Lafferty, Mur (19 page)

The heroes continued their battle not one hundred yards away, trying to break Light of Morning's force field, and seemed not to notice them. Tattoo Devil screamed as a pterodactyl was birthed from his shoulder blades. It flew over Inert, the kid who could knock people out with a touch, and picked him up by the shoulders. The sidekick winced as the beast's talons cut into his shoulders. The pterodactyl flew over the massive golden sphere and dropped him. He readied himself to land on the top of the field, but Light of Mornings looked up, her eyes flashing golden, and she focused for the first time since Peter had seen her. As Inert fell toward her, she allowed a small hole in her force field to open.

It was over too quickly for Peter to register what had happened. The hero fell through her force field, and as he entered it, he reached out to touch her, but there was a blinding flash as if the force field had become something made entirely of light. The small sun flared and everyone hid their eyes. Peter stopped when the flash subsided.

Inert had fallen straight through the force field and through the bottom.

He lay in the grass, a charred husk. The corpse was badly burned, hair, clothing and eyelids missing.

"Oh God," Peter said. Keepsie had stopped running and was dashing back to him, Doodad trailing silently behind her.

The ground rumbled again and Keepsie clutched at Peter to keep from falling. Lightning struck and they clapped their hands over their abused ears.

The rumble abruptly died.

“I think that might be the end of Seismic Stan,” Peter said.

"Time to go, babe, like you said, we can't fight her." Keepsie grabbed his arm and pulled and they ran on, ducking into the trees and leaving the blinding battle behind them.

"You know," Peter said, starting to pant a little. "I didn’t see Ian with the villains. Did you?"

"No, I was hoping you had," Keepsie said, looking around. As they increased the distance between themselves and the park, darkness became more of the norm.

"I figured he'd be there with the fight," Keepsie said.

"Actually, I didn’t see Clever Jack when we came out of the hill, either.

This is not promising."

"Peter, none of this is promising. Come on, let's try to catch up," she said and increased her pace.

Time slowed. Michelle, Barry and Alex were far ahead. Logic had won a battle with The Librarian and she now sprinted in bare feet a couple of paces ahead of Tomas, who ran in fits of speed followed by a slow jog, using his brief super-strength to power himself forward. Colette trailed behind them.

After Colette, there was Clever Jack. He had stepped out from an awning and faced them, the pleasant smile plastered on his face. He pointed a gun at them.

Superpowered luck. Which meant instant sharpshooter, even in the dark, even with his eyes closed, even behind his back, tied up and hanging upside down. Peter's legs carried him forward in slow motion, and he heard a low, slow curse from Keepsie beside him.

For a small woman, Keepsie seemed quite dense as she slammed into Peter, shoving him aside so that he fell just as the gun emanated a puff of smoke and a very loud noise. He fell, hard, his head pounding.

Then, everything sped up to double time. Keepsie lay on her back, a hole in her shirt right where her heart was. Her eyes were wide and her mouth opened and closed as if she were a drowning fish.

Peter scrambled over to her and held her hand tightly. "Keepsie, listen to me, you can't die, hold on, you can't die."

She looked at him and he saw brief outrage in her eyes. She tried to speak but failed.

"You can't die. That's the part of your power I was going to tell you about. If someone tries to kill you, that would be stealing your life, and it won't work."

Peter felt the hot barrel of the handgun against the base of his neck.

"That's really neat,” Clever Jack said. “But I bet I can still kill you."

Keepsie's chest burned. She fought for every breath and tried to will her heart to beat regularly again. She could barely comprehend what Peter had just said. Then Clever Jack was above them both.

"No-" she managed to say, but even she couldn't hear herself above the shouts.

A foul jet of excrement shot over the three of them missing Clever Jack's head by inches, as Ian yelled, "You lying son of a bitch!"

A second later, Michelle's car door, no longer bearing Barry, whizzed towards them, clipping the back of Clever Jack's head. He crumpled, falling over Keepsie’s outstretched legs.

Ian whooped. "How's that luck now, you bastard?"

Peter, his hands visibly shaking, took the gun out of Clever Jack's lax grip and pulled him off of Keepsie.

Keepsie relaxed back on the pavement and concentrated on breathing, even though the air was filled with the stench of Ian's attack.

Hands lifted her and she opened her eyes without realizing she had closed them. She lay on the car door while Michelle ran down the sidewalk. She looked for Peter and found him talking to Ian, talking over Clever Jack's body.

"Peter," she croaked, but no one responded. She blacked out.

"Damn, Peter, you were right. It didn't even break the skin," Alex said.

"Yes, but the bludgeoning effect of the bullet to her heart still could have killed her," Peter said.

"Except she couldn't die that way," Alex said.

"Well. Yes."

Her breath came easier. Her heart beat loudly in her ears, a frightened, yet steady, rhythm. She felt uncomfortably exposed, and realized they'd removed her shirt and covered her breasts with it in order to better see what the bullet had done to her. Thank God I decided to wear a bra today.

She raised her head and saw Michelle, Alex and Peter with her. Michelle held her hand. She squeezed it and smiled.

"No offense, guys, but sometime I’d like to wake up and not have the two of you arguing about my health," she said to them.

"Welcome back," Alex said. There were dark circles under his eyes and he staggered back a bit. Peter helped him to a booth where he lay down.

They were in her bar; Keepsie lay on the floor. Tomas, Barry and the Librarian sat at the bar, eating. Ian sat alone in a booth, watching them.

Doodad stood, outrage gleaming in his frozen eyes, a couple of feet from her.

There was a definite scent of cheeseburgers on the air. Colette had been busy.

The door to the kitchen opened with a bang and the short, stocky cook stormed out. Her face was red and eyes wide, but bore with her a plastic basket of a cheeseburger and cheese fries. Keepsie already knew they were for her; Colette knew exactly how she liked her burgers. Employing a Third Wave cook had its advantages.

The basket landed beside Keepsie. "Eat. When you’re done, think about what we’re going to about the heroes and villains? This is going to kill our business."

Keepsie sat up, the ache in her chest subsiding. "I'm not sure, Colette. I think business was hurt when the heroes shut us down, actually."

Colette shook her head. "Bureaucracy I can fight. My dad is a lawyer. But the Good Lord did not give me superpowers to fight heroes and villains; He gave me powers to feed people."

"We'll think of something, Colette," Keepsie said.

Colette shook her head and went back to the kitchen. "Now if we could just get that nuclear girl on our side, we'd save a bundle on electric bills to heat this place and power the goddamned stove."

"Is she going to be all right?" Peter asked.

"Oh sure," Keepsie said, picking a cheese fry from the basket. "She deals with most any kind of stress by stomping around and cooking. She couldn’t do that outside, but here she’s in her element.”

Keepsie levered herself off the floor, waving off Peter's offered hand.

She picked up her lunch -or was it dinner? -and put it on a table at the nearest empty booth. She left her friends, dragging the super villain behind her and entered the Men’s room. She exited without Doodad.

“Everyone uses the women’s room from now on.”

“You got it,” Colette said.

Keepsie returned to her food and motioned her friends to sit. "All right.

Peter, what the hell were you talking about after I got shot, and why aren't I dead?"

Peter and Michelle exchanged looks. "I… have to go check on the bar trays. I think if I sharpen the edges they’ll be very Xena-like," Michelle said, and went behind the bar.

Peter sat down slowly, as if he wanted to do anything but.

"What's wrong? You said I was invulnerable or something, which is wrong cause that sure as hell hurt," she said.

Peter didn't meet her eyes. He sighed. "During the last couple of days, I've used my powers more often than I've ever consciously used them in my life.

I've never wanted to find out secrets about people, because what I find out is usually something I didn’t want to know. But, well, in the past couple of days I've discovered that I can do more than the Academy, my father, and even I knew I could."

"Wow, really? Like what?"

Peter picked up a napkin from the table and fiddled with it. "I can track people if I can get a good enough scent. That's how we found The Librarian. I also learned that I can learn the extent of someone's powers. I discovered that your life is one of your possessions. You can't be killed. I assume that you can grow old and die, and you can sicken and die, or die in an accident, but no one else can take your life from you."

There was something he wasn't telling her. She studied him for a moment. "You're serious?"

He finally met her eyes. "Well don't take my word for it -you survived a lightning strike, a spear to the chest, deadly fire and a gunshot to the heart.

What do you think?"

Keepsie sat back. Her first thought was an incoherent desire to never let the Academy know this information, if they hadn't figured it out already. Not that there was much of an Academy left. But she had no idea what Timson would do with this information.

"Man. I'm sort of immortal, you've found out all sorts of powers, and Michelle can lift a grown man on a car door. What other stuff do we know?"

Peter studied his napkin again. "Well. We need to discuss Ian."

Keepsie looked automatically at Ian, who stared at them from his booth with an unsmiling face. "I feel like I don't know him anymore, Peter," she said, not looking away from Ian's gaze. "I don't think we can trust him."

"He saved my life, he and Michelle. Well. After you did, of course.” He balled the napkin up in his fist and gave it a tight squeeze before setting it down and pushing it away from him. "Plus, he has given us information about Clever Jack. Information that I confirmed with, ah, my newly discovered talents."

"Oh? What's that?" Keepsie said.

"Clever Jack has a weakness. And it's a big one."

He opened his mouth again and Keepsie held up her hand. "Wait. I want to hear it from Ian."

Peter closed his mouth and nodded. He beckoned Ian over.

Her betrayer, her Judas, her Benedict Arnold. Her friend who worked a cash register at Seventh Sity Surfer. The guy who had gotten himself arrested defending her bar. The guy who had given Alex's info so they could recover from Academy’s torture. Clever Jack's ally. And eventual betrayer.

He didn't sit at the booth but stood next to it. Keepsie looked up at him.

"So what's Clever Jack's weakness, Ian?"

He looked as if he expected the question. "Clever Jack's luck is innate, like a cloud or something around him. But he can focus it. While he's focusing it, there is still enough luck protecting him from one, maybe two attackers. But more than that and someone will have a pretty good chance of hitting him.

"Like when he was trying to shoot Peter, you missed but Michelle hit,"

Keepsie said.

Ian nodded. "He pretty much said it to me, without actually saying it. I think he thinks I'm dumber than I am. I’ve got to start carrying my night school diploma with me, I guess. Anyway, I thought the double attack could get him off Peter. And then Pete checked out my story with his shiny new skills, and said I could come back here and talk to you. You know, when you were back up and running."

Running. Keepsie felt like she could never run again. If she had a chance to just lie down in a bed -provided her bed wasn't cinders by now -just for a moment, she would be able to cope so much better.

"So now what?" she asked Ian.

He shifted his weight and looked at Peter. "Uh, what do you mean?"

"Now what for you?" Keepsie felt mean all of a sudden, and wasn't willing to let him back in so easily. "You've been on our side, the villains' side, what's next? Joining the Academy?"

Ian looked hurt, and Keepsie felt both vindicated and guilty. He looked at the floor. "I fucked up. That's all. I wanted to give the heroes as much shit as they'd given us, and I felt like you guys were just rolling over. I didn't know Clever Jack was going to hurt innocent people."

"Conveniently forgetting his past, I suppose," Peter said.

Ian shrugged. "It's like, when you see him in the papers, he's bigger than life. The past couple of days, he seemed a lot more like us, pissed off at getting the shaft from the Academy. And you have to admit they're pretty twisted themselves.

"I guess I did forget what he'd done in the past, and just wanted to be with the winning team for once."

He took a deep breath. Keepsie and Peter didn't say anything. Peter relaxed back into the booth as if he'd heard this before.

"And?" prompted Keepsie.

"Well, after you guys started going against him, he got mad and started talking about killing you. He sent me on recon to find out who was left at the bar. I headed there with the intention of warning you, but I saw you guys coming back to the park, so I doubled back and followed you. By the time I got there, Clever Jack was telling that glowing chick to kill the heroes and then he grabbed me and said we were going to rule the city as soon as we got rid of you guys. That's when I started sticking really close to see if I could stop him. So when you guys escaped the hill, he left Light of Mornings to do her thing and fry the heroes while he went running after you. We slipped past you when you stopped to watch the fight. Clever Jack was so focused on you guys that he didn't see me run ahead to catch Michelle and Barry. I'm sorry we didn't catch him in time to stop his first shot."