Wonder Guy

by Stone, Naomi

  She had never been this miserable in her life. Even after her mother died, she’d had people around her, offering warmth and comfort. She’d never been so cold and wet and afraid as now, alone in the blind woods at night. Especially now, while rain streamed down out of a heavy sky, undeterred by the thin canopy of spring leaves. Clothing adequate for a sunny afternoon now clung, soaked, to her goose-fleshed skin, no help at all. The muddy earth packed around her buried legs only added to her chill.

  Worst, she lay helpless in the power of people–speaking loosely–who didn’t give a damn for her. They had some use for her now as some kind of bait, but she’d heard the part where she wouldn’t live past her usefulness.

  They weren’t human. Inhuman monsters for their murderous intent alone, but also literally. She’d caught glimpses. She had no idea what to call them. From time to time one would come up to her, skittering like a huge insect or silent, with no warning of approach. They’d poke or pinch her, or stroke her bare arm or cheek with sticky, prickly or slimy fingers. Apparently for no better reason than to make her squirm or wince in pain.

  The woman in charge looked most nearly human. She could pass, but her preternatural beauty seemed like the rainbow sheen across an oil-slicked puddle, just as superficial, with nothing wholesome about it.

  Gloria had never dreamed the world held such horrors. She’d done a good job of keeping life’s known horrors at bay, managing to keep a bubble of light and warmth and comfort around her daily existence. Her nice quiet life had been primarily concerned with simple things, friends, family, work, home and making useful and pretty things.

  Bad stuff–evil–existed out there in the world, but she’d always kept it at a distance. Lacking the powers to cure poverty, death, disease, war, or natural disasters, she focused her energies on the small things within her reach. She gave to as many worthy causes as possible on her budget, but giving constituted just another way of keeping the bad things at a distance.

  Now, all Gloria’s efforts at evading life’s evils had come to nothing. The bad stuff had swallowed her whole. It held her alone in the dark, cold and wet, helpless in the clutches of enemies who meant to use and destroy her. Bound helplessly in place, it looked like all the choices had been taken from her. The bad stuff had her now. In tomorrow’s news she’d probably be just another statistic. She should be a whimpering mess, but her mind worked overtime, soothing her panic.

  A few tears had come to her eyes, and her arms prickled with goose flesh coming from fear as much as from the cold. Her jaw ached from clenching it against more silent screams, but mostly Gloria’s thoughts seemed oddly abstracted from her reality. She strove for an analytic, objective perspective to help her find a way out of this fix. She might, literally, be rooted in the muck right now, but like even the tiniest seeds, something in her still fought toward the light.

  Kathleen wanted her dead. Silenced. The strange, evil-sorceress person wanted to use her as bait. Who was this other female? Kathleen hadn’t addressed her by name when turning Gloria over to her. When her odd servants addressed her it sounded like the shushing sound made even now by the rain in its descent through the canopy of leaves above.

  But her name made no difference. Gloria had to stop the witch. She meant to use Gloria as bait to draw in her hero. That had to mean Wonder Guy.

  The same Wonder Guy who had revealed himself to be Greg. Gloria, however upset by his keeping his identity secret from her, couldn’t let herself be used to hurt anyone, whether masked stranger or the friend she’d known all her life. Greg was her friend, her dear friend, who’d been on her side forever. Wonder Guy had become her hero, and something more.

  The best thing might be to end her life before her captor used her against those she loved. But how, with her movements so constrained? The sorceress held all the power. Maybe she could find a way to provoke the nasty creature. Without so much as a voice to taunt with, even that prospect seemed hopeless.

  * * * *

  Staying below the storm clouds Wonder Guy shot high above his home neighborhood and angled south. Follow the creek? That must mean Minnehaha, the creek winding from Lake Minnetonka in the west metro all the way across South Minneapolis to Minnehaha Park and the falls before it finally joined the Mississippi river in the Southeast quadrant of the city. Miles of parkland. Most of it might be trimmed back and tamed, but the park included steep hillsides with tangled undergrowth and stretches of wooded and marshy land. What was he looking for? Where did he start?

  The night may have turned rainy and overcast, but the added gloom constituted no impediment to Wonder Guy’s penetrating night vision. Scanning below, Greg soon spotted the dark swath of the parklands stretching like spilled ink among neighborhood lights. He’d do this right. He’d start at the source in the west metro and scour its course from headwaters to the falls and on to the river. He’d do the whole route over again if he had to, as many times as it took. Greg would tear the woods apart stick by stick if that’s what it took to find Gloria.

  His heat vision showed him the sparks of living things, stray dogs, plenty of rabbits, birds, squirrels, even wild turkey, fox and deer. Not many human forms emerged in the darkness. The falling rain deterred all but the most determined dog walkers, joggers, bikers and runners. This near midnight, there’d be few enough of those even at the best of weather. The cars taking the scenic route along Minnehaha Parkway blinded him when he glanced aside from the darkness of the woods.

  Within the hour, he’d scouted the creek’s course past Bloomington Avenue without spotting anything out of the ordinary. Time and again he focused his telescopic vision on one of the few people out and about–just to be sure–only to be disappointed. No Gloria.

  He followed the whole length of the creek, until he circled above the parkland where the woods grew thickest, between the falls and the confluence of the creek with the Mississippi. He must have missed something. Maybe if he flew lower? He angled into a descent, starting back along the path of the winding waterway.

  Intent on searching the land below him, Greg was caught unaware when his power began to flag. He dropped, rapidly losing altitude and carried along only by his initial impetus. Once again, Wonder Guy’s powers had departed him in mid-flight. He bent his angle of descent, trying desperately to backtrack in midair, but it did no good. Momentum carried him along until he flailed among the upper branches of trees, lashed by their limbs and the rain alike.

  He clutched at the branches as he fell, finally bringing himself to a halt, high in a tree. His super vision had deserted him. His perch was in a deciduous tree, as far as he could tell by groping branches in the dark. Probably one of the Black Poplars growing thick along the watershed. He hadn’t climbed a tree since he’d been fifteen.

  As he recalled from his earlier, tree-climbing years, the poplars branched in a regular pattern, but it was hard to predict how far apart the branching occurred. Well, he’d have to feel his way. Clinging to the bole, Greg extended a leg, feeling with his booted foot for the next lower limb. He might be no stronger than the next man and blind as the next bat in these woods at night, but he wasn’t stupid and time was wasting. Gloria needed him.

  The lower branches of his probably-a-poplar had been trimmed, leaving Greg to shinny and slide down the last ten feet of the trunk. Still clad in Wonder Guy’s costume, he escaped some potential scrapes, but a protruding stump of a branch caught him in a sensitive spot and he hit the ground bent double in pain, gritting his teeth against a howl.

  The wind and rain might have masked the noise he made crashing through the branches, but he had to assume his enemies knew of his presence. Greg took a few long and slow breaths, letting the pangs subside, leaning back against the tree he’d descended and assessed his situation.

  On the plus side, chances were he’d found Gloria’s abductor or abductors. The question was, how dangerous were they? Something had brought him down just now. Obviously, his superhero powers would do him no good under the circumstances.
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  Serafina had warned him his enemies had a chunk of St. Mary’s. Either Pederson’s chunk of pseudo kryptonite was in this immediate vicinity, still in her hands, or someone else had another such weapon. Not likely. Might Pederson be the Fairy Godmothers’ Union’s enemy in disguise or be in league with their enemy?

  His adversaries would have no interest in Greg Roberts. They’d used Gloria to lure Wonder Guy to this place. Someone must have noticed his interest in her, maybe observed their kiss. Great. They wanted Wonder Guy? He’d give them Wonder Guy. Obviously, this was a trap. The only question was whether he’d yet sprung it.

  He straightened. No superpowers. No rain gear. No flashlight and no more woodcraft than he’d picked up in his one year with the cub scouts. No point in being subtle.

  “Hey,” he yelled into the darkness. “Here I am. Where’s Gloria?”

  Chapter 22

  Gloria woke with a start, the sound of Greg’s voice echoing in her ears. She must have dozed off despite all the discomfort of her position. A hard knot in the tree against which she leaned dug into her ribs. Embedded in the earth, her legs felt so numb she could hardly tell if they were still attached.

  She tried to call out, but her captor’s spell silenced her. Her voice might have been swallowed in some vast abyss before it ever reached her ears.

  “Ah.”

  An eerie purplish-blue light swelled around her, revealing the perpetrator of all Gloria’s present misery, who appeared perfectly at her ease among the rain-drenched leaves.

  “It’s time to return your voice to you.” The sorceress gestured with an out-thrust hand at Gloria. “Please feel free to scream and carry on now.”

  Gloria gasped in a breath, relieved to hear the sound of it and, out of sheer pent-up frustration, blasted out a scream, cutting the air with satisfying, piercing clarity.

  What a relief to let loose everything she’d held bottled up for the past hours. They had to be close enough to the roads so someone would hear.

  “Gloria!”

  Her heart leapt when Greg called out, not far off. The sounds of heavy crashing through the brush followed. Dammit! She cursed herself, belatedly remembering her earlier conclusions and the danger to Greg.

  “No! Run,” she yelled, “Run! Get help!”

  The livid light grew brighter. It revealed the tiny clearing surrounding her, her captor standing near, the strange servitor creatures shrinking away into the shadowed underbrush.

  “Gloria!” Greg stumbled into the glade, slamming to a stop as if running up against a glass wall in the form of the tall sorceress, who held her stance, barring the way between him and Gloria. Dang he looked good in his form-fitting costume, even with that goofy look on his masked face.

  “I said, run, you idiot,” Gloria vented. “It’s a trap. Get out of here!”

  “Sorry, Gloria.” He spoke around the woman standing between them. “I can’t go. I can’t leave you here alone with this...person.”

  “You may call me Elysha, Hero.”

  Hmph. Introductions for him, when there’d been none for her, hauled around and dumped here like so much luggage. This Elysha person obviously thought her no more than a tool. Gloria fumed at her own helplessness, itching to prove the folly of discounting Gloria Torkenson. She squirmed against the restraints of roots and brambles. With Elysha’s attention turned to Greg, the roots trapping her behaved like ordinary roots again, keeping to their places rather than twisting to hold her. In the muddy earth, maybe she could work her legs away from their grip.

  Meanwhile, Greg demanded, “Free Gloria. You’ve got me here now. That’s what you wanted, right?”

  “That is part of my plan, yes.” Elysha stalked forward, circling him like a great cat. “Your powers are diminished while I have this.” She gestured to a chunk of masonry the size of a football lying on the muddy turf near Gloria. “But you are still under the protection of my enemies.”

  She spun toward Gloria, throwing out her arm and clenching her hand in a fist. At the gesture, the thorny vines trapping Gloria against her tree tightened convulsively. Brambles cut sharply into her already lacerated flesh and she choked out a scream. Dragging her a few inches deeper into the earth, the roots holding her legs writhed back to life.

  Elysha threw back her head and laughed a peal of ghoulish delight. “Yes. Good. Your beloved’s pain, her fear, your anguish and desperation. I could feed from the two of you for a whole season. What a feast.”

  “Stop! You have to stop.” Greg hurled himself forward only to fall back when he crashed again into whatever invisible wall Elysha kept between them. “I’ll do whatever you want. You have to let Gloria go.”

  Gloria recognized Greg easily now, even masked as he was, the familiar eyes, along with his broad shoulders, firm jaw and the long, lithe lines of his bicyclist’s form. How had she ever overlooked these qualities when he’d been clad in ordinary slacks and t-shirt or button-down plaid? She should always have recognized Greg as the hero standing before her now.

  “No!” Gloria managed to yell around the constriction of the strangling brambles. “Get out of here, Greg! They’ll just–” kill me anyhow, she meant to say, but the words choked off when the brambles grew even tighter around her throat, cutting off her air.

  She gasped, struggling for breath. The cold mud reached higher, chilling her to the waist now. She shivered uncontrollably. Thought deserted her for the endless moments during which pain held sway.

  Gloria struggled to stay aware of her surroundings.

  Elysha laughed. “Oh, how delicious, Hero. Your anguish delights me. How great will it be when the earth closes over her head and the weight crushes her lungs as you stand helplessly by?”

  “Stop it!” He threw himself again at the barrier and sank onto his knees from the force of his effort. It wasn’t nearly the force Wonder Guy had exerted before. It must have come from St. Mary’s, but it still seemed strange for a chunk of ordinary masonry have such a strong effect.

  “Tell me what you want. What will it take to set her free?” Still on his knees, pleading, Greg turned to Elysha.

  “You would deny me the pleasure of watching you suffer? Of enjoying your pain as your beloved dies before you, inch by painful inch?”

  “Yes, damn it,” Greg growled at her. He’d never looked so fierce, like a barely constrained and snarling beast. She’d never realized how powerfully he felt toward her.

  “But your passion is so potent. The strength of your desperation to help her is like a drug for me. What more could I want?”

  “There must be something. Did you lure me here only for this?”

  Something lurched in Gloria’s chest at his desperation on her behalf. She almost forgot the pain of the thorns cutting her and the chill of the earth gripping her. She longed to reach out to him, ease his suffering.

  Elysha cast a startled glance her way and Gloria thought for a moment her bonds had loosened. The sorceress spun back to Greg.

  “You’re right,” she said, closing on him, fixing him in her gaze as intently as a snake. “Let us waste no more time in this play. I want the power my enemies have given you. It is too much for a mortal man. You can’t make such good use of it as I.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you can have it,” Greg said, “But I don’t know how to give it to you.”

  “No!” Gloria cried out, renewing her efforts to pull free. She felt feeble with cold and pain, exhausted by the trials of the past hours. Her efforts came to nothing. “No, Greg. Think! She’ll kill us both, then do awful things with the power.”

  He seemed not to hear her. Perhaps Elysha kept her voice from reaching him.

  “Tis easily done.” The sorceress spoke, waving a hand and the barrier against which Greg pressed vanished, and he fell forward onto his hands. “Give me your hand and say, ‘I relinquish these fairy gifts to you.’”

  Greg lifted his gloved hand. Elysha took it between both of hers.

  Gloria didn’t hear his words for the r
ushing in her ears. Everything in her strained forward, despite how her efforts pressed the brambles further into her wounds.

  “No.” He mustn’t. Without his powers, the vicious creature would kill him. Her own fate was sealed. She couldn’t escape, but Greg might. He should. She ached at the thought of her own Greg dying here needlessly. A thousand scenes of their shared past flashed before her mind’s eye. Greg, so smart, so good-hearted and strong, so...dear. He mustn’t die. She loved him. She was in love with him...her own dear hero.

  Chapter 23

  That was all Elysha wanted? These powers? He’d only ever wanted them to impress Gloria. Without her, they meant nothing. What a relief to know he could save her so easily.

  Greg got as far as letting Elysha clasp his hand and saying, “I relinquish...” when he paused, pulling back at the thought of what the woman might do with so much power. In the same moment the dark woods exploded into light, he landed flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him. Voices, the sound of distant sirens...

  Sitting up, he found himself back in his regular clothes and the costume gone. Looking around, the glade seemed at first to throng with brilliant beings of nearly blinding beauty. He must have knocked his head when he fell. He blinked and saw only a group of elderly ladies. He spotted Serafina among them. The Fairy Godmothers–and no sign of Elysha.

  * * * *

  The glade exploded with light, dazzling in Gloria’s eyes. It might have been a midsummer’s day rather than a stormy spring night. Golden light turned the surrounding leaves to emerald jewels and the raindrops to diamonds. Her bonds loosened, the brambles fell away and the roots retreated back into the earth until she remained only loosely buried in the mud. Where had all these people come from? Greg stood among them, apparently at ease. No sign of Elysha. Gloria fell back against the trunk, her strength failing at last.