“That trick with your amplifier,” Danny whispered.
“The cold field?”
“Turn it on. He’ll reach for us again, he’ll have to. When he does, it’ll slow him down.”
“And then what?”
“I’ll turn on the suit to go invisible and jump over to grab him. You turn the field off before it affects me.”
It wasn’t perfect, and their timing had to be exact, but Mal wasn’t coming up with any better ideas. Flipping on the switch for the cold field, he expanded it to fill the room. “It’s up. Keep my pace,” he said, turning them one step at a time, shoulders touching again, like some morbid, backwards dance, “and warn me before you do anything stupid.”
“Okay. Let’s give him some bait. Ludgate!” Danny reached a hand back to place on Mal’s hip, startling him. He tugged Mal backward, pivoting but also bringing them closer to one of the panes of glass. “I thought you said something about a name when we first met! You have many names, as it turns out, right…Cassius? So who are you, huh? I hope your villain title is better than…Reflector or…Fun House!”
Mal held back a snort; the kid really needed to work on his banter sometimes.
“Oh, you’ll remember my true name, Zeus. For as long as you have left to live.” Ludgate’s voice was everywhere again, but definitely loudest coming from the glass in front of Danny. “My name…is Hades.”
“Now!” Danny cried just as Ludgate yelped in surprise at encountering the cold field.
Dropping the field, Mal spun, only to see Ludgate’s frost-covered wrist struggling to pull back into the glass against an invisible force. Danny should be stronger than that, he was stronger than almost anyone Mal had ever met, but not in whatever world Ludgate controlled inside the reflections. Mal couldn’t blast him; if he did, Ludgate would just retreat again.
Ludgate’s hand remained silver, clearly his own, but the rest of him shifted until the image in the glass was Danny. The mirror copy used its free hand to pull the mask from its face, and it was Danny’s face, plain as day. But the expression was wrong, the sneer there, the fury. Then its eyes sparked with familiar lightning, only it wasn’t yellow.
It was black.
Mal felt Danny tumble into him, knocking them both to the floor as Ludgate’s arm snapped back inside the mirror. Hurrying to right himself, Mal felt around for Danny’s invisible form to get him to his feet as well. But as soon as he had his footing, he saw the reflection of Danny in the glass vanish—and felt a hand grip his ankle.
The hand yanked, and Mal’s foot flew out from under him. This time when he fell, he slammed his head into the side of one of the cases. His cuff unlatched as it struck the floor and went flying off of his wrist. Somehow the switch for the cold field was flipped on, because the chill was instant and far too numbing, even with Mal’s natural resistance.
He pushed up, blinking the haze from his vision, but he couldn’t see properly, could barely move, as he struggled to focus on where his amplifier lay on the floor.
Only distantly did he notice another set of Ludgate’s hands reach out of a mirror near the first case Danny had shattered and pick up a shard. The hands disappeared back inside as Mal hurried forward to reach his cuff.
Sitting where he’d tumbled to the floor, Danny was visible again, staring at his hands, not moving.
“Danny!”
They were both already covered in frost, and Danny was too close to another pane of glass. The shard reached out of it in Ludgate’s grasp. He hissed as the cold field affected him too, but he was still close enough to stab Danny.
Reaching for his cuff, soothed by the instant feeling of warmth within the eye of the field, Mal rolled onto his back. He simultaneously replaced the amplifier on his wrist and turned the cold field off while blasting Ludgate with his powers, not caring that he was still seeing double.
He missed Ludgate’s arm but hit the pane of glass—it shattered. Mal wanted to see the bastard’s arm drop to the floor, severed by the disconnection, but he pulled it back just in time.
“Danny!” Mal hurried to Danny’s side and shook him. The kid’s face, even covered in the mask, still somehow looked stricken. “He’s trying to mess with us and he’s succeeding. Stay with me.” He held the back of Danny’s neck, gentle now instead of harsh, and forced his doubled vision to focus. There wasn’t time for a concussion.
“Zeus!” Ludgate roared around them.
Danny shuddered, but after a moment of erratic nodding, he grabbed Mal by the arms. “We have to get him outside the reflections.”
“Agreed. How?”
“Destroy the mirrors,” Danny said, then more excitedly, gripping Mal’s arms tighter, “Destroy the glass, everything! Leave him no place to hide!”
As Mal lurched to his feet and blasted every shimmering surface in his view, Danny lightning jumped around the room, punching and running through cases like a stampeding animal. In moments the room was in shambles. They both panted when it was over, but Danny in particular looked exhausted after so many jumps.
“Do you think size matters?” He gestured at the small pieces of glass all around them.
Mal huffed. “He can’t reach through something that small, even if he can still watch us.” He realized then that if they’d left one mirror whole, it might have given them the chance to force Ludgate out of it, but this was better. They needed time to regroup.
And then they heard laughter.
ß
I’m not like him, I’m not like him, I’m not like—
Ludgate’s laughter chilled Danny to the bone, worse than being caught in Cho’s cold field. He tried to shake off the image from the mirror, but those black eyes had hit too close to home. Especially after he’d tumbled into madness so easily again, attacking Cho without proof other than hearsay. Because it made him angry. Because he was angry.
That was never an excuse.
Now he felt numb and hollowed out again, and he just wanted it to go away so he wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.
“Danny…” Cho’s voice cut through Ludgate’s laughter, not by volume, but by the sheer terror in his tone. Cho never sounded like that.
Looking up, Danny saw that Cho had backed away a step, his face pale, arms hanging useless at his sides. But even through the goggles, Danny could see how wide Cho’s eyes had become as he stared at Danny—at Danny’s suit. As soon as Danny looked down at himself, he saw why.
The tiny mirrors that covered him from head to toe were twinkling between light and darkness, like they were blinking. Blinking, because each and every one of them held the image of an eye.
Danny surged back, but he couldn’t escape his own suit. Mirrors. He was covered in mirrors. His instincts were to tear the suit off of him, but in that moment, he realized he couldn’t move.
“I take it back, Zeus,” Ludgate’s voice emanated from the suit itself, from every individual reflector. “This is so much better than your normal suit.”
“Ah!” Danny cried out as his arms and legs locked into place, overextended, painful.
His head remained frozen looking downward long enough to see the eyes in the suit blink away to reveal a mosaic of Ludgate’s body as Danny’s body, and then the eyes were back. Danny’s head snapped upright and he caught the panicked look on Cho’s face.
“No!” Danny called when Cho rushed at the suit with a snarl. But he wasn’t fast enough, not when Ludgate had control of Danny’s body.
A lightning fast crack filled the room as Danny backhanded Cho the second he got close, striking the side of his face so hard, he flew several feet before he landed amidst the carnage of shattered glass. Danny stared in horror, but though his own reaction was to stay still, his body pitched forward of its own accord.
Shaking his head, Cho pushed up on trembling arms. He’d been struck too many times, hurt too many times to react fas
t enough. He struggled to find his footing in the glass.
“Get up!” Danny cried, but he was already reaching for the thief.
“Here, let me help you,” Ludgate said from out of a thousand tiny mirrors, all linked together like a network of reflections that left Danny as little more than a doll.
The hands that seized Cho from behind and hefted him to his feet were far from gentle. They pulled Cho back against Danny’s body, wrapped tight around his middle, and squeezed with an impossible strength.
“Da—!” Cho choked and gasped as his ribs were crushed.
“Cho!” Danny could feel the tear tracks on his cheeks. “Mal…please. I can’t stop. I can’t stop!”
“Danny…” Cho croaked. “We need…your team.”
“I can’t reach my comms!”
“Where…are they?”
“Right eye, on the side, but I can’t…I can’t…”
“Da…” The gurgle that came from Cho was awful, the feeling of his ribs bowing inward, so fragile within Danny’s grasp, just like when he’d almost broken that man’s arms. Cho couldn’t focus enough to use his powers. He couldn’t breathe, and in a moment, his ribs would snap.
Danny was killing him—killing him and he couldn’t stop.
With a slowly building howl, Danny wrenched his arms apart, feeling like he was breaking them in the process. Cho heaved in breaths and nearly fell to his knees, but before he stumbled, he flailed an arm back and gripped the edge of Danny’s shoulder. Using Danny for leverage, he pulled himself around and slapped his hand against the eye of Danny’s mask.
“Andre!” Danny screamed, praying his friend was still there.
The longest fifteen seconds of Danny’s life passed as Cho collapsed to his knees still sucking in air and Danny fought against Ludgate’s control over the suit.
“Dude, ow,” Andre came over the line. “I think you blasted out my eardrums—”
“The suit! Ludgate’s controlling the suit!”
“Wait, what?”
Danny had seconds to explain to Andre and no idea what to ask for, what could possibly be done to stop him from hurting Cho further. He felt his control over the suit slipping as he reached for Cho again.
“You’re strong, Zeus, but not as strong as me, in my world.”
“Who the hell is that?!” Andre shouted.
“The reflectors! He’s in the mirrors! Ludgate, please…” Danny begged, his hands shaking as he tried to hold back from reaching Cho, who didn’t have the strength left to get away. “Please don’t make me hurt him…”
“Shit, shit,” Andre chanted over the comms. “Lynn!”
“Already told you, Zeus,” Ludgate said, unified into a single resonant voice. “It’s Hades.”
Danny’s fingers closed around Cho’s throat.
“What can we do?!” Lynn cried.
“On...” Cho choked as Danny lifted him until his feet dangled above the floor. He tried to claw at Danny’s fingers to no avail. “Turn…it…”
Suddenly, it clicked.
“Turn on the suit!” Danny yelled. Andre had a master switch at the morgue. Invisible, there would be no mirrors, no way for Ludgate to control him.
Danny could see Cho’s eyes through his goggles, so blue, looking at him even as he fought for air and consciousness like he believed with every fiber in him that Danny could save him.
“Andre!”
“I got it!”
The tension fled Danny’s body all at once as he turned invisible and control returned. Collapsing from the relief, he barely kept from dropping Cho to the floor but managed a controlled catch as he fell to his knees.
“It worked…it worked,” Danny huffed, practically sobbing down at Cho, who blinked dazedly and coughed for breath. Cho couldn’t see him, but Danny held him close so he’d know he was there. “I got you, Mal…I got you.”
“Mal?” Lynn came over the comms again. “Danny, what is going on?”
“Uhh,” Andre broke in, “more importantly, are you okay? And where’s…did he say Hades? I hate when they name themselves…”
“He’s…he’s still here somewhere, in the reflections,” Danny tried to explain now that he had a moment to breathe. “He can travel through reflections. Through mirrors.”
“He can travel through mirrors?” Andre repeated. “That is every nightmare I have ever had.”
Danny could only laugh. He was hysterical and crying, so laughter seemed the next logical addition. “I’m getting Cho out of here. Tell the police not to enter the museum. Not yet. I don’t know what Ludgate might do.”
“Zeus!” Ludgate’s voice rose as if on cue from the many shards littering the ground, too small for him to reach through, though an array of eyes blinked at them. “I owe you, you hear me?! Do you really think you can run from your reflection?!”
Danny ignored him. He couldn’t risk another encounter, not until they had a plan.
When Danny gathered Cho close, only the tension in his jaw betrayed his wariness of being whisked off by an invisible man.
“Zeuuuuus!”
Not caring where he was jumping to, Danny focused on getting as far away as possible. He was so overly exerted that all he managed was a ten-block distance, but it was enough. Carefully, he leaned Cho against the wall of the alley, a refuge without any reflective surfaces.
“Danny, if he can control the suit when it’s off, you have to get rid of it,” Lynn said.
“I know. I’m a safe distance now. I won’t be able to talk to you, but I’ll check in when I can.”
“We can track the suit’s location,” Andre said. “We’ll pick you up.”
“No,” Cho shook his head as he overheard, still breathing deeply. He looked battered and beaten, with a split lip from Danny’s backhand and a cut on his head from one of his many falls. The bruises would be impressive come morning.
But he was right. Danny couldn’t risk anyone else until they were sure Ludgate couldn’t reach them.
“No. Don’t come unless I call for you.”
“Danny,” Andre and Lynn spoke together.
“I’ll call. I promise.” Danny’s arms burned with pain from fighting off Ludgate, but the soreness was slowly fading, slowly healing like it always did. Not for the first time, he wished he could offer his healing to someone else. He lightly touched Cho’s cheek, and even though he was invisible, Cho leaned into him.
Andre and Lynn were still yelling for Danny to wait, please wait for them, they’d come get him, as he tore off the suit, leaving him standing quite visible in front of Cho in just his snug black underwear.
Cho tried to smirk at him, but he started to sink down the wall, and Danny dashed forward to catch him. Easing Cho to the ground, he crouched in front of him with his hands gently holding the other man, then removed his goggles for him and brushed his now bare hand along Cho’s cheek.
“Mal…” Danny scooted closer, would have climbed into Cho’s lap if he could. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
“Wasn’t you,” Cho said, shivering but conscious.
“This one was.” Danny brushed a thumb over the scuff on Cho’s cheekbone from when he’d first thrown him into the wall. “I wanted to hurt you. I would have caused all of this without Ludgate if you hadn’t knocked some sense into me.”
“But I did…and you listened.” Smiling, Cho reached for Danny’s face in turn. “It’s okay—”
“It is not okay,” Danny bit out louder than he intended. Even as fresh tears slid down his cheeks, he held Cho’s hand to his face. “It’s never okay anymore. Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Danny…hey.” Cho tugged him closer—closer—until Danny was in his lap, snuggled into the open duster. “Shh…”
Sniffling as he buried his head in Cho’s chest, Danny hugged him, but not too tightly, s
ince he knew the man’s ribs were sore. “I didn’t mean any of it. Sometimes I say these things and I can’t stop myself, but that’s not an excuse. I should be stronger than this. I have to be stronger than this…”
“Calm down, Sparky. You think you’re the only person who’s ever experienced that? You are stronger. You are better. You’re not like me.”
The words startled Danny, tore at him, because Cho didn’t know. He had no idea about the darkness inside of Danny. “You’re...” he tried to say…something, but when the right words wouldn’t come, he pulled back to look at Cho—at his bruised and bloody face, at his kind eyes that he let so few people see. “You are nothing like your father,” Danny said, and he’d say it a million times more if it always smoothed the lines from Cho’s face and made his armor and masks drop away. “Am I?”
“What?” The lines returned with a vengeance as Cho frowned and some of his usually hard exterior cracked into something else. “No, Danny. Never.”
Cho kissed him, and for a moment, despite the tears on Danny’s face and the grief in his throat, there was nothing he wanted more than Cho’s lips.
But Cho hissed and pulled back. His lip was sore and bleeding. Because of Danny.
Feeling low and nauseous about it all, Danny still couldn’t help but snuggle in against Cho’s warmth—strangely warm, for an Ice Elemental. The dark night around them was filled with sounds from the city, but in their alley it was comfortingly still and quiet.
“I’m sorry, I can move, I just… I should get up. You need medical attention.”
“I’ll be fine.” Cho held Danny closer along the small of his back. “Might throw up on you if you squeeze too tightly though.”
Choking on distressed laughter, Danny scooted out of Cho’s lap. The other man’s lazy smile was tired, dazed. “You have a concussion. I should get you to Lynn—”
“No,” Cho shook his head, “too dangerous if Ludgate tracks us. We need to wait. Besides, I have my own doctor if I need one.”
“You do?”
“Nurse. But he’ll do in a pinch. It just looks bad, Sparky. Nothing some rest and ibuprofen won’t cure.”
Lovesick Gods Page 31