Stronger Together chapter 164

The snide french voice on the other end of the burner phone sounded  less amused when I answered this time "I am not enjoying this game  anymore. You have cheated. I had more fun planned, but if you cannot  follow the rules we will skip to the final stage. Meet me at the field  where we first spoke if you wish to recover the girl. As you did the  last time you have ten minutes before I spill her blood across the  grass." The line clicked off as he hung up again.

I  heard a faint groan from near my feet and kicked the hexenwulf in the  head to make sure she was unconscious. She apparently hadn't been,  because as soon as the kick landed she shifted back to human. I stripped  the belt off her and pulled down the curtains, ripping strips from them  to use to tie her up. I tossed her back under the bed and then put the  mattress back on top of her. Someone would find her eventually, or I  would call and tip off the hotel the next day. I stuffed the crumpled  wolf belt in my pocket and then rushed for Soldier field like I was told  to.

This was  it. Chastel was pissed, which meant he wasn't thinking. He was  operating on bad information and if he was ever going to leave me a  window to take him out this was that time. Now I just had to make sure  he didn't murder an innocent little girl while I was killing him and  that he didn't use his weird stealth powers to vanish into the night  where could lie in wait to rain down his horrible vengeance on us for  foiling his plans and...ok. My panic was getting away from me. Save  girl, kill bad guy. Not complicated. All I had to do was follow those  steps and it would all work out.

I  was sprinting at my top speed again, about three hundred miles per hour  based on the math from earlier. With the wind aspect active nothing was  getting in my way. A straight line was the quickest path between two  points so I could only hope I would make it in time. I managed to look  up a heading before I left but Soldier Field was about fifty miles so I  should be able to get there in time but I would be cutting it so damn  close. I hope Chastel didn't get bored and kill the girl before I got  there.

I  couldn't help but wonder how much of this was the girls and how much was  me. I liked to think I would have tried just as hard to save that kid  even without them in my life, but it was just so hard to separate my  powers from my perception of the world with them in it that even trying  to think over a hypothetical was almost impossible for me. Either way I  knew they would be proud of me for this. Hell, I was proud of me for  this. It felt good to put other people first without any hesitation. It  could just be more important to me because it was a little kid in danger  but either way this was the kind of person I wanted to be.

I  was deeply thankful that soulfire didn't disrupt technology, because I  would have killed so many people on that run, I could make out the  shapes of drivers and passengers as I blurred through cars, of shoppers  as I phased through stores, and at one point, of boobs as I ran through a  strip club. None of which I had time to pay attention to as i bolted  top speed toward Soldier Field to save a little girl's life. I came to a  crashing halt in the grass of the field beyond the parking lot where  Chastel had cornered us.

I  tore up the earth as I crashed down, chest heaving and heart thumping.  I'd pushed so hard that I felt like the godsteel threaded through my  body was overheating from the stress, but I managed to make it. I  glanced up to see Chastel grinning viciously down at me with the little  girl held next to him. When he saw me he let her go and she ran towards  me, but he yanked back on a dog leash lightly and she pulled up short  with a cry of pain. "Well if it isn't the hero himself. You have ruined  my game Cameron. Playing with you is not fun in the least, so now we  will play a new game. This is Gabrielle, speak, child."

He  yanked the leash and the girl cried out again, her voice was blurry  with tears as she stuttered out "P-please help me. My neck hurts and  he's mean. Don't let him hurt me. You said he wouldn't hurt me! Please  don't let him!" She collapsed to her knees sobbing, the kind of ragged  cloying gasps you make when you know nothing can fix whats wrong and you  don't care who knows how broken you are. My fingers itched to try to  grab for the leash, but Chastel had it taught, and with him having some  of the god abilities the twins had I didn't trust my speed.

He  laughed and walked forward unclipping the collar from her neck but  holding her by the shoulder. "She is so afraid mon ami, you must help  her. So here is the game. I well let this little one go and she will run  to you. When she is halfway to you I will chase her down and snap her  neck. If you stop me I have arranged for some very unpleasant friends to  receive custody of your little red puppy. You can either consign your  friend to a short brutal lifetime of unimaginable torment or you can  watch me kill the girl. If you let me kill her, I will tell you where  your puppy is and you can go and retrieve her."

He  released the little girl, who was still crying and seemed to be so  insensate with terror she hadn't heard a thing and she ran towards me.  Chastel watched my expression as she got closer and then suddenly he  bolted right at her as fast as he could go. I cranked my lightning  aspect watching the world slow down and walked casually forward to stand  between them I drew my gun, already loaded leveled it at his maniacally  grinning face, and pulled the trigger. There was a crack of gunpowder  that rippled weirdly in the air and his eyes widened in slow motion as  the bullet tore toward his head.

At  the last second his eyes flashed gold and his body seemed blur slightly  he jerked back and somehow seemed to tear free of the time stream and  blurred away from me. I let myself shift down to a slight lightning  boost so I could interact. Chastel was glaring at me with hatred, his  handsome face was torn apart on one side, he'd managed to jerk to the  side and take the bullet through the cheek. It wasn't healing. In fact  it was smoking like he'd been burned. His eyes were blazing yellow and  he was snarling at me.

His  voice was so white hot with rage I was surprised it didn't cauterize  the hole I'd but in his face "YOU...YOU DARE?" His voice came out  slightly garbled and bloody, apparently I took part of his tongue out  when I shot his face. "You use the weapons of my house against me? You  injure my face! You violate my rules and spit on my authority! I will  ruin your wolf, hurt her and bleed her and make her scream until she  forgets her throat can even be at rest. I will redefine her existence  and usher her into a sea of pain from which she will never escape! And  it will be all because of you!"

He  turned on his heel and vanished sprinting crazily...right into my fist.  I grinned at him as he stared up at me in a daze "Fun fact. The reason  you can use that little time shunting trick you like to mess with is  because you possess a legend that has spread around the world. You're  using a tiny sliver of the power a god would have, like a proto mantle  you forged yourself out of your own story. But that bullet is part of  your story too." He looked so shell shocked and confused it was hard to  resist the urge to laugh.

But  it was so much more satisfying to keep talking, to watch the light go  out of his eyes as all the hope died. Huh, I wondered if Jean had been a  bad influence on me?"It didn't just injure your physical body, it  damaged your nature. You aren't The Beast now. You're just sick,  pathetic Jean, too weak to stop the sorcerer that cursed you, to  helpless to save yourself now." I turned my head slightly, not moving my  eyes of him "Gabby sweetie, close your eyes and cover your ears and hum  me a song."

He  sputtered up at me, blood and mucus pouring from his shattered nose  where my godsteel fist had smashed his smug fucking face in "You are  nothing!" He screamed that and the fear was gone from his eyes, replaced  by genuine madness "You are a no one! A passing breath of wind! I am a  legend! I am the monster under the bed, the beast in the shadows! I have  spread terror and death in this world since before your ancestors came  to these shores! I will not be killed be a...a nameless cur!" He rose to  his feet, features beginning to shift under his skin "I am Jean Chastel  and I will-"

He  didn't really finish his thought, it was interrupted by my metal fist  smashing in the muzzle that was trying to form and flipping him end over  end across the field like a skipping stone on a pond. I ticked up my  lightning aspect and by the time he reached the other end I was standing  there holding out my metal arm to close line him. His whole body  smashed down on my arm neck first and I heard a snap as his spine broke,  and his misshapen smashed up muzzle let out a gurgling scream as he  fell bonelessly to the ground.

I  tsked at him "You will shut the hell up." I reached into my pocked to  pull out another bullet, loading the thing into the flintlock through  the muzzle as I watched his bones rearrange and try to heal, but the  bullet was slowing his regeneration, it was going to take him a few  minutes and I wasn't going to give them to him. "You know if you were  anyone else I would feel sorry for you. Being kicked around by ungodly  powerful opponents you can't hope to match is an awful feeling. I would  say I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy but...well you are...and I  really do."

I  finished loading the gun and leveled it at the spot between his burning  eyes, one gold and one dyed red from broken blood vessels after I  smashed his face in a few times. "You don't deserve to die this way." I  saw him relax "But I don't have the time to give you the death you  deserve. It would take years, and you just aren't worth it. So here's  what I'm going to do. I'm going to shoot you in the head and you're  going to die. Then when you're gone I'm going to buy every copy of every  book that mentions you and I'm going to burn it."

His  eyes widened "I'm going to move every person in Gevaudan into a luxury  estate and then bulldoze the whole town. I'm going to cut down the  forests you roamed and delete all the websites that mention you. I'm  going to erase every trace of you from this earth so no one will ever  know that you existed. I'm going to bury your corpse in this field in an unmarked grave and after a few months have passed at most, you will have never existed. I'm not just going to kill you, I'm going to UNMAKE  you. Does that scare you?" His eyes were wide with fright and madness  and I smiled "Good." Then I shot him.