The Indestructibles (15 page)

Chapter 32:

Guardian angel

For twenty-four hours, the city became the worst place on earth to commit a crime.

      The Dancer moved like bird of prey from rooftop to rooftop, prowling, waiting. She prevented a car theft, a purse snatching, and a pick pocketing during the morning rush hour; witnesses were so confused by a vigilante thwarting small crimes in the daylight they never stopped to think about who their rescuer might have been.

      Three men were left badly beaten after an attempted robbery of a convenience store at eleven in the morning. She beat one of the men senseless with a bottle of soda then apologized for the mess. The owner said the costumed vigilante was a girl who wore a mask, but never spoke. He called the police and mopped up, glad to have his business still intact.

      At lunch, a domestic dispute ended with an abusive boyfriend tied to a streetlamp, a fat lip and black eye not given to him by his girlfriend the only traces that remained of the hero who broke up the fight.

      A masked woman, who witnesses spotted dropping on the car from above, foiled a carjacking in the afternoon. The vehicle needed a new bumper; the two men who stole it needed hospitalization.

      A road rage incident nearly turned ugly during rush hour when one driver pulled a gun on the other. The armed man was left unconscious with a deep bruise on his forehead that mirrored the exact shape of the butt of his own pistol. The second man involved wouldn't say anything about the woman who broke up the fight other than the fact that she uttered one single word: "Behave."

      That night, at eight o'clock, police received an anonymous tip about a dog-fighting ring in an unoccupied warehouse downtown. Later, they found twenty-seven men suffering from concussions, broken bones, and worse. Several had been stuffed forcibly into undersized dog crates while awaiting arrest.

      An hour later, a dog crate filled with crumpled wads of cash was left on the doorstep of a local no-kill animal shelter. Many of the bills were blood-stained.

      At nine thirty, a female jogger was attacked on her way home. Her assailant was injured so severely doctors stated he would never walk without a limp again.

      Still later that night, police received another anonymous tip about a truck full of stolen rifles and handguns abandoned in an alley uptown. Two known local gangsters were discovered zip-tied to their seats inside. Both men refused to speak with the police. One would require extensive dental work.

      At midnight, associates of those gangsters planned retaliation against the masked vigilante who cost them two reliable gunrunners and a significant sum of money. Three hundred pounds of werewolf that had been following the Dancer all day — secretly watching over her during the rampage — kicked in their door and altered their plans.

      Finally, at one in the morning, the Dancer returned to the Tower, spoke to no one, closed the door to her room and bolted it behind her.

      Titus, wearing a new shirt and freshly scrubbed of gangster blood, did consider knocking. Instead, he went to bed. If it was Kate's intention to continue crime fighting the next day as part of her emotional therapy, he would need his sleep.

      Guardian angel duty was exhausting.

Chapter 33:

Magic

Curiosity and caution overlapped uncomfortably in Agent Black's head ever since they'd handed Wegener over to the Lady.
He came out of the meeting in one piece, but the scientist hadn't been the same since — barely making eye contact with anyone, disappearing into thought, often nervously chewing his nails or tugging on that awkward hippie ponytail.

      "What do you think she did to him in there?" he asked Rose eventually.

      They stood together on a catwalk overlooking the main hall of the underground base. Wegener sat in the makeshift commissary, drinking black coffee and talking to himself.

      "Why don't you ask her?" Rose said.

      "You've worked with her more often," Black said. "You don't have any idea?"

      She shook her head.

      "It's not torture, exactly," Rose said. "If they wanted him tortured they would have had me do it. All I know is nobody ever leaves an interview with the Lady in quite the same way."

      "Speak of the devil," Black said.

      The Lady walked across the atrium towards them. She appeared to be dressed in pajamas. A red, voluminous robe was intricately wrapped around her and her feet were bare. Several of Black's mercenaries and even a few of Rose's assassins watched as she drifted by.     The Lady beckoned Black and Rose.

      "Think she heard us?" Rose said.

      "Come along, my friends," she said. "Our clients have selected the city they want to test their pet storm on."

      The Lady brought them to a small room several levels below the main amphitheater. The space had been carved directly into the cave wall — as most of the rooms were — and she shut off all the electric lights, instead choosing to bathe the room with dozens of small candles. Black's cyborg eye kicked up the light compensation. He wished he hadn't.

      The floor was covered in bare stone, but someone — the Lady herself, he assumed — painted strange images all around the room, including a circle of alien symbols surrounded by a ring of candles.

      "Doctor Wegener's control mechanisms have failed, but his theories were sound," she said. "There was no way to know that the storm wouldn't process pain the same way a living creature would."

      As she spoke, the Lady finished her preparations, scribbling an additional symbol here, lighting incense there. The room smelled like the palm reader's establishment Black visited once when he was young.

      "Fortunately, they can still be useful as anchors for my own work," she said. "I can channel commands through them into the human girl's body, which the storm is now dependent upon to stay alive. A little malignant guidance is all we need."

      "All due respect, ma'am, but why are you telling us this?" Agent Black said. "We're just the hired guns."

      The Lady favored him with one of her heart-rending smiles. He immediately regretted speaking.

      "Just assumed you'd be curious, darling," she said. "I like you both and thought you might want to share in our next maneuver."

      "That's . . . generous of you, Lady," Rose said.

      Under ordinary circumstances, it should have entertained him to see Rose a bit off her game, yet it only made Black more nervous to see his partner's confidence waning.

      The Lady smiled again, knelt down in front of the circle of symbols and began to sing.

      Slowly, the emblems positioned throughout the room started to glow. At first, Black thought it was a trick of the light, but he saw them warming in the dark, a light red, like heating metal. The place grew warmer. A trickle of sweat slipped down his forehead, becoming trapped in his eyebrow.

      The Lady's voice changed, sounding less like singing, more like a conversation, a call and answer in some language Black, couldn't decipher, had never heard before.

      Inside the circle, something . . . congealed. A shape. Almost human, but most definitely not human, a strange form with thin, brittle wings.

      Black slowly, cautiously, took a step forward and to his left. Rose shook her head at him, her one good eye wide. The candles played with his night vision, but the Lady's face was clear and bright.

      She had horns. Long, black, polished horns rising like elegant weapons from above her brow. Open flame engulfed her eyes. For a moment, Agent Black was convinced he would run — fight or flight kicked in again, but this time there was no fight to be garnered. He struggled for control and took a deep, incense-addled breath.

      And then the lights went out.

      Every candle extinguished simultaneously, leaving the room in complete darkness. After images of the glowing runes remained, but they faded into pale red burns in his vision.

      Something crossed incredibly close to him. A warm body. He started to draw his weapon, but then light spilled in from the open door. Framed in the doorway, the Lady leaned to one side. There was an attempt at confidence in her stance, but Black sensed tiredness, too, a body weariness that told him the magic he just witnessed cost her something.

      "Well then," she said, her voice upbeat, but slightly strained. "Shall we see what happens when our baby storm meets a major metropolitan area?"

      Elsewhere, Valerie Snow was seeing things.

      Shadow creatures. Skinny men made of smoke, with wings like burnt bone, flying around her, there one moment, gone the next. They'd reach out to her, prodding new scars, and her insides would burn, like hot metal pressing against her skin from the inside.

      If it were not for the pain, she'd have thought she was hallucinating. But the pain was too much, and whenever she tried to push one of the shadow men away, another would reach out for her from the other direction. They teased and taunted. She tried to make out their mouths — smirking things — too wide and too thin to be human mouths, filled with splinters of sharp, sharp teeth.

      She yelled for them to stop. And cried out to the storm for help. Valerie knew the other entity was distressed; the rain and wind around her growing more and more violent with each attack by the shadow men. Particularly vicious attacks provoked shards of lightning.

      With nothing else to do, Valerie willed herself to move.

      And she did. She began to fly — slowly at first, but faster the more she willed it — away from the attackers. The storm moved with her like a cape, wrapped around her, billowing out as they gained speed together. Valerie and the tempest, black and violent thunderclouds traveling across the Atlantic.

      Later, she would realize the shadow men were driving her in a specific direction, but that didn't matter now. For the first time in weeks, Valerie Snow was in control of her own body, and moving by her own will. And even when chased by monsters, even when surrounded by a resentful alien sentience, to find herself moving, the wind in her hair, had her laughing like a child in a playground.

Chapter 34:

Hurricane

People forget Providence is a port city, Jane thought, standing on a half-shredded brick warehouse.
Smoke mixed with rain and dense fog for miles; she passed an area where a gas main exploded, taking out half a city block with it. The storm hammered into the coast like a charging bull, faster than they'd seen it move thus far, flooding entire streets, knocking cars over with winds of unheard of proportions.

      Doc and Emily landed beside her. Billy scouted on the edge of the horizon, his blue-white signature glow nearly eaten up by the density of the fog.

      "How do we fight a force of nature?" Jane asked.

      Doc watched the sky, hands thrust in his pockets, lips pursed in a hard, pale line.

      "I'll be damned," he said. "What are those doing in there?" He sounded wistful as he spoke.

      "What are what doing where?" Emily asked.

      He ignored her.

      "Here's what I want you to do, Emily," Doc said. "Try to push the storm away with one of your gravity fields."

      "Sounds like a terrible idea," she said.

      Jane thought the exact same thing.

      "Just try," he said. "If you feel the least bit out of control, simply let go."

      "Oh sure. Push the dragon, Emily. Poke the tiger! What if it chases after me?"

      "We're already standing in the worst of it," Doc said, his blue-white hair fluttering in the wind, long coat snapping and swaying.

      "Bubble of float," Jane said.

      "What?" Emily and Doc said, together.

      "Keep your bubble of float above the buildings, Em," she said. "So you don't float away any of the buildings."

      "I still think this is a terrible idea," Emily said.

      But she closed her eyes and held a hand out in front of her and flexed her fingers. Jane discovered that Em had updated her gloves and now a nuclear fallout symbol decorated both palms.

      The storm noticed.

      As if a living thing, the clouds pushed back, pounding away like an angry animal against the unseen wall Emily created. Lightning crackled and flashed, splintering the gray sky with pale light.

      "Is the storm actually attacking us?" Jane asked.

      "Sure looks that way," Doc said.

      He knelt down on the rooftop and pulled out a hunk of plain white chalk from his coat pocket. Doc sketched symbols on the ground, circling some, connecting others. Then he drew a perfect ring large enough to hold a person.

      "Don't stand inside that circle," he said.

      Doc sat lotus style in front of the circle. Jane could barely hear him, but she could tell he was talking to himself, chattering under his breath. The longer he spoke, though, the louder he got. His words sounded like Latin, but dirtier, more feral. They sounded, Jane thought, like things human beings were not supposed to hear.

      She watched the circle grow darker, as if filling up with shadows. The shadows moved, with limbs and long fingers and wings. Eyes stared at her with malice and hunger. Several creatures — maybe three, maybe more, it was hard to tell the way they seemed to glom together — writhed inside the circle like eels.

      "Hello, gentlemen," Doc said.

      The creatures reached for him, but couldn't pass through the circle he'd drawn. Jane heard their shadow nails squeal across the unseen surface.

      He pulled something from his pocket and looked at Jane.

      "When I throw this, I want you to set it on fire, and then I want you to close your eyes," Doc said.

      She nodded.

      He tossed the object — some sort of oversized capsule — in the air directly at the creatures. Jane projected a blast of fire from her fingertips. Even as she closed her eyes, she witnessed the blinding flash it created, a phosphorus explosion of hot white light. She heard the screams of the shadow creatures dying, and the sounds of Emily swearing.

      Then, Jane opened her eyes.

      The storm started to drift away from the city. Jane couldn't tell if it was moving because of what Doc did or if it was reacting to Emily's gravitational push, but it was clearly headed back out to sea again, gathering up its dark clouds like a shawl.

      Doc touched the tiny radio receiver he wore in his ear.

      "Straylight, can you hear me?"

      "I'm here, boss," Billy's voice said through all of their receivers.

      "Do not pursue," he said. "See what you can do to help rescue personnel, and then head back to the tower."

      "Sure thing."

      They watched Billy's aura arc back toward the city, disappearing between downtown buildings.

      "What were those things, Doc?" Jane said.

      "A complication," he said, watching the storm recede.