by Rob Rogers
And she flew.
* * * * *
Before leaving the building, Julian had tossed Zhdanov over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry with casual disregard. She needed to touch his skin, he figured, in order to hurt him, and therefore, his only truly vulnerable spot was his face; the uniform covered the rest. With her rear near his head and her legs in his arm, she’d be hard-pressed to reach up and zap him, and good manners be damned.
“Otpusti menya, ti Amerikaskoe gavno,” she yelled at him as he stepped out of the shack. Dispensing with the ruse of walking across the roof, he flew her across the building and down one side, heading toward his red Mercedes. “Kakova hrena?” she shouted in his ear. “Ti letaesh?”
“If you’re going to swear at me,” he said, “at least do it in English.”
Twice on the way, he reeled in sudden agony as his brother was injured in the battle above. When they reached the car, he dumped Zhdanov unceremoniously on the gravel, trying to keep his composure and catch his breath.
“You son of a bitch,” Zhdanov said, pulling herself to her feet, the palms of her hands bleeding from where she had tried to catch herself, pieces of gravel and dust falling from her hair.
Wincing from another injury, he raised a fist. “Take one step toward me,” he said, his breath ragged, “and I’ll knock you unconscious.”
She stared at him, eyes flashing, rubbing blood from her hands onto her sweatpants in scarlet streaks. She spat a piece of gravel onto the ground. “This is how you recruit me to help you?”
He shuddered in pain again. He was sweating again in his uniform. “No,” he said, his voice weak. He turned and pointed at the building. “This is how I save your goddamned life.”
The crashing, tearing sounds inside the building crescendoed. The warehouse began to rock back and forth. Chunks fell out of the south wall. It looked, briefly, like a grinning skull. And then the wall came down, the other walls pulled along with it, collapsing inward and outward and every which way. A stray concrete block sailed over their heads, smashing into the windshield of Julian’s Mercedes.
Julian felt sudden agony in his back, his legs, his side. He collapsed to his knees, staring at the warehouse as it turned into rubble. “Jason,” he whispered.
Zhdanov took a half step toward him, though he couldn’t tell whether it was in concern, need, or anger. She stopped when he held up a fist again, though he had trouble closing his fingers. “What did you say?” she asked.
He stared at the ruin of the warehouse. The aches were easing a bit, and he wondered what that meant about his brother. He wondered if Jason might be dying. He took a step toward the building then stopped himself. “Nothing,” he said. Uncle Costas would need a report. He yanked the cinderblock off his car and threw it a hundred feet away. The broken windshield would be conspicuous, but less so than flying through the air away from a collapsed building with a woman slung over his shoulder. “Get in the car,” he said. “We’re leaving.”
His thoughts a whirl, he watched the building in his rearview mirror until it was out of sight.
* * * * *
“Uncle Samuel, this is amazing,” Kate said, her body arcing through the night sky over Devil’s Cape, the Doctor Camelot armor flickering in the lights of the city. Her jet pack nearly silent, Kate could hear the chugging of distant cars, the flickering and popping of her cape in the wind, the soft rush of air around the armor.
“Glad to hear it,” Samuel replied tightly over her communicator. “This gizmo says you’re doing something like eighty per. You think you might want to slow it down a little bit, just in case?”
Below her stretched the galleries, art studios, antique bookshops, and internet cafés of Jocque Boulevard. Gaudily painted murals lined the sidewalks, and street vendors hawking woven bracelets, glittering jewelry, gris-gris, and pralines were just beginning to pull up their kiosks, folding tables, and blankets for the night. She slowed the armor to sixty-five miles per hour and ascended another two hundred feet, plowing through a cluster of startled bats. “Are you seeing this?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, and she heard the smile in his voice now. “Yeah, I see.”
Kate executed a flawless 135-degree turn, pivoting her body toward the tourist-filled Silver Swan district, its sky streaked with spotlights, its streets rumbling with jazz, zydeco, and laughter. “I could barely feel that turn,” she said. “The kinetic bafflers are doing their job.” The armor was buttressed with 26mm self-compensating shock absorbers in place not only to protect Kate from jarring shocks, but to allow her to reorient herself rapidly without injury.
Then she heard a loud rumble.
“What’s that?” Samuel asked.
“You heard it, too?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Over your transmitters and through the walls. It was loud, whatever it is.”
“Hang on,” she said.
Her faceplate allowed for a variety of small heads-up displays, positionable throughout her peripheral vision. She could queue up analysis of her internal systems, review sensor data, watch just about any television program broadcast in her considerable range, connect to the Internet, and scan through the databases she was connected to through her lab. All the screens were customizable—she could view what she wanted when she wanted.
“Hell,” she said. “Echo analysis shows the point of origin as the warehouse district, probably at Pier 42. Decibel level approaching 150, but unsustained, something loud but quick, like an explosion or building collapse.”
She was already turning in that direction, increasing her speed to ninety miles per hour. The armor flew her smoothly through the air. Her eyes flicked to another screen.
“Three 911 calls lodged in the vicinity. I’m getting automated transcriptions—” She paused. “Yeah, a building’s collapsed. Not known yet if it’s an explosion or not. No sign of fire.” Her eyes flicked to another screen. “I’ve got the address now. Parish records show the building as scheduled for demolition, but not for another six weeks.”
“Kate,” Samuel said, his voice tight again. “This is a test flight. You were going to fly around a little bit and come back.”
“My ETA’s thirty-seven seconds,” she answered. “Plans change.”
* * * * *
Jason’s body ached. He was wedged in somehow, concrete or a wooden beam running under his spine, which was twisted at a bad angle. His legs were trapped, too, swallowed in an immovable mass of rubble. Something—maybe a shard of metal—was jammed into his side under the ribs. He couldn’t tell how deep it was, but he felt cold there, though he could feel warm blood trickling down lower. He couldn’t see anything, but figured that was because the mass of the building over and around him was blocking off any ambient light. His eyes, at least, didn’t seem to be injured.
He coughed once, the pain of it agonizing with his punctured side. “Ducett?” he called out. “Ducett, you alive in here?”
The building hadn’t settled yet. Around him, he could hear chunks falling down, debris creaking ominously. He heard water trickling. The plumbing had surely been turned off when the building had been abandoned, but maybe there’d been some water trapped in the pipes or in a toilet somewhere.
He tried to move his legs. They hurt, but he could feel them moving a little inside the rubble. The trouble was that the wreckage of the building had him wedged in. To get free, he was going to have move the weight aside—and this probably meant hundreds of thousands of pounds—or he was going to have to pry himself out. Given the wound in his side, that didn’t sound too promising. He was strong. He could lift a car over his head without difficulty. But this was different. He didn’t have leverage. Any move he made could make the debris shift again, cause another collapse. And Ducett was probably in here, too.
“Ducett?” he called out again.
About fifteen feet above Jason and to his right, some rubble shifted. Small pieces of rock or concrete or plaster showered down on his face and he coughed painfully again.
“I’m here.” The voice was deep and rich.
“Ducett?”
“Yes.” A pause, a deep breath. “Scion?”
Jason coughed again, his mouth full of dust. He felt the weight of the building around them. It had been a while since someone had mistaken him for his brother. And never quite so dramatically. “No,” he said. “I’m Argonaut.”
“Oh.” Some more rubble shifted. Ducett sighed. “We’re both trapped here. The air’s probably not going to last long—it already smells stale. You might as well do me the courtesy of telling me the truth instead of lying to me. Maybe you are Argonaut, like you said. Maybe you have two uniforms or something. But you’re Scion, too.”
Jason shook his head in the darkness. The Argonaut Lynceus could see underground, the books said. He wished that he could, too. “I’m too tired and too sore to be lying right now,” he said. “I’m not Scion.”
“Bullshit. I talked to you on that rooftop. Your voice is the same. Your goddamned aftershave is the same.”
Jason blinked. Then he actually chuckled once, though that hurt almost as badly as the cough. Pop gave them the same aftershave every Christmas. He hadn’t realized Julian wore it, too. “Look,” he said. “I guess you’ve got a pretty keen sense of smell. But this is a waste of our time. I’m Argonaut, not Scion. Scion is someone else. I . . . know Scion. I’m not really prepared to tell you any more than that, but I’m not him.”
Ducett seemed to digest that. “You’re bleeding,” he said.
“Yeah.” Jason swallowed. “You can see in this?”
“No. No, it’s more . . . I can just tell.”
He could smell the blood, Jason thought. It hadn’t bothered Ducett to tell Jason he could smell the aftershave, but the blood—animals smelled blood. He wasn’t comfortable putting himself in the same category with an animal.
“I’m not sure how bad it is,” Jason said. “Something’s stuck in my side.” His lips were dry. He listened to the trickling water again, wishing he could drink some of it. “And you slashed me up, too.”
Ducett was quiet for a minute. “Sorry about that,” he said. His voice was flat, but Jason thought he might be sincere. “Argonaut, huh?”
Jason tried again to shift his body. Something shifted below him, and he could hear metal and concrete groaning in protest. He stopped. “It seemed to fit,” he said.
“I read about you in the paper,” Ducett said. “You caught the Troll.”
“He went free the next day,” Jason said. “He’s the leader of a street gang. The Concrete Executioners.”
Ducett grunted. “That’s what the paper said.”
“You used to be the leader of the Concrete Executioners.”
Ducett was quiet.
Jason continued to hear the sounds of the debris shifting, the water dripping. Any sounds from outside were muffled, but he thought that maybe he could hear sirens.
“He was after my time,” Ducett said. “I never met him. I think he started out in New Orleans, then came over here.” He paused. “Why the hell do you happen to know so much about me?”
Jason’s legs were starting to go numb. His circulation was cut off. He shifted some more. “I don’t really know all that much,” he said. “The whole ‘turns into a seven-foot-tall flying devil’ thing went right under my radar.”
Ducett actually laughed at that, a rumbling, crackling sound not that different from the shifting of the rubble in the collapsed building that trapped them. “Yes,” he said. “That came as something of a surprise to me, too.”
“But you rallied.”
The amusement fell out of Ducett’s voice and he sounded haunted. “No, not really,” he said. “And you evaded my question. How is it that you know so much about me?”
Jason thought about it for a moment, then said. “You know any blonde women with eyes filled with blood?”
Ducett sucked air through his teeth. It sounded like a hiss.
“I had a dream,” Jason said, “about a woman like that. In the dream, she told me you were evil, that you were going to kill someone, that I had to stop you. I have reason to believe my dreams sometimes.” He thought of pale-skinned Idmon, the circles under the man’s eyes, the gray streaks in his black hair. Fear them, Idmon had said in Greek, his voice shaking. You should always fear your dreams.
“I’ve come to respect my dreams, too.” Ducett’s words were a soft whisper. “She told you I was evil?” He sounded as though the idea hurt him.
“It was a dream,” Jason said. “And she was lying, I think. She was desperate for me to pursue you for some reason. Something terrified her. She was telling me what she needed to in order to get me to look for you.”
“And it worked.”
“And it worked,” Jason echoed. “What were you doing here? Why were you following . . . Scion?” He’d almost said “my brother.”
Ducett was quiet for a moment, and Jason wondered if he’d picked up on the verbal stutter. Finally, Ducett said, “Scion abducted a patient of mine named Olena Zhdanov and brought her to this building.”
“Oh,” Jason said. Olena Zhdanov. Rusalka, whose touch could kill. What in the world was Julian thinking? His side, where the piece of metal—a piece of rebar?—was stabbing him, had gone from cold to hot. He felt out of breath. “Why?” he asked, panting.
“I’m looking forward to asking him,” Ducett said, “once we get out of here.” His voice was angry, resolute.
“Speaking of which—” Jason needed to concentrate on escape first, his brother later. He wondered what Julian was doing with Rusalka, whether Uncle Costas was behind it. Julian was nearby. He had to feel the injuries Jason had suffered. Would he be coming to help?
Ducett grunted. “I’m wedged in tight,” he said. “Cinderblocks, a support beam, lots of plaster and gravel and dust. One arm’s pinned down, and so is my—” he broke off. “My tail,” he finished, “Never had that problem before.” He cleared his throat. “I can maybe climb free, pry my way out, but I don’t see how I can do it without burying you.”
Jason nodded. “I’m wedged in, too,” he said. “And like I said, something’s jabbed in my side.” He thought about it. “Your tail’s pinned, so you’re still in that . . . that other form?”
“Yeah.” Ducett’s voice was tight.
“Change back. You should be able to slip free.”
Ducett sucked air through his teeth again. “I’m stronger like this,” he said finally. “I’m not sure I could bear the weight otherwise. And—” he broke off, hesitated for a long moment. “I’m not sure if I can change back.”
“Oh.” Jason thought about that, thought about the intellectual man stuck in the body of the monster.
“How about you?” Ducett asked. “Can you pull yourself free?”
“Maybe,” Jason answered. “I’m strong, and I can fly, if the debris under me gives way.”
The strength of Heracles, he thought. The flight of the Boreads. He considered their options. Should he stall and wait for Julian to come to help them? No, he decided. He couldn’t count on anything from his brother.
“When you’re ready,” he said finally, “do what you have to do, and I’ll fend for myself.”
Steer clear of the warehouses along Provost Street, especially after dark.
— Excerpted from A Devil’s Cape Traveler’s Guide
Chapter Thirty-Six
Devil’s Cape, Louisiana
Eight days after the deaths of the Storm Raiders
7:45 p.m.
Kate arrived at the broken warehouse before the emergency vehicles did. She found a man staring into the wreckage, his brow furrowed. He was wearing tattered blue jeans and a red and brown flannel shirt that must have been sweltering in the Devil’s Cape heat. His hair stretched down past his shoulders in oily strings, his beard scraping his collarbone. His body and clothes were caked with dirt and grime, and it was evident that he hadn’t bathed in quite some time. His shoes didn’t match. Enraptured by the d
estruction, he didn’t notice her near-silent approach. As she landed and walked over to him, she was grateful for her armor’s air filtration system. “Excuse me,” she said through her voice-altering speakers.
The man turned and stared at her, his mouth gaping open. He was missing a lot of teeth. “Who da hell are you?” he asked. He had a thick Cajun accent.
“I’m Doctor Camelot,” she said, feeling a rush of pride at the words despite the circumstances. “Did you see what happened?” She began a hard scan of the wreckage with her sensors. Sonar, radar, X-ray, explosive detection, ultraviolet, infrared.
The man shrugged. He reached out with a tentative finger, poking her armor. It might have been an accident that he happened to poke her left breast, but she doubted it.
She gently slapped his hand away. “Stop that,” she said. “Did you see what happened?”
He shrugged again, squinting at her, trying to see through her faceplate. “Building wen’ down like London bridges,” he said.
“Was there an explosion? An impact?” She wasn’t detecting any explosive trace, but she was also still pretty far from the building. She set a program to analyze the structural data she was gathering, to plot out the weakest and strongest points based on the density of the materials.
“Nah,” he said. “Don’ t’ink so. Dat buildin’, she shook in a good wind. Ain’t no surprise she come undone.” He turned away from her again, looking at the building. “She come down real good,” he said. “She was what, seven, eight stories? Now she ’bout two, maybe.” He glanced at her. “You a cop?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Was there anyone inside?”
“Did I stutter?” he said. He said the next bit slowly, enunciating every syllable. “That. Building. Shook. In. A. Good. Wind.” He shook his head. “Have to be crazy to go in deah.” He scratched at an armpit. “ ’Sides, the doors was bolted up good ’n tight.”
