“I spoke to Henry,” she said.
“Why did you speak to Henry?”
“I needed to ask him something.”
“About what?”
“I explained our situation, and he gave some helpful suggestions.”
“Like what?”
“He said he has a buyer for the suit.”
“It’s not for sale.”
“Twenty million dollars, Dillon. Twenty million. Have you ever even seen that much money?”
“Jaime, it’s not for sale.”
She exhaled. “Every time you go out, I wonder if that’s the last time I’m going to see you. If someone’s just going to shoot in the right place.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“What about me, Dillon? What about the kids? What if people found out that you were the one in that suit? The logical way to get to you is to go through the people you care about.”
“That’s not going to happen, either.”
“You don’t know that. Dillon, look at me.”
He turned his head and gazed over at her.
“I hate that thing. And I hate that you go out in it. The world can survive without a Black Onyx. I can’t survive without a Dillon Mentzer.”
He leaned in and kissed her. “I have to go.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be here. Hopefully.”
He stood and headed for the garage. Inside, the suit sat in the corner like some monstrous statue, and it filled him with… awe, shock, wonder, and fear. Every time. And each time he stepped out of it, he said that it was the last time. Jaime was right; he had no business flying around the world.
He ran his hands along the smooth material, and it responded to his touch, the surface whirling like cream in coffee. The suit opened, beckoning him like some comforting drug. He stepped inside and felt the surge of raw power.
He flew through the open garage door and burst into the sky. The evening air was warm, and the Pacific sparkled in the final rays of the sun. He propelled himself past the clouds, high enough that he couldn’t hear anything. He hovered effortlessly, staring down at the earth. He could see all of the islands, the west coast of the mainland, and the tips of southern Canada and northern Mexico.
Swimming over the clouds, he slowly drifted toward the mainland. He spun onto his back and watched the sky, bringing his arms up behind his head. He sometimes felt as if he could sleep up there.
Twisting back around, he crouched. An invisible force built inside the suit and resonated in his bones. He exploded forward with so much speed that the clouds parted and reeled behind him.
Within a few seconds, he was over California. He landed on top of the US Bank Tower in Los Angeles. He sat on the edge with his feet dangling over and watched the cars stuck in traffic seventy-three floors below. Though he’d been an orphan and spent most of his time in Honolulu, he remembered living in Los Angeles at some point in his life. His parents, his birth parents, were from there. He didn’t remember their faces or names, but he remembered that.
Jaime had told him he should look them up. But what would he say? They’d abandoned him, making it clear he wasn’t a priority in their lives. To go crawling to them and begging for answers stank of desperation. But an answer, any answer, would have brought him some measure of peace. For most of his life, he’d felt like discarded trash. It would be nice to know that his parents had had a legitimate reason for tossing him away like a rejected toy. Perhaps they were drug addicts and knew they couldn’t give him the life he deserved. Anything would have been better than thinking they’d abandoned him because they didn’t want him.
The suit’s enhanced vision allowed him to see a drug deal going down on a corner a mile from the tower. Farther off and to the east, two men were having a fistfight. At a parking garage to the west, a family was coming out, and four men ran to an SUV with guns drawn.
“We have a winner,” he said, jumping off the building.
He fell halfway down, exhilaration making his body quiver, before he twisted and flew between the buildings like a heat-seeking missile. Taking a corner sharply, he was over the parking garage three and a half miles away and staring down at the SUV.
“Out of the car!” one of the men shouted. He grabbed the father from the driver’s seat and flung him to the ground, placing his foot on the back of the man’s neck.
“Please,” the father said, “just take the car. Take it.”
“You damn right we gonna take it.”
The second man pulled the mother from the passenger side.
“Nah,” the third said. “We take that bitch.” He yanked the two children from the vehicle, tossing them onto the concrete.
The second and third men pinned the mother down in the backseat, while the first climbed in behind the wheel. The father screamed for them to let his wife go as they peeled out, smoke billowing from the tires.
Dillon could see inside the car. The two in the backseat were ripping off the woman’s clothes. One of them pulled back and struck her hard across the jaw. The driver grinned. The car was speeding, wildly weaving in and out of traffic. Several cars were nearly struck, and they had to swerve into different lanes to avoid a collision.
Dillon swooped down. Placing his hands on either side of the roof, he lifted the car.
The driver shouted, “Shit!”
Dillon lifted the car thirty feet and then forty and fifty. He came to the top of a building and set the vehicle down on the roof before shooting into the sky. He watched the men sit motionless in the SUV. None of them said anything. The driver glanced at his boys before opening the door and stepping outside.
He looked up just as Dillon grabbed him, and in an instant, they were up in the clouds.
“Shit, shit!”
“It’s not nice to steal from people. Definitely not nice to rape their wives. Would you agree? What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? That’s all right. Hopefully, you won’t make too much noise on the way down, either.”
Dillon let him go, and the driver raced toward the ground. Screaming, his arms flailing, the man started to choke from the wind shooting down his throat.
Dillon wondered if he should just let him die. But that didn’t seem to be his place to decide. He’d stopped them. That was enough.
Dillon shot down and caught the driver a few inches from the ground. The man was still screaming, and a wet stain was spreading on the crotch of his pants.
Dillon dropped him to the cement. “Police were called. How far you think you can get?”
The man got up and tried to run but only went three steps before his blood pressure dropped, and he hit the cement.
“Shame.” Dillon flew back to the top of the building.
The other two men were still in the car, but the woman had jumped out and was climbing down a fire escape. One of the men got out and pointed a pistol at Dillon.
“That’s a bad idea,” Dillon said.
“What are you?”
“Poet, lover, warrior. You name it.”
The man lowered the pistol.
Dillon nodded. “Good choice. Get back in the car.”
When the man obeyed, Dillon lifted the SUV and took it down to a spot near the police cruisers that had gathered on the street in front of the building. He saluted the officers, who appeared to be in shock. Dillon flew off and found the woman running down the street, crying.
“You okay?” he asked, hovering in front of her.
She screamed.
“Yeah, I get that a lot. Sorry.”
“What are you?”
“I’m just a man in a Halloween costume. You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want a lift back to your husband?”
“No. No, I’ll walk… thank you. For what you did.”
“Tell your husband to keep the doors locked. Lotta weirdos out.”
He sped upward, firing past the clouds, until the sky slowly melted to
black. The stars were as bright as the moon, and he could see the cloudy puffs of violet galaxies.
He decided to hang out there for a while.
8
A limo was waiting when they stepped off the plane. Tyler opened the car door for her, and she climbed in. He had brought clothes for her to change into on the plane, and she’d chosen the black dress with the heels and a gold necklace. The limo driver was staring, so Tyler told him to roll up the divider.
Once they were on the road, Tyler took out the tin of black fluid and handed it to her. “For you, Queen.”
She took it and held it to her mouth. The fluid seemed to crawl out on its own. A tentacle crept into her mouth and pulled the remaining matter inside. She closed her mouth and swallowed.
“What are they?” he asked.
“They came to my people long ago from the sky. They taught us how to engineer marvels. And we were paid with destruction.”
“What happened?”
“A war unlike any this world has seen. We were spread across the earth like seeds. We fought everywhere one could fight, and we destroyed ourselves. Neither side was victorious, and we existed no more.” She looked at him, and his heart fluttered. Her eyes changed color rapidly. “I have heard you, servant. And I have waited for you. I knew you would come for me.”
“I would die for you, Queen.”
“You have the blood of my people in your veins?”
“Yes.”
“No man acts for the benefit of others. What do you wish for in exchange for this?”
“I wish to become like you—immortal.”
“I am not immortal.”
“You’re as close to it as someone like me can get.”
“This is true. As you wish. Get me my army, and I will help you.” She placed her ice-cold hand on his thigh. “My name is Atlantis, after the birthplace of my father. You have earned the right to call me by that name.”
“I am honored.” Tyler could hardly move. He kept looking at the slender hand on his thigh, the fingers perfect and timeless, the nails glossy and long. “I have waited for you for twenty years. It took me so long to find you that I wasn’t sure you existed anymore.”
She put a hand behind his head and brought his face close to hers. She kissed him, and her lips were as cold as her hands.
Mark Adler sat in the boardroom of the Nyriad Oil and Gas offices and watched a plane fly past the window. Night had fallen in Los Angeles, and he should have been out with that stewardess he’d met last week. But instead, he waited with five other executives for their founder, who’d sent a text calling for the meeting.
“Anybody know what this is about?” Mark asked.
The chubby man next to him, Gary Jordan, shrugged. “We all got the same text telling us to be here.”
Mark checked his watch. “Well, I’m only waiting another ten. If he’s not here, I’m gone.”
“Gone where?” Tyler Edgar asked as he entered the room.
Behind him was a woman who made Mark’s mouth fall open. She moved to stand behind Tyler as he sat down at the head of the conference table.
“Change of plan, boys,” Tyler said. “All of our resources—the drills, the wells, the refining plants, and especially the wildcatting teams—are all being diverted.”
Mark glanced at the other men. “Diverted to what?”
“We’re looking for something more valuable than oil and gas. My… associate, Atlantis, knows the locations. Some of them are going to be more accessible than others, but we’re going to get all of them.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Tyler?” Gary said. “What are you looking for?”
“Ancient artifacts.”
“What? Are you crazy? You don’t have the authority to do this.”
“This is my company.”
“This is the shareholder’s company. And they are absolutely going to go ape shit over this. We’re talking lawsuits. No way. You can’t do it.”
Tyler started to speak, but the woman placed a hand on his shoulder, and he stopped. She crossed the room and stood before Gary. Mark picked up a scent coming from her that he couldn’t place. It was alluring, like soft femininity and ice. A chill went down his spine.
She smiled at Gary and ran her fingers over his face, lightly touching his jaw and neck. Suddenly, she spun his head all the way around so his eyes were glaring at the ceiling.
Mark jerked away from the table. “Holy shit!”
The woman glided gently back to her place.
“Any other concerns?” Tyler asked, seeming completely unfazed. “Good. Work with your units to get everything geared up. And, Mark, one of the locations is in the Pacific in the Marianas Trench. What do we got there?”
“N-nothing, boss,” he said, his eyes glued to the woman. “It’s… um, the deepest part of the ocean. We’ve never drilled there.”
“Find a way to do it. We don’t need to go far into the earth, just kind of collapse the floor around something.”
“Um, yeah. Yeah, I’ll figure something out.”
“Good. Well, if there’s nothing else, I’m showing Atlantis around the town. ” He rose and headed for the door, with the woman behind him. Before stepping out, he stopped and said, “And get rid of that body. I don’t care where. We don’t have to be afraid of the police any longer.”
9
Dillon floated softly onto the beach in front of his house. No one was out at such a late hour, so he sat in the sand and let the waves lap at the suit. He could feel the water, the coolness of it, even through the thick layers of the suit.
The suit was magical; there was no other word to describe it. He was a rational person and thought there must be physical laws that governed its operation, maybe even obvious laws that hadn’t been discovered by modern science, but at that moment, all he saw was magic. He remembered a quote by Asimov saying that technology was just magic, anyway.
He thought about his life. Jaime was right. The suit put her and the kids at the orphanage in danger. Eventually, someone would find out about it. But the thought of giving it to Henry made him uneasy. Anyone willing to pay twenty million was looking to make it into a weapon, and that didn’t sit well with him. But he had one edge: the suit was bonded to him. It only opened on his command. It was possible that they would never be able to use or study it. And he wouldn’t transfer possession until he got the money.
Jaime came over and sat next to him, appearing like a child next to the gargantuan suit. “Really? You’re just gonna wear that out, huh?”
“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be wearing it.”
“You’ve been thinking about Henry’s deal?”
“Yeah. I think it’s what I need to do. Not just for the kids. For us, too. We could retire. We’d never have to worry about money again. And you’d never have to worry about me.”
“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, Dillon.”
“I’m scared they’re gonna use it as a weapon.”
“Of course they’re gonna use it as a weapon, but so would someone else, eventually.”
“Do you know the buyer?”
“The military. The United States military.”
He nodded. “That’s better than terrorists but not as good as a museum.”
“I’m not sure any museum will pay you twenty million dollars for it.”
“If I do this, I want to leave. I’ll set up the orphanage with a trust, but you and I have to go. I can’t stay here with all this.”
“I know.”
“And you’ll come?”
“Yes. I will.” She placed her hand on his chest and kissed the suit where his cheek would be. “Oh, look at this.” Pulling out her phone, she held it up so he could see the screen then played a YouTube clip. The video had been taken on a cell phone. It showed Black Onyx lifting a car into the air and dropping it onto the roof of a building. A few moments later, a man came rocketing down, but Black Onyx grabbed his ankles a few feet be
fore he would have splattered on the sidewalk.
“I didn’t even see anyone else there.”
“This is the twenty-first century, Dillon. Everything’s on camera.”
“Huh.” He stood up. “What’dya say I get out of this thing and into the hot tub?”
“I say yes,” she said, taking his hand and rising.
10
Tyler watched as Atlantis glided gracefully into the restaurant, taking in all the decorations and people. She stared for a long while at a glass encasement that held a waterfall.
“Your table is ready, Mr. Edgar.”
Tyler took her hand, and they followed the hostess to a table by one of the windows that looked out over Beverly Hills. Sitting beside her, he noticed the other men staring and grinned.
“I grew up in this city,” he told her. “This is the wealthy part that we’re in right now. My family was poor, and much of the time, I didn’t have enough to eat. So I used to come to these restaurants and go through their garbage. They throw away in one night more than a man needs to eat in a year.”
“You have great pain,” she said, looking steadily at him. “I sense it in you.”
“We all have great pain.”
“I can take that pain away, servant.” She placed her hand over his.
“I know. That’s why I’ve been searching for you for so long.”
Noise at the table next to them made him look up. Some teenagers in evening gowns and tuxedos were watching something on a phone.
“What is that?” Atlantis asked.
“I’ll show you.” He took out his phone and opened the web browser. His home page was the LA Times. “All of humanity’s knowledge can be accessed on this little device. And you can use it to speak across oceans to someone else.”
She stared at the screen. “What is that?” She pointed at a photo of Black Onyx lifting an SUV into the air.
“I forgot to tell you about him. He’s what allowed me to find you.”
“Who is he?”
Black Onyx Duology Page 12
