Death Blows

by D. D. Barant

  “You watch Seinfeld?” Eisfanger asks. “Get out!”

  I restrain my urge to push him out of the helicopter. “Bizarro has his own special language, where he says the opposite of what he means. He says good-bye when he shows up and hello when he leaves. He tells his friends that he hates them and his enemies that he loves them—it’s more reverse logic, but at a personal level. But it’s not just a speech impediment—he acts the same way.”

  I take a deep breath before continuing. “It’s not just the sequence of events that our killer has reversed. It’s his motives, too. He saw killing Dark as being a benevolent act; he saw robbing the Bravos as helping them.”

  “Wait—why would he act benevolently toward someone that’s supposedly his nemesis?” Cassius asks. “Is that another reversal?”

  I sigh. “Yeah, I know, it becomes a maze of mirrors after a while. Reverse a motivation twice and it goes back to being the original reason, right? Remember, Dark was killed by the kind of weirdo death trap that a villain usually locks a hero in; maybe he was supposed to escape the way the hero always does. That part doesn’t quite parse… but everything else does. See, while Bizarro’s costume is a virtual duplicate of Superman’s, the character himself resembles a crude statue of chiseled white stone. Sound familiar?”

  “Brother Stone,” Cassius says. “But Jace—lems aren’t subject to insanity.”

  “No, they’re not. But Brother Stone isn’t a lem.”

  Cassius stares at me. “Impossible.”

  “Not a word I throw around much anymore. Think about it: You’ve got thropes and pires and golems on your secret council, but no humans. What if one saw an opportunity to join and took it?”

  Cassius scowls at me. “I suppose a shapeshifter could do so, though any long-term masquerade as a thrope or a pire would be detected. But a lem?”

  “A solitary lem with a mysterious past. He was supposedly brought to life by a group of monks—but when I talked to him, he claimed to be the only member of his order, at least in this reality. We know he can shift his shape—how else can he move when he’s made of stone? And I think he can change more than just his form—I think he can change what he’s made of, too. From stone to copper to silver, letting him stab thropes with a fingertip or channel lightning—the electrified state of Aquitaine’s body was a statement about Transe’s decision to direct Wertham’s power into the earth instead of the sky, causing a volcanic eruption instead of a storm.”

  “It’s possible,” Eisfanger says. “Humans have a natural facility for changeling magic; pires and thropes don’t. It could even account for the transformation of Doctor Transe’s bones and Barbarossa’s body.”

  “If my theory’s correct, it should be easy to verify. That’s why you’re here, Damon; he may have some kind of magic concealing what he is. If so, I’m counting on you to crack it.”

  Eisfanger shrugs. “Shouldn’t be that hard to do. I’ll use Wittgenstein; he’s got a keen nose for shifters.” Wittgenstein is a rat skull Eisfanger keeps around, one still inhabited by the spirit of its former occupant.

  Cassius abruptly digs in his pocket, then presses his cell phone to his ear and says, “Yes?”

  The look of alarm on his face sets off all my own. “On our way,” he snaps, then signals the pilot. “Turn it around,” he says. “Get us back to the hospital. Now.”

  Gretchen.

  I should have known, I keep telling myself. I should have known.

  I thought I was so smart. I figured out all kinds of details on the trip back, mostly to keep myself calm instead of imagining what we might find when we get there. I figure out why there were huge footprints at the game park: Stone was distributing his weight by giving them a broader base, making them look like a giant’s instead of just someone very heavy. There hadn’t been two people with shovels unearthing the shield, just one who could turn both his hands into spades. I even think I have a pretty good idea why the murders had started with the Sword of Midnight.

  So why couldn’t I see that Stone would go after Gretchen’s baby?

  He hadn’t wasted time with subtlety, which was a bad sign. He’d simply smashed his way through a window riding the sky-shield, grabbed the infant from the nursery and left the same way. I’m standing in the middle of a room full of squalling babies, broken glass everywhere, Cassius in one corner giving nonstop, terse orders into his phone. Gretchen’s standing at the broken window, staring out into the night, her hands clenched into fists, her hospital gown flapping around her like a pale green shroud.

  “Jace.” Gretch’s voice is as hard and cold as a tomb-stone. She turns around and stares at me. You don’t see pires do the transformation thing very much—usually only when they’re really, really angry. Their eyes go red as blood and their fangs lengthen, making them look exactly like the supernatural creatures they really are.

  That’s how Gretchen looks right now.

  “Find him,” she says. Her voice scares me.

  “I will, Gretch. I promise.” Because if you don’t, a little part of my brain suggests, she will tear your head from your body with her own hands.

  Think. Gotta think. Gotta see this from a deranged, living statue of a monk’s point of view. One who thinks he’s a superhero.

  Okay, he started at the end and is working his way back to the beginning. What comes before facing your nemesis?

  Your origin, of course.

  Every superhero has one. Spider-Man got bitten by a radioactive spider, Batman saw his parents killed in front of him, Captain America—okay, I don’t know Captain America’s origin, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one. Bitten by a radioactive flag or something… focus, Jace, focus. He’s a shapeshifting golem. What was Bizarro’s origin? The Web site I found said he was made from some kind of duplicating ray…

  But that doesn’t matter, because Stone’s crazy. The logic he’s following is fractured and incoherent, based on a backward structure but still pretty free-form; you don’t chop a woman’s brain into sixty-four pieces due to rigorous logic. Speaking conceptually, what was Bizarro’s origin?

  The opposite of Superman’s. And Superman was—Oh my God. “Cassius!” I say. “You guys have rockets, I know you do—does Boeing still do aerospace contracts?”

  “I’ll call you back,” he says into his cell phone, and snaps it shut. “Yes. There’s a satellite launch research facility in Renton.”

  “That’s where he’s headed.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way,” I say, headed for the door. “Jace!” Gretch calls out behind me. Her voice is more anguished than angry. “For God’s sake, why is he taking my baby to an industrial plant?” I hesitate, but don’t look back. “I’m not sure,” I say, “but I’ll get her back, Gretch. I will.” And then Cassius, Charlie, and I run out the door. “I’m surprised she didn’t try to come with us,” I say as the chopper lifts off. “She did,” Cassius says, punching in another number on his cell phone. “I gave agents orders to restrain and sedate her. She’s too weak to help and I have enough to worry about.” His voice is hard, efficient, and anyone not in my line of work would probably think that means he doesn’t care. They’d be wrong. Every cop gets that tone when they’re chasing someone who’s hurt family—totally, utterly focused, all the anger channeled down to a tight little beam like a rage laser. From now until we catch this guy, we’re not individuals. We’re a machine. Ego, history, personal conflicts all fall away; nothing matters but the target. This must be what a pack feels like when it’s hunting.

  “Explain,” Cassius says. “He’s going to try to launch the baby into space,” I say. “Superman came here from a dying planet in a rocketship, as an infant. He’s going to reverse the procedure, send her away from a living planet.”

  “Again—why?”

  “Because it completes the sequence. It’s the first panel—there isn’t anything before that. Oh, and because he’s insane.”

  “It’s hard to believe he fooled us fo
r so long,” Cassius says. He sounds more as if he’s talking to himself than me or Charlie. “We humans are tricky like that,” I say. “I’m guessing the whole ‘secret identity’ thing both exacerbated his condition and made it easier to conceal his mental instability. He’s been leading a double life for decades; when he started losing control, he managed to contain it to just one of them.” Neither Cassius nor I comes out and says it, but we both recognize the deeper implications of Stone being human; namely, that he has to be working for someone else. Someone not in John Dark’s splinter faction.

  Someone human. “Security at Boeing’s pretty tight,” Charlie says. “ ’Course, that probably won’t count for much against someone with a flying, force-field-projecting shield, a sword that can cut through time, and magic solar-powered armor.”

  “He may not be wearing the armor,” Cassius says. “It’ll impede his shapeshifting ability.”

  “Don’t forget about Transe’s magic gem,” I say. “It’s probably the most powerful item of all.”

  “And the best encrypted, magically speaking,” Cassius says. “He hasn’t used it so far, near as I can tell. Pray he doesn’t.” The chopper’s coming up on Renton now, and I can see the rectangular, block-long buildings of an industrial park. It’s well lit, but there’s a jagged scar of light emanating from one of the roofs that doesn’t look like it belongs. “Set it down there,” I yell at the pilot. “I can’t land on that roof!” he yells back. “I don’t know if it’s strong enough!”

  “Then just get us close enough to jump!” He does. Cassius leaps out, nimble as a cat, while Charlie makes a landing just as graceful but a lot more solid. I manage not to hurt myself.

  The hole in the roof is the size of a Buick. Impenetrable force field plus mass of stone body times velocity equals sudden improvised skylight. “Stay back,” I tell Cassius. “If he is wearing the armor, you can’t get anywhere near him.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Cassius says. He doesn’t sound happy. Charlie and I peer inside. What we see is a large industrial space, the floor three stories beneath us. Lots of high-tech equipment around the periphery, but what’s got my attention is the large, distinctive shape in the middle of the room.

  A rocket. Guns—except for mine—don’t exist here, due to a magically induced blind spot that affects everyone on the planet. Missiles—in the sense of pointy-shaped things that blow up on impact—don’t exist, either. But rockets, the kind that put satellites in orbit and men on the moon, that they have no trouble with… and it seems I’m looking at some sort of prototype right now. “What’s he doing?” Charlie whispers. “Fueling up,” I say. “Those are tanks of liquid oxygen.” The rocket is on some kind of mobile gantry, currently in a horizontal position. The nose cone is configured like a clamshell, and it’s wide open. And then I hear it. A thin, heartrending wail. Gretchen’s baby. She’s lying in the middle of the nose cone, strapped in to some kind of jury-rigged harness. Stone’s busy with the hoses feeding the LOX to the rocket’s fuel tank. There are two dead security guards near the door. I wonder if they’re the only ones. The good news is that he isn’t wearing the Centurion armor. The bad news is that the sky-shield is parked only a few feet away, a large oval shape hovering about two feet off the floor. From what I understand, anyone traveling on the thing is pretty much invulnerable, plus it’s smart enough to let things—like arrows—out, while not allowing any projectiles in. Not sure how it’ll affect hand-to-hand combat, but if Stone hops aboard he could probably just ram us to death.

  “We have to get the baby to safety and keep him away from the shield,” I whisper.

  Cassius is abruptly next to me. “Correct. Charlie, target Stone. I’ll get the child.” And with that, he jumps through the hole. Charlie’s fast. He puts one of the silver-coated steel balls he keeps in a spring-loaded holster up his sleeve into the back of Stone’s head while Cassius is still in the air. It’s enough to take out a thrope, a pire, or even most lems. But Brother Stone is something else.

  The ball bounces off his skull with a klang! loud enough to make my ears ring. It gets Stone’s attention—his head snaps around just in time to see Cassius, now about fifteen feet off the ground.

  Stone points at him, in the most extreme sense of the word—his entire arm lengthens into a silver spike ten feet long, one right beneath Cassius’s falling body. Cassius manages to twist his torso enough that the spike misses his heart when it impales him, going in just under his ribs and out right next to his spine. Because Cassius wasn’t directly over Stone when he leapt, the spike curves halfway down its length, thickening toward the base where it began life as Stone’s right arm. Cassius actually slides halfway down the rod running through him, like an impaled worm at the bottom of a fishhook.

  I jump a second later.

  I don’t have any time to think, I just act. Cassius’s body is between Stone and the shield now, and I hope that’s enough to keep the monk from doing the same thing to me that he just did to oh God I forgot he’s ambidextrous.

  Luckily for me, so is Charlie.

  Who would have thought falling three stories could take so long. I’m almost bored by the time it’s over, if by bored you mean so frightened I’m paralyzed and I think I forget how to breathe. I have more than enough time to get extremely annoyed by whoever has decided to start up that jackhammer, though—

  That would be Charlie. Raining ball-bearing destruction down on Brother Stone with both arms, metal on metal mayhem as fast as a Gatling gun. If at first you don’t succeed, ramp up the firepower and try again.

  It keeps Stone off balance long enough for me to complete my trajectory, which ends exactly where I was aiming: on the shield itself. I’m gambling that either the force field will interpret me as some kind of attack and bounce me off—force fields are soft, right?—or it’ll think I’m just a rider in a hurry leaping into the saddle like the Lone Ranger with a two-for-one coupon for Tonto chow.

  Okay, that came out a little more racist than I intended, but I have no time to tell my brain to shut up because now that the shield has caught me like a cradle catching a baby I have a much less metaphorical baby to rescue. One that’s too far away unless I can somehow make this damn thing do more than just hover—

  Stone makes a motion as if he’s flicking a booger off his finger, except his finger is ten feet long and shiny and the booger is Cassius. Surprisingly, this doesn’t work, though Cassius does go sliding to the end of the spike—where he stops himself by reaching out and grabbing it, like a confused and suicidal fireman. For a second I think he’s actually going to start hauling himself back the way he came, hand-over-hand, but then I realize he’s pulled something out of his pocket.

  It appears to be a small pump-action bottle of window cleaner. Of course. That spike is looking awfully tarnished, not to mention covered in bits I don’t want to look too closely at. Cassius gives it a good spraying.

  “Giddyup!” I blurt. “Open Sesame! On Cupid! Shazam!”

  The shield stubbornly refuses to budge. I abandon the verbal approach, grab an edge with either hand, and will it to move toward the nose cone.

  It moves.

  Unfortunately, it picks the quickest and most obvious route, which is right past Stone. He’s kind of busy, though, screaming in agony as whatever Cassius sprayed on him is apparently a little more corrosive than your average cleaning product. His metal skin bubbles and hisses, vapor curling off it, and then Cassius drops to the ground as the chemical eats right through. He’s still got a chunk of metal lodged in him, but he’s free and Stone’s lost some body mass.

  I’m past him and to the nose cone, the shield halting when I want it to. I start to fumble with the baby’s harness, then draw one of my scythes and snap the blade out. Cut her free and worry about nicks later.

  Right about then is when Charlie, now out of ammo, draws his gladius—that’s a Roman short sword he keeps tucked into a scabbard in the lining of his jacket—and does his own leaping. He manages a much better lan
ding than either of us, planting his knees squarely on his target’s shoulders and knocking him to the ground. He drives the blade two-fisted into the back of Stone’s neck, no doubt hoping to separate his head from the rest of him.

  Good plan, but flawed in execution. I’m chopping away at the straps with the scythe, and I’ve almost cut the baby free when Charlie comes flying past me. I look back to see Stone, sword still sticking out of his neck but on both feet and looking very upset.

  “You will not interfere with the Divine Will of the Multiverse,” Stone says. His voice is intense, full of righteous fury. “I’m retconning it all, don’t you see? Going backward so we can start all over again, and do it right this time.”

  “I never was much for revision,” I say. “More of a first-draft girl, myself.”

  If I can just get the baby free, the shield will protect both of us. Unfortunately, Stone knows that, too—which is why he ignores me and does something to the control panel at the side of the gantry.

  The nose cone starts to close. I manage to hack through the last of the straps, spilling the baby onto the floor. She shrieks in pain and fear, though I figure as a pire she isn’t actually hurt. I jam my scythe between the closing clamshell doors, keeping them open—and then the rocket itself starts to move. He’s raising the gantry, trying to point the thing at the sky. I scrabble for purchase, but I can’t grab the scythe because it might pop free, and the surface of the nose cone is too slick to hold on to. The rocket tilts higher and higher, and I slip back and onto the shield.

  Down below, Cassius and Charlie are advancing on Brother Stone for round two. Cassius has pulled the spike out of his gut, but he’s in bad shape; he’s moving slow and has one hand pressed against his stomach. Charlie’s out of ammo and has lost his sword.

  And if we don’t stop him, Stone’ll launch this rocket as soon as it’s fully upright. It probably won’t clear the hole Stone made when he broke in, but I doubt if pointing that out will stop him; he seems to have a very nonstandard take on the whole cause-and-effect thing.