Power(97)

I shook my head slowly. The logic was obvious in that one.

“Sienna,” he said quietly. “They wouldn’t be able to stop me. Only you can stop me. I won’t stand still for them. I will for you, because I care about you, because I want to be able to spend the time with you that it takes for you to see who I am. I won’t do that for anybody else, and if they take you away, I will not be a prisoner anymore.” Each word came flatly, and there was a menace hanging with them. “I will not submit myself to any man or government. That’s not who I am. I surrendered to you because I trust you.”

“I can’t let you hurt anyone else,” I said and lowered my head into my hands.

“Then I have a perfect solution for you,” he said, and his voice was strong, commanding. “Your friends have already left. Why don’t you come away with me? We can go somewhere safe, somewhere like they did—and you can keep an eye on me for the rest of my life if you want, as my jailer—and you’ll never have to worry about me hurting anyone else again.”





Chapter 54


Minneapolis, Minnesota

January 21, 2012





The car rattled along, tires slipping on the turns as they drove away from the supermarket. Marius—though he hadn’t been called that in so many years he barely thought of himself in that way—could still feel the ice sliding down the collar of his shirt from where Wolfe had manhandled him.

“Urk,” Weissman said in some sort of complaint from the driver’s seat, “I haven’t been hit like that since grade school.”

Marius cocked an eyebrow at him. “Someone as strong as Wolfe beat the holy hell out of you in grade school?”

Weissman flushed, his skin going nearly purple under his greasy bangs. “No, I just meant that I hadn’t gotten my ass kicked like that in a long time.”

Marius stared Weissman, who had turned back to focus on the road ahead. It was coated intermittently with ice, heavy snow piled high on the median and both sides. A thick layer of grey clouds lay overhead, something he knew was not unusual here in the Midwest. I bet she’s never seen the sun, he thought to himself.

SHE IS A CHILD, came the voice from within, a flexing, moving thing in his head. It had so many voices now, and he could barely hear his own among them any longer.

But Mother’s was still in there.

He looked over at Weissman once more and called forth the power of the telepath he’d absorbed so long ago. He tunneled into Weissman’s mind without effort, tasting the fresh stock of pain and horror there. He found a memory with little effort, a juicy one, of a child in grade school taking painful hits to the face, the chest. Blood ran down his face and coated the inside of his mouth, and the screaming that filled his ears was his own. One word stood out from it all, one word repeated over and over—

Daddy.

Marius shook the horror from his mind, wanting to spit it out as though it were something foul he’d taken a bite of. “That explains a lot,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” Weissman asked.

“Nothing,” Marius said, and looked back out the window. “The girl—”

“I’ve got a guy already in at the Directorate,” Weissman said. “He was one of the first I put in place. Him and a few others with the big powers. Eyes on the big meta farms in China and India—they need to be our first targets. Anyway, this guy can keep an eye on the girl for you.” Weissman spoke in a staccato rhythm, his excitement inflecting his tone.

“All right.” Marius frowned. “Her mother was stubborn. We may need to play some games with her if we’re going to pull this off.”

“What kind of games?” Weissman asked.

“Manipulation,” Marius said casually. “I can’t be the bad guy to her. She’s young, probably prone to fits of idealism. I don’t want to be the villain. I have to be the natural choice, the solution to her problems and not the scary guy who’s destroying the whole world.” He paused “Unless she’s so cut up inside she’s into that, in which case I’ll swoop in as soon as possible.”

Weissman shrugged. “Women want power. You get enough of it, she’ll come around.”

“Maybe,” Marius said. “But in any case, for our purposes, in this endeavor, you’ll be the stick and I’ll be the carrot. If I have to deal with someone, they need to die.”

“I have no problems being the enforcer,” Weissman said, and took his hands off the steering wheel to crack his knuckles. He smiled. “It’s gonna work.”

Marius shook his head. “This plan of yours …”