Apex

by Robert J. Crane

  I smashed him over the head with the melting pole a few more times before he got irate enough to do something about it. And the something he did about it was a billowing cloud of fire that forced me to go sideways and ripped my electrical wires out, severing the power pole from the ground.

  There went one plan, unfortunately. And it was a good one, too. Zap zap.

  “You are not what I thought you were,” he said, steely and pissed now that he’d managed to blunt my constant bonking and burning attack. He was still holding his shoulder at a funny angle, though, and his head looked like it bore a wound, judging by the way the flames danced over his forehead, casting a consistent shadow over his brow like a scar. I’d hurt him and he couldn’t heal it, at least not immediately.

  “Hey, man, I’m sorry I haven’t updated my dating profile yet,” I said, taking advantage of the newfound freedom of the pole in my hand and bringing it overhead like a log, hurling it at his midsection. He started to go up and then changed his mind at the last second and went sideways, a nearly terminal hesitation and a pretty rookie mistake. He caught a glancing blow on the side as he tried to get out of range and the crack of his ribs echoed down the street. “But honestly, you lose a little weight, you ditch a few psychological demons, stop hearing voices—most guys would consider that an improvement.”

  He fell to the ground, clutching his side, fire starting to subside from his feet and hands. He was wearing clothes beneath, a trick I’d never managed to master with my flame shield, but one that Aleksandr Gavrikov had at his disposal. It suggested a high level of control of his fire, something I’d already suspected just from watching this guy work. Still, the ability to control it millimeters at a time? Enough to run a shield just over the surface of your skin and not consume your clothing? Way beyond anything I’d ever been able to do.

  I darted in and kicked him in the knee, wrenching it by making it go in a direction it was not supposed to go. He let out a little cry, and I did not let up, especially as the fire receded from him. I kicked him in those already-wounded ribs, sending him flying through the air and into the facade of the building across the street. He crashed into it, leaving a cracking impression in the concrete, and I was all over him as he flapjacked down onto the sidewalk, not giving him an inch of space to recover.

  “I didn’t ask for this fight,” I said, stooping and punching the shit out of him. His face was bleeding after one hit, nose shattered after two, cheekbones out of place after three. “I didn’t ask for any of this.” Blood spattered my clothing as I gave him the business, the Sienna Nealon special, which was face punching with no a la mode. His skull made a cracking noise—or my knuckle did, hard to tell with the adrenaline pumping—and I worked him like a punching bag as he lay there.

  “I didn’t ask for any of this!” I shouted, raining blows down on him. Fury pulsed through my hands, ravaging him as he tried to raise his hands to shield his face.

  I didn’t ask to be made a fugitive for shit I didn’t do.

  I didn’t ask for every meta asshole on the planet to see me as their number one rival.

  I didn’t ask for some crazy Scottish bitch who lost her family in the war to latch onto me as the avatar of every wrong that had ever been done to her.

  I didn’t ask for the president of the United States to decide I was a threat to everything he was trying to accomplish, I didn’t ask for Cassidy and the Clary family to come after me for revenge, I didn’t ask for freaking Sovereign to decide that I was his one and only chosen bride, or for my mother to die, or for her to imprison me, or—

  My adversary exploded in a burst of fire that flashed over me so quickly I barely had time to react. I moved on instinct, hurling myself away from him, seeking cold, seeking ice, and I landed in the nearby snowbank at the edge of the road and rolled, rolled furiously and without thought, even as the ice melted and steamed and sizzled around me.

  When I stopped, I was face up and looking into a cloudy sky. I raised a hand and saw scorched skin, blisters already appearing between the angry red. “You … ass,” I said, to no one in particular. Or at least no one I could see.

  He floated through the air toward me, head at a funny angle, creases in his flame shield in a few places where I’d worked his frigging smug, fight-seeking face. His nose was out of joint—literally—and his jaw hung a little to the side.

  “You … are not what I was looking for,” he said, muffled through the broken jaw. It was probably causing him a lot of pain.

  “You weren’t looking for an ass kicking?” I asked, unable to get my body to move. I was, after all, flash-fried, and that wasn’t a condition that leant itself well to anything but rolling around on the ground wishing for the burning pain to stop. I was feeling the first traces of it, but I suspected his earlier mind assault might have been occluding some of the pain because my nervous system was still not fully back to operational. “Because if you called me out, you should have known I wasn’t just going to send you away with a little chiding.”

  “Look at you,” he said, almost sneering down at me. “You talked your way through my advantages, lied your way through part of the fight, counting on me to be too dumb to realize you were … weak.” Here he sneered and spat a little, still talking like he had a mouth full of cotton. Which, he probably would, later, because I was pretty sure I’d knocked out some of that son of a bitch’s teeth.

  “Yeah, well … it didn’t seem likely you’d fight me fair, fist to fist, you loser,” I threw back. I was trying to move, to do something—hell, grab another snowball and throw it at him in defiance, maybe turn it yellow first if I had any pee left—but my body was just … not working. I glanced around, seeking some sort of impromptu weapon, anything would do.

  All I saw was empty sidewalk and snow. Nothing to my advantage at all. Quite the opposite, in fact, if he melted the snow that enshrouded me. He could drown me right here and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.

  I twitched, my fingers moving slightly, and I gathered a small amount of snow in my palm. With jerky movements, I lifted my hand, and tossed it at him.

  The small snowball hit his chest, sizzled, and evaporated.

  “You are pathetic,” he said, disgust just dripping from him. “What happened to you?”

  “I ran across someone badder than me,” I said, looking him right in the eye. “But I still killed her ass. And I’ll do the same for you.”

  “You are like an old dog that still barks even though he can barely move.” He just loomed, sneering down at me.

  “This old dog bit you harder than anyone who’s bitten you yet, dickweed.”

  “No,” he said, and his voice went hushed. “No … you are not even close. This?” He motioned to himself. “This is a pleasant sleep compared to what I have been through.”

  “That so?” I stared up at him. “Well, next time I’ll make sure to turn it into a nightmare you’ll never wake from.”

  “There will be no next time,” he said, shaking his head at me as he raised his hand. I could feel distant thunder, like the earth was moving beneath me. It was a strange, faint hammering sound that seemed to grow louder the longer I lay there.

  I stared at him as he raised his hand to strike—

  And the ground beneath me gave way, the sidewalk crashing in as I fell beneath the street.

  Something snatched me out of midair, and I was moving, moving like someone had me on their back. I didn’t even feel like I’d lost consciousness, just that somehow the sidewalk and snow had dropped from beneath me, and then I was being hoofed through tunnels. An explosion went off where the light had been streaming through into the darkness of this sewer, and the pressure felt like a hard shove.

  The person who carried me did not even stumble, sure-footed as he rounded a corner and kept moving at a hard run. “So,” came the voice of Harry Graves in the darkness, “that could have gone better, but not much. You did well.”

  “Harry? I … just got my ass kicked,” I said to
him, feeling oddly reassured that he had kept his word.

  He’d found me, like he said. Just when I needed him most he’d … uh … jackhammered through the concrete beneath me, pulled me out as it fell, and then dynamited the tunnel entrance behind us to cut off my adversary’s ability to follow us.

  Damn.

  “Damn,” I said, because it just came out.

  “I know, I know, I’m amazing,” Harry said, huffing lightly as he rounded another corner. “I’ll have you out of here in five.”

  That was exactly what I’d been thinking. Safe on the back of Harry Graves, I felt myself lulled by his movement, my body traumatized beyond the ability to function. I let my neck loll, swayed as he ran, and just gave myself over to the darkness I’d been fighting since the man on fire had burned me, and off I went, into waiting sleep, my fight now finished.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Isprang awake in a dark room, cognizant, dimly, of the fact that this was the second time I’d been beaten into near unconsciousness in the last day or so. The thought crept in as I found myself wondering, once more, where the hell I was.

  “Hey,” a soft voice said, and a lamp snapped on. I stared into the face of Harry Graves, and my frenzied breathing, loud and gasping, started to subside.

  “Harry,” I said, my near-panic at the memory of how I’d most recently gotten my ass beat starting to fade. I looked around; we seemed to be in a fully-furnished house, though one with extremely faded décor. “Where … are we?”

  “Oh, I just looked around for an uninhabited house and checked ahead to make sure we wouldn’t get caught,” he said. “So long as we’re out of here by next week, we won’t run afoul of the owners.”

  “You’re into burglary now?” I asked, looking around. There was a collage photo of a married couple on the wall in black and white, and the grandma-style throw pillows arrayed on the bed next to me and on the floor next to Harry’s chair, plainly discarded, told me a lot about this house’s occupants.

  “I’ve always been into burglary,” he said, smiling. “It’s like an Airbnb that they didn’t sign up for. And I always try and leave the place better than I left it.”

  I shook my head. “Between your breaking and entering, Eilish’s unrepentant shoplifting, and Cassidy’s cyberterrorism … I’ve fallen pretty far.” I plopped back into the plush pillow. It even smelled like I’d imagined a grandma pillow would smell.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked as I buried my face in the pillow.

  “I got my ass kicked, Harry,” I said, opening an eye and staring into the white cloth, made yellow by the lamp glow. “What else is there to say besides the obvious?”

  “What’s the obvious?”

  I sat up and looked at him. “It’s so patronizing when you do that.”

  He started to say something—I was pretty sure it was going to be another question that he already knew the answer to, but he stopped. “I told you … it’s kinda rude if I just finish your conversation for you. Then you don’t learn anything.”

  “I don’t need to learn anything else right now,” I said, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. My clothing was scorched, blackened, really, but still nominally functional, like rags held together by frayed knots. Cover myself up in a blanket and I’d be more or less fine. “I think I’ve learned enough today, attending the school of hard knocks.”

  “You almost beat him, you know.” He was looking at me … beseechingly? A hint of pleading present in his eyes and tone.

  I reached behind me, trying to figure out what the lump at my back was that was annoying the crap out of me. I pulled out a carbon-scored Walther PPK and stared at it before putting it back in my waistband. It wasn’t damaged, at least not badly enough to have set off the ammo or melted the barrel, and given how crappy I was doing these days for defending myself, I might just need it before long.

  It was the weapon I’d killed the most powerful person in the world with, after all. Albeit with an assist from Greg Vansen.

  “Everybody knows, don’t they?” I asked, staring down at my empty hand. Yeah. I’d need the PPK, sooner or later, since I couldn’t throw flame, shoot light webs, fly away, assault minds, read thoughts, or turn into a dragon anymore.

  “Yes,” Harry said, thankfully not bothering to play dumb and ask for clarification like, “Knows what?” Instead, he said, “The news caught the whole fight. Commentators assumed, of course … Everyone’s wondering how it happened. Cable airwaves are filled with the speculation, but to my knowledge, no one’s even close on the how.”

  “How could they?” I asked, staring at my empty palm, pale white and powerless. “I’m still a villain to them. I’m sure they’re wondering how I got my comeuppance. Whoever breaks that story is going to get beaucoup ratings.”

  Harry sat there in silence for a moment before answering. “There’s nothing I can say here that’s going to make an ounce of difference to you right now.”

  “You got that right.”

  “There’s a bar down the street,” he said instead, rising a little stiffly. “There’s a few, actually—we’re in St. Paul—but if you go to any of them but the one named Pete’s, you’re going to get recognized, and the cops will show up before you even get down one glass.”

  “We wouldn’t want that, would we,” I said sardonically. “Because I doubt I could fight them off, and I damned sure can’t flight them off anymore.” I stood and started to brush past him.

  He caught my arm, and I almost fought him, but he only held me for a second. “It’s not over,” he said, looking me right in the eye.

  “It’s over,” I said. “I can’t beat him. I can’t beat the Terminator. I’m not what I once was.” He let my arm go. “I used to be the most powerful metahuman in the world, Harry. And look at me now.” My voice was hoarse, a whisper. “You said it just now, without me even asking—”

  “Because I knew what you were going to ask before you even—”

  “All I want to do is get a drink,” I said, looking up at him and feeling the burning self-pity. “I don’t care about the Terminator. I don’t care about the Predator anymore—”

  “Nice names.”

  “—I don’t even care who Sigourney Weaver is. I just … want a drink.” I smacked my lips. “That’s all I want. All I want to do now.” I looked him in the eyes. “Whatever else I might have been before … it’s gone now. Okay?” I patted him on the shoulder, almost sarcastically, like I was giving him reassurance in the locker room after a hard defeat.

  “Okay,” Harry said as I went for the door. He didn’t say anything else.

  The guy who could predict anything I was going to say, could counter any argument I might make …

  He didn’t say a damned thing.

  He just let me walk out so I could go get stinking drunk.

  And that was when I knew I was right.

  It really was over.

  I was done.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “Hey,” Cassidy said, looking from her computer monitor as I came into the grandma’s living room. “I was just reviewing tape, and I think—”

  I held up a hand to shut her up, and pinpointed the door most likely to be the front door. There was a quilt on the back of the couch, and I grabbed it, wrapping myself up as I went. It looked dark beyond the cracks of the curtains, no natural light shining in, which meant it was almost certainly well below freezing out there, and my clothing was pretty frigging useless against the weather by now.

  “Where are you going?” Eilish asked, emerging from a bathroom as I stalked past toward the door.

  “Sienna’s going to get a drink,” Harry answered from behind me. I did not look back as I opened the front door, which was helpfully unlocked.

  The subzero air hit me full in the face as I stepped out onto a quiet street. Squarish, boxy houses stood all up one side of the street and down the other, but we were situated on a corner; the street came to an intersection to my right, and it looked l
ike a main road. US Highway 61, if I was not mistaken, which snaked through St. Paul heading north.

  I picked my direction and headed out onto the main drag of 61. The area was a little run down, but not terrible, and as I reached the corner I could see a half dozen bars just from where I stood.

  There was one with a neon sign that said “Pete’s,” and although the T was burned out, I got the idea. I thought, briefly, of being a defiant ass and just ignoring Harry’s guidance, but I wanted a drink a lot more than I wanted to get into a tangle with the cops, so I made myself a makeshift cowl with the purloined quilt and headed toward Pete’s—Pee’s, without the T, actually—crossing 61 at a jog, my blanket trailing behind me like a cape.

  Stepping into Pete’s was like dragging myself into a junkyard. There was no pretense about this place; the bare concrete were floors unrepentantly cracked, and the old plaster on the walls suggested to me that St. Paul’s building inspection team was either falling down on their jobs or their code was at third-world standards. A motley collection of old signs and beer memorabilia was the primary decoration, but none of it looked like it had come from this century.

  I bellied up to the bar, encouraged by the many, many bottles on the shelves behind the bartender, and tried to ignore the collection of older, biker-looking dudes at one end of the bar, a couple of leather-clad gals with them giving me the eye, like I was going to steal their men or something. Draped in a freaking quilt and wearing clothes that looked like they’d been barbecued. Ladies, if I could steal your man dressed looking like this, you have bigger problems.

  The bartender was a gruff old guy with a squint. “What’ll you have?”

  “Got any scotch?” I asked. He nodded. “Whatever’s good, then.” As he walked away to fetch me a drink, I fumbled for my wallet and found it gone. That was going to be a problem at some point.

  A jukebox played a classic rock tune, maybe Roy Orbison, though it was hard for me to tell. I put my elbow on the bar and then my face on my hand. There were no TVs in here, which was good, because I needed the outside world to intrude on my serious drinking like I needed to get into a brawl with all those old biker guys. Sure, I’d kick their asses, but what the hell good would that do? The Terminator and the Predator would still be out there. All I’d have done would be adversely de-stimulate the St. Paul bar economy and inject a few Medicare dollars into the local hospital. And Pee’s (I sniffed; the name almost fit) seemed like it could use all the help it could get staying open.