“Well, in the early days his argument was persuasive. What point are we really serving?” he says. “We are between the rock and the hard place, Zephyr. Enlightened just enough to understand the futility of our existence, but lacking the powers Sting believes can advance us up the evolutionary ladder to transcend these shitty circumstances.”
Cavalier slams his tequila shot.
“Plus, here we have fraternity, no?”
He motions around. A pair of hot-looking female masks enter looking tipsy already, clutching onto each other in that faux lesbian way so many underage girls use to sneak into clubs like the Flyaway.
“Where else can we be?” Cavalier asks.
He places the glass down, pats me on the shoulder, and heads for the girls like a hawk eyeing mice in the field.
*
TWILIGHT COMES FROM literally nowhere and settles into Cavalier’s place.
“Weird crowd,” he says. “Notice that?”
He points fairly openly to one of the various groups clustered around saloon-style tables and for a moment I’m just staring at the back of a bald egg, the head of a powerfully-built dude in some kind of metallic body armor. At once the guy turns, rising to go to the john, and the parallel raked burn scars going diagonally over one of his eyes as he looks briefly our way confirms Twilight’s interest.
“Disastro? Fuck,” I say. “I haven’t heard of that guy since you and I first started knocking about.”
“Villains, my friend,” Twilight says wistfully rather than gravely. “I’ve already seen Rakshasa and Killjoy, though I’m pretty sure Killjoy was at least trying to keep a low profile.”
I watch the one-time villain swagger to the gents’ and then I turn back to the expectant-looking barkeep, waggling my empty at him.
“Stoli?”
The guy nods and Twilight holds up two fingers, shelling a twenty onto the counter, gloved fingers moving to scoop the last nuts from a small metal bowl. He crunches those and I let out a sigh that feels like it’s nothing but stale air, angel farts and regrets. I barely start thinking about what the fuck I am doing here and how to go about conducting an investigation while sticking out like the proverbial tits on a bull when Twilight actually flicks the last peanut into the side of my head.
I blink, looking at him askance.
“Fuck off, man,” I say, lightly ruffled, the words not as heavy as they might sound.
The big guy only laughs and reaches out to where the peanut hit near my ear, grey-upholstered finger batting at me so that I rear up on my seat, noting the odd look from the barkeep as he sets down the wet bottles.
“Dude, keep your creepy fucking fingers to yourself,” I say.
“What’s the matter, butternut? Your scowl looks like a cat’s asshole.”
“What?” I unleash my level three glower at him now, but that only makes Twilight grin all the more.
“You look so pretty when you’re angry.”
“Dude, that sounds really gay. And coming from you, I’m not surprised.”
“Haha, fuck off, Zeph,” Twilight says with that tough guy laugh of his. “Even if I was gay, you’d be safe. What we have is far more beautiful . . . and perverse.”
He points the finger at me again and I am damned if I know what the fuck is going on here, but now I slap his paw away and stand, bar stool falling over and drawing a few looks.
“Seriously, guy, I don’t know what your aim is here, but you’ve been pissing me off since you turned up on Legion’s plane,” I say to him. “If you haven’t forgotten already the, uh . . . let’s call them historic conditions under which this fucking annoyance of mine started . . . then let’s not choose tonight for a recap, huh?”
“Ooh, big speech.”
“Twilight,” I snap, planting the stool upright and sitting again a foot further away from him. I shake my head as I ponder the words, hitting the Stoli bottle. “You’re bugging me. If you’re trying to pick a fight, let it go, OK?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve tussled,” he says.
I stop. Review my gaze at him. Scowling.
“Come on, man, you got so fucking serious lately,” Twilight says and actually drags his stool across to close the gap I’ve made.
“We used to hang out,” Twilight says. “You know, banging hoes and kicking . . . um, joes? What happened to that? Now you’re so . . . I dunno. Focused. Boring.”
“Boring?” I shake my head in wordless frustration that soon finds its tongue. “Like it or not man, we’re superheroes. You too. Even anti-heroes are just grungy good guys, OK?”
“Superheroes are for schmucks, Zeph,” Twilight says. “Even now, you’re here like you’re on some kind of mission. What’s got into you? No one’s paying you for this. It’s not a job.”
“I’m sorry my daddy didn’t leave me a drug cartel to run.”
“Aw, I’m already over that shit,” Twilight says.
Again he reaches out and prods me, I think trying to “steal my nose” like some kind of creepy uncle. This time I slap the hand away and stiff-arm him in the middle of the chest so he goes backward off his stool. A table loaded with second-tier Brit masks scatter, all eyes looking our way, none of them daring to say boo when they recognize who we are. I stand as Twilight does, dusting himself off of imaginary dirt since the bar itself is pretty much immaculately fucking spotless.
“Now now, there’s the guy I know,” he says with an almost drunken leer.
Twilight strides back to me almost like nothing’s happened, though I can tell somehow he’s well pleased at my reaction. Almost like he’s nursing a stiff one. I glower further (this time, the anger directed at myself) as I whip my Enercom phone from my pocket, and in a fumbling attempt, call up the hotel snap to which I have referred to so many times.
1. Avenge my mother’s murder.
2. Get custody of Tessa.
3. Kill Arsenal.
4. Find Loren.
5. Find somewhere to live.
6. Who is Strummer?
7. Look for the King/101ers.
I am reminded how little has really changed on that list since the headway I made before. For sure I remain light years away from finding this alleged father of mine. It’s time to make a new list, but here am I fresh out of hooker’s lipstick.
Right at that moment Twilight does the only thing that could set me off further. He snatches the phone from my hand with a grin more like the class idiot than a revered darkness-themed superhero or anti-hero or whatever the fuck he is.
I stare back, just frankly goddamn stunned at the temerity of it all for a moment, and then the steel shutters come down and I light up my fist in rage.
No more Mister fucking Nice Guy.
Zephyr 18.12 “Night Into Day”
IF IT’S A grudge match Twilight wants, he’s got it. This time we go at it like stags, smashing together like weather fronts as thunder and lightning clear the bar and a roll cage descends to protect the counter staff. After a few krav maga attacks and counter-thrusts, I get Twilight by his shirt-front and leverage him on my hip to hurl him across the room like an out-of-scale dwarf-tossing contest, Twilight hitting the front door frame, breaking it into a dozen pieces, then rebounding out into the cold night.
I stalk out after him as he gets up in the angled street wiping muck from his knees, an already weary-but-elated grin on his face, tongue practically lolling like a dog in a hot car. My right fist is a fucking nebula at this point, radiating daylight within about five yards, but seeing that cocksucker grin, I hesitate to question yet again what I’m doing as something vaguely reminiscent of the voice of reason drags itself out of the sewer of my mind muttering imprecations like a bent-backed old soothsayer. But before it can have any impact, Twilight gestures wildly in the sizzling air and a swarm of weird living bee-like dart things manifest before him hurtling straight at me. I throw my electrified fist out and light up, frying the strange extra-dimensional nasties before any can touch me, but as usual they’re j
ust the distraction Twilight was after so he can barrel into me bodily and we slam against the side of Babrak’s, the plastered foundations splitting with the force of impact.
I slam my right elbow down on his neck and shoulders a few times as he continues to squeeze around my waist, and when this doesn’t work I reach down, wrenching his cloak aside to grab his belt and haul him up and off me, backhanding the brute so he twists away into the street and comes rolling to a stop against the shut-for-the-night front of the yoga studio.
“What do you call that move?” he laughs.
I stare back unfazed. Adrenaline cools a moment. The top end of the street is crowded with costumed figures watching, many of them Cavalier’s fellow rejects. I step closer to Twilight in the wild hope that we might keep at least some of this exchange private.
Instead, Twilight does a forward flight-assisted somersault leap and brings his heel down in a brutal axe kick I only narrowly deflect, leaving him open to my right cross, which hammers into his ribs like a scud missile, destroying his trajectory and sending him flopping towards the onlookers, who surge back amid gasps and the odd cheer.
I’m just about to open the gates of hell on him when the fiercest pain I’ve ever known grips me by the skull, a chittering, thrashing horde of psionic locusts eating their way not just through my brain but my soul – and I crash to my knees with just enough of my sanity intact to be pleased Twilight writhes across from me exactly the same.
*
WE FALL TO our knees, howling and clutching our heads in desperation to make the pain stop, and the increasing radiance accompanied by Sting’s arrival turns night into day all around.
The crowd pulls back as the pain hits our thresholds and I quietly foul myself, thankful in the hours later that somehow my costume cleans up the mess. At that moment I am just rolling around like an abortion somehow given life, mindless to the muddy street as Sting lowers his arms and a kind of tinnitus-saturated tranquility descends.
I sit up like a man clawing his way out of a grave. Twilight wears the same haggard look. Sting towers over us in spirit, if not in the real sense.
Cease your bickering, he broadcasts.
Cold eyes stab at Twilight, then at me. I expect more – a lecture, another psionic blast, getting exiled from the camp, I dunno what – but Sting simply turns on his heel and walks away through the thinning crowd.
I look at Twilight, strangely sad he doesn’t appear to feel the least bit rebuked.
“He didn’t even say hello,” the big guy grimaces.
With an effort, I push off from the mud and shake my head.
“I don’t know why you followed me, but don’t fuck this up for me, Twilight,” I say to him. “Like it or not – and these people might’ve lost this point themselves – we have responsibilities. Our powers mean we serve the people, because unlike most people, we actually have the power to make the world a better place.”
“I’m not sure when’s the last time we did that,” he answers, real honesty in his voice.
“We’ve averted a few disasters,” I say to him, resisting the tug of humor that wants to infect my deadpan delivery. “More than we’ve started, anyway,” I add, turning away before he sees me smirking to myself.
I trudge back through the parting crowd to the fluoro-lit darkness of the cave maw.
*
SLEEP IS LONG in coming and short staying. It feels like only a few heartbeats after finally managing to drop unconscious that I shake awake, cognizant of the other masks slipping into their gear with the first rays of dawn. I used to call sleep le petit mort, thinking I was so fucking clever, but then I think it was Miss Black or someone told me the French phrase was slang for orgasm, leaving me like the prize jerk-off I made myself out to be.
Resisting the temptation to simply roll over, I remind myself I want to pass for one of these so-called Ascension-seekers, so I get out of the squeaky military cot and nod to Israel’s Balefire (not the villain of the same name) and take a few slugs from the inevitable free bottled water.
“What passes for breakfast around here?”
“In the long hall, after morning meditation,” a nearby guy who appears to have butterfly wings says as he quickly squares away his cot with the enthusiasm of a true zealot. “Sting says our bellies must be as empty as we want our bodies to become.”
“Jesus.”
The guy doesn’t get my disgruntlement and flutters on, leaving me to scratch my balls for a few moments before falling into the flow of parti-colored bodies heading down concreted stone steps in the natural cave formation, descending into another of these vast hangars, the polished concrete set with close to a hundred yoga mats in battalion formation.
People drift to their chosen mats in the way people naturally do, angling for others they know or cruising for personal space or to be near the nearest hot girl, which leaves me fishing the room with my eyes and barely noticing as Shade steps up and past me holding a clipboard to her ever-impressive chest, the look of the dutiful initiate on her chiseled features.
“Well hey there,” I say to her and turn, bearing enough to make a body language expert blush. “How’re you doing, Shade? Didn’t know you’d signed up for Sting’s crusade too.”
“Zephyr,” she says and consults her chart. “Is everything to your satisfaction?”
“My satisfaction?” I step a touch closer to her. “Not sure yet. Can’t say I think much of the recreational activities, unless you can think of something I might enjoy better?”
“It’s recommended you turn in early,” she says. “Sleep is nourishment for the body as well as the mind.”
After thirty seconds of trying to infect her with my grin, I abandon all pretense and step in close to the handsome woman.
“Hey, are you shitting me here? Stop talking like a dictionary and lay some sugar on me, honey.”
I clinch her around the waist and close, slipping her the tongue in what I must admit appears to be a moment of complete surprise for Shade. I ease off with a frown burning my brow, trying to read a reaction on her burnished features.
She puts me at arm’s length in no uncertain terms, though flustered doesn’t start to describe the blush burning beneath her chocolatey skin. I can at least claim credit for that, my own hard look softening.
“Now don’t tell me –”
“Take your place, Zephyr,” Shade says. “We’re ready to begin.”
*
I FIND A mat between the purple Stormhawk and the hard-faced Argentine hardbody Firebird. I catch a glimpse of Cusp scowling my way, but when I give a discreet little “We’re in Hollywood, man” wave, she looks away, luminously beautiful in her anger. Then a psychic hubbub moves through the crowd and I am aware of Sting and St George appearing out of N-space, Sting immediately raising a hand for calm as the assembled supers get excited.
Sting paces a moment as his teleporter moves off to one side.
You are not your thoughts, Sting starts stentoriously, the first thought-waves frying independent speech and action as good as any attack. You are not your feelings either. The Being who is you exists outside of these. You are not your mind. Your powers – if you have powers of the mind – are misnamed. They are powers of your Being, and it is your Being we seek to free from your body. And to be free of your body, your Being must first be free of your mind and the incessant thoughts and feelings that seek to trap you. I do not exaggerate when I say your mind is mad with the power you have given it. Like a child who secretly craves firm boundaries, your mind begs you to govern it, but it has made itself useful over the centuries of our evolution solving problems and saving us from annihilation, and so now it projects problems and dangers to justify the position of incompetence into which it has been promoted. To free your Being, you must resist the mind. And to do that is at one and the same time simple and elusive. You must cast off your thoughts in much the same way as you will soon cast off your body.
At this juncture Sting gestures and my eyes are drawn for
the first time, like those around me, to the high natural limestone roof of our assembly place. Hovering there is some kind of large metallic contraption, vaguely spherical, and I am damned if I can tell if it’s bigger than a soccer ball or as big as a house. It rotates slightly, and while it shines, it is also slightly phosphorescent, though the light is impossible to describe, and as I stare at it, I start to think perhaps I am not so much seeing the light emanating from Sting’s device as sensing it with some hitherto unknown psychic component of my own senses, this mysterious Being to which he frequently refers, though that might be buying into that line of bullshit a little too quickly, especially for me.
To put your mind in its natural order you must work on becoming a spectator, a witness to your own thoughts and feelings, and to do this, you must focus on emptying your thoughts by coming into presence into the Now. The mind and its infinitely complex ability to create worry, chaos and concern focuses all our attention on the future and the problems you need it to solve and protect you from so as to survive, but there is no happiness in that path. You must step into the Now, because the Now is all we ever have, constantly advancing like time travelers one second at a time into the future – a future where it is always the Now as well.
That’s a good line and I am conscious of my fellow internees making happy noises as the thought resonance thunderclaps through them like a case of gastro.
Sting pauses at this moment to compose his thoughts, starting to walk back and forth in front of our position, and I am strangely unperturbed to see what appears to be a hummingbird move into position on my right.
I turn to look at the hovering bird and it pulls away, then pulls away again, at which point I see beyond it Twilight standing at the edge of the concrete steps to up above. Our eyes meeting, he makes a furtive and not exactly invisible gesture, and since none of us have sat on our mats yet, I quietly step through the throng as Sting resumes his Eckhart Tolle-inspired sermon.
“What is it?” I stage whisper as soon as I am close.
Zephyr Box Set 2 Page 49