“So that’s how it is?” She stared at me in disbelief, then I watched the emotion dissolve into a cold fury. “All right.” She looked around and found the broadsword a few feet to her left and stooped down to pick it up, pointing the blade at me. “You know what this means, right?”
“You don’t point a blade at anything you don’t mean to have dead,” I said grimly.
She stared at me and I could feel the electricity between us as though the taser were firing from her eyes to mine. “So you haven’t forgotten.”
I stared down the blade at her. “I haven’t forgotten.”
She watched me as I rose to my feet, the sword never wavering. “Then it’s on you, what happens now,” she said. Before I could respond, she was in motion, her blade leaping at me. I parried, spinning to the side, surprising her and batting her weapon away. She came at me again and I dodged, riposting from the side and catching her with a glancing blow that elicited a grunt of surprise and pain. I took a step back, my blade still aimed at her, and I let a smile cross my lips. “Been practicing?” she asked.
“You don’t think I’ve just been sitting around watching TV and dating boys the last six months, do you?” I asked. I whipped the sword around to a defensive posture above my head in a flashy move that was crisp and beautiful and could have been pulled out of the katas she used to teach me.
A smile crossed her lips. “I suppose I sort of did.”
I darted forward with the sword, clashing with hers as she retreated from my onslaught. I hit my blade against hers, chipping metal from both, and hammered it again, causing her to flinch from the strength of my attack. “Then I guess that makes you kind of an idiot, doesn’t it?” I plunged the sword for the third attack, this time connecting hard with her hand, and she let out a cry of pain as her weapon flew out of reach and she bent at the waist, holding her injured hand.
I was prepared to halt my attack when she sprang at me over the distance of two feet, all that remained between us, and batted my sword aside, putting her hands against my face, pressing her bloody hands onto my cheeks as we both toppled over. I hit the mats and bounced, throwing my hands up in defense and against her face as I braced for it; the pain that I had inflicted upon others, the pain of the stronger succubus, my mother, beginning to take my soul. I fought against her, pushed at her, but she doggedly clung on and I moaned and squealed as I fought to get free.
I felt the press of her flesh on mine, of her touch against my cheek as she straddled me and pushed down. I reached up and wrapped my hands around hers, tugging on her wrists, trying to pull them free, but they didn’t budge. I waited for the pain to swarm me, overwhelm me the way I’d seen it take Wolfe, the way it had pulled at Gavrikov, ripping their souls free of their bodies, starting with a little jolt and building to a crescendo of agony that tore their very essence from their bodies and lodged it in my brain. I felt a slight stir in my skin as she clung tight, and I waited, still fighting, an agony building in my lungs more from the anticipation in my mind than the real pain in my body.
I watched her face, like it was a snapshot being shown to me, a moment frozen in time, and the cold fury broke over it as she grimaced, at first, then cried out in pain and tried to jerk her hands away. Mine were on hers, though, and I gripped her tight, felt the swirl begin in my mind as I overpowered her. I rose almost without realizing it as she fell back, trying to pull her hands away from mine. I held on, even as she started to scream, until finally she jerked once more and tugged free, staggering back onto the mats and landing on her backside as I stared down at her and she looked up at me. Her face was haggard, blue eyes fearful for the first time since I’d known her.
“So,” she said, recovering her frosty expression, “it’s you. You’re the more powerful.”
“You’re damned right I am.” I looked down at her, my expression now a cold fury not unlike hers. “Look at you. My whole life you tried to keep me under your control. You had to beat me down, cage me – to keep me from rising.” I looked at her with the ultimate disdain. “No more. I’m not a little girl anymore. And you…will…never…have power over me again. You will never tell me what to do again.”
I heard movement from the door and it creaked open as Scott and Kat slid in. Kat dropped to her knees by Zollers, her expression all concern. Reed was three steps behind them, and halted next to Scott as they stared at the sight of me standing over my mother, still on her knees. “Sienna,” Scott said, looking at the carnage, the three dead bodies and the fallen psychiatrist, “you okay?”
“Never better,” I said, still staring down my mother.
“You’ll regret this,” Mother said, looking up at me with flames in her eyes. “You’ll be sorry you stayed. There’s a storm coming, and it’s gonna sweep away the old order of metas. You, this place, you’re going to be sitting in a ruin, and when you look back on this moment, I want you to remember.” She stood as she said it, and looked me dead in the eye. “I did it all for your own good, and I tried to show you the way, but you didn’t listen.”
I stared back at her. “I’ve listened to you long enough. I’ll find my own way, through whatever storm comes.”
She shook her head, and in her eyes there was a cold satisfaction that bordered fear. “No you won’t. Not this one. I don’t care how strong you are; you’re not ready for this. You won’t be able to handle it alone.”
“She’s not alone,” Scott said from behind her, eliciting a glare from my mother. “She’s got us.”
“And who are you?” my mother asked with a scoffing amusement. “The M-Squad Junior League?”
“No,” Scott said. “Unlike you, we’re family.”
“Family,” my mother said with a derisive laugh. “You’re not family. That’s a word used by simpering losers to make themselves feel better about their pitiful relationships. You’re not family; you’re a bunch of puppets that Erich Winter has dancing in a pretty little row to whatever tune he’s playing.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but Erich Winter has trusted me with more truth in six months than you have in eighteen years.” I took a step closer to her. “And when push comes to shove – and if what you say is true, it will – I’d rather have these three at my side than you.” I stuck out my chin at her. “I’d rather be Sienna, the Directorate agent in charge of her own destiny, than the girl in the box, waiting for her mother to turn her loose someday.”
Mom took a step back, as though I’d hit her. “You’ll be sorry. I told you you’d make more mistakes, and this is one right now. Maybe the biggest you’ll ever make.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s the choice I made. See how I did that? If it looks funny, it’s because you’ve probably never seen me make one that wasn’t subject to your approval before.” I blinked at her. “Now get out of here, before I slap these handcuffs on you and give Old Man Winter an early Christmas present.”
She gave me one last look and turned, walking out unsteady, gaining strength as she hit her stride, passing Reed and Scott, then giving Kat only a glance as she walked on out the door.
Chapter 24
I sat in Old Man Winter’s office, across from the massive stone desk. I’d slept in my own bed the night before, after Zollers had confirmed to Ariadne that Mormont was the Omega spy. She’d looked oddly relieved, and she had admonished me to get some sleep with a look of mild concern that bordered on motherly, I thought. Or at least my vision of it.