Lovesick Gods

by Amanda Meuwissen

  He was being too dismissive, laying on the bravado to ease Danny’s concerns, when he looked almost as bad as Camouflage had that night when Danny lost it. “I’m sorry. I’m so—”

  “Danny,” Cho said seriously, “you never have to be sorry for defending yourself.”

  “But I wasn’t—”

  “You thought you were. You were wrong. Didn’t give me the benefit of the doubt. Fine. But why should you have? If it had been Vaughn or Rivers, you would have stopped and listened to them.”

  Danny honestly didn’t know if that was true—in the moment, in his anger. He thought he would. He would, wouldn’t he?

  “Here.” Narrowing his eyes at Danny sitting in front of him in his underwear on the concrete, Cho pulled his long, sleeveless duster from his shoulders. He settled it snug around Danny to cover him as much as it allowed. “Sorry for the lack of sleeves, but you need this more than I do right now. And mmm…” He regarded Danny with that familiar glance down his body. “Kept thinking of things to drape you in, Sparky, and here I stumbled upon the sexiest one by accident.”

  Danny snorted and wiped at his eyes, a complete mess on the ground of an alley in his enemy’s signature costume piece. He hugged it around himself. The duster smelled like Cho.

  “I’m just an old thief with a bad track record. You had every reason to believe what you did. Means you’re learning. You shouldn’t be so trusting of scoundrels,” Cho grinned.

  “Not even of you?” Danny grinned back.

  “Especially not of me.”

  Danny wasn’t so sure anymore. When Cho’s expression softened, he didn’t look like an enemy. Danny wanted to kiss him again, would have if not for the split lip. He wanted to hold him, keep him safe, keep him with him for…forever. But he couldn’t say that. It was too dangerous. This was all too dangerous and stupid and…and Danny didn’t care, he just wanted to keep feeling what Cho made him feel.

  He kissed Cho’s cheek where it wasn’t bruised or scratched. “I will never hurt you again.”

  “Now, now,” Cho said, “don’t get carried away. I might deserve it next time.”

  But he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t. “Mal, I…I have to tell you something.”

  “Sure, Sparky. But let’s get out of this alley first, huh? Gotta be somewhere better we can go for now. Hey…” Glancing around them, he shifted to look behind Danny. “Where’s the suit?”

  “Oh, uhh…” Danny looked over his shoulder at where he’d ripped the suit off of him. He couldn’t exactly leave it for someone to find. He needed to destroy it.

  Wearing nothing but his underwear and Cho’s duster, he got to his feet and ventured back into the middle of the alley, feeling the ground with his foot. Cho stood behind him, a little wobbly but steady enough. Danny still wanted to make sure he got checked out by someone with official medical credentials, whoever this ‘nurse’ might be.

  Finally, Danny felt the scrape of fabric on his foot, though there appeared to be nothing in front of him. Reaching down to pick the suit up, he wondered how best to dispose of it, when his hand accidentally gripped the spot on the glove that triggered the invisibility. The suit shimmered into existence in his fingers.

  Danny gasped and dropped the suit with a start. The air was too still as he waited for something to happen, for Ludgate’s laugher to come resounding up at them like some storybook monster.

  When nothing happened, he released a shaky laugh and looked at Cho, who had his hand out, like he was ready to fight regardless of the state he was in. Then Cho relaxed, and they shared a smile.

  Danny reached for the suit again.

  “There you are, Zeus.”

  The mosaic of Ludgate’s image flickered to life, and faster than Danny could pull back, a hand reached out of the many mirrors as if they were one—a thousand tiny reflections working in sync—and seized Danny’s wrist.

  By the time he screamed, he was already being pulled into the suit like disappearing down a rabbit hole.

  Chapter 23

  Danny landed hard on his shoulder and the sharp edge of his hip, only softened by having Cho’s duster around him. Gasping for air, he felt, for a moment, as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. But then he breathed, blinked, and rolled onto his back. Above him was a canvas of black and a million twinkling stars.

  “And to think there was a time when I was frightened of you,” Ludgate’s voice encircled him like a din from every direction. “You’re just a scrawny kid.”

  Leaping to his feet, Danny spun around, fists up in a fighting stance, but his composure failed him when he took in his surroundings.

  The blackness wasn’t the sky, and it definitely wasn’t a ceiling. It was…everywhere. Even the ground beneath his feet was a void of black that he was somehow standing on. And the twinkling lights weren’t stars; they were mirrors. He could see dozens, hundreds, thousands of them, some close, others spiraling into the distance like a labyrinth.

  And in every one of them was an image of Ludgate.

  The seams in Ludgate’s suit were reflective and glowing as if infused with power, giving him the impression of something larger than life—like a god—while Danny barely had enough energy left to use his lightning.

  “So easily brought to tears over Prometheus?” Ludgate mocked him, causing Danny to wipe furiously at the remaining wetness on his cheeks. “How did all that go down anyway, you ending up as his kept boy? You secretly his partner in crime, Zeus, and the hero thing was always a front, or do you just like the taste of rough now and again?”

  Using his waning strength, Danny lightning jumped to the nearest reflection and brought around a sparking punch that connected squarely with Ludgate’s image, only for a shriek to tear from his lips as he fell to his knees. The glass hadn’t shattered, but the bones in his hand had. He held it limply in his lap, willing the bones to knit together faster as it pulsed with pain.

  Ludgate’s laughter made it so much worse. “You can’t destroy the mirrors here, Zeus. That only works in your world. This world is mine.”

  Strong fingers wrapped around Danny’s neck and squeezed until he gagged, only to hurl him backwards before he could attempt to fight back. He struck one of the mirrors and felt a rib snap on impact. It all happened so fast.

  Ludgate reached for him out of another reflection, and Danny scrambled to his feet, backing away even as he coughed from the pain in his side. It would heal, it would heal…

  A sharp kick to his spine sent him spiraling forward into the reflection he’d been escaping, meeting Ludgate’s hand that gripped his shoulder and wrenched him down as a knee rammed up into his stomach. Danny coughed again and doubled over, feeling like he was going to be sick, like he was seeing stars. He had to focus.

  “Come on, Zeus, you’re not even trying,” Ludgate spat.

  Danny backpedaled away from the mirror, attempting to gauge how close he was to others, keep out of range, but there were so many. Even when he spun around and tried to strike out against Ludgate’s limbs that escaped the safety of the glass, one misstep always brought him too close to danger. He’d receive a kick or a punch or get knocked into another mirror, tossed around like a weakling. Like he was in high school again, surrounded by bullies.

  Thinking of the alley he’d come from, of Cho waiting for him, Danny desperately tried to summon the power to jump back to the normal world. He felt electricity pulse through him, but his form flickered with a jolt like he’d hit a wall, and he remained in the exact same spot he’d started. He couldn’t jump out of this place.

  The next time Ludgate struck him and Danny stumbled, he coughed blood onto the floor, and it seemed to disappear into the blackness like it was never there. The breaks in his hand were healing, slowly. Soon he’d be able to use it again if he could just breathe and see straight. He had to get away from the reflections, had to think, had to fight�
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  On his back, bloody and bruised as bad as Cho now, Danny grabbed the next limb that came into view—an ankle. He had Ludgate now, he had him. “You can’t…hide in mirrors…forever.”

  Escaping Danny’s grasp, Ludgate yanked his leg back into the mirror, and Danny was powerless to stop him. He rushed forward and hit the glass ineffectually in an attempt to retrieve the leverage he’d lost. Then, before Ludgate could retaliate, he rolled away and pulled his own legs to his chest. Hugging them close, he sat huddled, hiding in Cho’s duster, as equidistant between mirrors as he could get.

  “The real you is here somewhere!” he cried.

  “Sure, Zeus,” Ludgate chuckled in pure amusement, “but you’ll never find me. Just like you’ll never find your way out. See, I can use any of the mirrors here. But you can only exit out the mirror you came in through. Do you know which one it is?”

  Peeking his head up out of the duster, Danny looked around. The mirrors were everywhere. There was no discernable incline or decline in the darkness, but he could tell that some of the more distant mirrors were higher up or beneath him. Otherwise, they all looked the same.

  “All of these mirrors connect to the material world, Zeus. Mirrors, other surfaces with strong enough reflections, I can reach them all, but you can’t. You’d starve and waste away before you ever got close to finding your way home. It would take an eternity to explore the vastness of this world without my powers.”

  “Your powers?” Danny breathed, dazed and grimacing as his wounds struggled to heal when he was so tired. “They’re more than traveling through mirrors?”

  “Traveling through—” Ludgate broke off into his loudest laugh yet. “That isn’t my power, Zeus. I learned how to reach the mirror world long before I Awakened. No, my power is why I can do this when no one else can.”

  Danny didn’t understand. If Ludgate traveled through mirrors without powers then how did he do it?

  “That suit of yours is something else though,” Ludgate said, large and menacing around Danny like he might step out of his reflections as an army at any moment. “The way each of the pieces work together…it gave me such wonderful ideas. And you’re in luck. Because it means I’m not gonna kill you yet.”

  The images winked out, leaving Danny staring at glittering surfaces that filled the blackness with soft, faint light. He could finally see himself, reflected in the mirrors closest to him, and also see the way the mirrors reflected each other, creating an illusion of infinity.

  “I jumped the gun, Zeus,” Ludgate’s voice filled the vast space. “Been planning to take you down for six long months, yet I got ahead of myself. If I really want you to pay for what you did to me, we can’t end the game now. We could have so much more fun together. Besides, you ruined the show. Can’t make a splash with the museum heist anymore. Well…maybe I can. But we’ll have to think of something better for next time. Something bigger. Because now, Zeus, now I’m gonna make sure your suffering lingers. So, in the meantime, why don’t I introduce you to someone? Though I think you’ve already met.”

  Pivoting his head between reflections, Danny was terrified that Ludgate had gone back for Cho, that he’d hurt him in front of Danny or worse, but Cho’s image never appeared. Danny only saw himself. And then, once when he turned his head, he realized that the reflection he was looking at was staring at him with a twisted smile.

  Danny scurried back despite himself. His shoulders hit a mirror and he flinched, expecting Ludgate to push him or punch him or throw him around again, but nothing happened.

  While Danny remained pressed back, knees pulled in, staring forward, his reflection started to get up. He looked just as beaten as Danny, wore only his underwear and the duster like Danny, but his wounds started to heal and fade away faster. Dropping the duster from his shoulders, in its place a suit materialized. But it wasn’t The Invisible Man or his usual white and gold.

  It was deep purple like Thanatos.

  “This is better, isn’t it?” Danny’s reflection spoke, standing there in Thanatos’s suit, purple with highlights in black. The mask was pulled from his face, but the image still shook Danny. “White was never our color. I think we’re better in darker shades, don’t you?”

  The yellow of this other Danny’s eyes turned black as he said that—and remained that way, voidless and terrible.

  “You’re not real,” Danny clenched his own eyes shut, chanting into his knees. “You’re not me. You’re just a construct. A trick of camera footage and vocal recordings.”

  “You sure about that?” the voice whispered from behind him.

  Jumping up, Danny spun about to scramble the other direction, seeing his reflection in the mirror he’d been leaning against, grinning at him as he rose from a crouched position.

  “See, Danny, I’m the you that you keep trying to run away from. You know who you really are. What you are.” He tilted his head and the black in his eyes roiled like moving shadows. “You’re a monster, Danny. Just like Thanatos. You’re worse than him. Because you make everyone see this sweet, innocent face, this heroic façade,” he spread his arms, and for a moment the suit was white as it should be, before it shimmered back to purple, “but where you really get your kicks is when you bash someone’s head into the pavement. When you manipulate them for your own amusement.”

  The image shorted out like a faulty television and reappeared behind Danny again.

  “When you play Cho like a fiddle until he begs for you to fuck him.”

  “Shut up,” Danny said, trembling beneath the image of himself in Thanatos’s suit, “it’s not like that.”

  Other Danny crouched again to look him in the eyes—those black eyes. “Isn’t it? Wasn’t that your plan? Because he deserves it, right? Oh, Danny, Thanatos would be so proud—”

  “Shut up!” Danny screamed and leapt to his feet, not to punch this time but to pound the glass, if only to beat at his image even if he couldn’t shatter it. “I won’t do it. I won’t go through with it. I thought breaking his heart would make me feel better after what he did, but he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t.”

  His reflection laughed at him while moving to stand. “Sounds pretty monstrous to me. That’s how you created me, Danny. You think I’m not real? I’m real. I’m like a virus. Give me more of what I crave, what I need, and I just get stronger.”

  Danny’s pounding tapered off with a final weak thud, his fists and forearms pressed to the glass.

  “And one day,” his reflection said, eyeing him as though hungry to take his place, “I’ll be the only version of you left.”

  Hands pushed through the mirror and gripped Danny’s wrists. For a moment, he couldn’t be sure if they were Ludgate’s hands or his own, clad in purple and black, in the wrong suit, in the suit that had killed his friend. His mother.

  Lurching to get away, Danny tried once, twice, and finally on the third time his reflection released him and he tumbled back from the momentum. He expected to hit the mirror behind him, but when he fell, he toppled through it and kept falling. Blackness surrounded him, and he heard one last taunting phrase before he felt an impact.

  “Be seeing you.”

  “Danny!”

  Pulling away from the hands that seized him, Danny fought with a wild swing that he knew would be feeble. He was so tired and hurting and sorry—

  “Danny,” Cho’s voice cut through the rushing in his ears. He felt gentle hands close over his wrists where a moment before had been something harsh and cruel. Blinking past the blur of tears in his eyes, Danny saw that it was Mal, it was Mal.

  He sobbed as he collapsed forward. They were on the ground together in the alley, Cho’s duster still around Danny’s shoulders, while so much of both of them was bruised and bloody and sore. But Danny would heal. He always healed.

  “Danny, it’s okay. You’re okay. What did he do to you?”

  J
erking upright, Danny saw the suit. Visible. Shimmering at him. He wanted to tear it into pieces, but he didn’t dare touch it.

  “We have to turn it on,” Cho said.

  “No.”

  “Danny—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Danny huddled in Cho’s arms. “He won’t use it again, not tonight. He doesn’t want to kill me anymore. He wants to do worse.”

  For a moment, as Cho held him, Danny wondered what Ludgate would do to the infamous Prometheus. But he already knew. Ludgate didn’t need to do anything. Danny was enough. Danny was a poison—a virus. He’d ruin Cho all on his own.

  “Mal…what color are my eyes?”

  “What?”

  “My eyes…” Danny looked at him, into Cho’s brilliant blue, which were bright and beautiful even in the dark, even dazed and broken after such a long night.

  Cho held one side of Danny’s face and brushed away his tears. “They’re yellow, Sparky. They’re always yellow.”

  “And now?” Danny asked, summoning his powers, which made his heart stutter from overuse but also made him afraid that he was summoning something dark inside of him.

  “Just brighter gold,” Cho said, marveling at what he saw. “Like your lightning.”

  Releasing the breath he’d been holding, Danny fell forward against Cho as he let his power slacken. It was just a reflection. It was just a reflection…

  “Danny, are you there?!”

  A gasp left Danny at Andre’s voice sounding so close. It was coming from the suit.

  “Danny, if you’re there,” Lynn spoke next, “stay where you are. We’ve almost tracked you.”

  Before, Danny had worried about Ludgate trying to hurt his friends, had thought up so many terrifying scenarios for how the Elemental might torture and stalk them. Now he believed the man had different plans, but he still didn’t want Andre and Lynn to find him. He almost wished Cho wasn’t there either, witnessing him falling apart—again—but he didn’t want to let the thief go.