He was plucked off the floor and caught in a bear hug from behind. He thrashed his legs and snapped his head back, but the Blackfoot ace was a canny enough grappler to keep her face away from his attempts to pulp it with the back of his skull.
Tom knew he was stronger than she was. He could’ve broken free. If he hadn’t already been weakened by all the battering and bleeding. It was all he could do to keep from passing out from the pain her embrace caused to his seared and busted body.
Through agony-slitted eyes he saw the flying Frog aim his hand again. He phased out. Wilma Mankiller bellowed in surprise as the tricolored beam hit her.
Almost at once Tom rematerialized. Going insubstantial took more out of him than any other power. He dropped to his knees and was instantly bowled over as Burrowing Owl erupted through the floor beneath him again.
In midair Tom flung out an arm. White light lanced from his palm. The beam transfixed the flying man’s torso. He dropped straight down smoldering without making a sound.
Other aces were all around him, crowding in, pummeling him, but they couldn’t use beam weapons for fear of toasting each other the way Tricolor had toasted Mankiller. But they hurt him. He felt his left arm break. Something else lanced through his guts from behind, almost buckling his knees. He lashed out in all directions. He managed to knock down a guy who looked like he was made of some transparent semiliquid crystal but felt like metal, won free of the scrum, if not the fucking hateful bugs.
Something wrapped itself around his waist. It clung as if covered with glue. He felt himself yanked off his feet, saw he was being pulled toward a car-sized toad squatting to one side of the melee. “Oh, fuck me,” he moaned. He had no choice but to go insubstantial again. The bulbous eyes seemed to bulge more than usual as his captive passed clean through him. Tom stopped behind Toad Man, spun, grabbed him by a hind leg. Then a flashbulb went off in Tom’s skull. White dazzle filled his eyes as migraine pain blasted his brain.
Snowblind. He’d never experienced her power firsthand but he knew what it did. The blindness would last for minutes; if he stayed here he was well and truly fucked.
But the pain also shocked enough adrenaline into his system for one final surge of super strength. He flung Toad Man up at the pyramidal roof. Then he launched himself in normal flight, steering toward the crash.
Agony bathed his legs as some sort of energy beam brushed them. For a split second he expected to implode his skull on an intact strut. At this point he could give a fuck. Instead he felt cold high-altitude air on his face, smelled diesel fumes and fireplaces. He was clear.
With no perceptible interval he was in orbit, feeling vacuum tugging at his skin and the cold of space sucking warmth from his bones.
But alive. And free.
For now.
Ellen was kneeling at Lohengrin’s side. She was naked, except for the cameo at her neck. Bugsy was naked. The Louvre was really a hilariously stupid place to be hanging around naked.
The sirens were all around. Men and women in paramedic’s uniforms. Police. At least one SWAT team.
Bugsy knelt beside Ellen. “M’okay,” he said.
“You’re not,” she said.
The gurneys were coming out. Garou’s body covered in a blanket, blood soaking through the cloth. Snowblind was on her feet, but only with the assistance of two medics. She was crying. Buford was walking around, apparently unhurt, but with a stunned expression. Burrowing Owl was dead, too. And there, along the wall, a dozen nat soldiers and security men. And as many of the PPA’s Leopard Men. All of them incapacitated or dead.
Bugsy coughed. His lungs felt fragile. His body felt too thin, like if you held him up to a flashlight, his bones would show. He’d never lost that many wasps at once. He wasn’t sure he could. “Klaus,” he said. “You okay?” Lohengrin did not answer. He turned to Cameo. “He’s going to be okay, right?”
Ellen’s face was the answer. He wouldn’t be okay. Nothing would. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“I need clothes.”
“I’ll find you some,” she said. “Come on. Give me your arm.”
She found him a security jumpsuit, black and slick but warm. Bugsy let her dress him, let her put her arm under his. Together, they walked slowly back to their hotel, just a couple of blocks away.
“Aliyah?” Bugsy said as they reached the revolving glass door.
“She’s fine. I put the earring away.”
“Okay.”
“I need you to walk a little farther.”
“I’m on it,” Bugsy said, but it took a long moment to get his legs to move.
Back in the room, he collapsed on the bed. The mattress sighed under him. Ellen sat on the little love seat, sipping coffee and looking bleak.
“My fault,” Bugsy said to the ceiling as much as to Ellen. “My fucking fault.”
“You didn’t kill anyone,” she said.
“I pissed him off. My bullshit crap about Bahir and Noel Matthews. If I had just…”
“If you just hadn’t made him angry?” Ellen said. Her voice was soft and sad and amused. It was a voice that knew too much about loss and death and pain. “How many women in the shelter say the same thing, Bugs? It wasn’t you. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you said the wrong thing.”
“I’m always saying the wrong thing.”
“Well, yes, but that’s why we love you,” she said. It didn’t occur to him to ask who we was in this context until later, and by then he was too tired to speak. He heard the shower running. The bed shifted as Ellen climbed in, her arm across his chest, her legs pressing against his.
“I don’t think I can…” Bugsy said. “I mean, you’re beautiful but I’m just kind of…”
“Go to sleep,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Bugsy said. “Okay.”
He dreamed about fire.
Noel Matthews’s Apartment
Manhattan, New York
She was dozing on the couch with a crocheted comforter covering her. The pop of displaced air as Noel teleported into the flat didn’t disturb her. A book had fallen from sleep-slack fingers and lay on the floor beside the couch. The tail was thrown over the back of the sofa like the body of a heavy python. For an instant it felt almost like a fist had closed on his heart. Noel pressed a hand to his chest, and felt Lilith’s breasts flatten. Nothing must happen to her.
He allowed the muscles and bones to shift, restoring him to his natural form, then knelt down at the side of the couch. Niobe’s lashes trembled on her cheeks, and a small murmur passed her lips. Noel bent even closer to see if he could hear, but it was just a breath of sound.
The skin of her cheek was soft against his lips, and she smelled like Shalimar. He loved the oriental quality of that perfume. She stirred and mumbled.
“My heart,” Noel whispered.
“Oh, it’s you. You’re home,” and her arms snaked around his neck.
“Dearest, I’m here to take you”-he hesitated, remembering her fury in Vienna when he’d tried to lie and hide from her-“someplace safe.”
Niobe sat up. “Safe? What’s happened?”
“Weathers knows that Noel Matthews is Bahir and Lilith.”
She kicked away the comforter. “We can go back to the island. We were safe there.”
Noel shook his head. “No, I’m going to take you to Drake. He can protect you.”
“He could protect us both.”
“Weathers would come after me. A lot of people will get hurt in the cross fire. Maybe even you. I’ll play the merry fox to his hound while I-” He broke off abruptly.
“While you what?” Suspicion sharpened Niobe’s words. “Will people die?”
“Hopefully very few.”
“Weathers?”
“Probably. Hopefully. He seems like a man who holds a grudge.” Noel forced a smile.
“And then it’s over, right? Forever.” She folded her arms protectively over her stomach. Noel nodded. “Promise!”