Blood of the Masked God (Book 1): Red Wrath

by Gehrke, Gerhard

  Once beyond the bridge I flew further out and made a sharp turn upward. Once I attained a decent height, I scanned the span.

  Shieldbreaker and Chronos were at it up on the pedestrian walkway that ran the length of the bridge above the vehicle lanes. Shieldbreaker must have pissed Chronos off. Chronos was zipping after him like a black blur, smashing the pavement and swinging at the air but missing. Shieldbreaker had his fighting sticks in hand and was using them to tap, smack, and goad Chronos along across the span. But there was more stalled traffic on the Brooklyn side where they were heading. I had hoped those cars were empty, but even from my distance I saw scores of people standing about and watching, some recording the action with their phones.

  The brawl was rolling their way.

  I laid on the gas and streaked towards Chronos, adjusting my downward trajectory so I could make it between the wire mesh on either side of the walkway.

  Chronos saw me coming.

  I let out a low scream of rage. He did what he would have done if I were a bullet: he dodged. But my reflexes adjusted and I hooked him with a clothesline that knocked him flat as I raced past.

  My shoulder hurt as I pulled up out of my dive and came around for another pass. Chronos was standing again but appeared dazed. He wasn’t used to getting hit. He looked confused as I once again streaked towards him. He tried to punch me this time but couldn’t connect. He couldn’t sidestep in time, either. In the split second before impact I dropped low and clipped his legs, sending him toppling down. I was turned off-balance and almost piled into the wall of cables, and I had to swerve to avoid Shieldbreaker.

  He watched me race past, a stunned expression on his face.

  Chronos was getting to his feet even as I rocketed up and got ready for a third run. The drained feeling began to wash over me. I couldn’t sustain this for long. Whatever I had left in my tank I needed now. Turning, I sighted down at him. He was waiting, a mad leer on his face, his arms spread wide. I dismissed all thoughts and focused in on one thing. Him. There was no bridge and no one else around us. I poured it on and shot down towards him.

  This time Chronos didn’t bother dodging. I slammed into him hard and took him off his feet, leaving Shieldbreaker behind. His hands instantly locked down around me and squeezed. It was a steel grip I could never escape from. I had to get him out of there and away from the city. But as his grip bore down, I knew he could break me in two before I could take him anywhere.

  We were approaching one of the stone towers.

  I ignored the blossoming pain and focused on speed. I could no longer breathe. In another fraction of a second he would crush me into jelly. Grabbing one of his thumbs, I twisted one of his hands away. He answered by knocking me across the face with his elbow. We were spinning around each other, still flying. The pain radiating from my face threatened to overwhelm me.

  With both hands I managed to grab his cape and twist it around his neck. Then I put everything I had into going faster. One arm shifted from my shoulder to my neck and clamped down. It was only by continually spinning us that I kept him from snapping my neck.

  The bridge tower was too close. I would have to go around or up. But either way meant continuing the fight, and he would eventually gain the upper hand. I tightened my hold on the cape wrapped around his throat.

  Even as he gagged, he laughed, and that helped make up my mind.

  When I rammed Chronos into the tower a fraction of a second later, I let go of the cape. He crunched against rock. I kept flying. I looked behind me and my attention lapsed. I tumbled and impacted on the walkway, then bounced against the railing before finally skidding to a halt. My head spun and my chest hurt. I still couldn’t breathe. For one panicked moment I thought I had broken everything and that it was all over, but it was only the wind knocked from my lungs.

  It took a moment for my limbs to obey. Pain crept slowly in. The side of my head felt sticky and my fingers came away red. Sitting up was problematic as everything was sore, and my left shoulder sent up needles of pain when I tried to move my arm.

  Where was Chronos?

  I pulled myself up and hobbled towards the tower. Chronos lay unmoving, his cape twisted around his body like a black toga. The stone tower where he had impacted looked undamaged but for one long crack. Built to last. As I got closer, I saw his face was covered in blood. Red, like mine. A couple of teeth lay on the ground near him. I hesitated. Seeing him down like this was everything I had dared hope for.

  Lying near him was the figurine I had taken from his home. I checked my jacket. It was torn in several places and the one pocket had been ripped completely open.

  “Father,” he croaked. He wasn’t talking to me. With one trembling hand he reached for the tiny carved figure. I picked it up and looked at it for a moment before shoving it into the back pocket of my pants. Chronos let out a long sigh. His eyes met mine. His breathing came in deep heaves. With each passing second he was recovering.

  I felt something rising in me like a tide. There was nothing I could do to stop it and I wouldn’t dare try. I became a spectator to my own actions.

  Chronos changed position before me as if a time lapse had occurred. His black cape now lay twisted underneath him. His face looked puffier than before, with one eye weeping blood. Then it happened again, another jump. Suddenly I was breathing hard as if running stairs. I was straddling Chronos, who was now in worse shape and unconscious. My hands stung and trembled and my knuckles were split. I heard myself laughing. A third jump occurred. I now found Chronos pinned to the ground with my forearm pressed against his windpipe. I was screaming now and shouting unintelligibly. My voice was a stranger’s. My throat was hoarse. Chronos was nothing but a limp sack of meat, busted and bleeding.

  Shieldbreaker was running my way.

  I had no sense of time. Had minutes just passed or seconds? I was in a fugue state, as if my nightmare world were sucking me in. But there was no bathroom to hide in. The red mist from my dreamworld was filling my soul and I welcomed it.

  I let up on his throat and slapped him, knocking his face to one side. Making a fist now hurt. The fingers of my right hand were broken for all I knew. But I punched down anyway and felt something in his face burst. He let out a gurgle. He was still alive and breathing. I got my left hand on his throat and squeezed. I wasn’t thinking about my parents or me or anyone he might have hurt. My mind filled with an overriding raw ache that was both pleasure and pain, something I never wanted to end.

  A hand grabbed my arm. Shieldbreaker was at my side.

  “That’s enough. He’s down.”

  I spun and rose and shoved him away all in a blur. He was knocked back but remained standing. He struck a defensive pose.

  “Red,” Loremaster said. He drifted gently down between me and Shieldbreaker, his hands out as if parting two brawling children. “It’s finished.”

  I took a step in his direction and he flinched. With one quick move I could smash his fat face. Twist his neck. Take his ridiculous metal headpiece and shove it up—

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  My lips were trembling and my eyes stung. The red fog in my head began to fade. I still felt it, like the stench of smoke all around me, but it was subsiding. Part of me wanted it back. All too quickly I was hurting all over as my nerves began to fully register everything that had happened to my body.

  “You’re okay, Red,” Loremaster said soothingly. “It’s all going to be fine.”

  Shieldbreaker was checking on Chronos. He knelt over the fallen hero and pressed a pair of fingers against his neck, then placed the back of his hand by his nostrils. I could do little but watch. All my strength was ebbing away. If he stirred and got up again, I had nothing left. Shieldbreaker said something. I pushed my hair away from my face and behind my ear and worked my jaw. My ears were ringing louder and louder.

  When Shieldbreaker repeated himself, I made out what he said.

  “He’s dead.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two


  Shieldbreaker’s words didn’t register at first. He was using syllables that when strung together weren’t possible. Someone like Chronos didn’t die. There was always some trick up their sleeve. Superheroes got knocked out. They played possum. They came back.

  But the body of Chronos continued to lie limp, even as Shieldbreaker began chest compressions.

  Loremaster put a hand to Chronos’s head. “There’s still neurological function.”

  “Get the medics up here now,” Shieldbreaker said.

  Loremaster produced a phone from a well-concealed fanny pack.

  “Stop,” I said to Shieldbreaker as the man continued CPR. “Stop it.”

  “There’s a chance he might live.”

  “Maybe so. But I need you to stop, right now.”

  Shieldbreaker ignored me and kept pressing down hard on Chronos’s chest in a fast rhythm. I put my hand on Shieldbreaker’s shoulder and pulled him away. It was harder than I intended. I yanked him to his feet, where he stumbled and almost fell.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, squaring off with me. “We can’t let him die.”

  Ignoring Shieldbreaker, I bent down over Chronos and took in the sight. The square jaw, the dark hair, the slack face. I wrapped Mercy’s scarf around his neck.

  “Back off and let me help him,” Shieldbreaker said. “The medics are on their way.”

  “No. If he dies, he dies. But I need him now.”

  I picked Chronos up and pulled him over my shoulder. Shieldbreaker stepped up as if to stop me but I glared at him, daring him to try something. To my astonishment he hesitated.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, a note of desperation in his voice. “He shouldn’t be moved and you want to take him?”

  “I have friends that are being held against their will. The people that are holding them want him. I’m taking him with me.”

  “Put him down. We have to try to save him. With everything that’s going on in the city and in Virginia we need him now more than ever.”

  Loremaster was off the phone and he moved to put a hand on my shoulder. I sidestepped him and then floated into the air. The body on my shoulder weighed nothing.

  “Wait!” Loremaster said. “Jeremy’s right, Red. We can help you. And you can’t take him when there’s a chance he could recover. Just give us a couple of minutes so we can make a plan. There’s too much happening and we have to figure out how best to help the city.”

  “I can’t help you right now. I have people depending on me. And getting Chronos there is part of the bargain.”

  When Loremaster took to the air I flew higher. Shieldbreaker began climbing the cables to keep up.

  “Hold on,” Loremaster said. “If you’re in trouble, we’re stronger together. We can help. But it’s impossible if you don’t tell us how we can do that.”

  Shieldbreaker looked like was about to spring at me. “Put Chronos down!”

  I moved faster. Even though at any moment I expect to fall, I continued to race into the air. Our distance had grown beyond what I’d thought possible even for a superhuman like him to leap across. He remained balancing as he watched me leave with Chronos.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I left them and the bridge behind and soared away.

  ***

  Before I could even make it out of the city I was winded. My breathing came hard and I felt flushed. I picked a high rooftop of a fancy West End apartment complex and touched down next to a set of large air conditioners. I dropped Chronos and looked down at the limp figure.

  I didn’t know where the tears came from, but my body shook and I completely lost it. I wasn’t sure who I was crying for. Certainly not Chronos. I felt nothing for the fact that I had just taken his life. Not happy, not mad, not joyful at finishing the quest that had become the center of my existence. Even the memory of my parents was a vague thing, as if their faces and features were fading with each passing moment, the details of the picture in my broken phone slipping away. My tears let loose everything I had ever bottled up and so much more. I resented them. There wasn’t time to collapse into a puddle.

  I also knew I couldn’t just walk away, as Carter and Megan would die if I didn’t follow through.

  For some reason I thought of my year with Mark and how that had all gone belly-up because of me. He had wanted children. Perhaps if I had shelved my obsession we would be married. Have a life. Maybe even a kid. But I had traded it all for this.

  “I hate you,” I said to Chronos.

  Rubbing my temples, I tried to focus. From my pocket I took out the last muffin. It was a mushed ball of crumbs but I ate it. Whatever special ingredients Mercy put into her food worked their magic quickly enough, as my head cleared and I felt better. But how long would it last? And once she saw her brother dead, would she even release Carter and Megan? No, she or the other residents of Dogwood would kill them, assuming they were even still alive.

  My hand went to the pocket where I had stashed the figurine. It was still there. Perhaps it was just a bauble, but somehow I knew it was part of the puzzle of Chronos and his family. But at that moment the mystery didn’t interest me.

  I then put a hand to the locket around my neck. I pulled it out and opened it. Somehow it was important, perhaps even the source of my power and my sickness. My fingers worked the clasp. I expected to find an old-timey picture or a key to some long-lost jewelry box.

  Instead there was a pebble. The tiny rock looked reddish-black, like maybe some kind of rough opal. Rolling it in my palm, I noticed it felt heavy for something so small, as if it were made of gold. Suddenly my ears popped as if the atmospheric pressure had dropped around me, but the sky looked normal. My hand felt funny. It started trembling.

  “Wrath,” said a hard whisper that cut through the air.

  I spun about but I was alone. Chronos hadn’t moved and it wasn’t him who’d spoken. I had the overwhelming feeling someone had just stepped up next to me at the periphery of my vision.

  “Hello?” I called.

  “Wrath,” the voice repeated, but now it sounded like the wind, and it faded away to nothing.

  It was my imagination. It had to be.

  I put the pebble back in the locket. The strange sensation passed quickly. From the streets below I heard car horns honking and other sounds of traffic. Some of the cars were actually moving. Maybe with Chronos out of the way the world might return to normal. Whatever was happening to me couldn’t last, and the city would be a better place for it. I just hoped my illness would kill my body before it took my mind.

  The last thing people needed was more superheroes.

  Part of me wanted to pick Chronos up and fly him far out to sea and dump him off. I could then go back to my apartment. Take a bottle of pills. And watch the world end on television while I went numb forever. Turning my back on Mercy and letting her rot sounded good. Whatever apocalypse was brewing down in Virginia and around the world wasn’t my fight, and I didn’t owe anyone anything.

  But then I thought about Carter. I didn’t really feel anything I would call love for the man. We barely knew each other. He was a means to an end, and I had accomplished what I had set out to do. I didn’t need him anymore and I owed him nothing. He was a chump with an irritating sister, that was all.

  Even as I thought them, my bitter, selfish thoughts fell by the wayside.

  “Damn it,” I whispered.

  I hauled Chronos up on my shoulder again.

  “Time to bring you home,” I said to him.

  The pause had done me good, and maybe the muffin too. I launched myself upward and headed north as quickly as I could manage.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  By the time I was flying along the highway into New Hampshire, I was feeling loopy again. My speed kept slowing. At least it was daytime so I could see where I was going. The burden on my shoulder had grown heavy, and moving through the air took effort. Whatever new muscles were involved in keeping me aloft were getting a workout, and I
was running out of steam. I had eaten the last of the food Mercy had given me. It was all downhill from here.

  It shouldn’t have been difficult to stay alert while flying, but exhaustion replaced the thrill of it. The fear of the voice I had heard helped, but even still I had to shake my head to clear the drowsiness and suck in lungfuls of cold air to keep myself from zoning out.

  I needed a plan.

  Meekly showing up with Chronos in hand wasn’t going to cut it. I would have to do better than “Sorry I killed him. Now let my friends go.”

  I thought of my days of kickboxing training. Sizing up one’s opponent meant research. Going into a fight blind meant you were going to lose. At that moment I knew nothing, and if Mercy and her village all had powers like Chronos, it meant I was outmatched.

  But I also had to understand my own metrics before a fight. What was my weight class? My reach? How hard could I punch? Sure, I could fly, was stronger than ever, and had incredible reflexes, but I still didn’t understand the mechanics of my abilities. Was this all from my brief exposure to Chronos’s house and its basement, or was it the locket or the figurine? And how had Mercy’s food affected me?

  I didn’t want to believe it was all magic.

  The highway below split and I followed it northwest. It didn’t take long before I was close to the exit that would lead to Dogwood. Below I saw a gas station. I touched down right by a row of pumps where a high-school-aged kid with an oversized blue Ford pickup was finishing up getting gas.

  His eyes went wide as he saw me walking towards him.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, wishing my voice were more commanding.