I processed that. “Look…that sucks for her and all, but…why is she so pissed at me? I didn’t kill her family, and I didn’t really like the people who did.”
“It would be difficult for me to speak to her motivations without seeing inside her mind,” Wexford said, pacing back and forth in front of the bed crisply, with lordly precision. “All we can say for sure is that she is indeed, for some reason, quite obsessed with you, and has…done a number, I think you call it, on your abilities and your…person.” He seemed to wince at the sight of me. Having now seen myself in the mirror, I couldn’t blame him.
“Nice way of saying she’s ripped me eight new ones,” I said, falling back on the bed. Here with Wexford, I felt oddly safe again. Maybe it was his mind control working, but I didn’t think so. There was something about human conversation that was a pleasant lubricant to the spirit after a hard series of mental hurdles. I’d been on the run for months, but Rose had upped the game on me, and damn if it wasn’t taking a toll. I wanted to sleep again, but I fought off that instinct easily, sitting back up. “And you had no idea what she was doing up in Edinburgh before I went up there?”
“Indeed not,” Wexford said, turning to look at me. “If it’s as you see it in your mind—that she has ‘taken the city,’ nearly—then this comes as quite the surprise to Her Majesty’s government. I am the only telepath that I know of in the government, and while we always have a decent traffic of officials coming back and forth from Edinburgh, they would hardly notice…whatever it is you’ve noticed.”
“I’ve noticed mobs chasing my ass through the streets,” I said. “Fearless, angry, seemingly controlled by other sources. Meta sources, presumably. Rose, if she’s behind all the stuff I’ve seen…” I shook my head. “Your country lost a pretty decent amount of citizens to her.”
Wexford’s face fell, and I could tell he was feeling it. “Indeed…” he said softly. “It seems we’ve missed one of the tragedies of our time as it happened upon our very soil.”
“You really did,” I said, let my head sag as I stared at the patterned carpet, which had an older look to it. “How did you find me, by the by?”
Wexford almost smiled. “For one with direct access to most levels of government, it isn’t terribly hard. This whole island brims with security cameras, after all.”
“Mm,” I said, then frowned. “Hey, how high a level would you have to be to see—”
The door to the room blew open, shattering as it flew out of the frame. I ducked my head instinctively, rolling off the bed as a spray of wooden shrapnel blew overhead and the door shot into the room, launched like it had been blown out of a cannon. I didn’t see Wexford, since I was trying as hard as I could to mush my face to the carpeting, but as soon as I was down I immediately sprang up again, pushing to my feet in time to see—
Wexford had taken the door head-on as it had flown into the room. It had split him almost in two, and his eyes stared dully at the ceiling, the wreckage of his body leaving me in no doubt…
He was dead.
“Ye did miss one of the greatest tragedies of our time,” Rose spat as she hovered her way into the room, hair floating and her face blazing red, “you great ruddy idiot. You and the whole government missed it, with your heads up your arses in London. You missed the slaughter of a whole people, nearly, your own people—you didn’t give a fig, hiding in your country estates—” She practically spat at Wexford’s corpse, which lay still and silent on the ground beneath her as she hovered in.
I was frozen in place, Rose looking darkly at him, and then she swiveled to look at me. “And you,” she said, bleeding that malevolent loathing out in my direction now, “you…you were as responsible as they were for it, you and your high and mighty self…”
Without a thought, I turned and sprinted for the window, hurling myself through the glass at high speed, thinking only one thing—
Run.
36.
Reed
“Oh, hell,” I muttered as I mentally assessed the situation.
Veronika and Chase were captured.
Colin was out in York.
A plethora of gunmen were creeping up to our airplane.
And Sienna, who we’d come here to rescue, was nowhere in sight.
“Uhh, Reed?” Scott asked, nudging me out of my short mental break from reality. I wasn’t quite screaming in my own head, but close. This was a real damnation of a situation.
“Augustus,” I said, “blow up the tarmac at their feet. Non-lethally. They look like cops to me.”
“I can do that,” Augustus said, stirring out of his own open-mouthed surprise at our situation, “but then we’re not going to be able to roll to the runway.”
“One massive problem at a time, okay?” I turned my attention to Jamal. “I need eyes on Veronika and Chase.”
“Got ‘em,” Jamal said, and his screen flipped to an interior view of an office. There was a firing squad vibe to what we were seeing, Veronika and Chase standing there with their hands over their heads, guys with lots of guns pointing at the two of them. The only other things in frame were a desk next to the window and a potted plant.
Veronika was staring right at the camera, probably because she could hear me and knew we were watching. “Anytime, boss.” She didn’t even say “boss” sarcastically.
“Let me—” I started to say.
“I got this,” a soft voice said from behind me, and I glanced back to see Kat, her sleep mask up on her forehead.
“You—how?” Augustus asked.
Kat just pointed at the plant.
“That’s like a baby ficus,” Augustus said.
“You worry about your concrete and let me deal with this, okay?” Kat said, patting him on the shoulder. Then she closed her eyes.
There was no sound on the camera, but I could hear a loud CRACK! in my earpiece, corresponding to what was going on in the room where Veronika and Chase were being held. On the screen, we had a grainy view of the potted plant just shattering as every gunman in the room turned to look.
“Did you just—” Augustus said.
“Tarmac,” Kat said, concentrating. “Also—I ammmm GROOOOOT!”
The damned plant leapt out of the wreckage of the pot and attacked the nearest black-garbed tactical guy. It caught him full in the face and he ripped off a few rounds in the air out of sheer surprise. The plant seemed to stretch, limbs reaching out and grabbing the next nearest team member, dragging the two of them closer and smashing their heads together with a THUNK! so loud I heard it over the headset.
Veronika and Chase sprang into action on the screen, and I buried my instinct to say, “NON-LETHAL!” because what the hell was the point? Chase shot her lightsaber power out of her sleeve and cut the guns out of three of the twelve SWAT guys’ hands while Veronika fired plasma bursts at three more, rendering their weapons inoperable.
That still left four more, counting the two that Kat had, uh…treed? Bushed? I wasn’t sure what to call it.
Two of the remaining team members were all over the shrub-related incident that was afflicting their team members. The damned plant grabbed the guns out of their hands with vine extensions, and then whipped at them with the gun butts. Here they were, SWAT-looking guys in full black tactical gear, and a potted plant was strangling two of their number, had disarmed two more and was now smacking them in the helmets with their own weapons.
I could hear the chaos in the office. It was a hell of a thing.
“Augustus, you standing by?” I asked, trying to make sure the next thing I needed done was going to get done in time.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Augustus said, eyes closed. I guessed he was gripping at the tiny pieces of stone and rock in the tarmac, which—I was just guessing based on how my control of the winds went—was not the easiest of things.
“Colin,” I said, “I need you to find Sienna and get her the hell back here.” I waited a second. “Colin.” Scott looked right at me, concern rolling down his face like a falling curtain. “Fannon, report in.”
“That’s worrying,” Scott said.