and giving me a little chill. I was a little too tired, a little too jaded, not to say it aloud because it was there, on my mind. I’d been hunted out of my homeland, the USA, after months of constant attacks that had finally escalated to a, “Shoot first, ask questions after she’s dead,” confrontation in Montana that had damned near ended in my death.

  Fortunately, an old acquaintance from the UK, Alistair Wexford, the Foreign Secretary, had offered me a nice olive branch, or perhaps a lifeline—come to jolly England, do a little metahuman policing for them over here, and they’d ignore my presence and any requests from the US government to turn me—or my not-so-lively corpse—over to them.

  Talk about an offer you couldn’t refuse. Remain a hunted party hiding out in your own country or go somewhere that you won’t be constantly shot at. Gee, I wonder which I picked.

  I dipped over the skyline, avoiding smashing into the giant, stretched Fabergé egg of 30 St. Mary Axe on my way to my hotel, which was a charming American brand settled in central London. I liked the Brits overall, but their hotels were kind of ass. Tiny rooms, hot and cold water on independent taps, and a dozen other little differences that only served to highlight the fact that not only was I far from home, but unwelcome in my own home any longer.

  You’re not that bad, Wolfe said, which was probably the most encouraging thing he had ever said to anyone. It was also, probably, from his perspective very truthful.

  “Sweet talker,” I said aloud, as I often did while flying. Or standing still, without people around. Or with people around. I was weird like that, talking to the voices of trapped souls in my head. I started my descent, which would include a quick stop-off to pick up a wig and overcoat to help me hide my identity. No one needed to know that Sienna Nealon was staying in London, or at the least they didn’t need to know where I was staying. Let them think I just popped in every now and again and vamoosed off to the continent. I’d done overflights to Paris, Rome and Berlin to help muddle the trail a little, keep people guessing.

  I came down low over the rooftops, swerving to avoid a pronounced turret, then landed lightly on one that had a nice, castle-like battlement around it. I kinda doubted it was ever an actual castle, but it bordered an alley, had no roof access, and there was a nice, clean approach to it where I could go low and avoid being seen from nearby streets, allowing me to effectively disappear, so I’d dropped off my wig and costume here on my way to answer the call of duty and settle the hash of these serial robbers.

  The roof squeaked beneath my feet as I settled on it. I’d bundled my wig up inside the heavy coat that I was habitually wearing as a shield against the London weather (read: rain, rain, and more effing RAIN). I even carried an umbrella and sunglasses, because they helped me blend in a little more.

  I spent a few minutes affixing my wig, applying a little makeup, putting on my glasses, and re-dressing before I leaned over the bulwark on the alley side of the rooftop, staring down to the silent pavement below. It was getting close to eleven o’clock at night in London, and unsurprisingly, this alley was abandoned.

  Climbing over the side like I wa
s going to dip my feet into a swimming pool, I waited there, legs hanging over the edge, to see if anybody said anything. Nobody shouted from the shadows, so after a few seconds, I dropped onto a fire escape below. I used my power of flight to catch myself just before impact, eliminating any sound but the billow of my coat in the ten-foot fall.

  I scoured the alley again, waiting to see if anyone had made any sound, any sign. I tended not to use the same landing location twice, fearing a pattern might give someone an opening to ambush me. Even absent the US government, I was not short on enemies, and not desirous of giving any of them a free shot at me.

  Once I was sure no one had reacted, I dropped to the alley floor, avoiding the puddles that littered the uneven pavement. I looked both ways just to see if somehow I’d missed someone lurking, some poor soul huddling in the alley, or maybe doing something illicit that I’d interrupted.

  Paranoid. I was probably being paranoid.

  Good way to stay alive, came the voice of Aleksandr Gavrikov.

  “But not such a great way to live,” I said under my breath as I headed off down to the main avenue at the end of the alleyway.

  I emerged onto a brightly lit London street that was still quite alive, even at this time of night. I wasn’t too far from Piccadilly Circus, a choice I’d made for the ease with which I could get lost in the crowds. The theater shows had already let out for the evening, and I could see the people streaming out of the West End as I headed that way. The scent of an Italian restaurant I passed on the right caused my nostrils to flare almost involuntarily; pasta with cream sauce almost beckoned to me, summoning me in for a dose of carbs and luxuriant fat.

  “Not tonight,” I muttered. I’d done my daily exercises, worked my body exhaustingly enough to feel like, yes, I could have a reward, but I wasn’t going to indulge, not even after this evening’s efforts in battle.

  It is just as well, Eve said, to stay focused upon your goal to the exclusion of all else.

  “Because tight shoulders don’t come without effort and sacrifice, right?” I said half-jokingly, but Eve didn’t take the bait. Maybe because she knew she was being baited. She’d probably meant it sincerely; I couldn’t always tell with the voices in my head. It wasn’t like I could read their minds, after all.

  Nothing good comes without sacrifice, Harmon said. File that one under TNSTAAFL.

  “Tin-what?” I asked. “Did you just quote me a B-52’s lyric?”

  It’s an acronym. It means, Zack Davis said, quietly, ‘There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.’

  Zack had been quiet all night, which was usually a bad sign. I could have asked him what was on his mind, but given the recent, heady topic of conversation, I was pretty sure that was not going to be a route I would particularly enjoy coming to the end of. Because it was unlikely to be a favorable insight.

  I took a turn onto a side street, my hotel sticking out from where it had been neatly sandwiched into the existing street architecture, complete with a mostly matching facade that somehow didn’t stick out like the expansive, American sore thumb that it kinda was.

  “Oh,” I said, pretty willing to leave it at that.

  Because there’s always a trade-off, Harmon said. Always a string attached. No one does anything for no reason. They have a motive, and if they give you something—

  “Yes, I am aware of the mediums of exchange in our society,” I said, “which is why I’m currently policing metas in the United Kingdom in exchange for a country in which to hang my metaphorical hat.” I touched my wig, lightly. “Maybe I should get a literal hat too, though, y’think? Might be a good disguise, something to change up the shape of my head a little. Plus, I mean, as a woman, wearing a hat just says something different about you. Like a baseball cap says, ‘I’m down to earth and fun,’ while one of those larger hats with a big brim says, ‘I’m fashionable and bold.’”

  What does a bonnet say? Bastian asked for the benefit of the rest of the male audience.

  “‘I’m old and didn’t feel like doing my hair,’ probably,” I said as I headed toward the entrance to my hotel. Out front a kid in a t-shirt and with long shorts that hung past his knees was skating in the street, his board making a low rattling, scratching noise as he took advantage of the lack of traffic presently down this side road. The sound caused me to blanch, because it hit the register of noises which annoy the hell out of me without any effort on the part of the annoyer at all. “That’s gonna get old fast,” I said as I ignored the youth, his ballcap backward on his head. He looked about fourteen, and I had to wonder why his parents were cool with him just skateboarding on a London street at this time of night.

  I ducked into the lobby of my hotel, all lit up like it was daytime and the bar humming with a dozen guests drinking their night away. No one took notice of me as the front desk clerk did double duty as a bartender and refilled a tall guy’s glass with something clear that didn’t look like it had been cut with anything other than liquor. He was laughing as the patron dashed it back, and the bartender went right back to work refilling it.

  The air smelled of alcohol—beer, whiskey, even vodka, my sensitive nose detecting the notes of all those, plus some other flavors. Mint, because someone was deep in their mojitos, and a dizzying amount of lime from a couple ladies on business downing margaritas like they were about to dry up forever.

  I pushed past the front desk and pulled out my card as I headed to the elevator bank. It dinged, I stepped inside, and after scanning my card, I rode the elevator up to the third floor. I walked down a beige hallway to the last room and unlocked it, stepping inside and waiting a beat to see if someone would make a noise in the darkness.

  No one did, so I plugged my room key into the socket just inside the door, and the room’s lights sprung on. It wasn’t a big room; a bed, dresser, couch, a desk, a couple of end tables, and a bathroom. They were all the very generic, mass-produced furniture that big chains tended to gravitate toward, lacking the personality of individual furniture pieces by necessity. This wasn’t a boutique hotel, after all. The comfort was in the sameness of the experience, whether you were in London, UK or London, Kentucky. It was why I picked the place, after all—I knew what to expect. A little bit of home, far from home.

  And I missed home.

  Except for the bullets. I didn’t miss having those fly at me.

  I didn’t bother to take off my wig, though I did throw my coat onto the couch rather than hang it up. I tended toward keeping things squared away, but I did my cleaning in the morning, and didn’t feel like dealing with the mess that had accumulated during the day, at least not right now.

  It was eleven o’clock in London, which meant it was only five in the evening back home in Minneapolis.

  But I was still ready for bed. Ready to scratch another day off the calendar, just as I’d ticked the box next to the task that had presented itself—deal with the meta crooks tearing up London and hurting shopkeepers. Another goal accomplished, another bad guy group out of circulation, however mild their criminality might have seemed to this point to outside observers.

  The rattling of those damned skateboard wheels outside my window signaled that the unsupervised skater boy was still doing his thing just outside, and I sprang up, eyes narrowed and a sigh of deep displeasure making its way out between my lips. “That’s not going to work for me,” I said, and waited a few minutes in silence, trying to muster up the control not to do something that I’d regret.

  But the longer I sat there, the more the scratching and skidding of the wheels against the pavement, the rattle of him trying to jump the curb and failing, followed by laughter, drove me nuts. It was eleven o’clock at night, and the Brits around here might have been too polite to point out his rudeness, but I damned sure was not suffering from that problem.

  Don’t do something you’ll wish you hadn’t later, Sienna, Zack said quietly.

  “I won’t,” I said, “on any level.”

  I made my way to the window and opened it j
ust a titch, hiding behind the blackout curtains. Sure enough, there he was, skater boy, attempting another ollie off the curb. He did his jump and failed, massively, but managed to land safely on his feet, though his board went in the other direction. He guffawed as he stood back up.

  While his back was turned to his board, I slid a finger out the window, pointed it at the board, and in a perfect imitation of how I’d burned Charlie to death just a few minutes earlier, sent a blast of miniature fire right at that damned skateboard.

  It lit off immediately, flames spreading along the length of it as the wood caught. The skater boy turned at the sudden blaze of bright light and it took him a minute to realize it was his board that had gone up. I could see him get it over the course of a few seconds, leaning forward, trying to get his perception of what happened to align with the fact that—hey, his board hadn’t been on fire a moment ago, and yet now…

  “Oh shit, oh shit!” he screamed and went for it, stopping when he got close enough to really feel the flames. I didn’t know if maybe he thought he’d done it himself with his hot skating (har har) but he sort of danced around the board, ineffectually torn between stomping it and fanning it. It was a little like the chicken dance, and after the annoyance he’d caused me, it didn’t pain me at all to see him flop about like a fish in a boat.

  “Whoa!” someone shouted from below, and a guy came charging out, a little stagger to his step, with a martini glass sloshing, and dumped it on the burning skateboard. I snuffed the flames immediately, before the drunken moron could accidentally light up the whole neighborhood, and he stood there, next to skater boy, admiring their respective handiwork—skater boy for his too-hot skating skills, drunken master for idiotically charging in and doing the absolutely wrong thing at the wrong time.

  And there I sat, watching from behind the curtains. I reached out and closed the window with a soft click, then pulled the curtains back together, before I could hear whatever exchange of non-wisdom was about to take place. I crawled back to the bed, shed my wig, and started to lie down again.