“Umm.” I tried to focus on the panel, tuning out her prattle, ignoring the fact that she sounded almost offended. “I don’t know what to tell you. I have a job to do, and it’s pretty serious—”
She grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, causing my head to wobble, as she slammed my back against the railing. “Hey, kid! Wake the hell up!” She slapped me for good measure, not hard, but enough that I felt it and it pissed me off. I stared back at her, at the intensity in her eyes as she glared at me. “We’re at the top of the food chain, darling. Ain’t nobody can stop us: not Omega, not the Directorate, nobody. Women want to look like us and men want to grind up against us. You can have anything you want, take what you want, and nobody can stop you, and you’re killing time with these white hat Directorate wankers.” She let out a sigh of disgust. “Stop wasting your time doing all this crap when you could be having fun.”
She slackened her grip on me and started to back off, but I grasped the watch on her wrist and held it tight in front of her. “Ow! What are you doing?”
“What happened to the man who had this on last night?” I twisted her arm to put it right in front of her face. “Where is he now?”
“Who cares?” She said, ripping it out of my grasp. “They’re all interchangeable, men. They only last a very short time,” she got a wicked grin that I found damned unsettling, “so you have to use them wisely – and I do mean use . I keep looking for a man who can last longer, but even he couldn’t—” She waved at James. “Though obviously for different reasons, in his case.”
I felt a pit of disgust in my stomach. “You’re like…you’re a serial killer.”
“You’re so immature.” She made a noise of disgust, waving her hand as though she were dismissing me. “We’re succubi, Sienna; draining men’s souls is what we do. They’re there for us; it’s why we have the thrall, the dreamwalking, all of it. The world of men is our cup: we’re supposed to drink it, and you’re afraid to even take a sip.” Her face twisted into a humorless smile. “Just like your mom.” Her dark hair fell around her shoulders, framing her face in a different light than I’d seen before; she looked almost cronelike, emaciated. “Well, I’ll drink enough for all three of us, I don’t care. I’m not scared. I’m ready for all of it.”
I leaned on the railing for support, trying to edge away from her. “Why?”
“You know. Haven’t you ever felt the rush?” She looked at me in disbelief. “I know you’ve taken souls; haven’t you felt it? When you take them, how they scream and rattle in your head at first, how it spins you around? It’s the greatest high you’ll ever feel, trust me, way better than anything else. I mean, I know it’s tough the first few times, like losing your virginity, but it gets so good, so powerful, it feels so right.” She let out a little sigh and had her eyes closed. “You have no idea.” Her eyes opened and she focused on me.
“I don’t want to have any idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’m not a murderer.”
“Don’t play games with me,” Charlie said, a smile on her lips. “I know you’ve killed.”
“Twice,” I said. “Once to save my own life with Wolfe and once to save the city of Minneapolis from Gavrikov.”
“Oh, right.” She pirouetted and sent me a mischievous glance. “Why would you bother doing a thing like that?”
“Because I owed them,” I said, trying to catch my breath and push the pain away. “Because it was the right thing to do. I don’t kill in cold blood. I might not even have killed Wolfe, but I was so afraid of him I couldn’t let him go.”
“And what about the other guy? The one you sent for a long fall off the IDS tower?”
“That wasn’t me.” I grabbed a segment of rail in my hand, wondering if I had the strength to rip it loose and use it as a weapon like James had. I looked around for my knife, but it was far behind Charlie; she’d kill me long before I reached it. “That was Wolfe.”
“You’re weak,” she said, spitting the words at me in disgust. “You’re supposed to control them. They’re your souls, your puppets, but you can’t even keep what you’ve got in line. No wonder you can’t bring yourself to do what’s fun, what you should be doing. You’re pathetic.” She kicked out faster than I could have anticipated and knocked my legs out from under me, sending me to my back. I looked up and saw her face, nothing like the easygoing Charlie I’d seen; her eyes were wide, her mouth twisted in cold disdain. I felt a deep, powerful dose of fear as she said, “You’re nothing like me.”
“Thank God for that.” The voice came from behind her, strong, fearless, and I saw Charlie’s eyes widen in fright, her expression chilled as she turned to face the new threat, a woman standing at the edge of the platform, staring her down. Her dark hair was long, but pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore a simple t-shirt and jeans that had some dirt on them, as though she had been crawling around on the ground. “Get away from her, Charlie, or so help me I will crush the very life from your body the way I should have years and years ago.”
I felt a swell of emotion deep inside at the sight of her, something I didn’t even know I still had in me. Little tears sprang up in the corners of my eyes and I blinked them away, blinked again to be sure what I was seeing was true. It was. She was there. I opened my mouth, and amazingly, a single word fell out.
“Mom?”
Chapter 21
She attacked Charlie without warning, reminding me of a thousand sparring sessions in the basement. My aunt staggered back under the fury of my mother’s assault, kicks and punches blurring through the space between them so fast I couldn’t count. I saw Mom jump-kick and catch Charlie underneath the chin, sending her reeling, and followed it up with a flurry of punches that brought my aunt to her knees.
“Wait…” Charlie gasped. “Sierra, wait…” My mother stood above her, hands still raised, ready to rain down a killing strike while looking down at her sister with cold indifference. “I was trying…trying to help her…” Blood ran freely from Charlie’s nose, and one of her eyes was already swelling shut. I didn’t think she’d even managed to land a blow on my mom.
Mom reached down with a gloved hand and picked Charlie up by the neck, holding her out at a distance, as though she didn’t want to get to close. “Help her what? Die?” She threw Charlie to the ground, her face scraping against the grated metal platform as she landed.
Charlie lifted her head and rolled over, holding a hand out as though she could ward off my mother’s cold fury with it. “Please…please, Sierra…please!”
My mother halted. “One chance, Charlie. Why should I let you go?”
“Please.” Charlie propped herself up, both hands behind her back. “I won’t come anywhere near her again, I swear. I swear on my life.”
My mother’s face twisted in disgust. “You picked the right one to swear on. Heaven knows you’ve never cared about anyone else’s.”
“That’s not true!” Charlie shook her head, her normally calm or sly expression completely consumed by fear, stricken by the uncertainty of whether she’d live or die in the next moments. “I came to help her, Sierra, I came to teach her because I knew you weren’t around! I knew she needed help!”
My mother halted her advance, hovering menacingly over her sister, her face a mask. She stood there, staring down, her expression impenetrable, for a very long moment. “Get out of here,” she said, growling. “If you ever come near my daughter again, Charlie, I will kill you. You know I will; and it won’t be pretty, or quick.”
I saw Charlie slide back, pulling herself to her feet, then turning to see her sister, and she nodded, quickly, all trace of the carefree, cocky woman my aunt had been gone as though she had never existed. “I swear. She’ll never see my face again.” Charlie turned and began to walk out, down one of the catwalks toward a door on the far side of the room.