She didn’t seem like she was around to save my ass from harm this time though, which was just as well for her health, cuz Rose didn’t seem like the type to tolerate lesser bitches in the pack.
“D’ye like it?” Rose asked, raising her arms to indicate the massive snowfield we were standing in the middle of. There were curving-topped mountains in the distance, but this little stretch of plain had been blanketed beautifully and perfectly. “I wanted you to feel a little at home, y’see. I know your native land is a bit like Scotland in this regard—the big snowfalls.”
“Gee,” I said, clinking my cuffs behind my back, “thanks. I appreciate the effort.” Pure snottiness. I wouldn’t let her think for a second she’d actually beaten me, even if she skinned me alive an inch at a time.
She shrugged lightly. “For someone with the power of a frost giant at their disposal, it’s an easy thing.” She floated a little closer. If I could get the meta cuffs around her neck and pull hard enough, I could take her head off. That’d put an end to her pretty swiftly.
“Uncuff her and leave us be, will ye?” Rose gestured to Fannon and Mr. Blonde. “It’s time for some real talk.” Her green eyes glittered, and she shot me a malicious and dazzling smile. “Some girl talk.”
They had me unlocked in a hot second, falling over themselves to execute her command. They were gone a second later, taking my best weapon with them. “Thanks for nothing, Fannon,” I called after him. He didn’t even acknowledge me, and when I looked at his eyes, they looked…
Blank.
I’d known Fannon a little bit. Probably the least well of nearly any of the associates at the agency. He was a lot of things—kind of a hippy, into being vegan and environmentally conscious…
Blank-eyed and empty? Not so much.
“You’ve got a lot of sick puppets,” I said, watching their retreating figures head back to the van. They got in, started it up, and began to pull away, leaving tire tracks in the snow as they crunched their way across the field.
“Excuse me?” Rose asked.
I turned back to her. “Uhh…sorry…I think I made a mistake. Sock…sock puppets, that’s it. You’ve got a lot of sock puppets.” I waved at the van driving off. “You’ve got your hand up a lot of asses, Rose.”
“I do have a certain way with people,” she said, absolutely straight-faced. “You could say…I know the secrets of their souls.” She drifted a little closer to me. “Like you, for instance.”
“You don’t know shit about me, Rose,” I said, looking sideways, pretending to be bored. I was actually hanging on her every word, hoping she’d give me a seed with which to destroy her, or get close enough that I could take a reasonable chance to choke her to death.
“You really hate me now, don’t you?” She drifted closer and closer, only a few feet away now, grinning madly. “Good. I’ve hated you all this time. Had to fake my way through it while I was hanging about with you.”
“You’re a wonderful actor,” I said. “I bought it. You’re a master at feigning sincerity.”
“That’s not me,” she said, still smirking. “That’s Hamilton. He’s classically trained. I just draw on him anytime I need his skills. He’s been in the theater since the days that Medea was performed live.”
“Blah blah blah,” I said, pissing on her little reminiscence. “What now?”
She cocked her head at me. “Now…you’re going to try and kill me, of course.”
That felt awfully on the nose. “Oh?” I asked. Of course I wanted to, but the fact that she’d just casually suggest it…
“See…” Rose said, drifting even a little closer, “what we have here, is a couple of succubi with a dispute over who’s the best. I don’t really care that I’m stronger than you—because I am. I don’t really care that I’m better than you—because I am. What I care about…is you knowing, in your heart, in the depths of your empty, soon-to-be-ripped out soul—” this she said with a rising ferocity “—that I own your arse—” and she darted in faster than my eye could track her and slapped me right on it, making me jump “—wholly and completely. You belong to me now, Sienna Nealon. You’re going to attack me so that I can show you—eliminate that little doubt, that hope that’s feeding your soul, the one that says, ‘Yeah, you can still beat her.’ we’re going to knock that right out of you, starting now.” And she smiled. “So…strap it on, lass, and let’s have a go. Give me everything you’ve got. I’ll even give you the first hit for free.”
I debated whether to do it or not to rise to her goad, but I’m me, and there was no way I was going to pass up a free hit against someone who’d caused me this much agony, especially when I judged that if I sat there passively, she’d eventually starting pounding on my ass anyway, and if I was going to take a beating, I at least wanted to deserve it.
So I slugged her in the face with a couple fingers sticking out in a point, not pulling the punch as I drove it right into her eye socket like an old pro. Her eyeball disappeared under my assault and Rose took the hit with a shock.
I didn’t stop there, either. I hooked my fingers into the cartilage behind her nose and I ripped it out as I yanked my hand back, following up by dragging her toward me and elbowing her in the other eye as hard as I could. A hit like that from a normal human would cause trauma; my strike caused so much overpressure that her other eyeball exploded and she was blinded, half her face hanging off.
Not wasting any time, I seized her by the hair, taking care not to spend much time touching her skin, and lifted her off the ground. I was going to drive the back of her head down into the point of my knee, shattering her skull and spilling her brains all over this pretty white snowfield she’d created. I had a grip on her by the small crater I’d created in her face and was yanking her down when, very suddenly, she slipped my grasp.
“Oh my,” she said, floating eerily back up into the air, blood racing down her pale chin and cheeks from the gaping places where I’d torn muscle, tissue and bone. Her eyeballs reappeared first as her skin knitted itself back together, and she rasped, “That’s not nice, Little Doll.” And her green eyes sparkled as she was left looking almost as flawless as before, save for a few streaks of blood.
Something about the way she said it almost knocked the knees from beneath me. It was pure Wolfe, speaking through her. She’d just used his powers to perfectly heal from my assault in a matter of seconds, which meant…
He was with her now. Really, truly with her, doing her bidding and repairing her face from my near-lethal assault.
I swung at her again, coming at her with a series of punches and attacks designed to showcase my martial arts expertise. She fought back, flawlessly, her form perfect, her speed and dexterity miles beyond my own—
And she finished me with a perfect counter that swept aside my punch, turning me around, and landing a shattering blow against the small of my back.
My legs went out, numb and as good as dead. My face hit snow, cold and bitter, and my chest followed. The landing drove the breath out of me; she’d broken my spine, I could tell from the way I couldn’t move anything below the waist. I tried to push up—
“Now, now.” She landed heavily on my back, putting a knee right between my shoulder blades and then dragging me over. She was still smiling. “If you get too out of control, I’ll break your spine just below the neck, really give you something to heal over, aye? I want to talk now—”
“I’ve got nothing else to say,” I almost spat.
“Good, because I’m the one who’s talking,” she said, putting a hand over my mouth for a second and mashing my lips so that one of them split open. She did it so casually that I almost believed she was simply too strong to fully appreciate how easily she could hurt me. “So zip it.”
She settled, staring right down at me. “You know why I hate you? Did the Englishman tell you?”