by Rob Rogers
“Nine hundred kilovolts,” Doctor Camelot said, grabbing him and tossing him to the side of the pool, where he splayed out along a series of expensive ceramic tiles. She sprayed him from head to foot in the same kind of gluelike polymer she’d used at the collapsed building to secure the chunks of rubble together. The air smelled like ozone. “That should hold him for a while,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Cain stared at the man propped beside the pool like so much cordwood. The shrieking alarm hurt his ears. He heard a dog—or maybe it was the Werewolf—howling nearby. “One down,” he said. “Five to go.”
* * * * *
The Behemoth and Errando sat at the kitchen table, a smorgasbord of raw sausages, beef ribs, and a pork shoulder laid out in front of them, a thin trail of blood running toward the corner of the table and slowly dripping on the hardwood floor. The two of them frequently ate alone together, as their taste for raw meat repulsed the others. They’d experimented with fancier stuff from time to time—steak tartare or even sushi—but more often than not, they just got down to essentials.
The Behemoth sat awkwardly on a huge leather recliner he’d dragged into the kitchen, the only chair in the house that could bear his weight. Errando hunched over the table, gnawing at a raw sausage. He was in the form he was born in, human, but with long brown hair growing over most of his body. The sausage casing popped and squished as he chewed.
When they heard breaking glass followed by the shrill house alarm, they stared at each for a few seconds. The Behemoth pulled himself to his feet and Errando dropped the half-eaten sausage to the floor. His body began to shift, the nose elongating into a snout, his fingernails hardening into long, black claws.
“Stay with me,” the Behemoth said. “They’ll want to split us up. We should find the others.”
Errando was in his Werewolf form now, and the loud alarm was causing him obvious pain. He howled in agony. But he stepped to the Behemoth’s side as they headed toward the stairs.
* * * * *
Jason cast his eyes all around him, wishing that he could find some way to turn off the alarm, if only so that he could concentrate better. The plan, such as it was, had been to attack from the rear of the house quickly, taking as much advantage as possible of the element of surprise. They’d hoped to encounter at least one member of the Cirque d’Obscurité outside, but the goal had been to neutralize that person without alerting the others. Kraken was out of the fight, but now everyone knew they were there. It felt like they were already behind the eight ball.
He hovered over the house, waiting for signs that someone was coming outside or manning one of the machine guns. He heard dogs barking in other houses nearby.
Another one of their advantages was altitude. All three of them could fly, giving them an edge over all of their opponents except Osprey.
On the other hand, flying made them targets. Jason was focusing so much of his attention on the machine gun turrets that he nearly missed an attack from another direction.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a bright light from behind one of the upstairs windows and instinctively dove to one side. A blast of fire, its heat incredible, seared through the air where he’d been a moment before. Below, he could see that the window where the shot had come from had been shattered, only a few pieces of molten glass still clinging to the window frame.
Hector Hell.
Jason swooped down to the house, flying through the window frame, the shattered bulletproof glass still hissing and sputtering from heat. The room, a small study, was empty, Hector Hell gone.
The alarm stopped.
In the sudden silence, Jason looked around the study. An antique desk sat against one wall, a framed black and white photo of Lorenzo Ferazzoli hanging above it. Ferazzoli stood next to one of the race horses he owned, the white of his hair standing stark against the black of its mane. He didn’t smile in the picture. He just stared out from the wall in utter disdain. Jason remembered how much the man had always scared him.
Jason looked outside, past the charred, smoldering wood of the window frame. Ducett and Doctor Camelot were hovering nearby. Ducett’s red-black wings were fanned out and he was moving in a gentle circle, eyes wary. Doctor Camelot’s jet pack hummed, but she was motionless in the air. Her motions were so carefully calibrated that he doubted she moved a single centimeter unless she wanted to.
“Hell’s moved on,” Jason called out to them. “Are we ready to head on inside, or do you want to wait a while longer to see if we can draw them out?”
Ducett opened his mouth to answer him, but then a noise like thunderclap shook the house and he reeled back, plummeting down, a plume of blood spraying from his chest.
* * * * *
“Hell’s moved on,” Argonaut said from inside the mansion. “Are we ready to head on inside, or do you want to wait a while longer to see if we can draw them out?”
Hovering in the air, monitoring the machine gun turrets with radar, Kate debated it. She’d measured Hector Hell’s flames at 2,530 degree Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt steel. She could withstand a blast like that, but she didn’t want to lead the others to their deaths. Maybe she should enter the house on her own.
Then a shot cut the air and Bedlam was falling.
“Oh, God,” she said, swooping down and catching him. She stared at the wound. A small hole the size of a nickel was bubbling with red blood on his chest.
The shooter—it was almost certainly Gork, and with a sniper rifle from a window or murder hole somewhere, since those machine gun turrets were still empty—had punctured a lung. Cradling Bedlam in her arms, she flew around the edge of the vine-covered pool house, hoping for some cover where she could stow him until the fight was over. Lifting him above her head, she checked for an exit wound. She found it, a ragged hole as wide across as a racquetball.
“Bullet go through?” Bedlam grunted, startling her. His voice sounded ragged from the lung wound, but she was surprised even to hear him conscious.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll get you through this.” She sent an automatic message to 911. Someone highly placed in the police force was working hard at looking the other way where the Cirque d’Obscurité was concerned, but at least she might get an ambulance here on time.
“Set me down,” he said, and she was surprised to realize she was still carrying him. She bent her knees and lowered him gingerly to the ground.
“You can’t leave Argonaut alone with them,” he said. “Go ahead. I’ll be along in a minute.”
She shook her head, rested a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think you understand,” she said. “You’ve got a pierced lung. You’re not going to be able to—”
“Go,” he said, his voice urgent. “I’m a fast healer. Don’t waste any more time on me.”
And then she could see that the small entrance wound was already closing. She stared at it.
“Go!” he said.
She nodded, patting him once more on the shoulder, then flew around the pool house, heading toward the house. Argonaut was still inside—either he had decided to pursue someone in there, or something had happened to him. Either way, she thought, she needed to get inside that house.
* * * * *
Poteete jogged heavily down the hallway, panting with the effort. “Goddamn it,” he said. Standing at the window in the study, looking outside in response to the alarm, he’d spotted the caped form of Argonaut flying outside. If he’d been a little quicker, he would have torched the fucker. But Argonaut had seen him flame up and dodged to one side, and the blast had missed. A wasted opportunity. And now he had to run for cover before Argonaut followed him through the obvious hole in the window.
“Stay in the mansion for now,” the Robber Baron had said that afternoon. “Lay low. Be on guard. We’ll give Costas a few days to come around or to hang himself.” Crap.
He wished he hadn’t become so attached to the house. If they’d left, as the Robber Baron had suggested, they wouldn’t be facing down this atta
ck.
He heard a noise behind him and whirled to see the Behemoth at the other end of the hallway, waving to him to follow him into one of the bedrooms. He heard a gunshot echoing from behind the big man. Gork must have already been in that room. Good. Maybe he’d hit something.
Poteete waved the Behemoth off. The last thing they needed to do was cluster together and form one big target.
“Poteete!” the Behemoth bellowed.
Poteete ignored him. He ran into the music room, which featured an out-of-tune baby grand piano and lots of dust. Tony Ferazzoli hadn’t been much for the arts. But the room also had another big window, and beside it, one of the narrow murder holes that the old pirate who’d built the house had included. The murder hole gave good cover, but not a lot of visibility. Poteete turned sideways to minimize his profile and cupped his hand to the window, looking outside. At the side of the pool, he spotted Stecker, stretched out and motionless, unconscious or dead, and covered in some sort of goop. Not far away, though, he saw the shining chrome figure of Doctor Camelot, flying with the demonic Bedlam cradled in her arms. Good, he thought. Maybe Bedlam was dead. It looked like Gork’s aim was better than his.
He waited, trying to catch his breath, the dust from the room making him wheeze. Slowly and carefully, he stepped back and opened the murder hole. No sense blasting through the glass if he didn’t need to.
Doctor Camelot flew away from the pool area, heading back to the house, her armor glittering in the moonlight. This time, Poteete took the time to aim. His next blast of fire slammed into her, engulfing her in flames. She dropped out of the air to the ground, quickly setting the lawn ablaze.
He was smiling to himself when he heard someone moving around in Tony Ferazzoli’s bedroom, the room where he’d been sleeping. He closed the window, then moved down the hallway to check it out.
* * * * *
When Jason had seen Bedlam—Dr. Ducett—get shot, his first impulse, after a moment of sick horror, was to catch the man. But Doctor Camelot was already moving to catch him. And somewhere, nearby, there was a sniper. The best thing he could do for Ducett was to make sure that there wasn’t a second shot.
The sniper wasn’t in the turrets, because Ducett and Doctor Camelot had been watching the turrets. He was inside the house and close by.
Guessing at the angle, Jason smashed right through the wall to the next room, sending plaster, wood, and scraps of floral wallpaper flying, sending the photo of Lorenzo Ferazzoli crashing to the floor.
He’d guessed right. The scarred, grotesque Gork was leaning against a table by the narrow murder hole in the room beyond, a high-powered rifle in his hands. He wore an ironed black T-shirt, blue jeans, and a belt with the large, shiny buckle Ducett had warned them about. His skin was moist with oil or some kind of excretion. He turned toward Argonaut in mild surprise, but not fear.
Because he wasn’t alone.
Next to Gork in the small room he’d smashed into, Jason saw Osprey, Werewolf, and the Behemoth. All three turned toward him, the Behemoth grinning monstrously.
He knew enough about them to know that he couldn’t possibly take on four of them alone.
Hating the necessity of it, he ran away, sprinting as fast he could for another part of the house.
* * * * *
Julian stood in Tony Ferazzoli’s bedroom, lights off, his body in shadows.
Julian had never really liked Tony’s house.
Part of that, of course, was association. Tony made him uncomfortable. He was fat and coarse and superstitious, and had been sort of a rival of Uncle Costas. And of course there was the minor detail that Julian had murdered Tony’s father. Tony hadn’t known that—he barely knew who Julian was at all. He had probably even been relieved when the old bastard had died. But it kind of cast a pall over Julian’s associations with Tony and his house.
On top of his feelings about Tony, though, Julian just thought the place was tacky. Tony didn’t decorate his mansion. He used it to stash his loot. The bedroom was an example. Big brass bed, black satin sheets, an armoire that clashed with the rug, which clashed with the wallpaper in the master bathroom. Tacky.
He wasn’t sure whether it was his disdain for the house or sheer tactical sense that gave him the idea, but he liked it for its drama and simplicity. Jason and his new friends Bedlam and Doctor Camelot had been hovering around the building, waiting in vain for the members of the Cirque d’Obscurité to come out. Meanwhile, the freaks were taking potshots at them. It wasn’t exactly a winning proposition.
They needed to flush the Cirque d’Obscurité out of the house.
And what better way than setting it on fire?
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Hector Hell entered the room not ten feet from Julian. He was wearing that garish costume. Julian wondered if he’d been walking around in it all evening or if he’d taken the time to put it on when the alarm sounded. He wasn’t sure which possibility was more pathetic.
“Hector!” Julian said, smiling in mock surprise. “It’s good to see you.” Inside, he was calculating just what to do next. Hector Hell could make fire appear wherever he wanted, could manipulate it, make it dance. He was immune to the heat, too—he could make flames crawl up and down his arms or plume from his thin lips. He could stick his hand into molten lead without raising a welt on his skin. Julian was tough, but he knew that the ridiculous-looking man in front of him could easily burn him to death.
Hector held out an arm wrapped in flames. The heat in the room rose as though someone had lit a bonfire in the middle of Tony Ferazzoli’s bed. “I recognize you, Scion,” he said. He nodded toward the window outside. “Is all this your doing? Has Kalodimos gone rogue?”
His smile never dropping, Julian spread his hands. “What we have here, Hector, are a problem and an opportunity.” He clucked his tongue. “The problem is that no one was supposed to realize that I was here.” He held up a finger. “The opportunity, though, is that you are like manna from heaven. I was just looking for something to use as a tinder box.”
If Hector Hell had been just a little faster, a little braver, he could have engulfed Julian in an inferno of flames and heat. But when Julian rushed forward, he flinched instead.
And that was all the time Julian needed.
* * * * *
Cain rested on all fours, watching his blood spread out on the tiles and trickle into the pool, the red billowing out into the water like new-forming clouds. “Go!” he’d said to Doctor Camelot. But even though he could feel his body healing, could feel his lung start to fill with air again, the pain and shock were numbing. He was badly hurt.
“I’ll just sit here for another second or two,” he panted to himself.
Cain? Jazz’s voice in his mind.
“I’m a little busy right now, Jazz,” he said. Raising himself up to his knees, he clutched at the entrance wound.
I like the name Bedlam, she said.
“I’m so happy,” he said. He could feel air hissing in and out of the hole in his back with every word he spoke. “We’re dealing with the Cirque d’Obscurité now. If we catch them, I think you should be safe.”
Thank you, Cain, she said. Her voice was soft, relieved, wistful.
“And then we’ll be even,” he said flatly.
No, Cain, she said, her voice in his head now a harsh whisper. We’ll never be even.
He heard a blast like an explosion then. “Hell,” he said, “that can’t be good.” He struggled to his feet. The wound was healing, but not healed. He could feel blood oozing down his back. “Jazz?” he said. But she was gone.
Flying would be an impossible agony right now, so Cain stumbled forward as best he could, reaching over his shoulder awkwardly to pull out the shotgun he still had stashed in his satchel.
Doctor Camelot stood motionless on the back lawn, engulfed in flames. Even as far away as he was, Cain could feel the awful heat of them.
She’s dead in there, he thought. She’s been cooke
d inside of her armor.
Nevertheless, he limped forward to her, trying to think of anything he could do to help.
* * * * *
When Argonaut dashed away, the others turned to the Behemoth to see whether to follow. Everyone acknowledged Hector Hell as the leader of the group. He was the expedient choice, since he was best equipped to negotiate with outsiders. But when it came down to a fight, the Behemoth took over.
Outside on the lawn, the Behemoth saw Doctor Camelot erupt into flames. He smiled. Poteete was an idiot for ignoring him and going off on his own, but he couldn’t argue with the results.
Argonaut was running. Bedlam was shot, maybe dead. Doctor Camelot was on fire. It had made sense before for the freaks to stay together, to make sure that they weren’t isolated like Stecker had been. But now they had the white hats on the run.
“Sasha and Horodenski,” he said, “follow Argonaut.”
They dashed out of the room.
He turned to Errando. “Let’s see what we can do about cracking open that tin can,” he said. The Werewolf smiled, drool dripping from his mouth, then dashed ahead of the Behemoth with murderous speed.
* * * * *
Kate’s armor had measured Hector Hell’s blast at Argonaut at 2,530 degree Fahrenheit, but the flames blazing around her now were even hotter.
Her armor was struggling to compensate, to protect her. One of the readouts on her screen flickered and died as her IR sensors burned out. She activated the fire extinguisher vents included with the armory on her wrists. Nothing—the nozzles had been fused shut. She could smell the acrid smoke of melting parts. The weakest, least insulated parts of her armor were smoldering. She could feel a hot, burning spot against her ribs on one side. She told the armor to move forward, but, reacting to the heat, all of the energy in her systems was being redirected to cooling the armor and maintaining a sealed environment.
