As it turned out, he’d been right. You never knew.
Someone flicked a knife at her. It stuck on the floorboards of the former church. A bone-handled knife, with a four- or five-inch long blade. She grabbed it, yanked it free, felt its weight and heft in her hand. Tried to picture herself driving it into a living being, into someone’s flesh.
Oh, God. No.
Christine didn’t drop the weapon, though. She might not want to use it, but she’d done many things she didn’t want to do. And she wanted to live.
Charlie looked mad, and a little scared. His idea of fighting was to beat up outnumbered and cowed victims, not anything resembling a fair fight. And he’d seen her move and knew she was fast and sneaky. He wasn’t going to come at her any old way.
He’s going to cut me.
Not if you cut him first.
She gets a bit wobbly in the knees at both thoughts. She’s got no Neo super-healz, no Neo super-strength – she’d actually managed to deadlift an entire metric ton just a few weeks ago; not anymore – no Neo anything. Trying to use the Codex Words in real time was unlikely to work, not to mention would probably attract the attention of the Goddess, so that was out. It was going to be human versus human, and, Mark had told her knife fights were the worst, the kind of thing where the loser went to the morgue, and the winner went to the ER, or maybe the morgue as well.
Charlie unsheathed his knife, and it looked bigger than hers, like six inches to her four, which was a big difference if you were talking penises or Subway sandwiches, so she figured it also applied to knives. Plus he was taller than her by another two inches, and he had longer arms. Better reach. And he probably liked cutting people, or at least had some experience in it.
He was scared, though. Afraid of getting hurt. He also knew that getting into a knife fight was a terrible idea. Her empathy was strong enough to pick that up from his messed-up head.
That makes two of us, she thought. In a perfect world, they would both realize just how wrong this senseless violence was and they’d drop their knives, hug each other, and solve their differences another way. A dance-off, maybe.
The thought made her giggle, and that really bothered Charlie the Emo. He went even paler than usual.
He’s really scared now. Good. Scared people made mistakes.
“What’s so funny, bitch?” he yelled at her. “I’m gonna cut you bad.”
“Dead man says what?”
“What?”
“Exactly,” she said.
Sheriff Bergen started laughing, and the other Watchers followed suit, although their chuckles sounded rather tentative.
Glad I’m entertaining you, asshole, she thought. You’re on my list. If I ever get the chance, you’re going to find me effing hilarious.
It took Charlie a moment to work it out. He was pumping adrenaline by the gallon, so his cognitive abilities were at a pretty low ebb.
Good. Outthink him. Outmaneuver him. Out…
He came at her, done with the talking and posturing. She tried to back away, sidestep, something, but she just managed to interpose an arm before he could slash at her face. The cut on her forearm didn’t hurt at first, while she sidled around, keeping her distance, but when it flared up it stung like a mother-effer. She was bleeding, and it wasn’t healing; the pain wasn’t going away.
She’d faced off the Iron Tsar and the Genocide, and some punk who called himself the Emo was going to slaughter her like a fatted calf.
Eff that.
She swung the knife at him, but didn’t come close to connecting. Her tentative slashes made him wary, but only for a bit. Charlie was beginning to figure out she didn’t know how to use a knife. She must be holding it wrong or something. Sooner or later he’d find an open…
He lunged, and she was too slow yet again. The knife point punctured her left biceps. Her counter-slash made him back away, but he was grinning now, and that stab hurt even worse than the cut.
Stop thinking, you stupid bee.
When your brain tells you you’re thinking too much…
She let go of the endless narrative inside her head, let her training take over. Treat the knife as a fist. Parry, dodge, punch.
Charlie tried another lunge and she deflected it, left hand beating the blade away, at the cost of another cut, but the parry left him wide open. She punched him with her right one – the one holding the knife. Except it wasn’t a punch, wasn’t the hard impact of knuckles on flesh. It was a brief elastic resistance before the blade sunk into his flesh, and it was as bad as she’d imagined, bad enough that she froze in horror and revulsion as she saw Charlie’s face twist in utter, surprised agony. He tried to pull himself off her knife and she let it go.
The Emo fell on his side, groaning, her knife still stuck in his gut. She wanted to scream at him that she was sorry.
And that was when she noticed his knife stuck in her gut.
He’d stabbed her when she froze.
“It appears we have a tie,” Sheriff Bergen said cheerfully.
Then she couldn’t hear anything else over the sound of her own screaming.
Dreamland, July 16, 2014
“It’s okay,” Mark said, holding her in his arms. Except it wasn’t.
She could feel his impotent rage while he watched the brutal knife fight. He didn’t know what to do about it. After holding her for a few seconds, he disentangled himself, stepped away and started screaming. Pure, animal fury overwhelmed him, and the screaming wasn’t doing enough to quench it.
They were in Dreamland, though. Maybe she could help him. Concentrate, use some of that creativity that always seemed to be more trouble than it was worth…
“Mark.”
He stopped screaming and turned toward her.
“Over there.”
He followed her pointing arm, and saw them. Charlie the Emo, Sheriff Bergen, Little Jimmy, the Lowells, the other Watchers. The entire cast of that little Grand Guignol production.
“Thank you,” he said.
He charged them.
Sure, he knew they were just mental constructs she’d created for him, but the satisfaction of beating them to a pulp was enough to get his bad feelz out. She turned her gaze away from the carnage, though. The noises were bad enough, and she wouldn’t get any satisfaction from watching her tormentors die.
After all, she knew what happened to the real ones. And that was revenge enough.
Enough and more than enough, God help her.
Face-Off
Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea, July 17, 2014
We weren’t much good for anything the next day.
Reliving Christine’s memories was almost as bad as they must have been for her the first time around.
And that had been her first day on Earth FUBAR. And she’d been there a month, assuming time had passed at the same rate for her.
We agreed to hold off until the weekend before we did that again. I was beginning to understand why it was so hard for her to tell me what had happened.
That Thursday morning I was supposed to teach unarmed combat to a gaggle of new recruits. Not a good idea, since I kept seeing Christine in my head, getting slashed and stabbed, feeling her pain and terror time and again. I let my assistants do most of the teaching and contented myself with yelling at people for real or imagined mistakes. It wasn’t a very good class.
I ate lunch alone at my office, on the twelfth floor of the new and improved Freedom Tower, with a nice view of the ocean. I managed not to growl at my secretary and kept my door closed. Luckily the rest of the day didn’t require me to deal with the general public, or people in general. I annotated some reports, approved a comic book script where I turned villain and was taken down and cured by Hyperia and Mesmer – a nifty trick, since Mesmer was currently a disembodied ghost, but this wasn’t a ‘reality comic’ – and otherwise fucked off until it was late enough I could leave the office with a clean conscience.
We were off active duty until the end of the week, part
of our mandated time out after ‘strenuous physical or psychological activities,’ Legion legalese for kicking ass and taking names. That meant a light work week for me. Not so much for Christine. She had a busy few days ahead of her: two photoshoots today, one for Rolling Stone, another for Cosmopolitan. The next day she had a Guest of Honor gig at the San Diego Comic-Con. At least her publicist hadn’t forced her to spend the entire weekend humoring the geek hordes. After she was done with that shit, she’d spend Friday night at Ultimate’s Arctic Sanctuary, where she’d work on curing Janus from the Outsider infection he’d picked up from Mister Night. After she was done, sometime on Saturday afternoon, we’d go back to Memory Lane, hopefully for the last time.
I was dreading it.
I came home to an empty apartment. The damn photoshoots always ran late; she probably wouldn’t get home until ten or eleven. I wished her luck in a brief tele-empathic burst – she was bored to tears with all the posing for the cameras – before I choked down some leftover Chinese food and called my buddy Condor to catch up.
Kyle Carmichael, a.k.a. Condor the Avenging Angel, looked happy enough on the big-screen in my living room. One thing about videophones and big-screens is that you can pretty much see a person’s every pore when they answer a call. Condor looked indecently fresh and well-rested. It looked like he’d finally acclimated to his new job with the Empire State Guardians.
“Heard about the Neo hurricane chick,” he said after we’d exchanged pleasantries. “Sounds like it was a tough one.”
“Not for me. I mostly flew around with my dick in my hands while Christine, her uncle and Ulti-fucker did all the heavy lifting.”
“How’s Christine doing?”
I’d kept Condor appraised of her condition during the week following her big epiphany. Normally I wouldn’t have shared many details over an open line, but when Condor picked up the phone, the call was secured by the best encryption money could buy. Decades as an unlawful vigilante had taught him to play close attention to security, and his Genius skills with assorted forms of hardware gave him the tools to implement said security. I felt confident enough to answer his questions without worrying about someone eavesdropping on our conversation.
“Not so great.”
I told him pretty much everything.
“That’s a lot to take in,” he said after I was done. “I’m sorry, man. Neither of you deserve that.”
“She’s still convinced I won’t forgive her for whatever she did over there. That’s why she’s been dragging her feet telling me. Thinks this could be our last week together.”
“I guess you’ll find out soon enough. No sense wrecking your head trying to figure it out. Except you’re doing it anyway.”
I nodded. “I keep trying to think of something that might make me stop loving her.”
“And?”
“Couldn’t think of anything. Cheat on me? If she did, she did. I wouldn’t be happy about it, but drunk and in another dimension don’t count.”
“What if it wasn’t consensual? She was almost raped on her first day. What if…”
I concentrated very hard on not smashing the furniture in a fit of rage. “I don’t think that’s what happened. But if it did, I… Shit. I’d never blame the victim for something like that. We’ve seen enough of that kind of shit out on the streets. Only person to blame is the perp, That’s it. No if ands or buts. She knows me too well to be worried about that.” I hoped so, at least.
“So that leaves…”
“Nothing. I don’t care how many people she killed. I mean, unless she took up child sacrifice as a hobby or something like that. Kind of doubt it.” I sighed. “She’s probably overthinking it, and now I’m overthinking it. Let’s move on. How’s the wife?”
“Heh. I haven’t even proposed to her.”
Something about the way he said it made me instantly suspicious.
“You’re going to propose, aren’t you?”
He shrugged. “Thinking about it.”
Now that was the kind of news that would take my mind off my own worries for a bit. Condor and Kestrel – Kyle and Melanie – had been a couple for a good while, but their BSDM-based relationship wasn’t exactly healthy. There was enough repressed trauma between the two of them to keep a team of shrinks gainfully employed for decades. And I couldn’t picture Kestrel as the marrying kind. Not to mention…
“You two still seeing Lady Shi?”
“Nice of you to bring that up, Face. No, we drifted apart. She sort of tried to kill us one time, and even though she apologized profusely after we tortured her for a few days, the whole thing kind of turned us off. So that ménage is over for good.”
“Jesus wept. Did you…”
“Let her go, relatively unscathed? Yes, we did. We do try to keep the murdering to a minimum, you know, although Kestrel really wanted to kill her. We did make it clear she shouldn’t set foot anywhere in North America for the remainder of the century. If not longer. She’s persona non grata, and if she breaks her word, she’ll end up served up with potatoes au gratin. Kestrel promised that’d be the only way she’d eat her out again.”
“Thanks for sharing that. Means a lot. You guys haven’t considered therapy again, have you?”
“Last time I took confession, the priest quit the Church and joined the merchant marines. Think a therapist is going to handle it better?”
Maybe they would be better off married to each other. It would certainly spare at least two other people from getting involved with them.
“So what do you think, Face? Should I go for it?”
I shrugged. “Sure, why not? What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I can think of a few things. And thanks for the ringing endorsement, by the way.” He mimicked my shrug.
“Sorry about that. The whole thing sounds a bit too conventional for you two.”
“Unlike you and Christine, who could star in a chick flick, if you had a face. I notice you haven’t mentioned even thinking about proposing.”
“I think lots of things. I think it’s a little early in the game. If we can spend a whole year without one of us dying, being in a coma, or thinking we’ve done something so horrible the other person will run away screaming, then I’ll start to seriously think about it. We haven’t had more than a couple of months without some major crisis derailing our lives.”
“Excuses, excuses.”
“Plus she really wants to go home. And take me with her. Introduce me to her mother and grandfather.”
“Now that’s scary. And you’ve already met her mother.”
“Alternate reality versions don’t count.”
“Lucky for you it’s not like you can get on the freeway and go visit them.”
“Well, we’ve been quietly trying to find the Magister. If anyone can get us there, he’s the guy.”
“He’s also mad as a hatter.”
“Until Christine can figure out how to do it herself, or her Daddy remembers how he did it, Porta-Potty Man’s our only choice.”
The Lurker had made a good dozen trips into Christine’s reality, but he’d lost the Words he’d used to do so after he got killed. Or so he said. I had a growing suspicion he was bullshitting us for his own reasons. I’d kept my thoughts to myself, though. I didn’t want to start trouble with the only family she had until I was sure he was stringing her along.
“Good luck with that,” Kyle said. “I had a couple of run-ins with the Magister. He’s a total schizo, as the kids say nowadays. But I’ll keep an ear to the ground, and let it be known I’m looking for him. He owes me.”
“Thanks.”
“In other news, we’ve got a possible serial killer working the Big Apple.”
“Oh, yeah?”
That was the kind of thing I would have been working on, back in the days when I was a simple vigilante patrolling the mean streets of New York, with a big assist from a blind precog with the too-on-the-nose name of Cassandra. That brought a twinge of sadness. I mis
sed Cassie a lot. I wished I could tell her about Christine, how things had worked out better than we’d all expected. She would have been happy for me. She and Father Alex. I’d had very few friends, and recent events had cut a swath through them.
“You still listening, Face?”
“Sorry. You got me thinking of old times.”
“I hear you. But yeah, we’ve had seventeen disappearances in the last couple of days. The usual serial killer demographic – prostitutes, runaways, homeless people. Couple of tourists. I’m sure some of them will turn out in pristine condition, but that’s still a big number. Not to mention, streetwalkers don’t exactly rush to call the cops and report missing colleagues, so it could be a lot more.”
“Are you even allowed to follow up on that kind of street crime? Now that you’re a Guardian and all that?”
“I unofficially extended my services to the Police Commissioner, and he tentatively accepted. Mainly because he’s contemplating a run for Gracie Mansion in the near future and I hinted I would bankroll him.”
“Subtle.”
“I just want to catch criminals. All this kissing hands and shaking babies crap gets on my nerves after a while.”
“Well, if there’s anything you need, let me know. I may not be able to walk the streets and pound assholes into the ground, but I got VIP contacts coming out of my ass, now that I’m a Legionnaire.”
“More like Legionnaire’s Disease.”
“Hilarious.”
“It was good talking to you, Face.”
“Yeah. Don’t be a stranger. And let me know if you go for it. With Kestrel.”
“Will do.”
I hung up, feeling somewhat better. Condor and Kestrel tying the knot? Well, a non-Shibari knot? That was something. Enough to get me thinking along those lines. Perhaps not the wisest choice, considering my girlfriend thought she’d done something unforgivable. But still.
Maybe I was turning into a romantic in my old age.
Chapter Five
The Invincible Man
Freedom Island, Caribbean Sea/New York City, New York, July 17, 2014
New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative Page 9
