Authors: Robert J. Crane
“Children,” Ma said, taking out her stern voice. They both responded immediately, collapsing into a sullen silence. Cassidy sneezed in the background, and Ma caught a glimpse of her eyes watering heavily. “Yeah, I think we’re past time we need to cut bait and get this over with.” She looked at Cassidy, who was tugging free of Simmons. Not surprisingly, the man didn’t look sorry to see her go. “Darling,” she said, “why don’t you start figuring out the best way to get someone close to her and we just shoot her and be done.”
“All right,” Cassidy said, heading for her tank, clearly distressed since she wasn’t even bothering to argue for a smarter plan than “Shoot her.” She opened the lid and climbed in without even stripping out of her clothes first. Ma smiled as the tank shut, the sound of the heat pump coming on as she locked herself in drowning out anything the girl might hear inside.
Simmons sprang to his feet, looking ready to leave again, when Ma gave him a slow smile that caused him to hesitate. “Eric, darlin’, why don’t you sit down for a spell?” He froze, and she could see the uncertainty spread over his face, and it only got worse when she hit him with the next part. “I think we need to have a talk about you being faithful.”
Sienna
There was something about a six-hour car trip in a crowded SUV that made me even ornerier than before I’d gotten in the car. Maybe it was Augustus and Jamal periodically picking at each other like brothers, maybe it was Zollers sitting in utter silence by the window, or maybe it was just Scott chattering in the driver’s seat like it was business as usual, but it drove me bug-squat crazy.
“Oh, I see how it is,” Augustus was saying. “Can’t be bothered to make it in time when I’m injured by an invincible Italian, but Sienna has a redneck conspiracy to break her come up and you’re suddenly in town, willing to help in like two seconds.”
“I told you,” Jamal said, “I came to make sure you were all right after your back got broken, but it takes kind of a while to get to Minnesota by bus from El Paso—”
Augustus tapped me on the shoulder, and I reluctantly turned around. “Do you believe this?”
“It’s a war crime on the level of having a Nielsen box and watching the Kardashians,” I agreed without much conviction as we bumped along a dirt path lined with stubby trees on either side that were rapidly losing their leaves. Reminded me of a man going bald but struggling to keep it combed over. Let it go with dignity, guy.
“What are we looking at here, again?” Scott asked. “Clyde Clary’s pissed-off relatives?”
“Mom, son and daughter, I guess.” I thumped my fingers against the plastileather interior features of the SUV. “No idea on their powers, Jamal?”
“Nah,” he said from the back seat. “No record on these three that would indicate it. Clyde Jr.’s had some arrests, but never resisted, surprisingly.” He paused. “That said, I did find another interesting thing about how the Council Bluffs police station suffered some unexplained damage about a month after he got arrested there one time. Looked like a wrecking ball went through the wall.”
“I’m going to assume he’s like dear old dad, then,” I said, puckering my lips. “Changeable skin. He could be steel one minute, bone the next.”
“Why wouldn’t you be anything but steel all the time?” Augustus asked. “All invulnerable and whatnot.”
“Clyde used to try different states when he was in therapy with me,” Dr. Zollers said, staring out the window at the expansive fields beyond the trees lining the road’s perimeter. “He had a difficult childhood and had exactly that view; I made him shift into velvet in order to show him a softer side of himself.”
“It didn’t take,” I snarked. “Should have made him stay velvet for longer.”
“He was a rough individual,” Zollers said, finally turning his attention away from the window. “A little more rural upbringing, not a lot of tolerance for excess emotion. I got the sense his mother was … manipulative.”
“Any chance he mentioned if she had powers?” Scott asked. There was a split in the road ahead, two mailboxes parked right in the middle of the Y.
“I don’t recall him discussing it, no,” Zollers said. “He did talk about his children from time to time, though.”
“I’m still amazed old Clyde had children,” I said. “One, because—ew, that anyone would lay him, let alone twice, and two, because he was like twelve when he died.” Well, he acted like he was twelve anyway.
“He was forty-six,” Zollers said.
“Really?” I couldn’t keep my mouth from falling open at that one. “God, what a Peter Pan complex on that guy.”
“Looks like we’re coming up on the second star to the right,” Scott said, and I heard the tension in his voice as he angled the car to the right, where the mailbox was … held on by bungee cords and with the name “Clary” written on it in bold white letters like they’d been freehand painted by a moron. Which, given the mental capacity of Clyde, Sr., the odds were good on.
“Do we stop here?” Scott asked, slowing the van to a crawl.
“No,” I said, looking down the driveway. There were more trees lining the dirt path, and a couple ruts showing where everyone who’d come this way had driven, over and over. Beyond the trees were empty fields, flat ground, and at the very end of the road, a half mile or so in the distance, I could see a house. “Just step on it; we’ll roll up and bust down the doors before they have a chance to respond.” I blinked and looked back at Jamal. “You’re sure they don’t know we’re coming?”
“I’ve put every traffic camera that could have revealed us into a loop, so as far as anyone knows, we’re still at your HQ,” Jamal said. “There’s no way they can know we’re coming.”
“Then let’s go kick down the door and end this,” I said, feeling a hard resolve creep over me. These people had made my life hell for the last few months.
For you, Reed
, I thought. But there was a little nagging voice inside that told me it wasn’t just Reed I was doing this for.
Ma
“Someone’s coming up the driveway,” Junior said as they stood around Simmons, who was practically shaking on the couch. Ma had hit him with what they knew, and he’d reacted like all cheating cowards probably did, begging her not to tell, pleading that it was just that once, twice, three times with each lady. His face was all red and sickly, burning humiliation from forehead to chin. It hadn’t taken long to get him to start confessing stuff she didn’t even want hear about, liaisons he’d had in places she’d never even heard of. The man was a serial cheater, that was no doubt, and it was taking all her restraint not to just slap him out of the verbal diarrhea state he’d fallen into. By now he was just quivering and looked like he needed a smoke to calm his nerves.
“Well, check on it, will you?” Ma asked, rolling her eyes. “We’re in the middle of having a conversation here.”
“Yeah, all right,” Junior said, clearly not happy about it. He strolled off with his wide-frame self toward the front of the house.
“Now, Eric,” Ma said, leaning a little closer to Simmons, “here’s what I want to know. It seems to me you don’t really have a lot of loyalty to Cassidy over there.” She waved her hand vaguely at the tank.
“No, no,” Simmons said, shaking his head. “No, I love her—”
“Eric,” Ma said, “you done slept with about eighty women by your own admission, and most of ’em since you got together with Cassidy.” She exchanged a look with Denise, who seemed to be enjoying this all immensely. “I get that you like to make girls quake, but … let’s just be honest. You’re using her.”
Simmons’s mouth moved without words coming out, open and closed like a fish out of water. “No, I … it’s not like that …”
“It’s exactly like that,” Ma said, doing her best Dr. Phil impersonation. “It’s a problem of competing desires. See, Cassidy wants a faithful man, and you want to get your little dangle wet with every woman you’ve ever met.”
Simmons furtively swept his gaze to Denise. “Not every woman.”
Ma was about to slap the shit out of that boy when Junior came busting back into the room, hightailing like his rectum had just been lit like a fuse. “Sienna Nealon’s coming up the driveway in one of those agency cars!” His eyes were wide and he didn’t have that air of joking about him. “Got a bunch of her friends with her!”
“We’ll kill her right now,” Denise said, standing up abruptly. “Let’s just do this—”
“No.” Ma cut her off. She had more than a shiver of fear. “Cassidy didn’t even see this coming, which means Nealon’s tumbled to her little game.” She looked at Simmons. “Your girlfriend’s all played out. We’re about to get caught in a bear trap, and she either didn’t see it coming or she wanted to see us step in it.”
Simmons was about two steps from panic. Clearly he hadn’t seen it coming, either. “Wha … what do we do?”
Ma was a step ahead of him. She turned back to Junior, keeping her calm. “You said she’s got her friends with her?”
Junior nodded. “Yeah, but …”
“All right,” Ma said with a nod. “Here’s what we’re gonna do …”
Sienna
Someone threw a car at our SUV and it hit head on, a collision that deployed the airbags and sent all of us smashing forward. I saw the movement before it happened, but I didn’t get a look at who did it, hiding behind the car before they threw it. I also didn’t manage to get out the door in time to stop it because I got tangled in my seatbelt and only managed to get halfway out the door before it hit. I smashed into the ground and was lucky in that the car didn’t land on me, because that would have probably been at least as uncomfortable as a meteor on my shoulders. Really, when it comes to pain, your nerve endings can only register crushing pressure up to a certain point, and I doubt they differentiated between one ton of car and twenty tons of rock.
I lay there bleeding in the dirt for only a second, then sat up like the Undertaker. “Okay,” I said, “someone’s going to pay for that.” I got up and looked into the SUV, where my little team was stirring. “Everyone okay?”
“Broke my glasses,” Jamal said.
“Broke my asses,” Augustus said, pushing his way out the door on his side.
“Feel like molasses,” Scott said, continuing the rhyme pretty ineffectually as he pushed through a squeaking, protesting driver’s side door to get out. “But I’m okay.”
“We’ve got trouble ahead,” Zollers said, tentatively getting out just behind me, rubbing his neck. “I’m getting … strange readings out of a couple of them.”
“What kind of strange?” I asked, hanging near the destroyed vehicle rather than charging ahead like a maniac—or my usual self, maybe.
“Like Clyde when he shifted forms. His mind wasn’t clear when he changed.” Zollers massaged his scalp; there was a small laceration at his hairline. “Looks like it’s not just his son that has his power.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Danger,” Zollers said. “They’re planning something.”
“Any specifics?” Scott asked.
“They’re at a distance, and the two people who aren’t shifted don’t know the plan,” Zollers said, shaking his head. “Sorry.”
“Let me go ahead and clear the—” I started, and then a rifle shot rang out, shattering my mirror and grazing my arm. I ducked, instinctively and drew my pistol. Augustus fumbled as he did the same, the only other person actually carrying a gun.
“That’s not good,” Scott said, hiding behind the open door of the SUV.
“Gotta be careful,” I said, looking across two deflating airbags at him, “those aren’t bulletproof—”
As if the shooter read my mind, another shot rang out and a spray of blood blew out of the side of Scott’s neck. I watched his eyes widen, and his jaw drop as he scrambled to claw at his injury. Crimson spurted out from between his clutching fingers, and I watched the strength start to fade from his eyes as his life’s blood ran down his fingers like water he couldn’t control.
Ma
“Got one!” Junior crowed from the front of the house. Ma was moving around, smashing her way through the walls where she knew the support beams were, not cracking them all the way through, but enough to get the thing ready. It was messy work, dusty, and it gave the air a cast as motes got caught in beams of light, stirred by the air as she moved.
“Good,” she said. A face full of drywall dust hit her as she ripped a steel hand out with a wood stud clutched between her fingers. She smashed it to splinters and tossed it behind her, moving down the wall and repeating the process. “When she comes at us, we ain’t gonna have much time, so you be ready to move.”
Another gunshot rang out, and Junior cackled. “Got that bastard I already downed right in the back. She is gonna be pissed when he bleeds to death right in front of her!”
Ma didn’t see it, but that didn’t bother her at all. “Come on after us, Sienna. Come and get you some good ol’ fashioned revenge.”
Sienna
“Scott!” I screamed, but he slumped to the side and fell to the ground, out of my sight, the first victim of this raid that I had brought about. I felt sick, and I knew in my heart that I’d screwed up again. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. He’d left government service, had gone his own way into a profession where people weren’t waiting to kill him because he was trying to lay the law upon them. But he was here because of me, because I’d started thinking like I used to, remembering the “good old days” when I’d had a team backing my plays, back in the war.
But this wasn’t the war.
And I didn’t need a team anymore.
Like Reed in the car explosion, these people were my vulnerability. They were my Achilles heel, and whoever was running things up in the Clary house knew it.
“Go!” Zollers urged from behind me as another rifle shot rang out, spanging off the metal on Scott’s side of the car. “We’ll take care of him.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I zoomed into the air, out of view of whichever bastard Clary was taking potshots at us, up about fifty feet where I could spy down on the house without anyone being able to see me from inside. I hovered there like an avenging angel until I saw the muzzle flash from another shot. The crack of the rifle followed a second later, but I was already in motion.