Zephyr I

by Warren Hately

  God bless her, though. She sets her jaw and nods at Synergy and asks, “So you do what?”

  “I’m Synergy, girl,” the agent says in her rich Afro tones, a voice made for condescension. “Come with me and I’ll boost anything you can throw at that thing.”

  It is around this moment Ras Algethi emerges over the lip of the chasm and the head, just a nightmare slushy now of rock and ice and trash, throws open what I take to be its maw and lets loose with a long and guttural howl.

  If I spoke Assyrian or maybe Hunnic, perhaps I would know it had just announced its plan to devour us all.

  *

  THE TWO WOMEN are out in front of the rest of us and I am not sure if anything in my life ever felt so wrong on so many levels. I am imperceptibly cringing, shoulder-to-shoulder with Falconer and Twilight and Manticore, horribly aware that not one of them know my secret connection to Windsong – and what would happen if they found out. Yet I’m almost too worried to keep it quiet. I can’t help thinking that without outing myself as Tessa’s dad, I don’t have a spitball’s chance in Hell of protecting my little girl from this weird, dangerous, creepy world and all the gangbanging spandex-worshippers in it.

  Not that anyone wears actual spandex anymore. The technical accomplishments of the hero world know no bounds when it comes to the artistry of apparel. You’d almost wonder sometimes that advances in fashion aren’t about the most we’ve got to show with the sixty-something years dudes with hard-ons in masks have been turning up to fights.

  I’m being cynical again, here in the middle of our cross-your-fingers-and-save-the-world moment. Mostly I am proud. Proud and a little nauseous. Actually, a lot nauseous. And really the pride is what I know I should be feeling. I’m trying to zoom in on it, but instead I’m just quietly freaking out and hoping Nocturne isn’t poking around in my brain right now like I know she can.

  “What are they doing?” I hear someone say, the guy is called Jetstar apparently, his high voice rich with suspicion.

  “She’s a weather controller,” I snap.

  A few heads turn.

  “Haven’t heard of her,” Falconer opines.

  “Nice ass,” someone else contributes.

  My head snaps around so fast I swear there’s a wind. I can’t decide between Cipher and Paragon and just as I’m about to glare, I catch Twilight looking right at me with a dangerous glimmer to his grin. Based on past experience, this is not a guy I want armed to the teeth with facts about my private life. It’s like trying to have a dinner date with a shark. Makes you wonder what the hell I was thinking with my little confessional bout earlier. What do I tell you? He brings it out in me. The kinky deviant big brother I never had.

  “What do you think, Zeph?” Twilight asks with a twinkle. “Cute ass?”

  So I look at Windsong’s rear. Like all the rest of us at this moment. The city’s poised on the edge of the Abyss and we’re a line of color-coordinated guys in tight pants, most of us unwittingly checking out a fourteen-year-old girl’s butt.

  To me she’s just a little girl – a curvy little girl, I must admit – more puppy fat than voluptuous. The little girl who has to stand on tip-toe to kiss me goodnight. And as much as my chagrin burns at the stupidity of it all, I know if you turned that big old powerful lens around and focused some of that righteousness on where my own eyes have wandered while on the job these past fifteen years, there’s probably a bunch more dads who are proud of their little girls in uniform, fighting the good fight, who’d baseball bat pricks like me into the ground given half the chance.

  Truth is – and this is what I fear – I’ve done a lot worse than look, over the years, though my real straying from Elisabeth only began four or five years back. This is a guy (yes, me, stay with me) who quite literally notched his belt for each female reporter who’d swallowed his jizz. Suddenly, I’ve got the whole virginal Madonna thing happening, just because now it’s my daughter who’s pulled on a pair of tights.

  I figure it’s God’s final laugh, the piece of shit.

  I close my eyes briefly and listen to the gruesome noise of the thing hauling itself up. The ice-creature finally rights itself over the lip of the destruction-wrought chasm. Windsong has her arms out, hands splayed, and Synergy stands behind her with her hands on the back of my daughter’s jacket, her back to us, but a look of intense concentration on her face no doubt. Motes of light candle around them. There’s something palpable in the air and in the space before where Tessa gently motions and it’s not just the snowflakes.

  Manticore’s the first to put a finger on it.

  “The air’s getting drier,” he says.

  “She’s not controlling the weather,” Seeker says from nearby. “She’s cancelling it.”

  “This is a creature of the elements, not the weather,” floats Jocelyn’s arch reply.

  “Well watch, then,” Seeker says again. “How else do you explain it?”

  The creature who should be known as Ras Algethi gives a bellow and starts down the avenue toward us. It’s just the two courageous women between us and the beast. Oh, and the rest of the city behind us.

  Faintly, we hear Synergy urge Windsong on. My fists ball up and crackle with renewed power and I start forward, others joining me, knowing if something doesn’t change fast then we’re the last bastion.

  But things do change. The air goes from dry to downright sultry, the warmth not just a change in temperature, but now with a feel like the passing of the seasons. And that’s exactly what Tessa’s done. With her powers boosted beyond all ken thanks to Synergy’s assistance, it is more than the weather – there is something sidereal about what my little girl’s managed.

  It has its effect on the star-god too. Huge sections of the ice and slush making up its current form fall away as hidden seeds and spores within suddenly flower. Weeds and seedlings buried deep inside it spring into sudden life like a hippie’s green psychedelia. The costumed crowd gasp, jostling and shaking each other to see the startling effects of the seasonal change as we fast forward in seconds through spring and right into summer.

  The few pieces of organic matter keeping the weird simulacra together turn brown now and wither and the hidden junk, the tin cans and pulped pizza cartons and cigarette butts, they all collapse on the street and something hard and brown erupts, or perhaps I should say pours out of the collapsing mass paused in the street. I recall with squinting memory the slug-thing they withdrew in the aftermath of Twilight’s mad jaunt and open my hand and throw lightning into the remains. Seeker, Miss Black, Jocelyn walk past me. Windsong collapses into Synergy’s arms and I have to do and say nothing now and just join half-a-dozen others in a spastic moment of applause, a show of appreciation for what the teenage girl hero has done.

  It’s only moments and then the tactical police start leaping from wherever they went to ground, dragging in cordons and rushing across the scene to triangulate new security zones. The first of the ambulances are waved onto the scene and for a moment I gaze out at the bridge, the dozens of silent cars banked right up to the collapsed edge with their windscreens still frosted by the living force that has now gone.

  Gone, amazingly, at the hands of my daughter. I must be grinning like a fool. A few of the other masks pause to high five me or nudge my shoulder and I spot Seeker turning at the waist to regard me with a curious look I will never learn to read. I cast about myself, wondering where the woman who may or may not be Cusp has disappeared to, and by then I am right at the edge of the knot of people dealing with the demon’s remains.

  In some final defense mechanism, the entity has drawn a compelling cocoon around itself. It is chiseled and rectangular and faceted like a gemstone lozenge and an alien glyph marks the center, though later it will turn out it’s just Arabic. The capsule stands on its end, Jocelyn claiming to have the monolith in a telekinetic vice, and she calls over her boyfriend Paragon, glowing like a lantern in the midnight fog, and there’s just something to the swanky way this bitch is suddenly holding c
ourt that I don’t like. I can’t believe veterans, even young ones like Annie Black, are now treating Jocelyn like she’s a fellow “practitioner”. Jesus, the PC movement really ass-fucked the magick scene. And so I step across as it just so happens that the serpent’s obelisk splits in jagged two down the middle.

  There are screams and shouts all around, but I’m the only one with anything like super speed. And while some later say they expected me to rescue the lady, it’s my first instinct to dive like a footballer and take down Paragon. He’s the one who was for some reason idiotically standing way too close following her call.

  I feel something, I’m not sure what, pass through the air above us. I’m moving still, so there’s hardly anything to glance at as I twist my neck behind and the air fills with an inconsistent glimmer that disappears with the sparkling shards of the gemstone cocoon that go everywhere as its two brittle halves collapse.

  “Jocelyn!” Paragon roars and rolls clear of me.

  The lady lies in a heap on the ground and somewhere in the ensuing kerfuffle Paragon breaks loose with the public revelation that she is pregnant – and Paragon’s soap opera moment, captured by the hovering E! helicopter, the two lovers holding hands as their lips tremble with happiness and joy at the news, it doesn’t occur to anyone that our mysterious opponent has vanished and the rubbery, eel-like thing they excavate from the rubble is desiccated and lifeless and not worth anything except perhaps being put in that half-dollar Museum of the Supernatural they restored inside the Bubble downtown.

  Zephyr 3.11 “Beautiful Women Always Have The Meanest Scowls”

  IT IS SOMETHING of the patriarch in me, displaced fatherhood perhaps, that eventually makes me stop by where Jocelyn has been treated by the paramedics for her fall. It’s the closest she’s come to a battle injury.

  “Not much more than a scuffed knee and morning sickness,” a cute ambulance officer says and smiles and disappears, feeling unnecessarily superfluous I guess in the face of we costumed idiots.

  Jocelyn has removed her headpiece, the mask-cum-crown she wore to such great effect on so many occasions. It also kept her hair in place, which now hangs, veiling her seductive expression. I don’t know where Paragon’s disappeared. Fetching coffee, I hope.

  “You know, I always thought you had a great ass in that outfit,” she says huskily.

  I’d forgotten about the old costume, which is faring about as well as my newer suit thanks to the evening’s ruckus, though at least this outfit doesn’t have cum stains.

  “I’m not sure your fiancé would be so cool with those sentiments, and he happens to be a friend of mine, Paragon.”

  We eye each other off. Cat-like, her green-eyed gaze slowly travels down my torso and she stands and steps closer and puts her finger into a hole in my costume near my ribs.

  “A girl has to have secrets,” she says.

  “I think you probably have more than your fair share.”

  Jocelyn pouts, but she has no power over me. Never did. Her old boyfriend, the one Twilight mentioned, had a psychic affinity for machine technology and a complete and utter lack of scruples. He’s in White Nine for mass murder. I wouldn’t trust Jocelyn as far as I could kick her, and because we’re alone, I tell her as much. This is hardly news to the so-called reformed villainess and she only tries to pout more dramatically.

  “Do you remember that time you fought the Clockwork King and uncovered our little operation in Siberia?” she drawls.

  “How could I forget?” I say. “All that snow was a good reason to redesign the suit.”

  “Do you remember when Overlord’s men brought you down with the sonic cannon?” Jocelyn asks coyly.

  I eye the chunks of ice bobbing in the river beyond us with uncertainty.

  “Yeah, you guys took me out. For about an hour. Big deal. You’re gonna crow over that, after all that’s happened here tonight?”

  “The mighty Zephyr brought so low, and by some cheap machine knocked out by a half-blind Russian who used to hallucinate most the time that he was in Fairyland.”

  The woman gives a laugh, head back, glossy thick fall of gingery blonde hair swaying around her waist like a curtain. With the same theatrical bent she always possessed, she straightens and stares at me, completely fascinated by her own allure.

  “I had you for an hour on your own then,” she gloats. “I stripped you down, had every inch of you in my mouth. Did you know that? Tell me. Is it our little secret? Always has been?”

  I roll my shoulders and think of Snake Blisken.

  “Lady, if I notched my belt every time I woke up with some villainess sucking my cock, I wouldn’t be able to keep my pants up.”

  I shrug and look away, the breath uncoiling from my mouth.

  “I do sure hope you swallowed, though. Last lady had some pretty crazy designs on my tadpoles.”

  I add, “By the way, that better be Paragon’s baby you’re carrying, or God help me I’ll be the first one on the phone to Sal Doro.”

  I walk away leaving her with her mouth opening and closing, little more than bursts of white air coming out.

  *

  IT IS A night for the ladies. I find Cusp getting hit on by Falconer and Chancellor. Neither male seems deterred by the other, like maybe they have an unspoken agreement where a double-team wouldn’t be considered a bad outcome. Sadly for them I am not easily put off myself and I stand a short distance away and ahem and fold my arms until they get the clue and sod off. Cusp, looking truly delectable, turns my way and I am sure now there’s not a single glimmer of recognition in her crystalline blue eyes.

  “How’s that working out for you?” I ask with a wan smile.

  Her nose does a cute turn at wrinkling as her eyes narrow behind the cat mask.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re bluffing your heart out,” I reply. “How did you do that before? The flying thing.”

  “I can fly,” she replies deadpan. “Can’t you?”

  “Sure. Me, I got hit by lightning during some tomfoolery when I was sixteen. What’s your excuse?”

  Cusp works those cute lips for a second, but nothing comes out.

  “Having trouble remembering?” I take pity on her and ask.

  “Um. Yeah.”

  “Maybe I could help you with that?”

  Beautiful women always have the meanest scowls. Hers is a doozy.

  “I might not be able to remember what I’m doing here, but I know who you are well enough, Zephyr,” she says. “I’m not gonna be another one of your little trophies.”

  She is so full of it. And herself. I like.

  “Trophies?” I step in close.

  “Trophies?” More quietly.

  We lock eyes. I could kiss her, though she might kick my balls in.

  “Your name is Holland,” I say. “Until tonight you never had any real powers. I’m not sure what else to tell you. Something’s happened, that’s for sure.”

  “I . . . didn’t have powers?”

  “Something’s happened to you though, obviously,” I say.

  Cusp makes a fist. Darkness congeals around it.

  “The name,” she asks. “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “Holland? No. Weird name for a chick. I’d find your parents.”

  “I meant Cusp,” she says.

  I watch as the darkened blur slowly fades and pinpricks of light begin shining from across her gloved palm, the whole thing coalescing into a powerful radiance that silhouettes the pair of us standing amid the police cars and wreckage, news choppers whirring overhead.

  “Maybe we can talk soon,” Cusp says.

  She crouches slightly and then lifts, is away and up into the air before I can say another word – if anything would actually occur to me to say. Instead, I’m left with a mouth formed into a curious bow and a tingling in my loins.

  Behind me, there’s a muted cheer and I turn and see Windsong emerge from the barricade of ambulances with Synergy by her arm.

  Zephyr
3.12 (Coda)

  “THE GIRL DID good, hey Zeph?” someone asks.

  A few elbows nudge me, hands pat my shoulders. My costume is in rags and I am glad for it.

  “Yeah,” I say weakly. “She was . . . amazing.”

  They crowd her, and my little girl looks like she’s just won every fourteen-year-old’s lottery. The heroes of Atlantic City surround her and she is one of them, perhaps the best of them. A shining new hope.

  It’s Twilight who pulls me back. Once I recognize who he is, I give a patient leer and my uneasiness should be stronger than it is, so I perform as I am accustomed and he ignores it as is his wont.

  “Give the girl some room,” the big blonde hero says in his deepest voice. “They’ll get bored in a few minutes and then you can get her out of here.”

  “You know?”

  “It’s a reflection on these idiots that they don’t put two-and-two together.”

  “Probably just as well.”

  Falconer and Chancellor are there at the front. I can’t be entirely sure my daughter isn’t flirting with Miss Black, which just weirds me out. Treesinger is plucking his lute and grinning foolishly and the black guy in gold lamé looks my way and winks, setting me with a feeling of deep unease. Manticore is there as well, along with Chamber and Mastodon, who I think is smoking a thick joint behind Paragon spooning standing up with Lady Macbeth and I am reminded for one cold sad moment that Red Monolith will no longer be dancing from foot to impatient foot waiting for Mastodon to finish his deep inhalations, warning him not to “do the Bogart” on that joint.

  The other costumes are so distracted by the drama before them they don’t clue into the gravid animal noises coming from another of the ambulances near where Windsong and Synergy so recently evacuated. I give Twilight a surprisingly comrade-like pat on the shoulder with a look that suggests “I’ll be back, but see you later if I’m not,” and then I trot over to the row of ambulances and shoot a curious glance at one of the paramedics, who looks like a woman on a mission as she runs over to some cops nearby to get them to start clearing a path through the debris.