Powerless (The Girl in the Box Book 40), page 16
“Great,” I said. “Like my fashion sense wasn't atrocious enough without adding darts as bling to my look.”
There was a long pause, and when he spoke again, it lacked some of the irritable edge he'd been sporting throughout our conversation. “I know it's gotta be rough right now. Maybe you should just...run for now.”
“That's what I did yesterday. Hid out at Olivia's place until my powers came back.”
“No, I'm saying run now. Bail. Don't bring that trouble to our place of business. Head out, leave, don't come back until I call you to let you know we're on our way home.”
That twisted my face up. “You want me to...run away until my big brother comes back to help me fight my battles?”
“...Please?”
I let out a noise of guttural frustration that was something between a glottalstop and retching. “I will...consider your bullshit request.”
“That means you're going to ignore it, right?”
I sighed. “Reed...I'm not really the kind to duck out of a good brawl. But...” Another sigh, my eyes rolling. “Me being me is what has led me to a two-year-fugitive stint and a round of indentured servitude, so...” I felt like I was going to throw up. “I'll do it your way. I'll run, for now. No fights in the office space, no getting darted by Minnesota cops. I'll hide my face until you're back.”
“Great. Then we'll manhunt your men together.” Something rustled in the background. “Oh – gotta go. I think my case is about to bust wide open.” He hung up without ceremony or another word, really.
“Good for you,” I said, letting out another sigh, this one more disgusted than the last. Running?
Discretion is the better part of valor.
“Sounds cowardly.”
Half of winning a battle is knowing where and when to fight. And whether you want to admit it or not...you are now in a battle with not just those foes, but the State of Minnesota.
“I hate it when you make annoying amounts of sense in the direction of action I don't want to take,” I muttered. Because it was true.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“All right, here's the deal,” I said, stepping back out into the bullpen. “We're not going to slug it out with Moose and Squirrel or Oberheuser – which sounds like a German sex act, actually. Or at least we're not going to do so at this location.”
Aniya took this information mutely, with no reaction. Traverton's face curled up, making him look even dumber than usual.
Olivia, the only one whose reaction really mattered, just furrowed her brow. “Huh?”
“We're leaving,” I said, boiling it down. “Running, I suppose.”
“What about 'getting aggressive' or whatever?” Traverton asked. “That whole 'new you' plan that you rolled out this morning?”
“This is the new me,” I said, irritably, and with considerable dampening of my earlier enthusiasm. “Apparently destroying that bathroom stall door this morning got us in trouble with the landlord, so fighting around here is right out. We're going to go now.” I chucked a thumb over my shoulder. “So...um...”
“Where are we going?” Olivia asked. I could tell she wanted to raise her hand, but she was fighting herself.
It caught me a little off guard, because...yeah, I had no idea, either, so I said the first thing that came to mind. “Well...I mean...I guess we could go back to your pl–”
“Please let's not,” Olivia said quickly. “I really don't want it to get destroyed, and it sounds like they might already know where it is. I don't want to give them an excuse to wreck it. I really like it there.”
“Okay, that's fair,” I said. “Wherever we go, though, it's to lay low, not fight.”
“Do your plans always work out the way you hope?” Aniya landed the snark bomb with perfect deadpan.
“Another precinct heard from,” I said. “I'm just gonna ignore the fact she's making a really good point...but not really ignore it, because it is a good point. Okay, not going to my place, either, then. But we have to get out of here. Suggestions?”
“I heard there's a casino just south of here...?” Traverton asked.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What'd you do with the money you owe Moose and Squirrel?”
He squirmed, and I had my answer without him having to say a thing. “Nothing.”
“We are not taking a gambler to Mystic Lake Casino,” I said. He sagged, I could see it out of the corner of my eye. “Next suggestion?”
No one said anything.
“It's summer,” Olivia finally broke the silence, tapping a finger on her lip. “Cabin season. Maybe we could go up north and rent a place?”
“That'd...that might work,” I conceded. I didn't really want to do that, though. I'd seldom gone “up north” on weekends the way many did, fleeing to cabins and campers and tents and everywhere else outside the city. I-94 north on Friday afternoons in the summer was like a parking lot. “But I always hesitate to move in the direction of crowds.”
“There's a lot of space to maneuver up north, though,” Olivia said with a shrug. “Less metropolitan and all that.”
“Yeah, until you hit Canada,” I said, “and who knows how they feel about us? Well, me. They do seem to have a tragically European sensibility, and I haven't had any dealings with them for a few years, so we should probably steer clear of that. Which limits our freedom of motion in that direction. No,” I shook my head, “I don't like it. There's four directions. Pick another one, west, south, or e–”
I froze.
Olivia perked up, looking around as if a threat were about to crash through the windows. “What? What is it?”
I planted a hand on my forehead. “How could I have been so stupid?”
“Prey animals freeze when confronted with bigger, stronger predator,” Aniya said, oh-so-helpfully. “Is probably what has happened to you. You got hit...and you froze. Lower brain functions only working.”
I made a face at her. “Yes. Thank you. East, Olivia – East!”
She looked a little harried, then smiled politely. “East. Sure. Like...Woodbury? Cottage Grove? St. Paul...?”
I shook my head. “Farther.”
“Well, you can't really go any farther without running out of Minnesota – oh.”
Now she got it.
“What is it?” Traverton asked, looking like the kid who knew his parents had just said something in a secret language between them that he'd missed, probably getting the, “You'll find out when you're older,” non-explanation.
Though in this case, the answer wasn't lewd, it was geography. Because if you headed east on Interstate 494, in just a few short miles it joined up with I-94 in the town of Woodbury. And a mere ten miles beyond that...
...Was the state of Wisconsin. Where they were not currently choosing to dart me powerless on sight.
“To hell with Horace Greeley,” I said, decision made. “We're going east, people. A sweet, swift forty minutes east,” I smiled, relishing the prospect, “and at least half our problems will be over when we get there.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“Don't take anything more than you need,” I said to Aniya as we headed into her hotel. It was one of the countless nice, chain hotels in suburban and rural America. I didn't catch the label as we walked in, but the buildings were largely the same – beige exterior, three to four floors, windows spaced apart evenly so that even if you didn't know what the place was by signage, you might be able to guess by the uniformity of the window arrangement on the exterior. “I don't want to get stuck carrying a bunch of crap.”
Aniya assessed me coolly as the automatic doors opened for us. “It will only take minutes.”
“Great,” I said as we headed for the elevators. I pushed the button when we got there because I was the first to reach it. It dinged immediately, and soon we were headed up.
Lyricless music played softly in the elevator, the glow of the fluorescent lights emanating from above shining down on us. The silence didn't last, because of course someone had to ruin it by speaking.
“You have been powerful for how long now?” Aniya asked.
I didn't deign to look at her, sticking to elevator etiquette and staring straight ahead. “Are you asking how long I've had my succubus powers? Or how long I've had the ice powers?”
She pursed her lips, considering how she refined her question before asking it. “You are known as most powerful person in the world. How long?” Her skipping words, and that accent, made her slightly harder to understand but nowhere near impossible.
“I'm not sure anyone thinks of me that way anymore,” I said, readying the public line. “I had powers – other powers. They're gone now.”
“Gone...how?” Aniya asked.
I shot her a look as the elevator dinged our arrival. “Honestly, you got this non-profit NGO to give me a hundred and fifty grand so you could hang out with me but you didn't even do your due diligence about my history beforehand?”
There was little emotion at her eyes. “Perhaps I want to hear your side of the story. Not the official history.”
I let out a truncated sigh and indicated the open elevator door. She started walking, I followed, and offered explanation as I did. “I had a run-in with a more powerful succubus in Scotland a couple years back. She drained my other powers.”
“Hm,” Aniya said as we reached her room. Light shone in from a window at the end of the hall, drenching the corridor in bright rays. “Is curious to me how you have all these powers. You absorb them from other metas?”
“That's how a succubus works, yes.”
Aniya pulled her key card smoothly out of her purse and ran it across the locking plate. The door beeped, and she opened it. “So...why not absorb any enemy you come across? Hm? You are in dangerous line of work. More powers would be helpful, yes?”
“They don't come consequence free,” I said, taking a quick look around the place to make sure we were alone. The bathroom was empty, the traditional dark cave one expected in a hotel, windowless and backing to the hallway. “Every time I gain a power, I kill a person.”
“But you kill many people,” Aniya said, making her way to a suitcase that was already zipped closed and setting it upright. “Why not use their power for your good?”
“How thoroughly practical of you,” I said, “and slightly soulless. Yes, I kill people who cross me. They're generally criminals. Usually hopelessly bitter, and hate me by the time I take their life. Why would I want them in my head forever?”
I could tell by her eyes that this was not computing. “For the power.”
“I have power enough to beat them, clearly,” I said. “And a nifty ice power, now. Why would I want to add nutjobs to my head? Crazies that I'd have to deal with all the hours I'm not fighting? You see what I mean?”
“It would be useful,” Aniya said. “It could save your life.”
“At the cost of my sanity, maybe,” I said. “And I can't use the powers unless the person is cooperative. Not many of the people I'd absorb in your example would be very inclined to cooperate.”
She shook her head slowly as she rolled her suitcase to the door. “There must be other ways. Surely you could compel them.”
I raised an eyebrow and held the door for her. “Maybe I could. But would I really want to?”
She cocked her head at me, pausing in the open door. “Why would you not?”
“Well, not all of us are comfortable running a prison camp and using slave labor.”
Aniya greeted this jibe with a half shrug, but started moving again, the wheels of her suitcase rubbing gently against the carpet. “I have heard this complaint from many since coming out of the ground.”
“I hope you find it compelling, given your history.”
She shook her head. “This world you live in is soft. When I was a child in the Ukraine, we did well for ourselves. Well enough to not fear starvation. By the measures of the world at that point, we were rich beyond belief. Not as your American robber barons were, perhaps. But rich enough that the people around us looked at us much the same way as your people look at those wealthy. With jealousy for what we had. This is the natural state of man,” Aniya said as the elevator dinged after she pressed the button. A woman of middle age was standing inside, clearly riding down from the floor above. She moved for Aniya, who took little notice of her but to avoid rolling her suitcase over the woman's feet. “When the mob came for us, they took everything. When the state came for us, they imprisoned us. Worked us. Starved us.”
The woman next to her was quite the spectacle as Aniya told the tale. Her eyebrows looked to be in danger of shooting off her face and into orbit.
“If you have read history, you know,” Aniya said, “this is the way of things. The way things have always been. The strong come for the weak. Us, not starving, not worried – we thought we were the strong. But we were not. Not in the natural order of things. The strong was the mob who ripped apart our house. The strong was the state, who banded together an army and shoved us into boxcars.”
The woman in the elevator's face was a shifting miasma of horror. She subtly shifted toward the console and pressed the 1 button. Then again, and again, with increasing frequency.
“So you ask me...should I find pity if you take a criminal and rip their soul from their body so you can employ their powers?” She shook her head. “No. I do not pity them. You had the power. You won. You played out the natural drama of man the same way it has played out repeatedly over time. The strong win, the pitiful lose – unless they band together and become the strong. That is you.” She waved a hand at me. “As a succubus alone, you are weak. Someone with fire could scourge your flesh from the earth. Some fast runner – I don't know what you call them – can hit you so hard your body falls apart.”
“This elevator...is taking...forever...” the middle-aged woman singsonged under her breath, frantically pushing that 1 button.
“But if you collectivize,” Aniya said, clenching a fist. “You defeat the foes you were fighting anyway and then...add their power to your own. You would be powerful enough to do...whatever you want. Help people, if that is what you desire.”
The elevator dinged, and with a cry, the middle-aged woman practically threw herself out with only a panicked look back at us. “Yeah,” I said cheerily as she sprinted, sandals slapping against the tile floors as she fled for the front doors, “and I could have everyone in the world looking at me like that, all the time.”
“Why would you care what the weak think?” Aniya asked. “Do you think my father cared about what the villagers thought of his success until the day they tore our house apart?”
“No,” I said, “but maybe if, as a whole, your country's royals and wealthy had cared a little more what the poor thought, they wouldn't have gotten torn to pieces and executed by pissed-off mobs.”
Aniya made a dismissive noise, and we headed for the exit. “The rabble will always, inevitably, realize when their numbers count for something. This is the function of humans; we are crazed in mobs.”
“When angered, sure.”
“We are easily angered,” Aniya said. “It takes little to upset us. Better to have the power to fight it when the mob comes.” The hotel doors whooshed open, and a breath of warm, summery air greeted us as we stepped out to the portico, where Olivia and Traverton were waiting in the car. “Like you did here in Eden Prairie.”
I almost tripped over absolutely nothing, she'd nestled that little dig in perfectly. I didn't even see it coming.
Still, I ignored it, because there was really nothing to be said in reply. She wasn't wrong, exactly, she was just...annoying. And possibly right, in practical terms.
But if those practical terms meant I had to absorb people I hated who hated me and had died to my hand in battle...wasn't that wrong, too?
Olivia was parked under the hotel portico, the engine still running. I gestured for Aniya to get in, and Olivia saw us coming this time and popped the hatchback. I scanned right to left as I prepared to get in, making sure I didn't see any thr–
“Uh oh,” I said right after swinging the passenger door open to get in.
“What?” Olivia was already at heightened alert and nearly shoved her foot against the pedal. I heard the thump.
Aniya was just shutting the hatchback, but turned to follow my gaze. As did Olivia. No one said anything for a long moment.
Because standing there, about ten yards behind Aniya, an immensely satisfied grin on his face–
–Was Otto Klaus Oberheuser.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Oberheuser said nothing, merely stood with his arms folded, grinning in what I can only describe as an evil way. Unnerving, too, because he made no move against us. Just stood there, almost leering.
“All right,” I said, wishing I had a jacket to shuck out of. “New day, new us, right?”
“Whoa, whoa,” Olivia said. “We're still in Minnesota. If you rumble with him and the cops get called, you're getting darted for sure.”
“Guess I better make sure he's toast before they arrive, huh? Then we can make a run for the state line and I'll sleep the feeling off, happily, with one less worry on my mind.”
I started toward Oberheuser, who made no motion to move toward me. Just stood there, still grinning, arms still folded.
“Hey, Ober-hoser!” I shouted, drawing zero reaction. “You know how yesterday, you showed up at my office and were all leer-y, and I let you walk out of there with your nuts intact?” I strode right up, stopping about three yards away. Enough to throw ice, and maybe fire, if circumstances permitted. Maybe a little faerie light, who knew? I might be able to cover that under the ice throwing. “Well, it's a brand new day, bubsie.”
Oberheuser's smile gently faded, not apparently from anything I'd said, but because his levity had just died. “Mm.” A grunt. That was all I warranted.
I threw a questioning look behind me at Olivia, who was out of the vehicle and poised to act, and Aniya, who had moved in front of the car. Traverton, I noted, was watching through the back window. Like a proper dog.
