Apex

by Robert J. Crane

  That was a lot of time for doubt to sink in. And I had plenty of it, now.

  “I don’t have all day, sparky!” I shouted again. Black eyes appeared at the nearest split, Mr. Flames peering out at me. “That’s right, dark-eyed boy. I answered your call, dick. You could have just used the phone, but no—you had to make a big scene. You know what that says to me? You’re one of those dramatic guys whose mommy probably didn’t love him enough. The kind who tried to trip girls to get their attention when you were in grade school, and never really progressed beyond that.” I flipped my hair. “I get it, though, I’m totes smoking enough to get you jonesing, fire bug, but I’ll be honest, I’ve been with hotter guys than you—”

  The earthen armor around him shifted, cracking open like an egg as he floated out, staring at me like I was some unknown creature. “Sienna … Nealon?” he asked, staring down at me.

  “It’s me,” I said, spreading my arms wide. “You attacked my friends and family, you made an ass of yourself downtown in my city, you called me out—why are you surprised I’m here?”

  He blinked a couple times, his eyes disappearing in flames, the black orbs simply vanishing as his fire-covered eyelids covered them. It was a trippy thing, like they just vanished for a quarter second or something, and he was left featureless save for a nose and a thin line where his mouth would be. Like an incomplete, flaming version of the old Dick Tracy villain, the Blank. He leaned closer, staring at me. “You … look so different …”

  “Well, if I looked the same, people’d be realizing it was me everywhere I tried to hide, dumbass,” I fired back at him. I looked sideways and saw a local news truck parked a couple blocks down 6th, with one of those giant crane cameras extended up at the four-story level or so. The glint of a lens in the daylight told me that the world was watching. Probably wondering why I wasn’t about the business of smiting this asshole yet.

  Because they didn’t know the truth.

  That I was as powerless as a freaking kitten against a guy like this.

  “You are … too thin,” he said.

  “Way to skinny shame me, dickhead,” I said. “You go to all this trouble to arrange a date, and you end up being the worst I’ve had since that Ricardo douche.”

  “I … what?” Flamey looked taken aback. “I … do not call you here to … date you.”

  I rolled my eyes. Of course he didn’t. Only the sickest and most twisted of admirers would try and approach lust and/or love from this angle. Like Sovereign, which this guy was starting to remind me of. I ignored the tight ball of fear in my stomach. “Fine. Why did you want me to come here? What do you want from me?”

  Like I didn’t know the answer to that.

  His thin, flame-coated lips smiled wider, then wider still, curving up in a black line across the flames that covered his face. “A fight, of course.” He spread his arms wide. “I come here to you … for the fight.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Well, that’s just effing great,” I announced to the empty, echoing canyons of downtown Minneapolis. I didn’t bother keeping my voice down because there was no one really around to hear me. No cop cars, no obvious police engaging this guy, just a news camera a few blocks away and probably some snipers providing impotent cover fire from minimum safe distance.

  He blinked at me again, his fiery skin once more causing his black orbs of eyes to disappear as he did so. “Do you … not enjoy the fight?” There was a curiosity in his tone.

  “You think I enjoy fighting?” I gawked at him.

  “Does it not … remind you of who you are?” His Euro accent was strong, but the passion in his voice was undeniable. “Does it not remind you … of your strength? Does it not bring you back … to yourself when you feel lost?”

  I cracked my knuckles and they made a loud noise as they popped. “I dunno. I feel like there might be other ways to get in touch with my inner awesome. Ones that result in less pain for others.” I looked up at him. “So …” Now came the moment of truth. “We can both flaming suit up and cancel each other out,” I lied, “or you can come down here and fight me like a big boy without creating a rain of flaming wreckage all around. You know—recall your inner badass by going knuckle to knuckle with me instead of trying to prove your fire is stronger than my fire.”

  He cocked his head at me, but drifted closer to the ground. “You … would surrender an advantage?”

  I shrugged, looking around. “We could burn this place to the ground in a flaming twister, and I don’t know that it’s going to get you in closer touch with yourself or whatever it is you’re looking for. I’ve got fire, you’ve got fire—we use them against each other and it does nothing, you should know that.”

  He nodded. “That is true, I suppose.”

  “So are you out to cause utter devastation?” I asked. “Because there’s a town west of here where that happened.” I was playing a hunch; however much wreckage this guy had left behind—and shit, it was sizable—he hadn’t out and out annihilated Reed or Jamie or Veronika. If he’d wanted to, he could have left them a pile of smoking ashes.

  But he didn’t.

  “No,” he said and drifted to the earth. “I will not snuff the flame shield, though; if I do, your police will shoot me.”

  Well, shit. How the hell was I supposed to beat him seven ways to Sunday with my bare fists when he was five thousand degrees?

  “Fair enough,” I said instead, my mind racing. “Shall we keep this to the ground?”

  He frowned, another funny spectacle when wreathed in flames. “Why?”

  “I thought you were looking for a test of strength,” I said with a shrug. “Seems to me that if we’re flying and I land one good accidental hit, out go your lights and you crash to your death. Fight over, all on the basis of a lucky punch.”

  He thought about it. “That … is also true.”

  “You know my abilities,” I said, the lying becoming easier as I went. “And I’ve seen yours—or at least some of them. Let’s keep the destruction toned down and I will battle with you as hard as you want. You start ripping apart the whole city, I’m going to find a very unfair way to murder your ass as swiftly as possible. If you want a true contest of strength, fight me like a man, not a meta terrorist. Capische?”

  “Your terms are fair,” he said and set his feet. Flames smoked off of him. “Are you ready to begin?”

  Not remotely, I realized, since I had exactly zero ways to cause him damage when covered with flames. At least, nothing at hand.

  “Just a sec,” I said, and strolled over to the corner of the street, where Oceanaire’s outdoor furniture was sitting stacked on the sidewalk.

  “What … are you doing?” he asked.

  “Well, it’s not going to do me any good to punch you when you’re covered in fire like that,” I said, looking over my shoulder at him, “and I can’t get you with a light web. We’re not flying. I mean, I could probably get in your head with Odin powers—”

  “I have those myself,” he said, still watching me walk toward the sidewalk patio space in front of Oceanaire.

  “Which means those are useless for me,” I raised my voice and he started to slowly follow behind me, warily, because we were about to fight and obviously I was going to bushwhack him somehow. “So what have I got left? I can’t turn into a dragon here, we just agreed to limit collateral damage and that’d just make a mess of this building,” I nodded at the tower that stretched out of Oceanaire’s facade, “so … I’m kinda out of easy options.” I stopped by the stack of furniture. “Advantage: you. We fight as is, fist to fist, and it’s either a stalemate or you beat me with your superior quantity of powers, see?”

  He stopped short of the sidewalk. “Well …” He shifted uncomfortably. “I do not like all this talking. I thought we would fight.”

  “And we will,” I said, lifting a chair out of the stack. “But you can’t expect me to walk into it with nothing to hurt you with. What’s the point of that? How are you challen
ged by that? What’s that do to—what was it you said? ‘Remind you of who you are’ or whatever?”

  “That is a good p—” he started to say, but I winged the chair at him and he paused to try and stop it from taking his head off. He raised his hands and acted like he was going to catch it, but instead he tossed a little fire ahead of him, superheating the metal and turning it into a puddle of slag that hit him and steamed. His mouth pulled into a grimace, because he might have been able to absorb flame, but molten metal didn’t just evaporate when it made contact with his fire shield. Not that much. A bullet, sure. But a whole metal chair? Nah.

  It slid past his flame shield and onto his skin, sizzling as it burned him.

  I’d already heaved a table at him to follow it up, and he tried to block that but it went low, like a frisbee, right to the gut. It melted as it struck, but not before it transferred some force to him. He made an “OOF!” noise as it bounced and got him in the gut, doubling him over on the wire surface. He melted through the surface instantly but stopped as he made contact with the sturdy steel beams that held the supports together. They boiled, turning molten, and he screamed as he recoiled away from them.

  “Heads up!” I shouted, throwing another chair at him. He looked up, but I’d aimed low, throwing it like a shot put at his gut, chair-back first, and it caught him in the midsection, searing and sizzling as he melted that, and then caught the seat portion right in the chest and chin.

  He wobbled, leaving another pile of slag on the street as I tossed another table at him, then another. They went frisbeeing at him as he wove on unsteady legs. One cleaned his clock and dropped him to the ground while the other took his legs out from beneath him. The fire started to fade as he hit the ground, elbows buried in the slushy mess in the gutter.

  I bombed him with another chair, still about twenty feet away, then grabbed another two, one for each hand, clutching one by the wire back and gripping the other beneath the seat. I was going to tame this flaming lion, tame him or kill him, and I took off at a run to cross the distance between us before he regained his wits.

  There wasn’t going to be a lot of time to shellack this guy, and I was going to have to get him to drop the flame shield if I was going to even have a prayer of doing so. I rushed in on him and a little past, then whapped him squarely across the back with the chair in my right hand. It slagged, but not before the physical force sent him flying into the curb. I heard the rich crack of his collar bone as he impacted on the gutter, shoulder catching as he did a serious dive and ended up face up on the sidewalk, making little snow angels as the slush around him melted and ran off.

  Brandishing my partially melted chair, I came at him like I was going to stake him with the melted remainder. I had a couple of points left of the tubing that secured the chair back in place before it had been turned to molten metal, and it came to a sharp end. Drive that through his heart and he’d be just about done, I figured, or at least he’d be in a bad enough way that I could turn his head into a pinata and shower the street with his brains before I called this thing a day.

  I didn’t telegraph my move before I came in on him, driving the point at his chest. I would have leapt high to drive it in, but that would be overly dramatic and also give away my intent. Instead I just came running up and—HOO-AH!—rammed it toward his chest.

  I was about to make contact when something shredded its way into my mind like a physical punch inside my brain. I’d been hit by Bjorn’s Odin power before, when he and I had fought, lo those many years ago before Old Man Winter had forced me to absorb him and he’d become a complaining part of the cadre of powers I kept in my head. His powers tended to manifest in the form of a raven—your dark thoughts given mental form—blasting their way into your mind.

  That … was not what happened here.

  If Bjorn’s power could be called a psychic assault, akin to someone jumping into your mind and pummeling you with your fears, this could only be described as a psychic blitzkrieg, the entire Nazi army plowing through my brain and leaving nothing but trammelled dirt and wrecked villages behind. I screamed and dropped the chairs, heard one make a satisfying sizzling as it ran over him, and I staggered back and fell off the curb.

  This was worse than any hangover I’d ever felt, worse than taking a direct hit from a Thor type when they were standing in a field during a lightning storm. Scenes from my past flashed in front of my eyes, and they were like a montage of Sienna Nealon’s absolute worst hits—the murders I’d committed, the people I’d screwed over, the accusing faces of those whose lives I’d upended by my action or inaction.

  I saw Ariadne, and somehow she remembered me, and all the crap I’d brought down on her.

  Then there was Reed, looking pathetic in a hospital bed, tubes threading out of him, the guilt-inducing sound of a life support machine beeping in the background.

  And finally … there were my souls, surrounding me in silent judgment.

  Wolfe. Gavrikov. Bjorn. Zack. Kappler. Bastian. Harmon.

  Their forces were distorted, but their expressions were unmistakable.

  I’d failed them.

  And they were letting me know.

  “No!” I shouted, coming back to myself as I landed in the slush in the middle of the street. Cold water soaked through my clothing, and it was like a shock that brought me back to myself. I wanted a drink of scotch more than I’d wanted anything in my life to this point. I wanted it now, I wanted it quick, I wanted to cut my wrist wide and shove the bottle right into my veins so this sick, uneasy feeling I’d been running from for months, this sense that I’d—I’d lost something, that I sucked, that I was the worst person in the entirety of the world, that I was weak and pathetic and horrible—I wanted it gone, I wanted to be in blissful stupor, and—

  My face lay against the rough pavement of 6th Avenue, my fingers cold in the melted ice that this bastard, this … this fight seeking, this danger hunting … this Predator had left behind. The chill was seeping in, Minnesota winter come back to get me. I’d been warmed by his flames, distracted by the horror of what he’d done in my mind.

  I remembered Veronika, when we’d first met, saying that she’d conditioned herself with an ex to resist the power of the Odin mental attack. How I wished I’d been able to do that now.

  “Why do you just lie there?” the Predator slurred. I turned and saw him floating, his shoulder at a funny angle. “Why do you not shrug off my Odin attack?”

  “Because no one’s ever hit me with it like that before,” I said, rising to my feet. “Either that power has been enhanced or you’ve been living a thousand years and working with it.”

  He looked frozen in place, caught in headlights, me about to run him down. Unlikely, since the mind assault had frozen my entire body, and I was just shaking out of the paralysis. “I have not lived a thousand years,” he said stiffly, answering that question.

  “Then why are you so good with fire?” I asked. I was starting to get a feeling this guy was no incubus.

  He flared for a second, and then rushed at me, streaming flame. I was forced to dodge back, to go low, and he shot inches over my head. His black eyes passed me, and even covered in the fire, I could see the curiosity.

  My bluff was about to be called. If I’d still had my Gavrikov powers, I would have taken his charge head on, and we would have gone flame to flame.

  Instead … I’d dodged out of his way. And I’d already faltered under a mental assault that an Odin type should have theoretically been prepared for, at least in general if maybe not in scope.

  I rolled back to my feet, a little slowly because of the stiffness, and he paused as he came around. He threw a burst of flame at me, one I should have been able to absorb, then another, then another.

  I dodged them. Because there was nothing else I could do.

  The shiny lens of the news camera caught it all, blocks away, over his shoulder, and I knew that now … the world was drawing its own conclusions.

  Now … the whole
world knew.

  They knew I was powerless.

  Weak.

  “What are you doing?” Predator leaned toward me, throwing more fire. I dodged, rolled, sidestepped, and he upped the tempo. I moved, ducked, flipped, and spun out of the way of successive shots, no time to grab something and hurl it toward him for a counterattack. “What is wrong with you?”

  “I could ask the same of you, really,” I said, my breaths becoming ragged from all the rapid movement. “I mean, really, who goes looking for fights? What are you, Tyler Durden? Are you a figment of my imagination?”

  “This cannot be.” He stopped throwing flames. “You … are not her?”

  I paused, ready. “Oh, I’m her. Or as her as you’re going to get these days.”

  He just stared at me, almost crestfallen, like he was another person I’d hit with crushing disappointment. “You have none of her powers.”

  “You think so?” I stared him down. “Drop the flames, come over here and hold my hand for a bit. See if I’m missing that power.”

  “You are … weak.” It was a sick sounding declaration, like a gunshot in the street.

  “Fuck you,” I said and turned, reaching the corner in a second. I grabbed hold of the light pole in front of Oceanaire and ripped it out of the ground as he stood there, stunned. I tugged it carefully, working to not tear the electrical wiring as I pulled it free of the street. Then I put it on my shoulder, holding the pole like a massive baseball bat. “Come here and say that to my face, you son of a bitch.”

  He raised a hand to shoot flame, but I brought my improvised bat down on him like he was a Whack-a-mole. It hit, hammering him, melting as it did so. He let out a little cry of pain as the molten metal dripped through the fire shield, and I dragged it forward, taking care to keep the structural integrity of the wires that had powered it connected—at least for now.