Love for the Cold-Blooded. Or

by Alex Gabriel

  “Hey, no, it did. Your scheme was foiled, but that’s a different thing entirely. Your shield did great. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. You had the entire city trapped for days!”

  “I did,” Bitterfly conceded, a hint of satisfaction creeping into her tone. A large hint; more like a solid unmissable clue, really.

  “And the expanding portable bubble you trapped Sir Toby and the others with today? That thing is terrifying. I’d know.”

  “It is, isn’t it.” She was all smugness now, making Pat smile. “Even Sir Toby was powerless against my Mobile Agate. Nobody could escape its might… except for you, apparently.”

  Was that disgruntlement? Whatever, Pat had to get to the point anyway. Silver Paladin should be here any minute, and it would be better for everyone if Bitterfly had handed over the Crystal before then. “So really, you don’t even need the Crystal of Power, do you? You’re coming into your own quite nicely. I bet even Sir Toby would like to work together with you, now that you’ve shown what you can do. Provided you return his Crystal, of course, and provided you’re still alive when you do it. Which, you know, I wasn’t kidding about that. You try to use the Crystal, it’s not going to be pretty. We’re talking ‘last mistake you’ll ever make’ territory here.”

  Bitterfly didn’t respond for so long Pat was actually beginning to hope. “Lies,” she said then, shortly. The intercom crackled and spat as though sympathetic to the agitation in her voice. “Go away, minion. I will not dally further with you.”

  “I’m not lying! Sir Toby —”

  But the intercom cut him off with a sharp clack, clearly announcing that Bitterfly had closed the transmission. Pat slumped, defeated. Fuck it, he’d thought he’d been getting through to her. He’d thought…

  “Worth a try,” said Silver Paladin from directly behind Pat.

  Pat almost swallowed his tongue as he whirled around. How long had Silver Paladin been standing there? And when had he learned to sneak up on people like that?

  The look the hoagie was giving him was oddly thoughtful. Pat returned it helplessly, not knowing what was going on. It was probably a good thing that Silver Paladin shook his head a little then, and pushed Pat aside so he could insert the keycard into the lock and open the door.

  ~~~~~

  You could get used to a lot of things in life. Bitterfly’s eardrum-bursting, teeth-rattling screech, though? Not one of them.

  At least Pat hadn’t been caught entirely off guard this time, and had already been covering his ears when the door swung open on a startled Bitterfly. Plus, she hadn’t had that much time to scream. Silver Paladin had immediately lifted off and blasted into the suite, tackling her around the middle and cutting her off mid-screech.

  Even so, Pat’s ears were still ringing with a vengeance as he stumbled further into the suite, following the trail of destruction. On their way through the entrance hall and into the next room, Bitterfly and Silver Paladin had managed to wreck a rather nice antique table and chair, a tacky crystal chandelier, a large painting and the door to the next room, which hung crazily off its hinges. Even the frame was splintered and half detached from the slightly worse-for-wear wall.

  Pat arrived in the suite’s living room to see Bitterfly make a too-familiar gesture with one hand, launching a rapidly expanding green bubble. He ducked back out with lightning speed, and then very carefully peeked around the broken door frame — just in time to be near-blinded by the incandescent flash of Bitterfly’s Mobile Whatsit encountering Silver Paladin’s defensive force shield.

  Fuck it, Pat was so ready for this day to be over.

  He blinked through the orange aftereffects that swam through his vision and forged on grimly. He did stumble a little over a chair he couldn’t see because of the enormous reddish blob in the middle of his field of vision, but nobody saw, so that was okay.

  Silver Paladin and Bitterfly were duking it out in the middle of the room, blasts of silver and green flying everywhere. They weren’t bothering with trying to talk things over, or even with taunts and insults; clearly, the only goal here was to beat the living daylights out of each other.

  They’d already trashed most of what looked to have been an extremely luxurious room. Broken wood, glass, and various other debris was littered everywhere, and the glassless drape-framed windows were open to the wind, gauzy curtains billowing in the breeze. The only things that had so far escaped destruction were a floor lamp in the far corner, a small mahogany desk, and a Century-style settee upholstered in brocade and glass shards. A dent in the wall by the settee bore witness that one of the combatants had been tossed into plaster and brick with enough force to leave an impression, but whoever it was hadn’t let it slow them down.

  Right… Pat was not going to interfere with those two, that was for sure.

  Where was the Crystal of Power? Pat was pretty sure he should be able to spot the thing’s emanations (the eldritch ones, yeah, there really wasn’t a good alternate word for it) even if Bitterfly had put it into a case or something. He couldn’t imagine any ordinary box — or whatever — would do much to fence in that eery glow.

  Pat ducked into the bedroom and the attached bathroom to perform a cursory search. As it turned out, the suite also had a second bedroom, as well as a study. And a library. And another bathroom. Seriously? But anyway, none of all of these rooms appeared to hold the Crystal. Pat even checked on the second bedroom’s balcony, although he couldn’t imagine Bitterfly would want to put it there. No. She’d want to keep it close, wouldn’t she? Right to hand, in fact.

  Back in the living room, it was becoming clear that Bitterfly was unlikely to win this fight. She was slower than before and panting audibly, and there was a bleeding scrape on one of her cheekbones. And bingo! There, right at her belt, hung a large tooled-leather pouch that emitted an unmistakably eldritch glow. Before, it had been camouflaged by the fluctuating light of all the various energies flying about, but now that Pat was looking right at it…

  He should have noticed it before, really. The pouch didn’t complement Bitterfly’s outfit at all, and she wasn’t the kind of person who’d think nothing of attaching random bulging pouches to her belt. It ruined her silhouette.

  This time, Pat knew to be careful of Bitterfly’s skull and elbows when he lunged for her. He came in low from behind and pretty much just went right for the pouch.

  Everything happened very fast after that. Pat’s triumphant fist closed around the pouch. He looked up and barely evaded Bitterfly’s knee coming towards his face. His frantic dodge took him directly into the path of a blast of energy Silver Paladin had loosed. And bright metallic heat exploded in his chest, stiffening every muscle into cramp-like rigidity.

  From his chest, the blast bloomed through his entire body, racing along every neural pathway. To his groin and down his legs, up his throat and into his mouth and tongue and nose and scalp. Down his arms to his fingers — and there, at his fingertips, something sparked and woke at the sudden shock of energy, rising to meet it, to reflect it back magnified by the factor of a hundred, a thousand.

  Pat caught a glimpse of Nick’s visor, reflecting Pat’s own face (distorted flash of startled blue eyes above green satin), and of Bitterfly whirling to face him, her trailing sleeves flying. But his attention was locked entirely on the burn of power rushing up his arm, clawing right down to his blood and bone. He couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, but he must still be holding the pouch with the Crystal. That must be what this was — must be —

  The world fractured into a rainbow composed of a single shade, sparking and glittering with potential. Everything was changed, every thought and every sight imbued with a thousand layers of added meaning.

  If Pat had been able to connect with his body properly, he might have thrown up, because — no. No, this was just all wrong. He was a simple guy; he liked the world to be simple, what you see is what you get.

  Simple the way you want it, the potential promised wordlessly, arranging itself int
o a new possibility. A world made for you. This world remade to your will.

  What the fuck?

  Cities springing up according to his design, their inhabitants greeting him enthusiastically wherever he went. His family and friends, all happy and healthy and living the best possible lives. Amazing people who thought he was great, who wanted to be around him all the time. Nick. Nick who had forgiven him, who wanted him, who —

  “No fucking way,” said Pat, aghast. He was dimly surprised that he could speak, let alone hear his own voice, but he could. It sounded a bit distant and strange, as though he were listening to himself from across the room, but whatever, he’d take it. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

  BadMadRad and €linore bringing out glorious new albums year after year. Ghost Matter publicly declaring they would never try to make music again because they were horrible at it, and would be opening a tea parlor instead. An endless supply of fantastic computer games like ‘Mars Ascending’ and ‘Sanada’s Ten Heroes’, only better. Nick smiling at him. Frowning at him. Asking him stupid questions and having stupid opinions about what the answers should be. Nick. Always around.

  He could feel the burn of the Crystal’s energy as it dug deep, flowing over and through Pat, looking for weaknesses to worm into, desires to exploit. Pat had plenty of weaknesses and desires, and his defense against semi-sentient magical artifacts was pretty much non-existent. It was just that this was so massively lame. Was he supposed to be taking any of this shit seriously?

  Patrick. Patrick! Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me, Patrick. I know you can hear me.

  You’d think something with such a fearsome PR could do better. He was really dizzy, though, or rather thought he must be, except that he couldn’t tell. So yeah, this pretty much sucked, and next time he touched a mystical artifact he would be sure to wear gloves. Several pairs, all on top of each other.

  Patrick. “Pat!”

  Nick. Oh hey, it was Nick, slightly blurred by Silver Paladin’s force fields, but still so lickable. Nick had the stupid visor up and was leaning over him with his hair falling into his face, looking intent and fierce and grimly determined.

  “It’s you, hey,” Pat said, and smiled muzzily up at Nick. “There you are.”

  Someone was crying in huge, wracking sobs, complete with wet, unsteady breathing and little whimpering noises. Pat frowned and tried to look around, but his neck was stiff, and he could hardly see anything because a golden brocade backrest blocked his view. The settee? How had he gotten on the settee? Hadn’t he just been in the middle of the room, grabbing for Bitterfly’s belt pouch?

  Pat looked down at his hands, which were clenched white-knuckled around a large, glowy bundle that — oh.

  “Huh,” he said, with vague surprise. “Lost track of things a bit there.”

  “Put the Crystal in here, Patrick.” Nick was holding out a small collapsible containment unit. He was also still staring at Pat as though trying to compel him to do his will through sheer strength of focus.

  Not that any compelling was necessary. Pat was all for locking away this damned Crystal. If no tombs of ancient gods were available on short notice, a containment unit seemed like an excellent compromise. “Yeah, okay, sure, just…”

  He’d been clutching the Crystal so hard that his fingers had all but locked in place. It took him a moment to coax them into letting go; then, however, the eldritch monstrosity went down without a fight, falling into the containment unit with a dull thud just the way any large crystal in a leather pouch would.

  Nick closed and sealed the unit’s lid carefully. None of the Crystal’s trademark glow escaped from the box, which Pat took as a good sign.

  “What happened?” The fierceness from earlier was still hanging about Nick’s mouth, making him look darkly foreboding in a suitably heroic manner. When Pat began to sit up, he immediately held out a hand to pull him upright.

  Pat didn’t think he actually needed the help, but he accepted it anyway. “Bad luck. When I caught that blast, it must have activated the Crystal — and then it almost liquefied my brain, I guess. Its sales pitch was totally lame, though.” He shrugged. “I mean, power and riches and popularity and love… could it possibly be any more of a cliché?”

  Nick seemed momentarily at a loss for words, but recovered quickly. “You didn’t think it could deliver?”

  Pat scoffed. “It would have sucked my energy and liquefied my brain, so no. Though, okay, I wasn’t actually aware of that right then. It was just, that shit is lame, bro. Come on, who falls for that?”

  Nick’s eyebrows wandered some ways up his forehead as he took the time to contemplate what had been a completely rhetorical question. “Quite a few people, I would imagine,” he said at last.

  Lame people, maybe. “You wouldn’t.” He wouldn’t; there was no doubt whatsoever in Pat’s mind about that. Nick was bad with people and had weird habits and questionable opinions, but he was terribly good and heroic at his core, all selfless and noble and shit. It was pretty disgusting, actually.

  “I… would certainly like to think so.”

  Nick didn’t sound nearly as sure as he should have, which was pure bullshit. Pat glared at him a little and wondered if he should thwap him upside the head or try to explain in actual words just how stupid he was being right now.

  Before he could make up his mind, the crying in the background reached a crescendo of near-wailing before subsiding back down to broken sobs and whimpers. Now that his head wasn’t so addled anymore, Pat realized that the crier had to be Bitterfly — and she sounded like she was in a seriously bad state. If she kept this up, she would flood the entire hotel and then dissolve into sheer misery in another ten minutes.

  “Hang on a sec,” he told Nick, and went to check on Bitterfly.

  ~~~~~

  Unsurprisingly — given that she was wailing like a broken foghorn — Bitterfly was easy to locate. More surprisingly, she was handcuffed to the four-poster bed in the suite’s master bedroom.

  Handcuffed to the bed. What. The everloving. Fuck.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Pat told the wailing challenger, and speedily legged it back out into the destroyed living room, where Nick was loitering about.

  “What the everloving fuck!” Pat hissed. Nick looked blank incomprehension at him, so Pat got up into his face and shook a finger at him. “You cannot handcuff a lady to a bed when she doesn’t want you to! That is just not done, dude. So many red marks. No cookie for you! Bad hoagie!”

  Nick blinked at him in a manner clearly indicating that he believed Pat had taken leave of his senses. “I was not — this is not that kind of situation, Patrick.”

  “Yeah, yeah, tell it to the hand.” Pat made a ‘talking hand’ gesture at Nick and glared at him darkly for another moment, until he was sure Nick had gotten the message.

  “I’m real sorry about him,” he told Bitterfly when he’d returned to her. “He doesn’t get out much. Hey, you okay?”

  That was by way of being a rhetorical question, because it was pretty clear she was not. Her eyes were red and swollen, her entire face puffy and streaked with tears (and possibly snot), and her hair straggled about her face and shoulders in disarray. She was perched on the very edge of the bed in a miserable huddle, clutching the bed post she was cuffed to with both hands. Her dragonfly wings drooped limply behind her, one pair on the coverlet, the other half-dragging on the floor. Even her formerly airy, impeccably stylish outfit now looked drab, pale and shapeless. She looked like nothing so much as a drenched, disheveled and utterly despairing (and, truth be told, rather unsightly) kitten.

  Bitterfly didn’t respond; didn’t even spare him a glance, all wrapped up in her wrenching misery.

  “Hey now.” Pat hoped his helplessness wasn’t as clear in his voice as he feared it was. Fuck it, he’d always hated this kind of situation. He’d never known what to do even if it had been his own sisters crying their eyes out, and he didn’t know the first thing about this woman
. But — whatever, he was here. Didn’t look like he could make things any worse. “Hey, hey, it’s gonna be okay, Bitterfly —”

  At once, her head snapped up and she glared red-rimmed watery death at him. He’d retreated a step before he could stop himself. “Butterfly! I wanted to be Butterfly, not Bitterfly! But because of some idiot journalist — lot of idiots! — and now — it’s just not fair! It’s all so unfair!”

  “Wow,” Pat said. “Okay, that really sucks.”

  Bitterfly (no, Butterfly, keep it together, Patrick) gave a harsh, broken sound that Pat barely recognized as a laugh. “It really does! What kind of name is that, huh? It’s mean and ugly and — and, and everything’s so horribly ugly.”

  She was still sobbing intermittently, but now she was biting back the tears and fighting to take deeper breaths so she could speak better. Her bloodshot gaze was locked on Pat with desperate intensity, imploring him to understand. “Everything is so horribly ugly. I just want to make it beautiful. I want the world to be beautiful! Is that so horrible? Why can’t it just — why is everything so hard, why does nothing ever work when all I want is beauty!”

  “I get that,” Pat said, honestly. “It’s like, there’s this new bookstore trying to open downtown, right? And they are going to close down the really great bookstore that’s been here forever. And they suck. And that’s so wrong, isn’t it, and sometimes you just feel like…”

  Butterfly was staring at him with a new light in her eyes, now, like she was seeing him for the first time. When she jumped in, it was like the words burst from her unstoppably, driven by the force of a momentous injustice. “All the young people running around in clothes that make them look like they have no personality, like branded dolls, all exactly the same —”

  “And the awful, super-expensive trend drinks! And the —”

  “Hoagies ruin everything!” Butterfly screeched. There was no strength behind her voice, but she achieved a remarkably grating pitch even so, and Pat winced, ears smarting. “Every time I try to change something for the better, every time they rush up to ruin it, like they ruin everything!”