I reached down and grabbed his face, burying my thumb in one cheek and my fingers in the other, squeezing his damaged cheekbones, feeling them crack in my grasp. I relished inflicting the pain, the righteous fury consuming me like a cold fire that would melt him to nothingness. I looked into his blue eyes, the shock of frost in there, and knew mine were colder still. “Let me show you how Zack felt,” I said, pushing down on his face as though it could somehow make things work faster. You can die the way you made him die. It’ll be like a little reunion . We can all be together one last time before I put an end to all of us—all of us! Once and for all.”
I barely felt his hand creep up my wrist, but his grasp was far too weak to stop me. I felt the first of my power begin to work, to drain him, but he was cold to the touch in spite of the heat, a cold numbness that crept up my fingers from where they met his face. I waited, wanting it, wanting to draw him in so I could destroy us all together—all the people who had hurt me so badly, all in one convenient package, all destined for the same screaming oblivion. The top of the IDS tower seemed like a good place to do it. Or a bullet from my own gun, properly aimed.
The cold numbness in my right hand grew more fierce where I was touching him, and the haze of my power dimmed. I snapped out of the sweet haze of my power working, the drain of his soul slowing to a trickle and then stopping. I opened my eyes with a shock and realized that Winter had turned loose his power, that there was a thick layer of ice that held my hand imprisoned in his, that separated my touch from his skin, from his face. He pushed back and lifted me off him with my trapped wrist and I felt it crack where it was buried deep in the ice. He stood, forcing himself up atop his long, ungainly legs and he brought us both to standing, though he did it to me unwillingly, and the pain I felt coupled with the numb cold in my right hand was staggering enough that I couldn’t ignore it.
“I see that you have forgotten,” he said, as he held me at arm’s length, speaking through his comically distorted and beaten face, “that you are not the only one who carries a touch that can kill.” He took a deep breath of the cold air as the plane locked itself into position, ready for takeoff. “I am proud of you; you truly have become all I have wanted you to be.”
“I … will … kill you … “ I sobbed as he bent my arm around and faced me off the back of the plane’s wing.
“Perhaps,” he said calmly. “But not today. Til we meet again.”
Whatever defiant words I might have spat back at him were lost as he broke my right hand off as easily as snapping a piece of stemware. I heard it shatter and then I was falling, plummeting to the tarmac below as I heard the jet engines spool up and the Gulfstream rocketed down the runway. I waited, hoping he would fall from the sky before me, unable to make it back into the plane, but I saw nothing fall but the snow, now picking up, flurries coming down all around me as the plane disappeared into the clouds.
I lay in the middle of the runway, cradling the stump where my hand had been only a moment earlier, and rocked back and forth until the pain claimed me into blissful blackness, and the snow-flecked sky was replaced by the dark of unconsciousness.
21.
I was in memories and dreams again, and this time I knew it. Zack was there, striding through a hallway as fast as he could go. His pace was good, he walked quickly, and the insubstantial ghost of me was dragged along for the ride. I recognized where we were; it was Headquarters at the Directorate. Outside, the skies were dark. Ahead was a light and an office that was eminently familiar—Old Man Winter’s, and the bastard himself was behind the desk, dressed exactly as he had been on the night the Directorate had been destroyed.
The night Zack had died.
Zack knocked on the doorframe; it was mere formality, but Old Man Winter looked up from what seemed to be a daze. He blinked at Zack, at the sound, then cocked his head and regarded him curiously as Zack spoke. “You called me, sir?”
Winter seemed to regain his mental footing. “Status?” he rumbled.
“Campus is clear, sir,” Zack said. “Our remaining metas are clumped together in the dorm, all non-essential personnel are evacuated, and all is quiet.”
Old Man Winter only gave a slight nod that he had heard or cared what Zack had said, but his expression suddenly shifted to something more curious. “You have … become intimate with Sienna.”