06 - Vengeful by Robert J. Crane Page B

through a squeaking, protesting driver’s side door to get out. “But I’m okay.”
    “We’ve got trouble ahead,” Zollers said, tentatively getting out just behind me, rubbing his neck. “I’m getting … strange readings out of a couple of them.”
    “What kind of strange?” I asked, hanging near the destroyed vehicle rather than charging ahead like a maniac—or my usual self, maybe.
    “Like Clyde when he shifted forms. His mind wasn’t clear when he changed.” Zollers massaged his scalp; there was a small laceration at his hairline. “Looks like it’s not just his son that has his power.”
    “Anything else?” I asked.
    “Danger,” Zollers said. “They’re planning something.”
    “Any specifics?” Scott asked.
    “They’re at a distance, and the two people who aren’t shifted don’t know the plan,” Zollers said, shaking his head. “Sorry.”
    “Let me go ahead and clear the—” I started, and then a rifle shot rang out, shattering my mirror and grazing my arm. I ducked, instinctively and drew my pistol. Augustus fumbled as he did the same, the only other person actually carrying a gun.
    “That’s not good,” Scott said, hiding behind the open door of the SUV.
    “Gotta be careful,” I said, looking across two deflating airbags at him, “those aren’t bulletproof—”
    As if the shooter read my mind, another shot rang out and a spray of blood blew out of the side of Scott’s neck. I watched his eyes widen, and his jaw drop as he scrambled to claw at his injury. Crimson spurted out from between his clutching fingers, and I watched the strength start to fade from his eyes as his life’s blood ran down his fingers like water he couldn’t control.

23.

    Ma
    “Got one!” Junior crowed from the front of the house. Ma was moving around, smashing her way through the walls where she knew the support beams were, not cracking them all the way through, but enough to get the thing ready. It was messy work, dusty, and it gave the air a cast as motes got caught in beams of light, stirred by the air as she moved.
    “Good,” she said. A face full of drywall dust hit her as she ripped a steel hand out with a wood stud clutched between her fingers. She smashed it to splinters and tossed it behind her, moving down the wall and repeating the process. “When she comes at us, we ain’t gonna have much time, so you be ready to move.”
    Another gunshot rang out, and Junior cackled. “Got that bastard I already downed right in the back. She is gonna be pissed when he bleeds to death right in front of her!”
    Ma didn’t see it, but that didn’t bother her at all. “Come on after us, Sienna. Come and get you some good ol’ fashioned revenge.”

24.

    Sienna
    “Scott!” I screamed, but he slumped to the side and fell to the ground, out of my sight, the first victim of this raid that I had brought about. I felt sick, and I knew in my heart that I’d screwed up again. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. He’d left government service, had gone his own way into a profession where people weren’t waiting to kill him because he was trying to lay the law upon them. But he was here because of me, because I’d started thinking like I used to, remembering the “good old days” when I’d had a team backing my plays, back in the war.
    But this wasn’t the war.
    And I didn’t need a team anymore.
    Like Reed in the car explosion, these people were my vulnerability. They were my Achilles heel, and whoever was running things up in the Clary house knew it.
    “Go!” Zollers urged from behind me as another rifle shot rang out, spanging off the metal on Scott’s side of the car. “We’ll take care of him.”
    I didn’t need to be told twice. I zoomed into the air, out of view of whichever bastard Clary was taking potshots at us, up about fifty feet where I could spy down on the house without anyone being able to see me from inside. I hovered there like an avenging angel until I saw the muzzle