Wait, these creeps who were about to murder me were people I knew? Kids I bumped into every day at school?
“I doubt Nicolaitan will appreciate you telling me that,” I said, struggling to control the terror bubbling up inside me. “I might be tempted to stop you.”
“I see no harm in divulging his secrets to someone who will be dead momentarily.”
Scallion clapped his hands and the four rushed me.
Mason bellowed like an angry lion behind me as I drew my Amplifier and imagined a medieval rapier. Instantly, I felt the weight in my hand as the misty double-edged sword burst into the air. The Thought Saber, my weapon of choice.
The Knight with the condor mask wielded a massive psionic War Hammer. He reached me first, with the Knight in the puffy hood right behind him. Condor was bigger and stronger than me but not as fast. He took a two-handed swing, trying to knock my head off. I slammed my Thought Saber against his War Hammer, shivering it in his hands, then lashed out with a side kick, landing it squarely into his chest. Good form, solid impact, nice crunch. Condor flew backward and crashed into Hoodie.
I gave it a ten.
I was on them in an instant, slashing the misty yard of pure psychic energy through both Knights with a flick of my wrist. If Thought Sabers worked like light sabers, I would have had two dismembered Darth Maul’s on my hands. But Psi Weapons aren’t like other weapons—they cut through steel or stone but won’t harm flesh. Instead, they temporarily sever important things like mental connections. Slicing through someone with a Thought Saber is like temporarily pulling the plug that connects their brain to their muscles. Condor and Hoodie looked at each other in disbelief, turned to resume their attack, and fell flat on their faces as they lost all control of their limbs.
Scallion screamed, “Get her!” and the two remaining Knights came at me. I noticed the glazed look in their eyes as the Knights attacked in sync with their War Hammers, one at my head, the other at my legs.
I arched and flipped backward as one War Hammer whizzed over my head and the other sailed beneath me. Psychic force flowed between the Knights like a magnetic field. As my feet touched the ground, both Hammers were flying toward my face from opposite directions. These guys were good. I slammed my Thought Saber against one Hammer, knocking it from the Knight’s grip, and blocked the second Hammer with my left forearm, relying on my Psi Fighter armor to neutralize the Hammer’s effect. In a flash, my palm opened and I released a powerful burst of mental energy against the closest Knight’s chest. A sharp crack like a lightning strike echoed, and the Knight was thrown against a tombstone by the force of the Mental Blast. He slipped to the ground, unmoving. Scallion shook his head and staggered as though he had tripped.
The remaining Knight’s eyes cleared, and his War Hammer dissipated. I lunged and skewered him with my Thought Saber. He gasped behind his phantom mask, gaping at his stomach even though there was no wound. His legs gave out, and he dropped to the ground.
Four Knights down, one to go. But something was off base. I had just defeated four Knights singlehandedly, but two weeks earlier, I’d fought just one and almost lost my life. These four must have been having a bad day. I had the distinct impression that Scallion would not be so easy.
I turned to face him. “Looks like it’s just you and me, bud,” I said.
“Think again, Psi Fighter.” Scallion clapped his hands raised them like a symphony conductor, and all four Knights pulled themselves shakily to their feet.
Chills ran down my spine as I watched their zombie-like movements. There was no way they could have recovered so quickly from having their nervous systems disconnected. I lunged again, piercing the closest Knight’s chest. Instead of dropping, he threw a devastatingly fast roundhouse kick at my head.
I ducked and swept his legs out from under him just as the second Knight plowed into me like a linebacker. I hooked his arm in mine as we went airborne from the force of his attack. Just before we hit the ground, I rolled and pulled him with me, slamming him down and using his body to cushion the impact when we landed. He exhaled loudly, and I leaped to my feet. The other three rushed toward me, and I slashed them all through the middle with my Thought Saber, but it didn’t faze them. Rather than panic, I extinguished my weapon and cut loose with the fiercest kung fu moves I knew.
I dove into the three Knights with a barrage of kicks and punches that left them backpedalling. I sensed an attack from behind and spun to see a hard right coming at me from the Knight I had thrown to the ground. I knocked his punch away with one hand and slammed my fist into his jaw with a very impressive crack. He dropped like he’d been hit by a rampaging buffalo and didn’t get up again.
Scallion cursed loudly and raised his hands in the air, shouting “Get up, you fool!” Still, the Knight lay unmoving on the ground. With Scallion’s attention focused on the unconscious Knight, the other three stood like manikins. That’s when it hit me—Scallion was controlling the Knights. They were under the influence of Psychedone 10, the mind control drug Nicolaitan was using to build his army. My Thought Saber had no effect because I had severed the wrong connection—the Knights’ bodies were linked to Scallion’s mind. He was like a master puppeteer, and the Knights were his marionettes.
I turned to Scallion. “Can’t fight your own battles?” I asked.
“I am, Psi Fighter,” he said. “My weapons are simply more advanced than yours.”
He snapped his fingers, and the first Knight rushed toward me. I waited until he was nearly on me then unleashed with a spinning kick that snapped his head back so hard his feet flew out from under him. He flipped in midair and landed belly-up with a thud on the hard ground.
“Your advanced weapons don’t work as well when they’re unconscious, do they?” I said. Then I fired a very impressive double kick into the jaws of the two remaining Knights, dropping them like a bad cell phone connection. “Again I say, it’s just you and me, bud.”
“Thank you for pointing out a weakness in my Proletariat. Of course, it’s nothing that can’t be overcome by sheer numbers.” Scallion bowed low. “Until we meet again,” he said and turned slowly toward the tree line. “Follow me if you like. Or you can free the one you came to save before my minions regain consciousness and kill him.”
“Knights are so obnoxious,” I said under my breath as the slime-pit walked away. “You don’t have minions!” I yelled. “Gru has minions. And he is a much cooler super-villain than you.”
Psi Fighter protocol says that we have to notify Police Chief Dalrymple when we take down a bad guy. I hit the call button on my armor that connected me directly to the police station and sent an encrypted message to Dalrymple. In less than three minutes, he would arrive with a posse.
I produced a Thought Saber and sliced through Mason’s bonds with a flick of my wrist then extinguished the Saber, returning the Amplifier to my belt.
Mason sat up on the sarcophagus and stared at me. He rubbed his cast, a blank expression on his face. “So, this is the real you.”
I put my gauntleted finger to my masked lips. Mason had seen me in action twice before, both times unmasked. The first time, I stopped him from committing murder and changed him forever. The second time, we fought Egon. The memory of that battle flashed through my mind. When it was over, Mason’s face had been bruised and bleeding, his wrist badly broken. He had barely survived that fight. My heart grew heavy at the thought.
I pushed the memory from my mind and stepped toward the unconscious Knights.
Condor was the closest. I tapped him with my foot. His breathing picked up, but he was out cold. I had never unmasked a Knight before and wasn’t sure what to expect. Normally, I would have waited for Andy, but he’d gone after Nicolaitan, and he might need my help, so I had to be quick. I bent down and took Condor by the beak. With a quick tug, his mask came off. I heard Mason suck in his breath.
“Benny Klingensmith,” he said. “Hangs out with Tammy Angel at the Shadow Passage. Runs with the street gangs in tow
n. I had no idea he was one of these guys.”
I plucked off the blue demon and the corpse masks. “Do you recognize them?”
Mason nodded. “They both run with Benny.”
The Knight with the extra large hood lay face up, but his hood had fallen over his face. I reached down to pull it away, and the hairs on my neck instantly stood on end.
Now, you have to understand, a masked Psi Fighter is supposed to remain cool no matter what. It’s part of our training. We have an image to maintain. But before I could catch it, a tiny, bloodcurdling shriek came out of me. Beneath that Knight’s hood was the most realistic spider’s face I had ever seen!
I knew it was just a mask, I knew that the hairy fangs and zillions of eyes couldn’t be real, but it creeped me out in a way that only a fellow arachnophobe would appreciate. I turned my head away as I unmasked him, tossing the disgusting thing into the grass.
“Yeah, that’s the real you,” Mason said. His mouth twitched as if fighting a smile.
I shuddered. “Wait here until the police come. Tell them who these four are.”
“Okay.” Mason’s gaze dropped to the ground. “He said my mother is still alive.”
“He’s a liar. Don’t believe him.”
Sirens blared from a distance.
“We’ll talk later,” I said. “I have to go. If anyone suspects a link between us, you’ll be in even worse danger. Scallion won’t be back. You’ll be safe once the police show up.”
I went into Shimmer and sprinted across the lawn in the direction Andy had headed. I hated leaving Mason like that. He was upset. He needed me.
I pushed the thought out of my mind and flew past tombstones, mausoleums, and sarcophagi. The cemetery in Sinclair Park gave way to the tree line at the edge of the woods. I wondered what sort of carnage I would find. If Andy had caught up to Nicolaitan, I would very likely come upon a scene I didn’t want to see—someone would be dead. Andy was no killer, but Nicolaitan would not give him a choice.
I reached the tree line and entered the woods. A crescent moon hung in the sky, offering very little in the way of light. My mask’s filters gave the woods a twilight feel—not quite dark, but not bright enough to see clearly.
“Red,” I said into my mask, and green night vision lit the woods. I felt my way between the trees, using all my training in stealth to be soundless. A hundred yards into the woods, Andy stood in the middle of a circle cleared of all brush, leaves, and foliage. A large maple tree beside him was shattered, the trunk in shreds, the branches lying on the ground.
Because Andy was visible, I thought it was safe to come out of Shimmer. I slowly approached him, studying the carnage.
“No corpse?” I asked.
Andy shook his head. “He got away.”
I pointed to the remains of the tree then raised my hands in a huh? pose.
“Nicolaitan. He almost got me with that. Fortunately, it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it.”
“He did that with a Mental Blast? Impressive.”
“It’s more than impressive,” Andy said. “He’s grown very powerful.”
“You knew we walked into a trap, right?” I said.
“What trap?”
“The one where a bunch of Knights pop up the second you go running off after Nicolaitan.”
“Knights?” Andy said, horrified. “What Knights?”
I told him about the ambush and how Scallion manipulated his Proletariat. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be covered in spiders than let someone control me like that.”
Andy’s shoulders slumped and he shook his head. “I should have stayed.”
“Hey,” I said. “Everything’s good. Neither of us got hurt.”
“But you could have been. I went out on a limb to convince the Kilodan to let you come along. He still thinks you aren’t ready.”
I threw my hands in the air. “I single-handedly defeated four Knights. How can he think I’m not ready?”
Andy put his arm around me. “No one is questioning your skill. It’s your ego. You don’t know how to follow orders. And I’m sorry to burst your bubble, princess, but if what you told me is accurate, those four weren’t Knights. They were kids. Just kids with no control, no choice whether they live or die. They were lucky you held back and only knocked them senseless. Nicolaitan has taken mind control to a whole new level. He’s using innocents against us, and it’s about to get very dangerous. You’ll have to obey orders if you want to continue going on missions.”
“What did Nicolaitan say?”
“You don’t want to know,” Andy said.
“Probably not. Tell me anyway.”
“He said to expect more riddles. He’s going on a killing spree until we turn you over to him.”
“Not more limericks.” I covered my face and talked into both hands. “Let him have me. I can’t handle more limericks.”
“Then you’ll love this. He said, ‘You will be haunted by three spirits. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one. Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more, and see that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!’”
“Christmas past, present, and future? How weird can this guy get? It’s nowhere near Christmas.”
“Nicolaitan is a drama queen. He wants to see if we’re clever enough to catch the reference.”
“Sounds like a lot of work. We could always give him the Morgan girl. Might save time.”
Andy grunted. “Nicolaitan can lure us out by hurting innocents, because the Psi Fighters are sworn to protect them. But Nicolaitan can’t be lured. Even if the bait was everything he ever dreamed of, he’d send flunkies to get it.”
“Not if the bait was me,” I said.
“Not happening.”
“What will we do when we catch him? No jail can hold a Knight.”
Andy folded his arms across his chest. “I’m working on it.”
Chapter Four
Undetected and Unsuspected
The unmasked Knight faced Nicolaitan, hands folded calmly behind his back. Nicolaitan’s hideous mask did not frighten him. Neither did his appetite for murder, nor his completely delusional mind. No, what frightened him was how easily Nicolaitan had convinced him to betray his friend.
“You have made me proud, my boy. Using the mayor’s son Mason Draudimon as bait was a stroke of pure genius. It worked well. She came! You deserve the moniker of a true Knight. I hereby dub thee Sir Phobos, Knight of Camelot.”
Phobos, the Greek god of fear. The name did nothing to assuage the young Knight’s pangs of conscience. “I only did what you asked, Master. The credit is yours.”
“Of course, it is.” Nicolaitan’s crooked teeth gleamed. “After all these years, I have found her. The only thing I lack is her true identity. Tell me, what did you observe when I lured him away?”
Phobos calmed himself. He had to be convincing. “Mason Draudimon did not appear to know the female.”
Nicolaitan drew circles in the air with his gauntleted fingers. “What are you not saying, my boy?”
“I think she knew him.”
“As I suspected. The Morgan girl is your age. I am certain that she is one of your classmates. And I am equally certain, now that I have competent help, that she will soon be mine.”
Phobos enjoyed the praise—the den of Nicolaitan was the only place he got it. “I assure you that I will capture the Morgan girl where Egon Demiurge failed. Why do you want her, of all the Psi Fighters, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
Nicolaitan smiled, although the way the lips had rotted away from the teeth of his all-too-real mask, he always seemed to be smiling. “The girl was barely more than a toddler when I took her. She fought me with more ferocity than any opponent I have ever faced.”
“You want vengeance.”
Nicolaitan laughed psychotically. “No, my boy, I want a slave. And now th
at the way has been cleared, I will have her. They aren’t looking for you, even though former Police Chief Amos-Tattletale-Munificent—may he rest in maggots—uncovered your identity.”
“No thanks to Egon Demiurge.”
“All thanks to Egon! His recklessness is precisely why I sent him. His ego is unprecedented. He provided a beautiful diversion. Thanks to the now-defunct Demiurge, you remain undetected and unsuspected.”
“How would you like me to address the matter of the traitor Scallion?”
“The soon-departed are not worthy of attention.”
Phobos bowed. “You know best.”
Nicolaitan placed his hands on Phobos’s shoulders, and terror shot unexpectedly through him.
“I adore the ease with which you lie,” Nicolaitan said quietly. “You are a man after my own heart. You thoroughly enjoy pain, and your mastery of the Dark Emotions amazes me. Now let me explain how you will deliver the Morgan girl to me.”
Phobos swallowed hard. He could see the downward spiral coming, but as always, felt helpless to stop it.
Chapter Five
Home Invasions and Other High School Headaches
I got home just as my alarm clock told me to get up for school, convincing me of something I had believed for a long time—alarm clocks were invented by the Walpurgis Knights.
I was tired and cranky from being out all night, but thankfully, my parents were more understanding than my body. My body told me to crash and burn. My mom told me she made bacon for breakfast.
I love my mom.
Having understanding parents and a secret identity is a pretty cool part of being a Psi Fighter, but sleep deprivation is a definite minus.
I went straight to the school cafeteria, where Kathryn, my best friend in the entire cosmos, sat waiting for me. Kathryn knows everything about me, including my secret identity.
“Poodle poo,” she said. “You look like poodle poo. Late night?”
Live and Let Psi Page 3
