If Bjorn’s power could be called a psychic assault, akin to someone jumping into your mind and pummeling you with your fears, this could only be described as a psychic blitzkrieg, the entire Nazi army plowing through my brain and leaving nothing but trammelled dirt and wrecked villages behind. I screamed and dropped the chairs, heard one make a satisfying sizzling as it ran over him, and I staggered back and fell off the curb.
This was worse than any hangover I’d ever felt, worse than taking a direct hit from a Thor type when they were standing in a field during a lightning storm. Scenes from my past flashed in front of my eyes, and they were like a montage of Sienna Nealon’s absolute worst hits—the murders I’d committed, the people I’d screwed over, the accusing faces of those whose lives I’d upended by my action or inaction.
I saw Ariadne, and somehow she remembered me, and all the crap I’d brought down on her.
Then there was Reed, looking pathetic in a hospital bed, tubes threading out of him, the guilt-inducing sound of a life support machine beeping in the background.
And finally … there were my souls, surrounding me in silent judgment.
Wolfe. Gavrikov. Bjorn. Zack. Kappler. Bastian. Harmon.
Their forces were distorted, but their expressions were unmistakable.
I’d failed them.
And they were letting me know.
“No!” I shouted, coming back to myself as I landed in the slush in the middle of the street. Cold water soaked through my clothing, and it was like a shock that brought me back to myself. I wanted a drink of scotch more than I’d wanted anything in my life to this point. I wanted it now, I wanted it quick, I wanted to cut my wrist wide and shove the bottle right into my veins so this sick, uneasy feeling I’d been running from for months, this sense that I’d—I’d lost something, that I sucked, that I was the worst person in the entirety of the world, that I was weak and pathetic and horrible—I wanted it gone, I wanted to be in blissful stupor, and—
My face lay against the rough pavement of 6th Avenue, my fingers cold in the melted ice that this bastard, this … this fight seeking, this danger hunting … this Predator had left behind. The chill was seeping in, Minnesota winter come back to get me. I’d been warmed by his flames, distracted by the horror of what he’d done in my mind.
I remembered Veronika, when we’d first met, saying that she’d conditioned herself with an ex to resist the power of the Odin mental attack. How I wished I’d been able to do that now.
“Why do you just lie there?” the Predator slurred. I turned and saw him floating, his shoulder at a funny angle. “Why do you not shrug off my Odin attack?”
“Because no one’s ever hit me with it like that before,” I said, rising to my feet. “Either that power has been enhanced or you’ve been living a thousand years and working with it.”
He looked frozen in place, caught in headlights, me about to run him down. Unlikely, since the mind assault had frozen my entire body, and I was just shaking out of the paralysis. “I have not lived a thousand years,” he said stiffly, answering that question.
“Then why are you so good with fire?” I asked. I was starting to get a feeling this guy was no incubus.
He flared for a second, and then rushed at me, streaming flame. I was forced to dodge back, to go low, and he shot inches over my head. His black eyes passed me, and even covered in the fire, I could see the curiosity.
My bluff was about to be called. If I’d still had my Gavrikov powers, I would have taken his charge head on, and we would have gone flame to flame.
Instead … I’d dodged out of his way. And I’d already faltered under a mental assault that an Odin type should have theoretically been prepared for, at least in general if maybe not in scope.
I rolled back to my feet, a little slowly because of the stiffness, and he paused as he came around. He threw a burst of flame at me, one I should have been able to absorb, then another, then another.
I dodged them. Because there was nothing else I could do.
The shiny lens of the news camera caught it all, blocks away, over his shoulder, and I knew that now … the world was drawing its own conclusions.
Now … the whole world knew.
They knew I was powerless.
Weak.
“What are you doing?” Predator leaned toward me, throwing more fire. I dodged, rolled, sidestepped, and he upped the tempo. I moved, ducked, flipped, and spun out of the way of successive shots, no time to grab something and hurl it toward him for a counterattack. “What is wrong with you?”
“I could ask the same of you, really,” I said, my breaths becoming ragged from all the rapid movement. “I mean, really, who goes looking for fights? What are you, Tyler Durden? Are you a figment of my imagination?”
“This cannot be.” He stopped throwing flames. “You … are not her?”
I paused, ready. “Oh, I’m her. Or as her as you’re going to get these days.”
He just stared at me, almost crestfallen, like he was another person I’d hit with crushing disappointment. “You have none of her powers.”
“You think so?” I stared him down. “Drop the flames, come over here and hold my hand for a bit. See if I’m missing that power.”
“You are … weak.” It was a sick sounding declaration, like a gunshot in the street.
“Fuck you,” I said and turned, reaching the corner in a second. I grabbed hold of the light pole in front of Oceanaire and ripped it out of the ground as he stood there, stunned. I tugged it carefully, working to not tear the electrical wiring as I pulled it free of the street. Then I put it on my shoulder, holding the pole like a massive baseball bat. “Come here and say that to my face, you son of a bitch.”
He raised a hand to shoot flame, but I brought my improvised bat down on him like he was a Whack-a-mole. It hit, hammering him, melting as it did so. He let out a little cry of pain as the molten metal dripped through the fire shield, and I dragged it forward, taking care to keep the structural integrity of the wires that had powered it connected—at least for now.
I smashed him over the head with the melting pole a few more times before he got irate enough to do something about it. And the something he did about it was a billowing cloud of fire that forced me to go sideways and ripped my electrical wires out, severing the power pole from the ground.
There went one plan, unfortunately. And it was a good one, too. Zap zap.