Power(5)

I was back on my feet and I cast a look around for my other quarry. Grihm was behind the box, still working to get his balance. I think I might have disoriented him with all that flinging him around. Guy like that, his inner ear probably wasn’t used to all the ups and downs. It’s not like he got tossed around every day.

I hit him from behind with an epic sucker punch. It drove his face into the metal side of the plane and—I swear—left an imprint like an iron mask. I ripped him out of it and saw his lips were bleeding. A little cry of joy escaped me, and I punched him squarely in the face, watching the cut widen on his lip.

His long, red hair was blowing in the wind that was rushing around the cargo hold, and his eyes were glazed. He blinked at me, and I hit him again without mercy or remorse. I hit him so hard that his shirt ripped, pulling him free of my grasp and sending him flopping toward the back of the plane. He rolled head over ass twice, his limbs unresisting. He landed at the rear of the hold, where the decking rose in a forty-five degree angle to indicate the ramp where they loaded the cargo.

He came to rest splayed out, supine, a human body formed into an X. It didn’t take much more than a gentle reminder in the form of memories of what he and his brothers had done to me to coax me forward again. Mercy was for the weak and stupid, so I ran up and stomped his groin as hard as I could. It produced the sort of reaction you might expect, complete with a scream that made him sound like he was about to burst into tears.

“Not so much fun when someone does it to you, is it?” I snarled. He was curled up into the fetal position, and I planted another kick to his lower back, aiming for kidneys again. It’s a good place to hit, lots of pain involved. “How do you like it?”

I didn’t even recognize my own voice as I asked him.

I was so focused on monologuing like some old-time movie villain, that I didn’t even see the punch that downed me. I felt my face hit the deck, leaving an impression of my own there, and I hoped it wasn’t quite as ugly as Grihm’s had been. I heard metal grind and gravity shift once more. The deck lurched beneath my feet and face, then lurched again. The faint howl of the hole in the side of the plane became a much closer—and much more frightening roar.

My hands grabbed instinctively for the metal grid. I opened my eyes and lifted my face to see that the impact of the blow that had sent me against the deck had broken open the rear cargo door of the plane. It dangled, bobbing gently, the wind ripping at me as I held tightly to the only purchase my fingers could find. I looked left and saw Grihm there, hanging on with one hand and up in a crouch. His lip was still covered in blood but there was no sign of a wound.

I glanced up the ramp and saw Frederick standing, just outside the reach of the wind that was whipping around his brother and I. He glared down at me with a fury that made my stomach go flip flop. Neither of them were injured anymore. Both of them were mad as hell—at me—

And to top it all off, I could feel the descent of the plane steepening and had a vague intuition—named Roberto Bastian—telling me that we were, without doubt, on an angle of descent so steep that we were certain to crash.

I kept one eye on each of the two beasts before me and steadily rose to my feet, watching my balance in the rapidly descending—sorry, crashing—plane. Not that it mattered for much longer.

“Little girl, all alone,” Frederick said, and I could hear him over the roar of the wind. “No one to save you now.”

I saw them both coming, charging at me. The impact would surely be bad, would guarantee injury, pain. It was not something I wanted to get hit with, not only because of the impact, but because I’d be close at hand with the two of them. Close enough to work their claws. Close enough to let them rip and tear.

Oh, and the plane was going to crash. Couldn’t forget that.

I took two steps down the ramp and leaped backward, Grihm and Frederick behind me. I wrapped my arms around myself and turned my body like I was completing a graceful dive. I could see shadowed ground somewhere below, shapes of trees, and branches, and then a glint of light on water.

I twisted and brought my legs down as the wind rushed past me, the night air swallowed me up, and the darkness and gravity dragged me down, down to the earth.

I slammed into the hard ground with the fury of gravity—





Chapter 3


—and came right back to my feet like I’d stepped off a curb and not a falling airplane.

I can’t say I didn’t feel it, and I can’t say it didn’t hurt, but I can say I didn’t care. I was still fuming over the beating that Grihm and Frederick and their boss had laid on me earlier in the evening, aided by a telepathic bitch named Claire. I don’t think it was just the fury of Wolfe that made me want to push through any pain until I had flayed them all alive.