Fearless (Dominion Trilogy #2)

by Robin Parrish

  But this was new. Never had he seen an entire city gripped by the same hysteria. Everywhere he looked people were running, screaming, throwing, punching, crashing, spitting, dying.

  They were raging against the entire world for changing its rules so drastically without asking their permission.

  The scale of it made Samuel doubt his old eyes could really be showing him reality.

  His well-kept'75 Buick Regal weaved cautiously around the wild crowds and abandoned vehicles filling Imperial Highway. Someone from high above on the 105 interchange was throwing rocks and food down to the surface roads, and a carton full of eggs splattered across Samuel's hood.

  Any other day, such damage to his precious Regal would have seemed like the end of the world. Today he simply turned on the wiper blades to remove the excess splatter on the windshield and pressed down on the gas pedal a little harder.

  Samuel rarely said it aloud, but for his part, he was inclined to blame these new superhumans that were popping up all over the place. If they couldn't use their so-called superpowers to help everyone else and stop all these disasters, what good were they? The media had split its nonstop coverage between this unprecedented global phenomenon and the strange natural disasters that continued to break out all over the world, and Samuel's question was one that came up frequently among the reports. The superhumans didn't seem to be doing anything to prevent the disasters, so why not blame them for everything that was going wrong?

  The disasters had begun following the appearance of the very first of the superhumans right here in L.A., about seven weeks ago. China took the first hit; an outbreak of an unknown contagion decimated three cities in the southern Jiangxi Province, killing nearly a million people practically overnight. It happened much too fast, caught everyone off guard, and too many people became sick simultaneously for health officials to successfully identify a first patient. But the first official medical report about the contagion, showing the earliest time stamp, was for a businessman surnamed Zhuan. So it became known as the Zhuan Virus.

  The virus, which caused blood to clot inside of human veins, killed so quickly that the devastation had been done before it was contained. The entire province remained under complete quarantine even now, but no further fatalities had been recorded since that first forty-eight hour period. Health officials speculated that either Zhuan had mutated or the remainder of the population had developed the antibodies necessary to defeat the disease. Foreign travel to and from China was severely restricted.

  Samuel reacted to this gruesome pandemic with the same detached fascination as the rest of the United States-unable to look away from the gripping, heartbreaking news coverage, yet unable to invest himself personally in a plight so far on the other side of the world.

  Two days later came a situation he couldn't disengage himself from so easily. An unseasonably early Category Five hurricane-which had been projected to dissipate in the middle of the Atlantic, having never touched land-inexplicably and without warning shifted its track and drenched most of New York and New England. Carving a path of destruction thousands of miles long, Hurricane Austin left over a dozen feet of water standing for weeks in Central Park and Boston Common, and only in the last few days had the ground again become touchable by human feet. The devastation of American soil was without precedent, and Manhattan Island itself had all but disappeared beneath the ocean.

  The news coverage, inveterate in its focus on drama and desolation, had repeatedly insisted on zooming in on shots of hundreds and thousands of bodies floating atop the water.

  Samuel's thoughts returned to the present as the Regal was forced to slow to a crawl. He couldn't stop blinking due to the smoke seeping in from everywhere and stinging his eyes. The world was on fire.

  Helen gasped beside him in the passenger seat, stifling a scream as a pair of college-age girls, happily drunk with beer bottles sloshing in their hands, started banging their palms against Helen's side window. Samuel couldn't make out all they were saying but he thought they were trying to get money.

  His eyes darted to the door locks for the eighth time since starting the car. He moved on, barely noticing the yells, rude gestures, and then laughter from the girls in his rearview mirror.

  In the center of the street ahead, a man wearing nothing but a sandwich board waved a megaphone around, screaming the same message that was painted on his dual signs. Samuel recognized it as the usual "the end is near" garbage that always got spouted by the crazies after or during a major disaster. He mashed his car horn down, but the man in the street refused to budge. Samuel was forced to take his time, wait for an opening in the fender-to-fender traffic, and finally go around.

  In the weeks since Hurricane Austin, the world had witnessed one indescribable disaster after another. Stifling heat waves plagued India and Africa, bringing droughts and death in their wakes. Wildfires ate away at forests and vineyards in southern Europe. A massive sinkhole had opened up near Sydney, Australia, causing drastic shifts in the city's geological structure. There had been many cave-ins of buildings and highway bridges. The most recent disaster had come in the form of more than a dozen volcanoes across Central America and the West Indies that all erupted simultaneously.

  The entire global economy was in turmoil over the loss of sources of so many basic essentials used by people the world over. Simple items like a bar of soap or a loaf of bread cost four or five times what they had only a few months ago.

  It was madness, all of it, Samuel concluded. Sheer madness. The rules of how this little planet worked weren't meant to be changed so quickly and so drastically, and the earth itself was protesting as loudly as it could. And of course, a suffocating fear had clutched the hearts of those who dwelled upon it.

  L.A.'s citizens were simply the first to act out.

  What they were seeing today, Samuel's instincts were telling him, would soon engulf the world. It would spread and the world would soak in blood ...

  It was as this thought passed through his mind that he jumped in his seat. A nearby gunshot was accompanied by a splattering of blood against his right cheek.

  Five-year-old Gina Levinson tried to do as her grandfather told her and crouch low in the floorboard, in the backseat of his car. But the gunshot and someone yelling, "OUT OF THE CAR! NOW!!" just outside was more than she could resist.

  Slowly she lifted her head to see her grandfather's hands hovering above the steering wheel in a gesture of surrender. Something red was on the side of his face. Was he bleeding?

  Where was he hurt? Or was it her grandmother?

  She screamed, unable to catch her breath, too many thoughts clashing in her brain at once, and the gunman outside turned the gun in her direction.

  Her grandfather immediately stepped out of the car and offered to toss his keys to the man with the gun. "Just let me get my family out first," he pleaded.

  "GIMME THE KEYS, OLD MAN!!" the man with the gun screamed, his finger on the trigger and the gun still pointed at Gina.

  Samuel's heart seemed to stop.

  No! Mercy, no. Please no.

  "The girl goes free!" Samuel firmly stood his ground. "If you want a hostage, you can have me! But she walks away."

  The man pulled the trigger.

  The rear passenger window shattered with the shot, but Gina was too low in the floorboard to be anywhere near the bullet. Dozens of onlookers nearby turned to watch the drama unfold but none had the courage to intervene.

  Worse still, Samuel spotted not one, but two separate camera crews filming the event from several hundred feet away.

  Why were they filming this instead of helping him?!

  Frantic, Samuel eyed the man he would later learn was named Nick, and Nick returned the favor. There was evil in those eyes, something primal and desperate and animal. Samuel had seen it before, during his time in the Marines as a young man. And he knew without question that there was no good way out of this situation.

  Nick would wreak death and destruction on all he enc
ountered, because he knew how to do nothing else. Remarkably, Samuel found himself pitying this man, this hate-filled creature who was unequipped to hold onto his soul in a world gone mad. This vile killer who had murdered his Helen.

  "Give. Me. The. Keys," Nick said, voice low.

  "Gina, get out of the car, honey. Right now," Samuel said loud enough for her to hear.

  Gina opened the rear driver's side door where her grandfather stood and slowly walked toward him. She clutched at his right pant leg, watching the gunman with big eyes and a blank expression, as her grandfather threw the car keys at him. Her breaths came in shallow gasps and she reflexively retrieved an inhaler from her pocket and breathed in its medicinal contents.

  The man with the gun circled the front of the car, gun still pointing at her grandfather, and entered the driver's side. And just like that, the car and her grandmother were gone.

  Once the drama was over, the rampaging crowds on all sides swarmed into and through the spot where the car had stood like oxygen filling a vacuum. Gina and her grandfather merely stood there in shock, not knowing where to go or what to do.

  Finally, her grandfather found his voice and said, "Help us," in a small voice. It gained strength and intensity every time he said it until he was shouting it at the top of his lungs. "HELP US!!"

  "I'll give ya a hand, pops," said a broad-shouldered brute who passed by, flying gang colors. He slugged the elder man viciously across his temple and kept moving with the crowd. In no time at all, Gina's grandfather was lying flat on his back, and she cuddled atop him, trying her best to keep from being trampled by the sea of adults running around them.

  Samuel squeezed his eyes open through the tremendous pain that now seized his forehead, and caught a blurry image of the mass of humanity that was running, hopping, and stomping across him. He tried to raise a hand when he saw Gina kneeling over him, tried to protect her or caution her, but he was too drained. Too weak to do anything.

  Feet trudged over his body, crushing his legs, ankles, and abdomen. He did his best to shield his face but knew he wouldn't last long. A sharp chemical smell overpowered him and he felt something tacky and wet on his face. It was spray paint. Someone was spraying graffiti on his face and body.

  He was glad Gina wasn't old enough to read yet, for fear of what the paint probably said.

  Samuel could only pray that he himself would bear the brunt of the meaningless attack, and that somehow Gina would survive this. Because he had failed her, just as he had failed Helen. The whole city had gone to Hell and there was nothing left to hope for...

  Samuel felt a great whoosh and suddenly the crowd around him was replaced by a wide, full view of the hazy gray sky above. He squinted his eyes to see that the crowd had fallen back several yards away, many of them lying in a circle with a ten-foot radius around him. It was as if a small bomb had been dropped and he was in the exact center of the explosion; everyone else was on their backs, just outside of what might be considered the blast radius.

  But no, he was wrong.

  One person was still standing.

  A tall man with sharp blue eyes, brown hair, and a grim focus stood at Samuel's feet, his brown leather jacket framing his stance in the hot, smoke-filled wind like a billowing cape. He placed himself between Samuel and everyone on the ground around him.

  Between Samuel and certain death.

  The man's head turned sharply in the direction that Samuel's car had disappeared into only moments ago, and he stretched out his hand in that same direction.

  A screeching of unmoving tires on pavement could be heard in the distance.

  Gina had closed her eyes, afraid to look. But when the commotion stopped, she peeked just as everyone else did. A streak of the red spray paint on her grandfather's face had caught the ends of her hair, but other than a few bruises, she was unharmed.

  She blinked in recognition at the man who calmly stood just inches from her, his arm out.

  "Grandpa, look!" Gina cried, smiling. "It's him!"

  Hearing her exclamation, the standing man turned to look at her and a softer expression washed over his features.

  Gina clapped her hands in glee.

  He was here.

  "It's Guardian!" she shouted.

  Grant had to force himself not to wince at the sound of the name the public had given him. It wasn't their fault he had to remain anonymous, after all-and the name they'd selected for him could have been worse.

  Still, he felt wholly unworthy of such a name.

  And the camera crews nearby had caught the whole thing on tape. He fought the urge to sigh. Once again, the one man in all the world that nobody could identify, yet everyone recognized, would be the top story on the six o'clock news.

  He advanced toward the old man and his granddaughter, who still lay on the ground, as the others around them got to their feet. Some ran away in fear, others stood and marveled at the sight of him.

  A boy of no more than fifteen stood a couple of yards away, a paint can in his hand. Grant glanced at the can and it exploded, showering the boy in his own shade of bright red paint.

  At this, half a dozen other young men stepped forward from the crowd.

  Grips, Grant thought, steadying himself at the sight of the familiar gang colors.

  "So you the big dog, now, huh?" one of them shouted, pulling out a knife.

  "Yeah, we heard about you!" another joined in, brandishing a pistol. "Can't wait to be the one to say I put a bullet in your sorry-"

  The weapons in their hands leapt into the air as one. The gang members did double takes at their guns, knives, brass knuckles, and even a grenade, jumping into the sky and hanging there, several feet above their heads. The more complex pieces of weaponry disassembled themselves in mere seconds, all the way down to their core pieces of metal.

  The man that had brandished the gun was livid. "You sack of-!"

  The gunman suddenly stopped talking. His hands went to his throat, where he tried to pry something loose. He was breathing, but he couldn't make any sound come out of his mouth.

  "Now, gentlemen, I know," Grant said without shouting, his right arm still pointed at the old Buick in place several hundred yards down the road, "that we've had this conversation already. Same tune, different verse. I've squeezed off your voice box, because I don't want to go through it again. It's growing tedious. As I've told you many times now, you and your crew are done in Los Angeles."

  Grant had had several run-ins with the city's major street gangs over the last few months and had succeeded in driving thousands of them out of town. But he found that they were like roaches-always plenty more hiding in some unseen crevice, ready to pop up and multiply at the first opportunity.

  "L.A.'s ours and always will be!" another one hissed, threateningly. 'We ain't givin' up our turf to no-"

  "You have no turf," Grant said with a voice that was quiet but unarguably authoritative. "Los Angeles is under my protection. Get out now under your own power, or later under mine."

  The tires on the car were screeching loudly as the Regal came into view, inching toward them in reverse. Everyone in the surrounding area had stopped what they were doing and watched the scene unfold. No one dared interfere.

  A sea of gang members appeared from the edges of Grant's vision, and took up positions alongside their brothers. The new players drew out enough weapons to supply a small army. Switchblades, baseball bats, and guns of all kinds-even a few semi-automatics-appeared and all of them were aimed at Grant.

  Grant could practically feel the news cameras on the sidelines zooming in to catch his reaction.

  "Perhaps you didn't hear me," Grant offered. He held out his other hand and as he spread his fingers wide, every weapon that was visible flung itself upward, joining the others that were suspended above their heads. One gang member who stubbornly refused to let go of his gun was thrust up into the air with it, dangling freely as if hanging from a cliff. Finally he turned loose and landed with a dull thud against the pavement
.

  Grant made a fist. The hundreds of pieces of metal above their heads complied by mashing and twisting themselves together into something resembling a large ball of gleaming silver and black gunmetal. Grant tossed his fist casually to the side the way an office worker might toss a wadded up piece of paper into a trash can. The ball of metal shot impossibly high and away, miles and miles into the horizon, toward the ocean.

  "There will be no more violence here," Grant evenly stated, finally bringing the squealing car to a stop. Inside, Nick frantically tried to get out, to shoot a hole in the driver's side window, but his weapon had joined the others in the sky through the already-broken passenger window, and the driver's seat belt pinned him tightly against the seat.

  Grant let go of the car. Now both of his hands were free.

  "We still got fists, dog!" one of the gangbangers shouted, and the rest of them seemed reinvigorated by this outburst.

  "Yeah," another yelled. "You gonna pull those off us too?"

  As one, the angry mob began running toward him on all sides.

  Grant's head ducked down in concentration, but his eyes remained fixed on the horde stampeding straight at him. He opened his hands, arms down at his sides.

  The ground shook as hundreds of small pieces of the paved road cracked and tore free and shot toward the mob. Many of them were nicked in the head, leg, or stomach. It was enough to slow them down or even send some of them to the ground in fierce pain.

  A handful remained rooted to where they stood, still trying to look tough but unsure of what next move to make.

  "Don't make me do something you'll regret," he said to the ones still standing.

  That was enough to deter most of them, but a few lingered, as if deciding that their reputations might be worth risking it. One bold teenager ran straight at him, but he was knocked off of his feet by more pieces of pavement that collided with his shins. He screamed in pain, and Grant felt a momentary twinge of regret at having to harm the boy.

  But then, Grant had learned not long ago that some lessons could only be learned on the other side of pain.