Enemies(39)
There was movement outside the office; probably security details coming as I could hear the sound of feet on the floors, of people speaking outside in the cubicle farm. Bast was limp, slumped, staring over the desk at me in sharp disbelief. Janus’s eyes were closed, and Kat was openmouthed as she knelt next to Karthik, preparing to heal him with her touch. “You’ve changed, Sienna,” she said into the rushing void that was the office, the desperate quiet.
“No shit,” I shot back. “In case you haven’t noticed, even without your new necrophiliac habit, you’re pretty different yourself.” I reached down and grabbed the remains of the back of the leather chair and threw it, hard, out the window behind me, shattering it.
“Where will you go?” Janus asked, watching me as I eased closer to the window. “What will you do now?”
“I don’t know,” I said, letting my foot rest on the sill of the window. I looked down below into a busy street, and saw traffic passing by on the road. It was a long way down; I was on the fourth floor. “Guess I’ll find Winter myself.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Janus said quietly.
I laughed. “I just killed your leader.” I gestured to the splattered remains of Rick. “I kinda doubt his meta healing or even Kat’s touch is going to put him back together again.”
“Probably not,” Bastet said with quiet rage, “since he was human.”
I looked at Rick’s head; there wasn’t much left. “Excuse me?”
“He was a human,” Janus said quietly. “His father’s only remaining son, but born a human to a human woman. He was only in the position of Primus because we needed to maintain continuity during this time of transition. He was just a man.”
“A really arrogant, blustering man,” I said, and felt the heat on my cheeks. Had I really just beaten a defenseless man to death? “He just spent the last few minutes trying to convince me I was utterly under his power and that I should be ready to basically whore myself out to whatever purpose he had in mind for me.”
Janus gave a slight nod. “Young and foolish. You understand, I suppose?”
I looked at the mess at my feet. “I suppose.” I glanced back to them. “So long, Janus.”
“You don’t have to leave,” he said, and I caught the urgency from him.
I swallowed heavily. “I think I kinda do.”
Without another word, I turned and stepped over the edge. I heard swearing as I did it, the voices of Bast and Janus, already arguing. I fell about fifty feet and landed perfectly—right in the center aisle of an open-topped, double decker bus. It was a long drop, and I felt it in my ankles as I landed, but I managed to avoid any injury to myself or the bus. I dodged past the surprised people around me, marveling at my sudden drop out of nowhere, and I took a seat in one of the black plastic chairs and took a breath.
I looked back over my shoulder as the air from the bus’s passage whipped my hair around. Janus was up in the window, watching me, his eyes tinged with disappointment that I could see even from this distance. His eyes never left me, following me even as the bus turned around the corner and out of his sight.
Chapter 16
I hopped off the bus after it turned the corner and sprinted full out for the underground station sign I saw up ahead. I popped inside and bought a ticket to take me back to the Russell Square station and rode in silence through the first three stops. The air was heavy but cool, and it felt almost a little stuffy inside the train itself. It was busy, and I had to change trains at Holborn station. I walked through the crowd, oblivious to anything but my own problems. I jostled and brushed against pedestrians, never long enough to feel my powers work but enough to feel the presence of others just on the outer perimeter of my own sense of self.
Did you just kill the Primus of Omega? Zack asked me, his tentativeness coming through in the way he said it. Did that really just happen?
It was beautiful, Wolfe rasped. Glorious. The pampered scion of a dying family brought to a bloody end, his head splashed all over the floor just as marvelously as if Wolfe had done it himself. He’s not so arrogant now, is he? The sound of a chortle echoed in my mind.
“Oh, God,” I whispered as the crowds moved around me while I walked to the Piccadilly line platform over a series of escalators and moving walkways.
Killing the Primus of Omega is a big deal, Bastian said with something that sounded like grudging respect.
Yes, Eve tossed in, I’d be dancing if it weren’t for the fact that I’m dead.
Sienna … Zack said quietly, what were you thinking?