Family

Chapter 21

“What…the…” I breathed. “You were married to…” I blinked. “Wait,” I said to my mother, “you were married?”

“To your father,” my mother returned. “Until he died.”

“Then does that mean…” I blinked again, and turned to Reed, who gave me a shrug and a shake of the head. “You’re my brother?”

Reed nodded. “Half, anyway.”

Kat spoke up, drawing my attention along with everyone else’s. “What…the hell is going on here? Can I go yet?”

“Stay where you are, Kitten,” my mother snapped at her.

“My name is Kat!” A withering glare from my mother caused Kat to flinch. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, chastened.

“So Sienna and this dude are brother and sister?” Clary piped up from behind me. “Cuz I thought I caught ro-mantic tension between them. Heh,” he guffawed. “Guess it’s more like BRO-mantic tension!” He burst out in uncontrolled laughter which was echoed by no one. “What?” He turned to Bastian. “Roberto, that is funny! Come on!”

I turned to Reed. “All this time you’ve been playing Leia to my Luke and you never told me?”

He frowned. “What? I’m totally Luke. You’re the girl. Can you make objects move through the air?” He raised his finger and I felt a gust of wind blow my hair. “No? I’m Luke. You’re Leia. Get it straight.”

“So who’s Han Solo?” Clary asked seriously. “And Darth Vader?”

“I’m going to kill every last one of you pathetic geeks,” my mother said. “And I’m not even going to be nice about it. I’m going to just start draining souls. Will you please stop with the moronic Star Wars references? The movies came out in the 1970s. Most of you weren’t even born then. Move on with your lives.” She reached up and slapped Kat on the ass, causing the blond girl to jump. “Start walking. Sienna, get over here.”

“You know,” Clary said, “I think Kat should be Leia, because that gold bikini would look way better on her than Sienna.”

I turned and gave him a glare. “I hate you, Clyde.”

“Hey, girl! Ain’t nobody calls me Clyde!”

“Sienna.” My mother’s tone snapped at me, drawing my attention back to her. Kat was already walking across the fifty or so feet of space between us. “Get over here.”

I cast a look back at Reed and Ariadne, and caught muffled rage from Reed, directed at my mother. Ariadne was a bit more complex, stiff and impassive. I took a first hesitant step, then another, my feet carrying me toward Kat. The wind was warm, the dark skies and the light from the lamps nearby casting the only illumination on the whole scene. When I drew close to Kat, she stopped me, her hand on my sleeve. I looked down where it rested, then up to her wide, round eyes, sincere. “Don’t go with her,” she said quietly. “She’s so…so…mean. So cold.”

I looked at her, her perfect hair, her new clothes, her flawless makeup. “Why do you say that? Did she lock you in a metal box with no food and little water for days at a time?”

Kat’s expression turned scandalized. “No!”

I felt a subtle shift in my emotions toward indifference, toward tiredness and uncaring. “Count yourself lucky. She must like you more than me.”

“Sienna,” my mother said warningly, a dark look on her face.

There was a beep behind me, urgent, and I stopped and turned to look. All motion seemed to freeze in the formation, and everyone turned to see what the noise was. It was Bastian’s radio, and he held his hand up to his ear. “Yeah? Oh, damn.” He looked up at Ariadne, sharply. “The vamps. They’re here – we’ve got four men down by the dorms.” A klaxon sounded in the distance and speakers all around the campus took up the warning, blaring as the spotlights activated on every building and we were flooded with light.

“Oh hell,” Ariadne said, completely ruffled. “The entire population of metas – GO!” she shouted to M-Squad. “Don’t wait, GO!” She fired a look at Kat. “They’ll need you, too.”

Kat looked back at me, and I felt a cool calm settle over me. She bit her lip for just a second before she took off after Clary and the others. Parks had already transformed, taking the lead as a wolf. Kappler was flying overhead, her usually invisible wings catching just enough light to reveal them against the dark, fluttering hard like a butterfly’s.

“Reed…” Ariadne said, pleading, and I saw him look torn. The tension rose on his face, watching me, then he looked back to her. “We could really use your help.” She looked at me. “We could use all the help we can get.”

“I know what I’m in for if I stay,” I told her. She nodded once, and started to run, wobbling in her heels, before she stopped and kicked them off.

Reed was the only one left now. Regret tinged his features. “Find me,” he said, and I nodded. He thrust his hands down at the ground, and with a burst of air he shot up in a controlled leap that carried him a hundred feet along toward the dormitory building. Another blast of air cushioned his landing and then he launched off again.

“Well, wasn’t that fortuitous?” My mother spoke from behind me, drawing my attention back to her. “I expected we’d have to fight our way out.”

I looked at her warily. “What was your plan for that?”

She shrugged, as if she had not a care. “Fight our way out. Duh.”

“Why are you here, Mother?” I asked, worn out and sick of all the emotion, revelation, wondering and worrying.

“I’ve got my reasons,” she said, and I saw the skin crinkle at the edge of her eyes as she looked at me severely. “But you could do with a little more gratitude to me for saving your skin back at Eagle River, and again now.”

“Thanks,” I said without feeling. “But you’re still not answering the question.”

“I got what I came for. We can leave.” She turned as if to emphasize that point, and started to walk away.

“What did you come here for?” I asked, taking a few steps to keep up. “Why are you here?” She was taking the path that wended toward the woods where I’d encountered her before. I waited for her to answer for a minute. “What is it about Andromeda that’s so damned important?”

“You—” She whirled around and pointed a finger at my face. “You should learn to keep your mouth shut around others.”

“So you were here for Andromeda,” I said resignedly.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What’s ridiculous about reasoning?” I asked, and let my legs carry me past her along the path she had been walking. I heard her follow me, and I kept going. “You went halfway across the country to let her loose. You’ve exposed yourself to all sorts of danger coming here twice to…” I frowned. “Wait, you didn’t know she was dead last time you were here.” I turned to her. “What were you doing here then?”

She paused in her walk, stopping just in front of me. “Tapping Directorate communications so I could get Dr. Sessions’ results from her physical exam, after he’d run it, and Zollers’ psych exam results. I would also have loved to read the debriefing materials from after they questioned her – she’d have been a font of great information all around. Of course, I didn’t know she was dead, so when I explored my tap later, I got autopsy results, which weren’t what I’d hoped for.” There wasn’t an ounce of emotion from her.

“Why take Kat?” I looked at her, and she sighed, and started walking again. “Why take her with you? She seems like a liability, having to drag her along wherever you were going.”

My mom waved a hand at me. “When you can render someone unconscious with a touch, having a hostage that fits neatly in your trunk is never a liability; it’s an asset. Especially when your hostage is a meta, and your enemy is Erich Winter.”

“You’ve got a grudge against Old Man Winter?” I was following her still, and she didn’t say anything but I could see her demeanor change. “He acted like he didn’t even know you when I asked him about you before; like you two worked at the Agency but didn’t ever cross paths—”

She whirled around at me, eyes alight. “Did he now?” she asked, with a suppressed smile that was near maniacal in its intensity. My mother was not prone to displays of much emotion and I took a step back from her at the sight of it. “We knew each other. Of course we knew each other.”

“Enemies?” I asked, and she shook her head. “Friends?” She shook it again. “Frienemies?” I tried again, and she looked at me like I was an idiot.

“We were acquaintances,” she said. “But when the Agency was destroyed, we were two of the only survivors.” She smiled. “Tell me something – when you’re betrayed from the inside and your organization is destroyed, what do you think that makes the survivors?”

“I don’t know,” I said, not giving it a moment’s thought. “Does it matter—”

“Suspects,” she said, and I halted. “There were only three people that survived the destruction of the Agency. Me, Erich, and one other. And that makes every last one of us suspects. At least, in my mind.” She shook her head. “I know I’m paranoid, and that you never accepted that I locked you in the house for any good reason, but I did. I swear I did. I had to keep you in the bounds, had to keep you hidden, because there’s more going on here than you would believe.”

“Why not tell me?” I asked. “Why not just be honest?”

“Oh, yes,” she said sarcastically, “I should explain to my six-year-old girl that she can’t leave the house because someday she’s going to gain powers that will allow her to kill with a touch. I should tell her that any lifelong fantasies she might harbor about a normal life were a joke, a trick of a child’s mind, and that – oh yes, this is the best – powerful forces from within that world of superhumans would want to capture her, to take her away from me, and turn her to their own purposes.”

I let the silence hang between us. “Maybe if you’d given me a purpose of my own—”

She rolled her eyes and reminded me of Charlie again. “You didn’t need a purpose at six, or sixteen. You needed to be kept safe from monsters like Wolfe and Omega…and worse. I would have told you when the time came.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked. “Why did you just leave?” I looked at her, and I didn’t even feel anything as I asked questions that had been on my mind for months. “You locked me in the box and you left, just left, didn’t even say goodbye, or tell me what was happening, or—”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and I saw genuine contrition. “I got waylayed by Wolfe, and I barely got away with my life. By the time I got free, I couldn’t—” She stopped, broke off. “I did everything I could for you, I promise. And I’m still working for your benefit, even though you might not believe that—”

I would have responded but something stopped me, the same something that caused her to break off mid-sentence. Sound, movement, something fainter than the sirens going off in the distance, warning us about danger that was supposed to be at the dormitory but instead was coming to us. The vampires, both of them, were moving toward us at speed.

“What the hell are those?” I heard my mother ask as she drew a gun from her waistband.

“Angel and Spike?” I suggested.

“Get behind me,” my mother said as she stepped forward to block me from them.

“Unless you’ve got some sort of miracle bullets in there,” I said, catching hold of her hand, “those will do nothing. They’re vampires, and they don’t take any sort of damage from guns.”

She turned, whirling her head toward me, but I caught a hint of fear rather than anger. “Can we outrun them?”

I thought about it for a second. “No. But…” I turned and saw the training building not far from us, in the opposite direction of the vampires. “…we might be able to beat them if we had some weapons.” I tugged on her arm and started to run. “This way!”

She looked for a second like she wanted to argue, but she didn’t, taking up with me as we ran for the training facility. I didn’t slow as we approached, and saw the vamps gaining on us. We came up on the door of the building, the glass front, and I wondered if it was unlocked.

My mother raised her gun and fired, bullets shattering the glass panes of the door. I flinched and hesitated, fearful that the bullets were going to ricochet back at me. After five shots the glass fell out, breaking into pieces that covered the ground. I flew through the hole in the middle of the door, slowing down to make sure I didn’t trip. Mother followed, the vamps only about a hundred feet behind us. “Over here!” I called to Mom, and dodged toward the practice room, opening the glass door and running inside, cutting across the open mats and stopping at the wall of weapons. I stared up and cast a look back at Mom, who was waiting at the door.

“Sword,” she said, nodding at the broadsword on the wall next to me. I tossed it to her and grabbed the katana for myself. I ran to join her by the door as we heard movement in the hallway. “You take the ugly one,” she whispered.

I was about to question her on which one was the ugly one when I noticed the smile creasing her lips. “Did you just make a joke?”

“It seemed the appropriate time.”

The glass window to the hallway exploded behind me and I turned to see Blondie enter through it, glass filling the air around me as a rain of broken shards was came down sideways. I held up an arm to protect my face and spun backward to avoid the worst of it. In that moment, I heard the door slam open and my mother spring to action against the second vamp. I heard a great exhalation of breath from her as she swung her sword and I heard it hit flesh. After that I was done listening because the first vampire was in front of me and I had a fight of my own to deal with.

I raised my blade as he feinted toward me, catching him on the wrist and opening it. Whether he noticed or not was open to debate, because he didn’t react at all, pushing hard against the edge of the blade and sending it back at me, knocking me off balance as he did so. I came up and got a good look at his jagged teeth, formed into a smile under blond hair that looked bleached, and a face that was so lacking in humanity it made Wolfe look like a compassionate school guidance counselor by comparison. He pursued me and I tried to step back, but off-balance as I was, it turned into a hop as I tried to buy time.

It worked enough to let me get my footing, but he was still coming, so I poked at him, at the chest, and the tip of my sword bit into his dark shirt and the flesh beneath. I turned it into a hard, ramming motion that again elicited no reaction, but I pushed and he stumbled back from the force, as though I had shoved him with my hand instead of a pointed blade. Still, he made no noise; the only sound in the room was my breathing and my mother’s, somewhere behind me.

I took the attack to him, swinging my sword as he used his hands to block, that soulless grin still exposing his teeth. Every strike opened his flesh, but no blood dripped out, and I watched as the skin seemed to pucker and bind back together before my eyes. I made a dance out of my sword, practicing a kata of my own creation, a free-flow of motion, the sword spinning in my hands. I went low, hacking at the legs, wondering if I cut the muscles if it’d slow his motion. I buried a strike in his knee and he wobbled before recovering and slicing me across the shoulder with a slash of claws that caused the fabric of my shirt to rip at the sleeve.

I whirled in a circle and came at him low again, catching him in a perfect strike across the back of the knee that cut his leg out from under him – not literally, but the force of my blow was so great that when the blade had bitten in, it reached the bone. When the momentum of my attack had nowhere else to go it pulled his leg from the ground as though I had performed a leg sweep.

The vampire stumbled, now on one leg. Sensing his predicament, I launched into a side kick that would have killed a human, hitting him in the head with it. As it was, the vampire lost his footing and hit the far wall, shattering one of the mirrors and landing on his face.

I leapt to exploit the advantage and landed on his back, driving my sword into it. I felt the impact up my arms as I drove home my blow, the tip of the blade striking and sticking against his ribs, its momentum halted. The shock of the attack caused him to whiplash and it drove his head into the mat, from which it rebounded up, a jarring motion of the spine that would have killed a normal person by breaking their neck.

His neck.

I heard the voices whisper in my head, Gavrikov and Wolfe, giving me the answer I sought. It took me only a moment to grasp their meaning and I dropped to my knees, straddling the vamp’s back as I grabbed the dulled edge of my blade and slid the sharp edge against his throat and pulled.

The blade cut through the tissue without effort, then stopped, halted by a spine that was strong, as though it was steel. His hands came up and seized mine, trying to stop them, but he had no leverage. I pulled, and felt the blade stir another centimeter, then another, ignoring the lancing pain in my hands as he clawed at them, tearing through my gloves and into my skin, ripping at my sleeves and my wrists.

I felt the last tug cut through and the hands tearing at me went limp as the sword burst free from the back of the vampire’s neck. I fell onto the mat as something heavy that wore a patch of blond hair bounced off my chest. I batted it away with a free hand. Yuck. I scrambled to my feet to see Mom and the raven-haired vampire locked in battle. She was giving him about eight different kinds of hell and he was giving it right back. I angled myself to come up from behind him as she was falling back from a wave of his attacks. I struck as he was moving forward, a hard swing to the back of his neck that sent him to the floor face-first. I followed up with a repeat of what I’d done to the other vampire.

Mother stood back and watched as I pulled, again, hands forcing the blade against his throat until I finished and fell backward again, similar to the last time, this time not bothering to get up immediately. I lay on my back, breathing hard from the exertion of what I’d just done. I saw a hand reach down. I looked up and took it, and Mother helped me to my feet. “Nice work,” she said, looking at the two separate bodies that lay on the mats. “I ran across a vampire a long time ago, when I was working with the Agency.” She frowned. “Had to use a flamethrower to put that one down.”

“Yeah, I used a flaming club to take it to these two the last time I fought them,” I said, peeling the shredded gloves off my hands to examine the damage they’d done to my skin. The gouging wounds left by their claws were mostly superficial, but they still stung. “Tough bastards, though.”

“Yeah,” she said, and nodded. “We should get going.”

I sighed. “I don’t want to go with you.”

I saw a veil slide down behind her eyes, whatever momentary pride she was feeling evaporated. “We’re leaving. Together. You are coming with me.”

I felt something like steel run down the length of my spine and I pushed my chest out as I stood up straight. The air was heavy in the room, like summer humidity was creeping in from the window we’d broken out front. “No, I’m not.”

“You will,” she said again, her voice rising, “and—” Her hand came up and then she jerked, twitching hard and falling to her knees. As she dropped, I saw two little threads trailing off her back and leading to someone standing behind her, in the shadows, a taser extended from a shadowy hand.

He stepped into the light the moon cast across the floor from the windows, and I recognized his face. “Sorry to interrupt this moment of mother-daughter bonding,” Michael Mormont said with a malicious grin, “but I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that the two of you aren’t going to be going your own way.” His mouth twisted, and his eyes slipped into the shadow as his grin became more perverse. “You’ll both be coming with me.”