Power(104)

“Try having a menstrual cycle,” I said and launched myself into his chest with another boot. He tried to dodge but he was a little too slow. I caught him on the arm and heard it snap as he flipped away from the impact.

He stopped a short distance away, watching me with those heavily lidded eyes, breathing heavy. “I don’t understand you.”

“Clearly.”

He started to ramble on, but I tuned him out. Little Doll, this isn’t working.

Tell me something I don’t know.

He beat me, Wolfe said. He can beat you if you hold back and let him. If you play his game.

He is fast, Bjorn said.

I’m as fast or faster.

He can heal from your every attack, Wolfe said.

I flung a blast of flame straight from the core of Gavrikov’s power at him and he stopped monologuing long enough to throw up a hand and absorb it. “You can’t beat me,” he said, eyes flaring.

“Beat you? I just wanted to shut you up for a minute. Can’t even hear myself think over your yammering—”

He came at me with a roar of anger and I rolled at the last second. I got the feeling he wasn’t used to dealing with someone who operated at his speed and, like anyone who’s been sitting at the top of the food chain for too long, it had made him weak. He grazed my jaw and I laid into his. The impact of the traded blows threw us a good thirty feet apart, staring at each other across open sky, the city of Minneapolis’s skyline hanging behind him in the distance.

“You can’t stop me,” he said. “You know why I was trying to lock you up in the stasis chamber?” He sounded tired, almost defeated. “Because I was going to use my Ares power to destroy every army in the world.”

“But you didn’t,” I shot back at him. “And you can’t just crate me up like a dog because you want a servile bride—”

“I wasn’t doing it because of that,” he said. His weariness made way for a slow smile. “Do you know why we were killing the metas first?” I waited, waited for this maniac to just spit it out already. He was drunk on the sound of his own voice, clearly. “Because the power of an Ares doesn’t work unless you’re carrying an instrument of war—and most metas don’t.” His smile made way for a grin. “Tell me, Sienna … are you carrying a gun?”

I felt something take over my body, something run through my mind like I’d lost control over all my muscles. Whatever Zollers had done to block him from entering my mind was completely useless against this power. My hand went to my hip and drew my pistol. I felt it rise in my own grip, my arm unable to stop moving, to fight against it, to do anything—

The barrel of the pistol pushed tight against my skull, and I knew not even the power of Wolfe would be able to stop the bullet from sending my brains out the other side of my head. With a last breath, I just held on against my will and felt my finger start to pull the trigger.





Chapter 58


Nyet! Gavrikov’s voice rang in my ear, and suddenly the air grew hot around me. I felt something in my hand burn, dimly, like the first hints of a sunburn on a clear day.

“No!” Sovereign yelled, and my head started to clear. I looked toward the pistol and saw the weapon melting to slag before my eyes. My hand was on fire and I tossed the remains of the weapon clear. It fell down, down below me toward a pond in a park.

I lunged at him and he was a hair too slow to react, his eyes still following the downward path of the gun I’d just tossed. I bloodied his lip with the first punch, opened it with the second, smashed his teeth out with the third—

He threw me off with a counterpunch that rocked my head back and sent me flying. My t-shirt was partially burned through on the right shoulder and I heard it tear as I twisted from the hit. I managed to come around and ready myself for a counterblow, but he was just standing off from me again.

“It shouldn’t have been like this,” he said, almost like he was talking to himself. The frustration was rising with every syllable. “I’ve waited … for thousands of years for you. I planned everything … everything!” he screamed.

“I’ve been manipulated by the best,” I said. “Compared to Winter and Omega, you’re an amateur. Probably that whole ‘apart from mankind’ thing. It’s hard to get good at pulling peoples’ strings when you’re not around people—”

“You’re just sitting there mocking me,” he said, and turned hateful eyes toward me. No gentleness, no puppy dog, no googly, not even stalker eyes. This was just raw fury, the breath of hell.

I’d seen worse.

“You open yourself up to it,” I said. “Or to coin a popular phrase … ‘you were asking for it.’” I let that sizzle on him for a minute.