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part #38 of Out of the Box Series Series
And I desperately needed a weapon. It was a basic bitch Glock 19 with no special modifications. He squirmed as I took it, saying, “Hey, I need that!”
“For what?” I asked, already running away from the door. “Decoration?” I gestured vaguely to his pinned hands. “You earned that.” I started to circle around the building at a flat run – which was so much slower than usual as to feel like I wasn't even moving.
“You're just going to leave me to get eaten by the lion?” he shouted.
“Maybe next time you should try and fire on the predator that's trying to kill you instead of the one trying to save you,” I called back. Besides, I was like eighty percent sure that Priscilla had instructed the lioness to get me, which meant she'd bypass the downed officer.
Probably.
Maybe.
Well, I would have felt a lot worse about it if he hadn't just disabled me as I was about to fight a lioness. My side was on fire, a fresh stabbing pain coming out of it like aftershocks from an earthquake, radiating from just above my pelvic bone. I was moving hunched over, because it seemed to hurt less.
The sound of the door behind me bursting open under the weight of a sustained hit by a lioness made me pick up the pace a little. Nothing like death on your heels to motivate you.
I came out in front of the lion enclosure to find all those cops I'd webbed up still stuck to the ground, and I hurried toward the nearest of them. I'd caught him with my webs above the waist, too, but he'd been one of the ones who'd drawn a pistol instead of his dart gun, leaving that on his belt.
“All right, team,” I said, firing my purloined Glock blindly in the direction the lioness was coming from, “in just a second, I need you all to start screaming as loud as you can.” I slipped the dart gun out of his holster and slid it in the back of my waistband.
“I'm not screaming for you!” one of the women said, the picture of absolute defiance.
“Oh, it's not for me,” I said.
“Up yours, Nealon,” one of the male cops said. “You can kill us, but we're not dancing to your stupid tune.”
“I'm not much for dancing, and I'm not in prime condition for it at the moment anyway,” I said. Pocketing a couple of spare darts, I stood, suddenly really feeling the chill. I'd left a trail of blood around the side of the building. Convenient for the predator hunting me, probably, not so much for me.
It wasn't just that I was being chased by a lion, either. With Brianna suppressed, suddenly I was feeling every bit of the below-freezing temps. An icy wind whipped through, chilling me further, and I shivered.
Firing off another couple rounds to discourage the lioness from pursuing, I put a leg over the fence separating the lion enclosure from the sidewalk and stayed there, waiting.
The lioness was not long discouraged by my gunfire. She came bounding into the square and the cops, who'd been yelling obscenities at me and making defiant statements stopped all that nonsense and started screaming because there was a lioness loose and they were all pinned to the ground, helpless.
“Oh, so her you'll scream for?” I shook my head, meeting the lioness's predator gaze. “I see how it is.”
And I dropped into the enclosure.
The landing was painful, shocks of agony radiating out from my gunshot wounds and my knees. I bit my lip so hard it bled trying to keep from screaming or crying out, and I was forced to blink away tears. It was about a ten-foot drop into the lion enclosure; an easy one-way trip for a human. Or a lion.
I heard purring above me, and I scrambled ahead of her as she leapt up onto the railing and then down as I hobbled forth, leaving behind snowy, blood-soaked footprints on the snow-covered rock.
“Where are you?” a singsong from Priscilla somewhere ahead reached my ears. She seemed to be calling in the other direction, as though she couldn't tell where I was coming from.
Warmth radiated out of the faux-cave in front of me. They had to keep it a lot hotter for the lions to match their natural environs. Hell, the lioness behind me probably wouldn't have willingly chased out of the cave after me if not pushed by Priscilla.
A light purr to my left made me stop.
In the darkness I saw a shape; much bigger than the lioness, I saw a prone form, four mighty paws pointed at me, lying comfortably on the hard floor. The head moved subtly, eyes glinting in the dark. I cursed my now-human eyesight, but could see the shadow of a male lion, seemingly twice the size of the female chasing me.
He made another noise deep in his throat, then put his head back down.
“Yeah, leave the real work to the women,” I said, and kept creeping on. The landing of the lioness behind me was not a quiet affair, and I hobbled onward, into the dark of the cave.
I saw movement ahead, the flash of Priscilla's black hair. She was facing away from me, the light radiating from a lamp beside the door back into the zookeeper feeding area. A bloody bit of meat was in her hand, and she was easing around.
The noise of all those cops screaming outside had died down when the lioness had left them to pursue me, but Priscilla turned her face so I could see her silhouette, and I realized that between the noise of the refrigerator and the cops screaming, she'd totally missed me sneaking around behind her.
I lifted my Glock and aimed at her back, dropping the sight picture onto her ass and pulling the trigger twice.
The gun roared like thunder in the confined space, and Priscilla screamed, sprawling forward against the wall. Behind me, the lioness howled, not exactly running in the direction of the fearful noise.
“Ahhhhhhh!” Priscilla was face-down on the ground, blood running out of the bullet holes I'd just put in her right butt cheek. She was trying to clutch at her wound but failing.
I fired twice back at the lioness and she put her head down and ducked behind a cave wall, self-preservation overriding Priscilla's commands. Once I was sure I had a moment, I moved forward again, grabbing the dart gun out of my waistband with my left hand and drawing a bead on Priscilla's fallen form. Stroking the trigger, I planted a dart right in the middle of her back.
“Ow,” she said, snapping a hand back between her shoulder blades and probing until she found it. Plucking it from her skin she held it up, staring at it in the light shed from the lamp by the door. “Oh. Oh...no, no...”
“Oh, yes,” I said, striding past her to the door. A puddle of blood had already formed beneath her. One of my feet was dragging behind me, a trail of my own blood leaving me, but thankfully not as quickly as hers. “Hey, Priscilla?” I paused at the door. “You got darted, too.”
“Don't,” she said as I slipped through the door. “Please. Don't leave me like this.” She held out a bloodied hand extended to me.
“That almost sounds like the opening lyrics to ‘Don't Leave Me This Way,’” I said, hanging onto the door handle and peering into the darkness. I saw the flash of feline eyes in the dark. “Thelma Houston version all the way, by the by. Still, I don't think that's the right song for you just now, though.”
The lioness was on the hunt, and wounded prey was before her.
“Cuz...you won't,” I said, drawing the door closed.
“No – no! Sienna, no, PLEASE–”
I heard the lioness spring over the sound of the door locking.
“Sorry, Priscilla,” I said as her screaming died in the sound of a throat being ripped out. “It's survival of the fittest in here.”
“You just as good as murdered that woman.” The cop who'd shot me with the dart gun was still pinned to the ground by the building's exit, a tangle of threads of golden light crisscrossing his upper body and tying his dart gun to him.
“That convict,” I said, my leg dragging behind me, “was going to let these animals kill their way through St. Paul.”
His eyes were filled with real, seething anger. “You're no better than any of them. What makes you fit to judge? We could have rounded these criminals up.”
“You would have failed,” I said, putting the dart gun back in my waistband. My shoulder was hurting where that other bullet had perforated me. “You would have died.” I paused to draw a pained breath, and when I leaned on the wall, I saw I was leaving a trail of crimson. “Hell, you still might.”
“So you're just going to come in here and kill them all?” he asked, sounding utterly disgusted. “Summary execution?”
“I assure you, I wish I could have just read the summary,” I said, pushing off it and stepping over him. “But I saw it all play out before I made my move.” With each hobbling step, I felt a little weaker. “You should count yourself lucky I decided to get involved at all.” I had to pause for a breath; I was slumping hard to the left, favoring that side because of the wound.
“You think she felt lucky you got involved?” the cop asked, and I knew who he meant.
“She should consider herself lucky she didn't get worse,” I said, steadying myself on my wobbly legs as I took a turn. Sirens were wailing in the distance. “Because if you're gonna take a stab at the queen, to borrow a quote from The Wire,” I said, limping away, my side in agony and my shoulder screaming bloody murder, “you damned sure better not miss.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Sirens screamed in the distance as I limped away from the lion enclosure, sneaking around the back of the zoo. The pain in my side was fierce, blood running freely down my leg. I'd definitely exacerbated the problem jumping into the lion's den.
Also, what a metaphor for my activities here today. This whole trip had been me jumping into the lion's den. First, against those assholes who'd set an ambush that had been guaranteed to bring me down.
“Showed them,” I muttered to myself. Because Brianna was missing in action thanks to the suppressant.
All it had taken was command of time itself to defeat an impossible ambush. Now that I was inside the lines of their planned ambush, the dominoes were falling.
Speaking of falling–
I crumbled to my knees, felt the hard sting of them hitting the pavement. I yelped, because everything hurt so much more without my metahuman powers and natural durability.
The cold sidewalk kissed my cheek, and my pair of extra boots was snug and surprisingly warm. Unlike the rest of me.
“Where is she?” someone shouted in the distance. SWAT, probably.
I pushed off the ground, agonies searing my left side, like spears of pain lancing through my nerves and arteries. It took my breath away, and I had to hold still for a moment before I could try and stand.
Eventually, what felt like an eternity later, I managed to get to my feet.
I'd been shot and darted, and neither of those things were good. But on their own, neither was inherently fatal to me.
Without the dart, I could take bullet wounds to anything but the head and spit the lead right back out, knitting my wound together with the power of Wolfe in mere seconds.
And taking a suppressant dart while unwounded might depower me for about six hours, but that was just annoying under normal conditions. Hell, as a TBI agent I used my gun almost as much or more than I used my powers.
But here, now, under the influence of both, I struggled to catch my breath as I limped along the back of the lion enclosure, the cold wind blowing through with a fierce bitterness. A steely gray sky overhead made things feel even bleaker.
Six hours.
That was how long suppressant lasted in the human – or metahuman – body.
Even assuming I didn't bleed to death – which, given the quarter-sized splotches I was dripping on the sidewalk every six or so feet, was hardly a given – being without my powers for the next six hours was practically a death sentence.
The cops were coming after me now.
In thirty minutes or so, if the pattern in my timeline held, buildings would start to blow up in St. Paul. That was almost surely the work of Sherman and Schmidt, following a plan they'd started in Minneapolis before I'd interfered with time.
Would they do it now?
I didn't know.
MSP Airport would be hit in a little more than an hour. The capitol an hour or so after that. And finally, at two P.M. the last blow would come. Drusilla Cross and Scout Cole were responsible for that one, I was pretty sure.
Without my powers, I was helpless to prevent any of that.
With these wounds causing me to bleed out, I was probably going to be dead well before two o'clock, unless I got some medical attention immediately. I thought of Harry's predictions that I would die today, no matter what.
Well...maybe he was right, after all.
“Lot of blood over here!” a stern voice announced just behind me.
I staggered along a fence around the edge of the building, Glock in hand, knowing that in the next few seconds I was likely to be shot to death by the St. Paul police. The fence was slightly higher than my head, a difficult vault for someone my height even if I hadn't been shot.
Putting the Glock on the ground, I braced myself with both hands on the metal top beam of the fence and held my breath. This was going to hurt no matter what I did, so I needed to steel myself.
With all the strength I had left, I leapt, managing to catch the top beam of the fence just under my breastbone. It hit me solidly in the solar plexus, all my weight ramming it into my chest, and all my breath left me as a spike of pain like I'd been impaled in the chest ran through me.
I lost my balance and tumbled off the fence to a distant voice, “She's right over there and she's wounded, go get her!”
It was the cop I'd just left behind. So much for mercy.
I slammed into the concrete flat on my back, my skull cracking against it and a cold drift of snow falling off the fence and landing atop my chest. I barely felt the cold chill of it on my shirt, the thud of heavy boots conducted through the concrete as I tried to sit up.
Pushing to my knees seemed almost an impossibility, a distant dream that I might one day achieve with enough time and effort. Black motion out of the corner of my eye made me look, revealing a team of men with long guns that I couldn't quite identify in the hazy blur that was my vision, all dressed in tactical garb and armed, their weapons pointed at me.
Bright flashes rang out under a gray sky, the only bright sight in a dim day. Cracks of thunder followed–
Pain spiked through my chest, hitting me just above the heart, another through my stomach, yet another ripping through my chest just down and to the left of my right shoulder–
I fell over, whatever remained of my breath leaving me in a great huff, puffing out in a cloud of moisture from my cold lips. The pain in my side seemed to have metastasized, spreading through my body to my chest, around my heart, gripping it in a great glove of pain, squeezing it.
More cracks rang out and stings dotted my legs, calves, one hit my cheek. Another tore its way through my side, and the tiniest bit of breath I might have held onto left me as it ripped my right lung apart.
The edges of my vision got dark, squeezing in, claiming all the territory and turning the gray sky that hung above me an even bleaker shade.
“We got her,” came a harsh voice, and suddenly there was a figure of black above me, face familiar, voice even more so.
Bennett.
Blood seeped down my lips, dripping down my cheek.
“She's still alive,” someone said outside my vision.
Bennett grinned. He'd been after me for months before I left Minnesota. “Nah. She's not.”
He lifted the gun and I looked down its barrel, the blackness within it seeming to expand to slowly encompass all the world.
Then there was one last flash, one last thunder...
...and it was all over.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Amy Byerly
Como Park Neighborhood
St. Paul
10:45 A.M.
“Oh, Paul,” she said, giving Paul Kerbow a light slap on the backside as he chuckled, retreating from her and the window. They'd just woken up, and to the sound of distant cracking and popping, like fireworks going off a few minutes earlier, and finally stirred to look.
But nothing was going on in the quiet neighborhood, which put Amy at ease. She still had half a fear of the cops kicking down the door and dragging her out for being a meta and present in Minnesota.
“Want pancakes?” Paul called from the kitchen.
“Yes, please,” Amy said, yawning and padding on bare feet across the cold tile floor. She stretched, finding her phone. The battery was near dead, and something needed to be done about that.
She froze halfway to reaching for her charging cord. Hadn't she run completely out of battery? And at the worst possible time, too?
“Weird,” she whispered, retrieving the cord and heading for the kitchen. Paul was already moving around in there.
“What's weird?” he asked. He had bent over to retrieve pans, and Amy looked away abruptly because he was wearing no pants and no underwear.
“I know we're sleeping together now, but I'm gonna need you to at least conform to basic minimums of ServSafe and put some pants on before making pancakes,” she said, avoiding looking directly into his brown eye.
Paul laughed and stood up. “That seems fair. Be right back.” He walked off toward the bedroom.
Amy was left shaking her head at him. “The sheer cheek...literally,” she said under her breath, unlocking her phone just as it buzzed, a notification coming in–
SIENNA NEALON, 26, SHOT DEAD AT HANDS OF POLICE IN VIOLENT INCIDENT AT ST. PAUL ZOO
Amy dropped her phone and heard it crack against the tile floor as she slapped her hands to her face.
“What is it?” Paul stuck his head into the kitchen. He didn't have a shirt on, but he was zipping up his pants even as he spoke to her. He must have seen the look on her face, because his fell as well. “What is it? What's wrong?”
Amy could feel the tears in her eyes, and wondered if Scott and the others knew yet. If not, they would soon. “I know what those gunshot sounds were,” she said. But that was all she could get out.
