What if.
There were too many what-ifs to waste time on any of them. Right now, he either had to find Nightmare or he had to find Nova.
He jogged down the exit steps and peered around to the back of the building. He saw nothing. Heard nothing.
Frowning, he turned back to the fun house. Was she still inside?
No sooner had he had this thought than his eye caught on the shadow of the fun house stretching across the ground, and the hooded figure standing at its peak.
Adrian’s eyes shifted upward.
Nightmare stared down at him, calmly posed at the edge of the pitched roof. Her hood was pulled down low over her face, and with the sun behind her she appeared almost like a shadow herself. She had a weapon in each hand—his own tranquilizer gun and a revolver.
She lifted the revolver.
Adrian glared and crouched, preparing to launch himself up toward the roof, when she fired—
And missed.
By … a lot.
The gunshot was still ringing in his ears when it was replaced with an amused chuckle. “I thought I trained you better than that, Nightmare.”
Adrian whirled around.
Directly across from the fun-house exit, perched on the stage of an old puppet theater, sat the Detonator.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
NIGHTMARE’S BULLET HAD NOT HIT the Detonator, but rather, had struck one of two drooping marionettes that hung inside the theater, marking it right between its eyes. Though Nightmare hadn’t hit either the Detonator or Adrian himself, he had a feeling she’d hit the exact target she’d been aiming for.
Whatever message she wanted to send, though, left him baffled.
“You have a lot of nerve showing your face here,” said Nightmare, her voice low and muffled behind the mask.
Adrian felt his forearms tingling, as if the tattoos themselves were preparing themselves for a fight, though he still found himself reaching for his marker—habitually or instinctively, he wasn’t sure. But when he lifted his gaze back to Nightmare, she appeared to be staring at the Detonator, not him.
“What?” said the Detonator, bobbing her crossed leg up and down. She wore the same outfit she had at the library, though Adrian saw that she had bandages wrapped around her upper arm where Nova had shot her as she tried to run. “I’m not allowed to stop and say hello to a dear friend?”
“You,” Nightmare said, with a growl in her tone, “cost me a valuable connection when you went after the Librarian, and all the goods he’d stockpiled. Do you know how much work I put in to trading with him? How long it took me to cultivate that relationship? All for nothing, thanks to you.”
Adrian took a step back, moving out of the path between them. When neither paid him any notice, he stepped back again, then again.
“Blame me all you want for your sorry misfortunes,” said the Detonator with a one-shouldered shrug. “But let’s not forget that you started this all when you decided to go after Captain Chromium. The head honcho himself. If you hadn’t been so careless, the Renegades wouldn’t be after us at all, now would they? They wouldn’t have gotten your gun. They wouldn’t have traced it back to the Librarian, and it would be business as usual, now wouldn’t it?”
“Except they didn’t attack us after the parade, did they? They took the Puppeteer and they let the rest of the Anarchists off the hook. It wasn’t until you got lazy and impatient—when you decided to take a risk you shouldn’t have. You know what I think?” Nightmare raised the gun again. “I think the Anarchists will be better off without you.”
She fired again and the Detonator cried out and fell backward off the lip of the small wooden stage, disappearing into the tiny theater.
Adrian dived behind a rotting canoe, a leftover, he assumed, from the tunnel of love.
Nightmare kept shooting, letting off four more bullets until the revolver clicked over, spent.
When Adrian lifted his head, he saw that the front of the wooden theater was peppered with holes and splintered wood. The marionettes were swaying on their strings and there was a splatter of something dark against the backdrop, but he couldn’t tell if it was blood or dirt.
Nightmare holstered her gun and leaped from the roof, landing cat-like on the ground where Adrian had stood moments before. She hesitated, staring at the theater. Adrian couldn’t see her face around the drape of the hood, but he sensed her waiting, bracing herself. His tranquilizer gun was still in her other hand.
Clenching his jaw, he uncapped his marker as quietly as he could and drew himself a new gun against the side of the canoe. It was a hasty drawing, made messy by years of dirt crusted onto the wood, but he was glad to be armed again when it was finished. He sketched out a handful of extra darts and stuffed them into his pocket.
He had just finished when he heard the melodic clunking of hollow wood. Looking up, he saw the Detonator pulling herself up, shoving the marionettes out of the way. She collapsed over the ledge of the theater booth. When she looked up, her face was contorted in pain, her eyes seething with fury.
She hauled herself up onto the ledge, then tumbled gracelessly down to the other side.
The entire front of her shirt was covered in blood. More was dripping down her midriff and coating the bands around her arms.
Her nostrils flared as she forced herself up onto shaky legs. She cursed, then spat into the dirt between her and Nightmare.
She stumbled forward. One shaky, plodding step.
Blue sparks began to crackle at her fingertips.
Nightmare shifted back, stepping up onto the bottom step of the fun house.
“Ace never should have taken you in,” said the Detonator. The sparks began to converge into something no bigger than a tennis ball at first, but growing fast. “You might have had potential once, but now? You’re nothing but a disappointment.”