Enemies(81)
Our foreheads met, bone on bone, and the pain was so bad I thought my life flashed before my eyes. It was like the end of the world had come, like the universe had sent the big bang out at us for another round. The only thing I focused on other than the exquisite, screaming, shearing anguish in my forehead was the sensation of my fingers, still locked around his wrist. I felt him staggering but held on, even as I hit my knees. A meta-strength headbutt was the sort of thing that would turn a normal human’s skull into pulped mush. I suspected I’d lost enough brain cells in this attempt that permanent impairment might follow, but I’d have to survive the impending cerebral hemorrhage first. It felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer and turned it loose on the top of my head, then poured lighter fluid over the remains of my skull and had Gavrikov blow up behind my eyes. The only saving grace was that I could feel my fingers tingling as my power started to work. Or else the paralysis from brain injury was setting in. Either or.
“You …” I heard Heimdall whisper in fury.
“Yes, me.” I blinked and threw out my other hand blindly in a snapped punch that caught him in the jaw. “You were expecting Bugs Bunny?”
His eyes were slitted, watching me, and I knew this because I’d only just gotten my own back open. The world was still spinning around me, and I realized it was a wonder the two of us hadn’t fallen over. My balance was shit, and plainly so was his. He was woozy, I could tell, and I was just starting to feel better.
“You … cannot …” he said, grunting, staggering unbalanced on his feet. He looked even paler than he had when we’d begun, which took doing.
“Can.” I hit him in the throat with my free hand and he expelled all his remaining air and looked at me with a shocked expression. “Will.” I hit him in the face with a hard cross and he fell to his knees, his eyes blinking, stars filling them. I felt the thrum and pull of my powers ripping at his soul, clawing it out of his body. I didn’t want it, but my body did. “Have.” I kicked him like I’d seen him lay into Eleanor Madigan and he flipped backward, end over end like a combination between a bowling ball and a ragdoll until he hit the wall of the white tower and lay there, unconscious. “Did.” I wiped blood off my forehead from the headbutt that had ended the world. “I guess that makes me number three, huh?”
“Holy shite,” came Breandan’s voice from behind me, and I turned, giving the museum battlefield a look of cold fury that I had lately reserved for Kat. He was ragged but still standing next to Kat and Janus, who were attending to the fallen Madigan. Reed was glaring at Bast, who was glaring right back, trapped between him and Karthik. The suits were all down, as were the four ministers of Omega and Hera. “I appear to have lucked out in my choice of guardian angels,” he breathed then flipped his hand toward Bast, who was sitting very, very still, as though trying to decide whether or not to pounce. “Give it a go, if you want. See if your luck holds out.”
Janus looked up at me from where he sat next to Kat and Madigan, his face drawn but serious. “You have become something very different than the girl I met in the basement of the Directorate.”
I felt a wash of emotion through me and pushed it aside. “Is that good or bad?”
Something tugged at the corner of his mouth as he forced a weary smile. “For the rest of the world, I think it is a good thing.” The smile evaporated as suddenly as it had appeared. “For your own sake, I think the opposite.”
I looked over the carnage and my eyes came to rest on Bast, who watched me through narrowed, predatory eyes. “I need answers,” I said to Janus. “I need to know why Century wants me alive. I need to know why you’ve been after me this entire time.” I cut my gaze over to him. “I need the truth.”
Janus gave me a slow nod then looked to Hera, who lay on the ground, dazed and bleeding, and she nodded. “You deserve the truth,” he said softly, and turned back to look me in the eyes. “If ever there was someone who deserved to know why everyone has been vying for your attention since day one, it is you.” His gaze softened. “I am sorry for not telling you earlier, but the truth of your situation is possibly the most closely guarded secret in the entire old world of meta civilization, and one that threatens to destroy us even now. No one knows this but the oldest of our kind, and it is information sealed away by a pact so ancient that most of us were little older than you when we made it.”
He reached out to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “The truth is this: you have the power to save the entire world, or destroy it. And it is not something that should be used lightly, as—”