Before the others could protest, the two women were gone.
"I so hate it when she does that." Stefan shook his head. "I guess we're just supposed to stay here and watch the kid."
"Looks like." Jack answered.
Outside, Helen appeared behind one of the men walking in the street.
"Hey," she whispered.
Startled, the man turned, ready to fire but Helen's hand reached out, touched his face and he became a pile of ash. The others recoiled at the same time as something leapt from the tips of Helen's outstretched fingers and a wave of coherent light enveloped them. Their bodies twitched once and were stripped of their flesh.
They fell to the pavement in heaps.
Before Helen could turn, however, a woman on the sidewalk fired her rifle. Helen had time to gesture quickly with her arms, leaving a gossamer web of light in their wake. It absorbed some of the energy but the blast pushed through the hastily fashioned defense. It struck Helen full in the chest, lifted her from the ground and threw her twenty feet to slam into the side of a parked car.
Watching from the house, Stefan felt something wash over him. It was a concern, until that moment, he hadn't realized he felt for her. To his surprise, however, Helen slowly lifted herself to her hands and knees.
Even from the distance separating them, Stefan could see a change in her demeanor. Where before, she'd been cynical, almost silly with all she said and did; now she was lit with anger.
She glanced over her shoulder to see Tina dispatch two soldiers by sinking her hands into their chests and extracting their hearts. From her recollection, that left two more; the one that attacked her and another who had yet to make his presence known.
Helen closed her eyes, threw back her head, and touched the ground with her fingers tips.
She snarled and muttered quickly, "Mine!"
The woman who shot her came around a car on the opposite side of the street. She threw her rifle to her shoulder and fired again.
Inside the house, Stefan screamed, "No!"
When the blast reached the spot where Helen had been, she was gone. The blast ripped through the parked car and impacted the house behind it, searing a hole through the wall and continuing until it depleted itself somewhere inside.
The woman turned once then again, searching frantically for Helen. She found her only when Helen tapped her on the shoulder, causing the woman to spin about.
Helen grabbed the rifle, ripped it from the woman's hands and tossed it aside. She gripped the woman's throat and lifted her, bodily from the ground.
"You would murder them because you think they are us."
The woman gurgled, trying to respond.
"No," Helen's grip tightened around her throat, "you don't get to offer excuses and lies."
The woman gurgled again.
"All you get to do is die."
"Helen, stop!" Tina trotted across the street. "We need her alive!"
Stefan and the others piled out of the house and gathered around Helen.
"The last one got away." Tina went on. "He will bring others unless..."
Helen turned to gaze at Tina.
"...unless what?"
They all took a step back. Helen's eyes were completely white. The affect was like looking into an empty vessel. And her voice had turned deep, raspy, and took on unnatural resonance.
"Unless," Tina pleaded, "we can find out where they are and get them first."
Turning back to stare at the woman, Helen bared her teeth while her head lulled back in forth in contemplation. Finally, she threw the woman to the ground with as much force as she could without killing her. In the same instant, her appearance returned to what it had been before the attack.
"Then take her and learn what we need."
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