by C. E. Martin
The other agents all relaxed a bit and took their hands out from under their jackets. They were collectively relieved as well. From what little they’d been briefed, their handguns wouldn’t have been of much use anyway.
Mark turned to Josie. “C’mon, let's blow this popsicle stand.”
Josie stepped up beside Mark, falling into step with him as he started walking past Cooper.
“They’re just letting us leave?” she asked incredulously.
Mark gave Cooper one last glance. “Nobody likes spending a month in traction.”
CHAPTER TEN
A side exit provided Mark and Josie a way to slip out of the mall without having to push through the mass of people wondering what was happening on the food court. Those inquisitive crowds and mall security would likely keep the agents inside busy for some time.
Mark and Josie walked quickly toward where they had parked. Mark carried Jimmy over his shoulder, while Josie carried Mark’s shopping bag of clothes. As they crossed over from mall sidewalk to parking lot, Josie dug in Jimmy’s pockets for the keys. She located them, then dropped them.
Mark stopped and turned to watch her pick the keys back up. Josie was very nervous.
Josie realized Mark was watching her. “Those guys were terrified of you.”
“Apparently, I'm a bad ass,” Mark answered.
Josie didn’t find that funny. Or reassuring. “Should I be afraid of you?”
“Only if you try and hug me,” Mark said, turning and walking toward the truck again.
A small metal cylinder bounced onto the ground at his feet, interrupting any further conversation. It was a teargas canister, pumping out a thick cloud of gas.
Several more canisters started hitting the ground around Mark and Josie in rapid succession. In seconds, they were enveloped in a thick cloud of dense, white smoke.
For Josie, it was surprisingly painful. She’d seen teargas on TV, in movies, but the reality of it was worse than she could have imagined. Her eyes, nose and throat were on fire. She couldn’t see and was having trouble breathing. Her eyes watered uncontrollably. She even had difficulty coughing.
Two men in SWAT-style uniforms, with FBI stenciled on the back, stepped out from concealment behind some nearby parked cars. They had on helmets, gas masks and were dressed all in black. They approached the teargas cloud with taser pistols drawn and at the ready.
The agents could hear coughing coming from the cloud. They stepped in cautiously, expecting to find Mark and Josie on the ground, incapacitated. In the dense smoke, they could make out the shape of Josie, on one knee, hand covering her mouth, her body convulsing as she coughed and gasped for air.
Standing next to her was the dark silhouette of their target. Unmoving. The agents stepped closer and fired their tasers.
The small darts from the tasers struck Mark in the chest. Electricity immediately began pulsing down the darts’ trailing wires.
Mark reached up and tore the darts free with his left hand while he held Jimmy with his right. Then he stepped up to the agents. He struck one on the top of the helmet, hopefully only hard enough to knock the man unconscious. The agent went down. Hard.
Mark turned to the other agent, who was trying to aim his taser for another shot. Mark smacked the weapon out of the agent’s hand, then punched him in the stomach. The agent doubled over, the wind knocked out of him.
Mark reached out and pulled at the agent’s gas mask. Off it came, dislodging the agent’s helmet as well. The agent couldn’t help but inhale a lungful of the thick gas. He promptly passed out from the sheer pain.
Mark turned to Josie and slipped the gasmask over her head. She grabbed at it and pushed it tight against her face. Mark tugged at the straps, trying to tighten it. Balancing Jimmy on his shoulder while adjusting a gas mask was surprisingly difficult.
Outside the cloud of teargas, which was just beginning to dissipate, a third agent stepped into view. He too held a taser at the ready. But as he had heard the sounds of a struggle, heard the unmistakable sound of the tasers firing, then bodies hitting the ground, he decided to wait outside the smoke cloud.
Mark and Josie finally emerged. Mark appeared unaffected by the smoke. He held onto Josie’s arm, holding her up, while she clutched at the gasmask with one hand, still coughing under it, and dragged Mark’s mall shopping bag along with her other hand.
Mark glared at the new agent. The gas hurt. But more importantly, the gas had hurt Josie.
Special Agent Bennett fired his taser. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it wouldn’t work. But maybe it would slow the target down enough for Bennett’s partner to get here.
Again, twin darts struck Mark’s chest, and the taser started its pop-pop-pop as it discharged electricity into him.
Mark released his grip on Josie, who sank to her knees. Stepping forward quickly, with the unconscious Jimmy still on his shoulder, Mark closed the distance to the last agent. Then he grabbed the taser. And the Agent’s hand.
Special Agent Bennett had never put his hand in a vice, or had a car drive over his foot. But he imagined this is what it must feel like to do so. He was in terrible, terrible pain as his hand, and the taser, were being crushed in Mark’s grip. The taser cracked and popped as it broke into several plastic pieces. Bennet was sure the bones in his hand were doing the same.
Bennett dropped to his knees in pain.
Mark released his grip on Bennett’s mangled hand and grabbed the agent’s gas mask. With a jerk, he ripped the mask off the agent’s head, tearing the silicone straps that held it on.
Mark then leaned in and exhaled a lungful of teargas into the agent’s face, slowly.
Bennett had been holding back the tears as his hand was crushed, broken in at least ten places. But the teargas couldn’t be resisted. His eyes welled up, burned. His nose and mouth burned. He couldn’t help but breath in deeply. His chest was now on fire.
Bennett dropped to all fours, coughing and hacking, and growing faint from pain and the lack of breathable air.
Mark turned to Josie and helped her back to her feet. Somehow, she still clutched Jimmy’s keys in the same hand that held Mark’s shopping bag. Mark led Josie the thirty feet down the aisle of parked cars to Jimmy’s truck. He took the keys from her and unlocked the driver’s door.
“Get in,” Mark told her. He then opened the rear door and carefully laid Jimmy down on the back seat.
Josie stood by the open front door of the truck and pulled the gas mask off her head. Her eyes were red and burning. Tears streaked down her cheeks, along with most of her eye makeup. Her vision was blurry. She groped for a bottle of water she remembered Jimmy putting in the door pocket.
“I guess you aren't so scary after all,” Josie said. She had found the bottle. She quickly unscrewed the cap and began pouring water into her eyes.
Before Mark could respond, a loop of steel cable dropped down on him, seemingly from above. The loop immediately tightened, pinning his arms, just above the elbows, to his sides. The cable began to glow faintly green where it touched him.
“This doesn't look goo-” Mark started to say. He was suddenly jerked off his feet before he could finish.
Mark fell hard, onto his back, then began sliding backward, pulled by the steel cable. As he was pulled out from between Jimmy’s truck and the car parked next to it, he suddenly flexed his arms, snapping the steel lasso around him. He rolled over quickly and sprang to his feet. And stopped. He had just seen his attacker.
Standing across the parking lot lane from Jimmy’s truck, on top of a parked car, was a woman all in black. She wore thigh-high, black leather riding boots. And black leather pants. She wore a loose, white silk blouse and a long, black leather jacket.
The woman had thick, black hair, held up in a something like a beehive design, with long, thick curls coming down, plastered to her pale skin, around her face. Thick makeup around her eyes gave them a sunken look. She reeled in the steel cable with hands that ended in two-inch long
, lacquered, black nails.
“Oh, good grief. What are you supposed to be?” Mark asked.
The woman in black dropped her steel cable and pulled a short, polished, ebony cane from her jacket. It was topped with a baseball-sized, ruby-like stone that glowed red.
“You may call me Femagick!” the woman announced.
Mark almost laughed. He’d seen this type of parahuman many times before. A sorceress. They were always flashy and dressing in garish costumes.
“Are you supposed to be a superhero?” he asked, knowing she wasn’t. Adepts hated to be questioned or mocked.
Femagick frowned. She couldn’t believe the target didn’t know who she was. Fifteen years fighting crime, then another ten on the Strip as a headliner. Everybody knew who she was. She had marketing people to make sure of that.
“I used to be. Now I'm the FBI's bounty hunter,” Femagick said.
Mark turned around and started to walk away. “Pleased to meet you, but I'm busy right –” he started to say.
His statement was interrupted by a bright red, six-foot-diameter ball of fire Femagick launched at his back from her cane. The fireball wrapped around Mark, burning his shirt and hair, and even singeing the back of Jimmy’s truck. Where the fire touched Mark, a bright green light flared.
Mark turned slowly around after the fireball quickly burnt itself out. The back of his shirt was melted and smoldering, his skin showing through in several places. His hair was gone from the top of his head to the back of his neck, but his skin was unburned.
“I don't get paid if I don't bring you in,” Femagick explained. And she was all about the money.
Femagick suddenly extended her cane at Mark again- this time unleashing a stream of red fire, like a flamethrower, at him.
The flames hit Mark square in the chest, swirling around him for a second. Green light flared again where the flames touched his skin. His shirt was burnt the rest of the way off, the ashes of it falling down as the stream of fire went out.
Mark again appeared unharmed by the mystic flames. He casually brushed ash off his bare chest.
“You're going to be difficult aren't you?” he asked.
Femagick was enraged. First the target didn’t know who she was, now he resisted some of her most powerful, most used, magic. Well, enough with the routine stuff. She’d get creative. And indirect.
Femagick held her cane at eye level in her right hand. With her left she made mystic gestures in the air.
From under the car she stood on, a crack appeared in the asphalt. It raced out, spreading as it did so. An area of maybe three feet across formed as the crack split and turned, forming a large circle that then cracked and broke apart. The cracks inside the circle formed hundreds of quarter-sized chunks of loose asphalt.
Femagick gestured again and the pieces of broken asphalt rose slowly in the air. They began to grow bright red then burst into flame.
Josie watched all this from the cab of the truck, leaning over the back seat and watching out the rear window. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Femagick gestured again and the hundreds of small, gooey, burning asphalt pieces raced forward, peppering Mark, Jimmy’s truck, and the cars parked on either side of it. The molten, burning asphalt stuck to Mark, burning his skin.
Mark briefly wiped at the hot asphalt chunks clinging to his forehead, cheek, chin, neck, chest and arms. As he brushed them off, burns were revealed on his skin.
“What’s next?” he asked. “The kitchen sink?”
Femagick was so mad she could scream. The past ten captures her name and reputation alone were enough to ensure surrender. And now this bulging, over-steroided ape was talking to her like she was a child having a tantrum. She’d have to dig deep for this one.
Femagick gestured again.
The parking lot rumbled. The ground shook slowly. Then a stream of water shot up into the air from the patch of ground she had already damaged.
Femagick gestured again- this time causing the water to freeze in place, a ten foot high pillar of ice. Her left hand balled into a fist, then she suddenly extended her fingers.
The ice pillar exploded in a cloud of ice shards. The shards then hung in the air, defying gravity. Hundreds of shards, each four inches long.
Mark quickly threw his left arm up over his face and ducked his head as Femagick sent the cloud of ice shards streaking his way. The ice sliced into his skin in thirty to forty places. Lancing into his arms, his chest, his stomach. The remaining shards in the cloud passed over his head or smashed against Jimmy’s truck and the cars parked on either side of it.
Mark looked up when it was over. He lowered his arm, then with his right hand casually broke a piece of ice off from where it was sticking out of his chest. He popped the piece in his mouth and started to chew it.
“Refreshing,” Mark said.
Femagick was stunned. Then amazed. The many ice shards sticking out of the target began to fall off him, as though they were melting. Then she could see that the portion of the ice that had penetrated his skin had simply been absorbed into his body. All the wounds that should have been bleeding were closing up, turning gray. Then they faded back to his tanned flesh tone.
His burns from the asphalt debris were now gone as well. The hair had regrown on his head. Aside from no shirt, he appeared unharmed.
Femagick grabbed her cane with both hands now. The ruby glowed brightly, extending red light over the cane, then Femagick, like an aura. The red light then faded rapidly, with only Femagick’s eyes glowing red as she absorbed all the mystic energy.
Mark swallowed his ice snack. “Now what?”
Fire and Ice had failed Femagick. It was time to get her hands dirty. She held the cane high, over her head. Femagick then jumped into the air, at least fifteen feet, straight up. She twirled and somersaulted, arcing around and landing with gymnastic precision directly in front of Mark.
Mark was just opening his mouth for another sarcastic remark when Femagick swung her cane with all her might- striking him in the jaw.
Green light flashed from the impact as Mark was staggered a bit to the side and his head turned by the blow.
He had felt that blow. He straightened, facing the witch and again opening his mouth to speak. Again, Femagick struck him- this time on the other side of his face.
Mark reached up and felt at the corner of his mouth. When he pulled his hand away, there was a trickle of blood. It quickly absorbed into the skin of his fingertips and vanished.
Femagick stood almost toe-to-toe with Mark, glaring at him- mentally daring him to speak anything but words of surrender.
“I'm normally against hitting a woman,” Mark said. “But I'm really reconsid-”
Femagick lunged forward, swinging her foot up and directly into Mark’s groin with all the mystic force she could muster. Again, green light flared as Mark’s inherent ability to negate magic encountered Femagick’s self-enchantment of super-human strength.
The impact of the kick caused Mark to grunt out. Behind him, in the truck, Josie winced at the terrific impact.
Mark resisted the urge to double over. Instead, he backhanded Femagick.
The blow sounded like a boxer striking a side of beef. Femagick went flying backwards with terrific force. But instead of smashing into the cars on the other side of the lane, Femagick again twisted and turned- grabbing at the ground and ending up in a gentle cartwheel that brought her back to her feet.
Mark held his hands up, and started walking toward Femagick.
“I really don't want to hit a girl...” he said.
Femagick almost growled in anger as she charged forward. She reared back with both hands on her magical cane, ready to bash Mark’s head in with the large, mystical ruby. When she got within range, Femagick brought the blow down with all her force, physical and mystical.
Mark caught the cane with his left hand. His hand began to glow green where he held the cane. With a quick tug, he pulled the cane free from Femagick�
�s grip. He then stepped back and held the cane high, up over his head.
Femagick also stepped back, shock and disbelief on her face. She had to look at her empty hands then at the cane Mark held over her head. It was inconceivable.
“You can have this back when you start behaving better,” Mark said. His patience was just about exhausted.
Femagick had never in her entire life even been half as mad as she was now. Decades of study of the mystic arts were forgotten and a primal scream welled up in her lungs. Her vision swirled as her blood pressure reached dangerous levels.
Femagick raised her hands and charged forward, intent on scratching Mark’s eyes out with her long nails.
Mark snapped out a light jab with his right fist, connecting with Femagick’s face. It jerked her head back, and stopped her charge with a flare of green light. She staggered backwards several steps then fell onto her butt in an undignified sprawl on the pavement. Blood began to trickle out of her nose.
Mark lowered the cane in his left hand, transferring his grip so he held it by either end. Then he slammed it down over a raised knee, cracking it in half. With the slightest of throws, he sent the two pieces vanishing in opposite directions.
Mark stormed over to Femagick, who was dabbing at the blood trickling out of both nostrils.
“Lady, you are a royal pain in the ass,” Mark said.
He roughly grabbed the still-stunned sorceress by the collar of her expensive leather jacket. Then he began dragging her across the parking lot, toward the three teargassed agents.
Agent Bennett, after he had recovered from the teargas, had checked on his unconscious comrades, then sat down to watch Femagick finish off the target. He had sat there, slack jawed, holding his shattered hand when Mark dropped Femagick to the pavement with a light jab.
Bennett became alarmed when he saw Mark dragging Femagick over toward him. He held up his good hand, as if to shield himself.
Femagick began to kick and punch, trying to free herself from Mark’s grip as she came back to her senses. She struggled as she was being dragged across the pavement, but her arms were caught in the leather jacket and she couldn’t squirm free.
