by Wyatt Kane
She didn’t know the danger she was in.
Ty didn’t want to see the collision. At the last moment, he closed his eyes and looked away.
From somewhere nearby, he heard sirens approaching.
Perhaps that was what warned Lilith. The sirens, or Ty looking away. Or perhaps she heard some small sound from behind her, maybe Tempest herself grunting in effort. Either way, Ty heard a distinct popping noise that told him all he needed to know. Moments later, he caught a whiff of ozone, and had to smile as Tempest let out an inarticulate noise of frustration.
Ty opened his eyes again. Lilith had disappeared. Tempest was standing over him. Even in the midst of battle, she looked like a goddess, full of power and capability, her blonde hair a picture of perfection and her eyes flashing with anger mixed with concern. The blonde superhero glanced quickly all around, but Lilith was nowhere to be seen.
11: Boss Fight
Tempest reached for Ty’s hand to help him up. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Ty replied as she hauled him to his feet. He shook his head in an effort to clear it. “A bit rattled. I’ll be okay in a moment.”
“Then let’s finish this!” Tempest said. With that, she turned back to the remnants of the mercenaries, some of whom were starting to organize themselves. Ty looked about and spied his blaster on the pavement. Stiffly, knowing he would be in pain in the morning, he made his way to the weapon and picked it up. He wondered idly if there was some way to integrate it into his device, or maybe his mesh suit. If there was, he wouldn’t have to worry about being disarmed in the future.
As he turned back to help Tempest mop up the rest of the mercenaries, he wondered where Lilith had gone. Then he decided it didn’t matter, as long as she stayed out of Tempest’s sights. With the things the demoness had told him, he didn’t want her to be in any additional danger.
Yet it seemed his wants and desires weren’t those that governed the universe.
He had barely taken a step toward Tempest before Lilith appeared again, flying above the battlefield. Without hesitation, the demoness let out a shriek and made a gesture with her hands. Ty had no idea what her skill actually was or whether she had more than one.
All he knew was that Lilith was enormously powerful.
When she rescued Bain, she had hidden her efforts within a localized dust storm. Moments before, she had hit Ty with such a blast that even his shield couldn’t protect him.
This time, it was as if she called forth an earthquake. The street shook and buckled as if an unknown fault had suddenly ruptured. None of the combatants were able to maintain their footing. The mercenaries, those still playing an active part, were thrown from their feet. Ty felt he was trying to ride a bucking bull. He couldn’t do it, and had to steady himself with his hands. Not even Tempest was proof against it. She stumbled, tried to steady herself, then looked about for the cause.
She spotted Lilith and launched herself into the air with a battle cry that sounded like a shriek of pure anger.
Once again, the demoness saw the danger in time. She blinked out of existence with her familiar pop! all but drowned out by the rumbling of rocks. As soon as she did, the earthquake ceased, and Ty was able to get back to his feet.
Yet the battle wasn’t over. Lilith appeared again, still flying, higher up in the sky. From where Ty stood, it was difficult to see her expression clearly, but he got the impression she was wondering how to deal with Tempest’s power and fury.
But what she should have been worried about was the blonde superhero’s speed.
Before Lilith could even begin to react, Tempest had spotted her and used her speed to come up behind her. Ty watched with his heart in his mouth. He didn’t want Tempest to hurt Lilith any more than he wanted Lilith to hurt Tempest. Yet there was nothing he could do to stop either of them. All he could do was watch and hope.
Tempest let out a howl of rage as she careened into the demon woman in midair. Ty heard Lilith gasp in surprise and unexpected pain at the collision, and with Tempest still holding her, she began spiraling downward like a wounded butterfly.
“No!” Ty shouted. He knew that Tempest was proof against such a fall, but he hadn’t seen Lilith’s character sheet. He had no clue if she was durable enough to survive an impact from such a height. For all he knew, her strength, durability, healing etc were no greater than his own.
Locked together, each of them crying out in either anger or fear, Tempest and Lilith both fell – only to blink out of existence a few feet from the ground.
Ty looked around wildly. He knew that Lilith’s range wasn’t limited to the immediate area. She had teleported Ty across several miles and could doubtless do the same with Tempest.
Yet for no reason other than sheer intuition, he expected her to remain close by.
And he was right. Lilith and Tempest popped back into existence between Ty and the mercenaries, about where they would have landed anyway.
Both of them cried out, although whether from pain or rage, Ty couldn’t tell. All he knew was that they were no longer standing. Instead, Lilith was lying flat on her back, with Tempest above her. The blonde superhero raised her fist as if to smash Lilith’s face, but the demoness wasn’t yet done. She gave a groan of effort and aimed her power at Tempest.
Whatever she had done to knock Ty into the wall and shake the whole street, she did again, flinging Tempest from her as if the blonde superhero weighed nothing at all.
Whether by design or just bad luck, Tempest landed among the mercenaries. Those who still stood immediately turned their attention to her and started firing their blasters.
“No!” Ty yelled again. Heedless of his own injuries and the uncertainty of his strength, Ty took off at a run. He could see that Lilith was injured. She was hauling herself back to her feet with one of her wings hanging limply, and there were several grazes on her skin.
But Ty’s greatest concern was for Tempest. At least four of the remaining mercenaries were firing at her with their blasters at a range Ty considered too close for comfort. The place where Tempest had landed had become obscured by detonations of plasma.
Ty took aim and fired for all he was worth. In seconds, he had crossed the distance between himself and the mercenaries. He fired again and again, doing his best to thin the enemy’s ranks as quickly as he could. On their part, they turned their attention from Tempest to Ty and kept firing, at the same time as shouting curses and orders to one another.
“Tempest!” Ty shouted. He was more than happy for the mercenaries to aim at him instead. His shield could take it. This was what it was built for. He aimed his blaster at a solid, belligerent looking brute of a man and fired again, dimly aware that the sirens he’d heard earlier were much louder than before. He fired again, clearing the last of the group of mercenaries away, and found himself beside Tempest.
The blonde superhero was more durable than Ty could imagine. The plasma blasts she had taken had had little impact. She was dusting herself off in a way that suggested annoyance more than anything dire.
And then, just like that, it was over.
“This is the Police!” came an amplified voice. “Drop your weapons! If you do not, we will be forced to fire upon you!”
The words were enough to take the last of the fight from the mercenaries. While it had been them against just Ty and Tempest, they had a chance. But now, with the police involved as well, there was nothing more they could do, and they knew it.
Several of those still standing dropped their blasters as the police demanded. Others hurried away to hide in the shadows. For a moment, Ty was uncertain what he should do. He looked around in time to see Lilith vanish again, and suspected she would not reappear any time soon. His only other concern was for Tempest, and she seemed perfectly fine.
More than fine. Despite the battle, despite the blasts she had endured, she appeared to be in total control.
She was looking about with a calculated expression. As if coming to a decision, she no
dded once. Without saying a word, she reached for Ty, wrapped him up in an unexpected embrace, and took off directly upward.
She dropped him on the bridge outside the main entrance to the mansion. Ty’s heart was pounding in his chest and he was still breathing hard. Real-life battles took more effort than those in games. There was so much adrenaline in his blood that he was starting to shake.
Tempest held him until he regained his balance, then stepped away. “I’ve got to go back down and talk to the police,” she said with obvious regret. “They are going to need help figuring this mess out. It might take a while.”
Ty nodded. His first thought was that he should talk to them as well, but Tempest’s next words dissuaded him.
“Stay here. Protect the mansion. Whoever Bain reports to hasn’t given up, and that demoness is still out there. I can’t protect Dinah from someone like her, but you can. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
There was much that Ty wanted to say. He wanted to tell Tempest what Lilith had said to him. He wanted to reassure her that the demoness wasn’t their enemy.
At the same time, he didn’t know for sure that she wasn’t. Lilith might have apologized to Ty, but she’d still knocked him on his ass. How far she would be willing to go to protect her father, Ty just couldn’t know.
And anyway, Tempest didn’t give him the chance. Before he could open his mouth, the blonde superhero threw herself back into the air and was gone.
12: An Unwelcome Reward
Ty stood on the bridge over the koi pond and stared after where Tempest had gone. He could hear snippets from the aftermath of the battle below. Fragments of sirens as more police joined in. Occasional loud voices. But nothing more.
For the first time, he noticed that it had started to drizzle. Whether it had been doing so all along or if it had just begun, Ty didn’t know. He just stood there on the bridge until his hands stopped shaking.
“Deactivate,” he said. The blue nimbus that indicated his shield was working faded away, and he pushed the hood away from his face.
He had been part of Tempest’s and Dinah’s superhero team for only a few days, depending on how he counted. In that time, his life had been a rollercoaster. He had been attacked multiple times by faceless men working for a secretive villain.
In turn, he had done extraordinary things.
For someone who had never really been in a fight of any significance, the last twenty-four hours had been particularly brutal. He didn’t know how many people he might have killed. Yet surprisingly, that thought didn’t bother him as much as it might. The men he had shot had intended to harm both himself and the women Ty cared for. He knew without a moment of doubt that he would do the same again.
But the physical rigors of combat were something else. He had never been hit the way Lilith had hit him. Although “hit” wasn’t exactly correct. Whatever her power was, his defenses were not proof against it.
Yet he had survived, and, beyond a few bruises, emerged relatively unscathed.
The experience left him contemplative. How long he might have stood on the bridge in the damp of the night, just thinking, Ty didn’t know. He’d been standing there for less than a minute before his musings were interrupted by a familiar alert.
In a world where nearly everyone had traded in their phones for wearable tech or implants, Ty’s old-fashioned smartphone was a good indicator of his relative status. With his job at the Club, he could barely afford to keep himself afloat. The latest tech trends were beyond him.
The alert meant that someone had left him a voice message. Despite all that had happened with Lilith and the mercenaries, Ty still thought he knew what the message might be. There weren’t many people who contacted him by phone or any other way. His roommate Brad, his mother and sister, and that was about it.
Except for Angie the Hutt, his boss.
Instead of checking the message, he thought about flinging the phone into the pond. But that wouldn’t help him in the long run, so instead, he unlocked the screen. With a feeling of dread, he listened to the message.
It was as he feared. The person who left the message was indeed Angie.
“Ty Wilcox, you are truly a worthless piece of shit,” the message began. Angie’s voice was so shrill Ty had to pull the phone away from his ear. “In all the years I’ve been in this business, seldom have I come across anyone with so little actual capability and yet such a disregard for the rules. Leaving partway through one shift was bad enough, but two shifts in a row? And without even showing me the simple courtesy of letting me know? If you think your meager success with the sound system buys you any leniency at all, you are sadly mistaken! Any half-trained tech-monkey with a screwdriver in his hand can do the things that make you in any way valuable, and in case you hadn’t noticed, there is a surplus of half-trained tech-monkeys in the world!”
As he listened to Angie’s recorded rant, Ty could clearly picture the loathsome woman’s twisted expression of anger and glee. There was nothing she enjoyed more than making the lives of those around her more miserable, and Ty could hear the pleasure in her voice.
More than ever, he wanted to stop listening to the endless stream of bile and venom. But Angie was a master of manipulation. She hadn’t actually delivered her message, and even though Ty could guess what it was, he had little choice.
He had to listen, in full, in case he missed anything of value.
Angie the Hutt raged on for a good several minutes before she got to the point. “And because of all that, it is with great joy that I’m telling you that your services will no longer be required. Don’t turn up to your shift tomorrow, because you don’t work here any more. Ty Wilcox, you are fired!”
With that, the horrible woman uttered what could only have been a laugh, and ended the call.
Ty knew that a more reasonable boss might have tried to find out what was happening. But Angie had never been reasonable. She was cruel and vindictive, and Ty’s first response to the message was one of relief that he wouldn’t have to deal with her any longer.
But that relief was quickly followed by worry. He still needed a job. Still needed an income. Even a superhero had to pay the bills.
With a heavy sigh, he tucked the phone back away and stared out into the night.
<<<>>>
Not long later, the main door slid open to reveal Dinah inside, with Gremlin held happily in her arms.
“Are you going to stay there all night?” the deerkin asked. “Or would you like to come in?”
Dinah’s voice was warm and melodic and instantly soothing. Ty’s spirits lifted immediately, and he had to smile as he pushed himself away from the railing. “I’m coming in,” he said. “Just needed a moment.”
As if it hadn’t been just a little while since he’d seen her last, Ty took a few seconds to study the deerkin. She was exquisite. A work of art sculpted by a master. So many people had body modifications that looked artificial. Irises that shone in spectacular colors but didn’t quite blend in with the wearer’s natural complexion. Extra height that made them look slightly disproportionate. Horns, fur, fangs, or pointed ears that looked fake somehow, as if they were made of plastic even when they had grown as a result of a genetic graft.
Dinah’s modifications were as graceful as she was herself. Her antlers should have looked strange, but on her, they were as natural as her eyebrows. The subtle mottling of her skin around her eyes and all over her body was so perfect she might have been born with it. And her hooves! To balance her weight on such tiny points should have made her clumsy, yet she moved with the lithe grace of a dancer.
Whoever had crafted the deer DNA into Dinah had been a true master of the art.
Dinah’s grin gained a playful aspect. “See anything you like?” she asked, and Ty realized he was staring at her.
“Absolutely,” he replied. He realized that this was the first time Dinah and he had been alone together. Always before, Tempest had been with them. Because of this, she might have held a subs
idiary position. But to Ty, she loomed as large in his heart as Tempest did. He couldn’t have chosen between them.
“Well, maybe we can do something about that later,” Dinah said. “In the meantime, how about you tell me what happened?”
“Oh!” Ty said. “Of course!” But before he began, she interrupted.
“Just the bits I don’t know. There are cameras all around the building. I was watching the fight. But where is Tempest? Why isn’t she here as well?”
Ty nodded. “She went back down to talk to the police. She seemed to think it might take a while.” Then he frowned. “What else don’t you know?”
“How did you get back here? How did you know the attack was coming?”
So Ty told her everything that he’d wanted to tell Tempest but hadn’t had the opportunity. He started his story at the point where Lilith appeared in the alley behind the Concubine Club. He briefly described their conflict and admitted how woefully inadequate his shield was against someone like her.
“She dropped you?” Dinah asked, her expression incredulous.
“Yeah. But she caught me again. I think she just wanted me to stop shooting at her.”
Ty then told Dinah what Lilith had said about her father.
Dinah listened to him speak with a thoughtful expression. When he finished, she asked a question. “Did you believe her?” she asked.
Ty nodded. “She didn’t have to warn me. If she wanted to, she could have dropped me at Bain’s feet. Or those of this mysterious Master. She could have done that with any of us. Including Tempest, and you. Somehow, she already knew where we were.”
“And yet, she didn’t seem to be holding back during the battle.”
Ty didn’t know what to say to that. “Her power is formidable,” he said. “I think she could be more dangerous than Bain. But I do think she was holding back.”
Dinah was looking at Ty with an assessing eye. “She has my device,” she said.
“Yes,” Ty replied. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected a note of rancor in Dinah’s voice. “But it wasn’t her who took it from you. And from the way she talks, it wasn’t her choice to wear it. She was coerced.”
