by Joe Ducie
‘What do we do now?’ Irene asked.
Drake clenched his fist and glared down the corridor. He put his crystal hand on the skull of the T-Rex and knocked it aside. ‘Brand is down there. He hurt you. He killed me. I’m going to –’
Half a dozen fast-moving creatures, shining in the museum light, shrieked around the corner of the corridor, following in the wake of the T-Rex. They varied in height, from three feet to five, sleek with amber, and even at a distance Drake could see razor-sharp claws attached to each arm and leg.
‘Raptors,’ Irene said. ‘Oh hell, I’ve seen this movie before.’
The raptors – resurrected by Brand, had to be – caught sight of Drake and shrieked again. The six dinosaurs moved as a pack, leaping over the remains of the T-Rex, and snapped their jaws at him.
Drake contemplated another beam of fire and energy, thought about hitting six moving targets and what would happen if he missed, thought about running, and was still thinking when Irene made the decision for him. She grabbed his hand and together they turned to flee.
Irene made it halfway across the foyer, Drake’s hand in hers, before she stepped on a piece of shattered glass. She’d cast aside her heels in order to run, so the glass cut deep into her foot.
Irene screamed and stumbled.
His breath coming in hard gasps, Drake didn’t let her fall. He swept her up with his hard, dark crystal limb and Irene threw her arms around his neck. Warm blood dripped down the sole of her foot and left large drops along the marble floors, mixing with spilt champagne. Looking over Drake’s shoulder, she saw the raptors burst into the foyer in two groups of three. A hunting pack.
‘Faster!’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Will, faster!’
Drake grunted and put on a burst of speed. To Irene he smelt of flame and sweat and something charged – like ozone in the air during a thunderstorm. He kicked open the side door leading out onto the street without losing much speed. The night air was cool against Irene’s flushed skin. The panicked crowds had spilled out onto the steps of the museum. People fled in all directions, across the road into the park and down Central Park West, disappearing into the city.
‘Noemi and Takeo are in that silver car over there,’ Drake said quickly. ‘Near the taxi line.’ He dropped Irene on the steps. ‘The dinosaurs are after me, so I’m ditching you here. Pretty dud first date, huh?’ He grinned, turned on his heel, and jumped down the steps three at a time.
‘Will!’ Irene called, her heart hammering and her eyes wide. You can’t just leave!
The raptors burst through the museum doors, shrieking and shattering glass, and were met with renewed screams from the crowd.
Irene rolled along the stone steps, bruising her ribs, as the partygoers were set upon by the extinct creatures. An older man in a tuxedo, wearing an Alliance earpiece, fell under the assault of one of the raptors. A gun clattered from the holster at his waist – he was an Alliance guard. The beast snapped its amber jaw around the man’s neck and bit down – hard. His screams stopped abruptly.
Most of the remaining crowd ran into the road, between parked cars, taxis and buses. Irene had lost Drake somewhere in the chaos – but caught sight of him again on the other side of the street. He met her eyes briefly and held his crystal arm towards the sky. Four balls of white light erupted from his hand, flares in the dark, and exploded twenty metres above the road like silver fireworks. As one, as if they were dogs and Drake had blown a whistle only they could hear, the raptors left the crowd alone and moved towards him.
He grinned again – idiot! – and leapt the wall into Central Park.
Scraping across cars and the sidewalk, pushing people to the ground, the raptors gave chase and bounded over the wall and into the park after Drake. Their shrieks were diluted by the noise of the crowd, but an intense light flashed between and silhouetted the trees – Drake was fighting.
He was right … they are just after him.
One of the raptors exploded as it jumped over the wall into the park, struck by a bolt of blue energy. The fossil lost all vestiges of life and a rain of smouldering pieces struck the sidewalk.
‘Nice shot, Will.’ Irene pulled a thick piece of glass from her right foot and held a hand to the wound. The bullet to the arm had been painful – an inch or so to the left and it would have hit her chest – but easy to heal in half a minute. At this point, after months on the Rig and mending Drake every five minutes, fixing her foot was the work of five seconds.
She rose to her feet on shaky legs, sick to her stomach, and intended to give chase after Drake – to help him, if she could. A desperate, quiet sob behind her made her pause and turn. Hunched just against the wall of the museum, tears running in little rivers down her face and clutching a small, sparkly handbag with a teddy bear poking out of the top as if her life depended on it, was Amy Whitmore.
The girl’s terrified eyes latched onto Irene and she held her arms out. ‘It ate Joshie!’ she said, and cast a quick look at the man who had died on the steps. ‘He was my friend.’
Irene bit her lip, heard a distant explosion from the park, and then swept Amy into her arms.
‘That silly boy can look after himself,’ she said kindly, before her voice – her nerve – broke. ‘Us girls need to stick together. Come on, Amy, let’s get out of here.’
Another bright idea, Will, Drake thought, throwing himself down a grassy embankment and rolling onto a stone path with a grunt. He spun onto his back and fired a burst of energy into the air, catching one of the raptors just before it could bury its claws in his chest. The creature exploded into a hundred pieces, some of which grazed his cheeks and exposed skin, slicing small, sharp cuts.
Two down … four to go.
The shards of old fossil stung but weren’t the worst of his concerns at the moment, not by a long shot. Drake stood quickly, stumbled back into a couple of people clutching each other, and offered them a grin and a wink. ‘Stroll in the park,’ he breathed. ‘Raptors, eh? Run that way.’
He ran the other way, his lungs gasping for air, away from the couple. He wasn’t worried so much about the raptors attacking anyone else – they had his crystal scent now – but more so having room to use his power to destroy them. One of the amber-coated creatures appeared through the trees off to his left. Drake raised his arm and the familiar, alien light spiralled down his limb and escaped from his hand. A beam of energy cut the raptor in half – as well as the tree behind it, like a hot knife through butter. The old elm fell to the ground in blue flames.
That was a nice tree, Drake thought. Three down. Three to –
Something that was either a raptor or a freight train slammed into his side and sent Drake flying through the air. He spun and his crystal arm exploded with light, out of control, and propelled him across the park. Lashings of power struck the stone path and the grass, leaving bands of wicked flame in his wake, as if the earth had been struck with a fiery nine-tailed whip. He landed on his feet twenty metres away and kept running – for all of about three steps before the momentum caught up with his legs and he fell forward onto the hard ground.
With another grunt Drake stood, bruised and bleeding. He’d landed on a cobblestoned bridge built over a pool of dark water. Lanterns of soft orange light lined the bridge and the banks of the pool. But he didn’t have long to admire his new surroundings. The raptors had followed his mad, spinning arc through the air and, one in the front and two following the leader, made for the bridge with vicious shrieks. He had about five seconds.
Drake licked his lips and clapped his hands together. His real palm stung against his crystal hand and bounced away as if made of elastic. Between his hands spun a furious sphere of white light, crackling with blue bolts of energy. The sphere grew swiftly, to about the size of a basketball, and just as the raptors reached the bridge Drake pulled his hands away and the basketball exploded with raw heat and pure lightning. He dived over the edge of the bridge, caught the edge of the explosion, which set his clothes and awesom
e hat on fire, and hit the water as hard as if it were a brick wall.
The pool wasn’t too deep, certainly not as deep as the Arctic Ocean had been as it flooded the hold of the Titan. Drake struck the bottom and all the air was forced from his lungs. He floated for a handful of seconds, savouring the quiet, the pool lit up by the white and blue fire above, and then created a thin shield of energy as large chunks of the cobblestone bridge splashed into the water and threatened to crush him.
Barely feeling his injuries, or the fatigue he knew his body must be straining under, Drake pushed off the bottom of the pool with his feet and swam back from the fire. His lungs burnt for air and he breached the surface near the far bank, away from the collapsed and burning bridge, and drew a deep breath between fits of giggles.
Of the raptors, nothing remained. He’d vaporised all three in the blast.
‘I’m good at this stuff,’ he said with a smirk and thinking about Whitmore’s job offer – to join Crystal Force.
Drake stood on the bank, dripping from head to toe in clothes scorched by alien fire, bleeding from a dozen nicks and scratches, bruised all along his ribs – a few of which he felt might have been broken – and grinned. I am crystal force.
Chapter Twenty-One
Make Feel Nice
It took Drake fifteen minutes to limp back to the apartment overlooking Fifth Avenue and the park. Dozens of police cars swept by the park, sirens blazing. Drake kept his head down as he crossed the street, tried to look as inconspicuous as someone burnt and battered and sporting a crystal limb could look, and found drawing a breath was getting harder and harder.
No longer using his power, the pain from his injuries seeped through his body like water breaking through cracks in a dam. Every breath felt like one of his perhaps-broken-ribs was piercing his lung. He was given a wide berth by the people he stumbled past on the street. He imagined the look on his face was something close to ghastly strain. I’d avoid me too …
The doorman gave him a nod and said nothing as he reached the apartment building. Haven must pay him well. Given the world of crystal power and violence he had stepped into, Drake imagined he wasn’t the first bloody and beaten chap the doorman had seen collapse in a Haven safe house. He stepped across the lobby and into an ornate elevator with a golden grille. Drake punched the button for the top floor, their penthouse, and slumped against the wall as the lift took its sweet time. What felt like minutes but was only about fifteen seconds later, he fell forward into the hallway out the front of the opulent apartment and would have once again hit the floor, nose first to break the fall, if not for the pair of strong arms that caught him.
Drake fell into Takeo’s chest and the giant man’s muscles felt about as firm and as yielding as a mountain. ‘Smleth lifander,’ he said.
‘Your pardon?’ Takeo asked, pulling him back up onto his feet.
‘I said you smell like lavender,’ Drake said, throwing his arm around Takeo’s shoulders. ‘All fancy like, buddy. That’s some nice shower gel. Did you find Irene?’
Takeo hesitated. ‘Yes, she is inside with Noemi and … a young guest.’ He moved down the hallway to the penthouse, almost carrying Drake. ‘And you smell like pond water and blood, William Drake. Less than fancy.’
‘Hey, I killed seven dinosaurs tonight,’ he said, wincing against the pain in his side from ribs that were definitely perhaps broken. ‘Well, re-killed. Killed again. Does that make me responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs? Heh.’
‘I know.’
Drake frowned. ‘You don’t sound too impressed.’
‘Oh, I am.’
‘How many dinosaurs did you kill tonight?’
‘Less than seven,’ Takeo conceded.
‘Damn right,’ Drake muttered and the hallway spun. He gave Takeo a thumbs-up as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
He blacked out.
When Takeo brought – dragged – Drake into the penthouse Irene gave a startled yelp and pulled little Amy Whitmore out of his way, clutching her against her legs. Takeo calmly carried him to the closest bedroom, calling for aid from the living area, where Irene had been arguing discreetly with Noemi over just what to do about the little girl she had pulled from the chaos at the museum.
‘We will discuss this development,’ Noemi said, nodding towards Amy as her eyes followed Drake intently, ‘after you have healed, William Drake.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Irene said, biting her tongue. She knelt down in front of Lucien Whitmore’s daughter and struggled to find a smile. ‘I need to go and help my friend, Amy. Do you want to play with your doll on the couch and stay right there? I’ll just be a few minutes.’
‘I think I should go home now,’ Amy said. ‘Can you call my daddy?’
Irene tried not to let the wild laughter in the back of her throat escape through her teeth. ‘I will, yes, in just a minute, OK.’
‘Irene Finlay,’ Noemi said.
‘Yes. Fine.’ Irene pushed her loose hair back behind her ears, exposing her face and determined not to be bothered by the ropy scar tissue. She was still barefoot and wearing the blue party dress courtesy of the Alliance, stained dark red down her side from the gunshot wound back in the museum – also courtesy of the Alliance.
She brushed past Noemi and followed Takeo into the bedroom.
He’d placed Drake on the bed and was in the process of unbuttoning his shirt, having already removed his burnt tuxedo jacket. The tassels on his stupid hat had been scorched as well, and the yarn bobble was reduced to a pitiful nub.
‘Numerous lacerations to his face and hands,’ Takeo said, as urgently as if he were reading a starter menu and couldn’t decide between the garlic bread or the bruschetta. ‘From the way he’s breathing I’d wager at least three broken ribs. Possibly more. Minor burns to his neck. I think he is also running a fever …’
Irene crawled onto the bed next to Drake, leaning over him. Her knees rested just against his frightening crystal arm. His eyelids were closed but his eyes darted beneath them, and Irene wondered just what he was seeing. Has he gone mad? That thought wouldn’t go away, not after what she’d seen of Carl Anderson on the Rig. But no, when he’d left her at the museum he’d been fine – if coaxing half a dozen zombie dinosaurs to chase him into the park could be called ‘fine’. As fine as things got around William Drake, anyway. But how quickly does the madness happen … when it happens? Surely not within half an hour.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she whispered.
Irene placed a hand gently on his bare chest, over his heart. His skin was hot and wet with perspiration. She had a flashback to crawling down the elevator shaft beneath the Rig.
‘Cuts and stuff are easy, but fixing things I can’t see on the inside – I’m worried I’ll set your heart on fire or something,’ she had said. And Drake had laughed. ‘Sweetheart, you already have.’
‘Was that still less than a month ago?’ Irene muttered, as her pale hand against his dark skin shone with blue light. ‘Yes, I can believe it was.’
Irene let her power seep into Drake and she felt what was wrong with him. The crystal light travelled through his body, knitting bones back together and healing his cuts and bruises. Her power wasn’t so much diagnosing what was wrong, as mending bumps in the road. An all-purpose curative. Irene allowed the light to flow through her and heal the damage. She could feel his burns – not the pain – but more as if she were running her hand across a smooth canvas and her fingertips came across an imperfection in the cloth. Her power healed those imperfections.
Drake was bruised, broken, and wounded in a dozen different places, but apart from some nasty breaks in his ribs, it was mostly superficial. Her power touched the edge of something else, something hot and fierce and spinning, and she nearly recoiled. A wave of exhaustion accompanied the nauseating heat and she saw a flash of red eyes above a smile stained crimson on Drake’s face. He’s sick, she thought – her power said. He’s unwell.
Irene pushed what she suspect
ed was raw insanity aside and had Drake physically mended in under two minutes, as Takeo and Noemi watched on from the side of the bed. They hadn’t – she hoped – noticed her fight the recoil.
Drake’s eyes stopped darting about beneath his lids as she removed her hand, but a small frown creased his forehead, which made Irene smile. He’s cute when he frowns. She lay down on the bed next to him, resting on one arm, and gently pressed her thumb to his forehead and rubbed slow circles. She avoided massaging the kiss-shaped burn tissue – how he’d got that scared her more than almost anything else. More than dinosaurs or all the power of the Alliance.
More than the worry he was losing his mind.
‘Will he live then?’ Takeo asked.
‘He’s running hot,’ Irene said. And his mind is eating itself. ‘But there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s the Crystal-X – sorry, the Yūgen – burning inside him.’
‘We must remember it is a miracle he survived absorbing that much of the gift at all,’ Noemi said softly. ‘He is unique in the world. But he uses the power recklessly, too fiercely. I have tried to guide him, but he is wildfire and will burn without regard.’ She shook her head. ‘I am failing.’
‘His use of the power will burn him alive as surely as an engine running without oil,’ Takeo said grimly. ‘You must help him, Irene.’
‘Me?’ Irene nodded. Yes, of course me.
‘Yes,’ Noemi said, a strange glint in her eye. ‘Of course you. For whatever reason, he will listen to you, Irene.’ Her tone sounded neutral, guarded. ‘William Drake is loyal to you.’
‘Oh, he’s fiercely loyal, Noemi, once you’ve earned his trust.’ She gave the Japanese girl a cool smile. ‘Earn his trust, deserve his trust, and he’ll bring entire oil rigs crashing down for you.’