by LE Barbant
Uncertain, yet operating on instinct, he ran to the old woman’s side. It seemed the terms of battle had shifted and she now stood as the only thing between his friend and the mechanized shit-bag he had once known as a colleague.
Distracted by a spell from the young wizard, the Blackbow warrior managed to slip around her. Tim saw him raise a blade as long as a sword and aim it at her exposed back. Ford lowered his should and charged into the metal suit, cutting off the attack. The two warriors slid across the hard floor.
Tim pushed himself to his feet. Pain shuddered through his bones. He shouldn’t feel this week, not yet. The serum’s effects had already started to wane. Tim Ford understood that this could be his last stand, but he also knew the body could do amazing things when convinced by the mind.
Tim smiled as the mech warrior gained his feet. Ford was glad not to be fighting magic. He wanted to go out with a good old fashioned brawl and he remembered Jack Reznor’s reputation well enough from his days in the service to know he could give him one. But several enhancements adorned the suit. It lacked the smooth proportions of the precision weapon he had seen at City Hall. Instead, a patchwork of hastily welded repairs gave the machine a jagged, Mad Max style cruelty. This included two twelve inch blades attached to the suit’s arms.
Tim pushed away the weariness invading his body.
“Ready for round two, Twiki?”
The men circled each other.
“Stretching back pretty far with that one, old man.” The soldier grinned. “I didn’t expect to see you back here, Ford. I thought you would be out of the game after your last mistake. That was one fine piece of ass you wasted.”
Ford’s jaw clenched. It wasn’t the first time an enemy tried to get under his skin, but referencing the death of Anna was the express route to his heart.
“Jack, you’ve always been a heartless sonofabitch, but I didn’t figure you for a traitor. No way Blackbow is funding this shit show. Who are you working for?”
“Blackbow was nothing compared to the power I’ve seen. I’ll introduce you to my new employer if I decide to let you live.” His mouth contorted into an evil sneer. “But probably not. So, we going to talk or fight?”
As they circled, Jack turned just enough, allowing Tim to spot a plastic encasement around the power supply and its cord. The blades weren’t the only improvement. He had learned quickly from his mistakes—a bad sign. The mercenary wouldn’t underestimate Tim’s strength of speed again.
Grabbing a broken table leg with his left hand, Tim raised it adjacent to the brass knuckles on his right.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
The metal mercenary sprung. Tim easily sidestepped the blade and swung the hard oak leg at the man’s back. It clanged off a rail of the suit.
He spun and grinned. “Heard you’re done killing, Ford.”
“Yep. But I’m not done winning.”
Jack Reznor laughed. “I don’t know, Tim, you’re not looking so good. You should try one of these things.” He held his mechanical arms up. “It’s the weapon of the future.”
“I prefer to go all natural.”
“With the shit you’re juicing, you’re as natural as most of the riders in the Tour de France.”
The soldier rushed Ford again, arms waving at breakneck speed.
Tim ducked a wide arc but didn’t see the mechanical kick aimed at his ribs in time.
His lungs deflated.
Shit.
Rolling, he got to his feet.
He leaned on the broken table leg. “That all you’ve got? Your robo crutches don’t change the fact that you still hit like a pussy.”
“I haven’t even broken a sweat.” The man smiled.
The soldier came at him again, backing Tim into a giant Gothic column supporting the center of the room. “Back’s against the wall, Tim. Time to collect your pension.”
He swung down hard.
Tim raised the wooden rod over his head. The blade slice through it like straw. It bit into Tim’s left shoulder, peeling off a chunk of muscle.
He grit his teeth, fighting through the agony. Without wasting a second, Tim aimed and drove the jagged piece of wood deep into his adversary’s thigh.
Pain showed on Jack’s face, but the suit kept him upright. He lifted his arms and swung again.
Tim ducked.
Sparks flew as the blade glanced off the stone column.
Ford drove the second stake into the man’s side, just above the hip. It pierced a piece of rubber tubing on its way into his flesh.
The man howled as he took a step back. Blood flowed freely from his wounds, mixing with the oil leaking from the damaged machinery.
“It’s over,” Tim said, brushing his long dirty blond hair out of his face. “Shut it down.”
“Fuck you.”
Tim laughed, trying to keep up a good show. Blood spilled from his arm and his strength went with it. One way or another, the fight was coming to an end.
It was his turn to advance.
Reznor’s movements were slow but precise. He raised his right arm in a desperate attempt at a finishing blow.
Tim caught the metal arm by its rods, just below the elbow hinge points. He pulled with all his enhanced strength.
They snapped like dry twigs.
Grabbing the man by the shirt he tossed him like a doll against the stone column.
He landed with a clatter of steel on stone.
Ford looked down; the exoskeleton’s mechanical bladed arm in hand like a war trophy.
Jack coughed as he struggled to draw air. “Alright, I yield. I’m glad you gave up killing.”
Tim looked down at the broken man. He could almost hear Edwin’s voice from the trial, recounting the litany of wrongs he stood accused of. The guilt of the abomination.
He raised the blade and drove it through the man’s chest.
“One more couldn’t hurt.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Crane sat alone in the cramped living room. As the hours past, he sank deeper and deeper into his chair. His tea had long ago turned cold. New information ate at his mind.
Edwin Weil was still alive.
Crane had known the plump professor for decades, their friendship forged in the fire of battle. Edwin had considered Mallory a brother-in-arms. But for Crane, their relationship had always been purely pragmatic. He hungered for power, and Edwin was nothing if not powerful. While Weil was stronger in the magical arts, Crane was shrewder and willing to do the hard things.
Edwin Weil was a good man, and that would be his downfall.
When Mallory Crane’s abilities first manifested, he knew that destiny had finally turned in his favor. Crane had been weak. He knew this about himself. Misunderstood by his family, laughed at by his peers, and impotent to do anything about it, Crane lived a miserable life. But with the newly found power of magic at his disposal, he knew that the world would one day bend to his will. Only two things stood in the way of achieving his goal: Edwin Weil and the Guild.
Crane had only begun to make sense of his gift when Edwin approached him. The wizard, only slightly more experienced, had a passion that was matched only by the power he wielded. Crane knew that Edwin would be a problem. His idealism would always resist Crane’s quest for influence.
So he waited.
Crane befriended his rival and rode his coat tails for years, waiting for the right moment to strike. But, when the moment presented itself, Crane’s caution won the better of him. He outsourced the hit. Crane did what he did best; he pulled the strings and achieved his goals through indirect influence.
A young lawyer with his eyes on politics.
A crime family with its eyes on the future.
A powerful wizard with a family to care for.
Setting the stage was simple.
He swayed Edwin to direct his crusade against the Rizzos, while at the same time providing information to Dobbs to broker a deal with the family. The Rizzos would kill Edwin’s daughte
r, Edwin would kill himself trying to avenge her death, and Crane would get a puppet in the mayor’s office. Everything had been laid out perfectly. Each step in the long game was clear, all he had to do was be persistent and execute the plan.
But Edwin took the coward’s way out. He let his daughter-in-law’s murderers run free and hung up his cape, dedicating his old age to publishing in academic journals.
Or so Crane had thought.
Willa let it slip that Edwin was secretly working with the Guild the whole time. Crane’s two biggest obstacles united against him. Weil’s retirement had been a farce, kept even from his own family. But why? Why lie to his oldest friend? Why fake his death?
Hours of muddling through these questions and Crane finally landed on an answer.
Edwin was searching for the person truly responsible for his daughter-in-law’s death. He had never given up on his quest. Weil had learned a deadly ability, lacking throughout his youth: patience.
And if Willa was going to him, then Edwin would finally have his answer.
He would know that it was Crane who betrayed him.
Crane pushed himself out of his chair, raised his arms, and began to chant:
“Nor wonder therefore, if more artfully
I prop the structure! Nearer now we drew,
Arriv'd whence in that part, where first a breach
As of a wall appear'd, I could descry
A portal, and three steps beneath, that led
For inlet there, of different color each,
And one who watch'd, but spake not yet a word.”
Purple light appeared on the wall. Crane’s words got louder, and the spot grew until it filled the wall from shag carpet to ceiling, a sheet of purple light thick as molasses.
Crane stepped forward and let the light consume him.
He was done hiding in the shadows.
If Edwin wanted a fight, Crane would give him one.
****
Crane stepped through into a war zone. Giants and wizards duked it out in the marbled halls of the Cathedral of Learning. Spells bounced around the room in a display of magical fireworks. Crane’s pawns were scattered throughout the room, but he had no more need for them. An explosion erupted; he ignored the fray, focusing instead on one man.
Edwin Weil.
The heavy set warrior stood by the elevators, leaning hard against the wall. The battle had taken its toll.
Crane had no compulsion about hitting a wounded man. He summoned the words of power at his disposal:
“Strike, churl; hurl, cheerless wind, then; heltering hail.”
Weil cried out as the spell struck him in the back. The old man fell to the ground. Crane stepped forward. As Edwin struggled to rise to his knees, Crane blasted him again:
“Till burst the bolt on yonder shore;
Rolled, blazed, destroyed—and was no more.”
Weil fell over backward; his arms sprawled out to the side.
Crane moved to deliver the final blow. He had waited years for this moment.
“Dr. Crane, what are you doing?” Willa stood to his left, her eyes wide with fear.
He spun to face her.
“I appreciate all that you’ve done for me, sweetheart. Without your help, the Guild would have never exposed themselves. But their time is done, and now I have no need of you. Why don’t you run along and let the grown-ups talk?”
He lifted his hands and chanted a short line:
“Where Helen sits, the darkness is so deep,
No golden sunbeam strikes athwart the gloom”
Willa didn’t stand a chance; Crane knew his craft too well. He had dedicated himself to increasing his power while the Guild searched for order and Edwin vengeance. It paid off. He was no longer the half-rate wizard that followed Edwin around like a pup. He was an unnamed master of the arts. Her eyes went dark before she hit the floor.
Crane turned back to the task at hand.
Edwin Weil was on his feet waiting for him.
“Hello, Mallory. I’m surprised to see you out of your chair.” The old wizard’s face was stern, exhibiting neither fear nor consternation.
“Well Edwin, sometimes the best hands are one’s own. But of course, you already know that.” Crane bared his yellow grin in a sneer.
“Why, Mal? I don’t understand. I trusted you. I thought we were friends.”
Crane smiled. “Trust is an illusion, Edwin. A lesson I see you’re teaching your granddaughter. How does it feel to know you will die, your last words to her poisoned by deceit? Maybe she’d forgive you if there was time. Unfortunately, time has run out for you and her.”
“I always knew you were a coward, Mal. Now I see that you are a fool as well.”
Crane’s rage boiled over. He lifted his hands and began to chant:
“By the brave blood that floweth like a river,
Hurl Thou a thunderbolt from out Thy quiver!”
But Edwin’s face was calm. He closed his eyes and started to whisper.
Crane’s spell crashed into an invisible wall.
He screamed the words of Tilton louder:
“Break Thou the strong gates! Every fetter shiver,
Smite and deliver!”
But Edwin was unvexed. Eyes still shut, he raised his voice slightly. Crane lost ground as Edwin’s invisible wall moved forward a pace. Crane still couldn’t hear Edwin’s whispered spell over the thunder of his own words. Crane yelled louder with desperation:
“Slay Thou our foes, or turn them to derision!
Then, in the blood-red Valley of Decision”
As Crane’s power continued to beat uselessly against Edwin’s force field, he felt something behind him. Breaking eye contact for just a moment, he realized that Edwin’s spell wasn’t a wall, it was a sphere—a bubble surrounding Crane and slowly growing smaller. Crane redoubled his energy but to no avail. His voice started to waiver as terror filled him. Edwin’s eyes were closed, his face serene as if he were singing a child to sleep. Crane still couldn’t hear the spell that was surrounding him. His own words echoed off the wall. He began to lose focus as his words tripped over themselves.
He missed a word and ruined the next line.
The spell faltered, but his words continued, bouncing around him and filling his head with the distorted sound of jumbled words. Covering his ears in a futile attempt to silence the cacophony, Crane screamed. But his voice was lost in the fog of noise closing in on him. It was an endless feedback loop of his own words. As the sphere tightened, getting increasingly smaller, his broken spell grew louder.
Sanity left him.
He pounded at the translucent prison, now completely enveloping him.
He tore at his ears trying desperately to silence the hurricane of voices.
The wall grew closer, pinning his arms to the side. The cramped space was maddening. It closed tighter, crushing him.
“Edwin, help….” His pleading only added to the cacophony.
He tried to yell again, but the air was gone.
The last thing he saw was Edwin Weil’s face.
A single tear ran down his old friend’s cheek.
The world went dark.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Yinzer Night at the Brewery always drew a crowd. “Back to the Earth” faded out and was replaced in the jukebox by something from The Clarks. Steelers jerseys outnumbered the Pens and Bucco fans put together, even though the hockey team had recently brought home the cup. Some things never change, and the prominence of football in the Steel City was one of them.
Chem and his friends were able to procure a small table in the back corner of the establishment. He sipped his imperial stout and didn’t even try holding back a smile. Things were, at least for the moment, the way they were supposed to be.
Almost.
Tim Ford, now basically a roommate, lay in bed at their place at the Tenth Avenue house. He was refusing, once again, to use Chem’s serum. The inevitable decline had already started. But a possible s
olution lay just beyond the horizon.
Elijah drank quickly and by Chem’s count was several ahead of the chemist. The historian lifted the glass to his mouth with his left hand, his right still encumbered by a green cast. He had insisted on going to the “real” doctors, and they claimed he’d have full mobility by the end of the year.
“Your girls are back,” Chem said, nodding toward the ladies at the bar. They had become regulars ever since Tim and Elijah defended their honor months earlier.
“Your girls?” Willa asked with a wry smile on her own face.
“Let’s just say, being a hero has its perks.” Elijah grinned.
Willa slapped Elijah across the chest. He winced, his skin still raw from the transformation only days prior. Elijah reported that it hurt worse than ever before, and the fresh burns covering his body confirmed his assessment. But Chem knew that the magician had suffered worse than any of the other survivors. She still wouldn’t talk about how she got the gash across her back, but he had stitched her up himself and it took no less than sixty sutures to close the wound. It would heal cleaner than Elijah’s marks, but it would be a reminder of the year no less.
Elijah raised his glass. “To us.”
Willa lost it. She was a slow drinker like Chem but more of a lightweight. There was only so much her tiny frame could take, even with her added muscle.
“No. No. No,” she said, taking some caution to get the monosyllabic words out to her friends. “To you Dr. Branton and your hallowed tenure-track position.”
“What? Get the fuck out,” Chem said.
Elijah nodded with a stupid grin on his face. “That’s right. I soon could be fireproof.”
“Pun most likely not intended,” Willa said.
“Damn,” Chem continued. “Good for you, professor. I didn’t think they gave those out anymore. You excited, or what?”
Elijah rested his head on the back of his hands and then looked up at his best friend. “I don’t know. I thought they were going to fire me, not give me a promotion. It’s what I’ve always wanted, but now that it’s within reach, I’m not sure.”
