The Games of Supervillainy (The Supervillainy Saga Book 2)

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Gary's right.” Mandy licked the blood from her now ruby red lips. “Whatever concerns we may have about my condition can wait. We'll try the clock tower as well. It's the center of the city and where the barrier spell was erected. Do you have the Book of Midnight?”

  I winced, remembering I'd left it with Death. “Uh, the book isn't to be any help.”

  “Yes, yes, it would have been.”

  “Shut up,” I thought at Cloak. “Guys, we’re just going to have to stop the ritual the old fashioned way.” Which is probably what Death had wanted from the beginning. Still, I kicked myself for leaving the book behind. I’d been so focused on Mandy I hadn’t realized Death was using our visit as an opportunity to steal the tome. I’d admire her if not for the fact it was potentially screwing the world.

  “We’ll never make it to the clock tower in time,” Angel Eyes said, shaking his head.

  “I’ve got a way.” Lifting my scythe up, I spun it around and carved a rift through time and space.

  This time, it opened up the Night Tower, that place which should have been my base of operations but had been permanently polluted by the smell of dead supervillain. Now, I could see it was covered in blood and mystic symbols etched in the walls.

  “Yeah, I think this is the right place.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Final Countdown is not just a Song by Europe

  The interior of the Night Tower had changed drastically in the past month. Where once it had been a beautiful monument to Lancel Warren's work as a crime fighter, now it was a shattered ruin.

  Most of the Nightwalker's trophies were missing, either looted or destroyed. Every piece of his equipment was shattered to pieces across the ground or broken by other means. The furniture looked like it had been bashed repeatedly with a sledge hammer before being set on fire.

  “They did not like you, did they?” I thought to Cloak.

  “No, they did not.”

  The Night Tower walls were now inscribed with runes, each crudely chiseled into stone which composed its pillars. I didn't know much about magic, the disaster with the Book of Midnight proved that, but I could tell this was the spot they were going to summon Zul-Barbas.

  The floor was also covered in bodies, lots of bodies. All of the corpses were recognizable members of Falconcrest City's local supervillain population. There was the Watchmaker, the Ratcatcher, the Yellow Devil, Mister Sneezy, the Black Dentist, and even the KGB Commando. All of them showed severe signs of decay.

  “It looks like someone took care of their supervillain zombie-guard for us.” I guessed aloud, staring at them. I turned the Reaper’s Scythe back into a coin for ease of movement. The weapon looked badass but was pretty difficult for anyone without super-strength to move as a practical weapon.

  “Less for us to deal with.” Mandy held her nose as if the already-horrible corpse smell was doubly-offensive to her. “So much blood. Almost all of it rotted. A bit of it is fresh though.”

  I tried not to look freaked out and failed. “That’s…neat.”

  Three of the bodies were of special note, both elderly men wearing Reaper's Cloaks. The trio had been stabbed in the head with sun-shaped shurikens. The living capes were wrapped around their bodies, flailing as if trying to escape. I wondered why they weren't flying through the air as the other capes had, until I saw a glowing mono-filament cord wrapped around them.

  “Huh. Sunlight killed these guys.”

  “Sometimes heroes will kill. I vowed never to do, even in the name of saving lives. Sunlight was willing to do so in the name of saving others. I wonder if that made him my moral inferior or superior.”

  Behind me, I could hear the rest of my group react with a mixture of surprise and disinterest to the various deceased supervillains. Only Mandy seemed unaffected by the massive number of corpses around us. Cindy, having worked for a couple of the deceased supervillains, took time to kick their corpses.

  I checked the three men’s men’s faces. “Know these guys?”

  “Yes. Both of them were friends. All this time, they were playing me for a fool. How much of my crusade against crime was simply the Brotherhood distracting me from their affairs? I spent years battling pick pockets and drug dealers when I could have been smashing this cult to pieces.”

  “Well, live and learn,” I said, snapping my fingers and summoning my powers to dispose of them. “You also fought kaiju, dimension lords, and a bunch of really scary people who might have otherwise killed us.”

  The three cloaks burst into flames along with the corpses of the men they were tied to. The flame became a bright silver as three of the final four remaining Brotherhood owned cloaks vanished from this Earth. Now, only the Nightmaster’s remained. I'd have felt a feeling of accomplishment if not for the impending destruction of the world.

  “We need to get some lead-in time for the next Apocalypse,” I thought to Cloak. “Any leads on what we'll be facing here? I know you haven't been a member for seventy years but, hey, necromancers. You never know.”

  “Keep an eye out for Lucretia.”

  “If I see someone wearing a Reaper’s Cloak who isn’t Amanda, I’ll toast them. Don’t worry,” I muttered, finishing my search of the area. At the edge of the room, curled up in a corner and surrounded by blood, I saw the source of the zombies' defeat. A single figure clad in gold and white was lying broken amongst the corpses he'd created.

  Sunlight.

  “Merciful Moses,” I muttered walking over to the man's side. “You've got to be kidding me.”

  “Mister Warren!” Amanda shouted behind me, swiftly passing me and leaning down beside the fallen sidekick.

  Sunlight was wearing ammo bandoliers filled with shurikens, half of them expended and a few dozen gadgets affixed to no less than three belts around his waist. He’d gone super-equipped to the Brotherhood of Infamy and had gone down swinging. He had bled out from ten or more places, the source of all the blood around him. It looked like a couple of zombies had gotten close enough to bite him. One had stabbed Sunlight in the shoulder with a piece of metal, the piece still lodged there. The other wounds had been sustained fighting the cult. Somehow, Sunlight had managed to fight on long enough to take down his attackers. Probably right before he'd dropped. I'd say it was badass if not for the fact I hated Sunlight.

  Even so, I respected what he’d accomplished.

  Too bad he had to die to do it.

  Amanda rushed to his side, checking for signs of life. It was useless. He was already gone. I could feel her grief from across the room and envied Sunlight in that moment. Few would mourn me that way when I passed. Perhaps that was what Keith had been trying to warn me against.

  “Oh Robert...” Cloak whispered, both proud and forlorn.

  “We can hold a funeral later.” I snapped. “We've got a world to save.” I hated myself for saying it.

  That seemed to shake Amanda out of her stupor, which was good since we had about five minutes until the end of everything. I promised myself we’d deliver his body to his children. They undoubtedly knew their father was a hero already but deserved to know he died as one—silly as I may have found the old man, I felt like the final joke was on me.

  “Anyone got any idea where the ritual is?” I asked, trying to figure out if we had to go down or up or if we'd missed the whole thing. I was about one hundred percent sure that the later hadn't happened but not one hundred percent, which bothered me tremendously.

  Mandy herself, meanwhile, stepped over Sunlight's deceased form and took a position beside me. “The ritual is here, I can feel it, but I'm not sure we're on the right floor. We should try the rooftop.”

  “Yeah, I doubt Zul-Barbas is going to fit down here,” I said, preparing to summon my scythe to open another portal. “Okay, everybody, prepare to engage in epic combat with a powerful sorcerer or sorceress to save the world!”

  “Uh, Gary...” Mandy started to say.

  “Hold on, Honey,” I said, not finished with my speec
h. “Remember, everyone, shoot first and ask questions later. If we kill this Nightmaster psycho, we can prevent the summoning of Zul-Barbas. If we can combine our powers, the element of surprise should allow us to kill them all before they can even....”

  “Gary!” Mandy shouted.

  “What?” I turned my head.

  Practically next to us were about twenty guys wielding futuristic guns in high tech P.H.A.N.T.O.M futureplate armor which looked straight out of Star Wars. Standing in front of them was a shapely woman in a long black cloak identical to my own. She was perhaps a foot taller with long black hair and skin as pale as Mandy's post-vampirism. My gaze turned between the troopers’ guns and the Nightmaster. “Oh come on, the whole come up behind the guy while he's monologing is as old as Aristotle. You need to repeat that. Tell your men to leave and come back in about... ten minutes. We'll wait here for you.”

  “I'm sorry, Mister Karkofsky, but that's not happening,” the Nightmaster said in a thick Italian accent.

  “Lucretia, I presume?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Fuck.” If I hadn’t been run through the ringer tonight, I would have made a Sisters of Mercy reference.

  “Gary, I suggest you dial back your usual flippancy. Those weapons are Venusian wave cannons. The kind used by Foundation for World Harmony agents at the United Nations. They can cut through insubstantial flesh the same as immortal,” Angel Eyes said, raising his hands in surrender. “Our powers would be useless against them.”

  “I’m too damned stubborn to shut up.” I was barely able to stand, my head hurting from all the trauma I’d endured, and yet all I could think about was this woman was responsible. She’d ruined my home city, killed tens of thousands, killed my wife (even if she’d gotten better), and all for what? To make the world more boring? To take away heroes just to get rid of the villains? Newsflash: Heroes make the world better than villains make it worse. I wanted to scream this at her but knew it was pointless. She just didn’t understand.

  “Allow me to speak to her.” Angel Eyes flashed a pearly smile at the Nightmaster. “I'd be happy to be of service to your cult in any capacity. Any capacity. Why don't you delay the destruction of the world for a week or too so you can find out what I mean?”

  I could feel Angel Eyes’ powers wash over her. He was trying to work his mojo and I wished him luck.

  There had been enough killing.

  Too bad it probably wouldn’t work.

  “No, it won’t,” Cloak said. Lucretia has no interest in men or women, only power.”

  The Nightmaster seemed more amused than anything. “I could kill you now, poor fools, but in a few minutes it won’t matter what happens. So I’m just going to let the clock tick down unless you attack first. You will be honored above all other mortals by the arrival of the one true God.”

  “Already got one lady,” I answered, trying to figure out how much time we had left. “Two, actually, though I’m not sure if the second is an angel or a fragment or what.”

  All of us stood still, unsure what to do. All of us but Mandy. She bared her fangs at the Nightmaster like an animal before launching herself forward with claws extended. It was simultaneously awesome and futile. The Nightmaster lifted a small circular disc covered in a black cross. Shadowy tendrils poured from the object, wrapping themselves around her arms and chest. Her grunts didn’t fire, instead, keeping their guns aimed at us.

  “You have transformed your wife into a vampire?” Lucretia asked in a thick Italian accent, one which reminded me of my mother. “I must confess, I am impressed. What I have seen with my Sight told me you were a slave to your bride.”

  “Mandy follows her own path.” I stared at the Nightmaster. “Living or dead.”

  Lucretia scoffed at me.

  Mandy growled the Nightmaster, her eyes turning a shade of red. “You'll die for what you've done.”

  Lucretia sneered, looking all too amused with herself. “Perhaps, little one, but it won't be at your hands. No undead can harm me. It is one of the powers of my Reaper's Cloak. Oh and don’t think about trying to incinerate me or my troopers, Mister Karkofsky. I also know how to suppress the powers of you and Ms. Douglas’ cloaks. You are as helpless as newborn babes as long as I live.”

  Mandy hissed, hating the fact she was helpless against the Nightmaster.

  “Ouch.” I winced. “Mandy, please don't divorce me for making you an unholy creature of the night. It's bad enough that it has a bunch of drawbacks but I didn't mean for you to be stopped from saving the world. Really.”

  Yeah, I was stalling for time. Too bad we didn't have any left to stall for.

  “I'll think about it,” Mandy said, looking outside the damaged clock-face to the city outside. “Gary, the skies are turning red outside the windows. I think I see bloody rain. I think that's a bad sign. If you've got any of your tricks left, I suggest you pull them now.”

  “Right,” I stared at her. “Absolutely.”

  “You've got nothing,” Mandy said, looking at me with her red eyes. They slowly faded back to their natural brown.

  “I'm sorry...” I took a deep breath. “Mandy... I love you.”

  “I love you too,” Mandy whispered, the two of us reaching out to embrace as the world ended.

  Cindy pulled the Typewriter’s staff from her picnic basket despite the impossible difference in their sizes and shot the Nightmaster in the face with a glowing energy beam. The Nightmaster screamed as her head was seared by the high-intensity of the ray, far more powerful than I’d been hit with. Contrary to all build-up that she was a sorceress without peer, the Nightmaster was as vulnerable to high-tech beams as I had been at the start of all this. The demonic witch fell to her knees, clutching the side of her head which was still on fire but somehow not dying.

  “God Almighty,” Cindy said. “I'm almost ready for the world to end with sap like that.”

  Doing a triple-take between Mandy, Cindy, and the Nightmaster, I said, “Yeah, that was totally what I was planning. I take full credit for it and also the salvation of the world.”

  The soldiers, shocked by Cindy's actions, hesitated for a moment. A moment was all I needed. Drawing on the latent necromantic power in the air, I released more heat from my palms than I had ever before conjured. The flames melted through them and Lucretia on the ground as if they were nothing more than dry paper before an inferno. Seconds later, two dozen charred skeletons were spread across the floor. It was the single largest act of murder I'd committed since beginning my career as a supervillain. Once more, I found that I felt not a damn thing.

  Ain't I a stinker?

  The Nightmaster hissed at Cindy, her voice low and gravelly. “You pathetic worm! You stinking piece of offal. This world will burn and the whole of creation shall become nothing more than an ashen cinder! I will rule its ashes and your spirit will be nothing more than food for the Great Beasts!”

  Cindy shot another blast the Nightmaster but it was absorbed against a barrier she'd erected in front of herself, now adapted to the uncertain technological properties which were arrayed against her.

  “Got anything in that bag of tricks for this, Adonis?” I asked.

  “No,” Angel Eyes said. “But you do. The Reaper's Scythe.”

  I nodded and conjured it in my hands. The Nightmaster who had begun casting a spell in a language which sounded like heavy-metal monster voice, stopped dead in her tracks when she saw it and the weapon slashed through her barrier like a pin into a soap bubble. That was when Mandy leapt forward and tore out the Nightmaster's throat with her teeth, drinking all of the evil woman's blood as she struggled to cast some sort of spell.

  In the end, she didn't.

  We’d won.

  Sort of.

  “Nice shooting, Tex,” I said, putting the Reaper’s Scythe to the side and giving Cindy the golf clap. I tried to ignore the fact my wife was engaged in an act of decidedly unsexy liquid cannibalism in front of my eyes. It turned out vampirism was not nearly as cool a
s the movies made it out to be.

  Cindy gave a curtsy. “Thank you, thank you. I’d like to thank the Academy, Mechani-Carl, my family, and you.”

  Mandy dropped the dead body of the Nightmaster, wiping her mouth off with her sleeve. “Amanda, Gary, ask your cloaks whether killing the Nightmaster stop Zul-Barbas's rise.”

  “Eh?”

  “Is the motherfucking monster still coming!” Mandy shouted.

  “I'm sorry, no. The summoning is not tied to her life-force.”

  “Shit,” I said. “To think I killed her for nothing.”

  “I killed the Nightmaster!” Cindy shouted behind me. “With a cane! Do not steal my bit.”

  I was about to say that it was technically Mandy who finished Lucretia off when the entire tower started shaking. Cracks began forming in the walls of the clock tower with the cracks oozing out a glowing purple fluid that I likened to the plasma of an alien god.

  “That's not good,” Cindy said, dropping all snark.

  “Okay, everybody smash the runes on the wall! Everybody try and break them with whatever you can!” I shouted, directing everyone. Grabbing the Reaper's Scythe and tossing it to Mandy, I used my powers to freeze the stone around me to such levels that it cracked and exploded underneath the runes I saw.

  It was a desperation ploy, especially given the Brotherhood had potentially controlled the clock tower for a month. Still, we did our damnedest. Angel Eyes used his magic to blow runes apart while Mandy slashed through them with the scythe, leaping from wall to wall like a human spider. Amanda punched them with her super strength, Diabloman hurling rocks at them. Within seconds, we'd destroyed all of the visible runes but the place still felt like something was happening.

  “Well… that didn't work,” I spit out, feeling the air heat around my face. It was as hot as a sauna now and getting hotter every second.