by Jim Butcher
Then I popped him in the face with a glob of webbing, goosed him, and ran.
But not far.
I doubled back to the far side of the hangars, nipped up to the roof, found a place where I'd be neither scented nor seen, and waited to see what happened.
The Rhino ripped the webbing off his face and bellowed in frustration. He spun around looking for me, and naturally did not spot me.
Mortia sat up, her hair mussed. She might be tough as nails, but when the Rhino tags you, you know it, and I don't care who you are. Where Mortia hit the thicket of support struts, they had been mashed into a definite indentation. It matched her outline exactly. Her cold eyes locked onto the Rhino. "Well?"
"He is gone," the Rhino replied. He let out a frustrated growl and then turned to Mortia to offer her a hand up. "My apologies, ma'am. It was not my intention to strike you."
The Rhino could be polite?
"I told you not to commit yourself against him until I signaled you,"
Mortia said, rising. "You disobeyed me."
"Da," he growled, frustration evident in his voice. "I lost my temper. He makes me angry."
"You allow him to do so," she said in that same cold tone. "You are a fool."
The Rhino looked like he couldn't decide whether to be angry or chagrined. "One day, he will not be lucky. One day, I will strike him, once, and it will all be over."
Mortia looked at him for a moment and then said, "No. I do not think that will happen."
The Rhino glanced at her, a question on his face.
"You have just become more liability than asset," she said, quite calmly.
And then, in a motion so fast even I barely saw it, her hand shot out and clenched over the Rhino's face, her nails somehow digging into his superhumanly durable flesh. There was a flash of sickly greenish light beneath her fingers.
The Rhino screamed. Not a war bellow, not a cry of rage, not a shout of challenge. He screamed like a man in utter agony, screamed without dignity or any kind of self-control, and his superhumanly powerful lungs made it loud, loud enough to shake the ground and the shipping containers around him. His body bent into an agonized arch, and if Mortia hadn't been holding him up with one arm, he would not have remained standing.
Instead, she whirled with him, eyes burning with the cold light one might associate with a hungry python, and drove his skull into the same debris she had struck. "Pathetic little vessel. "You are worthless, incapable of even simple destruction. Be grateful that your life will at last have some sort of purpose."
The Rhino screamed again. Weaker.
I watched it in pure horror.
She was killing him.
The Rhino was no friend. But he was a longterm enemy, and in some ways that's close to the same thing. I've butted heads with him, metaphorically speaking, since my earliest days in costume. And Felicia was right about one thing: The Rhino wasn't a killer. So much so, in fact, that one time, when the Sinister Somethingorother had me dead to rights, the Rhino had refused to participate in killing me with his fellow villains and had, in fact, argued against it. Sure, he hated my guts. Sure, he wanted to beat me down once and for all, prove that he was better than me, stronger than me.
But he wasn't a killer.
The Rhino was one of the bad guys, but there were worse bad guys out there.
Like the one murdering him in front of my eyes.
That unholy light poured up through her fingers, showing the outlines of oddly shaped bones that belonged to something else, something other, a creature who did not feel, did not fear, did not care. Who only hungered.
Aleksei was still a human being. There was no way I would leave a human being, any human being, no matter his sins, in the hands of a creature like that.
I couldn't make a fight of it; the wonder twins would be coming along any minute. So I took a cheap shot. I got to my feet, dove toward Mortia, and shot a webline at the wall of the hangar behind me. As the line stretched, it slowed me, and I stuck a second line to Mortia's rear. The first line snapped me back, and as the second line stretched, I gave it a sudden hard pull with all the power I could summon. The resulting combination of tension and strength ripped her away from the Rhino, sent her tumbling cravat-over-teakettle into the evening air, and flung her over the hangar and out of sight. She let out a wailing, alien howl of rage as she went, one that blended in with the roar of a jet lifting off.
I landed on the ground near the Rhino and said, "Right. Never say I've never done anything nice for you."
The Rhino didn't reply. Or move.
I hopped over and checked on him. He was alive, at least, and he let out a soft, agonized moan. There was blood on his face, trickles of it coming from the marks Mortia's nails had left there. The skin was horribly dry and cracked, flakes coming off as he moaned again, as if his face had been left out in the desert sun for several days.
He was barely conscious, even with his enhanced resilience. If I left him there, he was as good as dead.
"For crying out loud," I complained. "I haven't got enough to do?"
Mortia screamed again. It sounded like she was a lot farther away this time, maybe all the way to the edge of the inlet. A second later, I heard another brassy, weird-sounding call from the opposite direction. Thanis and Malos were closing in.
"No good deed goes unpunished," I muttered. Then I bent down and slung the Rhino over my shoulder. The extra eight hundred pounds was going to make web-slinging difficult, but I couldn't just leave the loser there to die.
So I got moving again, if more slowly, this time carrying an unconscious foe, avoiding the incoming Ancients, and making my way back to MJ and Felicia.
Chapter 16
When I tapped on the glass, Felicia opened the window of Aunt May's apartment. She looked at me. Then at the Rhino, wrapped in webbing from the shoulders down and strapped onto my back like a hyperthyroid papoose, the horn on his silly hat wobbling as his head bobbed in the relaxation of the senseless.
Then she looked at me again, blinked, and said, "You're kidding."
"Just open the window the rest of the way and stand back," I told her.
"I hope Aunt May is insured," she said, but she did it.
I climbed in with the Rhino on my back. I wasn't worried about hurting him if I banged him into something. I was more worried about the something. So I brought him in as carefully as I could and laid him out on the kitchen floor.
Aunt May's apartment is somewhat spartan, for an elderly lady. When she moved out of the house I grew up in, the one she had shared with Uncle Ben, she put many of her belongings in storage, rather than attempting to stuff them into her little apartment. She still has some of her furniture
- a table, chairs for it, her rocker, her couch. She replaced their double bed with a single one; there's a small guest room where she put the double, for when Mary Jane and I visit. She keeps a couple of bookshelves filled with everything from Popular Science (which I'm still half-sure she only subscribes to so that I'll have something to read when I visit) to romance novels to history books. She has a few small shelves, a few knickknacks, and that's about it.
Mary Jane came in and hugged me tight, then stared at the man on the floor. "Oh, God. What happened to his face?"
The Rhino looked bad. No worse than he had when I had picked him up, but no better, either.
"Mortia did it to him," I said. "She decided he wasn't useful anymore and started feeding on him."
Felicia regarded the Rhino with a cool, distant expression. "He's dead, then?"
"Not yet," I said.
"Are you insane?" Felicia asked quietly.
Mary Jane gave her a sharp glance.
"If Mortia did this to him," Felicia explained, "she touched him. If she touched him, she can follow him, find him, as long as he is alive. Which means - "
"She can find us here," Mary Jane breathed. She looked at me. "Peter?"
"No names," I said quietly. "He's out, but he'll be coming to anytime now. He
doesn't need to know any names."
"This is massively stupid," Felicia snapped. "You're going to get yourself killed. And me with you."
"She was going to kill him," I said. "What else could I have done?"
"You could have let her kill him," Felicia said.
I was glad that I had my mask on, because I wasn't sure I could have kept the anger I felt off of my face. "What happened to treating him like a human being? To his not being all that bad a person?"
"He might not be Charles Manson, but he chose which side to play for."
She folded her arms. "It isn't a pleasant thought, not for anyone, but he knows there are risks in this kind of life. You should have let her have him. If nothing else, then she might not have been quite so hot and bothered about coming after you."
"So I guess he's not a person after all," I said, and I didn't keep the bitterness out of my words. "Is that it?"
"It isn't about that," she said. "It's about you putting your life at risk. If I had to choose between the two of you, it would be you. Without a second thought. All I was saying is that I wanted you to show a little respect for him. I never wanted you to throw your life away trying to save him."
"He isn't worth that?"
"Worth you?"
Felicia asked, her voice tired. "No. You can't save everyone. This time around, you'll be lucky to save yourself. Don't throw your life away on some boy scout scruple you can't survive."
Mary Jane stood to one side of the kitchen, motionless, almost invisible, listening, her wide green eyes on me.
I forced myself to take a slow breath. Then I asked, "What do you think I should do?"
"Put him on a train. A plane. Throw him on a truck. Anything, but get him out of here until we can learn more about the Ancients. Once we get up close with these things, once they've touched us, we only have one chance to put them away. If you keep the Rhino here, they'll find us. Maybe in the next few minutes. Certainly soon. So you use him to lead them off and buy us more time."
"That would be the same thing as murdering him myself," I said quietly.
Felicia shook her head, frustration evident on her face. "You didn't ask him to come back to New York. You didn't force the Rhino to get involved with the Ancients. You didn't make them turn on him. He did that all on his own."
"Should that matter?" I asked. "If your places were reversed," she said,
"he'd do the same to you. In a heartbeat."
I looked down at the Rhino, maimed and helpless on Aunt May's kitchen floor.
What Felicia said was probably true. But...
maybe not, too. The Rhino could have done nothing while Doc Ock and his buddies finished me. He'd opposed them. They hadn't worked up to a fight or anything, but he'd said something, at least.
If our positions were reversed, would he have stood by and done nothing?
Would he have let me die to save his own life?
Probably.
But...
But in the end, that didn't matter. Regardless of what the Rhino might or might not have done, it did not change who I was. It did not change the choice I had to make. It did not change the responsibility I would bear in making that choice. It did not change what was right and what was wrong.
"Earlier," I said quietly, "you asked me the difference between people like the Rhino and people like me." I looked at the man, then slowly nodded. "Maybe it starts right here. I'm not letting them have him. I'm not letting them have anyone."
"Gosh, that's noble," Felicia said, her voice tart. "Maybe MJ can put it on your tombstone."
"Felicia," Mary Jane said, stepping up beside me, putting a hand on my shoulder. "You know he's right. If you could stop thinking about yourself for a minute, you'd realize that."
"Hey, Mrs. Cleaver. When I want your opinion, I'll read it in your entrails," Felicia snapped.
MJ's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"
"Enough."
I growled, loud and harsh enough that even MJ looked a little surprised.
I turned to Felicia and said, "This is what I'm doing."
The Black Cat stared at me for a long moment, and then demanded, something almost like a plea in her voice, "For him? Why?"
"It doesn't matter who he is. I won't leave him to Mortia."
She got in my face, quietly furious, spitting each word. "This. Is.
Suicide."
"Look, I get it that you're afraid - "
"Don't you patronize me," she hissed. "I'm not afraid of anything and you know it."
"I'm not saying you're a coward. There's no reason to feel ashamed of being afraid."
She jabbed a finger into my chest. "I am not afraid. I am also not going to commit suicide for some lowbrow thug too stupid to be careful who he works for."
I pulled the mask off and met her eyes. "I'm not asking you to do it with me," I said quietly.
Her eyes narrowed, searching mine. Then they became hooded and unreadable, her voice calm. "Good," she said. "Then I don't need to tell you no." She spun on a heel and walked quietly to the door. "I'll call you if I find out anything else. Good-bye."
She slammed the door on the way out.
I flinched a little at the sound of it.
My head pounded in a dull, steady rhythm. My brush with the Ancients had left my spider sense screaming, and the headache was, I began to understand, some kind of natural aftereffect of having the gain on my extra sense turned up to eleven, some sort of psychic hangover. My mouth felt fuzzy. More than anything, I wanted to crawl into a dark hole for a while and rest.
I've noticed that you rarely get a chance to do any dark-hole-crawling when you seem to need it most.
Mary Jane's fingers touched my chin and gently turned my face toward hers.
"Why did you provoke her?" she asked, her manner very serious.
"Provoke her?" I said. "I don't know what - "
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Don't try to deny it. I know you too well."
I felt my mouth turn up into a tired smile. "Well. Maybe a little."
She gave me a small, strained smile and slid her arms around me. "You're pushing her away. Trying to protect her."
I held MJ for a moment, closing my eyes. "Maybe."
"You're a good man," she whispered, her arms tightening. "Which makes me think that she must be right about how dangerous it will be to protect him."
"Maybe," I said.
"What's the real plan, then?"
"The Jolly Gray Giant here should wake up sometime soon. I hope. When he does, I'll tell him about the danger and send him on his way."
Mary Jane was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "How is that different from putting him on a train?"
"Because I'm not going to use him as a lure. I don't think Mortia will chase him down until she's concluded her business with me. He deserves to know what he's up against, and needs time to recover and prepare for it, in case I don't..."
I didn't finish the sentence. Mary Jane's arms tightened around me. We stood that way for a minute.
Then I said, "All right. The webs will hold him, but not for long. So I need to be here with him when he wakes up, so I can start talking right away. If he panics, he'll rip out of the webs in a few seconds, and God only knows what will get wrecked. So if he freaks, I'll pitch him out the window."
She nodded, biting her lip thoughtfully. Then she turned the kitchen lights out.
I frowned at her quizzically.
"I don't have a mask," she explained. "I'd rather not be someone he recognizes, generally speaking."
I gave her a small smile and put my mask back on, leaving my nose and mouth uncovered. It hit me that I was starving, so I opened Aunt May's fridge to rustle up something.
"How long will it take them to find us?" Mary Jane asked.
"Technically, they could have been right behind me. But you don't live for thousands of years by taking unnecessary risks. They'll come in carefully, quietly, checking out the area. With any luck, Sleeping Beauty here will wak
e up in the next few minutes. We'll let him go on his way, which ought to confuse them, at least. Then you and I will slip out and make them start looking for me all over again."
Mary Jane nodded slowly. "But you still don't know how to beat them."
"No."
"Do you know how to find out?"
"No."
"Then what good is running going to do?" she asked. "Ultimately, it's just a delaying tactic."
"So's exercise and controlling your cholesterol," I said, and it came out more frustrated than I meant it to. "I don't know how to deal with freaking magical, Spider-Man-eating monster people." I lost control of my voice completely and found myself shouting. "I'm scared, all right? I can't think! I
don't know!"
"But you'd risk drawing them here, to both of us, for this man?"
I was quiet for a moment, staring at the inside of the fridge. Then I said, "I couldn't just leave him."
Mary Jane's voice turned warmer. "No. You couldn't."
"If it comes to a fight, I'm not going to stay around here. I don't want them to grab you."
She was silent. I assumed she nodded.
"I'll try to lead them off somewhere where it will minimize the damage.
And..."
And what, Pete? Bounce around until you get tired, while they don't? Then miss a step. Then die.
"Here's a thought," Mary Jane said.
"Hmmm?"
"Maybe the doctor didn't mean those stones for the Ancients."
I frowned and blinked at her. "Huh?"
"Maybe he meant them for us." She shrugged. "I'm just saying. If it's some sort of timeless prison - maybe he meant us to use them to go there for shelter. Maybe he'd come and get us out."
"Maybe," I said quietly. "But... maybe he wouldn't. Or couldn't."
"Did he say that?"
I frowned. "He said that he believed I had what I needed to defeat this foe."
"Oh." She thought about it for a moment, and then said, "He's a difficult man to pin down."
I grunted. Aunt May's fridge was largely bare. Of course. She had been planning to leave for a week on Anna's prize cruise. She wouldn't have left anything in the fridge that would go bad. The freezer had TV