William, by contrast, was pointing to the various parts on a dummy with a curved knife. I saw some other familiar faces present here like the Trench Coat Magician, Swash! the Pirate Thief, and a surprisingly subdued Bloodscream the Retributive. There was even Splotchgirl, the daughter of my old friend, who had gotten cheated out of the legacy just because she was not a dude. Over in one fenced-off area, I saw they were conjuring illusions of giant Exterminator robots to blast.
‘What in the world?” I asked, blinking at the sight.
“Camp Blood is a summer camp for Super children,” Mandy replied. “Cindy and I are running it for people who can’t make it to Texas Guardians institute or just don’t want to be subject to all the scrutiny of the government.”
“Or deal with the Evo-Lutionaries racist BS.,” I replied. As bad as it was having the government trying to take away my children, the superhero side of things was almost as bad. Mindblaster and Earth Goddess had shown up at my house one day and argued it was better for my daughters to be raised in an environment among their own kind.
I’d taken that poorly.
“How the hell did you get so many?” I asked, wondering how Cindy had kept this from me. More to the point, I wondered why she’d hidden it.
Mandy grimaced. “I’m not going to say we launched raids on the internment camps for juvenile Super offenders, undocumented immigrants, and unregistered Supers. But we launched raids on the internment camps for them.”
“Your world became like a thousand times less cool when I found out it was a place where you could be arrested for being alive,” Jane said. “I’m surprised you weren’t burning the places to the ground.”
“I was tempted to,” I replied, telling the truth. “Gabrielle convinced me it was better to try to find a legal solution. I’ve been funding like fifty different legal teams to try to oppose President Trust on the issue. Kerri was also working with Super Representative and former President Android John to draw attention to it.”
Honestly, it felt like a weak defense to me. I’d wanted to start burning the places to the ground from the very beginning. Unfortunately, I feared making things worse for everyone. Being a superhero meant I had to be responsible for the results of my actions both good and bad. I’d straight up murdered President Omega and “saved” the day, but undoing his legacy had proven a lot bigger deal. He’d cultivated hatred and fear against Supers for eight years, and that wasn’t easy to remove.
“Yeah,” Mandy said. “We’ve been substituting surplus Foundation human replacement droids one at a time. The government has figured it out, but they’d rather pretend everything is fine rather than admit that they’ve lost five hundred children.”
I nodded. “That’s brilliant. Why here, though? I mean, Sheriff Injustice is right here.”
“This place is a sorcery vortex,” Mindy said, confirming my suspicions. “All the runoff from Falconcrest City’s occult buildings and sorcery gathers here. No one can sense us here. As for the Sheriff, we also have rocket launchers.”
“That is one way to keep the cops away,” Jane said. “The Resident Evil solution.”
“I wish I could have helped,” I said.
“I wish you could have too,” Mandy said.
I could sense the disapproval in her voice, though. They’d clearly been doing this under my nose and probably had been for the better part of a year. Cindy robbing the various rich jackasses of their wealth had probably been to get the seed money for this. So, being the tactless fool that I was, I decided to put the kibosh (such a great Jewish word) on this whole line of dialogue.
“So why aren’t I?” I asked, dryly.
Mandy frowned. “You’re too close to Gabrielle.”
I blinked. I had not expected that answer. “Gabrielle? Ultragoddess Gabrielle?”
“Gabrielle is not who you think she is, Gary,” Mandy said, sighing. “You are not going to have the relationship you want.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Gabrielle is a hero. We’re engaged now.”
Mandy looked sad rather than angry or surprised. “Is that because Cindy won’t marry you and I’m undead?”
I blinked. “What?”
“You know, it’s statically more probable for widowed happily married men to get married quickly after rather than staying unmarried?” Mandy asked, switching topics. “They jump into new relationships because they can’t live without the love they felt.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s… not what happened, at all.”
“Sure,” Mandy said. “Like you haven’t been chasing down every superheroine or villainess on Whore Island to fill the void in your life.”
“Consenting Adult Sex Island,” I replied. “Whore Island makes it sound nasty. Also, it’s a joke on Archer even though it’s a real place. We just call it Ibiza.”
Mandy rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to find happiness with Gabrielle.”
“I can love more than once in my lifetime,” I said. “She’s someone I cared for a lot and she’s open to the polyamory we had.”
“Because she doesn’t care about you, Gary,” Mandy replied. “She’s using you as a convenience. You and her other boyfriends. The only reason you’re a hero is because it’s easier on her to have you as a good guy rather than a villain. Worse, you’re going along with her.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t know her.”
“I know she brainwashed you to cover up her secret identity, she’s executed dozens of supervillains over the years, and runs a secret black ops team of ex-supervillains that overthrows governments hostile to the Society of Superheroes. Oh, and she made a pass at you while we were married. On the moon no less.”
I blinked. That did sound terrible, but it was not the Gabrielle I knew. “Okay, you’re putting a very negative spin on all this.”
“Worse, she’s trying to make you into one of her minions,” Mandy said, crossing her arms. “Which is not you.”
“I am not a minion!” I snapped.
“No, you aren’t. You don’t even keep minions,” Mandy said. “You helped encourage Cindy to reach her supervillain potential and pulled Diabloman out of a rut. You supported me becoming a superhero. Gabrielle keeps everyone under her superpowered thumb. Gary, she’s an antihero.”
“She is not an antihero,” I snapped.
“If she knew about this then she’d attempt to take it over and use it as a weapon,” Mandy said. “I know that for a fact.”
“How?” I asked.
Mandy pulled out a Primal Orb, the Primal Orb of Order, from her utility belt. I mean, her outfit did not leave room for pockets. “Because she had this after the Eternity Tournament. She had it and had been using it. Gabrielle never told you about this, though. Who knows what she’s been using it for and who she’s been using it on.”
I stared at the object. “How did you get it?”
“I stole it,” Mandy said. “I’d rather be Robin Hood than the Sheriff of Nottingham.”
“We already have a Robin Hood,” I replied. “He and Maid Marian are the protectors of Sherwood City in Washington.”
Mandy rolled her eyes. “Not the point, Gary.”
I sucked in my breath, trusting Gabrielle to have a reason for hiding this from me. Mandy had never liked Gabrielle and still blamed her for breaking my heart. There was something to her words, but I did my best to ignore it. Instead, I had another question. One that would possibly change the entire nature of our conversation.
“I believe you,” I replied, sucking in my breath. “I do need to know one thing before we
continue, though.”
“Yeah?” Mandy asked.
“Why are you not evil anymore?” I asked.
Chapter Fourteen
The Complicated Nature of Superhero Metaphysics
“Excuse me?” Mandy asked, as if she didn’t understand the question.
I took a deep breath. “Not to make any sort of judgements, but when you were a vampire, you were like, ‘I shall kill all th
e evil-doers and live forever, bwhahaha.’ When you were possessed by Spellbinder, you were a bit more relaxed but that was not you and didn’t count. Now you’re, well, you-ish.”
“I’m pretty me-ish, yes,” Mandy said, looking confused and off-put. “Also, you should probably release Spellbinder from Hell. Maria doesn’t deserve that.”
Jane blinked raised a finger as if to interject.
I cut her off. “Maria lied to me and impersonated you for years, possibly centuries depending how we’re dealing with time travel—”
“Let’s not deal with time travel and say we did,” Mandy said.
“Smart move,” I replied. “Sexual assault via deception is not something I’m inclined to forgive. So, yes, I sent Maria to Hell.”
“We were more a fusion,” Mandy said. “I was there throughout all of it. Alternate futures and everything. I was the reason she fell in love with you and there was no action she could do without me. It was a bit like you and Cloak. I remind you that he was there whenever we had sex for more than a few years.”
“I did my best to send him to the coffee room in the back of my head whenever that happened,” I said. “He was a good sport about that despite however long he had to go without getting any.”
Jane looked like she was getting a headache. “Okay, sorry, I need to interrupt. Gary can remove people from Hell?”
“He’s the Grim Reaper of this reality,” Mandy explained without explaining. “It comes with certain perks.”
“Yeah, all gods of this universe answer to the Primals,” I replied. “They dictate who gets what sort of powers over the universe. Hades, Arawn, Shao Khan, and so on all have their own afterlife realms but they derive their power from Death. Demeter, Aphrodite, and Idun get their power from Life. It’s all very Discworld. Personally, I try not to think about it.”
Mercury Takahashi, a potent witch in her own right, had stated that my long exposure to the Reaper’s Cloak and Death’s power had resulted in me becoming a god. Just a really-really tiny, almost pitifully small god. Given gods were more like spiritual bureaucrats rather than omnipotent incarnations of reality like the Primals, it was more impressive sounding than the reality. Hell, I’d killed multiple gods by this point in my career so that just further illustrated I had a cool title and nothing more.
“Gary is a god,” Jane muttered. “Oh my Goddess, so much about the universe makes sense now.”
“Oh, like you haven’t met insane loser gods yourself,” I replied. “Mythology is just one long reality TV show.”
“You’re not a loser, Gary,” Mandy said. “I never would have married you if you were. Still, if you won’t release her from Hell for me then do it for Diabloman. You broke him with what you did. That’s why he betrayed you.”
“He broke me with his betrayal,” I said, sighing. “But I’ll never deny you anything. Good, bad, or vampy.”
Mandy frowned.
I conjured the Reaper’s Scythe in one hand and banged it on the ground. “There. Sentenced commuted.”
Mandy blinked. “That’s it?”
I was sure since I had a cosmic sense regarding the disposition of souls. Don’t ask me to explain it. “Maria’s off to Heaven or wherever her celestial caseworker wills it. I sentenced her to the first circle of Hell anyway. It’s heck adjacent with people like Aristotle and Augustus Caesar. You know, all the people the pagans thought were righteous but were still kind of slaving assholes. It was the nicest part of Hell I could send her to. Really, I could have left her in Sheol but I’m not that kind of guy.”
“The first circle of Hell is real?” Jane looked ready to have a mental breakdown. “Dante’s Inferno is how Hell operates here?”
“Yep,” I said.
“How does that square with you being Jewish?” Jane asked.
“The same way my knowing Odin does, I suppose,” I said. “You just learn to roll with the ecumenist nature of the multiverse. You still haven’t answered my question, Mandy. You’re…so, you.”
Mandy frowned. “I don’t know.”
I blinked. “You don’t know?”
Of all the possible answers she might have given ranging from cosmic realignment to divine intervention, I hadn’t expected that one.
“That is deeply unsatisfying storytelling,” Jane said. “Maybe it’s in the middle of the trade paperback and we’ll get it later.”
“What is she talking about?” Mandy asked.
“Jane thinks we’re in a comic book,” I replied. “Which is ridiculous.”
“Does she know she has a book series and a CW show in this reality?” Mandy asked.
“No,” I replied. “I was waiting to show all the fanfic people have done of her. The weirdest is the G/ Jane shippers because those are actually canonical.”
Jane stared in horror.
As much as I wanted to continue this line of teasing, I was more interested in Mandy’s situation. “So, I just sucked out Spellbinder’s soul and you were fine?”
Mandy shook her head. “No, it was more complicated than that but even then, I’ve lived about two hundred years as a vampire thanks to time wackiness. It’s just that was two hundred years in a post-apocalyptic Earth where you were John Connor and Cindy was Sarah.”
For perhaps the first time in my life, I longed for the days when a sentence like that wouldn’t make sense.
“That would make her my mother,” I replied.
Mandy blinked. “Not what I was going for, Gary.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I learned to master my hunger and I’ve since got it under control with a serum that Cindy created,” Mandy replied.
“Because doctors can create super-potions in this world,” Jane replied, sarcastically. “I bet your local electrician can build power armor. I wish super-science was a thing in my world. We can’t even get people to get vaccinations. My local general practitioner is suspicious of vaccines and is a creationist, which I know isn’t true because I have an angel in my gun. He says it’s nonsense.”
“This is kind of an important conversation for me, Jane,” I replied, surprisingly unwilling to debate politics. “Could you, I dunno, go graze or something?”
Jane glared. “I would call that comment racist but there is a nice patch of mushrooms nearby.”
She walked off.
“Even with my hunger for blood under control, I was lacking something essential,” Mandy replied. “I felt betrayed, even hated you a little, for taking away that part of me that was human. Worse, you did it after putting it in me in the first place.”
“Technically, Merciful was the one—” I started to say.
“Don’t interrupt,” Mandy said. “You never bothered to ask whether I wanted my soul back. Whether it was possible to make me who I was again or even if you should. You wanted your wife back and that meant destroying what I’d become. Even though that being still loved you. Even though the mortal Mandy left that part of her behind when she ascended to Heaven.”
I never understood why the good part of Mandy left behind our love. Was Eurasian Wiccan Heaven only for people who abandoned their earthly attachments? Had they adopted Buddhism, Jediism, Vulcan logic? It was a real kick in the pants to know that your love was considered a character flaw by the powers that be.
“I don’t care about that now,” I said, my mouth dry and voice cracking.
“Sure,” Mandy said, looking down. “I wandered around, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life. I couldn’t be a superhero because the Society of Superheroes was playing ball with the Trust administration. Even those risking their lives to fight against the system were attached to Gabrielle and you know my opinion on her. I didn’t want to be a supervillain. You had your family now and I wasn’t a part of that.”
“You left me, Mandy, I didn’t leave you,” I said.
“You made it clear I wasn’t the person you wanted,” Mandy said.
I stared at her. “No, I didn’t. You will always be part of my fa
mily, Mandy. Horrifying undead abomination or not.”
Mandy opened her mouth, closed it, then laughed. “Goddammit, Gary.”
“I try,” I replied. “So, somehow you ended up hooked up with Cindy.”
“Yeah,” Mandy said. “If I was going to be a bad guy then I wanted to be the best bad guy I could be. So I ditched the Nighthuntress label and have been working as a thief. I haven’t really settled on a name, though I was thinking Kumiho or Calico.”
“Animal based cat burglars are played out,” I replied, surprised she was changing her name. That was a big deal among superheroes and villains. Your brand was everything. “So you just woke up one day and felt like not eating people?”
Mandy stared. “I don’t know, Gary, it’s weird. My powers have been changing and I feel less… vicious.”
“Your bite is also different,” I replied. “It’s possible the merging of worlds is resulting in an alteration of magical principles. The vampires of our world becoming more like the vampires of Jane’s world.”
“Really?” Mandy asked. “Where the hell did you get that idea?”
“Honestly, I just made that up because I wanted to sound smart,” I replied. “But time-compression and other weird facts of reality are something I’m trying to fix on behalf of my daughters.”
“What?” Mandy asked.
I explained.
Mandy stared and then handed over the Primal Orb of Order. “Okay. Well, I guess you need this more than I do.”
“Really, you’re just giving this to me?” I asked, taking it. Immediately, I felt the orbs in my possession increase their power as they all had a synergistic effect on one another. They were now well beyond my power to control and I would have to be extra-careful using them.
“Gary, you’re the one person in the world I trust with omnipotence,” Mandy said.
“Why in the world would you do such an incredibly silly thing?” I asked, avoiding the word dumb or stupid despite the fact I wouldn’t trust myself with any of the hundreds of supernatural artifacts or powers I’d gained over the years.
“You and Cindy both responded to getting Primal Orbs by deciding to use them to empower people rather than keep all the power yourself,” Mandy said. “Yeah, I know about your deranged open-source magic system. That is a terrible idea, but it shows exactly what sort of person you are. Power to the people versus trickle down sorcery. A rising wind lifts all flying broomsticks.”
The Supervillainy Saga (Book 7): The Horror of Supervillainy Page 13