Zephyr Box Set 1

by Warren Hately

  The cloak gets caught as I maneuver uncomfortably in the confined space, nearly upending the computer on its card table. I finish the beer for good luck, and I tell myself sincerely, also the energy, and then hit the catch on the secret exit and launch into the night.

  It is going dark. The lights of the city make a pretty spectacle with the falling temperature. For miles upon miles, the whole region succumbs to the advancing cold, snowflakes refracting the artificial light. I belt across the city at a fair clip, Queens my old stomping grounds, a faint trill of worry when I think of my parents, though at least I know there’s not much chance my wife and child would be in danger there as Queens is the last place Beth would run.

  One thing I have to give to the Enercom phones is their watery resilience. The damned thing starts up again as I pour on the speed, the Hell Gate glittering now over the black water, a fleet of choppers in the air suspended like Christmas decorations.

  “It’s Zephyr,” I bawl into the phone, aware I’m doing just under five miles per minute.

  Elisabeth’s voice is wobbly for all sorts of reasons. I slow, go into freefall and even hold my breath, I’m so desperate for the reply.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Tessa. She’s gone. And she’s left a note,” Elisabeth says. “‘Don’t worry. Gone to help dad’.”

  I alight on the roof of a tenement and watch the barges in the bay and the police boats for one angry moment.

  “Jesus.”

  “And I’m missing a pair of stockings and that Italian designer jacket you bought me,” Beth says.

  “The one you never wore.”

  “You know I hate leather.”

  I nod. Windsong.

  *

  THE POLICE HAVE erected a massive cordon on the other side of the bridge. I lose track after twenty police cars and a number of armored vehicles. The closest buildings are crawling with tactical units, snipers, signalmen. Arc lamps flood the scene and the ice-swept avenue leading onto the bridge, the daunting eternal blackness of the river moving sluggishly beneath. Suddenly its December, the cops in their fur-collared drill jackets accessorized with M-16s.

  The cordon bristles with an impromptu gathering of the city’s masked heroes. I drop to a space out in the open for safety’s sake, turning and burrowing back into the warm press of costumed humanity, eyes scouring the silhouettes for my daughter. Paragon, glowing warmly, and Red Monolith are nearby holding coffees and talking to one of the captains. The moment I am settled I hear reporters yelling as if from some distant dimension, but I ignore the projected sense of their own urgency and then the Commissioner himself walks across the ice in one of those neat Commie-era bearskin caps, a clipboard, thick gloves and a klaxon by his side.

  “Zephyr,” he growls loud enough for everyone to hear the love.

  “Commissioner Journey.”

  “You want your people to have a crack at this, or do we just give the order to take him down?”

  I finish my search of the terrain without any luck and turn back to the man in charge.

  “It is a him, is it?” I ask. “You have an ID?”

  “Reporters were good for something. They fingered a back-room massage parlor in Pierce.”

  “Queens,” I say.

  Journey raises one of those thick blonde eyebrows of his.

  “You a local boy?”

  “Just saying it like it is, Commish.”

  Journey grunts.

  “Our boy, we don’t have an ID on him, but a search of the scene reveals five hookers and their receptionist dead. Looks like he’d been in there for at least two days, loaded on crack, JB and some bad mojo. Can’t explain the freak weather. Mutant?”

  “Bad mojo?” I ask. “Explain.”

  “You tell me, hero-boy. Detectives said the dead girls had words etched into their skins, body parts missing, scorch marks on the floor. All the hallmarks of –”

  “Witchcraft.”

  “That’s right.”

  “OK, that’s all I need to know.”

  I look around. Paragon and Red Monolith have been joined by Seeker, Darkstorm, Mastodon, Vulcana and Miss Black. Further back among the police and forcing their way through I see Sky Blue, Nocturne and Falconer among a few less familiar faces. No diminutive auburn-haired flyers in short-cut Italian jackets.

  “Our guy out there on the bridge is Ras Algethi,” I say perhaps too loudly considering the topic, but I’ve recently watched Kurt Russell in Big Trouble In Little China again and I admit his delivery has rubbed off. “This is the same guy behind the bug invasion and the bank that went walking early last month. We need to put him down this time. There’s no point waiting for White Nine.”

  Miss Black pushes her way to the front.

  “If you’re talking demonic possession, we need to get Jocelyn here, now,” she says.

  Aware the ex-villainess’s fiancé is standing behind my left shoulder, I still manage to give my former teammate a look and say, “I think one potential enemy is enough here, don’t you?”

  Before Paragon can rile, there’s a fresh voice, and a big figure in grey-and-black wades through the impromptu freakshow.

  “You needed her last week, Zephyr, and you’ll need her now,” Twilight says. “We can all throw trucks around and melt tanks, but she’s a natural conjurer. There’s a chance The Kneeler may bow to her, if the moment’s right.”

  Everyone knows about the tension between Twilight and I – just thankfully not the sordid details. We stare at each other under the floodlights for a long moment and it’s me who breaks off contact, shrugging as I turn to review the bridge.

  “Well if you want her here, you do that.”

  Nearby, Darkstorm grunts under his Darth Vader helm.

  “We’ll go,” he says, and he and Paragon disappear together in the swirl of his black cloak.

  A new voice, feminine and throaty, pipes up.

  “Alright, gentlemen. . . .”

  Seeker walks forward, a light in the darkness even without the distinct feeling we’re all getting ready for a game of night football.

  “It seems we’re having a run on wayward spirits in Atlantic City lately,” she says aloud to the gathering. “It’s time to set an example.”

  “Let’s put the genie back in the fucking bottle, people,” I say and clap in keeping with the gridiron theme.

  And Seeker and I lead the flyers into the air.

  Zephyr 3.8 “Like Atlanteans”

  THERE IS A man sitting cross-legged in the middle of the Hell Gate Bridge.

  I should say there is an ice statue. In the half-hour he has knelt there, acknowledging the authorities blocking off the bridge from both ends, the ice has gathered with sculptural force. He sits in the middle of a circle also fashioned by the coldness of the air, a complicated sigil in frost drawn across it. I’m not sure he has made it himself, or perhaps simply just willed it into being. The other option is that it’s formed of its own volition – an even scarier prospect.

  Nocturne should know to set up the head radio system, but whether it’s because she’s too far behind the cordon or just flaking out again, we’re reduced to yelling over the wind and the noise of ice cracking in the river far below. Seeker indicates she wants to open negotiations with our frosty friend, and proprietary feelings notwithstanding, I swing around to offer back-up, drinking in the air currents as they lash across my garish uniform no-one has yet even noticed. Again, my eyes are half-distracted by the crowds, but I can’t see Tessa anywhere.

  Seeker lands gracefully and crouches for a moment, then advances on where the figurine glistens, unmoving in the middle of the bridge with frozen cars and minibuses pushed up along the sides.

  “I am Seeker,” she yells loud enough for at least the first of us to hear. “My colleagues and I are this city’s guardians. You are not welcome. We call on you to be gone.”

  Eventually she has to halt. Whether there’s power in the magick circle or not, it’s not wise to mess with the unk
nown, especially when you’re trying to run cosmic entities out of town. Unfortunately for diplomacy, the crouched figure doesn’t move. I can only hope he’s succumbed to the elements and in the morning the coroner’s office will be using a hacksaw to make way for traffic. But no, there’s something menacing and Otherworldly about the way the ice has constrained him, draping the possessed victim in the appearance of long robes and beard.

  More heroes arrive on the bridge and in the air around me: Crash Tiger, Devil Betty, and some of the even more rare ones, including a few oddities: Jackanape, Treesinger, Lynx, the newcomer Cipher, Amadeus in his Chancellor armor – a regular hometown showing, in support for Atlantic City. Perhaps the last week’s tragedy, courtesy of Twilight, has shown people that action may have staved off the worst of the damage.

  For a moment there’s a vision of a girl that makes my heart jump, but it isn’t Tessa. Against all logic I see Cusp, vinyl bodice packaging the goods as usual, moving around the backdrop. It makes desperate nonsense in my mind, logic the crusher of hopes. When our eyes meet, she glances through and over me. A stranger. I glance at Twilight, but he’s elsewhere, snapping instructions to the east flank. I can’t fathom it, but this is a mystery for another time.

  Sun Man gestures and a little fire cloud billows out from his palm. Chamber warps into view and we can hear his arsenal rotate into readiness. I drop to the ground and find myself beside Mastodon.

  “Hey,” he grunts, a cigar in the corner of his mouth. “Sorry I wasn’t there for you last week, comrade. You know I’ve got that wrestling gig in Tijuana at the end of every month. . . ?”

  “Hey don’t mention it,” I say. “It’s OK, brother.”

  We clasp forearms like Atlanteans and Mastodon gives a fierce nod, stamps his foot a few times and suddenly inflates beside me to his full nine-foot height. Lynx bounds over the roofs of the cars down one side of the bridge, dislodging ice, and Treesinger . . . well, Treesinger tunes his harp and continues with his quiet vocal warm-ups.

  “You think that turkey’s gonna have much luck out here with any trees?” I ask the ‘Don.

  “Well we’re on a bridge, Zephyr,” he says almost tiredly. “Some of these people just won’t ever frigging learn.”

  The ice guy still doesn’t move and I can hear nervous chatter among us good guys. Red Monolith, a hundred feet up in the air, yells, “Hey Zephyr! What gives?” and I have to shrug and console myself that we’re biding our time.

  And just like that the crouched figure cracks with a sound like audible gunshots, standing stubbornly, the frozen air giving him a wizardly appearance as a staff of ice manifests in his hand and he just as quickly hurls it point blank at Chamber.

  The armored guy deflects the missile with his forearm and the particle cannon whirls in reply, but the frozen dude, who they later imaginatively call the “Winter King,” actually cartwheels out of the way. And stupidly, Chamber’s attack sizzles amid the heroes on the other side, Jackanape tumbling and Cipher diving for it, while Devil Betty slips sideways into that pocket universe of hers and doesn’t come back till sometime around dawn.

  The colorful hordes around me surge and I fly with them, the city’s avengers, and the game as we play it around these parts is well and truly afoot.

  *

  ALL DOES NOT go according to plan, including the plan, which manifests stillborn and besides, we’re comic book heroes, we don’t have time for plans. We knock heads together and two plus two always adds up to the location of the bad guy’s lair. Or so we must think, because I can’t otherwise explain how within ten minutes the bridge is hanging by the thread of its last few remaining tensile steel cables and the police cordon’s utterly compromised.

  Sky Blue lies dead in the middle of the heaving bridge, burning cars and minivans screeching across the tattered tarmac and plunging into the river to the hissing of giant snakes and vast plumes of steam that erupt as if from the bowels of the very earth itself. There’s enough overtones of Ragnarok that I’m about ready for that fat lady to come in singing, but I could only wish this was a Wagnerian opera and not the balls-up it seems to be.

  As I crouch for cover behind an upturned police cruiser, its paint effectively sandblasted off by the raging wind, I see a delivery van tip over and accidentally collect up the dead, blue-suited air-controller, and they go careening together off the edge into the blackness below. Another cable snaps, whipping through the air with the fatalism of a guillotine, and in my immediate foreground a figure radiant with an icy aurora tips over police cars and ignores automatic gunfire like they were merely condiments on the Arctic breeze.

  Nocturne finally gathers some control over the telepathy thing. In a world first, Commissioner Matthew Journey clears his mental throat and addresses the supers.

  The creature doesn’t appear affected by our ballistics, he says gravely. If any of you people have a better idea, now’s the time to hear it.

  There’s some back-channel chatter I can’t quite get my mind around, pun intended, and as I squat there recharging and desperately trying to think through the twisted logic of how to beat on an alien god, I notice a compact figure descend through the dark sky to the rear of a row of police searchlights and then move between huddled cops to the very edge of the damage-strewn stage at the mouth of the bridge.

  My little girl looks grown up in her costume, but up close there would be no doubting she’s just a teenager.

  She wears the purloined leather jacket, black tights and knee-high leather heels. Her emblem is a deliberately punk W slashed haphazardly in spray paint over a rough circle in the middle of her back and while her hair’s tied back, it remains wild and aloof and the ferocious wind isn’t helping. And if that’s not one of my old masks concealing her beautiful pug-nosed face then it must come from one of those Zephyr novelty bags they used to sell at high school fairs a decade ago when this costume was still fashionable.

  Tessa takes a moment to assess the scene. Chancellor and Chamber rip into our opponent with their power blasts, Jackanape cartwheels in and realizes his dissembling powers, whatever they are, don’t work on something without a human mind, and Vulcana takes a powerful backhander that sees her disappear into the dark. In those few seconds I cross around behind Tessa, I mean Windsong, and I grab her by the upper arm just as she starts to rush forward.

  “Dad! What are you doing?”

  Against her futile efforts, I drag her back into the shadows at the base of the bridge. Two SWAT officers are triaging a Port Authority worker with a shrapnel wound to his arm that bleeds badly. The scene is too chaotic for ambulances to get through and last I saw, Darkstorm was taking those who would go with him on a shortcut through the shadow realms to Mt Mercy Hospital.

  “Tessa, what are you thinking? And keep your voice down.”

  I can’t restrain the deathly growl in my voice and Tessa, eyes wide under her mask, pulls her arm free with difficulty.

  “What’s going on?” she asks. “I’m here to help.”

  “We haven’t even discussed this,” I snap. “Tonight is not the night.”

  “I came to help!”

  “We haven’t even talked about how we’re going to handle this, Tessa.”

  “Hey,” she replies. “You’re the one who needs to keep your voice down. I’m Windsong, OK?”

  “Then stop calling me dad.”

  “Why?” she asks. “Can’t –”

  “Do you want every madman who’s ever held a grudge with me or lost out in a punch-up to start taking a number?” I hiss. “This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. We need a strategy – and that’s if not when your mother and I decide you’re allowed to start . . . going on missions.”

  “Hehe, ‘going on missions’,” she laughs.

  “Windsong,” I growl. “For Christ’s sake, it’s a school night.”

  “Oh dad. . . .”

  “It’s Zephyr.”

  “Our powers are similar. . . .”

  “I’ve never been a weather
controller,” I say.

  For a moment I can’t help but feel a little proud.

  “You really do that?”

  “Yes. And I can help here,” she replies. “You’ve got to let me. Hell, everyone’s here. I just saw the Crimson Cowl. Crimson Cowl 5, you know, the good one?”

  “Jeez, you’ve really been following this stuff. . . ?”

  “Why do you think my grades suck so bad?”

  “I thought because you were spending all your time eating pussy,” I reply off-handedly and blanch. “Crap, did I just say that? Uh, sorry honey. I meant, you know, teenage girls. . . .”

  My hands flail uselessly. I can guess that Tessa is blushing and looking around in that innocent teenage way kids do when wondering how they’re going to ditch their parents before they get seen together in the mall car park.

  After a few more moments pass, the girl in front of me flicks her hair from her shoulders and pouts, womanly all of a sudden, powerful and unknown.

  “I’m not a kid anymore Zephyr. You need to understand that, OK? I want your trust. Give me this chance?”

  “You’re killing me, honey. I have to say no. This time. This time, OK?”

  I wait a moment, but there’s not a lot of empathy coming back my way.

  “This time, Windsong,” I tell her, feeling ridiculous using that name. “This is just too big. Let’s ease into it. Train for it. I don’t even know what you can really do. You don’t even know what you can really do.”

  I’m winning. The pout sours.

  “So what am I supposed to do?” she asks.

  “Watch. Stay in the shadows for God’s sake, but watch. Sure. Watch.”

  Windsong says nothing. I rest a palm on her shoulder, the first time in living memory I have not been hitting on a female super in so doing. The thought of what some of these sleazeballs will make of her is enough to turn my stomach until I remember she’s a lesbian, or at least she thinks she is for now. I actually smile.