I felt my strength fading even as I got my sopping ass up to my feet and started running again. I threw that same shield wall up, taking a look over it to see giant man screaming and rubbing his eyes in a futile effort to get over that blindness I’d induced. I needed to keep an eye on that in case he somehow figured it out, because that man could be a serious problem if left unchecked.
But I didn’t have time to deal with him right now. I hoped Taneshia was faring all right, because if she fell, they’d be on me pretty quick, and I’d get their undivided attention. I’d taken out two, maybe three if the giant would stay occupied for the duration. I didn’t have anything else to throw at him at the moment, though, because I was using every bit of my abilities to try and keep that wall going up between me and the men with guns.
A man on fire came leaping over my curtain of dirt, and I felt my heart stop as I caught sight of him. He landed and stood straight up, staring at me as I stared at him. His skin was gone, completely replaced by flames licking up his body. His mouth was a dark, black hole, agape in a nasty smile.
“Dude!” I shouted, “you’re on fire!” I threw up my hands as he started to put his up in turn. I redirected some of my dirt right at him, hit him with a blast that I shot right out of the ground between us. “You need to stop, drop and roll! Let me help you with that.”
My dirt blast turned his ass aflip. I mean that, really. He got hit in the face so hard he flipped. I kept up the pressure as he fell, just covering him up with earth and rock, hitting him like it was coming out of a pressure sprayer. It took a lot out of me, but I poured it on. I watched him as his face came up, coughing and hacking, and I just hit him again, harder. I covered him with it, taking away all the oxygen around him and giving him nothing to work with on igniting his flesh again. I got the ground below him in the act, using that same thing I’d learned with water man, dragging him down into the earth.
As soon as he was covered over, I started forward again, but slower this time. I could feel myself wearing out, like I’d run miles. My wall went slower this time, and lower. I had pushed myself past the bounds in the last few hours, and I was finding out that my abilities really did have finite limits in terms of energy.
I felt a bullet skip along my back, grazing me, and it forced me to twist in an uncomfortable way, triggering my rib pain and dropping me to my knees. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before; way beyond the pain of that time I’d broken my arm. This fight had gone on for maybe five minutes, and I felt like I was on the twelfth round, with my knockout impending. Or maybe a TKO, given I’d just hit the mat.
I kissed the damned ground when I fell, getting a mouthful of dirt. When I hit, I arched my back and hurt myself even worse. That rib was going to be a severe impediment to my ability to fight, and I knew it. It was a weak point, and it wasn’t like I could just stop and cover myself in a cast and keep moving—
Or … maybe I could.
I pulled the ground up and surrounded my limbs with it, making myself a suit of armor out of the dirt itself. I packed it on an inch thick around my legs, then two inches, bulking up my fingers as I did. I came back to my feet as I let it circle around me. It felt strange, the grains of dirt against my skin, but it was working. I got back to my feet, a little more protected, and let my curtain wall drop. I hardened the dirt down to an inch-thick crust around me and felt the molecules slide as I moved. I packed them in tight around my chest, felt my rib crack back into place, and left myself two holes to look through for my eyes.
I have no idea what I looked like because there wasn’t a mirror around for me to see, but it felt like I’d just discovered that I was the earthworks version of Green Lantern. I let the little wall drop from in front of me; I’d already stripped it for most of the dirt anyway. It fell like a sheet and left me looking across a battlefield at my opponents and gave them a clear look at me.
Hell yeah, fools. Let’s get to this. That’s what I was thinking.
Then that big dude with the icy eyes and frozen hands came thundering at me with a wolf at his side, and I had a moment of fear, I’m not ashamed to admit. That guy frosted up an icicle with each hand and turned each of them into a sword, and I created a shield with one hand just in time to absorb some of the impact. His icicle cut through and sliced off part of my shield, which wasn’t exactly perfectly rounded to begin with. This turned it into a three-quarters circle with rough edges, and gave him enough room to swing his other blade around it and bury it into my side.
I had just enough time to harden that dirt where I saw the weapon going. I still felt it, though, and it hurt. I was lucky it wasn’t my injured side, because he hit me like a meta would. I saw ice spread into the dirt and jerked away from him once his momentum was spent. I twisted and watched his sword tip break off. He grinned at me through his black mask and came at me again.
I heard the wolf come up behind me. I didn’t have the energy to ejector seat him like I had his bear buddy—or was this the same guy? Not while I was using so much of my focus on the armor that was protecting me. I had to pick my shots, and I figured maybe I could take a wolf bite if I had to.
Then I took the wolf bite and wished I hadn’t.
He ripped into my ass like he was tearing into a steak, giving that dirt everything he had. I felt it shred in clumps from his claws and mouth. I hoped he was getting a stomach full of hard earth, but—
The idea occurred to me right then that if someone was going to try and bite through my earthen armor, I should by all means give them a heaping helping of what they wanted to take a bite of. I used my earth to feel the next place he tried to sink his teeth, and I just let him have it in a spray like it came out of a fire hose. I stripped the whole rear of my armor off in one good blast, leaving me unprotected but him with enough dirt to choke his ass. I heard him, too, gagging and retching. I could feel the dirt, and I’d managed to sneak a ton of it down his throat. Best be careful what you put in your mouth, fool.
While I was distracted with him, the ice man cometh at me hard. He swung those ice swords like he meant to kill me, which, presumably, he did. He shaved off some dirt from my arm as I threw it up with a little extra shielding. I could feel my reactions slowing, though, and he was coming at me full force. One good connection and he might end up taking a limb, which wasn’t exactly something I could afford to lose right now. Dirt streamed off me in little flecks here and there as my ability to hold it all together flagged under his withering assault. My hand came up over and over again, channeling more and more dirt between me and his insanely quick attacks.
The iceman’s teeth were bared in a ferocious grin of victory. He had me, no question; it was just a matter of time. I reached down deep, trying to generate enough upheaval to launch him, but the ground beneath his feet didn’t even stir. I felt maxed out, like the days when I used to work out hard and had nothing left in my arms. Like I’d squeezed the power muscle so tight for so long that I just couldn’t come up with anything else.
He hit me with a battering overhand strike with one of those swords, and I felt sweat stream into my eyes, carrying grains of sand with it. My legs buckled and I fell under the impact. I looked through my eyeholes and saw that what he was hitting me with wasn’t a sword anymore. Maybe he’d decided he didn’t need finesse at this point. Now he had an ice club, massive and growing by the minute, and he raised it over his head. One good hit and my armor was going to be done.
Two was going to cave my damned head in.
I stared at him, trying to come up with a defense, any defense. I felt for the earth and came back with almost nothing. All I could feel was the dirt I had hard-packed around my body. It was like being in the dark, unable to see anything. My range was down to nil, my strength at an end. I stared up at him and knew I was gone.
Then a lightning bolt came crashing down from above and caught him right on the raised ice club.
The iceman jerked as the electricity arced through him. I watched him convulse in pain until his eyes r
olled back into his head, hands scorched and smoking as he collapsed. He dropped onto his face and stared at me with dead eyes as my armor slipped away. I just couldn’t hold it together anymore.
“Thank you,” I breathed as sat there on my knees, unable to muster the strength to get up. “Thank you, Taneshia.”
A shadow swooped down from the roof above, putting itself between me and the rest of the damned army that was still out there making war on my neighborhood. “Not Taneshia,” a deep voice called out from beneath the hoodie. The figure in front of me was taller than Taneshia, but the voice—
Oh, damn. The voice.
I knew that voice.
The hood shot lightning from both hands in a flashing burst that made me cover my eyes. The electricity shot forth and caught two metas near the road right in the back. One of them looked like they had about a million bullets caught in some kind of gravity field in front of them while the other was throwing stuff ahead at the cops, who were under cover. Both strikes hit home and fried the people they hit, no question.
I’d found my lightning man killer.
He turned to look back at me and I caught the flash of glasses as he did so, the sun catching the light, and I felt my stomach drop. I knew the killer. I’d known him all along.
It was Jamal.
It was my own brother.
40.
“Jamal,” I said, not wanting to believe it. “Why?”
“No time to explain now, bro,” he said, and his voice was louder than I’d ever heard it before. Jamal was shy. Jamal was quiet. He was the meek that was going to inherit the earth.
And Jamal was a stone-cold killer who’d been rolling around town executing people for some reason.
“I could use your help here,” Jamal said, and I struggled against fatigue that threatened to drag me into the earth. I wanted to just cover myself in dirt. Maybe it would renew me. Maybe it would kill me.
Either way, maybe I wouldn’t have to deal with my brother being a murderer.
I looked over the battlefield. It was intense. Jamal let out another blast of lightning, this time right at the guys with guns who were shooting at the cops. It forked and hit about five mercs right in the guns. They blew back in a flash I had to look away from. When I opened my eyes, one dude’s shoes were smoking right in the middle of the street.
I’d bagged on Sienna for being ruthless and taking no prisoners, but my brother was looking like he was all set to one up the hell out of her.
“Jamal, no!” I called, and staggered forward as he started to unleash another blast at the big guy who was still clawing the dirt out of his eyes. I tried to throw up a shield of dirt, but I watched the electricity blow right through my little sandstorm, leaving sparkling glass twinkling as it fluttered under the sunlight and fell to the earth.
“These guys are serious, Augustus,” Jamal said, neatly batting away my hand as I reached for him. It stung a little. Jamal had never been a physical threat to me, not even when we were kids. His strength surprised me until I remembered he was a meta now. The slap was loud, too, echoing in my ears and reminding me that while we’d had a divide between us for years, I’d never even realized how little I knew my brother until the moment he’d saved me. “Cavanagh’s thugs aren’t playing. They mean to put us all in the ground.”
“Might be I want to go into the ground,” I said as I watched that giant guy fall down dead from my brother’s attack. I saw the black scar on his temple the size of a softball, saw his enormous body pitch over as the ground shook from the impact. “Where’s Taneshia?”
“She’s fighting with another Thor-type around the corner,” Jamal said. “You might ought to go help her while I mop this up over here.”
“How long have you been like this?” I asked, having trouble getting my breath. I could taste the dust in the wind as I stood there. Even now, it didn’t taste good to me at all.
“Years,” he said. “A year. I found out the night—never mind. Go help Taneshia, will you?” He threw his head at me in a fierce nod. “We’ll talk after. I need to take out the last of these gunmen.” And he let loose another burst of lightning that ranged far, hitting a car and running straight through it to blast back some dude hiding behind it.
I wanted to argue. I wanted to punch him right in that smug-ass, cold, lying face. But I didn’t have the strength for that. Instead I dragged myself away back the way I came. I limped along my trail of destruction. The yards were savaged in a line from fires that were still burning, trenches dug out where I’d made my defensive stands. I limped past the bush where I’d landed and saw a bloodied branch. I wondered where the blood had come from, but I didn’t wonder too hard. My side was on fire, and I suspected I was bleeding from there.
I turned the corner and saw Taneshia and some other guy going at each other with an electrical storm square in the middle of them. It looked they were both just pouring it on, some kind of Harry Potter vs. Voldemort contest, or maybe more like the Emperor from Star Wars facing off with himself. I couldn’t tell who was winning, and not just because it was insanely bright.
And then I remembered that I was there to help. I reached out with one good grab and made a dirt fist out of the ground behind the lightning dude, and just hammered him in the back of the head with a sucker punch. Dude dropped, unconscious, and I quickly buried him up to his face in the ground.
Taneshia let off the lightning as soon as I’d knocked him out and fell to her knees, breathing hard. “Thanks,” she said.
“You should have told me it was Jamal,” I said to her in return, with nothing but a deep and pure anger.
“I should have,” she said, nodding. “A long time ago, before it got to this point. It all just sort of spun out of—” She stopped suddenly and coughed, blood spurting from her lips and running down her green shirt, dark spatters that looked like syrup they were so dark.
Taneshia staggered to the side and looked behind her, and now I saw one of those guys standing there. He was grinning, was a bigger dude, solid and broad-shouldered, looked like he didn’t miss too many meals. His pale, bald head was freckled, his eyebrows and the goatee around his mouth were a light ginger color. “Oh, sorry,” he said, not remotely sorry. He held up a hand that was red with blood. “Did I interrupt your tender moment?”
41.
I felt that deep rage that had been pointed at Taneshia get redirected in an instant to the ginger bald dude. I flung dirt right at him and watched his face go ghostly whiter, like it was fading, and the dirt just passed right through it.
“What the hell are you?” I asked, and he just stood there smiling at me while my stomach sank.
“You’ll find out when I yank your brains right out of your skull,” he said, starting toward me. “Right through the bone, just tug ’em out like there’s nothing but air separating them from the world.”
I blinked at him. He smiled menacingly and started walking toward me, his feet making impressions in the dirt that had been exposed by the lightning battle between Taneshia and her enemy.
I picked up a dirt clod and hurled it at the guy.
It passed right through him like he wasn’t there.
But his feet were touching the ground.
I remembered an episode of Star Trek where two of the crew members got bombarded with some kind of space radiation and could pass through walls. They called it ‘phasing.’ It was a cool episode, and I liked it a lot, but something always bothered me about it.
Why didn’t they go sliding through the floor just as easily as they passed through the walls?
I watched the bald dude take his next step, and I just pulled the ground out from under him. Easy, just a foot or so down, a nice tug.
And I watched him fall, like he’d just missed a step.
“Hey!” he said, a little alarmed. His eyes got big, and I knew I had a winner.
So I rearranged another foot of dirt beneath him, sending it crawling out the sides of the little pit, and he tumbled down further. His
arms scrambled for hold, slapping against the sides, so I pulled the dirt out around him to widen the pit by another five feet in every direction. It happened pretty fast, and since I wasn’t lifting the dirt into the air or anything dramatic, it didn’t seem to take much of my strength.
He was in up to his chest now and starting to panic. “Hey! Hey!”
“Can’t hear you,” I said. I dug another three feet underneath him and watched him fall. Gravity still worked on him, and I just kept taking more and more of the ground beneath him. “Too busy trying to protect my brains from falling out of my skull.” I had full control of the dirt beneath him, and I was making it run up the sides of the pit like crazy, just digging him into the ground further and further. I had him down ten feet now, and he was starting to disappear as I filled in the earth behind him. He hit fifteen feet, then twenty, and I filled the pit in so that only a five-foot-in-diameter hole remained above.
“You can’t do this!” he protested, and I could barely see him as I narrowed his personal tunnel as he hit a depth I didn’t think he could get out of easily. This part of Atlanta didn’t have tunnels underground, as far as I knew, but even if it did, he’d be a long time in figuring out how to get back out of the earth again. I sealed the ground up behind him at thirty feet and didn’t care if he ever saw sunlight again.
“I think I just did,” I said, and slumped to the ground, spent. I looked over at Taneshia, who was on the ground, just bleeding. “And I think I’d do it again if I had half a chance.”
42.
Sienna
I was way late and I knew it by the time the pillars of smoke came into view behind the Atlanta skyline. I shot out of the sky with cannonball force and slammed into the ground in the wreckage of Augustus’s front yard. The sun was going down, and there was a guy with a hoodie and glasses standing there with lightning crackling out of his fingertips.
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