Ash dug into the pocket of his white pants, withdrew a gold and blue key card: the key to Mythcorp.
He held it out to Lamorak, who beamed.
“Come on out, Officers,” Ash said. “It’s time.”
My body temp was plummeting again. Fear does that. Terror more so. I followed the group, taking up the rear. I was all in now. No matter how this ended, I would see it through. I’d gone too far to quit now.
I was . . . an accomplice.
Chapter 30
Escaping Vera City proved trickier than entering it, but eventually we succeeded and the experience—other than forcing me to give a smidgen of begrudging respect to the vulgar and disgusting Ishmael—didn’t add anything to my life.
Two hours later we arrived at Izzy’s house. We’d taken the bus instead of renting a car because (1) I didn’t know how to drive, (2) Faustus didn’t like driving, and (3) Kana was too short to drive safely. Sweat oozed out of my neck and back and my pits as we walked the two blocks from the bus stop on 63rd to Izzy’s house on 65th Street.
A sneeze took hold, and then I knocked. She’s going to help us. She’s going to help us.
The door opened. A middle-aged woman appeared. After deciding we weren’t a group of terrorists (Kana was the deadliest ninja in our group and she barely weighed 100 pounds) the elderly woman with the excess of mascara seemed to relax. Her eyes turned to me. Before she spoke I knew we had knocked on the wrong door.
“How can I help you?”
“Um,” I began. “I’m sorry. I think we have the wrong Macawber’s.” I looked down to check the address I’d written down from the directory on Kana’s FAD. There were only two Macawber families listed in Philicity. The other was located near the Montaigne Tunnel on the opposite side of the metropolis. “We’ll be going then,” I said to Mascara Fanatic.
“Who are you looking for?” she asked.
“Izzy,” I said. “We’re friends of hers?”
Mascara Fanatic laughed. “You have the right house. Izzy is my daughter. Would you like me to get her? What were your names?”
I gave her our names and she toddled off to get Izzy.
Faustus tried to muffle laughter. “What?” I asked.
“Let me guess, you thought because Mrs. Macawber was of average height, she couldn’t possibly be the mother of a dwarf,” he said. I nodded and asked why this was funny. “It’s funny, because Knox at least understood genetics. But you don’t have a clue.”
‘He’s right,’ Castor rejoined. ‘You’re like those retarded orphans upstairs at the Home.’
I turned back to face the door as it squeaked open again. This time my favorite little person in the world appeared. “Yes?”
“Thank God you’re all right,” I breathed. “Ah, this is Kana and Faustus. Are you ready?”
Izzy inspected my Mythicon partners with her beady little peepers, a discombobulated expression on her face. When she inspected me, her face did not change.
“You’re Morgan, right? What do you want?”
‘Oh man,’ Castor said, sounding genuinely concerned for once. Marie laid a phantom hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Look at her eyes. She’s been Mesmerized. I’m so sorry, Morgan.’
The world spun. My flesh rippled with shivers and went cold.
“Are you okay?” Izzy asked.
I glanced back at Kana. She mirrored Marie’s expression. “Ash,” I spat. Then, speaking to Castor, I added “Ash did this as payback for what you made me do to Sanson. You took Izzy away from me!”
Instead of sucking on a B-drop, I swallowed one whole. The doojee-coating on the butterscotch is absorbed quicker that way. It’s a more potent but much shorter lasting high. The spooks quickly dissolved away to nothing.
I turned back to Izzy, who’d miraculously remained on the other side of the screen door, watching. Her mother wasn’t behind her, so I leapt forward and opened the screen door in one fluid motion. Taking Izzy’s soft and slightly plump cheeks in my hands, I gazed into her peepers. Unlike with Bruno Groothius, I did not hold back. I bore into her soul, pouring my will into hers, sensing her mind and will and forcing her to feel mine.
I didn’t know if a person could be de-Mesmerized. It was like trying to erase whiteout from a word that’s been covered over. But it didn’t matter, I had to try.
It was quick, no more than a few ticks. The gist of it was: You remember our friendship and you want to remember everything that we’ve done together. You remember our friendship and you want to remember everything we’ve done together.
From somewhere outside my intense focus, I heard screaming.
I snapped out of it, found myself five feet away from Izzy, my arms pinned behind my back by Kana. “I’m cool,” I told her in the calmest voice I could manufacture. The smidge wonder woman released me and I stepped up to Izzy, who had just finished screeching her head off.
Faustus was holding the door open. When Mrs. Macawber appeared behind Izzy, I was glad to see he kept it open. “What did you do? What did you do to her?” Mrs. Macawber demanded.
“I think they were trying to kiss,” Faustus joked. “But if so, then it was the strangest kiss—”
“Faustus!” Kana tried to stomp on his toe, but he stepped back just before she could.
I moved forward to explain, but Izzy beat me to the punch. “It’s all right, mom. They’re friends.”
“Friends who make you scream?” wondered Mrs. Macawber.
“That’s actually a good point,” Faustus looked to be having the time of his life, the jerk.
“It’s just something we do,” Izzy explained, winking at me, sending warmth throughout my body. “It’s like a game,” Izzy continued, “to see who can scream the loudest. Watch.” And she belted out a fine old scream.
I got the hint and followed her with my own howl. Kana jumped in next with a holler that could make the dead stand up.
After explaining that we were all going to the movies (and after receiving the dirtiest look in history) I was given permission by Mrs. Macawber to take Izzy with us. I couldn’t be sure, but while I was trying to convince her, Faustus seemed to be concentrating hard on Mrs. Macawber, almost like he was mucking with probability, putting the ball in our court.
Izzy grabbed her black plastic crutches and followed us down the steps out onto the street. We all waved goodbye to the mom and started up another screech-contest to reinforce our story. I wondered what the neighbors thought.
At the bus stop I couldn’t stop ogling Izzy. Finally she looked up at me and in a moment of pure and rapturous connection, we embraced. “Thank you,” she said. “I can’t believe I let him do that to me. I thought my mind was sharp enough to resist being screwed with.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” I said, resisting the urge to pat her head. “No one pulls a stronger Mesmer than Ash. He’s been practicing for years.”
“Besides,” Faustus said, “the old Jedi Mind Trick has been known to work on the strong minded. In Star Wars Episode Eight, Jacen Solo pulls a fast one on Ben, who’s quite powerful in the force you know. Plus—”
“Give it a rest, Red,” Kana interceded.
On the bus, while explaining the latest news about Ash and Sanson and Nimrod to Izzy, I noticed Faustus staring through his window out at the sky, a distinctively dire expression crinkling his freckled face.
We all gawked at him until his brown peepers turned to us. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“What’s up?” Kana asked.
Faustus rubbed his peepers. “Look at the sky. That’s a brimstorm sunset. It’s gonna hit inside ten minutes. I’d bet Ishmael’s liquor cabinet on it.”
“No way,” Kana argued as she and Izzy sat up on their knees to peek through my window. “It’s too soon. We just had one like a few days ago.”
“Yep, welp, tell that to God,” Faustus said while trading stares with an old crone in the opposite seat. “We’re going to have to go in through the back, through the loading bay doors.
There’s a roof there. It’ll at least give us some kind of cover while we try to bust in. I mean we could go through the front, but you’d all get slammed by brimstone, and then I’d just end up alone.” Here he raised his hands. “I can see the headlines now: Man is sole survivor of a horrific brimstorm, and he is miraculously unharmed. It’ll be like the headlines for Bruce Willis’ character in Unbreakable. Wicked good first movie of an awesome series.”
The bus was slowing down even though the light ahead was green.
“What’s going on?” I asked no one and everyone. That shivery feeling was returning.
“Oh no,” Izzy groaned.
“What?” I asked, but a few ticks later the PA system rumbled on with an annoying squelch and the bus driver spoke in his most official tone: “I’m sorry folks, but the Weather Service just grounded all public transportation vehicles. An unexpected brimstorm is brewing. Just sit tight.”
A flurry of complaints burbled up as he finished: ‘Oh come on’ ‘This is some bullcrap,’ ‘What kind of a candy-cane weather service can’t get its head out of its butt long enough to do a real forecast?’ ‘I am going to sue those bastards over at MNT Weather’ ‘I’m hungry.’
The bluish-black clouds rumbled overhead. It doesn’t really thunder during a brimstorm, but there are what we call rumbles, a sort of fracas in the clouds that sounds exactly like a fatty-patty’s gut after an all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet. Disturbing and nasty, sure as sure.
Despite having a whopping amount of doojee flowing through my body, I was on edge, legs jittering, teeth chattering, tongue jabbering. “We can’t stay here. We have to go. Now.”
“Whoa!” a punk in a leather jacket said. “I saw the first thread. You all owe me Pepsis.”
“Shut up,” another punk said.
Izzy patted my leg and nodded slowly. It was all very condescending. “You want us to go out in a brimstorm? Why don’t we just wait until tomorrow? It’s supposed to be a clear sky.”
“Today was supposed to be a clear sky,” Faustus pointed out.
Kana and Izzy gave him withering glances. “She’s right,” said Kana. “We can’t go out in this. Besides, what’s the hubbub? Why rush. Tomorrow we—”
“Ash is the hubbub rush,” I snarled through my teeth. “He won’t let this slow him down. He’s probably already inside Mythcorp. You know what, forget it. I’ll go by myself. You all can stay here and twiddle your thumbs, but I can’t sit still while that little upstart get’s his jollies off playing God.”
Kana grabbed my arm as I made to rise, yanking me down with embarrassing ease.
“I still don’t understand why a Morai reopening Mythcorp would be so bad,” she said, all innocent and ignorant as a rock. “It’s gotta be better than Alexander running it.”
I clenched my fists. Why couldn’t people understand?
“It’s megabomb bad because the first thing Ash will do with his newfound power is hunt down the Iconocops and politicians responsible for recycling our parents during the War. I guess I get that. But when he acts, congress will react. And then the Zoners will get into it and before you know it we’ll have another Mythcorp War on our hands and then every last one of us will be hunted down. Anyone with Madenine in their genetic code: Morai and Mythicons and whatever the hell I am. We’ll be hunted to extinction this time. Get it?”
My little tantrum had drawn a crowd, and for some reason this set my face a burning.
“Boys got a point, Tiny,” Faustus said, all cheery as usual, darn him. “But the boy shouldn’t snap at the girl; girl’s got a point too, and a girl can’t help it, as the great Tyrese used to say. So we going or what?”
Our four sets of peepers locked together. Were we really going to do this?
“Are we really going to do this?” Izzy wondered. “Run through Philicity during a brimstorm? Cause it sounds a little stupid.”
Faustus unleashed a giant smile. “Yeah. It’ll be just like old times.”
“Well then,” Kana jumped up. “Let’s not waste time chatting about it.” She whisked down the aisle to the driver. “Open the door.”
“Um, no. Are you insane?”
“Legally and otherwise,” the tiny woman boasted. “Open the door I won’t ask again.” She stepped up to the folding doors and waited with fists on her lovely-yet-not-very-full hips.
By then we’d joined her near the door. Every single passenger was gawking at us as if we were the reincarnations of the Three Stooges—plus Minnie Me. The driver tried once more to explain the direness of the situation brewing outside. His words fell on deaf ears.
Kana reared back and gut-checked the door with her right foot. She struck it so hard that the metal halves collapsed and her foot went right through the center. She was stuck. Instead of helping her, Faustus burst out laughing. I had to stifle a smidge fit of my own. Anyone who’s never been in a situation where their life or the future of their race hangs in the balance can’t know that laughter is sometime the only response.
After helping Kana free her foot from the door, we ran out into the gathering darkness, the drivers’ threats ringing behind us, burning threads of brimstone beginning to fall around us.
“We’ll cut through Victoria’s Secret, save some time,” Faustus directed with a smile.
We all followed him into the store. I was falling behind, trying to limp as fast I could, while Izzy was downright sluggish. I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t leave Izzy behind, no matter what. But then a thread was falling, heading straight for her head.
Chapter 31
“Izzy, run!”
“I am running,” she snapped at me. “In case you couldn’t tell, I have to move with crutches and your legs are twice as long as mine. So stuff it.”
The burning chunk of rock—or whatever brimstone is—was still on course for Izzy. I leapt aside to avoid another and ran towards the girl. “There’s no need to get snippy, I was just making a suggestion that might save your life.” From twenty feet away it became clear that I was going to have to step it up a notch. At nineteen feet away I knew I wouldn’t make it.
I stopped, raised my cane, and fired at the lump of brimstone heading for Izzy. Purple lightning scythed out of the crow’s peepers and obliterated the most immediate threat.
“Thank you,” Izzy managed.
“I still think you should hurry it up.”
Kana appeared beside us. “Would you two quit goofing around? It’s getting worse.”
We blew inside Victoria’s after that. Running through a store is never a good a idea, but bustling past its metal detectors (which you’ve just set off) and tearing up the posh merchandise and knocking over a few ritzy patrons is about as intelligent as yelling ‘BOMB’ on a plane while holding a toy bomb and wearing a ski-mask.
But we were moving at such a whiz-bang clip and had gotten such a head start that the store security guys, a couple of out-of-shape rent-a-cops, couldn’t catch even Izzy.
Still, it took us a few minutes to blaze a trail through the congested warehouse in the back of Victoria’s Secret. By the time we reached the exit I was wheezing, and every one of my wounds and bruises pulsated. Little Izzy was in worse shape. We paused outside under the loading bay roof.
“We can’t make it like this,” I gasped. “I can’t even see the tower yet. And Izzy is totally winded.”
“Oh no, don’t give me all the credit,” she said. “You look like you’ve been jousting with a windmill.”
“They’re right,” Kana agreed. “We need something . . . a car or something.”
Faustus looked around at the parking lot where brimstone was dropping in chaotic clusters. A fatty-patty would get clobbered in it. Kana and Faustus could probably make it, but Izzy and I were SOL. Somehow, a smile was growing on the gingersnaps face.
“Kana, can you break into a locked car?”
“Course,” Kana boasted. She scratched the back of her head and drew one of her dirks. “I could break into a tank if I had to.”
&n
bsp; “Good,” Faustus said. “Break into that Lincoln Breeze and I’ll hotwire it. I’ve seen it done a hundred times in the movies. Shouldn’t be a problem. Can you two keep up?” He looked at me first, and I nodded. When he looked down at Izzy, the dwarf girl reluctantly shook her head.
The gingersnap took me over to the side while Kana twisted the double door handles together so the guards couldn’t come out and bonk us. “Maybe we should leave the Hobbit here. I mean—”
“No,” I said. “Izzy is coming. Those scumbags on the surrounding roofs might shoot at us, but from way up there they’ll think Izzy is a child. They’ll hesitate. She’s our golden ticket, giving us time to break in. She’s coming.”
Faustus held up his hands. “All right.” He walked over to Izzy, ignoring the guards pounding on the glass doors behind her. “Would you mind if I carried you to the car?”
She sighed and for a tick I thought she might say no. But then she nodded.
I wanted to be the one to carry her, to protect her, but with my buggered knee and network of aches and pains, that was out of the question. So we waited for Kana to break into the Lincoln Breeze. She leaped off of the raised sidewalk and out into the brimstorm. With preternatural skill Kana weaved among the burning death balls, dodging and twisting with the grace of a dancer. When she reached the car she didn’t even hesitate; she whipped out her dirk and smashed through the passenger side window.
Once all the doors were unlocked, Kana ran back for us.
Faustus looked at Izzy. “Do I have permission to touch your body? It’s not sexual.”
Rolling her eyes, Izzy shouted over the din of the storm, “Just do it already!”
The red-head hoisted her and paused to tell us “That was from Hancock, by the way,” before grinning and rushing out into the brimstorm. His every step was calculated and flawless. They made it to the car and, after checking to make sure he wasn’t in the line of fire, Faustus deposited Izzy in the back seat. He then jumped into the front seat. Lying down, Faustus hotwired the Lincoln. It only took about ten or twelve ticks. Maybe movies were useful after all.
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