Archon's Queen (62 page)

“Aura, sniper!”

Aurora swung her arm back over the car, the man’s body jerky and zombie-like as he fought her for control. She squeezed off a series of shots, having little hope of hitting him with a handgun at such range, but the attempt was enough to make the sniper duck. Beneath blue muzzle flare, Anna leaned up, staring at the man who had shot her in the back.

For several seconds, she concentrated, building up a charge in the metal parts of the long rifle. The sniper broke left, seeking refuge behind another car. Creeping arcs leapt from the ground to the tip of the barrel. Sparks spewed from both ends of the electronic scope as it fried; the man holding it convulsed on his feet. Lightning crackled and scored the ground for a few seconds until he managed to toss the weapon to the side, drawing the attack with it. He leapt away from the discharge, and rolled out of sight behind a car.

Aurora grabbed Anna’s belt, hauling her around like a ragdoll. She hit the ground on her back, sliding away from the possessed man. Before Anna could ask why she had been thrown, a roar of automatic rifle fire blew through him, spattering blood on her face. Wheezing, he fell to his knees and careened over sideways, struggling to crawl.

The last of the three men from the van shouted from behind a vendomat cluster at the center of the parking deck. Clicking noises gave away he was reloading. “So who paid you off, Paul? I had a feelin’ that damn Brit was involved in something fucked up. He was payin’ too good to help him off his ex-wife.”

Gurgling, the wounded man reached into the air. “Donny, no! Something… controlling… me.”

“You think I’m gonna fall for a line of shit like that?”

Mercenaries?
Anna blinked at his surface thoughts.

Donny finished him with a single shot to the head. Ignoring the viscous red seep oozing out from the dead man’s helmet, Anna forced the last mercenary not to see her. Startled, he rushed forward from his cover, swinging in a leftward arc to aim at where he thought she had gone.

“What Brit?”

He whirled, hearing but not seeing Anna a few feet behind him. She sidestepped in case he decided to fire at random.

“Annabelle, Annabelle…” A man’s voice ended a moment of dead calm with a singing tone. “…where did you go?”

She recognized it―Agent Gordon.

The mercenary continued to circle, checking behind the next row of cars. He shivered as he walked into a cloud of arctic air. Fog materialized into the outline of Aurora’s nude form.

“You should have listened to Paul. Something
was
controlling him.”

“Wha―” He screamed, continuing to howl as he scrambled backwards and fired through an Aurora-shaped cloud of mist.

She laughed the condescending cackle of a high-society woman tormenting the lower class. Her fog-form swam like a mermaid through the air and into his chest. Curling into a ball, he fell thrashing on the ground and shouted, banging his fist into the concrete until his knuckles bled.

Unable to find Gordon, Anna crouched behind the wheel of a van. “You’ve got no backup left, Gordo. They’re still in London, or did you get sacked after Thompson survived?”

Crunching boots moved somewhere nearby. “You’re simply too dangerous to be allowed to remain alive.”

Donny’s head snapped up, his face red but calm. “My word, this one was stubborn.”

Two gunshots came in such rapid succession they sounded like a single shot. The last mercenary’s head exploded into a sluice of gore, chunks, and teeth. Anna stared at the expanding pool of crimson burbling out of the stump of a neck. Aurora’s body fell out of a cloud of fog a few yards away, sprawled on the ground, barely conscious.

“Aura!” screamed Anna.

“Two deaths is too… Wasn’t expecting…” She passed out.

Anna scooted over, jamming a stimpak into her friend’s back in hopes the adreno-stimulant helped. The pale woman didn’t move. She stuck her with a second one before the scrape of a boot made her jump back against the vehicle. Anna whined at Aurora.

“Come on, get up,” she whispered.

“Two birds with one stone.” Hidden Gordon laughed at his own joke. “By the way Anna, I should thank you for sparing me the expense of having to pay those men.”

nna peered around the back end of the car, balling her hands into fists as Gordon strode into view with a large pistol in each hand. Threading her mind into his, she moved as fast as she could while concentrating on keeping herself invisible. A field flickered through his brain, some manner of mental screen that made it more difficult to see his thoughts. Anna broke out in a shivery sweat from the exertion, but forced herself in anyway. Gordon staggered for a moment, touching his skull as if something burned him. She thought back to the inhibitor.
His tech isn’t calibrated to our level. I can’t keep this up very long.

Agent Gordon looked to a sudden beeping from his armband display, raising his left arm so he could look over the screen, almost aiming at her with his other hand.

“Well, well. Still playing mind games through a psi screen.” He sighed. “This piece of shit is supposed to keep you out of my head. Learn something new every day.”

The first time he fired, she had the nerve to trust he would miss. When he corrected, her resolve faltered and she sprinted at him, no longer able to keep up the effort to remain invisible. He flung his left arm out and fired the nanosecond the gun went vertical. The slug crushed into Anna’s breast, stalled on the armor, but the impact sent her to the ground, wheezing.

“Like pulling the wings off of flies, or pixies as the case may be.” Agent Gordon offered a sincere smile before turning to aim down at Aurora’s head.

Aurora’s body dissipated into fog as if she were a smoke-filled bubble popped by the bullet. Anna smiled at the sound of the ricochet, cradling her chest and trying to breathe.

“Well that’s just rude.” Gordon faced back to Anna. “I suppose I’ll have to eat the pudding before the meat.”

The fog coalesced around Gordon. He cringed as if experiencing a sudden migraine. Aurora faded in screaming and holding her head. Gordon raised an eyebrow.

“Well, I suppose the bloody thing is good for something.” He grabbed for her, but she zipped down through the floor. “That one’s always been a pain in the ass.”

Sliding backwards, Anna held a hand against her chest where the bullet hit her. Anger got the better of her, and she hurled a blast of lightning into the pistol. Gordon flew off his feet, landing on the ground a short distance away as the smoldering handgun skittered out of his grip.

He remained still for a moment before clasping his elbow and tapping his chin with his right forefinger. “You know, Anna. An insulated combat suit is quite the thing for dealing with people with your particular specialty. That almost tingled.”

Anna hesitated; her heart sank. “Why do you have to do this to us? All we want is to live like anyone else.”

He made a whimpery noise, mocking her. The condescending smirk she imagined hid behind the black material over his face. She sprang to her feet and sprinted past him to the dropped sidearm. He spun, kicking the back of her right foot out from under her as it hit the ground. She went over, sliding on her ass and knocking the pistol farther away. He grabbed her ankle when she went to run again, and dragged her closer.

Anna flipped over, drilling him across the face with her boot hard enough to make him let go, and scrambled in a crabwalk away from him. A chill ran through her as he laughed.

“That legwork might have worked at the strip club, but I’m not impressed.”

Telepathic invisibility forced him look at the armband once more; when he did not react to her, she had an epiphany, realizing it was a motion tracker. Anna froze. Gordon rotated, searching. She could not see where his gaze pointed due to the opaque lenses. His display chirped as her hand slid two inches rearward, and she went still again, letting him run past her.

Anna stopped concentrating on the telepathic invisibility and opened her mind to the electronics on his arm, calling to the sensor’s power cell. It went off in a bloom of sparks and a spray of molten plastic and glass fragments.

Roaring in pain, Gordon took a knee. “That’s gonna cost you, whore.”

Anna jumped on his back and yanked a knife from his belt. She raised it over her head, but he elbowed her in the gut before she could bring it down. The strike winded her and knocked her off him, sending her into a backward stagger. Gordon took a step and she lunged a second time. He swatted her attack away with an almost casual deflection as if he toyed with a child. Twice more she came at him and met similar results; the third time, he caught her hand, disarmed her, and flipped her to the ground.

“Who the hell taught you how to fight?”

Anna’s face reddened as he twisted agony into her shoulder. “No one, you twat. I grew up on the street.”

“Oh, that’s so tragic.” He let go of her and took a step back. “There’s no fun in
that
. I could go beat up ten year olds all day, but it’s just not entertaining. Come on, get up; grab the knife.”

Anna staggered to her feet, cradling her arm where he twisted it. “What the devil’s wrong with you?”

“I only want this to be fair.” The way his head tilted made her imagine the shit-eating grin she hated so much. “Here…”

He pulled another knife from a vest sheath, and held it in a closed fist. “This is your basic hammer grip, good for newbies like you.” He shifted his thumb along the spine of the blade. “This is a saber grip. When you learn a little bit more, you can employ this with some footwork.” After a brief demonstration of stances and shuffling, he flipped the weapon over, holding it like the first time with the blade pointed down. “Now the icepick grip is advanced; once you know what you’re doing, you can use it with some of the fancier deception techniques, but you give up some reach for power. However”―he tossed the knife and caught it upright―“you’re not even close to that level yet.”

He lunged with a teasing attack. Anna evaded it, but walked right into the foot sweep.

He pinched his temples, shaking his head. “That’s just sad. Get up.”

A crackling azure bolt connected her hand to his crotch for several seconds. He squealed, grabbing himself, and fell to his knees. Anna leapt at him, stepping straight into a jiu-jitsu arm takedown. She wound up kissing the ground with no knife in her hand.