He clenched a fist in frustration, and it began glowing a dull red. They want me to fire blind. They want to tire me out.
Another bullet tore through the drywall nearby, only narrowly missing his glowing fist. He shoved his hand into a vest pocket as he pulled Ava along with him. They had to keep moving.
"If anybody's a 'walking bull's-eye' around here, Rath, it's you," Ava said, looking at his hand, whose glow was still slightly visible, even through the leather vest.
"Shut up," Rath said, though he knew she was right. He continued hustling her along, hoping they'd come upon a door or a window soon. "You seen Lonnie? “
Ava laughed bitterly. "Let's hope she's not cutting a deal of her own right now with those nice people shooting at us. It's happened before, you know. “
A familiar voice cut through the intermittent staccato of gunfire. "All right! Hold your fire! I'm gonna give you what you want! “
Rath recognized the voice immediately, despite the creepy echo that the huge, darkened warehouse imparted to it.
Lonnie.
"1 knew it," Ava whispered. "She's gonna sell us out to the freaks. “
"Shut it," Rath said. "Lonnie has a plan. “
"Come on out where we can see you, Vilandra," came the response, a harsh, gravel-coated voice, speaking in perfectly inflected High Antarian. "You can't hope to stand against us all. “
Rath saw shadowy forms moving ahead of him. He wondered if dawn was already breaking, or maybe his eyes were simply adapting to the darkness. With no way to tell the exact time, he hoped for the latter.
Then another shape began to move. It was bathed in a faint glow that the freaks surely had to be able to see.
Lonnie.
At that moment, Lonnie spoke inside his mind, using the lover's bond they shared as a communication channel. Rath, can you hear me? Rath scowled. Her mental voice was faint, as though something were interfering with her thoughtcast. What's wrong, Lonnie? I haven't heard anything blow up yet, and our "friends" are still here and hostile.
They've protected their machines from our powers somehow, Lonnie thought to him.
Rath felt despair engulf him, threatening to drown him like that time the riptide had nearly killed him off the Jersey Shore. Great, Lonnie. If we can't blow up their machine, we can't send these guys back to whatever planet they came from. And they're gonna kill us.
No, Lonnie thought back at him. He felt an almost playful undercurrent in her psionic "voice." I found a boiler room in the basement. They've got an oil furnace down there. These guys didn't bother to protect that. It might take a few minutes, but it's gonna go boom really soon.
Rath grinned, imagining valves being turned and flash-welded temperatures cranking up and up, fuel tanks igniting. That's my girl, he thought. Mass destruction and fireworks, the old-fashioned way.
Buy us some time, Rath. I can't see them with my eyes yet, but I can feel 'em moving toward me.
Lonnie came to a stop a short distance away, her body still glowing with focused, barely contained power. Rath could hear weapons cocking in the darkness, instruments sounding metallic notes that echoed back and forth across the cavernous space.
"I can give you Rath and Ava," Lonnie said aloud, her voice projecting far and wide. "But not if you shoot me. “
"I knew it," Ava muttered. Crouched beside Rath behind one of the shelving racks, she started to rise.
Rath restrained her with a hand to the shoulder. "No. We wait. “
Ava tensed, forming a psionic connection of her own with Rath, just as she had done with them all so many years before, after the Royal Four had first emerged from the gestation pods. All at once, Rath could see into Ava's mind, as well as the images Lonnie was sending him.
Rath felt as if he were suddenly floating invisibly near the warehouse's high ceiling, and from this vantage he could mentally "see" each of the armed men and women… all of them apparently malnourished drug addicts or other assorted street people… who had surrounded them.
Touch Ava, Lonnie said inside Rath's mind. Let her see what I'm showing you.
Already done, sweetcheeks, Rath answered silently, grinning in the darkness. There were exactly fourteen of the freaks, and as of this moment he knew exactly where they were standing. He knew that Ava did as well.
To Ava, he thought, How many freakazoid brains can you jry at once? Answering inside his mind, Ava seemed ashamed of her earlier distrust of Lonnie. I guess we're about to find out, General. Through the hand he'd placed on Ava's shoulder, Rath felt her body tense as the alien power gathered and built within her.
"So do I have a cease-fire, or what?" Lonnie said, speaking to the darkness, where the armed street people stood in tense silence.
The rough-voiced man who had called out to her earlier answered: "Your 'queen' is trying to pierce our mental defenses. Given that, it seems a truce would be a spectacularly bad idea. “
Oh, crap, Ava thought to Rath. Their machines aren't the only things they've built shields around.
Thanks to Lonnie, Rath could "see" the man in the dark as he strode forward and raised his weapon in Lonnie's direction. Rath released his grip on Ava's shoulder and felt the three-way thoughtlink collapse. Now the universe contained only himself, Lonnie, and the freak who was trying to kill her.
Swept along on a wave of fear and rage, Rath lifted his hands. The power surged and churned within him for a split second before he released it.
The gravel-voiced man with the gun blew apart into countless pieces.
"Move!" Rath shouted at Ava, already on the run. He could hear a fusillade of gunfire as it tore up the space where he had been moments before.
Rath looked toward Lonnie, who still stood in the center of it all, glowing in fury, her arms extended like those of an angry goddess. By some miracle, none of the freaks had managed to shoot her. Then he saw how her image wavered and rippled, like a mirage they'd seen a couple years back after they'd stolen that yuppie's car and headed out to Roswell.
Shields up, he thought, suddenly realizing that his lover could do a pretty convincing impression of her dead brother's powers.
The first rays of the sun were slicing through the skylights, and Rath saw Ava dive for cover as a pair of armed thugs… strung-out junkies, from the look of them, all bone and gristle… chased her. He raised his hands and released twin flashes of energy, pushing the two men swiftly backward and impaling them both on a nearby metal rack.
Ava looked horrified. "We don't have to kill them, Rath. They're possessed. They're not responsible. “
But Rath knew he didn't have time to make distinctions between the hostile aliens and their innocent hosts. These bodies were carrying lethal weapons, aimed at him and the girls.
"Let the old gods of Antar sort 'em out," Rath said as a red haze swept across his vision while he and Lonnie went to work in earnest.
Rath wasn't certain how long the battle lasted; time seemed simultaneously to speed up and slow down during the fighting. He realized it hadn't gone quickly when he noticed the bright daylight streaming in through the broken windows. He looked straight up and saw the bright cerulean blue that lay beyond the shattered skylights.
He surveyed the now well-illuminated room, which was strewn with upended shelves, wrecked masonry, and lifeless bodies. He saw Ava, standing in goggle-eyed silence. Only then did he realize that his powers felt spent and that he was holding a blood-spattered metal bar. An equally gruesome body lay at his feet.
In an oddly debris-free spot near the center of the warehouse, Lonnie sat on the floor, looking as dazed and exhausted as he felt. Rath suddenly realized that he was looking at what could only be described as ground zero of the battle they had just fought. She's not used to going up against a whole homeless infantry battalion, he thought, running toward Lonnie. None of us is.