“Director Raven?” Henry said.
“...I don’t understand it, ma’am,” Clement heard the Sweep say to her. “Our people...half of them just collapsed. They won’t fight. The other half are completely out of control. They won’t listen to orders. Some even started shooting each another...”
The woman took a drink of her high-end coffee, her face unperturbed. “Gas the building with cyanide. If that doesn’t work, we’ll nuke the damned thing.”#p#分页标题#e#
Henry and Clement gaped at her, then at one another.
Even the Sweep looked confused. “Sir?”
“Kill them,” she snapped. “Do you hear me? This is no time to play footsie with her, not after what that bitch has done! Kill all of them!”
The man wearing the Sweep uniform saluted. Right before he turned to walk away, his face seemed to crumple strangely, turning almost childlike.
“How did this happen?” he said. “What will we do, now that we no longer have—”
“Pull yourself together, Agent,” she hissed. “Or you’ll join her.”
“Director Raven?” Henry said, louder.
Clement gave Henry an irritated look, mainly for interrupting his eavesdropping.
The woman, Raven, the hotshot seer they sent down from Central to run the iceblood units, turned. Her blue eyes glinted shockingly light, and she stood taller than Clement had realized, at least an inch taller than he did himself. She wore her hair long, unlike any other breed of agent Clement could recall. It hung like a dark curtain around her porcelain, Asian-looking face, nearly black in color. Her high cheekbones and almond eyes hinted at her seer blood, but apart from her height, she could have been human. A really beautiful human, for sure.
On her index finger, Clement saw a ring glint in the few wisps of sunlight.
It looked German to him. A six-pointed cross.
“I think you understand what needs to happen here, soldier,” she said to the Sweep, still staring at Clement. “It’s time to clean up. That means our side, too.”
The Sweep nodded, his eyes still holding that dense, childlike grief.
Clutching his helmet in one hand, he wandered back towards the building, as though lost.
Director Raven smiled at Clement, her shocking blue eyes still holding that odd focus. She held up the paper cup in a kind of salute.
“Coffee?” she said, raising a charcoaled eyebrow.
A chunk of cement hit the street, flattening a letter box. It broke in two, sending up a plume of white spray after the larger piece crushed a yellow fire hydrant.
Then Clement saw Henry freeze, his face drain of blood. Turning away from the woman and from Clement himself, he clutched his earpiece as he listened.
“Can you repeat?” he shouted. After a pause, he cursed. “So it’s a sure thing. He’s really dead...”
“Who?” Clement said, bending closer. “Who’s dead?”
“Ron!” Henry shouted, not hearing him. “They shot the U.S. President! Gunned him down in their own White House! Looks like the VP’s not going to make it either...”
“What?” Ronald Clement stared at his old friend.
Behind him, another explosion rocked the white building.
He and Henry both ducked. When Clement turned, looking for the person who had been standing there, drinking her designer coffee and smiling at him with that striking face, he couldn’t find her. He scanned the nearby crowd, looking past uniforms and the crush of onlookers gawking from the first set of barricades.
But Director Raven was gone.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
32
BRIDGE
A few blocks from Eaton Place, a manhole cover lifted softly from its resting place flush with the asphalt, revealing pale but dirty hands. As the cover rose higher, an equally dirty face grew visible, fitted with chocolate brown eyes and dusty black hair. The hands pushed the manhole cover to one side, planted themselves on the cement and hoisted up a muscular torso.
Maygar sat on the lip of the hole just long enough to get his balance.
He pulled up his legs behind him, then immediately reached back inside, clicking his fingers impatiently for someone to hand something up to where he could reach it. He glanced around as he caught hold of the clothing, then the arms of another, taller man and dragged him through the same opening. He pulled him clear, then laid him down on the pavement, frowning.
Bending over his inert form, he slapped him sharply on the cheek.
“No sleeping now, Rolf...wakey-wakey.” He slapped him harder, and the other man’s eyes flickered open. Once the clear irises could focus, he frowned.