Man of Steele

by Alex P. Berg

  Hemp tore, and the ropes fell.

  “You found him?” she asked.

  “Downstairs, please. Shay, with me!”

  I darted into the hallway and back out to the balcony. Shay followed me closely, but as soon as we stepped outside, she cocked her head. “There. I hear it.”

  I pointed as another flash and boom rent the sky. “Up there.”

  Shay’s jaw dropped. “Oh, no…”

  “Give me a boost,” I said.

  I tucked the knife into my pants, stepped onto the balcony railing, reached up, and grabbed the edge of the roof. Shay cupped her hands and brought them to chest level. “What can I do?”

  “Stay here,” I said. “Once I free him, I’ll slide him your way. He looks in rough shape. Who knows if he can walk.”

  Another bolt of lightning crashed. A shower of sparks flew from a tree a few homes down the block. I heard wood splinter.

  “Quickly, Daggers!”

  “I know.”

  I planted a foot in Shay’s hands, pushed off, and pulled with my good hand. Up I went, stepping off the drainpipe and onto the roofing tile. I lifted a leg, planted a boot, slipped, and fell.

  I flopped onto the tiles, landing hard on my stomach. My hand cried out as the shock reverberated through my body, and I might’ve cried out in the more literal sense as well. My body began to slide, but I caught a boot on the drain and held firm.

  Shay’s voice carried on the wind. “Daggers? You okay?”

  “Fine,” I shouted.

  “I’m coming up.”

  “Too late.” I stumbled to my feet, digging my toes into the inclined surface as best I could. I took the ascent one step at a time, steadying myself with both hands, ignoring the pain in my left. The wind pushed hard at my back, but at least it mostly pushed me up the roof, not down.

  The police chief watched me as I rose toward him, one eye half-closed and swollen, his face slicked from rain and blood. “Who are you?”

  “Detective Jake Daggers, sir.” I almost slipped again, but fell to a knee instead of to my belly. “I’m going to get you out of this.”

  “My family,” he said. “Where are they?”

  “Safe,” I said as I made it to the top. “Unharmed, down below.”

  Lightning ripped through the darkness, almost blinding me with its ferocity. The thunderclap slammed into me simultaneously, and a nervous shiver rippled down my spine. I glanced at the skies. The swirling gray arm above us crackled with malice.

  “Better hurry the hell up, Detective,” said the Captain.

  “Yes, sir.” I pulled the knife from my belt and went to work on the ropes, the same kind the thugs had used on the man’s family. “Can you walk?”

  “I think so. Those animals who broke in went to work on me. Roughed me up pretty bad, but I don’t think anything’s broken. Won’t know until I—”

  A flash blinded me, and I dropped my knife. A series of explosions rang out around me, four in quick succession, filling my ears with cacophonous sound. Pressure waves blasted me in the chest. My world rumbled, rattled, and shook. Dark spots swam in the infinite pools of white before me, and I fell.

  It didn’t last long. I landed with a squeak and a bounce rather than a thud. Debris rained down upon me, and I blinked, trying to regain my sight.

  Somewhere beyond the incessant ringing I heard Shay’s voice. “Daggers? Jake, are you okay?”

  I shook, or rather someone shook me. A familiar hand.

  Shay swam into focus before me, her face gray and chalky. “What the…?”

  Rain pattered against my face through the gaping hole in the roof above me, and I felt something gritty on my tongue. Plaster dust, quickly turning into mud by the driving rain. Exposed wooden beams sizzled and hissed, and I smelled smoke.

  Shay left my field of vision. I blinked and turned, finding I’d landed on the police chief’s bed.

  He hadn’t been so lucky. He lay on the floor, surrounded by smoldering wooden planks and shattered roof tiles. He wasn’t moving.

  Shay knelt next to him, shouting. “Chief? Can you hear me?”

  She shook his shoulder before bending over and putting her ear to his mouth. She pulled back, a frustrated look on her face, before placing her hand under his nose.

  “Is he alive?” I asked.

  Shay looked up. “What?”

  I could barely hear her over the ringing in my ears. “IS HE ALIVE?”

  She nodded. “He’s breathing.”

  I heard a groan. Looking up, I spotted another of the home’s support beams sagging. I rolled as it cracked, falling off the bed as the three hundred pound beam smashed into the mattress. I hit the floor, my shoulders, back, and hand screaming in agony, while the bed collapsed in the middle. A shower of sparks flew off the beam, hissing and steaming.

  I followed the beam to the hole, taking note of the red orange glow and flickering flames licking at the roof’s underside. The battering rains might’ve soaked the home’s exterior, but the attic spaces were still nice and dry. Perhaps the home might’ve survived a single lightning strike, but four?

  “We need to get out of here,” I shouted. “Fast.”

  Shay nodded again. “If you take him under the shoulders, I can grab his feet.”

  The wind screamed, tearing at the hole in the roof above us, the flames from the spreading fire swirling and licking at the dry wood like a hungry demon’s forked tongue.

  I swallowed hard. “Right.” The home’s windows rattled and shook as I stumbled to my feet. I ignored the throbbing pains in my back, legs, and hand as I hooked my elbows under the chief’s armpits. Shay took his knees, and together we lifted.

  I made it one step toward the hall before I heard a high-pitched whine. An angry, swirling gust rushed through the hole in the roof, turned in mid-air, and slammed me square in the chest.

  I managed to hold onto the chief, keeping his head from bouncing off the floorboards as I fell hard onto my bottom. I grunted as I hit, the air billowing through my shirt and jacket and filling my ears with a resounding whoosh.

  Shay had fallen to her knees. Her eyes widened. “Holy—”

  The high pitched whine cut her off again. The house creaked, and windows cracked and shattered. The wind screamed through us, back the other way, crushing us against the floor with its force.

  As it whipped by, I saw it, surrounded by a swirl of rain droplets, smoke, choking dust, and steam: two small spheres, devoid of particulates, set evenly in the center of the pressurized mass over a yawning void.

  A face in the wind. A howling maw.

  I staggered to my feet, leaving the chief at the floor. “Shay! It’s not just a cyclone. It’s a creature! Some being of the—”

  Back through the hole dove the spirit, pressing Shay against the floor and slamming me into the wall on its way to the stairs. The flames rippled and spread. Timbers groaned. Another beam fell to the floor, raining down alongside a half-dozen two by fours, singed at one end and licked by flames at the other.

  “A wind sprite, or elemental,” said Steele, pushing herself off the debris at the floor. “How in the world did Markeville convince one to do his bidding?”

  “How is the least of our worries right now,” I said.

  The chief coughed and groaned. His eyes fluttered. “What in the…”

  Flames licked the walls in the hallway now. Despite the rain and the wind, I could feel heat rippling through the air. The howling intensified again.

  “Get down!” I cried.

  The wind rushed up the stairs, howling and shrieking. It whipped around the upstairs, circling toward the windows before doubling back. It swirled in the center, creating a tiny cyclone of smoke and splinters and debris. Its howl adopted a menacing tone.

  “To the balcony,” I said. “We’ll jump!”

  I grabbed the chief under his arms and dragged him to his feet as he mumbled and looked about, staring into the flames.
Shay took him under the shoulder on the opposite side, and we bolted, but not fast enough. The wind tore through us again, sending us toppling into the remains of the bed as it whipped through the open balcony windows.

  “It’s no use!” cried Shay. “It’s trying to keep us here! To cook us alive!”

  I blinked, forcing myself to focus. Shay was right. We needed a way out, but the wind elemental seemed intent on preventing that from happening. Outside of a direct lightning strike, maybe it couldn’t kill us itself, but the house fire would do that for it soon enough. Already the smoke hung thick in the air. My lungs ached, strained as they had during the fight back at the King’s Theater.

  There had to be a way to distract it. Something I could do to push it back, at least long enough for Shay to drag the chief to safety.

  The elemental refused to give me time to think. It rocketed back inside, howling as it punched me to the far side of the room. My wet jacket sizzled at it bounced off the burning wall. The sound of rushing air filled my ears as the thing spun in a circle in the middle of the room. Sweat poured off me as the heat intensified. Steam hissed. Flames crackled. And still the spirit spun, pushing in every direction with tendrils of unseen air.

  “Watch out!”

  Shay pushed the chief to the side as another beam cracked and fell, showing sparks into the whirling dervish. As the fire motes hissed and steamed, the creature’s mouth distorted as if in fear, and its eyes widened.

  I wasn’t much of a scientist. My willingness to comprehend the natural world extended only as far as it affected me personally, meaning I had a good grasp on the effects of alcohol on the human body and knew that gravity, from the standpoint of falling three stories with another individual on top of you to maximize the impact, was bad. But Shay, having grown up in a scientific household, had forced me to learn more about the sciences. Biology. Chemistry. Physics. The lot of them. And though I had no idea what might be able to harm a wind elemental, I did know that heat caused things to expand—air, included.

  I grabbed one of the flaming planks strewn across the floor and whipped it at the miniature cyclone in the middle of the room, half expecting it to be thrown back at me with nose-crunching force. But the elemental didn’t touch it. The smoky, swirling haze parted around the flaming plank as it flew, where it smacked into the far wall along its initial trajectory, untouched.

  “Follow me!” I cried as I picked up another burning brand. “Get the chief to the balcony!”

  I lunged at the swirling twister of smoke and mist, swinging the flaming end of the wood into its midst with outstretched arms. The wind howled and whipped around, threatening to extinguish my brand, but the flames stubbornly held. I pushed forward, cutting swaths through the air with my makeshift torch, and the spirit danced back, warping away from each stroke of my fiery onslaught.

  Sweat dripped down my face, from the heat of the bedroom as well as exhaustion. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep up the effort, not at gods-knew what hour of the morning, not after being worked over by a group of power mad thugs and lackeys, not after tangoing with a hundred and fifty pound demon lizard, freeing myself from capture, and beating back the baddest ogre ever to break out of prison. But I had to keep fighting. I had to get Shay and the chief out of danger. I just hoped the wind elemental wouldn’t realize I wasn’t the biggest threat.

  My torch was but a match compared to the raging campfire of the home around us, and yet the spirit seemed to fear me. Perhaps it didn’t posses the ability for critical thought, but for whatever reason, fear me it did, and that gave me some measure of control.

  “Daggers!”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Shay and the chief stumble onto the balcony. Tossing the brand at the gaping maw, I turned and ran.

  Steele and the chief disappeared over the lip of the balcony and as I reached the doorway, but unfortunately for me, the wind elemental wasn’t permanently cowed. A powerful blast of wind slammed into my back with a shriek, lifting me off my feet and sending me soaring. I rebounded off the top of the balcony railing, spun, and tumbled into the darkness of night.

  I couldn’t help but think about that whole gravity being bad bit as I tumbled through the air, and how Shay was supposed to be the prescient one…

  36

  I tucked my injured hand in close to my body before I slammed into the dirt. A bone-rattling, teeth-shaking jolt shivered through my body, and my head whipped and slammed against the earth.

  Believe it or not, the earth gave. I stumbled to my hands and knees, spitting wet grit from between my teeth. Sand. Of course. Apparently, living at the coast contained a few ancillary advantages besides the view and nice breezes.

  I heard an angry shriek and looked up. A whoosh of air streaked from the burning home, trailing smoke and ash and sparks as it rose into the sky like a phoenix. As it fled, the howling winds seemed to die, slowing from hurricane force to merely strong. Rain continued to beat down, though, and I welcomed it. The droplets felt deliciously cool on my fire-baked face.

  The house groaned and shuddered. The roof over the upstairs bedroom sagged and collapsed, taking most of the left-hand side of the home with it. Sparks flew, steam hissed, and flames danced in the wreckage.

  “Carol! My kids!”

  I followed the cry to the chief’s shadowed face, still slick from blood as he stumbled around the edge of the house.

  Shay followed him. “Sir!”

  I rose to my feet, feeling every bone, muscle, ligament, and tendon within me groan and complain, but I forced myself after the pair of them. At a walk, mind you.

  When I arrived at the foot of the home, I found the chief with his arms wrapped around his wife, his kids latched onto the pair of them in a massive hug. The flames from the home danced, sending shadows flickering over the four of them. If not for their incessant crackle and the still potent roar of the winds, I’m sure I would’ve heard a sob or two.

  Captain Knox stood nearby, at a respectful distance, with Shay in her arms. She saw me approach, disengaged, and came to me.

  The hug she gave me was quick. Economical. “Are you okay, Detective?”

  “I’m still alive.”

  She glanced at the chief and his family. “The city owes you a debt.”

  “I know.”

  Shay joined us, taking position at my elbow. She touched me on the arm. “I didn’t see what happened. You drove it away before jumping down?”

  “Let’s go with that,” I said. “It sounds more heroic that way.”

  Shay smiled, despite it all.

  The fates refused to let us have a quiet moment. Quinto’s booming voice cut through the night. “Captain!”

  We turned to find him and Rodgers trudging our way from the direction of the street, pushing a pair of battered, handcuffed thugs in front of them. The long-haired orc and the guy in the raincoat from earlier.

  The chief noticed them, too. He disengaged from his family, motioned for them to stay put, and walked toward us.

  He blasted the orc in the jaw with a right hook when he arrived, and then slammed another fist in the raincoat-clad guy’s stomach as he started to say something.

  He surveyed the lot of us, looking like hell. I probably didn’t look much better. Hell, I probably looked worse. “Captain Knox. Damn it’s good to see you.”

  “Likewise, Chief,” she said.

  The chief looked at me. “What did you say your name was, Detective?”

  “Daggers, sir.”

  “And this is your partner?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Shay. “Steele, sir.”

  He nodded. “I owe you my life. Mine may not be worth much, but you saved my family, too. I owe you an undying debt of gratitude. I do not say that lightly. Thank you.”

  Steele and I echoed each other. “You’re welcome, sir.”

  He shifted attention to the newcomers. “You’re detectives as well?”

  “Yes, sir. Rodgers and Quinto
, at your service.”

  “I also owe the two of you for catching these foul murderers. Thank you, as well.” He stared into the sky, eyeing the swirling clouds with their intermittent crackles of lightning. “Gods, what the hell is going on? First, I get abducted in my own home. Then this cyclone shows up, and that thing attacks us. What was that, Detective?”

  I think he meant me. “Not sure, sir. A wind elemental or sprite is our best guess.”

  “It’s a long story,” said Captain Knox. “A bloody one, and one whose ending isn’t written yet.”

  “What do you mean by that, Captain?” said the chief.

  “Fifty men are dead at the King’s Theater,” said Knox. “Goons, mobsters, and criminals, mostly. But it’s not just the city’s dregs meeting their maker. Good ones have been lost in the fight, too. District Attorney Flint, for one.”

  “Gods…” The chief eyed the captives with murder in his eyes. “You mobilize the army yet? What about the rest of our boys? How many precincts?”

  “Working on it,” said Knox. “All of the above.”

  “Good. All of you, come with me. I want to know everything, but let’s get out of this damn rain first.”

  The man gathered his family and funneled us out his property’s front gates. I thought he might take us to a neighbor’s, but instead he crossed the street to a three story building, the split commercial and residential sort. He stopped under a sign depicting a rat with bubbles around its head and with a mug in hand. The words read “The Rat’s Nest.”

  “Felipe usually keeps this place open at all hours,” muttered the chief. “Probably better this way.”

  He reared back, kicked the door open, and walked in.

  We followed him into a bar, replete with booths, chairs, and tables. The only thing it was missing were patrons and barkeeps. Despite the name, the place actually looked pretty nice. We followed the chief around the large circular bar in the middle. Once at the back, the chief dug around behind the counter, struck a match, and lit one of the lanterns on the bar.