All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault

by James Alan Gardner

  The bat reached back and raked its claws across Ninety-Nine’s head. She pressed her face into the bat’s fur to protect her eyes, and her helmet offered a measure of defense. Still, the helmet was designed to deflect hockey pucks, not sharp, lethal attacks. One of the bat’s claws stabbed through the helmet’s fiberglass and into Ninety-Nine’s scalp, making a deep, bloody divot.

  Even worse, inside the rift, the strangler demon lurched to his feet. The fireball-bees of the Light shied away from Old Skinless—something they’d never done before. The demon wobbled forward, then shuddered as if hit by a seizure. He managed to stop himself from falling and wobbled forward again, only to be wracked by another spasm. This one was stronger than the first: so ferocious, his fleshless skull rocked wildly, as if it might come off his neck.

  Then the skull did come off.

  As did the demon’s right arm.

  And his left.

  Within seconds, his entire skeleton had shaken into individual bones: a whirling cloud like an osseous dust devil, a tornado of knuckles, ribs, and vertebrae. They clacked against each other like castanets in a gale.

  The skull remained at the top. It produced a familiar cackle that made my flesh crawl—a visceral revulsion beyond normal fear. I grimaced and rolled my eyes. This was another mind-fucking mental power, chilling my brain and making me want to run. At the same time, my muscles would barely move, clenched too tight to let me get the hell out of there.

  Aria had better luck resisting the effect, possibly because she’d surrounded herself with her force field at the first sign of trouble. As Bone-Tornado Skinless emerged from the rift, Aria delivered a sound blast at point-blank range. It shot from her mouth in a cone of golden force that encompassed the entire bone cloud. Individual bones shuddered under the impact, but most of the golden energy passed through, blowing harmlessly in and out of the cloud.

  The demon continued to cackle. He aimed himself toward Aria and gusted straight toward her at top speed. Within a fraction of a second, the cloud enveloped her. Bones clattered on her force field, 206 high-velocity projectiles trying to break her defenses.

  I wanted to help, but how? If I tried to get close to the bone tornado, its wind would drive me back. Even if somehow I got inside the vortex, what could I attack? This time, I couldn’t pull a tooth—the teeth were already detached into thirty-two biting bullets. And within that bone barrage, how long would my stone skin protect me?

  «Dakini,» I transmitted, «hit Skinless with something psionic. I’ll try to help Ninety-Nine.»

  AS I FLEW TOWARD NINETY-NINE, THE WERE-BAT LOOSED ANOTHER SCREAM

  Ninety-Nine was apparently weakening. Her arm on the were-bat’s throat was no longer strong enough to choke off his screeches. Once more my senses reeled. I tried to keep flying forward but felt cold wetness a moment later as I plunged to the ground and into the snow. I had no choice but to stay where I was until my perception cleared.

  Before that happened, the bat screamed again.

  And again.

  «Sober up!» said a voice in my head. «I mean it. You’re making me sick.»

  As if things couldn’t get worse, Elaine was back.

  BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS

  The bad: Elaine was still alive and could still speak to my blood.

  The good: My dizziness was contagious through the bond.

  Take that, mistress bloodsucker. I hope you puke.

  Elaine could surely have shut down the mental connection if she wanted. Considering what she’d told me, she must have thousands of minions, and at any given time, some would be sick, some in pain, and so on. Elaine couldn’t possibly handle such a distracting mental barrage. More likely, she could establish a small number of active connections and ignore the rest.

  But she wanted to keep her hold on me. That meant she inherited my nausea.

  Unless she used magic to fix it.

  My vision went crimson for a throbbing moment: like when you’re asleep and your mother suddenly turns on the lights and you squeeze your eyes shut but the horrible blinding shine still burns through your eyelids. Then my senses clicked back into perfect focus and Elaine shouted in my brain, «Wake up and kill that fucking bat before my antinausea spell wears off!»

  I FELT INFINITELY BETTER

  Except about the prospect of killing the bat.

  Yes, according to Diamond, the bat would die soon. Was it really so bad if I hastened the inevitable by a few minutes?

  But that question had become irrelevant. If I murdered the bat now, I’d be following Elaine’s orders. No, no, a thousand times no. I wouldn’t become her mind-controlled assassin, even if I actually might have whacked the guy on my own.

  On the other hand, my no, no, no might not matter. I was already moving forward. Part of my mind was weighing my options: whether to fly into the bat’s pointy ears or up his ugly flattened nose. Once I was inside, I could stay in his skull and rupture his brain, or head down into his chest and burst his heart. Either way, if I grew from the size of a microbe into my usual four-foot-ten, I would pulp so much of his innards, the bat would be dead before he could blink.

  I didn’t want to do either, but Elaine-infected blood pounded in my ears, demanding obedience.

  Surrendering would make everything easy. I wouldn’t even have to take responsibility; I could blame it all on Elaine. And I’d have to give in eventually; mental resistance wasn’t one of my powers. No shame to concede a fight I couldn’t win. Save the effort, save the pain, and just accept the inevitable.

  If it had been anyone other than Elaine, I might not have fought so hard. I wouldn’t have had the depths of emotion bolstering my defiance. But Elaine? I had fought and refought her every day for three years. This was personal.

  I COULDN’T COMPLETELY REFUSE ELAINE’S COMMAND

  This time, I wasn’t strong enough to say, “Get fucked, this is over.” But I could twist on the hook. I could choose my own method of compliance.

  So instead of a cold-blooded instant kill, I flew up to the bat and clobbered him.

  THE “FAST-GROW UPPERCUT” TECHNIQUE

  I landed on the ground under the bat’s nose. Ninety-Nine was holding him relatively still, so I trained my laser sights on a sweet spot under his jaw, made a fist, and held it over my head like raising my hand in class. Then I grew to Max Zirc, ramming the bat’s chin with a fist as hard as the Rockies.

  The punch hurt me too. It stung my knuckles and sprained my wrist. I’d tried to keep my arm straight, but even when turned to stone, I’m no stronger than usual. I don’t know how fast I was actually moving at the moment of contact, but it felt like punching a wall at a hundred kilometers an hour.

  Still, it didn’t hurt me as much as it hurt the bat. It lifted him off the ground, with Ninety-Nine still clinging to his back. The bat went up in an arcing trajectory, his wings instinctively spreading to slow him down. As soon as he did that, Ninety-Nine slithered around him like a kid climbing monkey bars, using her weight to push his wings back against his sides. By the time the bat began the downward half of his arc, his wings were pinioned and Ninety-Nine was perched on top.

  The bat slammed the ground nose-first. Snow padded the impact but not enough. A moment after the face-plant, Mr. Bat finally started to strobe.

  “OFF!” I TOLD NINETY-NINE

  Before I finished the syllable, she was moving. She could see the strobing as well as I could.

  She was lucky she moved fast. The bat made a grab and might have caught her, except that (being who she was) she’d done a flamboyant backflip dismount just to show off.

  Almost without thinking, I threw myself onto the bat. I could do that—I was still Max Zirc size. And the bat might be strobing, but he wasn’t unconscious. If I didn’t keep him busy, he’d go after Ninety-Nine again.

  Ninety-Nine may have possessed tremendous powers of healing, but there had to be a limit. If she was wrestling with the bat when he exploded, she might be blasted to shreds. If I was the one who was wrestling,
I’d be hit hard too, but in zircon-form I had a better chance of surviving than Ninety-Nine’s human flesh.

  The bat had no intention of going quietly. With yet another scream, he heaved himself off the ground. I was lying right on top of him, but he lifted full-size me as if I weighed no more than a snowflake. I tried to shift into the piggyback position that Ninety-Nine had used, but I didn’t have her dexterity. I’d barely begun to move when the bat grabbed me in a bear hug and tried to sink his teeth through my rocky skin.

  «WHAT ARE YOU DOING?» ELAINE SNAPPED INSIDE MY HEAD; «JUST SHRINK AND GET AWAY!»

  I didn’t answer.

  «Shrink!» Elaine snapped again. «He might be strong enough to bite through your skin. And when he explodes … »

  I tried to shut out her voice. The bat made that easier—it’s hard to hear someone kibitzing when a huge damned monster is gnawing on your throat.

  «Shrink, damn it!»

  Red light flashed, and I shrank a few centimeters before I could stop myself. Elaine had somehow amplified the influence of her blood bond. But if I shrank from the bat’s grip, he’d grab Ninety-Nine, still standing right by my side.

  I yelled at Ninety-Nine, “Back off before he explodes.” She didn’t budge. Belatedly, I realized she was staring at my face as if trying to see something. My eyes were completely covered by my mask, but she was silently trying to make some sort of connection.

  Then I got it. She could hear Elaine inside my head. My comm ring must have been transmitting Elaine’s blood-bond voice. Every command echoed from my brain to Ninety-Nine’s. Ninety-Nine had no idea who was trying to give me orders, but she was asking what I wanted her to do.

  I mouthed the words, “Help me.”

  Then the were-bat hurled me onto the ground.

  THE BAT PRESSED DOWN, HIS TEETH SCRAPING MY FACE

  The pain was bad, but the sound was worse, like chisels trying to carve into my rock by sheer brute strength. Inside my head, I recited, Teeth: made of apatite, hardness 5. Me: made of zircon, hardness 7 and a half. When his teeth gnashed my skin, they’d abrade and I wouldn’t.

  I could take this. His bites hurt, but I wasn’t actually being injured. And the guy was a lightweight bat, even if he looked as big as a bear. He wasn’t nearly heavy enough for his weight to crush me. I could just let him gnash till he blew up.

  Despite claustrophobic memories of that long-ago fight with Hannah, this wasn’t the same. I could escape anytime, just by shrinking. It was my choice to stay, just to keep the bat busy. And I didn’t feel smothered—for the first time, I realized I didn’t need to breathe. I was litho, not bio. Respiration was for squishies.

  More importantly, however, I could see. My gaze wasn’t blocked by the bat on top of me. I could let my viewpoint float out of my body, watching the world.

  Aria and Dakini had hit the bone-cloud demon hard enough to start him strobing. I didn’t know how they’d done it, but two on one, they had done the trick. Now Aria had the demon bubbled inside a force field, just as she’d done at the Market with the bogeyman. She and the bubble were heading into the sky at high speed. With luck, she’d release him and run before he detonated; this time, she wouldn’t get hurt.

  Closer to earth, Ninety-Nine was skulking. She was likely keeping to the shadows (as if I could tell!) but her major source of concealment was the ever-falling snow. I wondered where she was going, until I saw her stop and sniff.

  An Olympic-level sense of smell. I could guess what odor had caught her attention.

  I SEARCHED UNTIL I LOCATED NINETY-NINE’S TARGET

  Elaine crouched beside the ruins of the generator building. She too must have been hiding in shadows, but she couldn’t hide the stench of the dead man’s blood on her clothes. Ninety-Nine homed in on it. Like any skilled hunter, she sneaked up on her prey from behind.

  Elaine was no longer surrounded by glowing defense spells. They must have been blasted to smithereens when the generators exploded. Still, they’d done their job; Elaine’s clothes were crispy around the edges, but Elaine herself seemed uninjured.

  Could Ninety-Nine really fight a vampire mage? I didn’t know. I could call Dakini to lend a hand—she was only a short distance away. Dakini looked winded after fighting the bone-cloud demon, but even a weak mental attack would distract Elaine from Ninety-Nine.

  Unfortunately, if I talked to Dakini with my comm ring, Elaine would hear my thoughts and find out Ninety-Nine was creeping up on her. I had to stay silent …

  Wait. Even mental silence wasn’t enough. The blood bond gave Elaine access to my thoughts, even when I wasn’t using my comm ring. She must already have known Ninety-Nine was coming for her. That’s why Elaine had stopped yelling at me to shrink and escape from the were-bat. She was lying in wait for Ninety-Nine, pretending to be oblivious while really preparing an ambush.

  I shouted mentally, «Ninety-Nine, it’s a trap!»

  Then it was out of my hands.

  NINETY-NINE JUMPED BACK AN INSTANT BEFORE ELAINE LASHED OUT

  Elaine’s fingers had sprouted claws. They missed Ninety-Nine and slashed into what remained of the generator building’s wall. Aluminum siding shredded like paper. Elaine tore out a handful of the tattered metal and threw it at Ninety-Nine’s eyes.

  Ninety-Nine ducked her head sideways, letting the scraps fly past her ear. For a moment, she and Elaine simply faced each other, a short distance out of each other’s reach.

  Elaine smiled, her fangs fully extended. Thanks to the blood bond, I could hear her speak. “I’ve read Zircon’s mind,” Elaine said to Ninety-Nine. “I know you have no powers. Human strength. Human speed. You have nothing that can hurt me.”

  Ninety-Nine smiled back. “Zircon doesn’t know everything. But I do.”

  Green light flashed between Ninety-Nine’s hands, like an electric spark arcing between two conductors. An instant later, something long and thin slapped Elaine’s face, knocking her back a step. Elaine hissed: the sound of a Darkling dropping the pretense of being human.

  Ninety-Nine held a hockey stick made of blazing green energy. She’d summoned it out of nothing, or perhaps the collective unconscious. A hockey player made no sense without a stick. Since Ninety-Nine hadn’t included a stick with her costume, the Light had been forced to create one.

  It was a thing of power like Excalibur, imbued with inevitability. A super hockey player must have a super stick.

  It made me wonder if Jools had chosen to be Ninety-Nine as a way of making this happen. Had she really thought that far ahead? If so, what else did she have planned? What would she get when she finally summoned skates?

  The possibilities made me shiver. Or perhaps I was only shivering at the sight of the ensuing battle. Ninety-Nine vs. Elaine … and I was beginning to believe Elaine was at least as high-powered as her Sphinx-level brother. Lightning-fast and elephant-strong, she would have torn Ninety-Nine to ribbons, except for the glowing stick.

  Each touch of the stick seemed to hurt her. It was like a crucifix, a Holy Weapon of the Light. And Ninety-Nine used it like a world-class martial artist: attacking, blocking, and twirling it as a distraction in order to land kicks.

  Elaine was no slouch at martial arts either. If I’d had any doubts whether she truly belonged in the Dark Guard, they were dispelled.

  No ordinary Darkling fought like that. The Dark were bankers, politicians, and trust-fund babies. Like Sparks, they used their powers with instinctive skill, but they seldom trained for combat. Physical fights weren’t the Dark’s forte; they devoted their time to mastering magic and manipulation, not indulging in fisticuffs.

  But Elaine had trained hard. She must have done so in secret—in my time with Nicholas, Elaine had always been a merciless mental bully, but I’d never seen her get physical. Now she hissed and struck like a viper. Several times she drew Ninety-Nine’s blood. But Ninety-Nine struck just as hard and fast, hacking with the edge of the stick, smacking with the flat, and jabbing with the end. A normal wooden stick would
have been smashed to splinters in the first few seconds, but the burning green energy seemed unbreakable.

  Slashing, tripping, spearing, and other unsportsmanlike conduct: Ninety-Nine racked up penalties that would be measured in weeks, not minutes. And everything took place at Jackie-Chan speed—not even my Spark-o-Vision could follow the details. (I was also distracted by the were-bat continuing to gnaw on me. The experience was like lying on a couch and trying to follow a conversation while an attention-hungry cat pawed all over me.)

  So I can’t tell you exactly what ended the fight: just that suddenly, Elaine was falling, and the stick clubbed her head at least three times before she hit the ground. She lay unconscious, her face burned by multiple contacts with the stick’s “holiness.” Red-and-black bands across her cheeks were already beginning to blister.

  NINETY-NINE LAID THE BUTT END OF THE STICK AGAINST ELAINE’S STERNUM

  “Yo, Zircon!” she called. “This stick isn’t wood, but I’m sure it’ll do. You want me to stake her?”

  With the were-bat on top of me, I couldn’t answer right away—I had to do some squirming to get my mouth free of its fur. That delay was a good thing; it gave me time to think.

  I could have told Ninety-Nine to finish Elaine off. A vampire’s bondslaves usually can’t hurt their master in any way, but the blood bond had dwindled when Elaine went unconscious. I was sure the respite was only temporary; when Elaine woke, she could reactivate the bond whenever she chose.

  If Elaine woke. Her death would erase many problems.

  But it would cause others. The Dark Guard swore vengeance on those who killed one of their own. Nicholas might do the same, and he knew enough about me to do unimaginable damage.

  Besides, I didn’t want Elaine to make me a murderer. Nor did I want Ninety-Nine to kill on my behalf.

  «Dakini,» I transmitted, «can you erase memories like Invie did in the alley?»

  «I believe so,» she said. «I paid close attention to the technique.»