“I … “ Ariadne swallowed heavily, and clenched the coat tighter. Her bare feet looked cold in the snow, but I had reached the limit of what I was willing to give her. “I loved her, you know.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Love tends to allow you to overlook some things, yes,” Ariadne said harshly. “Foolish things, maybe. Maybe it made me stupid, to try and ignore it, to be with her in spite of it, but—”
“Oh, enough,” I said. “You overlooked murder. Your pals were all killers. Cold-blooded. You overlooked the fact that they stood there, and held me down, and made me use my own body to kill Zack. Sure, you were all upset in the moment, but Eve just whistles at you and you came running back, like a loyal b—-”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Ariadne said, and I heard her voice crack.
“Ditto,” I spat back at her. “Best of luck.” I turned and started to get back in the car.
“Where does it end, Sienna?” Ariadne called out. “You killed them all, didn’t you?”
“Not Winter,” I said, stopping myself, the door open. “I got all of them but Winter.”
“And once he’s dead?” she asked. “What will you do then?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. The wind howled, pulling against the door of the car as if it were trying to rip it from the hinges. “Does it matter?”
“There’s a lot going on out there,” Ariadne said. “This thing, this storm that’s coming … it’s bigger than any of us. Bigger than you and me, you and Winter—”
“It’s a little late in our relationship for you to be trying to give me career counseling,” I replied. “I think we passed the cutoff for that a few dead bodies—and a hell of a lot of trust—ago.” I stared at her, watched her, forlorn. “Goodbye, Ariadne. There’s a cell phone in the coat pocket. You can use it to call a friend to come and get you.”
There was a long, stark moment of silence. “I don’t have any left,” she said, and it was a bitter, frail statement of a truly lonely person.
I lowered myself into the seat and started the engine. “Join the club.” I closed the door behind me and pushed the accelerator pedal, and watched as she began to disappear in the rearview mirror. I stopped after a moment, and looked instead at the imposing structure of the mall, lit up all around me.
I turned to follow the ring road around the mall parking lot, but hit the brakes when I came around a corner. Everything looked desperately familiar, and it took only a moment for me to remember why. I’d never been inside this mall, nor around it, really, and there was a reason for that. I had seen it, though, from a distance. From a news chopper’s camera view of what was happening around it.
It was where Wolfe had slaughtered dozens of people while trying to get me to come out and face him.
I stared at the spot in the parking lot where I remembered watching him cut through a SWAT team like they were wet sandwich bread being shredded by a hungry bird, and I felt a pang in my guts. Wolfe stirred within me, his dark excitement obvious as he relived his kills—the smells of the event, the sights of it, the screams. I could feel Bjorn as well, less excited and more indifferent. Gavrikov watched quietly, and though they were newly with me, I could feel Eve and Bastian back there, somewhere, acclimating to their new surroundings.
“I’m never going to be able to undo all the damage that’s been done on my behalf, am I?” I didn’t know who would answer me, but I had hopes.
Not your fault, Zack said.
“It’s like a nightmare I can’t wake up from,” I said, and leaned against the steering wheel. “People die for me—because of me. I finally got to the point where I was trying to make a life, and I was trying to protect … the world, to be … I don’t know, what I thought Winter wanted me to be … and it turns out he just wanted to make me into one of you … “ I sent the furious word accusingly into my depths, and felt it reverberate there among the ones I cast it at, “ … and now I am. I’m one of you. I’m no protector. I don’t help police metas. All I am is a killer.”
There is no shame in killing to good cause, Bjorn said. Only in bad cause—