The first reports came in a little before nine, courtesy of the Boston media, Nina tells me, and as is often the case with such things, the details were at first sketchy: some sort of riot had erupted in Newburyport, a seaside town on the northern coast of Massachusetts. Cause unknown, parties involved unknown.
The state police cordoned off the town after two news vans foolishly ventured in. One of them was broadcasting live when the mob swarmed on them, gibbering in some bizarre language — a language Astrid identified as belonging to an ancient race of humanoids that died off long before man walked the earth.
(I’ve given up on questioning how Astrid knows the weird stuff she knows. It’s better for my sanity that way.)
That was the sign Astrid had been waiting for. She put out the call to action and, along with Concorde, went to Newburyport to scout ahead. She has yet to report back.
“So what do we do in the meantime?” I ask.
“We wait,” Nina says.
“There could be innocent people getting hurt.”
“I know. I know, but we can’t go in blind. Especially if we’re dealing with magic, because outside of Astrid, none of us know jack —”
The light inside the cabin turns inside-out, becomes impenetrable inky blackness. When it vanishes, Astrid is standing between me and Nina.
“Warn me next time, please,” Mindforce shouts from the cockpit.
“Sorry,” Astrid says. “Guys, it’s bad.”
“What’s going on?” Nina says. “Is it the demon?”
“I think so. The riot’s definitely supernatural in origin. The dark energy, it’s like smog, choking the air. We’re looking at a madness plague.”
“When you say madness plague...”
“I’m speaking somewhat metaphorically. A handful of known demonic entities throw off a powerful aura that causes, after prolonged exposure, psychotic behavior. Looks like things finally boiled over tonight.”
“Prolonged exposure. As in, about a week since someone brought a demon into our world,” I say, and my God, it’s scary how easily that all rolled off the tongue.
“Bingo. There’s no protection against it, but when we go in, we won’t all instantly turn into raving lunatics.”
“Small relief.”
“It’s an advantage. So is the fact that the effect is completely localized within Newburyport. Concorde and I talked to the staties working the perimeter, and the afflicted haven’t tried to break through, not once. Everyone is staying within town lines. That means the effect, and by extension its cause, is anchored to the town.”
“Concorde’s back from his initial recon,” Mindforce announces over the Pelican’s PA system. “Patching him in now. Concorde, go.”
“Copy that. Is Lightstorm there?”
“Right here,” I say.
“Good. Enigma, is everyone up to speed?”
“Good to go. What’s the play? Are we helping the police on containment?”
“Sorry, it’s not going to be that easy. It looks like this effect hasn’t hit everyone. The staties have received several calls from people sheltering in place all across town. They’ve tried to send men in, but they can’t get through the mobs, so we need to go in from the air. The staties relayed the GPS coordinates from the civilians’ phones to me, and I’m relaying them to you now, Lightstorm.”
A little pinwheel appears on my headset’s head’s-up display, spins for a second, and is replaced by the message DATA RECEIVED.
“I want you to hit the sky. We’re the eyes above; our job is to pinpoint trapped civilians. Everyone else, you’re going to run interference from the Pelican as needed, and you’ll transport people out in small groups. Minimal force on the affected civilians, people, they’re still innocents.”
“Rescuing people’s all well and good, but it doesn’t take care of the real problem,” Astrid says. “This won’t stop until we find the demon.”
“That’s all on you,” Concorde says.
“That’s the way I want it.”
“Then let’s go. We have people to save.”
The first few pick-ups are surprisingly easy. We hit the State Street area, a long row of brick buildings — businesses, mostly, a lot of them with upper-floor apartments. People have barricaded themselves in their apartments and on rooftops. The crazies (sorry: the affected civilians) can’t get to them, but for us it’s simply a matter of assisting people onto the Pelican, then flying them out to a staging area the staties set up at their highway blockade, on the safe side of the Newburyport/Newbury line. An occasional piece of flying debris pings off the side of the Pelican, but we avoid any direct engagement.
As we start moving outward, to the surrounding blocks, the affected get smart. They set trash on fire before throwing it, and they aim for the civilians rather than the Pelican. Sara does her best to deflect the worst of the assault, and Matt drops flash-bang grenades to keep the mob disoriented, but that only buys them seconds at a time; the mania gripping these people, it’s granting them an almost superhuman resilience.
As nerve-wracking as things are for my friends closer to the ground, it’s terrifying for me to see it all play out. I feel helpless, useless as I watch hordes of the affected surge through the streets, like blood flowing through the angular veins of Newburyport, and zero in on the Pelican. Each time the Pelican returns, Mindforce picks a new target, well away from its previous spot, to grant the teams extra time to make their next pick-up. The affected home in on it, swarm, attack. The Pelican leaves, returns, picks up civilians while dodging flaming garbage, over and over. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The process is tedious. It’s harrowing. It’s exhausting.
The explosion definitely wakes me up.
“What the hell?” Concorde says over the comm system. “God, please don’t tell me that was a gas main.”
It’s Astrid who responds. “I found him! I found the —”
The rest is drowned out by a second, smaller blast. It came from the wharf area to the north.
“Enigma?” Concorde says. “Enigma? Astrid!”
“I’m not doing any good up here,” I say. “I’m going.”
“...Be careful.”
EIGHTEEN
A short burst of speed gets me there in two seconds, “there” being a public parking lot near the wharf. There’s a crater, shallow but wide, in the approximate center of the lot, and acrid black smoke hangs low over the area. A number of cars are on their sides, their roofs, and bear what are unmistakably scorch marks — and yet, there’s no sign of fire anywhere. So what were those huge booms we heard?
My question in answered, deafeningly, when a ten-foot-tall cyclone of black smoke spins into view and — I guess bursts is the best word to describe it. The air vibrates with a thunderous whoomp that I feel forty feet up. An SUV tumbles end over end across the lot.
A killer cloud, huh? Not what I expected, but it’s something to blast — so I do, and I don’t hold back. I must do something right, because the cloud screams, screams like a helium-filled cat getting run over by a lawnmower, and then it vanishes.
“Neat trick,” Astrid says, causing my heart to leap. Perfectly understandable reaction, when you consider she is hovering three feet away from me. “What did you hit it with?”
“You fly, too?”
“When I need to. Mostly I teleport. What did you hit it with?”
“Energy blast. Coherent white light with a side of focused gravity pulse, according to Doc Quantum.”
Astrid makes a disgusted noise. “Quantum. Stuck-up little...”
“Catty later. Demon now.”
“Yes. Right. LOOK OUT!”
Astrid warps away, and I dive to the side a split-second before a corkscrewing missile of luminous black smoke takes us both out. I brace for a follow-up attack, but this thing isn’t flying; it loses momentum after passing me, and arcs back toward the ground. It lands atop a car, pancaking it, then skitters away.
It’s moving too fast for me to get
a lock on it (mental note: must work on aim!), but Astrid pops back in, right in its path, and makes a big wax-on-wax-off gesture. The cloud slams into a shimmering half-globe of magical force, ricochets off, and, staggers across the parking lot.
“Flank it,” Astrid calls up to me. I drop, and swing around until I’m at the thing’s three o’clock, while Astrid advances on its twelve.
Astrid waves at it, a backhanded flick. A wave of energy ripples through the air. The cloud falls apart, transforming from mist to liquid as it hits the ground, splashing like ink at the feet of a man — or something approximately man-shaped. It had to have been human at one point (it’s dressed in the remnants of a business suit), but its limbs are too long for its body, and they have extra angles, which give them the appearance of having been broken and badly reset. Mist, glowing as if under a black light, cascades off his body.
The thing’s head snaps left and right, searching for us. It spots Astrid first, then does the last thing I expect: it smiles, spreads its crooked arms, and bows low. Imagine the screechy squeal an electric guitar makes when you drag a pick down its strings, and you get a solid idea of what its voice sounds like.
“Ahhh. This pays homage to thee,” it says, “if this is correct, that this addresses the Lady of Shadows.”
“I am the Lady of Shadows, and I would know your name, demon,” Astrid says, a command that carries with it a hint of formality, “and your purpose here.”
“This name is this own,” it hisses, “but you may know this as the Soulblack, the Mind Cancer, the Eater of Order, and this purpose is this nature, no more.”
“Meaning?” I say. The demon turns to me and grins, his mouth stretching much wider than a human mouth ever could — a literal ear-to-ear smile. Oh, I am so freaking out right now.
“It wasn’t summoned with a specific purpose,” Astrid says. “Someone called it up, then cut it loose. Is that correct?”
“Not so loose this was allowed to leave this village, but aye, it is truth enough,” the Soulblack says.
“Name your master, demon.” It makes gurgling sound, like it’s hawking up a wad of phlegm the size of a bowling ball: a laugh. “I said, name your master. I would know who summoned you.”
“But this master would not be known, and by this master’s will.”
“Whoever summoned it told it not to narc him out,” I guess.
“Right. Well then, Soulblack, Mind Cancer, Eater of Order,” Astrid says, cracking her knuckles, “down to business.”
“Aye.”
It lashes out in my direction, spraying its freaky black liquid cloud stuff at me. I rocket skyward, out of the wave’s way, and fire back. More by accident than design, my shot connects. The Soulblack wails, crumples from the impact, but I sense I’m not damaging the demon; I’m damaging the man it’s using.
I feel sick.
Astrid fans her fingers. Crushed asphalt springs off the ground, spraying the Soulblack in what should be lethal shrapnel. The Soulblack flinches, startled rather than injured, then (ew) vomits its black yuck at Astrid, expelling the stuff with fire hose velocity. Astrid conjures a shield, deflects the attack, and gives me an opening.
“What are you doing to it?” Astrid shouts up to me.
“Blasting it!”
“You’re hurting it!”
“Kind of the idea, yeah!”
The Soulblack lurches at Astrid, rage twisting its face into a grotesque mockery of a human expression. It shrieks in a language unlike anything I’ve ever heard.
“Yeah, right back at you,” Astird says. “Carrie! Cover your eyes, it’s going to get bright!”
She strikes a pose, arms outstretched to the sky. The air grows brighter, as if dawn were arriving several hours ahead of schedule. My eyes adjust instantly to the change (another perk of my power, I’m assuming). Within seconds, night has transformed into day. The Soulblack screams. The mist coming off its body turns a sickly gray; its skin starts to blister, peel, char. It bellows what sounds, despite its alien tongue, distinctly like a profanity.
The Soulblack explodes in a burst of anti-light, a sphere of midnight in the middle of this impossible midday.
There’s a shape in the middle of the void. Something not remotely human.
Oh God.
“Look at me.”
It’s Astrid, but all she is is a disembodied voice. I can’t see anything but blobs of muted, mushy color floating in a sea of hazy black.
Hands, warm and a little sweaty, grasp my face, jostle my head about on the loose spring of my neck.
“Look at me,” Astrid says again, and my vision snaps back to normal. It’s nighttime again. Astrid’s nose is tip-to-tip with mine. Her stare is intense, boring into me.
“Okay,” I say. “Looking. Looking at you.”
She looks back, hard, then sighs in relief. “Sorry. Had to make sure you weren’t insane.”
“Was that even a question?” I slump back against a car, perhaps the only one in the parking lot that hasn’t been reduced to a pile of smoldering wreckage. Astrid sits next to me.
“You caught a glimpse of a demon’s true form. That’s more than enough to break the average human mind.”
“I see.”
“Yes, you did, even though I told you to look away.”
“Point of order: you never said anything about sanity-destroying true forms. You told me to shield my eyes because it was going to get bright. Should be more specific next time.” Astrid grunts by way of an apology. “Neat trick, by the way.”
“Thanks, but you gave me the idea. The Soulblack didn’t like what you were dishing out. I theorized you were generating solar energy, or close enough, so I pulled together all the ambient sunlight reflecting off the moon.”
“You...pulled together all the ambient sunlight?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Uh. Wow. Cool.”
Astrid shrugs: shucks, weren’t nothin’. We sit there for a minute, the silence between us taking a turn for the awkward.
“That demon. He knew you.”
“Indirectly,” Astrid says. “By reputation. I have power. That tends to attract attention, often from all the wrong people.”
“Or demons.”
“Or demons.”
Or people possessed by demons, like the poor man who had the incredibly bad luck to be picked as the Soulblack’s sock puppet. He’s lying nearby, his body contorted as though he died from a seizure so violent it popped all his joints out of place. His skin is chalky and dusty, like used charcoal. Identifying the remains may well be impossible. We may never know who he was.
“Did you ever find out who Stacy Hellfire was?” I say. “I mean, before she...you know.”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. I talked to a friend of mine in the Kingsport PD; he took a look through recent missing persons reports...Moira Steenbergen. Sophomore at UMass, went missing two days before Stacy Hellfire popped up.”
“Moira Steenbergen,” I say, committing the name to memory.
“She’s on my revenge list, too,” Astrid says, “and trust me, when we nail Black Betty, she’ll pay for each and every name on it.”
“Explain something to me. What does she get out of this? Aside from chaos and destruction for the sake of it.”
“She gets chaos and destruction for the sake of it. She’s an anarchist, Carrie, she doesn’t need a reason.”
“How are we supposed to stop someone like that? If there’s no method to her madness, how do we catch her before she pulls something like this again? Or something worse?”
“That’s my job. Let me worry about it.”
“You’re not in this alone, you know. We can help. We want to help.”
“No offense, but you’re out of your depth here. Black Betty is playing by a different set of rules, and if you don’t know how to play the game...”
She leaves the thought unfinished, but I get what she’s saying: this is a specialized hunt, and we don’t have the right tools. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, tho
ugh.
“Come on, kiddo, we’ve got some cleaning up to do. Night’s not over yet.” She glances up at the sky, the stars clear and crisp in the winter night sky. “Oops. Actually, it is. Good morning.”
Good morning?
I pick my headpiece up off the ground and jam it on my face. The display tells me it’s 12:50 AM — almost an hour after curfew, almost two after I promised to be home.
I am so dead.
PART TWO: CULT OF PERSONALITY
NINETEEN
At top speed, I manage to get home by one. With nowhere to stuff my costume, I strip it off, and tuck it under a big rock near my woodland launchpad. My dress is wrinkled as hell, I’m wearing my boots instead of the shoes I left in, but I’m betting Mom is going to overlook such petty details, what with her seeing me through a red cloud of maternal rage and all.
As I expected, she’s awake, sitting on the couch. She doesn’t look up from her magazine as I enter.
“Mom, I’m —”
“Go to your room,” she says. “We are going to talk about this in the morning after Granddad leaves for church.”
Well, world, it’s been nice knowing you.
I do as I’m told, without any backtalk. I’m way too tired to be worried or afraid or to start concocting a cover story. I conk out as soon as I hit the mattress.
My alarm clock reads 10:23 AM when I finally wake up. I stare at it, watch the minutes tick away. At 11:02 AM, I decide I can’t stay my execution any longer, so I head downstairs to face the shrill, screeching music.
Mom is in the kitchen, sipping coffee and reading the Sunday paper, like nothing is wrong. Again, she doesn’t look at me as I enter. I stand there for a couple of minutes. The silence is, as they say, deafening.
Hold your breath and dive in, Carrie. Nothing ventured, no one screamed at.
“Should I assume I should go back up to my room and stay there until I’m thirty?”
“You promised me, Carrie,” Mom says, her voice level. “You promised me up, down, left, and right you would be home by curfew. You promised me you would have your phone on.”
Action Figures - Issue Two: Black Magic Women Page 13