I fail to commiserate and the silence unfurls like the penile fronds of some exotic Arctic fern, gruesome and suggestive and cold. McCartney hawks something up and fails to eject it properly from his mouth and the loogie just hangs from his stubbled chins until the butler comes over with a hankie to delicately clean up.
“Wipes my arse too, if I ask him, Ames does,” McCartney laughs.
“If sir insists on a diet exclusively of butter chicken burritos and fetish porn, such will become increasingly the case,” the butler says drily and backs off with the square of cotton like something instinct tells him he can’t hock on eBay.
“Cunt.”
“Yes, sir.”
McCartney does that unpleasant swallowing-his-burp thing again and lurches from the swivel chair, sending it reeling crazily across the wire grille floor as he crashes over into an adjacent row of monitors and begins slapping at keyboards like a big angry bear trying to work a Mars Bar dispenser.
“He’s in there, though. And his bitch.”
“Ono?”
“That’s right. But we know where she is, don’t we, Ames?”
“We have indeed maintained a close watch on ‘the bitch’ for the day of our grand revenge, sir.”
Ames raises his eyebrow at me in a gesture unseen unless the metal goggles give the former Beatle eyes in the back of his head.
McCartney keeps banging keys until a nearby printer spits out a single page. The overweight former hero waves at it me with a clear air of exhaustion, effectively telling me to help myself. Ames, the only one of us with any composure left, pulls the sheet from the printer and makes no effort to hide his own double-check before he sighs tightly and hands it to me.
It’s an address for the thirtieth floor of the Paladin Corporation building in Tokyo.
Zephyr 6.10 “Occam’s Razor”
I LEAVE WITH the Visionary’s good wishes and McCartney’s blasted countenance on my mind as I take to the air. I do not know what happened to him, and it is more than ironic that a man knighted for his services to freedom and battling infamy should be left disabled by the very powers used to win such acclaim. Although Paul went along for the ride to India with the rest of the team, we never heard anything about his powers developing beyond the cosmic-level eyebeams that were his namesake. Now I have to presume those powers are gone along with his sight, leaving the crippled, pathetically twisted figure I have just witnessed scratching his asscrack with a disposable lighter. It seems wallowing in past glories is not a unique peccadillo among my kind – a lesson for the future.
For now, I don’t know where I am going, but it’s not straight to Tokyo. I’m just not ready.
An hour later and I am off one of those streets you get on the Monopoly board, if you’re playing the proper version, and not the stupid 90s one where there’s the Ill Centurion’s Power Cave and the Sentinels Tower and Black Jack’s Sewer Lair and what have you. The air smells like turpentine and pussy and I am pressing through the crowds with gorgeous Eurotrash girls grinding their asses into my thigh and skinny British celebrity girls making out with each other in the alcoves beneath where a DJ with a fake afro and goggle glasses plays endless second rate Australian pop singers like Delta Goodrem and Tina Arena and Dannii Minogue and Guy Sebastian, only he cuts them like a crystal meth dealer with black Norwegian darkwave trance and spasmodic trip-hop so the vibe is like the last few seconds of a young girl’s life as we succumb to a vast socio-cultural accident that masquerades as the best of London’s nightlife.
The club is called Blitzen and Shade waits for me at the top of one of the risers in a pleated miniskirt and clingy black mesh vest and her hair has been electrocuted for the occasion above her devilish smile, her skin surprisingly pale under the warbling UV lights, her teeth and the whites of her eyes like manifestations from beyond as she holds one of two martini glasses out to me and raises it in a toast I am meant to claim. I step up beside her with plenty of body contact and she smiles like a ninja cat and we drink as several other minor grade British supers break around us like fractals and Shade nips my ear when she leans over to speak.
“I thought you’d got lost,” she says in that bewitching accent of hers.
“Once-upon-a-time I thought you would’ve liked that.”
“Let history lie, Zephyr,” she says and finishes her drink. “Tonight, we dance.”
I’m not much of a dancer, but I like to watch, and Shade backs slowly into a crowd heavily populated with French mutantes who have come over on the Euro-shuttle for the evening and because anything that goes against the norm is in vogue in France at the moment, as the minutes trickle by the club becomes like a menagerie of weird human sculptures, black girls with tails, a boy with needles growing all over, a woman with the bones on the outside of her skin, an oiled, well-muscled black guy with a peroxide Mohawk and eyes in his teats and another dancer with black dots covering his moon-white skin that I am certain I see peeling off onto the carpet as he begins to sweat and reveal he’s really just some kind of poseur I later glimpse engaging in choke sex with the bouncers out the front of the club. Certainly none of the dancers seem to have any useful abilities (apart from the guy with the forked tongue who disappears into the bathroom with a pair of cosplay twins I swear I have seen before back in Atlantic City), but we are hardly exercising our powers as I follow Shade with my eyes and she pretends not to notice and moves her ass precisely how she knows it’s impossible to miss, pulling her vest tight enough I’m in little doubt about her intentions as she practically brings herself to the cusp of orgasm against the corner of a protruding sound stack. I am momentarily distracted by a big, lantern-jawed dude with Gallic good looks who pushes by and looks my way, once, like a Terminator on the prowl, but then he’s engulfed by the increasingly rhythmic tide of dancing flesh around us, the girls and the B-grade heroes and the mutantes and Shade all whirling before my gaze into some extraterrestrial paradigm that remains sexy even as it resembles something close to the Asimovian definition of alien life. At some point I have my back against the wall and Shade is dry-humping my thigh and asking me if I am game for a rematch, her wicked grin in place, and I make some vague inquiry about her sexuality after years of rumors and remembering this is the woman I warned my daughter off, but Shade’s only answer is to run her tongue from my ear to the edge of my leather collar and later I have three fingers in her cunt and she is eating me and the stars are dropping from the sky and I can’t actually remember ingesting anything that could get me this high, and the walls of Shade’s apartment are covered in a surprising amount of superhero paraphernalia too and my vision blurs to a narrow tunnel as she urges me onto her from behind and all I can see is various bobbing faces, people from old newsreels staring on with mild disapproval, and the sense of some enormous sphincter having me in its embrace as I give a shuddering yell and lightning crackles spastically across the suite and Shade laughs, her skin black as night and hard enough that it is like I am fucking a pile of bricks with just the one incredible soft, slick, slender spot to sink myself into.
I wake for one brief moment in the middle of the Atlantic false dawn and a nearby framed poster swims into view and I lift my head, alerted from a dream where somebody was calling my name in a childish sing-song and it’s like I think the three men in the poster have something urgent to say: the guy draped in the British flag, the hairy bloke with the moustache in the purple suit, and the balding one with big mutton chops dressed like scientist, lab coat over a fawn suit, a gizmo staff redolent with mysterious tech in his hand like some steampunk shaman. And then Shade’s soft arm slides across me and pulls me down again and we sleep until the light becomes intolerable, slinking in from the east to show the rotting industrial docks through the wide bay windows of the trendy flat. And then she presses a button and the industrial blast doors slide down sending the room into darkness and us back into that lovely carnal place.
*
LATER, AND I am eating marmite on crumpets and not quite sure I am
enjoying the experience except Melanie doesn’t have much else in her refrigerator but half-a-case of viognier, and inexplicably, a pair of frilly women’s lingerie briefs a size smaller than she wears.
Shade is Amazonian in her nudity, though after a while I think my lingering gaze unnerves even her and she comes back from the shower wearing black leggings and a shapeless chainmail top by Michael Kors, her wet and heavy hair hanging midway between her shoulder blades, a pound of silver around her left wrist. I’m making the best of my lack of clothes, just wearing the leather pants from my costume with the smell resembling the cow it once was, though I compensate with a feral grin and one of the open wine bottles.
“Sounds like you’ve got everything you need,” Shade says, getting back to our conversation as she poises herself on one of the tall designer stools at the kitchen counter. “What’s the delay?”
“I’m just not sure what I am walking into. Or what to say.”
“I don’t remember much about him, John Lennon,” Shade says.
“Join the club.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“Look,” I tell her and open my palms. “This is the way all the evidence is pointing. Occam’s Razor and all that.”
“Yeah, right,” Shade replies absently, like she’s forgotten she confessed to reading quantum maths and astrophysics and was just the black bimbo as she’s been portrayed.
“If what you said about Julian’s true, it sounds to me like you better get yourself back there, don’t you think?” she asks a minute later. “Let me know if you need some back-up.”
“Speaking of back-up,” I say. “You’ve been thinking about Sting’s offer?”
Shade nods. Her wry, handsome grin reveals her self-doubts as well as her excitement at the idea of moving up a rung in the superhero world, though perhaps it means her exploits will maybe never be known.
“Hard to say no. I’m not sure what the Jacks’ll say.”
“Seems to me you’ve got to think about what Shade wants, not what they want.”
We’re still smiling at our own cleverness when there is an infinitesimal buzz from Shade’s security system and the roof above the kitchen explodes in a shower of concrete chunks and plaster, the stylish white apartment a building site in instants.
Shade does a neat backwards cartwheel that brings her alongside me and I stand with my fists illuminated as the dust clears and the intruders reveal themselves.
Their identities, unexpected as they are, shock us into momentary silence.
Zephyr 6.11 “Large As Life And Twice As Ugly”
“THE JACKS,” SHADE says as the figures become clear through the haze of the shattered apartment.
There are four of them. Four men. Big men. Lionheart I know, having caroused with him on plenty of occasions – so much so he winces when he sees I’m here and the bloodlust, whatever it is that’s driving them to gatecrash Shade’s place, retreats a bit, and he can eye his companions with fresh perspective. Or perhaps I’m imagining things. The other three – Iron John, Bull and The Unicorn – loom large as life and twice as ugly.
“What the fuck’s going on here?” I manage to yelp as I stuff my feet into my boots.
“If it isn’t the boys’ club,” Shade says with admirable swagger.
“Well we came to find one little bitch and found two instead,” Iron John says.
The voice sounds characteristically metallic through the steel-colored armor, the stylistic rivets and exposed seams that scream Industrial Age and a nod to Britain’s steam era revolution.
“Not that it makes it any harder,” Bull says.
He’s a huge muscular red-hued guy, a real-life minotaur except it’s only his bottom half that end in hooves and a swishy little tail. His face screams pub brawler on steroids, his receding hairline plaited into an eighteenth century pony tail.
Unicorn says nothing. He wears a clean white uniform with a stylized black chess piece on the chest, but with a horn protruding from the classical horse-head silhouette of the knight. His big gloves are the same black, and a dark-hued visor covers the face of his full head mask. Years ago it was “The Lion and The Unicorn” when that made sense, the emblematic duo ensorcelled by ancient powers to guard Britain from invaders. His partner, though, died, in bloody circumstances that left The Unicorn mute, and he had since been unmasked and spent a period in high-profile rehab before returning to the Union Jacks around the time the previous incarnation of the Sentinels was crumbling. Of the foursome, he’s the only one I haven’t met before, and therefore perhaps the most dangerous.
“What is this, Mel?” I ask sideways.
Shade shrugs.
“Wanna tell us, boys?” she calls. Then to me: “They’re angry about something.”
“You’ve made us look like fools,” Bull grunts.
“You don’t take responsibility for that?” Shade fires back.
“The Palace has cut back our budget and Protector’s gone off again,” Iron John practically sniffs, though it is steam that creeps from the curlicue vents either side of his armored neck.
“You need to learn to keep your fucking trap shut, you dirty black bint,” Bull says and comes stomping down the steps and at us.
“I guess they think they’ve got me,” Shade says quickly. “Away from the sun and all that.”
I nod.
“I guess they can think again.”
I extend my arms and do the flashbulb thing. Bull clutches his eyes and roars, more noise than any man has a right to make. Iron John and The Unicorn don’t noticeably react, but Lionheart averts his gaze in keeping with his lack of appetite for this venture. Shade, God bless her, is now a grinning, jet-black enigma with her white eyes and bared teeth showing her glee.
“Let’s just I may or may not’ve sold my story to the Daily Mail once I quit the team,” she says to me and gives a fierce war-cry and then smashes into Bull with the sound of a train crash.
She and the big hairy-legged bastard disappear back through the kitchen.
“Come on, lads,” I say in the wake of their debris. “You’re bigger than this, aren’t you?”
I try and assay their reactions, but Lionheart’s the only one with an actual face, the maroon domino mask on his David Beckham mug, his hand nervously tugging at the fringe of fake lion’s mane around his shoulders.
“I’m sorry about this, Zephyr,” he says. “You’re a good bloke. This is just a bit o’ housekeeping. What the fuck are you doin’ here, anyway? I thought she only shagged models – you know, female ones.”
There’s a bad taste creeping up the back of my throat as the sounds from Shade’s slugfest carry to us. I shake my head and start rolling my bare shoulders.
“I guess if there were any real men around, that might’ve changed,” I tell him.
And then the question as old and inevitable as time itself.
“So which one of you cunts are first?”
*
IRON JOHN’S PRETTY fast for someone masquerading as steam-era tech, once he’s done with the atmospheric hissing and clanking. He must weigh a ton, though, and yet he jumps down in front of me as eager as a geek after the latest model iPhone, and before he can bring those enormous power gauntlets around I slap my hands against his chest and unleash a torrential charge of electricity that upends him and sends him back through three walls and into the daylight, the noise of the port outside and the distant traffic and lapping water and startled other residents mingling into the one stretched sound-bite.
As I understand it, the Unicorn’s powers revolve around bio-energy, the air seeming to bubble around his black gloves as he thrusts his hands out at me and a sickening, uncomfortable feeling threatens to crush my ribs as the strength goes from my legs and I just manage to open my palm as I fall back and a minor spark sizzles into him and breaks the otherworldly barrage. I roll back, feeling the chunks of plaster and masonry across my bare back as I stand in time for Lionheart to land in front of me and try his best at a kick
to my face. I block, stand properly, palm off a fist to my chin, and elbow block his uppercut and then my forehead smashes down into my old ally’s teeth and chin and as he sags, and I respond with an uppercut of my own that lifts him from the ground and drops him into the wreckage of the kitchen scant feet away.
Bull storms through like some runaway semi-trailer, hitting no one and taking out the rear bedroom wall, though the move appears deliberate, so I am frightened for a moment that I can’t see Shade, but I have other things to worry about as The Unicorn does some gay-looking cartwheels and lands before me like something from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers and just as quickly I slap him upside the head and he is gone. There’s a splash and the next few seconds I dive away from the rotisserie of Iron John’s lasers, the carpet and walls hissing as they’re pierced and I am hit once or twice in the legs before I get through the hole overlooking the water and dive in to escape.
The Thames tastes like a sewer and I jet through the torpid sludge fast enough that when I break from the surface, flying, I am over the other side of the quickly-becoming-devalued apartment, landing behind Iron John where lay hands on him again, my fists clasped together as I deliver the haymaker that sends him clattering through the rest of the apartment and then a crucial support pillar goes and tons of roof and cement pile in and Shade appears and grabs my hand and we take to the air – only Iron John can fly – and a few hundred feet up we twirl in each other’s loose hands and eye the destruction wide-eyed and panting.
“What a fucking mess,” the Englishwoman gasps.
“Are you alright?”
“Bastard kicked me in the box, didn’t he!”
“Fuck. Are you going down again?”
“Na,” she says. “Leave ‘em to it. I knew they’d be pissed, but that’s a bit much.”
“What exactly did you say about them in this article, then?”
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