Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (13 page)

“Shell…”

“Not a big deal, really. He didn’t remove any memories. It’s like remembering you had the banana cream instead of the apple pie for lunch.”

Mom and Dad nodded agreement, but I resolved to have a talk with Shelly later. There were boundaries.

After that I got away with minimal fuss and aggravation, but there was no way I was going to classes. My superhuman healing ability would clear up the bruises before the day was out, but till then a battered little Hope Corrigan would raise way too many questions. So instead I changed into costume, using makeup to cover the bruising where it crept out from under the mask, and flew out to see Detective Fisher. A phone call might have worked, but what I was going to ask for probably broke half a dozen department regulations.

Shelly found him for me, hanging out at the corner of Clark and Taylor. He stood in the empty lot south of the AMLI 900 luxury apartment tower, beside the Mid-Am “for lease” signs.

“Astra,” he said when I landed. “You’re not on duty today.” For a miracle, he didn’t have a cigarette in his mouth—probably because of the Starbuck’s Coffee cup in his hand.

“Good morning, Detective Fisher—”

“Call me Don.” With his free hand he indicated the complete absence of other detectives or patrolmen. A few morning commuters saw us and slowed as they drove by. I waved, turning back to him.

“I don’t think so. Fisher?”

“That’ll do. What can I do for you?” He finished his coffee and lit up as I rolled my eyes. “And what happened?”

“What—oh.” I touched my made-up cheek. “A little fight out of town. Anything on the Moffat case?”

“We’re still looking for Mr. Ross. He might be able to tell us if Moffat was more involved in the robbery than we thought.”

“But you thought he was dead.”

“So we’ll find a body that could tell us something. Much as I’d like to talk shop, this is just my breakfast stop.”

I nodded. “I need access to Mr.
Moffat’s
apartment, for me and three others. Is it open?”

He looked at me. “It’s been swept and cleaned. The department turned it loose last Friday, so you could always just ask the building super.”

Who’ll probably say no.
Neither of us said it. An impossible murder? Superheroes poking about? The last thing the apartment management would want was their tenants getting the idea that the building was superhuman-murder central.

“Could you…”
Lean on the building super? Get permission to go back in?
I
so
didn’t want to do a B and E.

“What is this about?”

Sighing, I told him.

He lit his second cig when I finished, exhaled.

“Blackstone. That explains a lot. Called me last week, asked for the case file. Didn’t want to go through Garfield.” The deputy superintendent of the Bureau of Investigative Services didn’t much like
superhumans
, and didn’t like having superheroes affiliated with the CPD even as private contractors.

I held my breath while he looked at me. Finally he nodded.

“Okay. When?”

“Tonight? Two of them are flying in from LA this afternoon, and Artemis has to wait till after dark.”

“I’ll call the super, and there’ll be five of us. Otherwise Garfield will have my badge.”

“Thank you!” I felt a million pounds lighter knowing I wouldn’t have to skirt the law. Giving him a mock-salute, I started to lift off, then stopped. “Detect— Fisher? What are you doing out here?”

“I’m looking for the man who wasn’t there.”

I had to be satisfied with that cryptic comment. Back at the Dome I settled in to write up an after-action report of Sunday’s fight. Since it hadn’t happened in the team’s jurisdiction or on Sentinels business, I didn’t have to explain why I’d been in LA, and now
I
got to be cryptic. I called the LA Guardians and got the file number on their report of the incident to append to mine; the review board that read my after-action reports could contact them or the LAPD, get their official write-up, and wonder about the rest. Then I pulled out my homework; the investigation had to wait till nightfall, but Thomas Paine’s
Common Sense
couldn’t if I was going to finish the essay on time.

When Artemis rose from her grave—actually a queen-sized bed with sheets of absurdly high thread count in rooms as nice as mine—we set off to meet Orb and Mr. Jones at the scene. I’d offered them the hospitality of the Dome while we waited for sunset, but they’d have had to go in the front doors and Mr.
Shankman’s
mob pretty much covered it with a sea of pickets and slogan-chanting drones right now. My favorite protest sign was
Stop worshipping false idols!
I’d never felt like a golden calf, and only hardcore fans stuck with me now. The ones calling Chakra the “Whore of Babylon” were less funny.

Fisher opened the lobby door and waved us all in when Artemis and I landed.
 
The man standing behind him, playing with a ring of keys, had to be the building super.

“Ladies,” Fisher said. “
Mr
Osburne
has graciously agreed to cooperate with the investigation.”

The man twitched a nod and waved us to the elevator. We all fit, and I gratefully noted that Mr. Jones had bathed, even found some way to get his star-studded coat laundered. He cleaned up pretty well; even his gaunt eyes looked brighter. Orb looked as stylish and cool as if the fight yesterday hadn’t happened, in black tonight to match Jones.

I bit back a nervous laugh. All in black, we could form our own team.
Nightwatch
? Beside all of us, unlit cig ready, Fisher looked like he’d wandered in from a different movie. Maybe an indie-film from the Sundance Film Festival?

The super got us out of the elevator and down the hall without any residents noticing, making me wonder why he hadn’t simply opened the balcony door for Artemis and me.

Mr.
Moffat’s
apartment had been completely cleared, the walls repainted, even new carpet laid out. Whatever had killed Mr. Moffat hadn’t left anything that couldn’t be carried away in garbage bags, but the building owners weren’t taking chances. The new-paint and carpet smells left nothing of the original scene.

“Well?” Fisher said after the super left, closing the door behind him.

Mr. Jones looked over my shoulder at Shelly. “I said it may have been a thought-form?”

“Yes,” Shelly said.

“Excuse me?” Fisher looked where Shelly wasn’t.

Jones chuckled. “Sorry, detective. Conferring with spirits. One, anyway.”

“This isn’t filling me with confidence.”

“Please,” I said. “I’ll explain later.”

Orb smiled. “If you can.”

Fisher nodded, not even blinking at her hair-veiled face and lips that didn’t move when she spoke.

Mr. Jones reached into his coat and pulled out a bundle of sticks wrapped in silk. Reciting to himself, what sounded like Latin to my church-trained ears, he unwrapped the sticks, draping what looked like a ceremonial stole, russet-red embroidered in silver with eyes and astrological signs, over his shoulders. The sticks unfolded to socket together into a narrow rod with measured notches and numbers.

He kept reciting. I couldn’t call it chanting—he wasn’t doing it for us—and my Latin was bad but I kept catching what sounded like a name:
Umibael
. I looked at Shelly and she shook her head. Fisher cocked an eyebrow at me, looking amused. I found myself holding my breath.

Then the sound changed. Any ear can tell the difference between indoor and outdoor sound; outdoors there’s no reflection, no echo. We stood in a mid-sized luxury apartment, and my ears told me the walls were gone, that infinite space had suddenly moved in with us. I blinked, and blinked again. Shelly had become transparent, remote, and Fisher looked… gray-toned. Like a film-noir gumshoe on the silver screen.

Now
Jone’s
words had an
underbeat
of bells, a distant Greek chorus counterpointing every phrase. Fisher shook his head as a heavy odor filled the room. Musky, old.

And then infinity filled with
something else
. A cloud of flesh-rags shrouding scaled arms ending in steel-edged claws. Far too many arms and too many claws. The horror, immaterial and distant while floating right in the middle of the circle we’d naturally created, spun, searching its own infinite horizon.
Jone’s
eyes snapped open and he gripped his rod. He started to shout something, and then infinity collapsed and it was
here.

I froze. Orb screamed, her sphere flaring up and spreading out into a foil-thin shield between her and the horror we all saw now. Artemis swore and drew her pistols. Jones threw the rod and the nightmare thing caught it, reducing it to bits no bigger than my fingertips with a shredding sound. I gagged on the reek of old death as ribbons and tatters of flesh billowed around it.

A bundle of arms whipped out, razor-claws spearing Artemis as she unloaded both pistols into it. Blood sprayed as it punched through her chest and stomach, nailing her to the wall. Fisher methodically emptied his pistol into its center-of-mass from the other side and started reloading.

I screamed Jacky’s name and finally unfroze, throwing myself at the nightmare. Stinking flesh wrapped around me and I gagged, retching. I broke bundles of arms like rotten twigs, trying to grip it and pull it off my friend, but I couldn’t find its center, it seemed to go in forever, and I couldn’t breathe the putrid air, the miasma of sulfur and decay as claws ripped at my costume, grasped, sliced and drew blood as I struggled with rising panic. I couldn’t grapple it, couldn’t pull back, couldn’t fight…

And then Mr. Jones
spoke
.

One word, and I heard it in my bones, a golden sound like the deepest chord of a cosmically amped base guitar, like a
planet
had just sung a note. The foul thing screamed, the horror of its ululating voice distant and faint beneath the world-filling sound of the Word.

Then the room was empty, of infinity, of the nightmare, and I lay retching on the floor. I felt something wet and, reaching up, found that my ears were bleeding. Along with lots of other parts of me. Climbing to my knees, I looked to see Artemis, slumped to the floor still holding her pistols. Jones and Fisher crouched over Orb. Blood covered her from coiffed head to Jimmy
Choos
, and she wasn’t breathing. Fisher started CPR, but each push brought more blood, soaking the new carpet.

No. Oh no.
I began to shake.

“Fisher,” I whispered, pulling myself up. I could fly her to the hospital.

He looked up and shook his head. Jones made a sound, like an animal caught in a trap. Then he
spoke
again, another word too big for the world. Infinity roared back, deeper than seas, to blow through me again with the rush of a million wings and the heady smell of clean spring rain. Giddy, I laughed without knowing why, and as the Word faded out of memory I heard them:
two
more beating hearts. Orb breathed and laughed as even Fisher smiled wide enough to crack his face. But I ignored them, because sitting against the wall Jacky laughed and cried, the holes in her closed, gone, and I could hear her heart beating, racing as blood filled warming cheeks. She was
alive
.