Mal was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating. But as he stared at the hand that took hold of the diamond, he also heard a voice, powerful and loud like it was coming from all around him.
“Just like the glassworks, right...partner?”
The hell? Glassworks? Was that Ludgate?
It was only when the hand pulled back into the mirror, taking the diamond with it, that Mal realized he wasn’t alone. Whipping his head to the right, he discovered that Danny had seen everything, but he clearly had the wrong idea about what it all meant if his clenched fists were any indication.
“Wait—” Mal raised his hands, but by the time he’d finished the gesture, he’d already been slammed into the wall. He couldn’t turn on the cold field with his wrists pinned.
“Partner?! Partner?!” Danny’s breath puffed hot against Mal’s face through the mask. “You were working with Ludgate the whole time?!”
“What? No, I—”
“I trusted you!” Danny cried, gripping him too tightly, painfully, as he shook him. “I can’t believe I fell for your act again. I knew you deserved it, I knew it…” he muttered as he seethed, shaking in his anger—and what did he even mean by that? “Playing all the angles, making a big show of it, while those other heists kept happening all around me, making me look like a fool.”
“Sparky, listen to—”
An eruption of noise in his ear made him cringe as Dom and Lucy remembered the comms and started yelling at him, demanding to know what was happening. Lucy asked if they should head back in, but Dom huffed and said, “Trust me, Evergreen, he don’t need shit if he’s with Spark Plug. Favorite pastime of his lately.”
“What?”
But even if Mal could have turned his mic back on to call for help, Danny ripped the device from his ear and the sound went dead.
“You really had me going, Cho,” he said darkly, close and menacing and not giving Mal any room to breathe. “Taking care of the people in your neighborhood. Agreeing not to hurt or kill anyone. Acting like you cared. But that’s all bullshit, isn’t it? In the end, you’re still the one conning me.”
Before Mal could answer, Danny slammed him into the wall harder, making him cough as the air pushed from his lungs.
“Was it fun laughing at me with Ludgate while I ran around in circles losing my mind trying to catch him?!”
“Danny—”
“Well I hope it was, because I might not be able to catch him,” Danny held Mal firmly with one gloved hand twisting into the collar of his duster, while the other pulled back into a fist that started to spark, “but you’re not going anywhere.”
Chapter 22
Pinned by Danny to the wall, amplifier currently useless, with a fist sparking with lightning speeding toward his face, Mal did the only thing he could to avoid the blow. He went limp.
Danny lost his grip from the unexpected lack of tension between them, and Mal dropped to the floor just as that powerful fist slammed into the wall above him with an impressive impact.
Mal shot his hands up and blasted Danny’s midsection with a burst of ice before he could react. He wanted to take a moment to get his bearings, to get his breath back, but Danny wasn’t listening, wasn’t thinking, and Zeus on the rampage was more dangerous than anything Mal had ever faced.
Scrambling to his feet, he flipped on the switch for the cold field, scanning the area in front of him to see where Danny had landed.
Nothing. He’d already gone invisible. Shit.
Mal’s goggles revealed the ring of the cold field’s radius. Knowing Danny was being smart, biding his time, he had no choice but to expand the field outward. It wouldn’t hurt Danny, he didn’t want to hurt Danny—even if Danny was dead set on hurting him—but he had to slow him down.
“Zeus!” Mal called, trying to remember that there could be ears and eyes everywhere with what Ludgate had just pulled; he couldn’t risk using Danny’s name again. “Get your head on straight! I’m not working with Ludgate!” He scanned the floor. Where was his earpiece?
“Liar!” Danny called back, his voice too loud and shrill for Mal to discern its origin. “All you know how to do is lie! He’s just another one of your Titans!”
A shimmer in the air caught Mal’s attention as frost built on what appeared to be nothing—the suit! Mal blasted Danny again, knocking back the frost that had been suspended midair. Quickly, he scanned beneath his feet again. If he could just find his earpiece, call Dom and Lucy back…
No. They wouldn’t understand. What he needed was to get through to Danny, throw him off his game somehow to snap him out of his rage.
“What the hell…?” Danny hissed from the direction Mal had struck him, but a faint blast wasn’t enough to stick on a suit like that, and the frost that had formed before had already melted. “I knew there was something about that cuff. New amplifier, huh?” he said, at most three meters away at the edge of the cold field, invisible but close. “Smart.”
“Zeus, listen to me. I am not working with Ludgate.” Moving slowly away from the wall toward the center of the room, Mal faced the direction he believed his nemesis to be and expanded the radius of the cold field further, looking for signs of forming ice.
Things had been going so well, better than he would have ever dreamed of between him and Danny in the midst of a heist. Everything Mal had done to pull this job off with immaculate precision had worked in his favor, and yet Danny had still come running to save the day. Mal could have fought back when he first saw him, but he’d been curious, and Danny hadn’t disappointed. Now, he just needed to get through to Danny, and if he couldn’t, the police would be a better plan B than calling the Titans to return.
Mal didn’t need his comms. He needed to find one of the pressure plates.
“Come on, Sparky, you think I’d trade the offer you gave me for splitting the loot with that maniac? Never even met—”
A bolt of lightning arched toward him, and Mal sidestepped just in time, causing it to shatter a vase, one of the few displays not encased in glass, into a dozen tiny pieces. By the time he whipped forward again, the frost outline of a figure running toward him was already too close. Mal raised his arms to fire off another blast of ice, but Danny had him. Strong, invisible hands gripped his shoulders and threw him across the room into the wall.
With an oomph, Mal’s ribs and the left side of his cheekbone exploded in pain as the breath knocked from his lungs a second time. He told himself to just stay conscious, stay conscious, before he whirled around and blasted Danny to the floor once more.
“Listen, damn it!”
“Shut up!” Danny screamed as the ghostly form of him outlined in silvery blue pushed up to his feet and continued to pursue Mal across the space between them, but slower now, sluggish the longer he remained in the cold field.
Upping its range again, Mal prepared to blast Danny as many times as it took. Finally, he spotted a pressure sensor, just one foot to his right. He inched toward it, keeping one hand trained on Danny, and pushed his foot down on it firmly. “Zeus—”
“You’re a l-l-liar!” Danny shivered inside the cold field’s power. “A liar! I k-kept telling myself what a m-manipulative b-b-bastard you are…but you had me s-so certain I was wrong…that m-maybe you were d-different.”
“Sparky…” Mal held himself against the wall as Danny drew closer. He was like some ice demon out of a nightmare, empty space painted in frost, and he wasn’t stopping. Mal had to blast him again. He had to.
“You’re not different,” Danny spat. “You’re just like your father.”
The eruption of his powers almost surprised Mal, he was so startled by his own snarl. But as Danny flew away from him, this time he didn’t feel bad about it.
Covered in ice and still caught within the range of the cold field, it was easy to see where Danny landed beside one of the display cases. Mal had i
ncreased the field nearly enough to encompass the entire room. Danny tried to get up, but he moved even slower than a normal person now and lifted to his feet only to crumble to his knees.
Mal stalked toward him. He couldn’t see Danny’s face, just the frost-etched outline of the eyes on the mask, but he could feel the glare, the fury radiating out from Danny like palpable heat struggling to melt the ice. The suit was doing its job to keep Danny protected, removing the ice almost as quickly as it formed, but the cold field was too strong.
Danny looked up at Mal from his prone position and sparked with lightning all around his silhouetted form. When Mal got close, Danny sent out an attack he couldn’t avoid. It jolted through Mal, hurting worse than he remembered as electricity surged down into his limbs. But Danny was too weak from the cold. His sparks were already dwindling.
Shivering, Danny prepared for Mal to prove him right and blast him again, attack, gloat—like he’d done many times in the past. But Mal crouched in front of Danny and turned the cold field off.
He knew it was a risk, a stupid risk he never would have taken a month ago, just to appease some damn bleeding heart hero. He was putting too much faith in someone else, leaving himself vulnerable and open to be hurt, something he’d promised he would never, ever do.
But Danny didn’t mean this. Danny was better than this. And Malcolm Cho did not give up on something he wanted just because the plan went to shit. He adjusted. Planned again. Did things better the next time around. And always, always got his mark.
He pulled the goggles from his eyes. “You could stand to have a little more evidence, Sparky, before you assume the worst. But then…I never gave you any reason to think I wouldn’t betray you again, did I? Can’t blame you for coming to what seemed the logical conclusion. So let me say it again.”
Leaning forward, he looked Danny in the eyes, even as the ice melted faster from the suit’s defenses and Danny’s own power, leaving less and less for Mal to see. He’d be at Danny’s mercy the second he was no longer visible.
“I am not working with Ludgate. If you ever catch me in the act, I’ll come clean. No fun playing out a con you’ve already lost, trust me. I had nothing to do with the glassworks or Virgil Labs. Why would Ludgate even need me? Why would I need him? I had the diamond just fine on my own, and he reached through a god damn mirror to get it. He could have done that any…time…” Mal tilted his head as the truth of those words dawned on him.
Ludgate didn’t need him. So why had he waited until the very moment Mal was about to claim the diamond to take it for himself? Something was rotten about this whole ordeal…
As the ice finished receding from Danny’s suit, Mal stared at the empty space left behind, waiting to see how his gamble would play out. Tension wracked his body in anticipation of a blow or another bolt of lightning, but none came. The image before him shifted, and suddenly there was Danny in the black suit, visible and panting. He dropped to the side onto his hip.
“He could have done that any time…” Danny repeated. “He wanted me to see, wanted me to think…” Jerking up straighter, he made Mal flinch despite himself. “He used a mirror! Mirrors. Reflections. That’s how he’s been doing it! I thought he was phasing through matter or teleporting, but he was using mirrors and glass to travel through reflections!” Danny’s voice filled with that energy Mal so loved about him. “So if he could have taken the diamond at any time, why wait, unless…”
“Unless he wanted us to fight,” Mal finished Danny’s thought. “Which means he knows…”
“Everything about us.”
They stared at each other as the truth sunk in, because reflections were everywhere and they hadn’t seen Ludgate until he wanted them to, which meant he could have been anywhere at any time, watching them, learning about them.
Mal slid his goggles back into place. Slowly, he and Danny rose to their feet.
“Well damn,” that same powerful voice echoed around them, like it was coming from every shimmering surface in the room, “you two are just no fun at all.”
The room erupted in a flicker of color and light, as every faint reflection of themselves in the mirrors and translucent surfaces around them turned to look at them like entities of their own. Dozens, hundreds of themselves stared their way in eerie unison.
Keeping the many reflections in their sights, Mal and Danny instinctively moved back to back. “If I turn on the cold field, you’re protected as long as you stay close to me,” Mal spoke beneath his breath. He could feel the heat from Danny’s body behind him.
“Wait. If we can find the real him, I can lightning jump to grab him,” Danny muttered back. But which reflection was the real one? Were any of them something they could catch?
“I’ll admit,” the sound came out of the mouths of their reflections—or at least out of Mal’s since Danny wore a mask—only…only it wasn’t just Ludgate’s voice but theirs too, “it was a surprise to find out that the local superhero and the city’s most notorious criminal are engaged in an illicit affair. But it does make for a juicier story.”
The images rippled, changed, and suddenly Mal was looking at himself and Danny from a few minutes ago, moving footage of them embracing, kissing, and then of Danny lightning jumping away as only Zeus could.
“It’s a shame you’re not wearing your signature suit, Zeus, but I think the people will see the truth with the right evidence. Imagine the headline? ZEUS AND PROMETHEUS SEX SCANDAL LEADS NEW SUPERVILLAIN TO GLORY.”
“We disabled the cameras,” Mal whispered as he and Danny pivoted, shoulder blades nearly touching, watching the reflections for any signs that might tell them how to attack. “He must have turned them back on.”
“Or he can capture images in reflections.”
“Now, now, no fair keeping secrets,” Ludgate said as the puppet images of Mal and Danny returned. “You’ll find it’s hard to keep secrets from me anyway.” All at once, the images turned into copies of Danny alone. “Nice name, Zeus. Danny, is it?”
Shit. Careful as Mal had been after he realized Ludgate could be listening, it was already too late.
“You’re harder to track, of course, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the detective on my case is Daniel Grant, do you? Operating right under the OCPD’s nose as a vigilante. Of course they turn a blind eye to Zeus’s activities, but do you think they still will once they learn your real identity? And who you’ve been screwing?”
Mal felt a gust of air behind him as Danny lightning jumped into action. “Wait!”
One of the reflections shattered as Danny appeared in front of it and punched it with everything he had. The pressure sensors were silent, but not the cases. Alarms blared to life, and a suit of armor inside the destroyed case toppled over and clanged to the floor.
Ludgate’s voice returned as a sinister laugh, still multiplied by the reflections but now his voice only, as his own image finally replaced Danny’s.
He had a costume. A silver cowl covered his face with a black outline for eyes, not that his identity was any secret, and black and purple accents framed a mostly silver bodysuit with a black and silver belt. He was a showman, like Mal. He wanted the notoriety. He wanted to be introduced to Olympus City with a bang.
Danny was panting again, shaking, when Mal reached out to pull him away from any reflective surfaces. “Keep it together,” Mal hissed but squeezed Danny’s arm in support, waiting for him to look at him before he nodded. Danny nodded back.
“The police more than suspect me,” Ludgate said, “but they can’t find me, and they never will. This night will seal my place as the city’s ultimate threat.” His many reflected images spread their arms wide, giving the impression that Mal and Danny were surrounded. “You see, Zeus, I owe you, and that headline will look even better next to a photo of bodies.”
Owe him? Mal turned that over in his mind, but he didn’t get the time to dwell
because all at once the reflections vanished.
Blinking light spots from his eyes after Ludgate’s display, he pressed his back to Danny’s as they turned. The room was dark again. Only the alarms and the faint sound of police sirens could be heard. But Mal knew how to gauge the distance of sirens. Even if the cops could be of any help to them, they wouldn’t get there in time.
“Danny, get ready to jump. You can—”
“No, we can catch him.”
“Danny.” Mal risked a glare over his shoulder, but Danny wouldn’t look at him.
“There!” Danny called and lightning jumped toward another case.
“Stop!” Mal saw an image of Ludgate within, but it ran away when Danny reached it, like an awful game of tag. Danny only just barely stopped himself from slamming into the glass. When he whirled around, Mal realized what was about to happen seconds before it did. “Danny—”
An arm reached out of the glass behind Danny and hooked around his throat, trapping him against it in a tight choke hold. Mal didn’t hesitate; he blasted the arm with ice, even if some of it ricocheted onto Danny.
“Ah!” Ludgate’s voice cried out as his arm recoiled.
As soon as Danny lightning jumped back to Mal’s side, he made a point of grabbing the idiot by the back of his neck. “Stop fighting blind,” Mal warned. “Be smarter. Or I’ll blast you again myself. Now get us out of here!”
“And leave him to show up again—when? Where?” Danny shot back, shoving Mal’s arm aside. “The next time we’re with everyone we know? Everyone we care about? We have no idea the extent of his powers. Right now it’s just you and me. And we can end this.”
“End this?” Danny sounded like he was ready to—
“More lovers’ quarrelling?” Ludgate called to them, prompting Mal to spin Danny around and position them back to back again. “Don’t make this too easy on me now.”
“First sense you’ve made all night!” Mal yelled, then spoke hushed to Danny, “You don’t wanna run, fine, but if you got any bright ideas, now’s the time.”
Lovesick Gods Page 30