Twilight peers around the room, taking in but not really taking in the various pretty harlots who spin and parade for his approval. Then he finishes the bottle in one long pull and nods, green gas emanating from his nostrils for added effect.
“OK, drink up. We’ll deal with this like a band aid and rip it off in one clean sweep. Tonight.”
Zephyr 17.5 “Golgotha”
TWILIGHT MAKES A couple of calls and rather than magic circles or even flying across the city, a limousine pulls up for us down at street level and we clamber into the back, Twilight immediately switching on some low insistent lounge tunes and doing a couple of lines, not even bothering to offer me any due I guess to past refusals more on account of it having little effect on my racehorse physique.
“You’re a waste of good drugs, don’t take that personally,” he says and gives his oddly handsome yet demonic laugh as the long car cuts across the city’s streets.
“What’s the plan?” I ask in vain.
Twilight shrugs, pinching the bridge of his nose and screwing up his eyes like a man who hasn’t slept for weeks, as well might be the case. Terribly haggard for a moment, Twilight stares out through the chromium tint of the limo’s glass, sepia streetlights giving a ye olde feel to the homeless people struggling to survive on the freezing city streets, cops on horseback looming out of alleyways, then moments later a pack of dogs howling at the locked gateway to a city park like creatures of myth and legend.
“I thought I saw a unicorn,” Twilight says softly, wistfully, almost boyish.
“What?”
“Did I say that out loud?”
“Twilight, you’re scaring me.”
“Ha, want a cuddle?” he fires back.
I settle into the plush seat with a perturbed look, arms crossed as I think about a toilet break, stomach rumbling amid contemplation of the witching hour fast approaching.
We ride in silence and I start to loll off, and then the long vehicle turns like a bus down a vandalized street and parks before the chained entrance to a deserted if not derelict-looking wharf. The smell of the ocean, which is to say sewage, wafts across the scene. Beyond the East River I can see the specter of Manhattan, the crumbling skyscrapers like crosses on Golgotha. It’s impossible not to marvel at the waste and neglect of what was once one of the world’s most pre-eminent metropolises left to ruin within spitting distance of the mainland.
Big echoing warehouses dot the wharves and Twilight and I disembark with silent intent, my plosio simply nodding to me as we cross the empty street past ancient toll gates to vault over the chain-link fence, approaching a big warehouse with “42” stenciled on the side.
“This is where Plastic Stan said they make the shit,” Twilight says.
I tag along behind as we approach the building, what’s now a graffiti-scrawled mess, a low cast iron railing meant to be a barrier against tripping into the trash-dotted water lapping like an exhausted hooker at the underside of the pier. I note a dog’s leash with a collar tied to one of the nearby rails, Fido long since missing, perhaps eaten.
“This place sucks,” Twilight says like it’s a genuine surprise.
“It’s quiet.”
“Don’t even finish that thought.”
I am lost in my own thoughts though, misgivings about the situation outweighed by the surprise I feel that in going to the guy at the top I’ve somehow jumped right to the back page of the story and avoided the whole tedious investigation part. If that was the case though, this should be the climax, but it feels anything but as we hear a distant breaking of bottles and a hooker’s nightmarish laugh off among the side streets before silence descends once more and we angle on the warehouse and approach from the front.
After a quick shove, the warehouse door rolls weakly to one side, litter choking the trolley wheel rut showing it’s a long time since anyone worked here. Inside, it’s dark except where columns of moonlight play down from Perspex panels in the corrugated roof. Like old New York across the stream, the warehouse is a throwback to an earlier time and stinks of rotting timber, dust, old paint and decay, rats scuttling out of our way as we proceed inside.
And right into the ambush.
*
THERE IS A flash and Twilight grabs his temple, letting out a surprised moan before he slumps to the ground with a distressing amount of blood spilling onto the tired concrete already fuzzy where dust clings to the dark patches of ancient oil stains.
As a matter of basic self-defense I leap into the air and barely see the metal javelin travel out of the gloom from the wooden loading dock at the back of the warehouse. Next thing I know, the fucking thing is sticking out the other side of my thigh and I tumble groundwards in pain and surprise as three figures break from cover and lope towards us.
I don’t need to see much through pain-narrowed eyes to gauge they’re Glow addicts. There’s a guy with what looks like flaming sparks spilling from his eye sockets running right at us with a wild grimace. The dude beside him waves long and rubbery arms that stretch even as I squint at him. Number three looks plain enough, carrying what appears to be a meat hook on a chain he starts swinging as he closes the distance.
I know they have back-up in the further recess of the warehouse, but my first thought is to mine and Twilight’s safety. I let rip at the guy with the hook with a focused electrical stream because he’s slightly faster than the others, and he goes down with a rewarding howl as I let the dosage play over him a split second longer than might be technically necessary. By then the rubber-armed guy is in close proximity, limbs stretching out and circling me like an Escher drawing, encouraging me to back flip away – convenient, really, because it’s the same moment Mr Spark Eyes focuses like a blind man and a fierce, hot hosing spray angles towards me like twin dragons’ breaths, the torrent dripping along the flight path as a flaming ichor and sure to set the whole place alight, not that it matters. Clearly it’s been months if not years since anything more untoward than the occasional hook up took place here.
Flying in close confines, I turn a tight semicircle, wrenching the javelin from my leg and charging it with my powers before hurling the fucking thing with disastrous abandon at the guy with the elastic limbs. Fortunately for us both the weapon misses its mark, though not before the goon performs his own evasive maneuvers, allowing me to sizzle in and body-check the flaming eyes guy. Resultantly, he goes flying across the room to smash into a stack of gigantic disused wooden crates.
As those crates collapse, another three figures are revealed: two Mafioso-looking goons in neat suits and a seemingly gorgeous raven-haired woman equally well dressed, white collar over a black jacket, riding pants, a little scarf about her throat, fawn driving gloves on hands that clutch a 9mm silenced Beretta.
“Well hello,” I grin and prepare to fire phasers.
The meat hook catches me in the lower back and drags down my back with alacrity.
I emit a frightened shriek, fearing my innards caught by the hook’s deep tines. Going to one knee, I flick a look back to see the guy with the hook wearing a dirty white singlet and a murderous grin, the charnel damage from his recent electrocution repairing itself before my welling eyes. I open my palm and unleash another electrical charge, but this time he pulls some kind of ninja move, cartwheeling sideways to avoid it as the woman and her two goons open up with their European sidearms.
Growling, I feel the tether on the hook pulled tight, jerking me off-balance just as I go to bulldog forward and take the fight to the enemy. The pain’s beyond description, but adrenaline fuels my rage as I force forward and grab the closest goon literally by the face, yanking him off his feet and hurling him into the distant rafters with a cracking noise I apportion to the beams rather than him. And that’s about the last free move I get as their elastic man clinches me from behind, my arms bent behind my back at painful angles as he rides me like a bucking bronco to the ground, blood spattering the dirty floor as I go.
“Get the fuck off me!” I yell, trying
desperately to elbow the motherfucker.
The guy with the hook boots me across the jaw hard enough that I almost pass out: an object lesson in super-strength as well as his healing powers. I spit blood and look up, the word “wearily” not quite right given the spasming pain running through my lower back.
“I said get off!”
This time I light myself up and the elastic guy screams, limbs retracting enough that I can twist, get my feet under and propel him away. In midair he’s hit by a glowing green fireball and I’m relieved to see Twilight staggering towards us with a livid look in the one eye I can still see beneath the veil of blood, reflected off the flames now licking across the chipped and dirty concrete.
Twilight’s locked on the classy dame in the driving gloves as I pull the hook free from my back, sickened to see it several inches into the red as I swing and embed the fucking thing in my attacker’s chest. The regenerator goes down as I manage to get up, chest and neck aching with welts from the recent gunfire.
“Danica,” Twilight says in a low and threatening voice. “What’s going on here?”
“What does it look like, cuz?” the woman smiles. She nods to her cohorts. I notice a couple more of these suited gangsters emerge from the shadows toting Armalite rifles.
“Hit it, boys.”
Stupid me, I think we’re about to be gunned down. But it’s much worse than that.
*
THE FOUR SUITS each reveal themselves as supermen, pulling off their jackets and neatly flinging them aside. The first one transforms to bare blue-scaled skin, dangerous razor-sharp claws, fangs and antelope horns projecting from his angled skull. The second one’s back explodes in fireworks, bona fide flaming wings destroying his Hugo Boss work shirt and lifting him off the ground. Goon number three’s fists melt like plasticine, one turning into a flesh-colored hammer, the other a spiked maul. The fourth guy shimmers before he’s encased in a suit of medieval plate mail that glows a spectral silver.
Twilight’s cousin Danica Azzurro continues to smile her malicious smile as she plucks off her driving gloves and uses them to wave her troops on.
I can practically feel the life force dribbling from the deep fissure in my kidneys, but we can’t relax yet and there’s no cleric when you need one. I nod to Twilight, our abbreviated battle language letting him know I’ll take the two fucktards to the left.
That gives me the demon gazelle and the flaming angel.
I leap after the flying guy, knowing however great his powers might be, all these Glow users are newbies. True to form, he shows all the maneuverability of an ocelot, and that’s actually an insult to ocelots, I realize, as I streak past him with my fist outstretched and catch him across his quite ordinary chin, sending him into his scaly blue-skinned pal below. The demonic-looking Mafioso is suitably freaked to have his incendiary compadre drop on him from such a height, and he immediately rolls sideways to go crashing into the elastic man just as he starts getting to his feet. Still airborne, I dose them both with an electrical blast and swoop down, collecting the flaming angel for a second time across the jaw. There’s a crunchy, aesthetically pleasing snap and he goes down for the count.
By the growing firelight behind us, it’s a mad scene. But unfortunately the other goons don’t stick to mine and Twilight’s battle plan. The moment I’m down, the guy with the weaponized fists caroms into me and I do my best to duck and weave with blood oozing from my back, trying to get enough breathing space to hammer him with a few of my own choice strikes. Instead, back from the dead, the regenerator who was previously modelling the best of this season’s meat hooks jumps up and onto my back, a forearm under my chin choking the life out of me.
I growl, rage making my squinting eyes bulge as I try to shake him off without success.
Zephyr 17.6 “Tooth And Claw”
PRAYING TO THE gods of battle that Twilight is doing OK, I manage to reach back into the swarthy regenerator’s thick black hair and pull him forward, lobbing him like a piece of furniture into the guy with the fists. Quite righteously, his erstwhile teammate batters him aside with the spiked fist in his headstrong rush at me, a veritable berserker, drug-fuelled madness in his eyes. I duck aside, pummel the guy with my best right cross, and then twist away as the blue-skinned guy hurls himself at me tooth and claw.
“Twilight!”
Outnumbered and outgunned, discretion’s starting to look the better part of valor except I can’t get clear and I can’t see Twilight – and I’m damned if I’m going to abandon him to this. He’d never let me live that one down.
Backing away, the regenerator, the guy with the fists and the blue-skinned devil circle me, but I get the chance to see Twilight swinging huge powerful blows into the guy who fancies himself a modern day Sir Lancelot.
Feeling more than a little unfairly ganged up on, I’m at least glad to know the angel guy and the stretchy dude are out of the fight. Staggering, I motion my attackers on, making out I am even worse than I already am as I suppress a smirk to see them swap glances as if to ask who’s going first.
“Come on, you fucking Nancies.”
The guy with the deadly fists has the shortest leash. At my insult, he comes in swinging and clubbing in a display that would be terrifying if he wasn’t putting so much effort into each ill-timed blow that it leaves him completely off-balance. Gauging the others, I back away, biding my time until I can leap into the affray, embracing the dude in a moment’s weakness and completing an easy judo throw to put him on his back, whereupon I drop my knee into his gut and drive my fist hard into his surprised face.
I withdraw my arm like a blade, confident my enemy isn’t getting up again any time soon. Reduced to two, the blue devil and the regenerator look mightily aggrieved, but determined nonetheless. The swarthy guy reaches into his waistband and produces a straight razor. The scaled dude seizes on my distraction to streak forward, slashing me hard across the chest and very nearly disemboweling me except my heightened reflexes save the day. Skipping back, I clamp a hand on his muscular, blue-scaled arm and wrench him off balance, then stamp down hard on his in-step. The transformed Mafioso squeals in agony and I silence him with a measured love tap.
“Just you and me,” I say to the last guy, singlet now stained with my blood.
“It’s all the same to me,” the mobster says. “You keep hitting me and I’ll keep getting up. You say the same?”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have to keep dosing up to keep my powers,” I tell him.
A deflated look passes over the guy’s face and I make like a quick draw and empty a few amperes into him. A look of silent agony crosses his face, pain too great for him to actually get anything out before he drops to his knees with smoke curling off him amid the smell of fried pork. All the hairs on his arms and most of it on his head is gone, but even as he watches me, astounded, I’m equally fascinated and appalled to see the regrowth take shape like a time lapse of the plague in reverse.
“Time to wrap this up, Zeph!” Twilight yells.
Scanning across, I see Twilight and the fourth goon like Greek wrestlers, the glowing armor clearly a match for Twilight’s super-strength. The chick in driving gloves watches the pair up close, relishing the encounter and losing nothing of her menace nor her sense of delight even as Twilight gets the upper hand. Twilight grapples the glowing dude to the ground, one arm at a scream-inducing angle, at which point the Toecutter’s daughter pulls a phone and snaps off a command in Italian.
I refocus my attention on the regenerator, meeting a wide smile instead of the previous look of alarm.
“What the fuck are you smiling at?” I bark.
Then the high windows to left and right crash inwards as a dozen more mobsters pour in.
*
THE NEWCOMERS EACH display their own drug-induced powers. Twilight and I are seriously outgunned. Before I can do much more than blanch, a Mafioso who transforms into a furious ape rushes at me and leaps, planting both huge plate-like feet
into my chest and back-flipping away, the commotion sending me sliding across the dirty concrete and into a thick support pillar. More and more of the goons swamp us – one is a human blur, another an apparition like a haunting nightmare, while a third fires concussive blasts from his fists – so I do the only thing which seems sensible right now short of escape and grapple the pillar and pull the whole damned thing away.
The building gives a lurching moan and I swing the now loosened pillar like a broom. The ape, the ghost and the blur manage to avoid catastrophe, but the next few juiced-up mobsters are collateral damage, as is the regenerator, whose head I have the pleasure of watching explode like an over-ripe tomato. I no longer give a shit whether that was a genuine fatality or if he’ll be up and fighting in a minute – in fact if I’m perfectly honest, being just dead and not getting up again gets my vote.
After one circuit of the room, the huge aged oak beam is torn from my grasp by a guy the color and consistency of granite boulders. He hurls it aside and it punches open the seaside wall, freezing night air blasting in along with moonlight showing Twilight wrestling once more with the armored guy while a dude with what look like laser-cutting dreadlocks tries to jump on his back. My distraction’s assured as a power blast at close range takes me out from behind, wood and concrete and glass disintegrating in shards as I’m flung across the warehouse by the explosion. The blurry guy lays beside me with veritable exes over his clouded eyes proving yet again some of these Glow users might have neat powers, but they’re completely unschooled.
A stack of collapsed wood pins my legs and it takes precious seconds to drag myself free, ignoring the pain as best I can, by which time bullets ping around me, several clipping my skull and shoulders, the effect like eighty-pound ant bites. Not a big help to my confidence. I wave my hand and a scorching discharge takes out a guy with bubbled, metallic-looking skin, and then I’m up and right in the path of a huge red guy’s left hook. Cartoon stars and birds surround me as I fly limp into the opposite wall and crash through, but out of nowhere those fucking elastic arms I’ve been missing so much clutch me before I can disappear into the shit-smelling waters of the East River, reeling me in like the catch of the day.
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