Somebody had knocked her to the ground pretty effing hard. Christine saw the cube she had been holding clattering away on the ground. Mark was lying next to her. “Look out!” he wheezed, as if he couldn’t gather enough breath to shout.
Christine looked up and saw a pale guy in white about to slice into her with what looked like a freaking light saber.
“Frak me.”
Face-Off
Lake Michigan, Illinois, March 14, 2013
The freaky sounds and lights had been nearly hypnotic. No wonder some assholes sneaked up on us without being noticed. I got my first clue that something was wrong when Ultimate was mowed down by a barrage of energy attacks and pounced on by a seven-foot plus bearded man-mountain that tore into him like a rabid organic chainsaw. Ultimate went down, guts and pieces of flesh and bone flying everywhere, and stopped moving. It really sucks when the toughest guy in your gang gets taken out right off the bat.
Big Ugly went after Condor next, and an Asian chick somersaulted into the chamber and launched a barrage of glowing spinning stars at Kestrel. I couldn’t pay a lot of attention to either fight because Asshole Number Three was making a beeline towards me. A short man, white from head to toe, an energy sword in his hand. I recognized him right away: he was the motherfucker I’d seen in Cassandra’s last vision.
He’s mine. I'd never wanted to kill someone so much.
From the look in his eyes as he rushed toward me, the feeling was mutual.
I sidestepped his flashing blade, which went on to carve a molten furrow on the cave floor, and tried to drive my fist right through his face; I was aiming for a point about six inches on the other side of his head. Instead, my knuckles hit a heavy-duty protective field, the kind that absorbs and dissipates energy. In other words, the punch didn’t hurt him very much at all. I rocked him back a step, and I broke his nose. That was it. Fucking force fields.
His energy sword would hurt me plenty if it hit me. Even the first near miss gave me a mild case of sunburn. I did a little dance around a flurry of furious slashes, trying to avoid getting skewered and deep fried while I looked for an opening.
If Pasty-Face hadn’t been so eager to carve me a new asshole, it would have been a short fight. He was pissed off and trying too hard. A particularly wild swing left him wide open and I got him with a spinning kick right on the throat. I put everything I had on the kick. He got rocked back and was stunned for a second or two, long enough for me to land the best punches on my repertoire on all the vital points I could reach.
I hurt him, but nowhere near enough. I managed to kick him in the balls, which got me a few more seconds to try to kill him, but he bounced back much faster than he should have and kept me at bay with his fucking sword.
To make things worse, after he recovered he stopped fighting stupid. The frenzied cuts stopped, and he started coming after me like a professional, cool and collected, using the greater reach of the sword to make me keep my distance. And the fucker healed all the damage I’d inflicted. The blood on his nose and lips disappeared, and he looked like the picture of health just again. I was fighting someone who could take my best punch without going down and could heal at least as quickly as Kestrel.
This is how most Neos buy the farm. Sooner or later you run into someone several points higher in the pecking order, someone you can’t beat, and that’s all she wrote. I knew this was it, and so did he. As long as he didn’t completely fuck up, I wasn’t going to last very long.
Not that I was going to roll over and die for him. The asshole was going to have to work for it, and I was going to do my best to take him with me.
I ducked under a horizontal slash that would have cut me in half and tried to sweep his legs off under him. He jumped up, avoiding the sweep – fucker was fast – and tried to pin me to the ground with a downward stab. I rolled away from that, but not quite fast enough; the energy sword touched me on the upper arm, burning and slicing through my armored jacket and the flesh beneath.
I rolled until I was far away enough to leap to my feet. He came after me, swinging his sword in a figure eight pattern, leaving behind bright after-images like a sparkler from Hell. I had to backpedal away from him. A quick glance to the side told me things weren’t going great for the rest of the crew. Condor and Kestrel were also on the run from their respective dance partners. The Lurker was engaged in some sort of staring contest with a creepy little guy in a black suit. Dueling creeps. Not my kind of spectator sport but I’d rather be watching it than running for my life from a guy who powdered his face like a fucking mime. I needed to come up with something.
Sometimes a good idea can be used more than once. I cartwheeled backwards to get some space and pulled out my gun. I didn’t even bother shooting Pasty-Face with it; I flung it right at his head. He took a moment to slash the gun out of the air, and I used that moment to close in on him. We grappled, and I got the first bit of good news of the night: I was stronger than him. I grabbed his sword hand and pushed it away while I gripped him by the throat with my other hand and head-butted him a few times. The blows didn’t do much, but at least I had the initiative. Maybe I could rip his arms off, snap his neck, something.
The energy sword in his hand disappeared. I had just enough time to realize that couldn’t be a good thing.
The dazzling blade reappeared in Pasty-Face’s other hand, the one that I didn’t have a grip on.
He ran me through.
I felt the burn all the way through my lower torso; things burst and popped inside of me and I smelled my flesh being roasted. Pasty-Face kicked me away and had the sword reappear in his right hand. I landed in a heap with a wide round hole burned clear through me, front and back. I could have put a whole hand in it. I could feel air blowing through my insides. I tried to move, but nothing seemed to be working at the moment. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to exist. The world was beginning to get dark around the edges, and a part of me wanted to close my notional eyes and go to sleep. I told that part of me to fuck off.
Pasty-Face looked down on me. “I could have killed you just now,” he said. He had a nice stage-actor voice, for a murderous pissant asshole in white-face. “My name’s Archangel. I owe your Gypsy bitch a debt I intend to repay. Before I kill you, I will show you something interesting.” He gestured towards Christine, who was still standing in a trance, looking at her father’s freak show cube. “I have to capture her alive, but she doesn’t need to have arms or legs when I take her in. Watch this.” He turned his back on me and strode towards Christine, sword at the ready.
Nobody else was in any position to do anything. I saw Condor leap over the giant and kick him in the head, which didn’t even muss the fucker’s hair. I couldn’t see Kestrel anywhere and the Lurker was still busy. The last thing I was going to see before I died was Pasty-Face mutilating Christine.
Fuck that.
I sat up, ignoring how bits and pieces of me were moving around the hole in my midsection; some were falling right out. I kept moving. No guts, no glory, and I don’t need guts to live, Condor told me so. I gathered my legs – my leg; the left one wasn’t working for shit – under me, and jumped. It was the most painful leap I’d ever made; I felt stuff tear up inside and I was positive a good percentage of my body didn’t make the jump with me. It a crappy leap, but I slammed into Christine and knocked her down before the killer mime landed a cut that would have taken off both of her hands at the wrists. As we rolled on the ground I felt the last bits of energy and blood leaving my body. I felt cold and thirsty and very sleepy.
Christine was awake. My peripheral vision caught a glimpse of Pasty-Face walking up to us, sword in hand. “Look out!” I yelled. Tried to yell. It came out pretty garbled. Next I tried to scream. It sounded pretty bad.
Neos in pain can make the most curious noises.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Christine Dark
Lake Michigan, Illinois, March 14, 2013
Shields up, Giordi!
The freaking light thin
gy – Lucasfilms should sue the guy – slammed into her shield in a pyrotechnic display that would have looked much prettier if it didn’t mean someone was trying to chop her up like a carrot.
Whiteout Man tried a couple more slashes; she felt her shield weaken, and when her shields went down she was going to get effed up for real, yo. She blasted the guy, and he was knocked back a couple of steps, which put a stop to the hacking and slashing for a couple seconds, but he didn’t go down. “Not bad,” he said. “I think I’ll have to put your eyes out as well.” He gestured with the sword at Mark; he was lying face down and he wasn’t moving; smoke was coming out of a huge hole in his back and he was making a horrible howling noise that terrified her and broke her heart at the same time. “He might even live long enough to watch,” the killer mime commented. Mark fell silent a second later. “Or maybe not. Pity.”
“Fuck you very much,” Christine hissed and let him have it. Her anger and terror at seeing Mark down – not dead, he can’t be dead – all exploded out in the strongest blast she’d ever fired off. She visualized a mental spear – a gigantic, mammoth-size spear, the kind of harpoon you’d use on killer whales or dinosaurs – and threw it at him with all her inner strength, propelled by a glare of pure hatred, moving fast enough to generate a supersonic crack as it struck. It went right though the man in white in an explosion of blood that should have sickened her but instead filled her with savage satisfaction. The man clutched at the huge hole in his chest with an incredulous look and fell flat on his back. His feet kicked a couple of times and he was still.
“Mark!” There was fighting all around her – Christine saw Kestrel wrap her whip around some Asian woman’s throat and send her spinning off in a move that should have broken her neck but somehow didn’t – but she needed to help Mark first. There was a huge smoking burn that went all the way through him, worse than the one she’d blown through the white dude. She could see inside of Mark and it was gross and horrible and who could survive that? Neolympians, that’s who, her brain said. Neos didn’t need to eat or breathe. They didn’t need their organs, not really, not in theory at least.
She knelt by his side and gently turned his head so he was facing her. Mark had a face on. It looked very young. Light brown hair, narrow nose, softer features than she’d have expected. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t in pain anymore, that’s why he’d stopped howling. She picked that up with her Christine-sense. He was also getting sleepy and about to let go.
“Mark! Wake up!”
His eyes opened. They were green. He saw her and he smiled with his lips and his mind.
“You got the fucker?” His voice sounded like he had a really bad case of asthma. She nodded. “Fuck, my face’s back, that’s twice today.” He tried to take a breath, and she heard air escaping through the hole in his torso. “This can’t be good,” he wheezed. He closed his eyes.
She felt him start to slip away. “No way. Mark, do you hear me? No fucking way!” Christine turned her special sight on and saw the bundle of colors that was Mark Martinez. The colors were draining away, replaced by a dull gray the same shade as the inert ground under him. It was a terrible thing to see, the end of life, but she forced herself to look, to figure out a way to stop it. The more she looked, the more she understood what the colors meant. One set of colors – a bluish-green hue – embodied all the healing power all Neos had to some degree or another; the green light was tapping energy from somewhere in a desperate attempt to undo the damage before his body stopped working altogether, but it wasn’t enough, and the green light was fading and turning gray as well.
Christine looked at her hand with her sight and looked through the colors within herself. She found the one that matched the healing force and tried to send it to Mark. Nothing happened. Most of Mark was gray now, except around his upper chest and his head.
Come on, think! She touched his face, saw her colors flowing near his, not touching, not mixing up. They were separated by something, some sort of membrane around her soul, or aura, or whatever. Okay, then. Break it.
She did, and it hurt like nothing ever had. She involuntarily pulled her hand away. This is so not a good idea, her brain warned her rather pointedly. She ignored it and did it again. This time she breathed through the pain like she was doing Lamaze exercises and dealt with it, worked through the agony wracking her, and now her colors were mixing with his colors and that hurt even worse.
She recoiled again and was almost overwhelmingly tempted to just give up. She’d done as much as she could. Just let him go. The pain had been bad, but the realization he might take her with him when he died was worse. She was terrified of the pain, of dying. Just let him go. Mark’s colors had made a brief comeback, but they were fading away again. His eyes reopened; she’d be the last thing he saw. He was cool with that.
She wasn’t.
Christine screamed as she let their auras flow together once again. Now they were both dying. She pushed back against the empty oblivion she saw ahead of them. In her mind, she pictured herself dragging his limp body out of a twisting dark tunnel. He was so heavy, and it would have been so easy to just drop him and walk out by herself. She didn’t.
When it ended, it was convulsive, explosive, a shuddering cold quasi-orgasm that made her body and mind spasm. The pain vanished. The walls around her soul snapped back into place and she was once again alone, no longer connected to him. She felt drained and weak.
Christine opened her eyes. Mark’s no-face was back, and he was breathing normally. “What the fuck just happened?” he muttered. He turned around and sat up. His clothes where still torn up and bloodied, but the wound was gone. “Holy shit.”
“Was it good for you?” Christine said, trying to sound like Kestrel and failing miserably.
“How… Look out!”
She turned and saw Pale Face. He was back on his feet and his wounds and the blood around them were gone. She barely got her shields up before he blasted her with an energy beam that looked like a ranged version of his light blade thingy. The blast hit her shield hard, knocking her on her back. Ranged and melee, that was so unfair.
The white bastard charged her, blasting her with one hand, sword held high on the other. She had to concentrate on her shield and couldn’t hit back, and she was still weak from whatever she had done to Mark. Her shield was collapsing.
“Fuck this,” Mark said. He moved just as the energy blade came down on her. He grabbed Pale Face’s hand, stopping the strike – and then pushed the hand back. The energy sword cut into the man's neck, but he managed to stop the motion before the energy blade went too deep. Mark was still too weak to force the man's hand beyond that point. Christine was almost out of juice too, but she sent forth one more push, adding her strength to Mark’s. The sudden push drove the sword all the way through the man’s neck.
Christine felt Pale Face’s mind/soul/whatever go poof as his head rolled off his shoulders and landed between her and Mark. He was dead, for real this time. The energy blade disappeared and the headless body collapsed.
“Burn in hell, motherfucker,” Mark said, always ready with a bon mot or two. He struggled to his feet and looked around. “Shit, we have to help the others!”
He was right. Kestrel and Anime Amy were in full catfight mode, but Anime Amy had shredded Kestrel’s whip with her energy thingies and seemed to have gained the upper hand. Condor was in even worse shape; she looked his way just in time to see him tase a guy who made Rubeus Hagrid look like Tyrion Lannister. Condor’s Taser was industrial strength: sparks and arcs of lightning flared everywhere and giant dude staggered back a step, but only a step, and he bitch-slapped Condor and sent him tumbling away.
Christine gathered all the power she could muster and blasted the hairy giant in the back, knocking him down, and caught Anime Amy with another blast just as she was trying to deliver a flying jump kick. Ninja Chick rammed a wall face first and stopped moving. The two attacks just about did her in, though. She needed some time to recover.
>
Mark jumped the bearded giant and started pummeling him, but the big guy came to his feet, knocked Mark away and jumped after Anime Gal, who was lying down semi-conscious while Kestrel kicked her. While Christine desperately tried to gather enough power for another blast, the big guy forced Kestrel back with a few wild slashes with his clawed hands. He used the breathing room to grab his friend and start fleeing towards the cave’s exit. Christine was about to blast him again when she noticed John’s body lying on the floor. There was blood and worse stuff everywhere. She rushed to him. Was she going to have to do the healing thing she’d done with Mark? She didn’t know if she had it in her to do it again – okay, she was positive she didn’t have it in her – but she turned on her Christine-vision anyway.
John was alive, and still shining like a multimillion watt bulb. She could see his healing energies swirling all around him, fixing him up, washing away the last traces of the evil dark energy that had poisoned him and temporarily neutralized his invulnerability. It was going to take a while – someone had really pwned him – but he would recover. Relieved, Christine looked up.
And saw her father and an even creepier guy facing each other. That would have been bad enough, but her special senses were still up. She saw what the two men really were, what they had become. The one time she'd used her Christine-vision near her Dad, she'd gotten nothing; he must have some sort of ability that blocked her power. This time, however, nothing blocked her sight, and she saw the thing that wore the face of her father.
Next thing she knew, she was on her hands and knees, throwing up and wishing she was blind.
Face-Off
Lake Michigan, Illinois, March 14, 2013
I got up. Man Mountain hadn't hit me with his claws or my guts would have ended up all over the cave for the second time that evening, but his punch had broken several ribs and given me a mild concussion. Compared to the radical laser surgery I'd just survived, it wasn't much, but it had left me a bit wobbly. The giant retreated up the tunnel, his little friend slung over his shoulder. I don’t believe in letting people who try to kill me or mine get away to try again another day, but I wasn’t eager to mix it up with the guy who had gutted Ultimate like a fish. I’d probably regret it later, but I let him go.
New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl Page 38
