But not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the fear flash across Jerusha’s face.
Not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the explosion.
Not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the concussion fling Jerusha backward. Not so dark that he couldn’t see her land, crumpled, like a rag doll.
Not so dark that he couldn’t see the seeds pouring out of her pouch… the blood pouring out of her belly, black as ink. Then lightning flashed from the talons of the giant monster, and turned it red for an instant. So much red.
He staggered to her. “Jerusha!”
She called his name. “Wally. I’m sorry.”
And then he was kneeling over her, cradling her, stroking her hair, calling to her again and again. “Please don’t go,” he cried. “You’re the best friend I ever had.”
But she was gone.
The boy who’d killed her watched it all with a cold smile. His eyes were just as dark, just as soulless, as Ghost’s had been that first night she appeared to Wally.
Wally stood. “You killed my girlfriend.”
Something inside him screamed in rage, called for justice, demanded revenge. One punch is all it would take.
But something else inside him spoke with Jerusha’s voice, the voice of reason. He’s just a little boy.
If Ghost could be fixed, so could he.
Whatever the boy saw in Wally’s eyes, he turned and ran deeper into the ruined mansion. Wally caught him in a few strides. He pushed the boy down, pinned him face-first to a shattered tile floor with one foot on his back. Wally looped the rebar around the kid’s wrists and ankles.
It was difficult because he couldn’t use one arm. But when he finished, the boy who’d killed Jerusha was stuck hog-tied in an iron lariat.
Wally collapsed.
Ellen lay on the ground, staring up at the night sky as if in surprise. Her skin all down the right side was black where it wasn’t bloody. The fedora-Nick-lay five or six feet away, the last low flames smoldering in the ruined felt.
“Are you okay?” Bugsy said, but he knew that she wasn’t. That she wasn’t going to be. “Medic!” he shouted. He was standing naked in the middle of a battlefield. The roaring detonations of Monster and Bubbles drowned his voice, but he kept shouting.
Lilith appeared at his side. “Get down, you idiot,” she hissed, but Bugsy ignored her.
“She needs help,” Bugsy said. “She’s hurt!”
Lilith bent down and looked at Cameo’s ruined body with a passionless eye, and then shook her head.
“You can get her to a hospital,” Bugsy said. “Something.”
“I have an idea,” she said, and a moment later was gone.
“Bugsy,” Ellen gasped. Her voice was thick.
“I’m here,” he said, taking her hand.
“It hurts,” she said.
All around, people screamed and died. But the only thing Wally heard was Jerusha’s final words. I’m sorry. They echoed through his head, over and over again.
He’d failed Jerusha. He’d failed Lucien. He’d failed Simoon and Hardhat and King Cobalt. He’d let down everybody who had ever cared about him. Good old Rustbelt.
Wally rolled onto his side, on the arm that didn’t make him pass out. He teetered to one knee. A charred body- Cameo? -lay sprawled on the earth, curled in on itself, barely moving. Bugsy cradled her, crying. His tears glistened with flashes of lightning and the light of explosions as Bubbles battled the gigantic thing that Tom Weathers had become.
Lilith-Noel-surveyed the carnage with a strange expression on her face. From across the smoking battlefield, she looked Wally in the eye. Then a flash of lightning made her silver eyes blaze bright, and she was gone. Bugsy saw her vanish, too. He swore. Michelle was the only person still fighting, and she was losing.
Wally steeled himself against the pain. He gritted his teeth, but a moan still escaped his lips when he pushed himself upright. If killing Wally could occupy the monster for even a few seconds, maybe it would help Michelle, or give Bugsy time to get some help for Cameo.
I’m sorry, Ghost. Guess I failed you, too.
Chernabog, Michelle thought as she flew through the air. That’s what he looks like. That damn big demon from Fantasia. And I look like one of those dancing hippos. Only filthier and less graceful.
She smashed into a small grove of trees, flattening them as she landed. The monster had grown tired of lighting her up with bolts of electricity and starlight. Now it was tossing her around like a rag doll.
Michelle groaned as she got up. She was terribly heavy now, despite bubbling at him as fast as she could. As she moved toward the monster again, her feet sank into the ground. The monster roared at her. Its massive erection waggled.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she said. “A huge, tumescent penis? That is one ginormous cliche, dude.” While she was talking, she formed bubbles in her palm: tiny, almost invisible, but extremely dense bubbles. Then she streamed them at the monster.
When they struck, it howled in pain and rage. Its hideous purple-black skin peeled back, exposing pulpy red muscle and bone, but the damage didn’t seem to slow it down at all. It dashed toward her again, trailing blood. Where the blood fell on the ground, the grass hissed and burned.
Michelle tried to run away, but the monster’s stride was too long. It grabbed her as if she weighed no more than a sparrow and hurled her at one of the smaller buildings. She went through the concrete walls as if they were paper. Her body blobbed out again. Dust, mortar, and cement block bits and pieces covered her as she rolled to a stop.
Michelle saw that Rusty and Fire Boy were no longer on the steps. As she glanced around, she saw Cameo, Bugsy, and Lilith. They were huddled together. At least Lilith could teleport them out if things got too bad.
As she pushed herself up, she glanced over her shoulder. The monster was bearing down on her again. She bubbled and blasted holes in its knees. That only pissed it off more. It grabbed her, hoisted her thirty feet into the air, and swung her around and around its head.
Then it released her.
Michelle saw the Red House coming at her at breakneck speed. It was burning now. When she landed, she would be buried in fire and brick. How the hell were the others going to fight against that thing while she bubbled her way out? And she was afraid again.
She hit with a deafening crash, scattering bricks in all directions and sending fire and ash into the sky. Walls crumbled as her body smashed into them. Weakened floorboards cracked beneath her weight. She smashed down through one floor, then another. As she came to a stop in what must have been the cellar, the roof collapsed above her. A moment later what was left of the Red House came down on top of her.
“Crap,” she said.
Kongoville, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
The glass coffin was thick. A sledgehammer would take too long, might not work, and the good citizens of Kongoville would come and tear him apart for desecrating their heroine’s grave.
Noel stood in the door of the mausoleum and looked up and down the street. Things were oddly quiet, though he could see some broken windows in shops where looting had broken out as the country coped with the idea that the Nshombos were dead.
At one of the construction sites the cranes stood idle, but a lone backhoe was moving the remains of the building that had been demolished to make room for another grandiose monument to the People’s Paradise of Africa.
He didn’t like teleporting into moving objects, but he didn’t want to take the time to run down the street. And that might draw the attention of the nervous policeman who stood ready to direct traffic if there had been any to direct.
Just like shooting. Lead the target. And he made the jump.
The driver yelled in terror as Lilith appeared, standing on his lap. He tried to eel out the door so Noel lost his precarious balance and fell sideways banging his head hard on the side of the cab. He managed to snag the back of the man’s shirt with one hand while with the
other he drew his gun.
He drove the barrel into the base of the driver’s skull. “Drive or I’ll kill you,” he said in French.
The man’s head nodded with the speed of a needle on a sewing machine, and he resumed his place behind the controls.
“Drive to the mausoleum.” The man rolled a terrified eye at him. “Do it!”
As they rumbled down the street the traffic cop gaped at them and began pawing for his radio.
They reached the mausoleum. “Knock down the wall.”
“Sir, please…”
Noel fired a shot right by the man’s ear. He screeched, put the backhoe in motion. The wall came down.
Some of the debris fell onto the coffin. Noel saw a few cracks. “Move that crap and break the glass,” he ordered.
It seemed to be taking forever, manipulating the hydraulics, lifting the front bucket, using it to push aside the fallen stones. Finally the glass was exposed.
The driver’s hands were trembling. “Sir, she is our hero. To desecrate-”
“She’s going to live again and save-” His inventiveness failed him. Noel could hear sirens drawing ever closer. “You remember how she saved Tom Weathers, brought him back from the dead?” The man nodded. “Well, her power still lives and she’s going to bring Dr. Nshombo back.”
The man enthusiastically obeyed. On the second blow the glass broke. Noel leaped from the cab. Cops were clawing their way over the rubble. Bullets began to snap and whine around him. Noel snatched the medal off the corpse’s neck, then staggered as a bullet took him in the shoulder. For an instant he felt only extreme heat at the point of impact. He knew the pain was coming.
He made the jump back to the Red House.
The Red House
Bunia, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Ellen’s breath was shallow, her eyes fluttering. Lilith pressed the golden medallion into her good hand. Bugsy held his breath. Behind them, Monster roared, a sheet of lightning turning the night to day.
Ellen closed her eyes. Someone he’d never met opened them. He was suddenly very aware of being naked. “Hi,” he said. “I know this is going to seem a little weird, but the thing is, you’re dead? And I kind of need your help.”
“I know what I am,” the new woman said. Her voice had an African accent.
“Great,” Bugsy said. “Really that’s great. I was thinking if you could just patch Ellen back up, that would be really, really cool. Then we could-”
The woman sat up slowly. Ellen’s skin cracked and split, blood rolling down her side in a crimson stream. “No,” the woman said. “The time has passed for that. Help me stand.”
Bugsy took her good arm and lifted. She seemed lighter than Ellen. Less substantial. The Lady of Pain turned her head as if no terrible injuries had disfigured her. Her expression was frank and evaluating. Bugsy turned with her, and saw what she saw.
Bodies. Dozens of them. Men in the tattered uniforms of soldiers or the white smocks of nurse attendants. Children lying flat on the ground to avoid the violence all around them, or already dead. And beyond them, in the ruins of the Red House, Bubbles and Monster trading terrible blows.
With every strike that Monster landed, Bubbles grew, and with every exploding bubble that detonated against Monster, the creature became larger, its claws and penis waving in the African air. Each incapable of harming the other, and both wreaking terrible damage all around them. Monster howled at the moon above them.
It struck Bugsy that both the combatants were white, and the dead around them black.
“You do not know the pain I have carried,” the Lady of Pain said. He thought at first she was looking at the dead, but when he followed her gaze, it was on the charred remnant of Nick’s fedora. She turned to look at him. Cameo’s good eye narrowed. The burned one was too damaged to close. “With every healing gesture, I have carried the pain. Do you understand what I am saying? They call me an ace, and all that I have been given is pain.”
Ellen, Bugsy thought. This isn’t the Lady of Pain, whatever the voice sounds like. I’m talking to Ellen.
“Please,” Bugsy said. “Could you just heal-”
“This is no day for healing. This is a day for the ending of things,” the Lady of Pain said. “Tom Weathers has killed me. Let him take the pain that I carried.”
Something came out of her, a bolt of light that was not light, a heat that froze. The air between the Lady of Pain and the monster writhed and shuddered. Bugsy felt the hair on his arms and the back of his neck rise.
And a world of hurt enveloped Tom Weathers.
It was as if he were being wrenched apart and crushed and suffocated and burned alive. All at once. As if it were happening to each and every nerve ending in his body. Every atom.
He struck out. The pain only grew, impossibly grew. It began to eat at his mind like flame at paper.
“Here’s what’s happening,” Mark said, his words clear through the horrific all-consuming agony. “One of those eggs you broke so cavalierly has been put back together again. Sort of. Just long enough to pay you back for all the pain you caused others. With that pain.”
Tom tried to say something. He could only scream. Even in his unimaginable torment he knew that Meadows felt every bit of it, as strongly as he did. Yet the old hippie spoke as serenely as ever a martyr did through flames.
“Remember Dolores Michel, Tom?” he asked. “Our Lady of Pain? She couldn’t just take on herself the pain of others. She could also give that pain back.”
The Radical tried to raise a final fist of defiance. But that emotion crisped and burned to ash as well.
And in that agony, he died.
The quiet seemed unnatural. Noel became aware of the whimpers and cries from the wounded. The medal gleamed against Cameo’s chest, her hands still clutched around it.
But the demon was gone. There was a form lying on the ground. Noel got to his feet and tottered toward the body. He had to draw the gun with his left hand. The wound in his shoulder had left his right arm useless.
Shock brought him to a stop. Instead of a powerfully built man in his forties there was an emaciated figure with long grey hair and a beard like the remnants of a torn spiderweb. Blood streaked the body, drawing the insects. Noel holstered his gun and laid two fingers at the base of the man’s throat. There was a threadlike pulse. “He’s not dead,” he said. “Even after all that, the bastard Weathers is still not dead.”
“He is,” came Bugsy’s voice from over his shoulder. “That’s Mark Meadows.”
Michelle bubbled away the last of the Red House, swearing as she went. When she emerged from the rubble, the monster had vanished. The gunshots had died away too, as had the explosions.
She brushed away ash and cinders as she picked her way through the debris. Bugsy, Rusty, and Lilith stood grouped around a man lying on the ground. Bugsy was naked. She didn’t see Cameo or Gardener anywhere and that scared her.
“He should be killed,” Lilith was saying, with the matter-of-fact air of a person discussing whether to take the bus or a taxi.
The man on the ground was slight in build, almost emaciated. His face was lined and there was a shock of grey-blond hair on his head. A long, thin, scraggly beard covered what looked like a weak chin. He looked about the same age as Michelle’s father.
“But that ain’t Tom Weathers,” Rusty said, confused. “I dunno who that guy is, but he’s some other fella. And he ain’t that demon thing neither.”
“Yes and no,” said Bugsy. “He’s Mark Meadows. His ace is to turn into other people when he takes drugs, and he’s been on a really long, lousy trip. He’s the guy the Radical, I don’t know… hijacked, I guess.”
Rusty shook his head. “He’s just lying there. Doesn’t seem right to kill someone that helpless.”
Lilith rolled her silver eyes. “However it happened, it could happen again. Weathers is too dangerous to be allowed to live. And the only way to kill Weathers is to kill Meadows. They’r
e one and the same.”
“Well, not exactly,” Bugsy said, “but killing him is still the smart move. Even if he’s not Weathers now, he might turn back into Weathers when he wakes up.”
“I’ll do it,” said Lilith. “What’s one more death in the midst of
…” She gestured at the carnage around them.
Michelle stepped closer. She wondered again how Niobe could have fallen in love with this man. “There’s been enough killing here.”
“This is Tom Weathers,” Lilith said. “I will not allow him to simply walk away.”
“You don’t get to choose,” said Michelle. “You’re an assassin. You murder people in cold blood for money. And as far as I can tell, you feel no remorse for what you’ve done. That makes you a sociopath. You can cut the crusts off it all day long and you’ll never make that anything but a shit sandwich. Yes, I’ve killed people too, but I’ve never killed anyone who wasn’t trying to kill me. I’ve never killed anyone in cold blood. I’ve never befriended someone so I could sneak in their room later and slit their throat. And just so we’re clear, I have never felt good about killing anyone, even when the choice was me or them. You can’t wash off what you’ve done with tea and crumpets and pretty clothes, Noel. That’s the biggest difference between us. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t mourn and regret what I’ve done.”
“I had no idea you were the only one among us who possessed such moral clarity and purity,” said Lilith. “By all means hug that close, Bubbles. As for Weathers… do whatever you want. It’s on your heads.” She walked away into the darkness.
Then Meadows groaned and opened his eyes. He sat up and looked up at them, dazed.
“Time to shit or get off the pot,” said Bugsy. “He fucking killed Cameo. In Paris he killed Garou and the owl guy and a bunch of security. He almost killed Klaus. If it weren’t for him and the Nshombos, Gardener would be alive. And how many more? Hundreds? Thousands? Mark Meadows may not be Tom Weathers, but he created him.”
“I did,” Mark Meadows said softly. There were tears in his big blue eyes.
“Seriously,” Michelle told him. “Don’t contribute.”
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