The Games of Supervillainy (The Supervillainy Saga Book 2) (20 page)

“God, I hate this town,” Cindy grumbled, following me. “First thing I do after I make my first billion is buy one of the Hawaiian Islands. One of the ones without an active volcano.”

“You may want to go for a smaller island,” Diabloman said. “A billion doesn't go as far as it used to.”

“You're right,” Cindy said, nodding. “I'll have Gary ransom it from the government. I figure by then he'll control at least the lower forty-eight states.”

“I’m debating getting Canada first.”

“Why Canada?”

“Why
not
Canada?”

Amanda coughed and pointed to the horde of spirits around us. “The ghosts, Gary.”

“Oh, right.”

Reluctantly, but uniformly, the ghosts all closed their eyes. The only exception was Amanda's mother, who was still talking with her. It was somewhat gratifying to see I'd managed to shake them all out of their post-death lethargy through the simple power of my presence. Well that and the huge otherworldly artifact I was wielding.

“
Shouldn't we be saying something to these souls as we send them off
?”

“If you see Marilyn Monroe, tell her I'm sorry the press hounded her so much in life,” I said, addressing the ghosts. “Oh and tell my third grade teacher to rot in hell. I'm sure she's there.”

“
I don't even know why I bother
.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “One... two... three!”

Slamming down my scythe into the ground, the entire mansion shook. One by one, the ghosts around me disappeared, until whole groups started to fade away. A few of them screamed as if being consumed by fire while the majority reacted as if they were waking up from a long nap.  That told me more about the afterlife than my visiting it had.

Only a single ghost remained, a man in a tuxedo with a pencil thin mustache and slicked black hair. “Ha! I knew you were a fraud!”

Mandy put her hand on my shoulder. “Are they gone?”

“Most of them,” I said. “There's always one jackass in a crowd.”

“What are you going to do about him?” Mandy asked.

“Not a damn thing,” I said. “He can have the cold satisfaction of sticking around this joint. Besides, the house is infinitely cooler being at least a little haunted.”

“Now all we need is to find the
Book of Midnight
, cast whatever who-zit spell is needed to undo the hex, and save the world. Oh and kill Dick Gleeson.” Mandy put her hands on her hips.

“You got it,” I said. “Let's hope we can find it in this place.”

Amanda left her mother's side and walked over. Her face was grim, lacking all of the joy I'd had at meeting my brother. “My mother will show us the way to my father's resting place for the
Book of Midnight
.”

“That's good news,” I said, having a distinctly feeling about this. “Right?”

Amanda looked up. “Not quite. Apparently, Dick Gleeson got through the wards about an hour ago. He’s trying to destroy the
Book of Midnight
so we can’t use it.”

“Sweet Mother of Solomon!” I spit, clenching my fists. “He has the book already?”

“Probably,” Amanda said, looking pedantic. “I'm sorry.”

We'd come all this way to try and get the
Book of Midnight
, only to find the damn thing might have been snatched up while I was reaping souls.

“I'd say the person responsible was an idiot,” I said, “but since that's me. Someone else must be. Angel Eyes, I blame you.”

“What?” Angel Eyes looked up.

“
George Orwell wrote a book on the way you think
,” Cloak said. “
He called it doublethink
.”

“Nah,” I said. “I would have been in the Inner Party. Julia and I would have been chilling while the world burned.”

“
Wait, you got that reference
?”

“I went to college, Lancel. I just didn't get a degree in anything useful,” I replied, trying to think of what to do next. “We are screwed every which way from Saturday.”

“And not in a good way,” Cindy piped in. “So, Dick and the Brotherhood have the
Book of Midnight
. What's the worst that could happen?”

“Well, the end of the world is already happening.” Mandy was holding her pistols downwards so they weren't aimed at anyone. Good gun safety. “So I can only assume it's going to happen faster if he brings the book to his boss, this Nightmaster character.”

“Which would be bad,” I added.

“I think we got that,” Mandy said.

“Just making sure,” I said, holding my palms up. “We should get moving as soon as we've got our plan for dealing with him laid out.”

“Are we sure the Society of Superheroes can’t take care of this?” Cindy said. “Hey, Amanda, did you make any super-secret teen hero friends during your training?”

“No.” Amanda said, “And teen heroes? I’m five years younger than you and Gary.”

Cindy blinked. “Really?”

“Oh yes.” I said, “The sex tape proved it.”

Amanda looked like she was going to throw a shuriken at my head then just blushed, which was surprising.

“I think we can safely assume we’re alone here,” Mandy said, holding tightly to her pistols as expecting monsters to show up at any point. “Gary, Amanda, I need you to ask your cloaks what sort of powers the others have.”

“Ten-four, Sexy Boss Lady,” I said. “Cloak?”

“
The other cloaks—
”Cloak started to say before he was interrupted.

“Dick Gleeson has the Cloak of the Dragon,” Amanda interrupted, looking between us.

“It allows him to become a dragon. The literal fire-breathing kind.”

Try as she might, she couldn't look intimidating in her outfit. It looked adorable on her.

“Well, that's a bit on the nose isn't it?” I asked, chewing on my one of my thumbnails. “Anyone have any experience in dragon slaying?”

“Does
Lances and Labyrinths Online
count?” Cindy inquired.

“No,” I said.

“Then no,” Cindy said. “Which is a pity because I had a 40th level Chaos-aligned Orcish thief who would have been perfect for this situation.”

I lost a lot of respect for Cindy in that moment. After all, I had a 60th level Chaos Elf Warlock. Obviously, she didn't have sufficient devotion to playing our mutual computer obsession. I really needed to buy the latest expansion pack. Supposedly, they were bringing back the King Below by promoting one of his Wraith Knights.

“The others?” Mandy asked.

Cloak said, “
The Nightmaster’s Cloak grants all the abilities of the other cloaks combined as well as vast knowledge of sorcery. The price of said cloak is the subject goes steadily insane, however. The other cloaks are eso-morphic, transferring abilities as based on the personality of the wielder but one can expect they’re at least going to grant the ability to become insubstantial as well as powers related to the elements.”

Great. I got stuck with one of the crappy cloaks.

Cloak, somehow, glared at me.

I could feel it.

Explaining, Mandy and Amanda listened before discussing their battle plans. Mandy proved to be a good leader, taking in everyone’s opinions and formulating a strategy based on consensus.

Mandy pointed to each of us as she spoke. “Angel Eyes, if you have any protective magic or things you can cast on us now, I need you to do that now. Diabloman, protect Gary, it's your job and I'll be very cross with you if my husband dies. Cindy, you quip and be useless.”

“Righto,” Cindy said, saluting her. “I'll even throw in a cowardly back-stab before running away. I'm good at those.”

“Good to know,” Mandy replied, not bothering to look at her. “We're going to hunt down Dick Gleeson and take the book back from him. If he turns into a dragon, we'll hit the wings first and then the underbelly. It worked in Tolkien and it worked in folklore. Any objections?”

Cindy raised her hand, standing on her tippy-toes. “Ooo! I've got one.”

“Except from Cindy,” Mandy said, looking between the rest of us. In that moment, she looked like the world's sexiest drill sergeant.

“I do.” Angel Eyes coughed into his fist before raising a hand. “I can work my magic on you, Fair Lady, but there will be a risk. Aphrodite can bolster your strength, give you limited invulnerability, and perhaps even enhance your firearms but she is a jealous deity. The fact I am asking her to help a woman I care for will likely result in something ill befalling you.”

“You can tell that Hellenistic ocean-born bitch nobody threatens my wife,” I snapped, fully willing to scale Mount Olympus and kill her if it came to that.

Another thunderclap was heard outside, this time accompanied by a lightning bolt hitting a tree visible through one of the hallway windows.

“Gary, please don't threaten my goddess, I'm in enough trouble as it is.” Angel Eyes said, wincing, before glancing back over at Mandy. “Are you still willing to take that risk knowing the potential price you might be asked to play?”

“Yes,” Mandy said without hesitation. “I am.”

A pained expression passed across Angel Eyes's visage. For a brief second, I actually thought he cared about my wife. Then I remembered he'd only known her for the space of a few days and rolled my eyes. What a drama queen.

“Very well. I will work the magic,” Angel Eyes said, stepping behind Mandy and muttering something in Ancient Greek. I could feel a surge of power in the air that wasn't easy to put into words, like someone was rapidly changing the room's temperature up and down.

“Does anyone else have any objections?” Mandy asked, completely ignoring Angel Eyes's spell-work.

None of us raised our hand. We didn't have any further time to dawdle. Mostly because I'd taken compassion on a bunch of spooks. I wasn't going to make that mistake again. No good deed goes unpunished, it's an immutable law of the universe.

“Okay, then, good. Time to move on,” Mandy said, waiting only a few seconds for Angel Eyes to finish chanting before starting to walk off. Amanda's Mother, probably realizing she was supposed to be leading us, floated over in front of her and started heading down one of the mansion halls. Amanda quickly followed her.

“Mandy, such a Type-A personality, she could even order around the dead,” I muttered, hoisting up my scythe over one shoulder.

“I still don't know why we're risking our lives for the brain-dead masses.” Cindy sounded better. “They’d hang the lot of us if they could. I mean, you leave a pair of scissors in someone’s torso during surgery and you’re out for life. What sort of world is that?”

Well, that explained what had happened to her medical career.

“Try and think of it less as us saving the world than us saving ourselves, which coincidentally saves everybody else.” I started walking after my wife, Diabloman and Angel Eyes following me.

“Well
that
makes sense,” Cindy said, running to catch up.

The interior of Amanda's house got no less creepy the further we got in. It was pretty much the ultimate embodiment of spooky interior design. There were cobwebs, dusty bookshelves, oil paintings with moving eyes, and even the occasional suit of armor.

Amanda herself was pretty silent, mostly just telling where her mother was moving so we knew where to go. It would be easy to get lost in her home and I wasn't about to waste any more time doubling back to find our way.

I wanted to ask what she and her mother talked about, none of my business or not. Amanda was too old to be called a little girl, especially after blowing the head off that robot, but I still felt pretty protective of her. Maybe it was because she did remind me of Mandy as a younger woman, the kind of person I'd imagine our daughter being like.

Daughter.

Yeah, that was a conversation I was looking forward to. We'd agreed not to have children. Yet, Death had shown me one. A daughter who was a little piece of Mandy and me, carrying our legacy into the future. You might think it's stupid I was thinking of my relationship with my wife when the world was ending but it was the primary thing on my mind. I didn't want to reopen a painful wound and the last time we'd discussed children, it had ended badly.

Really badly.

My staying in a hotel for a week, badly.

I wanted a child and Mandy didn’t.

It was that simple.

“
You have hidden depths, Gary
.”

“Forget everything you heard or I swear I will destroy you, even if it kills me.” I mean it too. I did not like Cloak listening in on what I'd been thinking. There were few things I considered private and my relationship with Mandy was one.

“
As you wish
.”

I considered grabbing the edges of my costume to try and strangle them. Instead, I just shook with rage.

“Gary, are you okay?” Amanda asked, looking over her shoulder at me.

“No, but don't worry about me. I'm tough like the noble turtle. The turtle is the most underappreciated of the animal kingdom, you know. They can become mutants and ninjas but do you see them topping anyone's favorite animal's list? No.”

Amanda looked bewildered. Kids today, no education.

“You realize he distracts people from questioning his actions by acting like a lunatic, right?” Angel Eyes said, behind me. “It's obvious.”

“Who’s acting?”

The ghost of Amanda's mother paused in mid-air, floating in front of a pair of wooden double doors. The doors had a bloody giant inverted pentagram drawn on them. Stretching forth her arm, she gestured to the doors and gave a silent nod.

“Yeah, in no way could we have found this on our own,” I said, looking between them. “
Clearly
, Amanda, your father knew
how to cover up where his valuables were hidden.”             

“Gary, I like you like a weird sociopathic big-brother but please don't ever mention my dad again.” Amanda looked between me and the pentagram. “He's dead to me. Deader than he already was.”

I wondered how that was going to work with his soul bonded to the cloak she was wearing. Given my relationship to Lancel, probably not well.

“Alright,” I said, deciding not to push it. “Your call.”

Amanda sighed, looking to the ghostly apparition of her mother. “My mother, says that the door is impenetrable to any physical force and all magic. Not even the Brotherhood of Infamy can get through it. Somehow, Dick Gleeson figured a way to get past the barrier after about month of trying various spells and explosives. He's been in there for about an hour. Mom doesn't know how he did it.”

Diabloman ran his hands over the door, a glowing aura wavering wherever he touched it. “Powerful magic. I can feel it from here.”

Angel Eyes rubbed his chin, taking in the strange phenomenon. “As long as the pentagram is unbroken, I don't think we're going to be able to penetrate it. Given a few hours, I might be able to break it.”

“We don't have a few hours,” Mandy said, hoisting up her guns as if in battle posture. “Especially if there's a window in there he can get out of.”

I hefted back my scythe. “Okay, guys, let the master go to work here. Let's see how this magic door

“Wait,” Mandy interjected. “Is it possible he found the room key?”

I paused in mid-swing, holding the scythe over my head with both hands ready to slash into the door. “Would that work?”

Amanda reached over and turned the door knob, there was a resounding click as the pentagram broke. “Huh.”

“Occam's razor,” Mandy said, gesturing with her automatics. “Let's go pay Mister Gleeson a visit.”

“Allow me,” I said, kicking open the door. “I love making a dramatic entrance.”

“No wait!” Mandy shouted, trying to stop me. “Don't!”

Unfortunately, it was too late. Kicking open the door, I got a glimpse of the room inside. It was a ballroom-sized chamber filled with more antiquities than I could count. There were statues, paintings, piles of jewelry, books, swords, armor, and chests overflowing with gold. The looked like cross between a warehouse for the Louvre’s castoffs and a pirate den. In the center of it, though, was the single most ugly thing I'd ever seen in my life.