Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  “General Krall!” Aleksy said, snapping to attention just a second late. His features were wide with horror. I rolled my eyes; it wasn’t like he’d gotten caught sleeping with me on the job or anything.

  “Explain yourself, soldier,” she said, marching up the hall toward us with measured steps.

  “I was escorting her around,” he said, looking like a train was barreling at him and he was riveted to the tracks by both feet. “She … she demanded it.”

  “I don’t see a uniform on her,” General Krall said. She didn’t look a day over thirty-five, which told me something else about her, given that in the US military, it was rare to find a general younger than their late fifties. Sure, maybe she was a prodigy, but more likely, in this land of nearly-entirely metahumans, she was one as well. “Why would you take orders from this piece of blown-in trash?”

  “Ooh, she fires the first shot in the war of words,” I said. “Welp, that’s it—now I’m free to fire off all the unkind observations I have about you, which is going to be such a relief, because I’m telling you—boy, have I got them for you. And that’s number one, by the way—it’s the hair, General Krall. Seriously. Which boy band are you part of?”

  She was still marching in her steady cadence, and she’d made it almost across the big room. She wasn’t moving meta speed, she was taking her time getting to me. Still, her eyes were on mine, and a smile that I could only describe as savage broke out slowly across her face. “Lieutenant?” she asked, not sparing a glance for Aleksy.

  “Yes, ma’am?” His reply was immediate, meta-speed, and his boot heels snapped together.

  “I am going to teach this interloper a lesson about manners,” General Krall said, stopping in the middle of the high-ceilinged room as though it were the center of an arena. “It is long-needed, I think … and you will stand aside.” She unbuttoned her jacket front swiftly, slipping it off to reveal very petite shoulders underneath, bared by a tank top that was a deep grey covering a chest that was so sunken a pirate would jump for joy at seeing it.

  I shared those thoughts with General Krall, whose expression became slightly more crazed, her smile twisting wider as I stepped opposite her. “Also,” I added for good measure, “your singing voice sucks, so whichever band you were part of, guy, I feel certain this is why they dropped you like a vat of bad sauerkraut. Which you smell like, by the way.” That last part wasn’t true. She did smell a little spicy, but it was like a potato dish of some stripe. Couldn’t place it.

  She dropped one shoulder low, in line with me, setting her posture for an attack. “It is going to be a pleasure to drag the screams from your lips.”

  “Bigger people than you have tried, short round,” I said, doing a little stance correction of my own. “Want to know how it ended for them?”

  Her smile got wider, exposing some serious deficiencies in her dental work that seemed to predate her meta powers. “The same way it will end for you—in tears.” She looked sideways at Aleksy. “Salute me.” He snapped to attention. “Remain that way through the battle. If you drop your hand or fail in your posture, you will be removed from the service.”

  Aleksy’s eyes got wide, but he stayed in position. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That seems unfair, especially if he accidentally gets hit by your flying teeth as they leave your mouth,” I said.

  “I deem that unlikely to happen.” She just kept grinning. I imagined her without the teeth. It was going to be an improvement.

  “Yeah, well, I deem you a waist-high pile of shit unworthy of my attention, but you don’t seem to be going away, so that’s what ‘deeming’ gets you—”

  She came in low at me, a kind of squat crab-walk at meta speed her vector of attack. It was a little alarming, not gonna lie, seeing this crazy little lady with a hideous smile coming at me like a spider monkey. She even hissed.

  I kicked at her, losing my cool just a little. I was used to fighting guys that felt like they were twice my size. Hell, sometimes Friday was twice my size.

  Krall was probably a few inches shorter than me, maybe five foot at most, but stooped over in a gorilla stance, she seemed even shorter, and her shoulders from side to side were about as wide as a sedan’s hubcap. Added to that, she moved alarmingly fast in that crab-walk, sweeping in at me as I kicked to fend her off.

  She caught my leg.

  Nothing good happened after that.

  Between the wrenching of tendons and being yanked off my feet, I did, unfortunately, scream. There was nothing for it, because I had my balance aggressively ripped away from me by a crab-walking spider-monkey. She dragged me toward her with alarming force, slamming an elbow into my ribs and bending me almost in half. I tried to get her with an elbow as I folded, but it was a glancing blow at best, and she snapped me forward as she took my legs from beneath me.

  I vaguely recognized her style as something in the vein of jiu jitsu, but by then I was hitting the ground, thrown at meta-force, back first. I slammed into the stone, all the air left my lungs, and a dancing, flashing series of lights exploded in front of me. Mom had never taught me jiu jitsu; it was something she didn’t know, so it was beyond her ability to teach. She’d focused on a lot more of the kicking arts, probably figuring my meta speed would give me an advantage against most comers.

  But once your kick got caught, and your legs got ripped from beneath you? Well, that brought you down to the mat. Against most metas, who didn’t know shit about fighting technique? There were a few things I could do.

  Against a crab-walking, boy-band-playing spider-monkey with jiu jitsu training?

  Like I said … nothing good happened.

  She broke my right arm at the elbow before I even realized she’d done it. She executed some sort of arm bar submission swiftly, but instead of giving me a chance to submit she snapped my elbow so it was bending the wrong way. Not stopping to celebrate her victory, she then proceeded immediately to skittering around my back while I was busy realizing that something was very, very wrong with my elbow joint and being hit by a ton of pain.

  By the time I really felt it all, she was already behind me and had a rear naked choke locked in. But she didn’t throttle my esophagus and windpipe, oh no. That was amateur shit. This lady was a pro. She went for the jugular vein and carotid artery.

  Her legs locked around my waist like steel cables, trapping me on my side. She had her wrists perfectly positioned, bare arms against my shirt, creating an artificial collar and keeping me from touching her. I reached up, panicking, to grab her, to employ my powers against the bars of iron she seemed to have placed against the sides of my neck.

  But it was way too late for that. I didn’t have my head about me, and my vision was already blurring because she’d cut off the blood flow to and from my brain.

  Lack of oxygen makes things hazy, fast. All I could muster in terms of resistance was a light slapping on her arm.

  “As pathetic as I expected,” General Krall whispered in my ear. “You are not what they say you are. You are not …” Her breath brushed away my hair from my ear, “… worthy of the mantle.”

  If I could have seen straight or formed a thought, maybe I’d have argued. As it was, blackness was pushing in at the edges of my vision, and I choked off a reply because I couldn’t think of one.

  Then I passed out into darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I woke with a gasping breath, surging upright in a soft bed, darkness all around me, the only light a dim glow of blue across the room.

  There was a scent of fresh laundry soap near me, and something else. A click sounded like a gun’s hammer pushing back, and light flooded the room like a shot going off in the darkness—

  It was just a lamp coming on, washing my castle room in a dim glow. Vlad was sitting in a chair by my bedside, hand still under the lamp shade, a warm note of relief on his gaunt, pale face. “Ah. You are all right, then?”

  “Your spider-monkey general choked me out,” I said, bringing a hand to my n
eck. “So no, not really.”

  “General Krall is a thoroughly humorless woman,” came a voice from across the room. Lethe, of course, looming—as much as a woman around my height can loom—next to the window, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “Still, you didn’t suffer any permanent damage, so it seems she doesn’t entirely detest you.”

  “Oh, is that a boon she grants to those she doesn’t ‘entirely detest’?” I asked. “Lucky me.” My neck still hurt where she’d applied the choke to either side. Her precision was on point, though; I didn’t feel anything on my windpipe.

  “We were worried about you,” Hades said.

  “Maybe control your attack dog a little better and you wouldn’t have to worry,” I said, stinging from my defeat. In all ways, because my pride? Not in a happy place after losing a fight, especially that badly. Man, Aleksy must have had a hell of a show … for the five seconds it took for Spider Monkey the Boy Bander to whip my ass.

  “May I suggest, alternatively, you listen to General Krall’s orders in the future?” Hades asked, a hint of amusement lifting his brow and the corner of his mouth.

  “Hey, man, you gave me the run of the castle,” I said.

  “I did not, in point of fact,” Hades said.

  “Well, you didn’t tell me not to, and you’ve got to know by now that I’m a free-thinking, not-bound-by-barriers kind of person, so … I’m going to put this one on you for not offering the direction to stay in my room,” I said, sliding sideways out of bed. I was still wearing my prison jumpsuit, and the pants portion was smeared with dust from my dungeon brawl. It was the sort of thing Reed would have found especially amusing, like something out of one of his old games. You have encountered a miniature dungeon goblin. It grips you around the neck and chokes all of your hit points away!

  Hades and Lethe traded a glance. “Fair enough,” Hades said. “You may roam the castle as you will, but perhaps stay away from that room … and a few others … just for now.”

  I was surprised he buckled that easily. He must have really been trying to make a good impression on me. “Is there a reason why?” I asked, deciding not to push it for once in my life. Maybe the choke-out defeat had humbled me.

  “Everything will be explained to you in its own time,” Hades said. “Everything. There will be total truth between us, at least from our side. However, there are things in motion that require my attention, and certain questions have deeper answers than I can easily give at the moment. Suffice it to say, if you can be a little patient … you will know all.”

  “Know all, huh?” I drew my hand from my neck. “That sounds promising, especially if there’s a weight loss formula in there somewhere that involves eating all the cheesecake ever and still maintaining your figure. I might be motivated to have patience for that.”

  “Okay, well, we’re not quite at that level of advancement yet,” Hades said. “I’ll put some of my scientists on it, though. It seems a worthy endeavor.”

  I blinked. He seemed serious about that scientists thing, I thought. And I’d seldom worked for people who could actually put scientists on such a crucial project as weight loss with infinite cheesecake. It would change the very nature of humanity, and for the better, I’d argue, mostly because I’d had to work my ass off to not eat all the cheesecake in the world. “Uh. Good, then.”

  Lethe just rolled her eyes. “This is the dumbest exchange in the history of dumb exchanges. And I’m including Manhattan for beads.”

  “All I ask is patience,” Hades said, looking me in the eyes. “We are working toward a purpose here. To make this country strong. To allow it to stand on its own on the world stage. We are … so very close,” he said, holding up his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “This can be a homeland for metahumans, the next phase of development. Bring peace and prosperity to our people in a way that they have not experienced in quite some time—”

  “The hell?” I asked. “Our people have generally been some of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. With power comes the ability to insinuate yourself into government, and other power structures. Hell, the president of Russia is a meta now, thanks to you guys.”

  He traded a look with Lethe, and she shrugged. “She asked, I told her,” Lethe said.

  “What you say is true, to a point,” Hades said.

  “We were gods,” I said. “You … were a god. Both of you—”

  “I was never classed as a god,” Lethe said, a little darkly.

  “If you say so, Valkyrie,” I snarked. She rolled her eyes and looked back out the window. “Point is, you guys have had wealth and power throughout human history. Metahumans have always been able to climb the heap a little better than the average Joe, okay? I realize we got knocked down a little bit these last few years, what with Sovereign killing, uh … most of us, but … come on. We’re doing all right. Except for all these new Johnny-come-latelys you’ve been creating out of the human population. A lot of them are ending up in jail or dead. But those of us old-schoolers that have survived? We’re doing fine.”

  “We have lost the seats of power we once held,” Hades said. “And our strength is not what it once was. After the Great War—”

  “I can always tell how old a meta is by whether they refer to it as World War I or ‘The Great War,’” I muttered.

  “We’re your elders,” Lethe said. “I don’t expect you to respect us any more than you respect anyone, but if you listen you might learn something.”

  “We are not what we once were,” Hades said after I clammed up. “Yes, some of our people have done well individually, but there are so few of us left. That war wiped out so many of our number. We were cannon fodder in our own armies, the ones who led the field. We lost entire generations of our kin in that war.” He stared into the distance. “Here in Revelen we were fortunate to stay out of that conflict—there were few enough of us in any case, your grandmother having been … ahem …”

  Lethe rolled her eyes. “I see what you’re getting at.” She refocused on me. “He means that we were the only two metas here back then, and that I was abstinent by necessity and choice, and he’s old and used up, so …” She faced back toward the window.

  “That was … deeply uncomfortable to hear,” Hades said, “and also unfortunately true, for the most part.”

  “I don’t want to know which part wasn’t true unless it involves abstinence by you, too,” I said, about a half-step from putting my fingers in my ears and humming really loud until this whole expository speech was over.

  “As uncomfortable as it is,” Hades said, not meeting my eyes, “this is the truth—family was vitally important to me for reasons that you might not understand at your age.” Here, his striking blue eyes looked into mine. “You … you and so very few others remain to carry on my legacy. I am, as she said … old. Used up as well, perhaps. I do not deny it.” He smiled faintly. “To look in the mirror every morning is to realize I have more days behind me than ahead. Perhaps many more behind me than ahead. I did so much to try and leave a legacy in this world. I had many children with your great-grandmother, and yet almost all of them are dead.” He looked away. “Almost all of your kind … have passed on.”

  I took that all in. “’kay …” I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Your grandmother and yourself are the last two succubi that I know of,” Hades said. “And I know of no incubi remaining. That makes you …” His smiled faded. “My heirs.”

  I blinked. “Uh … so … are we just going to disregard all those Persephones out there as not your kin …?”

  He shook his head. “Very few are related to me in any way … if at all.”

  “Nearly all of the children of Persephone and Hades were either incubi, succubi, or Hades types,” Lethe said. “The Persephone genetic code is apparently not dominant. Which is why most of their offspring ended up being an amalgamation of the death and life that comprise our power. Death bound to the skin instead of life bound to the skin.” S
he turned back toward the starry night shining in through the window. “There was only one Persephone born to Hades and my mother, and I think … it is questionable whether that child was even his.” She didn’t look at Hades.

  “Ouch,” I said. Hades was looking right at me, unembarrassed.

  What the hell did you say to that? “Sorry you got … cuckolded,” was what I came up with.

  That … probably wasn’t the thing to say. Lethe shot me a dark look from the window.

  Hades quirked an eyebrow in amusement after a moment. “Well … it was hardly the worst thing she did to me.” And his hand fell to his chest, where that scar lay under his shirt. “And it was a very long time ago.”

  “So … basically you’re saying that, uh … with Rose dead,” and I saw him blanch only a little, “Grandmother and I are your only living descendants.”

  He nodded. “Indeed.” He smiled again, though it was sad. “You are the only evidence I leave behind that I ever existed, which … considering how long I lived is perhaps not how I would have preferred it, but here we are. I will, as they say … play the ball where it lies.”

  “Big golfer, huh?” I asked.

  “I have always wanted to learn,” Hades said, “but no. You and your grandmother are all that remain of my legacy, other than whispered legends and myths. My days grow toward an end, and with that end …” He looked up at me again. “I want to make sure that the few things I leave behind are well protected. That my legacy is secure.”

  “This better not involve a box of any sort,” I said.

  “No box,” Hades said with a feathery laugh. “But … a country, yes. Here, I am a king. And someday very soon … your grandmother will be—”

  “Queen,” I whispered, getting it. Finally.

  “Yes,” Hades said. “And she has many years left before her—”