Villain

by Michael Grant

  “NO!” DEKKA YELLED as she slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt. She was out of the door in a heartbeat, but by then Armo was out and running.

  He ran straight at the burning mass, arms outstretched. He was like a harvesting combine, knocking people back and scooping them up. He ran with four burning people, hurled them onto the unburned sidewalk across the street, and threw himself bodily on them, using his mass to one by one extinguish the flames, even as his fur singed and burned.

  Shade Darby was suddenly there, right in front of Dekka. She pointed, her arm vibrating like a tuning fork. “Dekka! Shred! Smother!”

  Dekka followed the direction of her arm: the overhang!

  She raised her hands and roared like the mother of all lions. The overhang began to shred, bits of steel and plaster and wood and gravel. Dekka sprayed it over the burning people, a fire extinguisher of debris.

  Too little. Too late.

  Dozens, maybe hundreds had already died. More would be scarred for life.

  Her effort had saved some. But only a very small . . . some.

  “Armo!” Cruz appeared, a baby in one arm, kneeling over Armo. She batted at flames that had caught in his fur. “Are you okay? Armo!”

  He blinked up at her.

  “Take care of the baby!” he yelled, leaped to his feet, and went charging back into the burning crowd. He grabbed burning people and literally threw them clear of the gas. He bear-hugged people, smothering the fire on their clothing and flesh. His feet were covered in burning gasoline, but he roared on, oblivious to the pain, fearless, mad with horror and rage.

  Shade tried to think. Tried to reason. Enough wind and she might deprive the fire of oxygen as she had in leaping to snatch Dillon’s sparking toy. But how? If she ran around and around, would she just draw the fire ever outward?

  She was watching human beings burn in what to her was slow motion. She could see individual blisters forming on cheeks. She could see hair go from singed to aflame. She watched mouths desperate for air inhale nothing but fire.

  She froze for what felt like a terribly long time. Her brain just seemed to shut down. For a moment even the Dark Watchers were unnoticed.

  Then she saw Armo, lumbering in near-comic slo-mo, gathering up burning people, and she moved.

  Shade snatched two people, one with each hand, and ran. Ran down the line of tanks, ran so fast that the people she pulled did not drag along the ground, but flew. Her speed extinguished the flames but both people, two women, one older, one barely Shade’s age, were covered in raw red flesh.

  It was about half a mile to the fountains and man-made lakes in front of the Wynn casinos. Shade skidded to a stop and simply threw both burn victims into the water.

  No, no, no.

  Peaks turned away. Turned and ran in great, ground-pounding leaps.

  No, no, no!

  My God, they would think he had done it! They would think he had burned those poor people! They would think he was in league with the Charmer!

  No!

  The whole world had seen the Ranch. The whole world had seen him rampaging around the Port of Los Angeles. But he could rationalize those, he could try and explain, he could . . . he could someday face his children . . .

  I didn’t do this! I didn’t know!

  He had been trying to defend himself, that was all. He had tried to defend himself against the Rockborn monster Shade Darby.

  Would his kids see the video?

  Would they blame him?

  He ran, and as he ran a tank shell raced after him. It struck him in the spine and exploded.

  All fifty feet of him flew forward under the impact. He slammed down hard, crushing a car beneath him like a soda can. He tried to stand, but his legs would not work. He twisted his massive reptilian head and stared at the bottom half of Dragon, twisted, skewed, attached now only by skin and viscera.

  And liquid fire spilled from his split gut, bubbling out like a volcano.

  No! No! He couldn’t die like this. He couldn’t die with the whole world thinking . . . but his mind . . . his thoughts . . . the Dark Watchers . . . No . . .

  He felt the light of his mind flicker and fade.

  He formed one last, desperate thought.

  De-morph!

  Francis Specter stood helpless, paralyzed by the sheer, sickening horror. In morph, Francis’s world was bizarre and twisted, lines of light, geometric shapes, but none of that mattered to her now, because her power had made the dying visible in a way no human had ever seen. She saw at once the outsides and the insides of the burning. She watched fire eat its way into their muscle and tendons. She saw the way steam formed pockets beneath skin and within organs. Saw those organs burst.

  Malik was beside her. He stood frozen, watching.

  “Fire,” Malik said. Like that one word was everything. He touched his arm. He looked down at his uncanny flesh. Then he looked at her and she saw his eyes and the pink mass of brain behind it. Saw his mouth move and the tongue within and the squeezing and releasing of his esophagus, and the vibration of his vocal cords.

  “Take me to him,” Malik said.

  “To who?” Francis cried, her rainbow eyes streaming tears.

  “Him,” Malik said. “He’s in there. It’s why I asked about your clothing—you can move objects with you. So move me, Francis. Move me!”

  Francis looked up at the gold tower. Up and behind and around and through it. There were lots of people still in there, some in the hotel rooms, many on the bottom floor. She saw, too, that the fire was inside the lobby, spreading. The reception desk was already smoking. The art on the walls browned and curled.

  “Take my hand,” Malik said.

  She did.

  “Do you see him?”

  She searched her field of view. Everything was exposed to her when she focused. “I don’t know!”

  “Take me inside.”

  “I don’t know if I can!”

  Malik took her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Listen to me. I know what fire is. I know what these people . . . the pain . . . the fear . . .” He closed his eyes, shook his head slightly, as if warding off some bit of bad advice. “If you can carry objects like clothing with you, I think you can move me.”

  Francis took his hand again. She targeted a spot within the baffling 4-D maze of her reality, and said, “Here goes nothing.”

  For a moment of time, a mere moment, Malik experienced a maze of lines and shapes and bizarre visions. And then, suddenly, he was standing in a restaurant off the lobby.

  Smoke hung thick and acrid in the air. A man and his family cowered beneath a table.

  “Where is he?” Malik asked the cowering man.

  The man could only shake his head, too overwhelmed to think. But his son, who looked to be about ten years old, said, “I heard he was on the top floor!”

  “Thanks,” Malik said. “Let’s go, Francis. And whatever you do, don’t drop out of morph!”

  Thirty seconds later they exited the elevator into an empty hallway. “Blood trail,” Malik said, pointing at a red smear leading down the carpet.

  The door to the suite was open.

  Inside, two cheerleaders stood over a writhing reptile in formal wear who had already saturated the bed covering with his blood.

  “Dillon Poe?” Malik asked.

  The cheerleaders stepped back and Dillon’s eyes widened. “Who are you?”

  “Who, us?” Malik asked, his voice low and silken. “We’re the ones coming to save your life, Charmer.”

  “What?” It was a sob.

  “You’re losing a lot of blood,” Malik said. “But, see, what you don’t know is that each time you morph—you know, change—your body is renewed.”

  “I . . . what?”

  “De-morph, dumb-ass. The bullet wound is to the morph, your own body will be fine. And then . . .” He shrugged. “You can re-morph. All better!”

  “Why would you . . . why are you helping me?” Dillon was in pain but still sm
elled a rat.

  “Simple,” Malik said. “The Dark Watchers, Dillon. You know who I mean. I’m . . . with them. I can’t de-morph; if I do, I die an agonizing death. So”—he shrugged—“if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

  “They asked you to save me?”

  “Why else would I be here?”

  Malik sensed Francis’s worry. Would she know to play along?

  “They like you,” Francis said. “They think you’re, you know . . .”

  “Funny?” Dillon croaked.

  Francis blinked. “Yes. Funny.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Dillon said. “I just have to . . .”

  Malik watched as Dillon Poe, the nerdy-looking kid who wanted to be a comedian, slowly emerged from the snake. He watched the bullet wound close, and then disappear.

  Dillon blinked. He sat up. He flexed his fingers as if checking that they were real. He touched the place where the bullet had gone. His ridiculous tuxedo, the outfit he’d thought would give him some class, was still soggy with his blood. But the wound was gone.

  “And now I can just morph again? Hah! Hah!” He jumped to his feet. “Oh, they think they’ve seen the worst I can do. Just wait!”

  “You could re-morph,” Malik said. “But I have a deep and powerful hatred of fire, and an even deeper hatred of the kind of sick creep who would burn innocent people.”

  Dillon smirked. “Well, too bad.”

  “Yeah,” Malik said. “Too bad.” He closed his eyes and focused on the no-longer-transformed and entirely vulnerable young sadist.

  Dillon screamed.

  “Anyone here have, like, super night vision?” Justin asked. He was on his feet, steadying himself with a hand on Tolliver’s tank body and staring intently toward the east, toward the moon, toward that fleeting shadow he’d glimpsed.

  “What is it?” Tolliver asked gruffly.

  “I saw something.”

  “Step back, I need to turn to aim my sensors,” Tolliver said. Tolliver had an array of sensors meant to improve his usefulness as a weapon.

  It was no easy thing turning Tolliver on the crowded flatbed truck. It was like watching a very old person try to execute a three-point turn on a narrow street.

  “Ahhh!” The pain chip twisted Justin’s nerves for a second time. “Am I the only one with a chip?”

  “Mine is still in,” the turtle woman said. “But I’m not getting hit.”

  Three others said the same.

  “I’m not getting anything on my sensors. What is it you thought you saw?”

  “Like a plane or something,” Justin said. “Probably nothing.”

  Tolliver had no face and no facial expressions, but he muttered something, and his tone worried Justin.

  And then, again, the stabbing pain. But this time it had a rhythm to it. On . . . off . . . on . . . off. And still it was only affecting him.

  “Wait!” Tolliver said. “I’m getting something. Definitely something off to our nine o’clock.”

  “What is it?” someone asked.

  And again, the rhythmic stabbing pain, faster this time. On-off-on-off.

  A signal! Someone was trying to tell him something.

  “It’s a goddam drone!” Tolliver said. “There!” He pointed his mechanical arm, and at that second Justin saw a small but distinct flare, a jet of flame.

  The stab! Urgent this time, unrelenting.

  The pieces came together in the blink of an eye. Justin instantly began to morph. His sword arm stretched out. His skin was replaced by chitinous armor. His other hand became a claw. And the instant he was more Knightmare than Justin, he leaped from the side of the truck.

  It would certainly have hurt Justin very badly—jumping off a moving truck doing sixty would break his bones and scrape his flesh and quite possibly smash open his head and kill him.

  The half Knightmare hit pavement, though it felt more as if the road surface had jumped up to hit him. The impact emptied his lungs and shot a different pain through his spine, but his armor did not crack, his sword arm did not shatter, and Justin DeVeere did not die.

  Ka-BOOM!

  The truck was a few hundred yards down the road when the Hellfire missile found it. Justin lay on his back and did not see the moment of impact. But he felt the concussion and the rush of superheated air.

  And he saw bodies twirling through the air.

  He jumped up, now fully Knightmare, and saw the truck engulfed in flame. It ran on for a few feet before veering off the road and coming to a stop.

  Knightmare ran to see, equal parts shaken and curious. He stumbled and fell when his feet tangled in the viscera of the turtle woman.

  A bush had caught fire, and a part of Justin registered the sight and connected it to the biblical tale and imagined trying to re-create it. But even he could not distract himself from the horror smeared down the highway.

  He found Tolliver. The tank man was on his side. His missile launcher was crumpled, his sensors all blown away. The back of Tolliver’s steel body burned.

  Knightmare knelt down and peered at the slit and to his shock saw Tolliver’s eyes open and aware.

  “Who are you?” Tolliver asked. His voice was faint, weak, as if whatever pumped air through his voice box was on its last wheeze.

  “Justin,” Knightmare said in his booming morphed voice.

  “The kid?”

  “Yeah, the kid,” Justin acknowledged.

  “Huh.” The next sound may have been a laugh. “I’m finished. Friendly fire! Damn it all.”

  “I’ll see if there’s a fire extinguisher in the truck cab.”

  “No. No,” Tolliver said. “This is where it ends. Use that blade.”

  “What are you . . . what?” Justin drew back. Was the marine asking him to finish him off? He wasn’t a murderer! He’d killed people, yes, but not in cold blood, only to defend himself!

  “Use. The. Blade,” Tolliver begged.

  Justin swallowed and looked around guiltily, as if someone might see. The fire flared hotter.

  He stood back, giving himself room, and brought his blade arm around. Was it thin enough? Would it fit? He placed the tip of his blade on the lip of the slit in Tolliver’s armored bubble.

  It would fit.

  “It’s okay, kid,” Tolliver said. “Semper Fi!”

  Justin plunged his blade into the marine’s face.

  CHAPTER 29

  One Less Hotel

  “ALL DUE RESPECT, I’m going to need that order in writing from someone upstream in my chain of command, General.”

  The death of Frankenstein Poole had left the army column briefly leaderless. But the army is good at chain of command, so Poole’s authority swiftly devolved to Major Gary Andrews. And he had just been given an order by General DiMarco.

  DiMarco was not in Andrews’s chain of command.

  Andrews was currently just behind the lead tank, in a backup JLTV, from which location he had just seen hundreds, maybe as many as a thousand human beings set on fire. Then, within mere minutes, seconds even, he had seen a sequence of events he would never be able to make sense of. He’d ordered a round to be fired into the massive T. rex–looking creature, but beyond that, he’d been helpless.

  “Grow some goddamn balls, Major! You’ve got half a dozen mutants right there in front of you! Kill them!”

  The major held his headset a bit away from his ear to save his eardrum the assault of DiMarco’s fury. Andrews waited, and when DiMarco paused to take a breath, he said, “General, I understand that you have direct authority from the Pentagon and the White House, but I am not able to carry out this order without proper written orders.”

  No way in hell was he going to do what DiMarco wanted. It would be absolute career suicide if it turned out DiMarco was nuts. And from what Andrews had seen of the Ranch from Shade’s YouTube video, he was willing to bet good money that DiMarco was off her rocker.

  And then he was handed the printed order, signed by the army deputy chief of staff, no less,
directing him to obey any and all orders from DiMarco.

  Andrews looked at his adjutant. “Jesus H.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is a direct order,” Andrews said. He fell silent for a moment, precariously balanced between what felt like a very illegal order, and the reality that disobedience would mean a court-martial.

  Then, he gave the order.

  The screams had been terrible.

  The silence was worse.

  Some still lived, lived and cried in agony and yet could not move away. Those who’d had their personal hells extinguished by Dekka’s shredding coughed and crawled. But what had been a thousand voices was now just a few.

  Armo stood panting, his chest heaving. His white fur was streaked black. Cruz stood beside him, de-morphed so that the baby in her arms would have a face to look at. She was past tears. Tears were not sufficient testimony to the unspeakable tragedy before her.

  She could not look at the smoldering bodies. She looked up at the palm trees that lined the street. They were leafless black toothpicks.

  Dekka stood, seemingly indifferent to the fact that her own morphed fur smoldered and smoked in places.

  Shade blurred to a stop. She held a red fire extinguisher, almost laughable in this setting. She sprayed white foam over Dekka’s back. Then threw the fire extinguisher away to skitter across the pavement.

  “My God,” Dekka said. “My—”

  But her last word was obliterated as the whole world erupted in a stunning, rolling series of explosions, as the tanks opened fire at point blank range on the Triunfo.

  Gold-filmed glass windows blew out, showering shards like a hailstorm.

  BAM! BAM! BAM!

  Round after round blew away pieces of the hotel. It was deliberate, professional destruction. They were piece by piece, floor by floor, destroying the gold tower.

  Dekka yelled, “Malik and Francis!”

  A buzz came from Shade, and she was gone on a hurricane wind.

  Dekka ran down the army column, hands before her like a faith healer in feline cosplay. She aimed at the long barrels spitting fire. It wasn’t hard, it didn’t take long, to shred just enough of a barrel to stop it firing.

  She ran and shredded, screaming, “Stop it! Stop it! You’re killing people!”