“No, I saw a few women, but no girls,” he replied, a little breathless.
“Oh,” I said, deflating. “I could’ve sworn she ran this way.”
He merely shook his head, his brows furrowing.
“Nope. Sorry.” He terminated that with a wide yawn and a tired sagging against the fence, as though he’d completely lost all his strength from whatever workout he’d been doing until that point. “Man, I need to sleep,” he then muttered, drawing a hand across his forehead.
“Okay, thanks.” I turned around and walked slowly back to the square, half-puzzled and half-excited by the development. I needed to find Lucy again and get her to talk. She was the only one who could help me now.
Just as I was halfway down the side street, the sound of countless firecrackers exploding tore through the air, followed by scattered shouts and screams. They all came from the main square. Game on. Finally. Jeez.
Chapter 9
I powered up without a second’s hesitation or an ounce of conscious thought. Instinct—fight or flight, I guess—that was all it needed.
Plus something deeper and more powerful than you expected, just like the Trill said, that too-familiar voice in my head whispered.
I ran at first, but once my powers flared alive, my momentum took me off the ground, and I was flying in a wide, high arc, zooming past stampeding people who cried out in surprise and immediately threw themselves on the pavement as I soared above them. I directed myself toward the founder’s statue and perched myself atop the headless figure, kicking the rotting fruit off for better leverage. Not that I needed any, given my powers. Having that extra object in the way would pose a few difficulties, the smell and the flies being the least of them.
“Look! It’s that kid!”
“Up there!”
All right, they spotted me, but I didn’t give a flying fig. I’d protected myself with an energy field, which absorbed the occasional projectile that some wannabe-vigilante threw at me, as if empty soda cans or someone’s worn out sneakers would compel me to step down and surrender.
I gazed around in search of the Shadow Puppet’s mechanized criminal dolls. The firecracker sounds I heard could only be caused by their guns and their funky bullets. Traffic had stopped. In different places, people ran, with most vanishing inside shops. Here and there, I saw doors swinging shut.
From a bit of a distance, I saw a series of windows from the third floor of a building explode. Shattered glass flew in every direction, pelting everyone in the street.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, launching myself toward the area immediately. Now was the time, I felt. No, not thought, but felt, because it was a voice that couldn’t be heard even in my mind, but rather in my gut. Now was the time for me to prove the Trill wrong.
I sent a blast of energy in the direction of the scampering pedestrians. I wasn’t able to keep them from being initially stung by glass debris, but my energy shield swept above their heads like an absorbing canopy. The rest of the flying shards fell into the pulsing warmth, where they dissolved or were simply broken apart into countless harmless bits of sand-like particles that showered down.
I heaved a sigh of relief. “I saved them,” I said, my heart pounding. “I actually saved them.”
I’d stopped in mid-flight and was just hovering in the vicinity of the damaged windows when another round of gunfire caught my attention. Crashing sounds—furniture and glass being broken—followed. Then a smoking and partly-burnt figure flew out of one window. No, it was thrown out! Its battered hat flew off its wooden head, and the mannequin jerkily flailed about, trailing smoke behind it. It soared through the air in a downward arc, landing in an explosion of wood and fabric on the roof of a van. Head and limbs flew apart, the wooden torso bursting open on impact and sending bits of the mannequin’s mechanism all over the place. Springs, nuts, bolts, weirdly-shaped thingamabobs in steel—it was a geek’s dream come true.
Around the carnage people screamed and dove for cover.
Then another mannequin came sailing out, and then another followed. I did nothing to save them. Hell, why should I? But they were being blasted out of those rooms—whatever those rooms were—one after the other, most likely by the Trill’s men or maybe even the Trill himself.
Down went one mannequin, landing in an explosion of wood and metallic debris on a limo, sending the passengers scurrying out in a frenzy of black tie and satin. I thought I even saw a wineglass in the hand of one woman. She stumbled out, screaming at the top of her lungs, and made a beeline toward the nearest shop in her pink satin dress, beehive hairdo, and black pumps.
The other mannequin fell on the pavement, barely missing an old man who hobbled away in a panic, his poor face contorting into a painful grimace. A couple of people helped him once he reached a safe enough spot, and they led him away.
I flew toward the damaged windows and saw a battle going on inside. I didn’t know what the place was, only that it was definitely a large, studio-type of place, with no furniture but plenty of canvases and sculpture shoved against the walls, all of which were covered by thick and stained cloth. Was it a holding place for stolen art or something?
Or was it simply a storage place of some kind for things of value that were meant to be sold somewhere?
In the middle of the area the Trill’s henchmen were locked in battle with the Puppet’s dolls. Either engaged in hand-to-hand combat or just outright shooting each other down, the two groups were pretty much doing everything they could to turn their enemies into a steaming pile of wooden or organic debris.
I held back and watched, now puzzled as I noticed something strange.
The Trill’s men appeared to be strong—superhuman, almost. They were perfectly matched with the Puppet’s mannequins, which were nearly indestructible. Emphasize “nearly.” Using nothing but their fists alone in some cases, these thugs managed to send a mannequin or two crashing to the ground or flying across the room to smash against the wall and destroy whatever artwork happened to be resting there.
“What the—did the Trill use the Noxious Nocturne on them?” I breathed. It sure looked like it.
One of them spotted me. “Hey, kid!” he bellowed as he gleefully mowed down an armed doll with his own tommy gun. “Keep an eye out! We’ve got these bastards where we want ‘em!”
Amid the confusion of noise, which the wailing police sirens now heightened into migraine levels, a thought crossed my mind. Now was my chance, wasn’t it?
I powered up some more, forcing just about every little ounce of energy up and out of the deepest corner of my being. Then I threw my hands out and blasted the windows so they appeared to melt in little rivers of brick, metal, plaster, and paint. Like candle wax, they seemed to pour down, the top edges of the windows losing their horizontal lines as they streamed down in thick, bar-like formations.
It took too long, though, and my strength was mostly zapped. I could feel my powers pulse erratically and then fade, little by little, bursts of energy coming out like sudden farts that faded gradually.
“Only a little bit more,” I hissed, gritting my teeth and forcing my strength to hold up. “Only a little bit more. Come on, you can do it. Come on. So close…”
My body shook from the strain, and my arms felt as though they were about to fall off my shoulders. My hands trembled, and the blasts that shot out from them visibly waved around, following irregular lines. Sweat poured down my face. A warning bell sounded in my head, alerting me to my crazily fluctuating powers, but I ignored it. More than anything, I wanted to trap the Puppet’s dolls and the Trill’s goons in that room. Let them duke it out, pummel each other to dust. I wanted to make sure they were no better than trapped monsters, tearing at each other’s’ throats until the bitter end. And then they’d be caught by the cops or the heroes.
The slowly forming stalactites of brick, plaster, and paint were close to how I wanted them to be.
“A little more. Come on, a little more…”
“Get away
from that!” someone shouted.
Something cracked, but I was too slow to cut myself off from what I was doing. Before I could fully withdraw my blasts, a sudden blow to my back sent me tumbling into space, crying out in surprise and pain at the force and the intense heat that stung me. The world spun around me for a few seconds before I was stopped by a wall. I had enough of my powers left to buffer the impact of my body against solid brick, but I still felt the thud—still heard the horrible sound of skin, muscle, and bone crunching against a building.
I slid down to the ground and tumbled forward, rolling on the sidewalk, momentarily blinded by the burst of stars and light that filled my vision.
“Don’t even think of moving!”
I blinked away the fog and found myself staring at the sky, caught in a cartoon-like moment where I was the defeated bad guy, his defenses zapped, lying on the pavement with thin pillars of smoke rising from my body.
I wondered if I could just roll on to my side and fall asleep. Maybe if I woke up, I’d be back in my old bed, Liz kicking it to get me up, and Peter and I would still be together, Althea would still terrorize me out of love, and my parents would ride my ass over my grades.
What snapped me back to the ugly present was the too-real sensation of heat and pain that ate away at my back. Was I burning? God, it felt like my back was roasting.
I grimaced as I tried to sit up, groaning at the soreness that likely meant my body was nothing more than a mass of black-and-blue, and maybe red, flesh. I leaned on one elbow while reaching behind me with my other hand, wincing at the pain that was now being worsened by my contortionist’s move. I felt around my back.
“Oh, shit,” I breathed.
My clothes sported a seriously warm hole in the middle of my back. My fingers touched charred and torn cloth—my hoodie—and a slightly roasted shirt under that. I couldn’t imagine how my skin actually looked. How badly burned was my back? Would I need a skin graft? God, I hoped not!
I struggled to get up and only managed to roll over and raise myself up to my hands and knees. I was so tired—so tired. Above me the fight continued. Sounds of gunshots, splintering wood, and breaking glass carried on, with police sirens and ambulances now making their presence more and more known.
I forced myself to turn despite the soreness and look up at the windows above me. I couldn’t help but smile grimly at my handiwork. The Trill would kill me for doing what I did, but my stomach did flip-flops in triumph.
I’d “melted” the windows, reconfigured their molecular structure so the top edges dripped down to form crude “bars” that held the Trill’s men and the Puppet’s dolls inside the room. I’d turned the room—warehouse—whatever—into a jail cell, almost. They kept going at it, the idiots. Maybe they were so hung up on kicking each other’s asses they just didn’t care about my two-timing move.
My smile broadened. Yeah, it was a betrayal. The Devil’s Trill brought me here to help his men, and I did something totally unthinkable. On top of that, I was about to surrender myself to the good guys, and I didn’t give a damn.
I took a deep breath and staggered to my feet.
“Hold it! Hold it! Hands in the air, kid!”
A series of threatening metallic clicks followed that.
I raised my head and saw a semi-circle of cops had taken their positions behind their squad cars, their guns all pointing at me. Just above them hovered Wade, in full battle mode, her fire whip in hand. She’d used it on me, and I guess I was glad she did. Around them more cops ran toward the building, with shields and helmets and every imaginable police gear that could realistically be worn in battle.
Exhaustion crippled me. I could barely keep myself standing, but I did it, anyway, and raised my hands as ordered. With fatigue and pain came indifference. Resignation. I kept my eyes on Wade, and we watched each other. She, to make sure I didn’t try anything stupid, obviously; me, to make sure she understood my surrender.
“You win,” I whispered, not knowing whether or not she could hear me from that distance. “Just—whatever happens, take good care of him. Okay?”
I thought I saw a flash of something in her face. Confusion? Surprise? I couldn’t tell. Only one thing was clear to me, and once I recognized it, a vague peace that I’d never before felt swept over me. It was an amazing feeling, letting go like that.
“Yeah,” I said, some relief setting in as well. “It’s all right. He’ll be all right.”
Concentrating every ounce of strength that was left in me—willpower being the only force that kept me going—I powered up. One last time, I thought. The sudden peace that came over me lent me more strength, and I used it to full effect.
“Wait a second,” Wade cried. “What are you doing?”
I smiled and closed my eyes, concentrating. The energy that churned and swelled in my belly, gathering strength that I didn’t think I had, momentum I thought I’d lost, and I let go, feeling myself sink into calm waters. I opened my eyes in time to see the world burst in an explosion of red and yellow light, which was quickly swallowed by a blinding flash of white warmth that grew and grew, overwhelming, suffocating, and terminating. Noises wavered, and I sank deeper into those welcome waters.
Well—that is—until I heard this from somewhere above or behind me: “Oh, for God’s sake! Damned teenagers!”
Crap. The Trill.
Something metallic fell on the pavement. I saw nothing but heard the distinctive clacking near my feet. Then came shouts and a loud hiss. Lots of coughing and more shouting. Wade crying out orders to run. Or hide. More coughing and general confusion. Did the Trill just drop a gas bomb thingie?
The world vanished around me, but the last thing I remembered thinking was, “He totally fucked up my plan. When I come to, I swear I’m going to kick his maestro ass!”
Chapter 10
“How many are in custody, Mr. Bowles?”
“Uh—all of ‘em, Boss.”
A brief pause. “About ten, then. If the Noxious Nocturne’s working as it should, they ought to be out of jail by midnight.” Another brief pause. “Come to think of it, even if the Nocturne’s effects were to fade by then, I still wouldn’t be surprised if the men were out of jail by midnight.”
“Hehehehehe. Good point. Now what about Useless Emo Kid here?”
“His powers are growing more and more unstable by the day.”
“Time to off him, Boss! He’s only giving us more grief! Look at what he did, fer chrissakes—trapped the guys and then tried to blow himself up, not kick that fire girl’s ass!”
“Yes, yes, yes. I’ll have to talk to the boy, myself, Mr. Bowles. Now let’s hurry along. Has anyone reported back yet? Any news on the Puppet’s next plan or where the Debutantes are scheming for more bling?”
Footsteps moved toward the door as the conversation continued. “No, sir. I’ll get on the radio right away. It shouldn’t be too hard. Damn teenagers always screw up—can’t shut their traps, no matter what.”
The Trill chuckled as the door creaked open. “Yes. It’s good being the oldest of the pecking order. Now for tea, Mr. Bowles, while I work on the next trap.”
“You sure you don’t want Useless Emo Kid offed? I can do it, myself, while he’s passed out.”
“Just tea, please. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“Damn.”
The door closed, and the voices and footsteps faded off in the distance. I shifted and opened my eyes to stare in tired desperation at the frolicking, half-naked, heterosexual images above me. I wanted to self-destruct. I was ready to let go and cripple the Trill and give Wade and Peter what they deserved: some peace of mind. I didn’t want to hover along the fringes, casting a pathetic shadow onto their happy little world. I was resigned. I was letting them go—letting everything go. I even felt calm in the end. The final few seconds clawed their way through the fog, and I remembered the Trill “saving” me from destruction at the last minute. The bastard was hiding nearby. I was sure of that now. He’d been watc
hing everything from his vantage point, probably studying what I was doing, like a scientist would a tricked-out rat in a crummy little maze.
Then again, even if he were planning on saving my hide, I still should’ve been able to self-destruct, probably taking the Trill with me.
“Why couldn’t I blow myself up?” I asked the frolicking, half-naked, heterosexual figures, but they refused to dignify my question with a response and just carried on with their soundless, motionless dances and porn-like sports. “Were my powers too weak? Was I too tired?” I pursued, but still, no answer came. It certainly didn’t feel as though my powers were too weak. The final blast of light and energy seemed supernova in intensity.
I turned on my side. My eyes burned, and I choked back a sob of exasperation. “Fuck all this. I want to go home.”
The last time I had a really, really good—or, rather, bad—cry was when I was around eleven. It had something to do with my puppy, which was a stray I saved from a dumpster, dying in my arms before we could take it to the vet, so I could officially call myself a new dad. Even when my dad suggested that we could adopt a pet through the local animal shelter, I was too broken up by the loss to want to be attached to another animal. Now I was sixteen, with more than just a sick puppy weighing me down. It was one of those horrible, ugly outbursts: the kind that made a person nearly die from lack of air. I sobbed myself to a pair of crumpled, air-deprived lungs.
I didn’t know how long it took for me to realize that someone was knocking on my door, but I did—eventually. Besides, the knocking had grown to an all-out pounding, so I had no excuse.
I sat up, still sniffling, but at least no longer crying. I could only breathe through my mouth, and my eyes were swollen nearly shut, my nose felt as though it were three times its normal size, and my head pounded viciously.
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