She’ll start out reasonable, trying to convince me to let them go. I’ll let that go on for a while until the fear builds, until she really understands that she is powerless. And then she’ll scream.
He felt the sharp edge of anticipation as lovely pictures and lovelier sounds played out in his head. This was going to be amazing. This would be the highest moment of his very strange life.
I actually feel nervous. But such an excellent nervousness!
With a lunge he threw his weight against the crowbar. The jamb splintered, but the door did not give way until Drake had kicked it several times.
When at last it did open, he yelled the line he’d decided on after much consideration.
“Honey! I’m home!”
There she was! Right there in front of him: Astrid! The daydream had turned real. After so long, she was right there, right in front of him. A little older, still just as beautiful and cold and disdainful as ever. Astrid the Genius.
“You look good, Astrid,” he said, and licked his lips outrageously, then laughed out of pure joy.
Astrid sat in an easy chair that had been turned to face the door. Just sat there. Sat there in yoga pants and a cropped spandex top, with her blond hair spilling down to her shoulders and her icy blue eyes appraising him.
Gorgeous. Vulnerable. Alone! And still with that smug, I’m-smarter-than-you look in her eyes.
“Hello there, Drake,” Astrid said.
In a flash Drake knew that something was wrong, very wrong. No one ever, upon seeing Whip Hand with his tentacle arm curling in anticipation, said Hello there. No one. Ever. Certainly not Astrid Ellison. But he’d prepared another line, also taken from a movie, and he couldn’t think of what else to say so he said, “Going so soon? I wouldn’t hear of it. Why, my little party’s just beginning!” It was from The Wizard of Oz, a line from the Wicked Witch of the West.
Of course he’d assumed she would bolt. And here she was just sitting. In fact, she seemed to be calmly flexing her muscles, which were actually kind of impressive for a girl who . . .
Then Astrid stood up, and something was very definitely wrong. Astrid had always been tall for a girl, but she now stood well over six feet. And she had been working out. A lot. And taking steroids. A lot. Because even as he stood there gaping, Drake saw her Thor arms still expanding, like someone was inflating them with an air hose. Her thighs were thick as tree trunks and growing thicker, until the spandex yoga pants threatened to tear. It was all made stranger still by the fact that Astrid’s face, the face from so many of his fantasies, remained unchanged except for the way her whole head seemed to be surrounded by shoulders like boulders. Drake flashed all the way back to his childhood: Astrid reminded of him of nothing so much as his old He-Man action figure. But without the boots.
“Why, Drake,” Astrid said in a mocking voice. “Did you think I would run away?” She leaned toward him—toward! “Are you disappointed? You like when people run, don’t you? It’s part of the fun, right?”
Drake licked his lips, and Brittany muttered, “Heh. Heh-heh,” like she was fake-laughing at a joke. But this was no joke. Astrid was not afraid.
Astrid. Was. Not.
Afraid.
Drake shot a glance at the door behind him thinking the unthinkable, that maybe he should be the one running. Crazy!
Astrid saw the glance and said, “You forgot to shut the door, Drake.” She took one step to her right, bent down and grabbed the edge of a solid-looking end table, and with a mere flick of her wrist threw it past Drake’s head.
Bang!
Slam!
The table hit the door and smashed it closed.
And that was when Drake realized why the doorknob had bothered him. It wasn’t bad maintenance: Astrid must have crushed it accidentally.
His head was swimming. This was madness. This was an impossibility! Four long years of greedy anticipation leading to this? He tried to think of some quip, some quote, some anything, anything to say, but this was not a situation he had ever experienced before. No one faced Whip Hand without fear.
And there was something worse than the absence of fear. There was a hunger in those cold eyes, a blue glitter of anticipation. A slight, close-lipped smile tugged at one corner of Astrid’s mouth. Her kielbasa-sized fingers flexed threateningly.
Now, Drake was scared.
He spun and leaped for the door but was jerked back by a hand the size of a ham grabbing his shoulder. Astrid pulled him to her and turned him around as easily as if she’d been moving a chess piece. His face was inches from hers.
“You’ve dreamed of this day, haven’t you, Drake?”
He shook his head violently.
“Oh, sure you have. And me? I’ve dreaded it. Dreaded it!”
Quick as a snake, Drake whipped his tentacle arm at her. It was a well-aimed blow, and Astrid was too slow to react. Hah! I’ll still . . .
Then he saw that she was smiling. The whip hand should have laid a bloody gash across her face but . . . nothing.
“Yes,” Astrid said, nodding with some satisfaction. “It’s fascinating, really, the way the rock works out here in the wider world beyond the FAYZ. It should be random is the thing; you should develop mutations that don’t necessarily function well. Take Shade Darby for example. She could have developed speed but been burned by the heat of air-friction, but no, her mutation came with a sort of armor. And think about the subtle changes that have to take place inside the brain to be able to process visual images while moving at the speed of sound. Frankly, it suggests intentionality.”
“You stalling for Sam to sneak up behind me?”
“Sam? No, he’s away. He had other things to do. And I wanted this to be just for us, you and me, Drake. Our special time together.”
Drake’s eyes darted. Door: no. Window? He’d have to get past her first.
“In any event, along with the super strength I got pretty much invulnerable skin. Yes, indeed. So honestly, you won’t need this old thing anymore.”
She shoved her right hand under his left arm and lifted him effortlessly into the air as he kicked and cursed and tried to whip her. She let him flail, then caught his tentacle in her free hand. Still firmly holding his whip, she threw him across the room. Threw him like he was nothing, and as he flew backward through the air he saw her intent and shrieked in outrage.
She held his whip. Had she not he might have smashed into the wall, but she held his whip and it yanked at him. He fell onto a glass coffee table, shattering it.
“Well, that’s a mess I’ll have to clean up.”
Then as Drake tried to get back on his feet, Astrid yanked his tentacle arm so hard he was thrown against the kitchen counter, then, like he was a yo-yo, she snapped him back the other direction so hard that his head left a dent in the wallboard.
With an impossible leap, Astrid was over him, astride him, looking down at him like he was a worm, the bitch, and she still had his whip arm, and now she had one foot on his pecs, holding him down effortlessly. With her massive left arm she began coiling his tentacle, like she was putting away a garden hose.
He felt the tension in his shoulder, and the horror of her intentions was clear now, and he roared, “No! No! No, you bitch, I’ll make you suffer. I’ll nail you to the floor and drop burning coals on your . . . No, no, nooooo! No! Nooooo!”
Astrid, with a foot on his shoulder, pulled with the strength the rock had given her, pulled and coiled as the whip stretched and then would stretch no more and began to tear as Drake screamed the vilest curses and threats.
And then, all at once, she was holding it, a limp python.
“You see the lack of internal structure, the absence of viscera, tendons, veins. This goes to the . . . I won’t say supernatural because I believe that word to be an oxymoron, but let’s say, the unusual origin of this appendage of yours. It might as well be Play-Doh inside.”
“Let me go!”
“You know, Drake, you tempt me to sadism. But I refuse to
take pleasure in this.”
And yet, she was smiling. She started toward the door, dragging him now by his hair.
“Where are you taking me?” he cried, kicking and yelling and trying to grab the doorsill, all of it futile.
“Down to the garage. Let’s take the elevator, shall we?”
“Let me go or I’ll kill everyone you love! You know I’ll come back! You know I can’t be killed!”
“Well, that may be true, Drake,” Astrid allowed, now carrying him down the exterior walkway to the elevator as easily as Drake had carried the FBI agent’s brat. “But you can certainly be slowed down, can’t you?”
The elevator door opened. Astrid tossed him inside, and Drake saw that she had his precious whip arm looped around her neck like a scarf. He thrashed frantically but pointlessly, trying to claw with his remaining hand, as Astrid calmly pressed the B for basement.
The door opened on the second floor, revealing an elderly man in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, carrying a cooler.
“Might want to catch the next one,” Astrid said. “Sorry.”
In the basement garage, Astrid dragged Drake by the foot, allowing him to flail away, to claw at the concrete, to stretch to try and get hold of anything solid, almost seeming to enjoy it.
She fumbled with fat fingers for a key to unlock the storage cage but decided just to rip the lock from the latch. The cage was half-filled with white cardboard boxes and a heavy steel box. Leaned against a box were a machete and a chain saw. He saw, too, a cardboard carton stamped with a set of black triangles and octagons labeled with skulls and crossbones and words like “corrosive” and “highly toxic.”
Astrid lifted the hinged lid of the box and Drake saw that it was lined with heavy-gauge plastic. Then she raised the chain saw.
Drake tried more threats. He tried more curses. In his desperation he tried guilt. “If you do this, you’re no better than me, you hypocrite bitch!”
“Yes, it has its moral gray areas, doesn’t it?” Astrid acknowledged. “Then again, you’re a rapist, a torturer, and a murderer so I’m betting I won’t have too many regrets.”
She fired up the chain saw, the metal teeth whirring too fast for the eye to follow.
Drake bolted for the exit, but she blocked the only way out. Then she delivered a backhand slap that knocked him through the air to smash into the concrete wall. She grabbed him by his thigh, held him half-suspended in the air, and said, “Let’s first deal with making sure you can’t run.”
And she lowered the chain saw and held it firm as it buzzed through his leg.
“It’s convenient you not having blood. Imagine the mess otherwise.”
Brittany said, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” Not a barb, just a random blurt.
In all, it took twenty minutes for Astrid to reduce Drake (and Brittany) to bits using first the chain saw and then the machete. All but Drake’s head, which still saw and heard, but could no longer speak. Astrid disassembled him without a quiver of emotion, without a qualm, as calmly as if she was cutting up a chicken for dinner. She tossed each new bit of him into the box, and made sure that he saw his parts lying there, squirming, each with a life of its own, but with no means of escape.
She set his head in a corner where he could watch as she donned a breather mask and poured bottles of hydrofluoric acid into the plastic-lined box, covering his parts.
The acid seethed and bubbled, and noxious fumes rose in the air. And he watched. He could do nothing else. He watched as the powerful acid boiled. Like she was making a stew! Like she might be about to add salt and a bay leaf.
Astrid then knelt before him, peering down at him. As he watched, helpless, she began to change. Her shoulders seemed to deflate. Her massive biceps diminished. And soon she was just a young woman with arms no bigger than baguettes.
“I wanted to do this last part as myself. As me. No morph. No superpowers. Just me.”
With that Astrid lifted him by his hair. He had the sensation of flying, but not far. He came to a stop two feet above the roiling, poisonous pool of acid.
“I want you to recognize that I’m not lowering you slowly so that I can enjoy the look of terror in your eyes. Yes, that look! No, I get no enjoyment from this,” she said, and undercut her statement by laughing. “Actually, now that I think of it, I’d better do it slowly. I don’t want to splash any of that nasty acid on myself.”
Drake no longer experienced pain, but he was not without sensation. He felt the instant his severed neck touched the surface of the acid. It felt like an electric shock. He mouthed a silent curse and then a plea but the acid was lapping at his lips so he was soon unable to mouth anything as it filled his mouth, eating away at his teeth and tongue, burning its way through his gaunt cheeks.
“This is for everyone you ever terrorized, you vile, despicable, evil piece of shit, and most of all, Drake, most of all, for Sam.”
He felt her release his hair.
Felt himself sink . . .
Saw . . .
CHAPTER 27
Lesbokitty Represents
THERE WERE ADVANTAGES to having the mayor and the NYPD on your side. All subways to or from Grand Central had been stopped anyway, but the mechanics of finding the right entry point to the vast subway tunnels was handled for Dekka.
Dekka, Armo, and Simone arrived discreetly at the Fifty-First Street and Lexington subway station by three different cabs, just in case Markovic had eyes on the streets. A single plainclothes transit policewoman waited for them and tried to shoo them straight to the stairs down, but Armo had different priorities. He had spotted a hot-dog stand, still open and operating despite an almost total lack of pedestrian traffic.
“Seriously?” Dekka asked.
Armo shrugged. “I need energy if I’m going to get my berserk on.” To the vendor he said, “Give me two. No, three. With everything.”
Dekka was impatient, but she knew not to push Armo. So as the transit cop led them down the gloomy stairwell, Armo ate the three dogs in a total of six bites.
“Good?” Dekka asked.
“Enh. I prefer them grilled.”
They marched down the grimy stairs, stepping carefully to avoid being overbalanced by the heavy flamethrower tanks Armo and Dekka carried. They came to an electronic turnstile.
“Our first crime of the day,” Armo said, winking at the policewoman. He tried to hop over very nonchalantly but that was something not even he could manage with fifty pounds of steel and napalm on his back. He and Dekka both made it, eventually, but it was an extremely clumsy start to the proceedings. Simone, less burdened, easily hopped over. The policewoman sensibly swiped her MetroCard and walked in normally, adding to the comedy of the moment.
“It’s kind of like D-Day but with less dignity,” Dekka said as she tried to pull her wedged-in leg free of the turnstile with an assist from Armo.
The subway platform was old, with tile more yellow than white, and a blue tile sign reading 51st Street. And it was eerily empty. A homeless man slept curled up against one wall. A pigeon fluttered past, came to rest on a trash bin, and cocked a curious eye at them.
“So, here’s where it gets hairy,” the cop said. She pointed. “We have to walk the track that way for about ten blocks.”
“The third rail is off, right?” Simone asked.
“It is. They’ve killed all but emergency lighting, and the downside is that the tunnel will be even darker than usual. Just the same, maybe don’t lick the third rail.”
“Thank you, Officer,” Dekka said. “But we’ll go ahead on our own. We aren’t exactly professionals at this, and we may end up getting you hurt for no good reason.”
She demurred, but in the end the cop decided not to argue. Especially when Dekka, Armo, and Simone all began to morph. She did, however, supply them with two excellent flashlights. Simone took one and levitated away, scouting the tunnel ahead.
“You think she’s solid?” Armo asked Dekka, nodding his big shaggy head in Simone’s direction.
Dekka shook her head, and her now-living dreads seemed to decide on their own to stare at Armo. “I don’t know. If it comes down to killing her father? I don’t know. Could you do it? I mean, not necessarily yourself, because she’s been clear on that. But could you stand by and watch someone else doing it?”
“Well, my dad’s a stuntman, not a supervillain, so it’s hard to say.”
They hopped down easily from the platform to the greasy, gravel-paved track. In their morphs they were much stronger, and the flamethrowers were much easier to manage.
“It’s really hard to stand on a train track and not think you’re about to get run down,” Dekka said, nervously looking in both directions. At that moment Simone came back, flying level, like Superman, her flashlight looking disturbingly like the headlight of an approaching train.
“It’s clear for the next six blocks. I didn’t want to go any closer in case my fa—” She stopped herself. “In case Vector has spies down in the tunnels.”
“Good thinking.” Had she switched from the familiar “father” to Vector as a signal to Dekka and Armo? If so, was she sincere? Or was she mentally distancing herself from her father, using the name Vector to draw a line?
You think she’s solid?
“There’s a little colony of mole people,” Simone reported. “Like half a dozen around where Forty-Sixth Street would be.”
“Mole people? Mutants?” Dekka asked, alarmed.
Simone laughed. “No, it’s a not-very-nice nickname for homeless people who live in the tunnels.”
“People are living down here? In a city as rich as this?” Dekka shook her head.
“A rich city with very expensive rents,” Simone said. She remained in morph but now walked between them, her wings still and silent.
Hero Page 19