“Fuck,” I growl, splaying out a hand as we come to rest, trying to scramble in a most ungentlemanly way on top of Belle to protect her as the hairs on the back of my neck prickle at our crucifixion in those gun sights, but Belle – whether she misunderstands my clumsy efforts to shield her or thinks she has a better way to deal with the impending threat – evades my best efforts, starting to rise with one hand to her temple in that time-honored tradition of telepaths everywhere.
But too late.
Arsenal’s wrist beam squeals again, the invisible light punching right through her. For that awful time-slowed moment, the incandescence bursts from her mouth and eyes as they fly open, nothing she can say, the fire lit within and me unable to say anything either as Titan’s coruscating death ray strafes me, blasting me backwards into a concrete shelf that shields stairwells to the cellar level below.
Before the darkness momentarily claims me, I’m a horrified witness to Belle twisting back at me as she ignites from within, going up like a tree in a forest fire as the scream she at first could not unleash now breaks free along with her life force.
I push free of the wreckage half-covering me, fighting off the pain of Titan’s attack, hurling a girder aside as I leap like an avenging angel from the ruins, the whole superstructure groaning above me as I sling out an electrical attack that knocks Titan back so I can get clear enough to race to Belle’s side, the disorienting agony of the this-isn’t-a-dream realization that accompanies each tragic life’s upheaval threatening to choke me, testosterone and adrenaline momentarily not at war with each other, but allies as they saturate my bloodstream and let me act, furious, beyond furious gaze scanning for Arsenal who is set to disappear, job done, whether he eliminates me or not clearly not part of his remit or concern.
My lightning bolt hits Titan’s weapon, which flares in a blinding white snap flash that disappears him as completely and effectively as some cosmic etch-a-sketch. The wall behind where he was standing comes down, then the whole structure behind me follows suit so that I’m flying across the chipped and stained and ruined concrete as the building slumps chaotically to the ground in my wake and I break free into sunlight, the news chopper’s shadow crossing the sun and throwing the shadow of its hurtling rotors over the tragedy lending a stomach-rending strobe effect I could really do without.
Belle collapses into my arms. The fire burns within her still, yet life clings to her skeleton like her very soul’s fingers are clawing to avoid that final release. I’m again overwhelmed to think this calamity, for all my powers, appears so unavoidable, and that another woman close to me has to die.
“No.”
A wretched sob’s my one concession to the moment. Belle’s face is gone, burnt out from within, perhaps just her psychic presence the only thing leaving a trace of life within her, the stub of her incinerated tongue making an awful dry clucking noise I yearn to still. My hands clutch her, fingers sinking awfully into the flaking meat of her arms as her already slim body arches in its final misery and she starts to yield to the great Nothing.
Across from me, Arsenal flicks his helmeted gaze my way, fussing with a device on his opposite wrist.
Torn, I refocus my attention on Belle. Gently shake her.
“I don’t know if you can hear me, honey,” I say, words a half-moan decipherable to probably no one. “We were linked before. You can do it again. The Preacher Man did it. So can you. Come across to me, Bella. Tessa. Please. Take me. Don’t hold on. Leave your body behind. Do it now.”
Frantic, I look between the still collapsing epic monstrosity of the naval graveyard and the bleeping from Arsenal’s wrist. The villain gives a satisfied smirk, but in one of those rare transmorphic moments, I feel his grin slide from his face to mine as there’s a spark of light within my forehead, inner eye ablaze as I feel Belle’s triumphant psychic yell as she slips free of her mortal corpse and rappels along the psychic lasso into the warm sanctuary of my head space. Somehow Arsenal knows this moment of victory isn’t entirely his, and whatever taking stock he’s started, he quickly abandons it as he sees me drop Bellwether’s corpse like so many rags and hurtle towards him.
“You’re dead,” I bawl as I land on him, swinging a left he ducks as he activates the old-fashioned chronometer on his left wrist.
“Whatever I do, you’re mine, Arsenal,” I growl and grab his arm, fingers raking down over his arm-guard and tearing the device from his arm.
Seagal’s shocked look – lower half of his face, stubbled chin and biker’s moustache visible beneath the helmet’s guard – is of a pyrrhic victory.
I cock my right arm back to deliver the killing blow.
And disappear instead.
Zephyr 15.10 “Into The Nightmare Realm”
THE DISORIENTATION ENDS a few seconds before my frustrated cursing as I, or should I say we drink in the crepuscular surrounds, some kind of ornamental Japanese garden so beautiful and picturesque I feel I might’ve stepped into a silk painting. Tiny birds flit lovingly between the bare branches of blossom trees, their petals adorning a wide, figure eight-shaped pond limned with smooth stones, a meditative garden beyond in three tastefully designed tiers, a grassy path unfolding like a green tongue between the contemplative stillness of the pond and the traditional Zen garden off to the side, darkening early evening sky back-lit by far-off thunder in heavy storm clouds, their occasional oscillation throwing the pagoda-style building atop the slope into bas relief.
I’m disconcerted and not quite sure how such a beautiful place convinces me we’ve plunged into the nightmare realm except to say my hairs remain prickling as I take in the peace and quiet, koi in spiraled lovemaking, movements rippling on the still water like someone throwing in pebbles, the air fragrant with nearby spruce trees as well as the blossom, a scent like from a distant orchard coming in with a hint of ocean breeze.
“No one deserves a hideaway this nice,” I say not exactly to myself.
Standing by pond’s edge, I go inwards, feeling around inside my head much in the manner of a tongue probing broken teeth after a fist fight. Impossible to describe where, but in a familiar corner I sense Belle’s hunched psyche. I prod gently, oozing warmth, comfort, safety, hell, even love. A tiny pinprick of energy flares in the underground cavern of my mind.
“Don’t go digging through my Id,” I say soothingly. “You never know what you’ll find.”
Pained tinkling laughter fools me into thinking I’ve struck a chord, but the noise comes from without, not within. Bellwether’s licking her wounds the only way the psyche knows how: in total shutdown. The laughter comes from the ridge above.
Cast as a ninja in my dark outfit, I move swiftly beneath the immediate underhang to avoid prying eyes, once more softly cursing to myself that Arsenal escaped my grasp right at the moment I was about to put my fist through his head.
The spoken Japanese comes as no surprise. A woman’s voice, low and sonorous. Moments later a pair of white-clad women descend the grassed network to the same level as me, lurking practically invisible in my hiding place as they shuffle past in their geisha outfits, face make-up almost as white as the kimonos they wear.
I am in Japan – yes, your boy’s no slow learner there – and I suspect we might have skipped back a few years in time while we were at it. About four hundred years, if intuition serves me right.
Examining the chrome-plated wristwatch that brought me here, I am no wiser for the experience, so I slip it onto my arm and tighten the strap and probe once more for Bellwether, reassured however dour the moment may be that at least she has sanctuary and isn’t biting at the grave.
*
ONCE THE GEISHAS have gone, I can’t resist creeping up the twisting pathway and closer to the pagoda. It is a beautiful building and the smell of incense wafts from it. It is full night now, so any intelligence I might glean about our surroundings from beyond the building is close to nil. But the pagoda itself is well-lit with urns and braziers and the glow reflecting off soft wood furnis
hings emanates from beyond the big round wood pillars addressing either side of the path, an open chamber beyond, no sign of movement or life except again that distant trilling laugh that sounds much closer than before.
“How did you find your way here?”
The Demoness steps from the shadows beneath a nearby ornamental plum tree, literally coalescing from the darkness as she relaxes her masking powers. Deceptive hair falls like a black shawl to her knees, though it quickly retracts the closer she moves to me, which isn’t close enough for me to strangle her outright. For a moment I think she is wearing a short black kimono, but the light is playing tricks on me again. The skin on her compact naked body becomes pebbled like a serpent’s and as I watch, her face hardens, eyes yellowing as her nails extend in preparation for attack.
I extend my wrist so she can see Seagal’s chronometer. Her hard look falters.
“Is he . . . dead?”
“Eventually,” I answer. “I’ll send him your regards.”
This is it. My moment. Any uncertainty I might’ve had is gone. I am ready to kill this woman, burn her as a witch like she and Seagal have killed others before.
Yet so many questions remain unsolved.
Anything stupid I might be able to do is undone by the sinister look that blooms on Ono’s face. A shy, tiny, evil-hearted smile as she backs away from me.
“You’re just in time,” she calls over my shoulder.
I don’t have to turn to look. I can sense the displacing air and would guess a half-dozen figures arrayed on the shelf of lawn behind me.
Lennon’s kids. The Progeny. My erstwhile siblings.
I summon all my reserves as I swing about to meet the first attack and Ono slithers like the creature of darkness she is, away and out of my immediate reach.
*
FIVE OF THEM have come at their “mother’s” summons. I couldn’t tell you the name of a model I banged last week – if I had actually done anything of the kind instead of traipsing through another equally yet distinctly different nightmare experience – but I can name each of these nasty-featured, smug little bums: Carbon, Hardass, Carnage, Ruse and Blaze.
The three boys are the vanguard, Carnage morphing into his lizard man form and Hardass simply rushing in, a cliché about the invulnerability of youth writ large, while Carbon turns as treacly black as Ono herself, features hardening, becoming more jagged. The girl Blaze does as her name suggests, hands bursting into fire, while the Eurasian girl Ruse doubles, then doubles again before my confounded eyes, each slim, chainmail-mini-skirted figure sliding a gleaming bright katana from an inverted scabbard across her slim back.
“Guys, you don’t want to do this,” I say pretty much pointlessly, but it’s important I show the younger generation how we heroes roll.
I catch Carnage by one heavily muscled paw. Hardass swings a rock-hard punch at my head and I duck, sweep-kicking his legs from beneath him, then angle my hold on his brother to topple Carnage on top of him. Then I jump free as one of Ruse’s mirror images come in swinging and I needlessly put my fist through the shadow form as the real Ruse attempts a ninja run at me, sword hacking at the back of my neck. The girl doesn’t count on my cat-like reflexes allowing me to turn, pull the blade from her grasp and throw it five yards at Carbon. The sword juts out of the join between his shoulder and chest and the surprised look on his black face is as close to priceless as I’ll ever see.
I very nearly back-hand the girl. God knows, she deserves it, trying to cut my head off with a samurai sword and everything, but as I glimpse the movement of Ono still circling our location, a more fevered if irrational option leaps into my mind.
I let go Ruse’s hand and shove her away, Carnage and Hardass getting up from their impromptu game of Twister.
I put my hands up.
“Don’t hurt me,” I say reluctantly. “I give up.”
But these guys have no intention or interest in capturing me.
I kneel as Hardass kicks me hard. I push away his legs without retaliation, twisting aside as Carnage growls, hisses and tries to shred me with one of his big clawed mitts. I block and catch. Push him away. Eyes probing the darkness.
“You can’t let them do this, Spectra. You can’t.”
And for a moment I really wonder what the fuck I’ve done.
Zephyr 15.11 “Harrowing”
IT’S ONLY A few seconds more before I have little option but to kneel down, covering my head and privates as kicks and punches rain down on me. My three “brothers” slip into the part of school yard bullies with frightening ease. The girls hang back, Blaze now alight from the waist up and making me doubly glad she isn’t joining in the gang bang.
Ono shimmers out of the air once more, dropping her natural cloaking mechanism to pad forward, the limited view I have confirming her mixed reactions.
I stagger to my feet, a jiujitsu move to redirect the aptly-named Hardass away, then shaking off Carnage like a horny dog. Jagged black claws of Carbon’s namesake jut from his hands and I slap away several blows before getting my boot under his chest and flinging him off about ten yards before I am free to turn Ono’s way.
“You have to stop them,” I tell her. “Lennon left you to watch over me. That’s the only thing that makes sense. He told me himself: he implanted instructions that you couldn’t let any of his progeny come to harm. That’s why you’re stuck playing mother hen to these half-breeds.”
Breathing hard, I assume a position equidistant from all the Lennon kids, the five of them roughly ringing me, the heat and light spilling off Blaze adding a weird prehistoric tribal vibe to the goings on. I shoot another look at Ono, hatred and a weird maternal look at war on her face.
“I don’t know how long you did it for,” I say, pitching my voice soothingly low like a late-night radio host. “When did she die? Maxine?”
The Demoness stares at me hard, memories of my first dead mother playing through both our minds.
“It started when you were ten,” Ono says brokenly.
The answer guts the brood. They noticeably step down their alert level, and noticing that, the Demoness looks at each of them and nods. They step away, Blaze’s flame extinguished as they gather in a small knot together, more like a pack of gorillas checking each other over than regular siblings.
“Tell me,” I say, soft voice no ruse this time. “How did she die?”
“Two years ago. She was unwell,” Ono says. “She didn’t know it. I had been watching for some time. My company . . . Paladin . . . it started out in surveillance. This was my inheritance, my legacy, from the decision of The Twelve.”
“You inherited a tech corporation? Nice.”
Ono nods, something acutely Japanese in the gesture. This is the most we’ve ever spoken and despite the sudden stillness of the evening I am reminded of the time in another parallel I tore out her spinal column with my bare hands. None of that killing rage has really departed, merely subsumed within an even more primitive desire to understand the unknown.
“It was cancer. And an opportunity. I made her passing as painless as I could.”
“You . . . murdered her?”
“I had impersonated her before, to get close to you. It was a . . . compulsion I have never understood. I hated him. Wanted him dead. I –”
“Whoa, who?”
“Lennon,” she says matter-of-factly. “Your father.”
And I laugh.
“A better man than me would be pleased with that,” I say. “He hardwired your addiction to his own offspring, forcing you to expend years of your life playing guardian angel while he was off traipsing the multiverse – except he was inside my head the whole time.”
I tap my skull and Ono makes a puzzled face.
“What?”
“You were just part of his ruse. He never loved you. It was a giant shell game,” I say. “A con. And he took a huge risk once he realized what was happening, what the Doomsday Man had done – his parallel, from the universe of The Twelve – abando
ning his body at the moment of the . . . whatever you call it. The write-over. The splice. So he could avoid it. So he would not be subsumed into the other’s alter ego. So he could go on as he had done before.”
“Why?” Ono barks at me. “Why would he do such a thing to me?”
“To protect his legacy,” I tell her. “The real laugh is that the joke’s on him and you both. He’s not my father and never was.”
“What?” Ono barks again.
A light comes on for me as the pieces of the puzzle I have fretted over and unconsciously toyed with so many times come down like a rush of Tetris tiles at the end of a high level game.
“He was never my father because my mother was never my mother.”
Ono shakes her head at that. Tilts.
“The splice,” I say. “The moment the Editors – is it OK to say that aloud now? – the moment they collapsed our two parallels, the Preacher Man leapt into me because he thought I’d be going off-world with Strummer and the 101ers. With my mother.”
“Your mother was Catchfire,” Ono says warningly, like threatening me not to burst the bubble on beliefs that have defined half her lifetime. “Arsenal killed her to protect me when I moved to –”
“Kill me. I know.” I smile almost sympathetically, rocked by my own realizations. “When she told me who she believed my father was, it woke you from whatever autopilot you were on because of his programming. Not that you could carry on with it, but just for a moment, you wanted to destroy me, right?”
“Not just a moment.”
I catch the look and the snarl. It’s not the time to tell her I suspect the question of my parentage is still an open riddle. The Catchfire who died in my childhood home – who was she? And was I even her son?
Zephyr IV Page 25
