Power(105)

He screamed and came at me again, bull on a charge. This time I didn’t bother to veer off, I came right back at him. I hit him so hard I heard his jaw break, teeth crack, nose shatter, face smash—he flew at the earth and cratered it like he’d dug his own grave.

And a few seconds later, he rose right back out, face rearranged and back to normal.

“Son of a bitch,” I breathed.

Not working, Little Doll.

“That’s a real talent for news flashes you’ve got there, Wolfe. You could have a wonderful career in broadcast journalism.”

“I’m not going to stop,” Sovereign said, coming back toward me slowly. His eyes were glowing with malice. “I’m gonna break you, little girl, break your will, and then I’m going to fix this world—”

“First of all, it’s not your world to fix,” I said. “Again, with the living apart from humanity, you lose the right to make changes in people when you don’t like what they’re doing. Second, you said it yourself—my mother used to lock me in a metal casket until … do you know when she’d let me out?” I waited to see if he’d answer, but he just hung there, all malevolence and anger. “Until my will to resist her broke. Except it never did,” I spat at him. “Not really, anyway. I just learned to do and say whatever it took to get out.” I glared down at him, resolute. “So if you think you can break me, good luck, jackass. Because I stayed behind to beat you when I could have run. I’m here to knock your ass flat, and I walked into that room knowing that was my task at hand. Whatever it takes, no matter what. That’s my motto.”

“You could live for thousands of years,” he said in a low rumble laced with fury. “As near to forever as your nineteen year-old mind can imagine. In a perfect world, free from all the sins of humanity that plague us.”

“I’d rather die right now than listen to you go on and on and on—” I said, shaking my head and rolling my eyes at him. “God, do you even listen to yourself? You’ve gone round the bend, dumbass. You’re so drunk on your own damned glory you probably can’t hear how crazy you sound.”

“It’s not crazy if I can make it happen,” he said in a low grunt. “It’s not crazy when we have the power to do it.”

“And all for the low, low price of annihilating the whole world,” I said. “Zollers, you can stop now.” I looked down at Sovereign. “Take a glimpse into my mind. See what Adelaide showed me. It’s your future, if you live and get your way. Take a look at your perfect world—”

He shook his head, left to right, so rapidly that I thought he’d been afflicted with some sort of nerve malady at first. “You’re a liar. She’s a liar. You’re trying to trick me, you deceitful—” He shuddered, full body.

“Don’t go all Gollum on me,” I said. “You really do it. You bring about the end of the world if you keep trying to go down this road.” I figured by this point he was beyond reason, but since I was skeptical that just beating his ass was going to produce the desired result, I gave it a try anyway.

“SHE’S A DECEIVER.” His voice had changed, grown fuller, like someone had taken over behind the eyes. He looked a little wild, too, and I got the feeling not for the first time that Sovereign was a man whose engine had thrown a piston a long time ago. Or whatever it means in car talk when someone loses their shit. Breaks a belt? Something like that.

He threw a bolt of lightning at me and I barely dodged it. I tossed a blast of fire back at him as large as a boulder and he stopped tossing lightning long enough to absorb it and throw it back. I caught it and pulled it in with one palm, dragging it behind me as I drank it back in. Lightning lanced after me again, and I sped away at full tilt, remembering Janus’s cautionary tale about how his parents had been immolated by Zeus’s lightning.

This running away thing was not going to work, either, and I knew it.

Lost his mind, he has, Wolfe said.

“Keen observation, Yoda,” I said. Downtown loomed in front of me, and I tried to think about what I could do. I shot upward, not stopping for a thousand feet or more. The city shrank beneath me, but I could still see him back there.

I paused in flight and held fast. Sovereign thundered at me, flying full force.

I waited until he closed and pulled Bjorn to the front of my mind. I hit him with the War Mind, and it looked like he’d had to shrug off a punch to the face. That lasted about a second, and then he had to contend with an actual punch to the face from me. His right hand glowed blue and I knocked it aside with my left, which was covered in flame. I wondered if he could channel two powers down the same arm and a moment later my question was answered as he absorbed the fire and then shot electricity into the sky above.