Namaa. That must be my grandmother’s name. Grandmother. Damn, I still couldn’t believe it.
Easter’s head had been shaved on one side and the remainder of the long strands of rich red were swept all to the other side in a low ponytail. She wore street clothes, but it was the wand in her hand that kept my eyes on her. She was a cleaner, the kind of abnormal who could make it look like nothing had ever happened in a crime scene. But that was not where her abilities stopped.
“I don’t want to shoot her,” Dinah whispered.
“No choice,” I said. “We used all the sedative rounds on the fallen.”
Diego gave a grunt but was otherwise quiet, keeping my little lie between us. The subway train got moving again and the car we were in lurched a little. Eligor stumbled, but neither Easter nor I so much as flinched.
“It’s about time we had this out, you and I,” Easter said. “You should have fought at my side when I tried to break free of that fucking facility.”
I smiled at her. “You should have listened to me and had patience.”
She bared her teeth and snarled as she lifted her wand in a sharp twist of her wrist. I squeezed off a round at her hand, wanting only to disarm her.
The bullet missed as she dropped and spun away from it, knocking Eligor to the ground. He yelped and crawled to one side.
“Please don’t do this! Phoenix, there are men waiting for you at the next train station!” Eligor yelled.
“Shut your traitor mouth!” Easter swung a fist toward him, sloppy and loose as though she had no idea how to fight. Which wasn’t her at all.
With her no longer looking at me, I shot again, this time hitting the wand in the middle and shattering it.
It broke like glass, shards flying throughout the small car and a pulse of energy blowing out with it that sent me tumbling through the air. Ruby yelped and went end over end, her paws unable to get purchase until she slammed into the end of the car. I stood and tucked Dinah away.
“Try not to shoot me,” I said as I walked toward Easter.
She stood straight and settled into a stance.
Her fist snapped out for my chin, then she feinted and drove her left fist into my side. I took a step back and let her come at me, keeping my fists up, blocking her here and there. Mostly just waiting.
Killing people was easy.
Not killing someone while still handing them their ass required patience.
Easter kept at me, a grimace on her face as she shot close and tried to drive a knee into my belly. I crossed my arms, blocked her leg and shoved her back. I suppose I could have just shot her with the sedative, but I needed to see how deep the real Easter was. Or if there was anything of my friend left.
“Easter, snap the fuck out of it.” I blocked another flurry of blows, pushed her back again.
“Time, you don’t have the time!” Eligor called.
I glanced to the side to see that we were indeed coming up on the next station. Figures in army black and holding a shit ton of weaponry were visible even in that glance.
Easter took my moment of inattention and came at me hard, tackling me to the ground, and I let her. She got her hands around my neck and started to squeeze. I grabbed her wrists with my hands and dug my nails in enough to force her to relax her hold on me. “Easter, you’re being ruled by a master.”
Her face twisted with rage and I dug deep into my own body, looking for the power that made me what I was. That power that was an ascendant. My bloodline was from the fallen, so who said I couldn’t do exactly to Easter what the others had done to her?
I closed my eyes and let myself fall into that state of meditation that had saved me. My hands went limp on Easter’s and her fingers tightened around my neck.
Everything around me was distant. The sound of the car doors opening. The screaming of Easter as she strangled me. Ruby snarling from behind us, snapping her teeth at Easter. Dinah yelling at me to do something.
I blinked and stood in the fog of my mind and reached out with a hand to where I thought Easter should be, my fingers brushing against something.
Metal, it was like she was wrapped in metal that I couldn’t see. I wiped my hands over the metal and it cleared like glass. Easter pressed her hands on the glass as she stared up at me, her mouth working but no sound coming out.
Help me.
I spun on one foot and drove a roundhouse kick into the glass and metal cage that held Easter tightly. I bounced off the cage and hit the ground hard, gasped and felt my heart stutter.
I was dying.
I needed to break this cage now.
A hand touched the back of my mind, Eligor making his presence known. “You have to use the power that is in you to break it,” he said and then he was gone.
The power in me. That rage in me was red hot and it swelled up, a magic that was nothing but death and destruction. But even those things were good. They’d saved me more than once, and they were going to save Easter.
I placed my hands on the cage, and the power in me rolled upward through my fingertips and into the bonds holding her. A moment of pause, like the world held its breath and then the cage exploded around us, not unlike her wand. A scream of a woman who had to be the one controlling her echoed through the space, a screech cut off mid-scream.
I was thrown back into my body as her fingers loosened
