Prom Nights From Hell Page 0,58

some part of her brain had started measuring her distance to the exits, looking around for weapons, watching the door. Her senses going into overdrive was a relief; it meant some of her powers were cooperating. But did she have the strength to take on ten armed men? The most she'd ever taken on at one time before was three, and they hadn't been toting machine guns. She'd have to be crafty rather than direct. She said to Sibby, "Give me your boots."

"For what?"

"To get rid of some of our competition so we can get out of here."

"But I really like these-"

"Give them to me. And also a rubber bracelet."

Miranda set her trap, then held her breath as a guard approached. She heard him say into the walkie-talkie, "Southwest pillar. I've got one," and saw the ribbons stir as he used the butt of his gun to push them aside.

Heard him say, "What the-"

And fired George Washington's sugar nose at him with the slingshot she'd made out of Sibby's rubber bracelet and a fork. All her target work paid off because it hit him at exactly the right point to send him plunging forward. He went down headfirst just hard enough to be disoriented and docile while she tied his hands and feet with the ribbons from the pillar. "I'm really sorry," she said, flipping him over to gag him with a piece of dinner roll, then smiled. "Oh, hi, Craig. Not your day, is it? I hope your head's feeling better. What? It's not? It will. Try rubbing some insta-hot on your wrists and ankles when they untie you. Bye."

She'd just grabbed the boots she'd used at the base of the column as a decoy when she heard another guard coming fast from her left. She threw a boot at him Frisbee style and heard a satisfying swack as he fell down, too.

Two down, eight to go.

She was apologizing to the one she'd hit with the shoe, who was out cold-it was nice to know ankle boots were good for something-when the walkie-talkie on his belt came to life. "Leon, this is the Gardener. Where are you? State your position. Copy?"

Miranda picked up the unconscious guard's walkie-talkie and said into it, "I thought your name was Caleb Reynolds, Deputy. Why the Gardener stuff? Or, as my friend likes to call you, Plant Boy."

A crackle. Then Deputy Reynolds's voice through the walkie-talkie. "Miranda? Is that you? Where are you? Miranda?"

"Right here," she whispered in his ear. She'd snuck up behind him, and now as he turned, her arm came around his neck with the heel of the boot pointed at his throat.

"What are you stabbing me with?" he asked.

"All you need to know is that it's going to cause you a lot of pain and probably a bad infection if you don't start telling me how many people there are here and what their plan is."

"There are ten in here, five more watching the exits outside. But I'm on your side."

"Really, Gardener? That's not how it looked at the house."

"You didn't give me a chance to talk to the girl."

"You're going to have to do better than that. I'm not a mix tape, you can't play me."

"Do you have any idea what she is?"

" What she is? Not really."

His heart rate sped up now. "She's a real-life flesh-and-blood prophet. The Cumean Sibyl. She's one of ten people who between them supposedly know and can control the whole future of the world."

"Wow. I thought she was just an annoying fourteen-year-old with wild hormones."

"The Sibyl operates through different bodies. Or that's what they think. These people I'm working with. Wack jobs. They pretend they want to protect her, keep her prophecies from being exploited by the unscrupulous, but I think they're actually into extortion. I heard one of them say they could ransom the girl for eight figures." His heart rate slowed as he talked. "My job was to find out where she was supposed to be picked up, so they could send someone there with some trinket of hers to show we had her, and get the Overseer to pay up."

Miranda didn't like the sound of the word trinket at all. "But you weren't going to?"

"They're just using this religion stuff as a cover for their greed. It's disgusting. I'm all set to stop them, and then you"-getting agitated, his heartbeat spiking-"you come along in the middle and mess it up."

Miranda knew he was genuinely angry. "Stop them how?"

"I was supposed