“I don’t mean to insult you,” she said, her boots clicking as she came down the alley, shedding the tweed jacket she wore over a white blouse, “but I don’t think you know a bloody thing about me.”
“I know you’re an Omega assassin,” the man replied, holding his ground, “and that’s about all I need, really. Come at me, and you’ll die. That’s all you need.”
“I don’t know about that,” Adelaide replied, continuing her slow stroll toward him. I wondered how she could walk in those heels, much less fight in them, but I suspected based on what I’d seen of her so far that I’d be finding out shortly. “In fact, I think it’s going to go quite the opposite way.”
“Told you to kill me, didn’t they?” The man asked. “They would. I know things,” he said, his flabby paunch hanging over a truly sloppy pair of trousers. “Things they don’t want getting out. Things about their golden boy, Wolfe.” The man wore a self-satisfied expression that was hiding something else entirely. “He’s a murderer, you know. Kills anything he wants to. Men, women, children. The Primus and the ministers just look the other way. He’s a stone killer, has been for thousands of years.”
“I’ve heard rumors about that,” Adelaide said with a glacial reserve. “Don’t expect it matters much to anyone in Omega.”
“So you’re another that doesn’t care what Omega does so long as you get your piece of the action, is that it?” The man waited, his hair long around the sides of his face. “It doesn’t bother you that people who used to be gods have sunk to petty criminality to finance their lifestyles?”
“I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I let moral concerns get in the way of my work,” Adelaide said. I couldn’t see even a glimmer of emotion from her.
“They tell you to even try bringing me back alive?” The man asked.
“They weren’t specific, this time,” Adelaide replied. “If you gave yourself up, I could be persuaded to bring you back—”
“Don’t wanna go back,” the man said, and I saw some age on him at that moment. “I’d rather kill you than go back.”
“All right, then,” Adelaide said tightly. “Give it a go, then.”
The man wore a look of almost-remorse. “You’ll be sorry you asked for this, luv.”
“I don’t think I will,” Adelaide replied.
The man leapt at her across the last ten feet, and he soared through the air with all the strength I’d come to expect from a meta. As he did so, his chest bulged under his ill-fitting clothes, turning him from a paunchy sort to a wide-bodied beast. His face filled out on the jump, his neck widening and pushing his collar open to reveal raw muscle that hadn’t been there a moment before. He landed and Adelaide dodged backward, just missing a heinous punch from him that would have smashed a tree in two.
“Ever fought a Hercules before?” the man asked with a confident grin. “All I’ve got is the strength to beat you to death twenty times over. You run, I catch you. You fight, I beat you. You try and hit me, I break you to pieces.”
“Well,” Adelaide said in a defensive posture, standing back from him a few paces, “you’ve certainly got me there. Whatever will I do?”
“I told you—die,” he said. “You could have run away before, but now I can’t let you tell them where I am.”
“If that’s the way you feel about it,” Adelaide said, “maybe we can come to an understanding.” She eased a step closer to him, watching his hands.
“Oh?” the man asked. “Now you see what I’ve got, you think it’s time to deal?”
“Not really,” Adelaide said, her accent clipping, her tone ambiguous. “I just wanted a moment to get closer to you.” She threw herself at him and he swung at her. She ducked his blow and came up with one of her own, an open-handed slap to his face that lingered there, giving me pause.
He laughed at her and caught her hand. “A slap? Really? I would think you could do better than that.”
“Quite right,” Adelaide said, and brought her other hand around in a slap that didn’t so much as sting but stayed attached to his face, held on by her grip.
He laughed out loud. “This is supposed to hurt me, luv? Why don’t you try about three feet lower?” He wagged his pelvis at her.
She smiled. “You want me to?”
He laughed again, bubbling with mirth as she held on to his face. “If you’re offering …”