Spider-Man - The Darkest Hours

by Jim Butcher

  She waved a hand. "Well. Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Larkin will be more careful about following immunization procedures next time," she said, and jerked her clipboard back. She tore off a pink copy of the form I'd signed and said, "This is for Mr. and Mrs. Larkin."

  "Julie," I said. "Have a heart here. The kid needs some help."

  She sniffed in contempt at the very idea. "I am only following the policy, rules, and law of the New York educational system."

  "Right. Just following orders," I said.

  "Precisely." She turned on a heel and goosestepped out of the gymnasium.

  My God, the woman was pure evil.

  I glanced back at Samuel, who was currently playing four-on-one and winning handily. He wasn't talking smack to them, though. He was focused, intent, moving in his natural element. The kid was a stiff-necked loudmouth, insulting, arrogant, and he reminded me way too much of people who beat me up for lunch money when I'd been in school.

  But no one deserved Julie from Administration.

  And since Coach Kyle wasn't around to do it, this looked like a job for Spider-Man.

  Chapter 3

  "Talk about disasters."

  I said, as Mary Jane came through the front door of our apartment. "It's like they could smell the high school nerd on my clothes. Mister Science.

  They called me Mister Science. And shredded wheat. Just did whatever they wanted. And the worst one, this Samuel kid, he challenged me to a round of one-on-one. Told me if I won, they would run the practice my way."

  I might have sounded just a bit sulky. My wife got the look she gets when she's trying really hard to keep from laughing at me. "The basketball practice?" she asked.

  "Yes." I scowled down at the stack of papers I was grading. "It was like herding manic-obsessive cats. I can't remember the last time I felt so stupid."

  "Why didn't you play the kid?" MJ asked. "I mean, you could have beaten him, right?"

  "Oh, sure. If I didn't mind the kids finding out that Mister Science has a two-hundred-and-eighty-inch vertical leap." I put my pen down and set the papers aside. "Besides. That isn't what the kid needs. I'm supposed to teach him to be a team player. If the first thing I do is go mano-a-mano with him to prove who's best, it might undermine that."

  "Just a bit," Mary Jane conceded. "I thought you were going to go to the faculty meeting early so you wouldn't get saddled with coaching the team."

  "I was," I glowered. "Something came up."

  "Who could have foreseen that."

  she said tartly, and walked into our little kitchen and set down the brown grocery bag she was holding. If you'd asked my opinion when I was Samuel's age, I'd have said she looked like a million bucks. Since then, though, there's been inflation, and now I figure she looks like at least a billion. Back then, if you'd asked me to describe her, I would have handed you a laundry list of girl parts. Luscious red hair, bewitching green eyes, flawless pale skin, long and lovely legs - and I would have blushed before I got to other, ah, salient features.

  And to be totally honest, I still saw all of that. Somedays more than others, but hey, I'm a man. I sometimes think primitive and politically incorrect thoughts about my wife. I'm allowed. I think it was in the vows somewhere.

  But as we grew closer, I saw other things when I looked at her. I saw the woman who was willing to stand beside me through thick and thin, despite a mountain of reasons not to, despite the fact that just being a part of my life sometimes put her in danger. I saw the woman who was willing to spend many nights - far too many nights - alone while I ran around town doing everything a spider can, and leaving her to wonder when I'd be back.

  Or even if I'd be back.

  I might have been able to juggle compact cars, but I wasn't strong enough to do what she did, to be who she was. She was the one who had faith in me, the one who believed in me, the one who I knew, absolutely knew, would always listen, always help, always care. The longer I looked at her, the more beautiful she got, and the more thoroughly I understood how insanely lucky I was to have her beside me.

  It was enough to disintegrate my frustration, at least for the moment.

  Honestly, if a man gets to come home to a woman like that at the end of the day, how bad can things be?

  "Sorry, MJ." I sighed. "I ambushed you the second you walked in the door."

  She arched a brow and teased, "I'll let it go. This time."

  I started helping her with the bag. Not because she needed the help, but because it gave me a great excuse to stand behind her and reach both arms around her to handle the groceries. I liked the way her hair smelled.

  She leaned back against me for a second, then gave me a playful nudge with one hip. "You really want to make it up to me? Cook."

  I lifted both eyebrows. I cook almost as well as Ben Grimm embroiders, and MJ knew it. "Living dangerously tonight, are we?"

  "Statistically speaking, you're bound to make something that tastes good eventually," she said. She took a frozen pizza out of the bag and passed it over her shoulder to me. "Back in a minute, master chef."

  "Bork, bork, bork," I confirmed. She slipped off to the bedroom. I flipped the pizza box and went over the instructions. Looked simple enough. I followed the directions carefully while Mary Jane ran the shower.

  She came back out in time to see me crouched on the ceiling, trying to get the stupid smoke alarm to shut up. She got that I'm-not-laughing face again and went to the oven to see what she could salvage.

  I finally pulled the battery out of the smoke alarm and opened a window.

  "Hey," I said. "Are you all right?"

  "Of course," she said. "Why would you ask that?"

  "My husband sense is tingling." I frowned at her, then hit the side of my head with the heel of my hand. "The audition. It was this morning, right?"

  She hesitated for a second, and then nodded.

  Oh, right, I got it. She'd been bothered by something about it, but I'd been quicker on the draw in the gunfight at the co-dependent corral, and she didn't want to lay it on me when I'd been stressed myself.

  Like I said. I'm a lucky guy.

  "How'd it go?" I asked her. We got dinner (such as it was), a couple of drinks, and sat down on the couch together.

  "That's the problem," she said quietly. "I got the part."

  I lifted my eyebrows. "What? That's fantastic! Who'd they cast you as?"

  "Lady Macbeth."

  "Well of course they did!" I burbled at her. 'You've got red hair.

  Redheads are naturally evil. Did I mention that this was fantastic?"

  "It isn't, Pete."

  "It isn't?"

  "It isn't."

  "But I thought you said it was a serious company. That working with them would give you some major street cred for acting."

  "Yes."

  "Oh," I said. I blew on my slice of pizza. "Why?"

  "Because it's showing in Atlantic City."

  "Ugh. Jersey."

  She rolled her eyes. "The point being that I'm going to have to get over there several times every week."

  "No problem," I said. "We can swing the train fare, I'm sure."

  "That's just it," Mary Jane said. "I can't trust the train, Peter. Too many things could happen. If it's delayed, if I'm late, if it takes off a couple of minutes early, and I don't show up, that's it: I can kiss my career good-bye. I've got to have a car."

  I scratched my head, frowning. "Does it have to be a nice car?"

  "It just has to work," she said.

  "Well," I said. "It's more expensive, but we might be able to - "

  "I bought a car, too."

  I looked down at the suddenly too-expensive pizza on my plate. MJ's career as a model had been high-profile, but not necessarily high-paying.

  I was a part-time science teacher, and the paycheck isn't nearly as glamorous and enormous as everyone thinks. We weren't exactly dirt poor, but it costs a lot of money to own and operate a car in New York City.

  "Oh."

  "I
t didn't cost very much. It's old, but it goes when you push the pedal."

  "That's good," I said. "Um. Maybe you should have talked to me first?"

  "There wasn't time," she said apologetically. "I had to get it today because rehearsal starts Monday afternoon, and I still had to take my test and get my license and..." She broke off, swallowing, and I swear, she almost started crying. "And I failed the stupid test."

  she said. "I mean, I thought it would be simple, but I failed it. I've got a chance to finally show people that I can really act, that I'm not some stupid magazine bimbo who can't do anything but look good in a bikini in movies about Lobsterman, and I failed the stupid driver's test."

  "Hey," I said quietly, setting dinner aside so that I could put my arms around her. "Come here."

  She leaned against me and let out a miserable little sigh. "It was humiliating."

  I tightened my arms around her. "But you can take the test again tomorrow, right?"

  She nodded. "But Pete, I... I got nothing on the test. I mean, nothing.

  Zero. If there'd been a score lower than zero I would have gotten that, but they stop at zero. It isn't fair. I've lived my whole life in New York. I'm not supposed to know how to drive."

  I wanted to laugh, but I didn't. "It isn't a big deal," I told her.

  "Look, I can help you out, you'll take the test tomorrow, get your license, and then we can plan your outfit for the Academy Awards."

  "Really?" she said, looking up at me, those devastating green eyes wide and uncertain. "You can help?"

  "Trust me," I told her. "I spent years as a full-time underclassman while spending my nights creeping around rooftops and alleys looking for trouble. If there's one thing I know, it's how to pass a test you haven't had much time to study for."

  She laughed a little and laid her head against my chest. "Thank you." She shook her head. "I didn't mean to go all neurotic on you."

  "See there? You're becoming more like the great actresses by the minute."

  I kissed her hair. "Anytime."

  I heard a low, faint rumbling sound, and glanced out the window. I didn't see anything, but it took only sixty seconds for the sirens to start howling - police as well as fire department, a dozen of them at least.

  "Trouble?" Mary Jane asked quietly.

  I grabbed the remote and clicked on the TV. Not a minute later, my regular programming was interrupted by a news broadcast. The news crew camera was still jiggling as the cameraman stumbled out of a van, but I got enough to see what was going on: a panic, hundreds of people running, the bright light and hollow boom of an explosion and clouds of black smoke rising up in the background - Times Square.

  "Trouble," Mary Jane said.

  "Looks that way," I said. "Sorry."

  "Don't be." She looked up and laid a swift kiss against my lips. "All right, tiger. Get a move on." She rose and gave me a wicked little smile.

  "I'll keep something warm for you."

  Chapter 4

  Ah, New York on an autumn evening. Summer's heat had passed by, and let me tell you, there's nothing quite as miserable as webbing around the old town when it's so hot that my suit is soaked with sweat. It clings to and abrades things which ought not be clung to or abraded. My enhanced physique runs a little hotter than your average human being's, too - the price of having muscles that can benchpress more than any two X-Men, and reflexes that make Speedy Gonzalez look like Aesop's Tortoise. Autumn, though, is different. Once the sun starts setting and the air cools off, it feels just about perfect. There's usually a brisk wind that somehow smells of wood smoke, a golden scent, somewhere on the far side of eau de New York, that heralds the end of summer. Sometimes, I can stand on one of the many lofty rooftops around town, watching the moon track across the sky, listening to the passage of geese heading down to Florida, and letting the traffic-sounds, the ship-sounds, the plane-sounds of New York provide the musical score. Nights like that have their own kind of delicate beauty, where the whole city feels like one enormous, quietly aware entity, and though the sun was still providing a lingering autumn twilight, tonight was going to be one of those times.

  Assuming, of course, that whatever had caused a third column of smoke to start rolling up through the evening air didn't spoil it for me.

  I was making pretty good time through Manhattan when that twitchy little sensation of intuition I'd dubbed my "spider sense" (because I was fifteen at the time) let me know that I wasn't alone.

  I managed to catch a blur in the corner of my vision, moving along a window ledge on a building parallel to my course, above and behind me, staying in the shadows cast by the buildings in the fading light, and rapidly catching up with me. If I continued in my current line of motion, my pursuer would be in a perfect position to ambush me as I crossed the next street - one of those midair impacts, when I was at the top of a ballistic arch and least able to get out of the way. The Vulture loved those, and so had the various Goblins. If I had a chiropractor, he'd love them too, on account of every one of them would make him money.

  Me, I'm not so fond of them.

  So at the very last second, just as I would have flung myself into the air, I turned around instead, hit the building my chaser was on with a webline, and hung on. The line stretched and recoiled, flinging me back toward the would-be attacker, and I added all of my own oomph to it and shot at my pursuer like a cannonball.

  Whoever it was reacted swiftly. He immediately changed direction, leaping off a ledge and soaring through the air by swinging on some kind of matte black, nonreflective cable to a lower rooftop. He hit the roof rolling, and I had to flick out a strand of webbing to reverse direction again. He might have been fast, but not that fast. I hit him around the waist with a flying tackle and pinned him against the roof.

  At which point I realized that I had pinned her to the roof.

  "Well," drawled a languidly amused woman's voice. "This evening is turning out even better than I thought it would."

  "Felicia?"

  I said.

  She turned her head enough to let me see the smirk on her mouth and said,

  "This is hardly a dignified position for a married man. What if some nerdy freelance photographer for the

  Bugle came along and took our picture? Can you imagine the headlines?

  Two Swingers Caught in Flagrante Delicto on

  Roof."

  "I doubt that the Human Flattop would use that term," I replied. But she had a point. I read somewhere that full-body pins are not a proper greeting for an ex-girlfriend from a married man, so I got off of her in a hurry.

  Felicia Hardy rolled over, leaned back on her el-bows, and regarded me for a moment from her lounging position. She'd given her Black Cat costume a minor makeover, losing the white puffs at her calves and wrists. Maybe they'd been harder to find since

  Cats closed. She still wore the catsuit, and still filled it out in a way that could cause mass whiplash, but this new suit was made out of some supple, odd-looking black material I'd never seen before, and it managed to give me the impression that it was some kind of body armor. Her hair was shorter than the last time I'd seen her, and she wore a black visor that covered her eyes, until she tipped it down enough to give me a wicked-eyed smile over the visor's rim, and extended her arm up to me.

  "Give me a hand?"

  Part of me was happy to see Felicia again. There aren't a lot of people I'm comfortable fighting beside, but Felicia is one of them. Admittedly, we'd gotten off to a bad start, since she had been a professional burglar at the time, but eventually the bad first impressions became spilt milk under the bridge. She'd reformed - more or less. And she'd helped me out a couple of times when I really needed it.

  Plus, she had been hot. Really, really hot. I like to think of myself as a decent guy, most of the time, but what man wouldn't enjoy his work more partnered up with a looker like Felicia?

  We became involved during that time, and the romance had been...

  eventful. Tempestuous. On occasio
n, it had resembled pay-per-view professional wrestling. It had ended amicably, more or less, but I'd still been worried that she might go back to what she was doing before she met me. Apparently, however, her reform had been sincere, and she was, as far as I knew, on the straight and narrow these days. I pulled her to her feet. "What are you doing here?"

  "I needed to talk to you," she said, rising. She put her hands on the small of her back, winced a little, and stretched again. "Mmmm. I always did like it when you played rough, Spider."

  "I could have killed you," I said. "What do you think you're doing, stalking me like that?"

  "I was going to knock on your door," she said, "but I saw you leaving. I had to get your attention somehow."

  "You know what gets my attention?" I said. "When someone shouts my name and says that they want to talk to me. One time, they even used this magical device called a telephone."

  "You don't get it - ," she began.

  Another enormous crunching, crashing sound from Times Square, only a few hundred yards off, interrupted her.

  "No, you don't get it," I said, and turned to go. "I don't have time for this right now, Cat. I'm on the clock."

  "Wait," she said. "You can't!"

  I ground my teeth under the mask and paused, webline in hand. "Five words or less, why not?"

  Felicia put her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed, and said, holding up a finger with each word, "It is a trap." She considered and stuck out her thumb, too. "Dummy."

  "A trap?" I said. "Whose?"

  "That's just it," she said. "I'm not sure."

  "You just know it's a trap."

  "If you'll give me a second to explain - "

  Down the street, a police car tumbled across the * road, end over end, bouncing along like a child's toy, lights flashing. It knocked over a fire hydrant, sending a cascade of water into the air, then crashed through the front window of an adult bookstore.

  "You've got to admit," she said. "It isn't hard for someone to get a rise out of you if they want to draw you out. That's what Morlun did."