The creature was almost on him as Dillon crunched himself together and then thrust his body straight, propelling him forward at an enormous speed. The creature was right behind him now, and Dillon zipped up in a loop and then back toward the volcano. He was directly above it now and spun around. The creature was barreling toward him. Dillon feigned cowardice as he leaned back, and then flung the hunk of metal from the car at the creature’s eyes.
It caught the creature by surprise and it brought up its hand to shield its eyes. Dillon slung himself at it and wrapped his arms and legs around it. They began to plummet into the volcano.
The creature hit Dillon so hard it gave him double vision. He blocked the next blow and came up with a knee into the creature’s mouth, breaking off several teeth. The creature brought him near and bit into his shoulder, tearing away parts of the suit and some flesh with it. Dillon screamed.
He slammed his elbow over and over and over into the creature’s mouth, breaking off teeth, bloodying its tongue. They were maybe a couple of hundred feet above the lip of the volcano now. Dillon tried to pull away but the creature kept him in a bear hug.
Dillon pushed down on its arms, trying to loosen its grip as they rushed toward the molten rock. The grip was so tight it wouldn’t budge…he was going to fall into the volcano with him.
Dillon leaned back, feeling the crushing pressure of the creature’s grasp, and slammed both fists into the sides of its head. He did this until the creature let go. They were inside the volcano, the intense heat searing his flesh and cooking him inside the suit. Dillon put both his feet on the creature’s chest, and using him as a springboard, flung himself up and out of the volcano as the opposite force from his push sent the creature into the lava with a final, pain-filled roar.
Dillon flew out of the volcano and onto his back, rolling down the side of the volcano until he hit a large boulder and stopped, smoke billowing out of the suit. He tried to sit up, his vision spinning, his back and hips feeling like they’d been broken, but he couldn’t do it.
He blacked out and lay still.
31
Dillon woke to the sound of sirens. He forced himself up, pain in every point of his body. He was limping off the volcano when the sirens zipped past him, none of them seeing his black suit in the night. He stumbled down as far as he could go before having to rest, and then lifted himself into the air as he slowly drifted home.
Dillon could see the lights of the yacht a few thousand feet from shore. He drifted down, Jaime and her family on the deck, and landed next to her.
“Dillon?”
The pain overwhelmed him, and he felt vomit rising in his throat. He disengaged the suit and slipped out, collapsing onto the floor, vomit spewing from his mouth. She ran to him and put her arms around him.
He looked up to her parents. “You must be Mom and Dad. I’m Dillon. Nice to meet you. Could you do me a favor and take me to a hospital now please?”
She grinned and kissed his forehead.
Dillon came out of the hospital in crutches. The nurse helped him most of the way as they’d given him Percocet and he was slurring his words a little. They came outside and he leaned against a pillar.
“You have anyone meeting you here?” she said.
“No, I don’t have anyone. Could you just call a cab for me please?”
“That’s not necessary.”
He looked over and saw Jaime waiting for him next to her car. She walked over and put her arms around his waist and kissed him.
“Need a ride?”
“I don’t really take rides with strange women.”
“You’re the one with an alien suit.”
“It’s not alien. And it just enhances my normally handsome features.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, so you know, you better keep a close eye on me unless you want other women hitting on the Onyx.”
“The Onyx? Really? You’ve given yourself a name?”
“Yeah, Black Onyx. I was thinking Blue Onyx but then I thought that sounded like a cocktail.”
She smiled. “How about ass-head? I like that.”
“Hmm. I think that’s taken. Wasn’t that Dick Cheney’s nickname?”
She kissed him again. “Shut up and get in the car.”
He watched as she walked over and opened the door. “Yes ma’am.”
EPILOGUE
Dillon sprinted through the dense thicket of trees. He jumped over the first projectile and ducked under the other one as he spun on a branch and kicked off the tree, running in the opposite direction.
He dashed through the vegetation as another projectile was thrown at him and he cartwheeled out of the way; a move he had been working on in the gymnastics classes he had been taking. He struck another projectile, knocking it into the ground. Something he’d picked up in the Jeet Kune Do classes he had been studying.
He spun around and sprinted out of the jungle and into an open grass clearing. Behind him the jungle rustled…as five young boys ran out with plastic spears in their hands. They chased him over to the picnic table where Jaime and one of the orphanage’s counselors were setting up lunch.
“Boys,” Jaime said, “leave Dillon alone. He’s thirty now. He’s an old man.”
“Don’t listen to her little men. She’s jealous of my mojo.”
“All right, everyone go wash your hands. Lunch is almost ready.”
The boys ran into the building and Dillon watched them go. He glanced up to the name above the entrance: THE JAMES MENTZER CHILDREN’S HOME.
The home had been started with a half a million dollar donation and was run as a non-profit with Dillon on the board and Jaime as the executive director. It currently housed twenty-four boys and thirty-six girls from all over the Hawaiian islands who had been orphaned or the state had deemed the parents unfit.
Each child was given their own room, something unheard of in children’s homes.
Jaime walked up and kissed him, putting her arms around his neck. “Are you happy?”
“For a long time, I don’t think I knew what that meant.”
“Do you now?”
“Yeah, I do.” He exhaled. “I wish James could have seen this.”
She kissed him again. “Who says he hasn’t?”
He smiled and hugged her tight as the children ran back out for lunch.
BLACK ONYX RELOADED
A Superhero Thriller by
VICTOR METHOS
1
Gunfire exploded as Ramon jumped over the counter and stuck his shotgun in the teller’s face. “The vault, puto! Now!”
His three partners spread out around the bank lobby. One customer had been hit and lay on the floor in a pool of blood. The security guard was unconscious, crumpled beside the door. That left three cashiers, the manager, and the two remaining customers.
“Open it!” Ramon yelled.
Tears ran down her face. “I-I can’t. Only the m-m-manager can open it.”
He threw her into a chair. Lifting his shotgun, he pointed it at the manager, who had his hands behind his head, trembling. “Open it!”
The man nodded and pulled a set of keys from his pocket as he walked over to the safe. He input a code on the keypad and inserted a key. The red light on the keypad turned green, and the vault door clicked open. Inside, stacked in neat little piles, was more cash than Ramon had ever seen in his life.
“What you got, ese?” Jorge shouted.
“This is it, yo.” Ramon motioned for his other two partners to enter the vault.
Carlos and Esteban rushed in, pulled out garbage bags, and began filling them with bundles of cash.
Ramon pressed the shotgun to the manager’s head. “No witnesses, yo.”
Something crashed onto the building so hard that bits of ceiling fell, speckling the floor. Ramon heard what sounded like footsteps across the roof, but they were too heavy to belong to a man.
“What was that, Ramon?” Jorge asked.
“No lo se.”
“Go see.”
Ramon shoved the manager against the wall and walked to the window. San Francisco was lit up, but the street right outside the bank was empty. He was about to turn away when he spotted a light across the street.
The light grew brighter, blinding him. Then something smashed through the window so quickly that Ramon didn’t even have time to scream. He was flung into the air. He thumped into the ceiling and stared at the floor thirty feet below as he fell. He slammed back down so hard that he heard the bones in his arms break.
“Puta madre!”
Carlos and Esteban ran out of the vault, jerking their guns up as they spun in every direction.
“What was that, holmes?” Carlos asked.
A soft humming sound came from across the bank. Ramon struggled to look in that direction. A man-shaped thing appeared. It was seven or eight feet tall, dressed in black, with eyes that gleamed a bright blue.
“You know,” the thing said, its voice metallic and loud, “I’m all for robbing the people that rob you, but I’m not down with the innocent bystanders. Now why’d you shoot this guy? He didn’t do anything.” The thing drifted over to the fallen customer. Ramon didn’t realize the creature was floating until it landed on the floor with a thump.
The thing gestured at the customer. “Sir, you have a gunshot wound to the forearm. Did you do anything to deserve that?”
The man’s mouth dropped open.
“See? You guys hurt him so badly he can’t even speak.”
The customer made a choking noise. “Um…”
“‘Um. That’s all he can say now. Happy?” It shook its head. “If you would have snuck in here, robbed the place, and took off, I wouldn’t have even heard that anything was wrong. But they said shots were fired. So here I am. Now, are you guys going to lie down and wait for the cops, or what?”
Ramon couldn’t move his arms, so he just nodded to his boys. Jorge opened fire, and the other two followed suit. The rounds ricocheted off the thing’s smooth black surface and clinked to the floor.
“Kids these days,” it said. “No ability for conversation. I blame Facebook.”
The thing shot into the air and held out its hands toward Ramon’s gang. An invisible force slammed into the men. Carlos went through the wall, into the room on the other side. Esteban and Jorge were flung sideways and rolled on the ground a few times before stopping. Blood dripped from Jorge’s mouth. He spit and climbed to his feet.
“Now that is disgusting,” it said. “You could’ve at least done it out the window.”
Jorge took out the modified Tec-9 tucked into his waistband, pointed it at the creature, and held down the trigger. Rounds flew at the black figure.
It held up one hand. The rounds stopped in midair and hovered as if caught in pudding. Then they jiggled and turned. Jorge screamed and turned to run as the bullets raced toward him. Most missed, but one slammed into his buttock. He fell, banged his head against the floor, and lay still.
The manager, still trembling, stepped forward, swallowing hard before taking his glasses out of his breast pocket and putting them on. “I’ve heard of you.”
“Really?” it said, coming back down to the floor. “Where?”
“Television. Um… Black something.
“Onyx.”
“Black Onyx. Yeah. Yeah, I saw you.”
“Cool. Good piece?”
“Um… yeah. But… ah, isn’t, I mean, isn’t all onyx black?”
“You’re welcome, sir.” Black Onyx rose into the air and soared through the broken window as sirens screamed in the distance.
2
Dillon flew into the clouds. His Black Onyx suit fit him like a second skin, almost to the point where he hardly noticed it anymore. The sensations from the external world were a little dulled, but he could feel the cold wind against his face and smell the salty ocean air of the Pacific sparkling beneath him in the moonlight.
He rolled over and over, like a dive-bombing bird, then straightened out and raced forward so fast that the water below spread as though a knife were slicing through it. He had initially thought the suit was made of some sort of metal that hadn’t been discovered yet. But the thing adjusted to him, moved with him, protected spots on his body that were injured, and loosened spots that needed to be flexible. The suit was… alive.
Within minutes, he was over the mountainous terrain of his native Hawaii. Rolling white clouds clung to the peaks like cotton balls. He dipped low and came over the Honolulu beach, where his house sat on the shore. Jaime, his neighbor and girlfriend, was reading in her hot tub on the patio.
He landed quietly on the wooden deck behind her. “Boo.”
She jumped. “Dillon, seriously.”
“Sorry. I coughed. What ya reading?”
“You wouldn’t like it.”
“Chick book?” He walked over and started to swing one of his legs over the side of the tub.
“Dillon, the suit.”
“Oh.” He stepped back.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“San Francisco.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Stopping some young boys from robbing the good people of GH Mutual. Now the bank can continue its work of robbing everyone else.”
“Is that a little cynicism I sense in Dillon Mentzer, the person I thought would never grow up?”
Dillon closed his eyes a moment, and when he opened them, the suit had split down the middle. He unzipped his thermal tights and climbed into the hot tub. “I’m just working at the edges, Jaime. These guys tonight, they were just kids. Starving kids. They’re going to prison, and the criminals they were trying to steal from are going to keep robbing the public blind.”
She laid the book down on the side of the hot tub. “I’ve told you what I want.”
“Stop wearing the suit. I know.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And are you going to do it?” She moved closer and put her arm around him. “It’s too dangerous. And you have a lot more to offer than wearing some ancient tin can. You’re smart. You’re funny—”
“Oh, keep going. I like this.”
She kissed his cheek. “You’re handsome. You’re funny.”
“Already said funny.”
“Well,” she said, placing both arms around him, “you’re really funny.”
They kissed, and he glanced around before slipping off her bathing suit top.
Dillon spent the night at Jaime’s. That section of beach had surfers and partiers around blazing bonfires, but they were so stoned, they never noticed him stashing the suit in his garage.
He lay in her bed in the dark, her hair covering his chest and neck. He gave her a kiss and watched her sleep.
She was right. He was spinning his wheels with the suit. He had power unlike anything he had ever imagined, but he felt like a security guard for the wealthy.
Before discovering the suit, he had been a treasure hunter, one of the few legitimate ones left in the world. His dad—the closest thing to a father he’d had, anyway—had taken him from an orphanage at a young age and taught him the trade. And for his efforts, James had been killed by some… creature.
Dillon slipped out of bed, kissed Jaime on the forehead, and headed out to his garage. He stared at the suit. The metal, or whatever it was, gleamed in the dark, moving and adjusting to the light like scales on a black snake.
She’s right, buddy. It’s time to hang you up.
3
Hank Jensen stood on the ice, staring out over a black sea. The moon was full, and he’d never seen it so clearly, so big. No lights were in Antarctica, so nothing dimmed the glow emanating from the sky.
He shifted, trying to light a cigarette. His gloved fingers couldn’t flick the lighter well, and the few times he’d been successful, the flame didn’t come because of the cold.
“You all right?” Jones asked, coming up behind him.
“Cold, man.”
“How long we gonna be here?”
Jones looked over at Tyler Edgar, who was going over a map by the campfire. “’Til he tells us to leave.”
Tyler put away the map and whistled. Three men piled out of the tents, putting on their gear and crampons.
Tyler Edgar walked over to Hank and Jones. “We’re leaving.”
“Now?” Jones asked. “Can’t it wait ’til morning?”
“No. It can’t. Get your gear and stay close.”
Hank mounted the snowmobile, feeling the cold wind against his face as he adjusted his goggles. The snowmobiles roared to life, and the six men sped away from the camp. The air flying into Hank’s face was so cold, he thought the small amount of skin exposed between his goggles and the scarf tied around his mouth was going to freeze and fall off. They rode a good twenty minutes. Considering that they’d hiked six days since landing in Queen Maud Land, twenty minutes wasn’t long to wait.
A mountain came into view. The side was perfectly smooth, as if it were made of metal instead of ice and rock. They stopped the snowmobiles at its base.
Tyler stepped off first. “It’s here. Let’s go.”
They readied their ice axes and formed a line. Hank brought out two Grivel Force axes that resembled the arms of a praying mantis. He pulled his beanie down farther and followed Tyler up the small trail leading to the summit.
As he climbed, the air howled in his ears. The cold became so biting that his Fischer sub-arctic gear was useless against it. His chest, legs, toes, and fingers felt like icicles. He looked up at the summit, which was still a ways off, and felt overwhelmed. The escarpments on either side led down into blackness—and death, should they make one slip.
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