Brightblade

by C. T. Phipps

  Ah crap.

  My ex.

  Chapter Six

  Exes and Unwanted Rescues

  “Your plan to pilfer this place of its treasures is finished!” Alex declared. “Surrender now and I won’t be required to smite you in the name of the law.”

  No, seriously, he talks like that when he’s in-character. Alexander Timons was my twenty-six-year-old ex who had been an FBI Special Agent since he was twenty-two. It turned out that they were willing to make exceptions to their usual age requirements if you could warp reality with your mind. Alex was not a bright. He was a full-on mage.

  Alex and I had been surprisingly close for about six months despite the age difference. Unfortunately, things had gotten a little heated and we’d ended up broken up when he’d gone off to Bright Falls, Michigan and apparently taken up with a nineteen-year-old weredeer witch. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, well beyond pissed off, but this wasn’t the time or the place to bring it up.

  “This is none of your business, Timons!” The lizard woman, Clara (?), shouted. I had to admit, I was surprised that she was named Clara. That seemed like a cow woman’s name. I was thinking she might be an Elizabeth Zard or Sally Mandra. Yes, it seemed my time as a superhero had left a bit too much of an effect on me.

  The bat-woman screeched at him and he fell backward, wrapping himself up in his cloak momentarily to muffle the sound. I got the impression that attack surprised him, so I had to guess he hadn’t seen anything of the fight we’d been having, only seen the glass window shattered and swung in to help. Great. That meant he wouldn’t be ready for the other two.

  There was a large telephone on the edge of a loan officer’s desk, and while I might wish those things were made out of metal still, it was heavy enough that when I grabbed it with my telekinesis and slid it over the edge, it hit Clara’s back with a satisfying thump. She grunted, probably more in surprise than actual pain, but it was enough distraction for me to roll us both over so that I was on top of her and able to elbow her hard in the ribs, like I’d tried before.

  This time she did grunt in pain before teleporting out from under me and I fell a few inches onto the floor. She reappeared about four feet above me, ready to fall on top of me adding her momentum to her weight in injuring me.

  Luckily, it was the most predictable maneuver possible, and I’d seen it coming. I rolled over, again, reaching out to TK grab a tiny office crystal pyramid trophy so that she’d land very painfully on it, forcing her to teleport again. Only, now with more momentum to deal with, she had to teleport over the lobby couch. She was far enough away that I had time to get back on my feet.

  The bat-woman had, again, paused to take a breath, and Alex had recovered faster than I had, throwing an exploding-foam grenade at both batty and Cthulhu’s understudy. Who the hell had foam grenades? Was this a thing for the FBI now or was he going full-on Batman? Which was funny because he was fighting a batwoman. Okay, I was having way too much fun here.

  Bats looked seriously restrained by the result, and I had to imagine that getting that suddenly hard foam out of all that fur would be a nightmare I was glad I didn’t have to worry with. Slimy wasn’t more than momentarily annoyed as she seemed to just pop the foam restraints off and tried to spray a pool of slime under Alex, but she was knocked off her aim when I ripped the phone off its cord and threw it at her. She turned to spray more slime at me, but I TKed a seat cushion between us, blocking the stream.

  Clara, meanwhile, had teleported in front of Black Wing and delivered a surprise series of punches to his stomach, teleporting away before he could return the blow. I grabbed the stapler I’d thrown earlier and held it in the space in front of my former boyfriend. I wasn’t sure what teleporting into a solid object would do to a person, but I was sure it couldn’t be good. Sure enough, Lizard’s next attack was halted when she was snapped back to her original location and sent reeling like she’d been punched in the gut.

  “Thanks, Ash!” he said. “Just like old times!”

  “You clearly remember the old times differently than I do,” I muttered, dodging out of the way of a flying body as tentacle-woman lifted one of the unconscious people on the ground and threw her at me.

  “Hey!” I snapped, watching to make sure that they weren’t injured. “That could hurt someone.”

  Of course, doing that meant I’d had to take my eyes off the tentacle-woman and before I knew it, she was on top of me, wrapping her body around mine like she didn’t have a bone in her entire frame. She smelled about as horrible as she looked, incidentally.

  Unable to move my actual limbs, I sent TK punches into the tentacle-woman’s guts, none of which appeared to have the slightest effect on the creature. How the hell something this slippery could hold me so tightly, I still have no idea.

  Tentacle-woman pulled me physically across the room and then threw me at Alex, which was all a maneuver to put us both in the bat-woman’s line of fire at the same time. The creature screeched and, again, I felt like my bones were Mexican jumping beans.

  “Finish her off, Bella!” the tentacle-woman hissed.

  “With pleasure!” the batwoman, Bella, snarled.

  “No killing, Jessica!” Clara shouted.

  “I’ll kill anyone to be human again!” the tentacle woman, Jessica, snapped back.

  Okay, were we the bad guys in this? Just who the hell were Clara, Bella, and Jessica and what did they want? I mean, most crooks who robbed banks were doing so for the cash and they were all dressed up for tearing into the safety deposit boxes. Had some wizard turned them into creatures from the black lagoon then told them to rob the place to get back their original forms? I could taste the desperation in their auras and it made me wonder if I should have tried diplomacy before punching things.

  “Cut the doll bouncing around’s throat!” Jessica shouted. “Then the G-Man.”

  “You got it, cupcake,” Bella the Bat responded.

  Or maybe the time for talking had passed. Also, the trio talked anachronistically. Like when my grandmother was imitating people from the movies of her time.

  Alex and I struggled to make our limbs work well enough to get apart so she couldn’t target us both, but as soon as we got any distance between us, Lizard teleported next to him and punched his lights out. Which was about the last thing I saw before I got the same treatment and I slid across the floor to where I’d initially been trying to make a deposit.

  “This is no time for softness!” Jessica hissed, waving her tentacles.

  “What sort of life will we have if we’re murderers after we’re free?” Clara asked.

  “They’ll have to know who we are,” Jessica replied and started dragging the equipment they’d brought in toward the vault. “Finish them, Bella.”

  The bat-woman started breaking free of the glue hardened around her, screeching a few times as she had to pull hardened glue bits away with chunks of fur.

  I felt like I’d been hit with a freight train, but I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Well, a better fight than the one I’d already lost. Thumping around my hand for a weapon, it landed on the hilt of the sword I’d brought here to deposit in the vault.

  “Great, I’m going to die fighting a bunch of angry Disney mascots with a giant kitchen knife,” I muttered, pulling it out of its scabbard.

  Almost immediately, I felt my entire body flood with energy that was familiar to me but new. The injuries I’d sustained healed over and I rose to my feet while a glowing nimbus of golden light covered me. I had the strangest urge to shout, “FOR THE HONOR OF GRAYSKULL!” Something I was sure Arthur would have appreciated had he been there.

  Only one of the trio is objectively evil so I suggest you only slay that one, the sword spoke in my mind.

  What the hell? I shouted back, telepathically. I hadn’t had one of these kinds of conversations since my sister disappeared.

  What the heaven, not what the hell, the sword replied. I am Zadkiel, Angel of Mercy. My vessel is a blade
forged by the greatest sorceress of her age, Kim Su, and it is my place to protect the innocent. How do you do?

  I shook my head in disbelief. Great, I am in the middle of a fight with people trying to kill me and I’m stuck with the Angel of Mercy.

  I give mercy to the victims of the evildoer first. Move to one side.

  I did so, automatically. I used my TK to give myself a boost and watched as the marble countertop was stained with an ink that started melting through its bottom.

  “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself,” Jessica said, hissing. She then started moving around her arms in a wild series of gestures. I felt nauseous and afraid as a black smoke-like substance poured out from her fingertips until it turned into a seven-foot-tall naked man made of what looked like magma.

  There was something innately wrong about the figure and it wasn’t just that people weren’t supposed to be made of living rock and flame. No, instead, there was a primal disgust that made me want to grab hold of the sword and plunge it through the newcomer’s chest. It filled me with a righteous fury I hadn’t felt since I was a child first watching Star Wars and wanting Leia to blow the hell out of the Empire’s soldiers.

  Remember Alderaan!

  It is a Jinn, the sword replied. A creature of Iblis. You must destroy its avatar, or it will kill everyone here. Jessica Flanders has summoned a demon with black magic.

  “Jessica, what have you done?” Clara called from the vault where I could hear her using some of the equipment they brought in.

  Bella the Batwoman, alliterative antagonist, seemed concerned.

  “What I had to!” Jessica the Tentacle-Woman hissed. “Get the wand!”

  A wand, seriously? They were breaking in here for a wand? I mean, I knew magic was real but I thought the whole wand thing was made up by stage magicians, Tarot cards, and Harry Potter. It was why I called them wands, because it was silly. That was when I saw the Jinn walk forward with its arms stretched out. Each step burned a hole in the floor an inch deep and I saw him about ready to step on Bryce’s head.

  “Back off, I Dream of Genie!” I said, pointing the sword at his chest. “Go back to where you came from.”

  Hell, Zadkiel replied. He is from hell.

  Is now a good time to mention I’m not religious in the slightest? I asked, feeling a bit embarrassed.

  The Armies of Heaven are not overly concerned about religion, Zadkiel replied, as if this was the least important thing in the world to be worried about right now.

  What? Someone should tell the Po…ahhh! I started to think back, only to be grabbed by the monstrous thing and then thrown against the wall across the side of the lobby. My shoulder felt like it was on fire and only the magic of the sword suppressed the pain from what I suspected were third degree burns.

  Use your telekinesis to continue fighting. I will attempt to keep you from dying, Zadkiel replied.

  Attempt? I snapped at the angel in my sword. Listen, I am not—

  Your friends will die if you do not, Zadkiel shut me up with a single sentence.

  Goddammit.

  Don’t blaspheme.

  I channeled my TK into my arm and held it together before moving it all over my body. From there, I launched myself forward at the Jinn. It took the creature by surprise as he was leaning down to pick up Tracy.

  “Arraabbbbiaannnn Nights!” I shouted as a battle cry. Okay, I wasn’t at my best. It had been a long time since I’d been a superhero, okay? Nevertheless, I slammed into the genie with the sword and it passed through the lava monster like he was made of smoke.

  My face pressed against the monster, its rocky surface now cool to the touch, before it exploded into a bunch of rocky fragments. I rolled across the ground and saw the ceiling moving around. Yeah, this was even worse than getting batted around by the werebear.

  I am sorry, you are very badly injured now, Zadkiel said.

  No kidding, really! I snapped back. Uh, how badly am I injured?

  Very.

  Yeah, I got the impression that Zadkiel wasn’t a particularly popular angel in the heavenly host. Mind you, I hadn’t believed in angels until approximately five minutes prior. Solomon Academy educated me in everything about mathematics, science, small arms fire, infiltration, martial arts, and investigation but they’d neglected theology. Now I was a martyr for Catholicism.

  Angels are above religions’ sectarian conflicts. Also, you wouldn’t be a martyr unless you had the opportunity not to die by renouncing your faith.

  Huh, I said, trying to force myself up with the sword as a brace. Isn’t that special.

  Your sarcasm is noted. If you had more power than being a hedge mage then I could heal all your injuries.

  Bright, not hedge mage! I snapped back.

  There’s a difference?

  Don’t argue terminology when I’m dying.

  Sorry, Zadkiel replied.

  I saw burns across my body and couldn’t move well. My whole body felt like jelly held together by the force of my TK. Everyone, mostly, seemed alright on the ground. Call me a jerk but I didn’t care much about anyone here but Bryce and Tracy. I mean I didn’t want random bystander number six to die but I was here for the people I knew and cared about. I was kind of surprised I was willing to die to save them. Well, maybe I wouldn’t have been if I wasn’t already dying but since I was, it seemed as good a cause as any to follow through on. The fact I didn’t feel any pain from my injuries was a sure sign I was fucked.

  That’s my doing, Zadkiel replied. Paladins of the Twelve Holy Weapons do not feel pain and can carry out their duty even beyond the power of healing we bestow on them.

  Paladins of the what?

  Champions of God. True Warriors of Faith. I’m settling with you.

  I tried to contain my rage. You know your previous owner hocked you for bail money, right?

  I settled with him as well.

  I managed to climb to my feet just in time to see Jessica charging at me with a black obsidian knife. Bella and Clara were exiting the bank vault carrying a thick steamer trunk that radiated an unholy power that dwarfed that of the Jinn. I felt Zadkiel’s desire to destroy it but I couldn’t do anything but brace myself for Jessica’s attack.

  That attack never came because a blast of wind shot forth like a little tornado that sent Jessica flying. Jessica screamed before landing with a thump on the ground beside Clara and Bella. Standing up, clinging to his staff, was Alex.

  “About time,” I said, spitting blood on the ground. “You almost got me healed, Z?”

  No, Zadkiel replied. I’m afraid the damage is too extensive.

  “Well shit,” I said, collapsing. I could no longer sustain my TK to keep myself up. A part of me was glad that I’d managed to go out like a boss. The rest of me reminded that part that going out like a boss was what men told themselves to explain why the stupid things they did were justified.

  Alex rushed to my side. “I’ll help you, Ashley!”

  No, stop them from escaping with the Nakoso’s relics! Zadkiel cried out. The entire world is at stake if they retrieve them!

  Don’t listen to him, I shouted back in my head, unsure if he could hear either of us. Save me, I’m what’s important!

  Okay, maybe not my finest moment but I just killed a genie made of lava, so I think I deserved a little credit.

  That was when we both disappeared in a flash of teleportation magic.

  Huh, I hadn’t been aware Alex could do that. Then I passed out. Or died. I wasn’t sure which at the time.

  Chapter Seven

  So, I’m not really dead (shocking, I know)

  Death felt a lot like dreaming. Huh. I would have thought it felt more like nonexistence. The teachers at the Solomon Academy had always emphasized ghosts were not the people they were in life. Then again, I’d met plenty of ex-House members higher ranked than my teachers that chuckled at the idea. Maybe they were trying to keep us from having any loyalties above our superiors—it would fit the H
ouse.

  I found myself as a little girl sitting at the desk at the Solomon Academy, staring at Headmistress Freya Proudfoot as she wrote the words OBEY on the chalkboard repeatedly while I stared forward, a little bit of blood leaking out of my nose.

  “No,” I said, “I don’t want to.”

  “But you have to,” Freya said. “If you don’t, then you can’t have any meat and if you don’t eat your meat then you can’t have any pudding.”

  “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd started playing. Okay, either I was dreaming, or the afterlife was really fucking strange.

  I was then back at the bank, wearing the original Red Widow’s blood-soaked harem girl outfit. Mac was bleeding out on the floor. I tried to reach him but the wires tore up out of the floor and wrapped around me as the Wire-Woman face laughed. Her face was a mass of wires sticking in and out of her flesh as she looked like a corpse reanimated by coat hangers. She was a demon and the first time I’d ever encountered something like her. So much so I refused to think of her as such.

  Mac was a handsome African American man in his late twenties. A little older than me at the time. He was a werewolf and had decided to be a protector of the people in hopes of getting them to accept him. I didn’t know how well it had worked but I’d tried to help him. However, the supernatural world was filled with things far worse than puppies. We’d stupidly wandered into a place with them and now he was on the ground with a heart-shaped hole in his chest.

  I was wrapped in wires, hundreds of them, as the Wire-Woman made me dance like a puppet.

  “How many times have you had this dream and you still can’t save him?” Grandmother Morgan asked. “Pathetic.”

  I ignored her, struggling against the wires, trying to reach Mac.

  “Is this why she let us die?” my brother, Arthur, asked. He was covered in blood and sported a prominent pair of fangs. “To play at being a superhero?”