Broken (10 page)

Yes, Little Doll, like that
—

“
I don’t need any help right now, thanks,” I muttered as Phil looked at me one last time before his eyes rolled to unconsciousness. I held my contact with his skin for only a moment more before letting him go, and his body sagged, half-stretched over the desk. I gripped his shirt as I walked around and slid him back into his chair, letting him rest in a sleeping position, head leaned back. “I’ve got this.”

Of course, Little Doll
.

I felt the seething at that and knew he was pushing me, trying to make me angry before what was about to happen. “I don’t need your help getting pissed off at these people, Wolfe.”

But the Little Doll works so much better when she is angry. It’s almost like art, and anger is the flavor, the expression. Wolfe’s best works always had some sort of emotion put into them—tragedy, pathos, terror
—

“
Please don’t recount your greatest hits right now,” I said, and strolled back to the elevator, “unless you want me to go from angry to nauseous.” I pushed the button for the twenty-eighth floor and then hit the elevator’s close button.

Oh, of course. This reminds Wolfe, though, of a time in London, not long before he came to Minneapolis and met the Little Doll
—

“
Before I killed you, you mean?” I felt a self-satisfied smile creep on my face.

Killed the Wolfe, oh yes, the Little Doll did. But the Wolfe made a glorious show of it before he went, made many, many people go before him, made much art in the days before he went out
. There was a little smile in his voice, too, that I could hear in my head. The low sound of the elevator ascending was background noise for the maniac in my head telling me about his finest hour.
To go out after a full life of work such as that, well … it is all that Wolfe could have hoped for and more
.

The elevator dinged. “And here I thought that Wolfe would have aimed to keep living and keep killing,” I said acidly. “But no, all this time you were just looking for a way to leave a legacy of carnage that will only be dimly remembered given time.”

Little Doll teases, but Wolfe isn’t dead, not so long as the Little Doll remembers him, keeps him safe inside her
—

“
Ugh,” I said. “Enough.” I unbuttoned my coat and let it fall in the hallway. I pulled the H&K MP5K submachine gun that I wore on a strap across my midsection into my hand. It was the same weapon I had been trained with, and something that I’d pulled from Parks’ basement along with four pistols I had holstered on my hips and under my arms. “Time to kill a faerie.”

I paused outside the door of number 2883 for only as long as it took to check to make sure I had a bullet chambered. A moment later I kicked down the door with a crash and burst through. The smell of something spicy, like peanut noodles, hit me as I threw myself into the room. It was a kitchen and living room, barely lit, and all it took was a quick sweep with my eyes to see that the finely appointed but sparsely furnished space was empty. Bookshelves lined the wall to my left. I heard movement beyond a door in the middle of them and I ran for it, sweeping into a bedroom in time to see two figures in motion coming out of the bed. One was already on her feet, the other was going more slowly at half speed, struggling to get free of the sheets. I smiled predatorily as I raised my weapon at the target on the left side of the bed.

Eve Kappler was standing there, naked, her chiseled muscles and flawless skin making her look positively statuesque as she threw a hand up at me. I pulled the trigger and felt a three-shot burst echo through the room and lit the entire place in a flash of the muzzle. By the light of the flashes I saw the bullets impact, and her flat belly distended as the first shot hit her on the left side, the second in her ribcage under her left breast and the third presumably missed. The muzzle flash went off again as her net of light energy caught me, pulling my gun up and against my chest, causing me to pull the trigger again. Another three-shot burst went off, this time stitching the ceiling and walls as the net carried me back and slammed my back into the counter as the web knitted itself to the first surface it came across, the island in the center of the kitchen.

I felt my ribs break in my lower back as I hit, and the jolt caused me to fire again, the bullets shredding the light-based filaments of the net and forcing the barrel to poke out of where it had torn through the web that had me restrained. I tried to ignore the searing pain in my back; I was bent at an almost L-shaped angle backward, my lower torso and abdomen cemented to the kitchen island, the granite countertop anchoring part of my upper body where the net had caught me from just below the collarbone all the way to mid-thigh. I strained and felt it give at the weak point where the gun barrel had slid through, so I tried to force my weapon into the tear. I felt it rip a little at a time there but give very little on the hold it had around the rest of my body.

“
Well, well,” I heard a strained voice from the bedroom door. Eve staggered out, still nude, blood running down her side where I’d shot her. “It turns out the little kitten has some claws after all. I wouldn’t have predicted it, no matter what Winter said.” Her thick German accent was tinged with a rasp, and I suspected the shot I’d landed in her ribs had punched through her lung. She leaned against the frame, her hand holding tight and smearing the white trim with a bloody palm print as she used it to hold herself up. Red dripped down from the wound on her front; I was sure that my first shot had popped her in the kidney, and it pumped a little crimson out with each beat of her heart.

“
Not a kitten,” I said through gritted teeth and tried to angle the barrel toward her, standing in front of the open door. It was about twenty degrees off, I reckoned, and her webbing wasn’t tearing very quickly. I could almost feel it ripping strand by strand, but the glow told me there were thousands of strands, and it reminded me of the time I saw Kat slowly sawing through her old denim jeans with a pocket knife, trying to turn them into cutoffs. “And just as an aside, I’ve got a hell of a lot more than claws. I’ve got things you wish you had,” I said, stalling for time as she eased off the doorframe, the ambient light from the city skyline casting her still-naked body in stark relief. “I’ve guns. I’ve got bad attitude, and … um … clothing.”

“
I don’t need any of those things.” She said it with such self-assurance that I knew she wasn’t kidding.

“
Are you sure? You look like you could at least use a bra.”

“
You think you can shoot your way into my home, then talk your way out of it when things go badly for you?” Eve asked, taunting. I could see the blood that had been pumping out of the hole in her side was oozing more slowly. I looked closer and realized her skin was glowing; she had looked like she was stroking herself but she’d really been using her light webs to patch her own wounds. “I suspect Winter would like to talk to you. Though I’m inclined to make you hurt for a while before I bring you to him. And I think you’ll need to be declawed first, kitten.”

“
Winter wants to talk to me?” I kept sawing for all I was worth as Eve began to circle wide around me to the right, well out of the arc of my gun. “That’s good. I have a few choice things I’d love to say to him as well.”

“
Maybe you misunderstand,” Eve said, easing closer to me, leaning over me from the safe side to approach. The filaments ripped, and it felt like I had torn through into a weaker section of the web. My arm moved now as well, my right one, and I felt it under the net as it broke free and I regained some mobility. “He isn’t going to be interested in a single dull-witted thing you have to say,” she reached a hand up and condescendingly gave me a gentle pat on the cheek, “he’s going to talk, and you’ll listen.” She put her hand above my face, palm out, and I knew what she was going to do before she even started to do it. “But you’re unlikely to shut up, so I’ll just help him with that—”

With a last tug I felt my right hand tear free; the gun, unfortunately, did not follow, and before Eve could cover my mouth with her light web, I reached out and stabbed a finger into the bullet wound I’d left in her abdomen. She shrieked and doubled over, and I felt the strength of the webs loosen as she slapped a hand on my arm with enough force to break it had I been as slow as a normal human. I moved it in time and threw my forearm against her neck, pulling her around into a chokehold as I tried to get the rest of my body free, her back pressed against my front.

She bucked in pain, and I could tell the screaming agony I had caused in her abdomen was the only thing keeping her from throwing her head back hard enough to break my face. I tried to wrestle her struggling body with one arm while she fought me. When she dodged to my left, I tried to get my left hand up to the trigger of my submachine gun to put a few more holes in her, but it was still firmly anchored to the front grip by the light web.

She wrenched free with a gasp of pain and I lifted my booted foot and kicked her in the bare ass, sending her tumbling to the ground. As she landed, I felt the web that was pinning me to the island weaken further and I tore loose, watching the threads of light disintegrate as I ripped free and stood under my own power. I pulled the nearest convenient pistol to my dominant hand, the one on my right hip, and started shooting as I came up. Eve looked back in time to see me before I could fire and rolled to her left, her wings sprouting in the dark as she did so, though I couldn’t hear them flutter over the sound of the gunshots. I tracked along her path and hit her again as she came to her feet, a solid shot to the shoulder with a .45. She staggered, now halfway across the living room. I pumped another round into her back, hitting her low, between her spine and hip on her right side.

Her arms pinwheeled as she hit the glass windows on the far side of the living room. I advanced on her without fear now, her hands smearing bloody streaks on the glass as she used it to keep herself from falling. I shot her again, this time in the right thigh, and I saw the glass crack as the bullet traversed her body and went out the other side. She fell hard against the window, causing a spider web of cracks to spread from where the bullet had torn through it, and she forced herself to turn to face me. Blood oozed out of her mouth, down her pale chin, and I could see every single wound I had put in her, the agony writ on her expression. She clenched teeth outlined in blood as she lay there against the window, half-turned to face me.

“
Looks like … I was wrong … about you … “ she said, and a bubble of blood formed on her lips as she spoke. “You’re not … as weak as I thought you were. You always … hesitated before … at what needed to be done.”

I shot her again, this time through the left shoulder, and she screamed, though I couldn’t really hear it as the sound of the shot subsided. “I got over that after I shot Parks in the face a few times and drowned Clary.”

She took halting breaths, and I saw fear mixed with admiration creep over her face as the cracks in the window worsened as her weight was pushed against them. “You killed Clary? And Parks?” Her accent was thicker now, her words slurred. “I wouldn’t have thought … you could … “

“
You should leave the thinking to someone more capable of it,” I said, keeping my distance but shifting my aim. “But after my next shot that’s not gonna be a problem for you anymore.” I lined up the sights with her forehead. “Where is Old Man Winter?”

“
I … “ She choked on blood. It ran down her chin and fell over her chest, making for a grisly sight when coupled with the wounds elsewhere on her body. She looked worse than James Fries did after she had beat him into a pulp. “I … wouldn’t tell you. You’re going to kill me anyway.”

“
Yep,” I said. I adjusted my aim and shot her in the kneecap, causing her to squeal in pain. “But how much it hurts before I do is entirely your prerogative.”

“
Torture?” She said with something between a laugh and a cry. “I didn’t think you had the stomach for it.”

“
Times change,” I said. “Amazing how motivated I got to learn new skills after you and your best pals murdered my boyfriend.”

“
He never cared for you,” she said with a straight face. She looked me straight in the eyes with those cold blues of hers. “He was—”

“
I know what he was,” I said, and started to aim my gun again, this time at her other shoulder. “And I know what you and yours did. And I know what I’m going to do now. How much do you want to hurt before you die, Eve?”

She looked at me with a defiant gaze, holding her lip from quivering. “You can’t hurt me enough to make me tell you what you want to know.”

Kill her
, Wolfe suggested with some glee, out of nowhere,
she will never talk
.

I nodded slowly. “You’re probably right. Let’s just get this over, with, shall we?” I pointed the gun back to her head, watched the defiance slip from her face as I tightened my finger on the trigger—

Something hit me in the head, something heavy, and my aim was thrown off just enough. I fired, and saw the bullet go through Eve’s shoulder and shatter the glass behind her. The blond woman’s weight carried her out, and I saw her fall for only a moment before her wings shone in the light and caught her, and she fluttered off. I fired the rest of my magazine at her and felt something else hit me in the side of the head. It smarted, and I saw it as it fell out the window, a simple, leather-bound hardback book. I turned and aimed my pistol at the figure standing there before me.