“Dammit,” I whispered. “When things start to hit the fan, you’re moving him out of here, right?”
Kat nodded. “I’ll move him into one of the offices right now, but I’ll be back. I’m not letting Century kill me without a fight.”
I shot a look to Karthik. “What about you? Are we ready?”
“We have guns,” he said, gesturing to a few souls who were clustered between us and the elevators in the room. The blinds were down on all the windows that could be seen outside the offices, and it left us in a space that was lit solely by fluorescent light. “We have a few people who are trained with them, and a few others who can fight with meta abilities.” He nodded to the cluster of people behind him and I counted, quickly. “Seven,” he said, interrupting my count. “That makes us twelve when you account for the five of us.” He gave a quick sweep of the hand to encompass those of us standing in a rough semi-circle for the conversation. “We’re protecting another sixteen.”
“I thought there were more,” I said, eyeing the offices that had the shades drawn, where I knew the others had to be hunkered down, hiding, out of the way.
“A few decided to take their chances on their own,” Karthik said. “I’m only surprised it wasn’t more.”
“So now we just wait?” Breandan asked, turning to look between Karthik and I.
“Unless you have any plans that will allow us to launch an offensive against an enemy that we have no current ability to track,” I said.
“Not really,” Breandan said glumly. “I hope they come soon. The anticipation is just killing me.” He paused. “Oh, wait, it’s them that’s going to be killing me. The anticipation is just annoying the piss out of me.”
“Save some of that piss for when they get here,” Reed said seriously. “After all, you wouldn’t want to get in a fight to the death without wetting your pants first.”
There was a laugh that rippled through the few metas behind Karthik, and I took a moment to look at them. They were a nearly equal split, four women and three men. Two of them looked terribly young, younger than me. One of them looked to be older than Hera had been. The other four seemed grouped in their twenties and thirties. “See,” I said, “we can laugh. It’s not the end of the world, right?” That quieted them. “Sorry. But I find if I’m not trying to laugh death in the face, I’m thinking way too hard about what I’m up against, and that’s almost never a good thing. Cracking jokes helps defuse the tension for me, and I don’t do my best work when I’m so stressed that I can’t think straight.” I looked at each of them in turn. “Also, the people I’m fighting are usually assholes, so it’s kind of nice to emasculate them while you’re pounding the hell out of them.”
There was another laugh that was cut off when the fluorescent lights went off with a loud pop, the hum of electricity fading with them. I drew a quick breath. “Show time. Reed, rip the blinds off the windows.”
I couldn’t see him in the dark but I knew he had complied with my request when I felt a tornado gust rip around the edges of the room, tearing the blinds off the few external windows that weren’t protected by offices. I saw some of the others come up on their own as the metas hiding within them began to lift them to let some of London’s city lights shine in on us. It cast the whole room in a dim glow, the reflected lights giving us little to see by.
“All right,” I said, “I want everyone behind me. I’ve heard Hades himself had a hell of a range, and we don’t know how far this guy has to be from a person to put the hurting on them—” I glanced back behind me but heard nothing save for a grunt that was repeated from several different sources at once. I wheeled around and saw Reed on his knees next to Karthik, Breandan on his back next to Kat. The others had collapsed as well, holding their chests as though something were being torn out of them forcibly.
“The answer is close,” came a voice from behind me, near the elevator. “Your great-grandfather might have been able to draw souls from miles away, but his powers were diluted by mating with Persephone.” A man stepped out of the shadows, with black hair slicked back in something that almost looked like a pompadour. He had a huge belly that hung out in front of him out from under his T-shirt. He wasn’t tall, he was squat, and he walked with a little bit of a limp. “Hey.”
“Um, hi,” I said, a little distracted. The others were falling behind me.
“I’m Raymond,” he said, his eyes still in shadow from the low light. “Or at least that’s what I call myself now.” I caught a whiff of a cologne. It smelled cheap.