Reaper pauses. The bastard wants me to ask him to finish his sentence. I’d love to leave him hanging, but I’m too curious to hear what he wants to say. “Or what?” I ask.
Reaper’s skull somehow grins. “One of our scientists believes the weapon is powered by the Light. I don’t mean ordinary light; I mean the energy that makes superpowers possible. If that’s correct, the gun can only be fired by a Spark. Imagine how useful that would be, for identification.”
A chill goes through me: I can imagine it all too well. Darklings have always been frustrated by Spark anonymity. It’s hard as hell to tell if someone is superpowered when they’re in civilian identity. Because, sure, you could shoot them point-blank and see if the bullet bounces off; but courts really frown on that sort of thing, so good luck on getting a warrant. Besides, plenty of Sparks aren’t bulletproof. But if you could just hand someone a bazooka and see if they can fire it …
That must be what Reaper is hoping for. And if it works, he could test me right now to see if I’m super.
Not good.
But to brazen it out, I say, “What does this have to do with me?”
“According to the statement you gave police,” Reaper says, “you actually touched the equipment in Diamond’s lab. Is that correct?”
I decide it’s way too late to lie. “Uh, yeah. I touched the diamond refrigerator.”
“Good,” Reaper says. “We know for certain that that device was built by Diamond. When you touched it, you established a sympathetic connection with him.”
“No way,” I say. “No sympathy for Diamond at all. He’s total dog dirt.”
“Magical sympathy,” Reaper says. “You touched something he touched; that forms a link. It’s extremely weak, but sufficient for us to use. If this weapon”—he indicates the gun—“was truly built by Diamond, we’ll detect a resonance between it and you.”
I give him a dubious look; but a second later, WikiJools tells me that Reaper isn’t totally off his meds. Darklings are paranoid about letting outsiders know exactly what magic can do, but it’s common knowledge that mages can tell if someone has touched a particular object. If two people have touched the same object, maybe a top-notch wizard could sense the connection.
I say, “What do you want me to do?”
“One moment, please.” Reaper leans his scythe against the side of the vault, then reaches under his robes (ew) and pulls out a strip of sparkly black fabric. It’s the same length and width as a scarf, but it’s constructed more like an afghan: crocheted with an interrupted V stitch, so it’s mostly a lacework of holes. (And for once, WikiJools isn’t planting outside info. I learned to crochet when I was seven, thanks to bonding experiences with my sisters. Ignorant assholes call me a tomboy, but I’m actually quite good at girly-girl things. And if I refused to learn how to knit, it’s because wool is scratchy and ugly and gross, not because I kept dropping stitches.)
Reaper hands me the cloth. It’s freezing. I don’t mean it’s merely as cold as the ambient winter air. The moment I touch the strip, my bare hands ache as if I’ve plunged them into an ice bucket. Is Reaper that cold under his robes? Or is the fabric rigged with cold-based magic?
I look more closely at the strip of cloth. It sparkles because thin metal wire has been threaded in with the crocheted yarn. I see gold, silver, copper, and something perfectly clear, like thin optical fiber. In other words, the cloth has “genuine magick artifact” written all over it.
“What is this?” I ask Reaper, as I pass the cloth back and forth between my bitterly cold hands.
“A connection tester,” Reaper says. “Made by a master wizard.” He gestures toward the bazooka. “Tie yourself to the gun.”
“What?”
“Use the tester strip to tie yourself to the gun. No need for fancy knots. Just a loop around your wrist and another around the barrel. There’s plenty of cloth.”
“Do you know how freezing cold this sucker is?” I ask. “It’s giving me frostbite.”
“Then stop arguing and get it over with.”
“Why should I?” I toss the cloth to the male Stephens. He automatically catches it. His face tightens in pain; he may be a big strong Renfield, but the frigid cold still hurts him. I wonder if the strip is icy enough to damage flesh. With my powers, I can tolerate cold temperatures as stoically as any human alive—let’s say like some veteran Inuit hunter whose people have spent umpteen generations straddling the Arctic circle. But if I were a normal candy-assed white girl, my fingers would be bloodless, numb, and ready to snap off like icicles.
“This is bogus,” I say. “You haven’t formally arrested me. You haven’t shown me a court order. You haven’t read me my rights or asked if I want a lawyer. Do you know how much it hurts to touch that stupid thing? I’ll bet it counts as torture. Making me tie it to my wrist violates the Geneva convention.”
I stop ranting, mainly because it’s hard to think straight when WikiJools is downloading an entire law library of judicial precedent. My goal here is to sound like a run-of-the-millennial biology student, not a justice of the Supreme Court.
Reaper lays his skeletal hand on his scythe. He doesn’t raise the weapon; he leaves it propped against the side of the vault. But he strokes the wooden handle, and he amps up his Shadow to squeeze me like a fist. “This could all be over in a minute,” he says. “Then we go our separate ways and you forget it ever happened. Alternatively, I could charge you and your roommates with multiple felonies for your adventure in Diamond’s lab. The charges wouldn’t even have to make sense—they’d be heard behind closed doors by a Darkling judge who specializes in terrorists too dangerous for public trial. That’s the nice thing about a world with supervillains in it: those pissers are a pain in the butt, but their existence justifies draconian legal procedures that the public would never accept otherwise.” Reaper takes the magic cloth away from Stephens and thrusts it back into my hands. “Now get this done or you’ll never see daylight again.”
Well, at least he’s not going to test to see if I’m a Spark. And if worse comes to worst, I can punch my way to freedom. The odds are three against one, but the element of surprise should let me grab Reaper’s scythe. That would be a wonderful equalizer: enough to hold off these douchebags until my teammates arrive to bail me out.
But fighting would end my civilian life. Even now, I’m on thin ice. Magical auras of fear are flooding my way, both from Reaper’s Shadow and from whatever juju oozes off Stevens & Stephens. An ordinary person should be puddling her panties, not debating constitutional law. Soon these dudes will start wondering why I don’t melt through the floor.
So fuck it. I have to knuckle under.
I glare at Reaper and knot the cloth around my left wrist. Just an overhand knot—simple enough to tie with my free hand. The frigid cloth chills every drop of blood passing through my forearm. I tie the other end of the strip around the barrel of the bazooka. As I do, I take care not to touch the gun with my fingers. Given the conversation about Diamond’s stuff exploding, I think I’ll avoid direct flesh-to-gun contact.
“Done,” I say to Reaper. “Is that it?”
“Don’t be impatient. I have to cast an activation spell.”
“Well, get your ass in gear,” I tell him. “I’ve lost sensation in my arm.”
Reaper reaches under his robe again, moving with what seems like deliberate slowness. I wonder what will happen if my hand turns to ice and falls off. I mean literally. Because a few minutes after that, my hand will start to grow back thanks to my gift of regeneration. I don’t have a ton of respect for either Reaper or Stevens & Stephens, but they might just be observant enough to notice a fucking hand sprouting back from nowhere. “Come on, come on, come on,” I mutter to Reaper.
He doesn’t move any faster, but he finds what he’s after: a scroll scribbled with sigils. The scroll is parchment, an animal skin scraped clean and bleached to beige. At least, I hope it’s animal skin. The haystack of legal information still needling my
brain includes the worrisome fact that our government recently passed a law that allows the use of human remains for … well, anything.
Reaper’s scroll could have been flayed off some dead dude’s corpse. And now that I think about it, that isn’t the worst-case scenario.
Reaper begins to read. As with the spell that opened the vault, the words from the scroll are gibberish. I hear the sounds but they don’t stick to my brain. Since becoming a Spark, my memory has been perfect—it records every photon and phonon I perceive, without ever losing a qubit. But Reaper’s mystic recitation slips away like white noise.
My head starts to throb and go dizzy. My eyes cross; I can’t straighten them out. It’s hard to breathe, like my lungs have lost the knack. If I don’t consciously force myself to inhale and exhale, I’m afraid I’ll pass out.
No idea how long the wooziness lasts. I’m not conscious of anything but the need to keep breathing. Then heat flashes like a cheese grater scraping the length of my arm, and the cloth connecting me to the bazooka bursts into flame. The fabric burns to ash with the speed of blazing plastic. Just as fast, my hand goes dead, all the nerves completely cooked. They’ll regenerate soon, but if I were human, I wonder if I’d be living the rest of my life with a shortage of one in the hand department.
“We’re finished, Ms. Walsh,” Reaper says. “Your government thanks you for your cooperation.”
“And what’s the verdict?” I ask, as I massage my dead hand with the other. “Is this Diamond’s gun or not?”
“You don’t have clearance for that answer,” Reaper says. He gestures to Stevens & Stephens. “Take Ms. Walsh back to Arrivals. Her luggage should be waiting at the—”
Boom! The wall of the baggage area explodes in on us.
* * *
FLYING FRAGMENTS OF CINDER blocks gash my skin with their sharp little edges. To add insult to injury, the cement barrage is immediately followed by a cloud of pink: shreds of the insulation that used to be inside the wall. The shreds grind into my new nicks and cuts, setting me asquirm with itching.
Oh, and while I’m being peppered with concrete pellets and panther-pink, I’m also flying backward from the impact of the kaboom. I land in a kneeling pose because I’m just that good. A moment later I’m up again, diving for cover behind a baggage cart. The cart has flipped on its side from the force of the blast; the luggage that used to be stacked on the cart has tumbled onto the floor. Still, the cart itself is solid wood held by a reinforced steel frame, so it should be a passable shield against whatever just broke in.
I peek around the edge of the cart. A huge woman stands where the wall used to be. Her skin is rusty black iron, and that’s no metaphor—she looks like something produced by a blacksmith’s forge back in pioneer days, which then sat collecting rust for a century and a half. Her body approximates a sphere, what with her short legs, small head, and a bulging belly she stole from Santa Claus … that is, if Santa was made in a metalworks, and if he came smashing through your living-room wall instead of sliding down the chimney. I think Ms. Iron-and-Oxide is wearing a Spark-ish “tights and tank top” costume, but since it’s the same rusty black as her body, it’s hard to be sure.
What I can be sure of is the name that pops into my mind. WikiJools says the woman calls herself Wrecking Ball.
Of course she does.
A moment after telling me who the woman is, WikiJools tosses in her group affiliation: she’s one of Robin Hood’s Merry “Men.”
Oooo-kay. Things just got interesting.
Robin Hood is the kind of super-dude who’s culturally inevitable. Think about it—actual monsters now control the world’s money and power. How long before some Spark takes the name Robin Hood and thrusts his Sherwood Forest up the Dark establishment’s ass?
Naturally, our modern-day Robin steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Or so he claims. And maybe he does. It’s just impossible to tell one way or the other.
After all, suppose Robin openly gives everything he steals to the Red Cross or UNICEF—some altruistic group that truly fights the good fight. Charities can’t take stolen money; they’d have to give it back to the original owners. Maybe even pay fines and interest. Also, every government in the world would go over the organization’s books with a fine-tooth comb to make sure they haven’t taken any other illicit donations. End result: more harm than good.
So whatever Robin Hood does with his ill-gotten gains, he has to keep it hush-hush: buried so deeply that even the best forensic accountants can’t tell where the money goes. For all I know, Robin Hood may honestly be feeding the hungry and healing the sick. On the other hand, he might spend his loot on blood diamonds, drugs, and underage girls. No one knows.
Whatever Robin does with his cash, he has plenty to throw around. He and his outlaws take credit for six of the ten most lucrative heists in human history. That’s quite an accomplishment, considering the gang is competing with Mad Geniuses and other assorted super-criminals.
If Rockin’ Robin has come to Waterloo—or even if he’s just sent Wrecking Ball, who’s one of his top lieutenants—then tonight just escalated from “Jools in a little hot water” to “Guess what’ll dominate the next forty-eight hours on CNN.”
I hear a yell. Enter Reaper, brandishing his scythe. But the scythe has upped its game from “kitschy farm implement” to “enchanted instrument of death.” It glows bright black, and yes, that defies common sense, but I stand by my statement. Under the lights of the baggage area, the scythe is surrounded by a jet-black nimbus, as if it’s destroying any photons that venture too close to the blade. The photons don’t die easily; the scythe itself is utterly silent, but the nearby air makes a curdled crumpling noise, as if the fabric of reality is having an allergic reaction.
My nose is bleeding. What the living fuck. That scythe is bad.
Perhaps I’ve underestimated our grimly reaping pal. He might lack the little gray cells, but he’s way more lethal than I thought.
Wrecking Ball comes to the same realization. She backs away fast from the scythe and grabs a chunk of concrete that broke off from the wall. She hurls it at Reaper’s bony head with all the super-strength at her disposal. But Reaper spins his scythe in front of his face, weaving a complicated pattern that would give Bruce Lee nightmares. The blade intercepts the concrete and shatters the chunk to dust.
Note to self: Don’t fuck with the scythe.
Oh, yay, and now we’ve got gunfire. Stevens & Stephens have finally pulled their thumbs out of their badges and are giving their boss SIG Sauer support. This is not a positive development. Any idiot knows that bullets bounce off ladies made of iron … and when the lady in question is spheroidal, the ricochets zing in unpredictable directions. Bullets ping at random around the room, including a few that embed themselves in the luggage cart I’m hiding behind.
« What a surprise,» says a voice in my brain, «you’ve gotten into a firefight. »
It’s my roommate Miranda, except now she’s Aria—a snarky Spark songstress with supersonic powers. She continues, « And here I was wondering how I’d find you in a big place like the airport. I should have known you’d make it easy. »
« Are you okay? » asks Kim, who is also Zircon. At least one of my so-called friends cares about my health.
« No sucking chest wounds yet,» I tell my “rescuers.” « Where are you? »
« Observing from on high,» Aria answers. « Zircon says I shouldn’t blast anyone until you give the word. »
« Zircon is right,» I say. « Right now, we’ve got Wrecking Ball from Robin Hood’s crew tussling with a Darkling named Reaper. I see no reason to help either one out. Let ’em hack and slash on their own. »
Aria says nothing, but I’m sure she wants to lend a hand to Wrecking Ball. Aria is a “Fight the Power” girl. She considers a week wasted if she doesn’t attend at least one protest against Darkling overreach. But siding with Robin Hood’s gang is more serious than waving signs at a sit-in. Every government on the plan
et has declared Robin a terrorist, maybe even with good reason. If half the stories about him are true …
Well, who knows? I have no doubt at all that Darklings have fabricated lies about Robin. But when a superpowered dude picks fights with the Dark, it’s damn hard not to cause epic collateral damage. Even if you manage to avoid vivisecting bystanders, what about all the Darkling minions you smack around? Many of those minions are ordinary joes: not Renfields, but cops and security guards.
And some of Robin’s crew are freakin’ psychopaths. Ninja Jane, for example—the popular perception is she’s putting on an act, like some bad-guy wrestler who snarls at the camera and cusses out the crowd. But WikiJools tells a different story. Witnesses have seen her chop and drop anyone who gets in her way. The only reason her butchery isn’t public knowledge is that someone in Robin’s merry band can clean up murder scenes and expunge every microspeck of evidence. Now there’s a superpower.
All things considered, helping out Wrecking Ball would align us with extremely problematic allies. Not something to do on the spur of the moment. But throwing in with Reaper isn’t any better. Not only would it make Robin Hood our enemy, it’d piss off the millions of people who idolize Robin as a hero.
Our group is new at being Sparks. Best not to risk our reputations by backing the wrong horse, especially when we haven’t a clue what the fuck is going on. Why is Wrecking Ball even here? Apart from the fun of kicking through walls and fighting a demonic scythe.
I watch as Wrecking Ball continues to back away while hurling debris at Reaper’s head. She’s retreated completely out of the building; now she’s on the pavement that surrounds the terminal. I can see the undercarriage of a plane through the hole in the building’s wall. The winter night is dark, but the outside area is lit by the overhead lights that illuminate much of the airport. The shine gives a sodium-yellow tint to Wrecking Ball’s rusty black body, and to the steam that billows from her mouth as she breathes.
They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded Page 4
