The Lighter Side of Things

Before I get to my next bit of fiction (probably the next chapter of “The Gathering Storm”), I thought I’d pop in here with another post for my “Ruminations” category. Or maybe it’s a “General Announcement.” Hell, let’s just say it’s both and move on.

Clearly, things get a little dark around here. I mean, Janus is a psychopathic asshole with a girlfriend who not only is criminally insane but makes other people insane, too, when she feels like it. And then there’s Tooth Fairy, whom my 21-year-old son said a year or so ago was one of the scariest characters in this world of mine, and he’s not exactly some milquetoast lightweight young man. Query, while a hero who cracks sarcastic and witty at times, is a brooding guy, not unlike Batman. Ladykiller is a vigilante who doesn’t have any problem slashing men to ribbons for an act of sexual assault. Many of the stories here deal with dark themes.

At the same time, there’s obviously levity in many of these stories and in the various chapters of “The Gathering Storm,” which will clearly be of sizable novel length by the time I finish it.

Well, I’m obviously feeling at least a tiny bit lighthearted tonight, as I’ve decided, thanks to a strange inspiration yesterday and a typo in a tweet tonight, to introduce two new characters soon, at least in passing: Plain Jane and Amateur Knight. At some point in the more distant future will come a duo of also silly inspiration (OMG and BFF…I’m pretty sure OMG will be the lead in the duo with BFF as the sidekick; it only makes sense, right?).

With stories like “Wolfman and Sparrow,” “Mild-Mannered,” “The Rule of Opposites,” “Curiosity Thrills the Cat” and others, it’s clear I have my playful side. Hell, I introduced a character (not yet fully fleshed out) in “The Gathering Storm” named the Vegan Manhunter (who is a nod to DC’s Martian Manhunter, my son’s decision to go ovo-lacto veg a couple years ago, and the vegan power guy in the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.)

So, what can I say about Amateur Knight and Plain Jane right now? Not much. They’re still forming in my head.

But Amateur Knight will live up to the first part of his name and be a pain in the ass for the hero community because of it, and Plain Jane will somehow dovetail with Crazy Jane because it just makes sense.

As for OMG and BFF…I’m probably going to go full-out silly on that one when I finally decide to tackle that duo, whom I’m willing to bet spend a lot of time on Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest.

See you in the (slightly) funny papers, folks…

Identity Crisis

This story is unique among my one-shots so far in that it involves a very central character in this world (Query) and doesn’t take place before or during the events of the as-yet-unfinished saga “The Gathering Storm” but after them instead. As such, this story actually reveals some minor plot points not yet revealed in “The Gathering Storm.” It’s not really a big deal, though, because those plot points have been mentioned in some of the “About” and “Bio” entries on this blog.
____________________________________________

The sky was dark as twilight prepared to give way to full night, but the man standing in the courtyard of what had once been the Grand Marquis Hotel was darker still, with the only portions of his ensemble that weren’t black being the red question mark on his full-head mask and a red exclamation point on the palm of each glove.

As he regarded the ornate marble fountain, cracked wide open in two places along the edge, then gazed at the blackened terraces all around, he considered the battle that had taken place here two years earlier and had gutted much of the once-elite hotel. A battle he’d had no part in, but one that almost everyone in New Judah knew about.

He considered the decay and disrepair. He considered the rubbish left behind by the homeless men and women who often camped here and the junkies who often smoked or shot up here. He considered the dead bird three feet from his right boot.

Mostly, though, he simply wondered how much longer he was going to have to wait.

Forty-seven seconds later, five men converged on him from the four sides of the courtyard, all but one of them carrying Uzis and sporting small headlamps.

“Nice night,” Query said amiably, nodding to the one man not openly brandishing a weapon, as four beams of light swayed back and forth and finally all settled on him directly.

“Nice for me,” the man said. “Only nice for you in terms of being a good night to die.”

“Except your men don’t actually intend to kill me, do they?” Query said.

The man squinted at him. “Why do you think that?”

“Partly because if the plan was to kill me, Mr. Haven, the shooting would have already started, and the bullets would be flying down from the terraces above me if you were smart,” Query pointed out. “Mostly, though, because I hacked your email and saw the message to your brother Quinn in which you wrote, ‘I’m going to make Query suffer for a while before I kill him’.”

“Why would you have been hacking my email?”

“Because you did a terrible job of setting up this meeting and making it look like someone needed my help on short notice. The only way you could have made it look more like a trap would have been to send an invitation saying, ‘Your presence is requested for a very special trap’.”

Dennis Haven frowned and squinted even harder, then said, “Well, now that I’ve captured you, I imagine you’d like to know why I went to all this trouble.”

“No, thanks.”

“Pardon me?” Haven sputtered testily.

“I’ll pass on the soliloquy, thanks,” Query said. “Main reason being that you haven’t, in point of fact, actually captured me yet. So, it’s premature.”

Haven spread his hands and regarded each of his men in turn. “Just how do you think you’re going to escape from this?” he asked. “We know you didn’t bring any friends because we’ve been watching the place all day. You walked into a trap with your eyes wide open and without backup. That’s the problem with being a loner, Query: You’re always outnumbered by your enemies. Also, you’re cocky.”

“I’m going to escape simply by Hedwig strafe,” Query answered him.

A furrow formed across Haven’s brow. “What? That didn’t make any sense,” the mobster said.

“It will in a moment,” Query said, and smiled behind his mask as he heard the mini-drone with an owl head that he had named Hedwig descend from above in response to his voice command. His Sensor powers gave him an edge there, he considered—the drone was very quiet and the others wouldn’t hear it until it actually entered the courtyard.

Five heads turned as it did, seeking the source of the muffled propeller sound, and then they cried out as the drone released two dozen micro-ordinances, targeting everyone in the area who wasn’t Query. Then the drone gained altitude again as it swooped away.

“Fuck!” Haven snapped, hissing his pain as he swore. Addressing his men, he said, “If anything comes in here again, forget what I told you earlier and shoot him dead! What did your toy shoot at us? BBs? Are you fucking kidding me? Are you asking for me to hurt you even more before I kill you?”

Query shrugged. As one of Haven’s men fell to the ground, he said, “Actually, I’m asking you to take a nap and give me some goddamn peace and quiet.”

Almost in unison, Haven and the other three men dropped to the cobblestones, weapons clattering against the ground.

Query bound the mobster’s men, then dragged Dennis Haven himself to a corner of the courtyard and stuck him with a needle that brought him to consciousness in a few seconds with a shuddering, gasping start.

“OK, now I’d like to hear why you went to all this trouble,” Query said.

* * *

Swallowing his mouthful of coffee and setting the cup down on the table at which they sat—costumed hero on one side and suit-wearing lawyer on the other—Carl Beacham asked, “So what was it all about?”

“A damned woman,” Query said. “Unbelievable. Turns out Dennis Haven’s main mistress hired someone to get her free of Haven because I guess she decided the jewels and furs weren’t worth the abuse anymore. He was pissed because he particularly liked that specific piece of ass.”

“But that isn’t one of the jobs you’ve been hired for or that you’ve taken pro bono,” Carl pointed out.

“I know. I know my work schedule as well as you know it, Carl. It’s not like I do side jobs without keeping you in the loop.”

“So why did he target you?”

“I asked him the very same thing, and he told me that he had security video showing his lady being led away by a guy all in black with a long coat and a mask that covered his whole head and had a big red ‘X’ on the forehead,” Query said.

Carl blinked a few times and then picked up his cup again, savoring the fragrant steam. “Your mask has a question mark over your mouth, though.”

“Exactly! Told Haven the very same thing. Even asked him if he had a learning disability that made him unable to distinguish letters from punctuation or mouths from foreheads,” Query said.

“Did he?”

“Nope. Copped to the fact that he was perfectly capable of handling basic skills like that, so I slapped him around a bit just for being generally moronic and wasting my time.”

Carl took another swallow of coffee. “So, end of story, then. Mistaken identity and a bad guy behind bars because of it.”

“Hell, no,” Query snapped. “It isn’t ‘end of story’ until I find out who’s running around New Judah dressing almost exactly like me and getting my time wasted by goons with Uzis.”

* * *

The problem with trying to track down someone who dresses almost exactly like you, Query realized, is that you end up getting a lot of reports of people having seen you.

It had been three days of going through street-level informants, posting Twitter, Facebook and StreetWize requests for help, and checking in with random costumed transhumans. But no matter how often he stressed the red “X” on the forehead, what Query ended up with after all that effort were a bunch of reminders of several of the places he’d been over the past week.

The experience made him mourn for the U.S. educational system and reminded him of why eyewitness testimony was often among the least reliable evidence.

The television news reports, newspaper articles about transhuman activities, police reports and the like hadn’t been any more fruitful.

This guy is either very new to the scene or flies under the radar even more aggressively than I do, Query brooded.

Fortunato, whose people had obviously noticed Query’s activity on the street and online, left Query a message asking if he wanted The Whethermen to start hunting the doppelganger down. Query had Carl send the man a curt message to keep away from the matter—the only reason Fortunato wanted to help, Query figured, was to have him owe the billionaire something or reduce his own indebtedness.

And then, five days after the ambush by Dennis Haven, Carl told Query a message had come through his office from the man they’d been begun referring to as X.

“He called you?” Query probed.

“Actually, he used the email account for reaching you,” Carl said. “He apologizes for not realizing you were looking for him. Says he’s been out of town for a few days relocating a domestic violence victim. Wants to know if you can meet him someplace public but quiet, like Whitley Park.”

“Set it up.”

Carl paused. “You think…I dunno…this might be a trap you’re walking into on purpose and maybe you shouldn’t push your luck pulling that kind of reckless move twice in one week?”

“Well, then, I guess I’d better have Hedwig fueled up and re-armed, won’t I?”

* * *

Two men in black stood across from each other. One had a dense treeline at his back; the other the open meadows of the city park—all the better to allow Hedwig a good approach path.

X had already been here when Query arrived, and had said nothing thus far. Query returned the favor—for now—and studied him.

A smooth and utterly featureless black mask except for the single red “X.” Black boots and black gloves. Black unitard. Black flak vest. Long black trench coat. If not for the different symbol and the fact the man was slightly taller and slightly leaner than him, Query might have thought he was looking into a mirror.

No matter how close our appearance, I still don’t feel bad for beating up Dennis Haven a little bit more than necessary; he should still have been able to figure out I wouldn’t try to disguise my identity by changing my question mark into an ‘X,’ Query mused.

“Mind telling me who you are?” Query inquired of the man before him, who simply stood in an at-ease position. He wondered if the man might be recent ex-military and filed the thought away for later digging to find out who was under the mask.

“Name’s Deus X.”

“Soooo…like ‘deus ex machina’ but without the second ‘e,’ I’m guessing?”

“And without the ‘machina,’ too.”

“Naturally,” Query responded drily. “Mind telling me why you dress like me? Because it caused a bit of trouble with Janine Daly’s former beau, who thought you were me.”

“Oh. Sorry about that. Actually, you’re my inspiration. I figured people could tell the difference between a question mark and an ‘X,’ especially if I put it on a whole different part of the mask.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Go figure. So, I’m inspirational now. Not sure how to feel about that.”

“You don’t just run around beating up transhuman villains or chasing down crooks; you help people or groups that need help. You charge the ones that can afford it and you do freebies for the ones that can’t. That resonated with me. I thought about calling my operation ‘Deus Ex Machina’ since I do like you do and help people who don’t have any other choices for help, but that seemed a bit redundant with my name so I went with ‘In Extremis’ instead.”

“You like Latin a lot, don’t you?” Query retorted. “Actually, a lot of the people who hire me do have other places they can turn; they just choose not to.”

“Well, there’s one other point of distinction between our operations, then, since I only do it for people who are truly and completely up against the wall,” Deus X said.

“Bully for you,” Query answered. “So, you’re not here to apologize because one of your recent jobs got me targeted by Dennis Haven, since you didn’t know that had happened. But you knew I was looking for you, which is a big, bad warning sign to most folks and encourages them to stay away from me. So why did you agree to this meet?”

“Because even if my operation is a tiny bit more noble than yours, you’re way more talented and better equipped. I thought you could be a great resource if I asked really nicely—even if it’s just to get information and intel through you. Thought maybe you could be a bit of a mentor, too. Maybe even lend a direct hand—or fist or kick—in a job now and then.”

“Not great at being a team player,” Query said. “I’m the strong, silent, lonely type.”

“You’re on Fortunato’s team.”

“No, I consult for Fortunato’s team,” Query clarified. “And I charge him an arm and a leg every time I do.”

“Fair enough. It was just a thought. Dreaming big and all that,” Deus X said.

“So, what’s the first distinction between your operation and mine?”

“Hmmmm?” Deus X responded.

“Earlier, you said your whole ‘people with nowhere else to turn’ thing was the other point of distinction. Kind of implies there was a ‘first thing’ you mentioned earlier. Except you didn’t.”

“Oh. That. Yeah, that’s the part that sucks about you not being cool with helping me out,” Deus X said, extending his arms and waggling the fingers of each hand in a “come out” motion.

Three other costumed people stepped into sight from the shadows—not that it was any surprise to Query since he had smelled and heard them with his enhanced senses long before. He recognized one of them—a woman in a red mask and bodysuit, with large, oblong amber lenses over her eyes and a blue musical note over her mouth—as Blue Note. The other two, a man in a white unitard and mask with a gold ankh adorning his forehead, and a woman in a black cloak with orange exclamation points decorating the oversized hood and another one marking her pale cheek, he didn’t recognize.

“Query, meet Golden Ankh, Hyperbole and Blue Note,” Deus X said. “They were theoretically the rest of In Extremis, but they’re not all that hyped to band together unless you’re onboard.”

For nearly a minute, Query simply scanned the quartet slowly, his head tracking one way and then the other, saying nothing and moving no other part of his body.

Finally, he said, “Mentor, huh?”

“Yup,” Deus X said.

“Plus logistics and intelligence help.”

“Uh huh.”

“What do I get out of this?” Query asked.

“The warm and fuzzy feeling of helping some less experienced transhumans help others?”

“Do I look like a Hallmark Card store?”

“Ego boost?” Deus X suggested.

“Thanks, but my ego’s pretty big already,” Query said. “How about being sidekicks?”

“Seems a little cutesy for you, Query.”

“Well, the black hats have pretty much taken over the term ‘henchmen’ and I thought ‘minions’ sounded a little demeaning,” Query teased. “How about we call you ‘associates’?”

“And you’d be working us for your own ends how often?”

“Not very. A few times a year at most. But you’d need to be on-call and move immediately on my ‘go’ unless you were already in the middle of being shot at or pulling people from burning cars or something. And no one knows we’re working together. Ever. No one.”

“Your own secret team? Kind of goes against the whole ‘I’m not a team player’ lone wolf thing,” Deus X pointed out.

“Well, sometimes I find myself dealing with moose and bears instead of rats and sheep,” Query said. “Times like those, the lone wolf thing isn’t a good look. Better to have a pack, then. Or maybe y’all being my buccaneer crew is a better analogy.”

Deus X looked to the other three, eliciting a trio of nods.

“You’ve got a deal, Query,” Deus X said, extending his right hand.

Query shook it, then gripped hard and leaned forward toward the other man’s masked face. “One thing, though. Bad enough that Odium wears damn near the same outfit as me most days, but he’s a villain and I can’t do much about that—plus he has a red mask and no symbol. Ditch your black for Navy blue, wear a shorter coat or a utility vest, and get some eye holes or some visible lenses for your mask. Otherwise, I may have to have my other associate, who’s a lawyer, sue you for infringement.”

A low chuckle from the other man. A release of hands. And an almost imperceptible bow of Deus X’s head.

“Aye, aye, Cap’n Wolf.”

Deus X and Blue Note images based off illustrations of Marvel Comic’s Spider-Man and Spider-Girl, respectively. Source for base image used to create Hyperbole unknown. I think the image I based Golden Ankh off of was one of the G.I. Joe Ninja characters.

That Which We Hate

Dirt, he decided, tasted decidedly foul.

All the more so mixed with his own blood.

However, the taste of soil and blood in his mouth—a few stray dry pieces of grass sticking to the bloody split at the corner of his mouth—as least gave him clarity. That was a welcome thing if he was going to get out of this mess. Because when the fist had connected with his face and his face with the ground, he had felt certain he’d be out cold.

“Get up, nigger!” the older teen shouted. He was a senior, and Hugo struggled to remember his name. He wasn’t sure he’d known it all that well even before his brain had gotten rattled.

Jim…Joe…Jack…Josh!

Josh was the name. He played varsity football. But why the fuck did Josh just blindside him? Hugo struggled upward, arms shakily getting him into a push-up-like position, then onto one knee in a crouch.

“I said ‘get up’ you fucking nigger!”

Hugo spat out blood, but was relieved that no teeth followed. “I’m not a nigger,” he blurted. The statement made his gut twist coldly and he felt like a coward. His skin was brown, and he lived in Pouco Brasil—New Judah’s “Little Brazil” neighborhood. That had been the home of his family since his grandfather, after whom he’d been named, emigrated here. A light-skinned Brazilian who married a dark-skinned one and started a life in the United States at the age of 21. An act Hugo’s own father had repeated when he put bachelorhood behind him—marrying an even darker-skinned woman at 23. Almost paradoxically, Pouco Brasil was both a microcosm and a mirror image of Brazil. Like the homeland, Portuguese was the local tongue and skin colors ranged from pink to dark brown. Unlike Brazil, though, the rampant racism toward darker Brazilians was nowhere to be seen—though often the paler denizens of Pouco Brasil transferred that racism onto blacks of African-American rather than Brazilian-American heritage.

Just like I just did, Hugo thought. What a little shit I am. A coward.

“You look plenty black to me, shithead. Get up! Take your fucking medicine!”

“Medicine for what?” Hugo cried out as he stumbled to his feet and shakily took three steps back from his attacker.

A thin blonde girl—a junior named Stacy, came into view. “Leave him alone, Josh. Jesus! There’s nothing going on between us. I’ve barely said 10 words to Hank all semester.”

Hank. She called me Hank, Hugo realized.

“Josh,” Hugo warbled, “the only people who call me Hank are most of the fucking school. And most of the fucking school doesn’t give a shit about me or just doesn’t like me. That’s why I tell them to call me Hank. If your girlfriend liked me and we were doing anything, she’d call me by my birth name: Hugo.”

“Fucking spic nigger, right?” Josh shouted. “Fucking Little Brazil bastard bussed in here. I saw you giving my girl the eye today. I’m gonna fuck you up!”

Josh advanced on Hugo and Hugo backed up more. He wasn’t a fighter under normal circumstances, and he was totally outmatched by a football player, even one who was a receiver or kicker or backup quarterback or whatever the hell Josh was.

Thank God he isn’t a lineman or I probably would be missing teeth.

“I was probably giving the eye to some hot Latina behind her,” Hugo retorted.

“Oh, so now you’re saying my girl isn’t worth looking at compared to some wetback slut?”

Josh advanced faster and Hugo retreated in the same way.

Hugo’s head was spinning, and suddenly the world around him started not to make sense.

No! Not now!

It was something that had been happening a lot over the past few weeks and he’d been afraid to say anything to his dad for fear he’d end up getting looked over by doctors. And he hated doctors, and more so hospitals. His mother had died in one when he was five and the memory of visiting her hours before her death had never left his memories. Nor the memory of visiting his grandfather—who’d driven the both of them off the road while drunk—two days before that and having him die a day later.

Hugo tried to focus, and found the world slipping even farther away from comprehension.

No.

Not the world; the people, he realized, and stopped trying to escape Josh as he realized there was a kind of halo around the older teen’s head. A bubble, maybe? Stacy had one, too. It was like a color but it also seemed like a sound and somehow, Hugo felt like he could even touch it from afar. How can something that shouldn’t even exist be something I can see and hear and touch?

Panicked and not sure what to do, Hugo touched the halo of Josh’s head with his eyes. Or his mind. Or…something. The sensation was both nauseating and exhilarating, and Hugo was almost more curious what would happen than he was afraid of being pummeled.

Josh stopped, and looked confused. And then that confusion became something else. Worry? Hugo wondered.

Then it became something so much worse.

Rage.

Before Hugo could react, Josh was punching him in the belly. The ribs. Over and over. And finally, a blow right to the side of his head that made Hugo’s left ear peal like a church bell. And as the ringing screech reached its crescendo, Hugo hit the ground again.

This time, though, he was unconscious and didn’t taste the dirt or the blood.

* * *

Hugo smiled when Andrea walked into the room. He winced as that made the scab of his injured mouth break open, but he didn’t stop smiling.

A small and rare burst of happiness, even if he was in the place he hated most: A hospital. His father hadn’t even been to visit him yet—apparently, there was something going on at work that he couldn’t get away from.

Or maybe he hates hospitals more than I do and for the same reason, Hugo thought, and that made him feel even more alone. Not to mention more grateful for Andrea.

“Hey, Hugo,” she said, and punched his bicep firmly. “By the way, the doctors told me you didn’t get hurt there, just in case you think I’m heartless. What have I told you about playing rough? What did you do to Josh, anyway?”

“Nothing. He thought I had the hots for his girlfriend.”

“No, Hugo. What did you do? There’s all kinds of talk running around the school since you got admitted here yesterday. They haven’t even suspended Josh because there’s talk you provoked him and he was acting in self-defense.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Andrea?”

“Well, Josh is telling the school you tried to make some unwanted advances on his girlfriend and then you sucker-punched him after school saying you were going to get rid of your competition. But to his close friends, he’s telling some weird stories. Only to a few people, because it’s so weird, but I’ve heard some things because I’ve got my ways, you know. To them he’s saying you messed with his mind.”

“I didn’t…I mean…” Hugo paused. “After he started in on me, when I was trying to get away from him, I started seeing something weird and I guess…I dunno…I think maybe it was something psychic. I’ve been feeling weird lately. Could I be a transhuman?”

“I don’t know, dude, but Josh says you changed.”

“Huh?”

“He told his buddies that suddenly, it wasn’t you there. It was a police officer that looked a lot like you and he says you must have had him seeing things because you hit him with a ‘psychic blast’ that stunned him and that’s the only reason he hit you. That’s his story to his friends, anyway. I think he hit you first. But it’s all bullshit, though.”

“What do you mean…bullshit? How? Maybe I did blast him…”

“Hugo, I don’t know exactly what the fuck Psi crap you did to him, but it wasn’t a ‘blast.’ He’s a terrible liar and only his friends would believe him. I think he did see a cop where you were. Josh hates cops. His stepfather is a cop and beats him silly sometimes. There’s no one he hates more than that guy except his mom for marrying the bastard to begin with. Plus, Josh has gotten picked up by the cops at least three times for drug possession or being drunk in public. If his dad wasn’t a cop, he’d have been in jail a few times already.”

“Great,” Hugo said. “I have a transhuman power that makes me look like a cop? That has to be the lamest shit around.”

Andrea smiled.

She was Hugo’s best friend in high school and had been since fifth grade. Maybe his only real friend in any school. A fellow sophomore and a fellow outsider, though people liked her more than him—he was more than an outsider; more like an outcast. But she was his friend and he kept her close. Maybe because when she smiled, like she was doing right now, the whole world lit up. If he wasn’t so happy being her buddy, he’d probably have been dating her by now.

Or if I wasn’t so chickenshit.

“What?” Hugo asked. “Why are you smiling?”

“I doubt you’d have a power that specific, dumb-ass. But I think it’s cool you might have one at all. And when they’re sure your skull is OK and they clear you to get out of here, we’re gonna find out just what it is you do. I think I already have a good idea. But you’re probably almost right; it’s probably even more useless than making yourself look like a cop.”

* * *

In one of the more heavily forested edges of Whitley Park, Hugo stood 10 feet away from Andrea. She smiled again—that enchanting smile that kept her on the periphery of so many cliques in high school and not as much the loner as he was. There was also nervousness in that smile. But expectation as well. And, Hugo thought, a hope for something amazing.

“What are we doing here, again?” he asked. “And why am I standing so far from you?”

“Here’s what I think,” Andrea said. “I think you’re a Psi and I think you can make people see you as the things they hate most.”

“Okaaaay. And so…why again are we here? And why am I all the way over here?”

“I want you to try it on me.”

“Why?”

“Science. Curiosity. Morbid curiosity, maybe.”

“I don’t want you to hate me, Andrea. You’re the best friend I have.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid. Josh doesn’t hate you any more than he did before—well, maybe a little more, since Stacy broke up with him. Not that I expect that to last. I just want you far enough away so that if I go trying to assault you, you can stop what you’re doing or at least run away until whatever you do wears off. Not like I want to beat you up any more than you already are.”

“I dunno…”

“C’mon! If you’re transhuman, let’s find out. You should probably learn to use what you have so that you don’t get into trouble if it kicks in again. Learn how to control it and shut it off and stuff.”

Hugo wasn’t even sure he could do what he’d done again. And if he could, the thought of Andrea hating him, for even a little while…

“Hugo! Earth to Hugo! Seriously, you need to work on this. And there’s no one else who’s likely to volunteer to be the guinea pig. Do it!”

For a moment, Hugo heard the “Do it!” in Josh’s voice instead of Andrea’s and remembered the senior telling him to “Get up!” He thought of the things Josh had called him. For a moment, he felt a flash of anger toward Andrea, and it made him sick.

And then the halo appeared—the bubble around her head that was tangible to him and calling to him. No, not calling; singing. And there were colors there, or something like colors, because he had no name for some of them—nor for the almost-scent of them that tickled not his nose but something deeper in his mind.

“C’mon!” she urged impatiently.

Hugo touched her there. At the edge of that aura. His mind to hers.

He saw a similar play of emotions on the sophomore’s face as Josh had expressed, and Andrea snarled. Stepped forward. Stopped. Almost lunged at him. There was something wild in her eyes.

Hugo panicked, and tried to disengage from her mind. For a moment, it seemed like he couldn’t. Her halo seemed sticky. It seemed to want to pull him in. But with something like the feeling of a wet, growling rubber band, he was out again.

Andrea’s face was confused. She swayed a bit and he thought she might fall. She blinked. Closed her eyes. Opened them again to look at him. And sighed. Her smile was nervous at first. Then elated. The world lit up as it always did when she smiled.

“Fuck, Hugo! For a moment there, you looked like a person made of damn snakes. All kinds of snakes. Slithering and hissing.”

Hugo didn’t know what to say.

“I hate snakes, Hugo! Godammit, I was right.”

* * *

Hugo’s face still hurt. And his ribs. And his kidney. But his father’s words hurt more.

“Don’t do that again, Hugo,” Eduardo said. “Don’t pick fights, especially fights you can’t win.”

“I didn’t Dad!”

Eduardo waved away his son’s word with a double-flick of his wrist. “Don’t! There aren’t going to be any charges. Your word against his, and that girlfriend of his is the only witness. She doesn’t want to say anything about either one of you. Don’t fuck with another boy’s girl, boy.”

“Dad, I’m telling you…”

“Enough. Son, it’s just you and me, at least for the next couple years, and then you’ll be off,” Eduardo said, a strange hitch in his voice that Hugo couldn’t place. “No one left but you and me,” he added, and Hugo could see the memory of his late wife Monique in the man’s eyes. The memory of Hugo De La Silva. Hugo remembered how it was only weeks after both of them were buried that he’d changed their name to simply Silva, as if to wash away the memory of his own father. Almost as if he knew what his son was thinking, Eduardo put on a pair of sunglasses and mumbled something about going out for a little while. “Just stay out of trouble. Now go. I love you, Son.”

As Hugo headed for his room, he wondered—as he had so many times before—why his father’s voice seemed pained when he said those three words that most boys all wished their father would say—even if they wouldn’t admit it.

* * *

“Why are we here?” Andrea said in Whitley Park, almost exactly where they’d met before two weeks earlier.

Hugo laughed.

“OK, déjà vu,” Andrea admitted with a grin. “We’ve switched roles. Seriously, though, why are we here again?”

“Because something’s been nagging at me, Andrea. There was something more.”

“What?” she said, and now she was intrigued instead of wary.

“When I did that…thing…before…I felt something. Something pulling at me. Like there was another level. But I didn’t touch it.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, but maybe there’s more to my power. Maybe I can do something more useful than encouraging people to attack me,” he said with a chuckle. “I figure I don’t need to have a way to make people dislike me more. What do you say? Be my guinea pig again?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Oh why not? Hit me, baby!” she said, and rolled her shoulders back a few times to relax, then clasped her hands in front of her. “Ready when you are.”

Hugo reached toward her again—the aura was easy to pull up now. He’d been able to master the art of perceiving it in anyone at will now without being under duress. He’d also been able to toss away his glasses, though he wore them around his dad. Everyone else he’d let think he was wearing contacts now. He was pretty sure his vision was better than perfect now, but that power—a Sensor power, he guessed—wasn’t foremost on his mind.

As he pressed forward into her psyche, he saw Andrea tense and become angry. Then he let the pull he’d felt before draw him to the next level. No, the next layer. He sensed nothing beyond it, and simply felt that new part of her mind. Stroked it and pushed. Activated it as he had activated hatred before, and hoped it wouldn’t simply make her more angry.

Her demeanor changed almost immediately.

She looked terrified.

But she didn’t run. Unlike the hatred which had spurred her to almost pounce, this terror seemed to root her in place. He wondered what she saw now. Probably still snakes. That’s what he figured. But they didn’t evoke the same feeling in her now. Fear instead of anger.

He didn’t release the connection. It felt comfortable, and since she wasn’t going anywhere and she wasn’t attacking, he figured he could talk to her a bit and then end this.

“I wasn’t sure…I thought it might be…” he started. “I remembered a teacher saying something about how we hate what we fear. Or fear what we hate. Or something like that. From some Shakespeare play or something. Because most people deep down fear something, and that’s why they hate it. Like Josh and cops. And calling me a nigger. He was really just afraid, but I had to push deeper to get that going. You don’t really hate snakes; you’re afraid of them, and we both should have realized that.”

Andrea’s eyes were wild now, and Hugo felt a pang of remorse. He had to break this off now. Why hadn’t he just done it already and told her his thoughts afterwards?

Because this feels good.

That’s what it was. Good. Really  good. Sexual? No, not that. He was inside the walls of her mind and doing this made him feel right. No, that wasn’t it, either.

Complete.

For the first time since he’d been a little boy who still had a whole family, he felt real again. He felt whole.

Andrea was shaking. She was…

Oh God, is she having a seizure?

Hugo pulled out of her mind, and rushed to her as she fell to the ground in the throes of violent spasms. Her mind probably filled with the horrifying, terrifying image of him as a mass of snakes that wouldn’t leave her alone. Filling her with hopeless fear.

Hugo ran.

She needed help. He couldn’t carry her. He needed to find a phone.

Then he ran back to her.

I’m an idiot. She has a cell phone in her purse. I don’t, but she does.

Hugo called for help. And prayed. And waited as he held her shaking body in his arms and hated himself.

* * *

“What the hell did you do to her?” his father shouted.

“Nothing!” Hugo cried. It wasn’t true, he realized, but he hadn’t done any of the things that were running through his father’s mind right now. Of that he was certain.

“What were you doing in Whitley Park? What were you two doing? What did you do? Her parents are angry. They’re talking about the police, Hugo! Did you give her drugs? Did you try to rape…”

“No, Dad! I didn’t touch her. Except when I was trying to help her after the seizure. I swear!”

“Bullshit!” his father roared. Hugo rarely saw his father angry, and this was the first time in years he’d even shouted. Even now, though, the man was restrained despite the harshness of his words. Of all the things Hugo feared, being beaten by this man wasn’t one of them. His father had never raised a hand to him, not even to spank him. “Hugo, something happened. First that football player; now this! What’s going on? What are you into? What did you do?”

Hugo’s mind reeled. He already felt horrible for pushing too far with Andrea. If her parents thought he had done something, he knew the police wouldn’t find any evidence of anything. A rape kit would prove they hadn’t had sex. Her body was uninjured because he hadn’t attacked her. A toxicology report would show her clean; he knew she’d never done anything harder than pot, and even that rarely.

“Dad…I…I’m a transhuman. It just happened. It happened when Josh beat me up. I mean, it came out then; it’s been happening for a while, I think. Andrea was helping me figure out my powers. It just got out of hand.”

For a moment, his father simply stared. Then shook his head. “No. No no no. I won’t have you making tales. Tell me what really happened.”

“It’s true.”

Only one way to prove to him. Only one way to show…Andrea didn’t attack me right away. Dad doesn’t hit me or hardly even yell. I can show him and pull back before he loses control. I won’t push to that second layer…

Hugo reached out to his father’s mind and felt the connection. It seemed as if Eduardo’s eyes squinted and as if some emotion crossed his face. Hugo couldn’t be sure. But he knew he’d done it, and held the connection for a few seconds. He paused.

“What did you see, Dad?”

“What are you talking about, Hugo?”

“What did you see, just now, for just a brief flash? What did I look like?”

“You look like you, Hugo. What are you on about?”

“No. I changed. You saw something else. What did you see when you looked at me just a few seconds ago?” Hugo’s voice was pleading now. He didn’t understand.

“I saw you, Hugo. What the hell else do you think I would have seen?”

Hugo’s breath caught in his throat. For ten seconds, he couldn’t breathe as his father looked on, dumbfounded.

Oh, God. Oh, no.

It was clear suddenly. His father, made motherless when Hugo was just a baby and the boy’s grandmother had succumbed to cancer. Eduardo’s wife, Monique, taken from him when Hugo was only five. Dead because Hugo’s grandfather had been driving her home drunk off his ass. His father raising him since then, all alone. No other family. Everything lost to him. Raising a son with the same name as the man who’d killed his wife so carelessly.

I am the one thing my father most hates in this world.

Hugo probably could have poured his power into his father for hours and the man wouldn’t have struck him. He was that good at bottling his anger. Every single time he’d said he’d loved Hugo, it had been a lie. Hugo was a burden. The greatest pain in his father’s life. His father hated him, and probably didn’t even really know it.

He hates me. My father hates me. I’ve put my only friend into a coma and if she wakes up she’ll hate me, I know it. My father has hated me since I was five and it was just the two of us. I’ve never had anyone but Andrea and I’ve destroyed that now, too.

Hugo realized he was crying. He looked into his father’s nearly placid—if slightly confused—face and realized that the calm affect was just a mask. Behind it was hate.

Hugo turned and fled. Ran from the house. Down the street. Into the heart of the city.

* * *

There had been fear at first.

He couldn’t go back to school; not that he wanted to. He couldn’t go see Andrea; not that she’d want him to even if he could. He couldn’t go home to the lie of a loving father.

He was 15 and alone. Hated and hating himself.

Then, after a day or so, there had been comfort.

He was free.

Always a loner, lucky to have any casual friends at all and luckier still to have had a true friend in Andrea.

He’d managed to call the hospital under the pretense of a being a relative seeking to visit Andrea, just to find out what he could. She wasn’t in a coma anymore—that much he discerned. But she was in the psych ward now, and he wondered what trauma he had wrought. What damage was done to her mind and her emotions.

With no money and no place to stay, he’d become frantic. He’d targeted a guy he thought looked like a shithead anyway. Hugo made the man hate him and then made him afraid of him. As the stranger cowered in a corner of an alley, Hugo took the man’s wallet and ran.

The money carried him for several days, and he was even able to get a cheap room for a couple nights. In the Hollows—the poorest neighborhood and most violence-ridden one in New Judah, lots of hotels took cash and didn’t ask questions. And Hugo knew he had little to fear from those who lived in that place.

Now, more than three days after fleeing his home, he wasn’t sure how he’d ended up in front of the main branch of New Judah’s library downtown. Oh, he knew he’d taken the bus, but wasn’t sure what drew him here. And then he considered how English classes had been one of his few bright spots in high school. Reading and writing. Hugo knew he wasn’t especially book-smart, but he was pretty good at that stuff.

And now he was inside the library. In the reference section.

He was a transhuman. A transhuman with no more family and no friends. His father had worn a mask for 10 years in front of his own son—a mask that looked like his own face. Looking into the face of a son whom Eduardo had so often said had his mother’s eyes.

I can put on a mask, too. A real one. I only have one way to live now—off my powers. No other future. I can put on a mask; maybe a costume. I can survive. Alone. Like I’ve always been.

He was, he realized, the embodiment of hatred. That was his identity now. His self. His future.

But hatred wasn’t enough. The word was too weak. It didn’t express just how freakish and just how wrong Hugo was. It didn’t truly speak to who and what he was.

He pulled a thesaurus from one of the shelves. Flipped through it until he found the entry for hatred. Looked down the list of synonyms, and almost smiled. He found the word he needed.

The name he needed.

I am Odium.

The Gathering Storm, Part 30

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Chewing thoughtfully on his cheeseburger, Carl realized he probably wasn’t doing it thoughtfully at all. He was considering the scent of machine oil and harsh cleanser in the room. He was blaming it for how his stomach now churned. And as his appetite quickly fled, he realized that all of that—far from being thoughtful—was just a delaying tactic.

There’s something I need to deal with—there are important thoughts tumbling around in my head, but they’re something my brain knows I don’t want to face, Carl considered. So why deal with them when I can sit here and leisurely gnaw on greasy hunks of food like a cow chewing cud?

Query looked up from the fuselage of the drone he was fiddling with, and regarded the lawyer through his mask. “Are we going to get to new business any time soon, Carl?” Query asked. “Usually you plow through your two burgers in no time flat—this second one’s taking you a while. Did Wendy’s use some rancid meat?”

“More like my employer using rancid-smelling and probably toxic substances that aren’t supposed to be used in enclosed spaces,” Carl said, finally setting the remains of the burger down on the table next to him.

Query put down his tools, turned in his chair, and pushed the recently installed bulletproof window behind him up about halfway. “There’s no good angle to get a bullet through that particular window anyway unless you’re in a cherry picker, so as long as no one is waiting to lob a grenade up in here, we should be good. Can we get on with things so I can get back to this without complaints from you?”

“Feel the love,” Carl teased wearily, and regarded the compact surveillance craft occupying all of Query’s desk and extending nearly a foot past each end of it. “What’s wrong with your drone there anyway?”

I’m stalling again, he realized, because I think the new business is what will put my mind where I don’t want it to be—it’s what’s going to trigger a talk I don’t want to have.

“New Judah PD shot at it and got lucky,” Query answered. “Nothing too serious, but a pain in my ass. Seems they don’t like my eyes in the sky. Guess they don’t like the competition for the three drones they have that are twice the size of mine, half the speed and not nearly as cool-looking.”

“Well, next time they should steal theirs from the military like you did instead of settling for first-generation models,” Carl shot back, looking at his half-eaten burger and sighing. “OK, new business, then. I’ve heard from inside Fortunato’s building, but only from one of our parties: Zoe. After a few days, Fortunato finally made a job offer, and she’s got a contract to send me for review.”

“Look it over with the finest-tooth comb you have and don’t let him screw her, Carl. At least not screw her over legally and contractually. I don’t care what other kind of screwing might happen.”

“I’ll keep her safe and solidly armored by flawless paperwork. Don’t worry about that. What you should probably worry about is yourself. Fortunato finally gets your attention and now leaves you hanging for three or four days? What’s he up to, you think? Why so coy now?”

Is this what’s bugging me? Carl thought. Fortunato’s plans? No, there’s no sense of dread. What am I avoiding?

Query paused in adjusting the wing articulation controls in the drone and looked up again. “Partly he wants to make me sweat, because he’s delusional enough to think he can. Mostly he’s busy trying to figure out how to get Zoe in his camp—”

“Loc-Down,” Carl interrupted.

“Hmmm?”

“Just occurred to me you might want to know. Zoe’s codename’s apparently going to be Loc-Down.”

“Cute,” Query said. “She’s got a whole head full of locs that can punch through metal plates and tear you to ribbons when she morphs. As good as any name. Anyway, he’s busy with her,” the black-clad hero continued, “because he knows I’ll sit tight. Zoe’s slippery and he doesn’t want to let her get away. Certainly not until he puts her to work with the plans he’s hatching.”

“Which are?”

“I don’t know,” Query admitted. “I’ve got wonderful intuitive powers, Carl, but I’m not an oracle. Most likely it has something to do with his cousin that took a dive out a window. I think Fortunato wants revenge.”

“On who? Did the guy’s pharmacist give him the wrong anti-depressants?”

“No, Crazy Jane gave his cousin all the right incentives to make the leap to the great beyond,” Query responded.

“How do you figure that? Did one of your birdies see her watching his swan-dive?” Carl asked, nodding to the owl-head-shaped cowling on the desktop that Query had removed from the nose of the drone some 10 minutes earlier.

“Nah. I got hold of some video that shows her making regular visits to the guy. The images were sent to Fortunato privately so he’d know who was responsible. I knew she could unnerve people psychically as well as transmit electrical shocks, but always wondered if she had more powers, given how unstable she is. Guessing this was either some mind control in action or, more likely, she can make people lose their fucking minds. That’s in line with her name, so it seems most likely. Nasty power.”

“I thought she was being held in the Givens facility under high security.”

“You must have been hung over or out of town a few months back, Carl. She was busted out of Givens. Bloody damn job, too. A dozen dead staff or thereabouts—and they took one of the doctors there with them—hard-ass, DA-hired headshrinker named Marcus Blood. No one knows if he was an accomplice or a hostage. Still haven’t found him. Big news. Janus busted her out personally—well, with some of his lackeys with him. Those three scary killer women he’s got and a couple norm human troopers.”

“So, Crazy Jane got busted out, maybe just to do this job against Fortunato’s cousin, which means Janus is behind it all, and he isn’t just going after you but Fortunato, too. Fortunato wants your help with getting back at him.”

“Probably,” Query acknowledged. “But I can’t say for sure yet. It feels like Fortunato has something else brewing. I think he may be trying to form some kind of team, but I can’t tell if it’s just a revenge kick or some kind of vanity project with longer-term goals. I need more data. Which is part of the reason I’m even going to lend him an ear when he finally calls you up to meet with me. As far as I’m concerned, the biggest single threat to New Judah after Janus is Fortunato right now. Man has a God complex and even if he thinks he’s doing good, he’ll probably leave a whole lot of damage in his wake—eventually, his ego and greed always get in the way.”

And there it is, Carl thought, and with a sickening mental lurch, he realized he was finally in the territory he had been avoiding all along. No stopping now…

“With all due respect, Query—”

“In other words, ‘let me point something out something potentially insulting to you’.” Query said, cutting him off.

“Anyway,” Carl sighed. “No offense—”

“Same thing,” Query teased him.

“Jesus! OK, Query, what I’m trying to say is, you’re right that Fortunato has an ego bigger than the city itself, but you’re not in a position to judge somebody else’s God complex. You have a squadron of high-tech, programmable, auto-pilot mini-drones flying around the city, you’ve got a network of informants, you regularly hack into all kind of surveillance systems and all that, and you share hardly a speck of your intel with the police. You know the identities and even the damn home addresses of several costumed whackjobs and you mostly keep that to yourself. You don’t go after them yourself very often, you don’t send other white hats after them very often and you almost never share with New Judah’s finest men and women in blue. Why?”

For several moments, Query said nothing. Carl’s guts clenched, but he didn’t sense anger from the man. Bewilderment, maybe, but not anger. As the sharp cramp in his belly eased, Carl could almost imagine the hero’s eyes blinking behind the mask like a startled cartoon character. The mental image calmed him a little.

“First off, Carl, my personality gives me plenty of right to judge Fortunato,” Query retorted mildly. “If I’ve got a God complex, and I don’t—but anyway, if I have a similarly large ego and level of presumption as Fortunato—then I’ll judge him all day long. Takes one to know one, and I have enough distance from his issues to know when he’s too close to them to think straight. Honestly—and this pains me to admit—the same could probably be said of him sorting out my issues if he knew enough about me to know what I was up to.”

“So why don’t you?”

“What? Share my entire wealth of data with everyone who’s going after the bad guys, you mean?” Query asked.

“Yeah. Because you should be.” Carl’s tone was flat, but still, the sense of accusation transmitted clearly.

“Partly because I’m not God, Carl. I can’t fix everything, and I shouldn’t try to. I also don’t want people knowing just how much I know, because then they’ll start wondering if I’m more a danger than an asset to the city or, if they’re the bad guys, they’ll realize I’m even more a threat to their operations than they know already. I don’t need to be dodging hit squads like the one Janus sent on a regular basis. That shit’s tiring, and I’m getting too old for that.”

Carl said nothing. But the accusation remained.

“But in the end, it’s really about balance,” Query said.

“You think the crooks deserve to have some kind of balance?” Carl spat out. “That’s crazy. A level playing field for them?”

“Oh, hell no,” Query sneered. “It’s not about making things fair for the black hats; it’s about not adding to their numbers, man.”

“Huh?”

“Look, transhumans aren’t crazy per se, Carl, but we’re wired differently. We have issues in our heads—an awful lot of us, anyway. And some of us more than others. Let’s say I handed out my data like candy at Halloween and we cleared out most of the costumed bad guys in the city. What would happen?”

“I guess folks would come in to the city to fill the voids. That what you mean?”

“Worse, Carl. Some of the heroes and vigilantes in the city might fill those voids, too. Without suitable challenges…that is, without enemies that are like them—peers in power, if you will—I suspect some of the white hats who mostly like kicking ass or getting attention might gravitate toward the dark side. Jedi/Sith-style like in Star Wars. A lot of those heroes need an outlet—fighting folks who are like them. Without that, seizing power and misusing their power might start to taste good to them.”

“But some of these black hats are way more of a risk than the average crook, and you let a lot of them continue to run free when you could shut them down. Doesn’t that—”

“Make me feel conflicted? Make me feel like shit sometimes knowing if I’ve misjudged that someone I thought was no big deal might kill a whole bus full of children or a convent full of nuns? Yeah, Carl. My job sucks. But the fact is, no matter how big my ego, I’ve got enough perspective and humility to know that sometimes I need to let nature run its course. I need to remind myself that no one—not even me—can make crime ever go away. We all have our roles to play, Carl. A lot of times, mine is to sit back and keep my nose out of other people’s business—even when I can smell things are going to go sour.”

* * *

Although her work as an assistant district attorney took her to the main building of the New Judah Police Department on a fairly regular basis, Andrea realized this would be her first time going above the fourth floor since she had started the job two months ago. Truth be told, though, that little bit of trivia was only a minor note in her mind right up until the elevator doors opened.

Then she gasped.

The man standing in front of her in a crisp suit-and-tie ensemble might have thought she was gasping at the sight of him, she considered many hours later—he was tall and handsome enough—but what had taken her breath away was the crisp, clean, high-tech appearance of the mostly open-plan landscape of the sixth floor. The rest of the eight-story main precinct building and the other, smaller precinct buildings she’d visited weren’t that much different than what she’d seen in the city of Cleveland’s Division of Police—the offices were neither startlingly decrepit nor were they models of modernity.

But this floor looks like it belongs on the set of some science fiction show, she thought.

“ADA Yates; good to meet you,” the lieutenant said, extending his hand. She took it and gave him a light, quick shake as she exited the elevator car. “Can I get you a coffee?”

“Sure. Black. Do you have a machine that teleports them straight to you, Lt. Greene?” she joked.

He chuckled, low and slow, as he stepped around into a small reception desk and grabbed a cup, pouring from a pot just underneath the counter. “Well, a lot of the officers around here do call this floor ‘The Enterprise,’ but no. Old-fashioned brewing and pouring,” he said, smiling and handing her the paper cup as the steam from it spiraled up in the air between them. “C’mon, let me give you the grand tour. So, I know this is your first time here, or I wouldn’t be your tour guide, but I wanna make sure I show you the right things. I hear that you wanna handle a lot of transhuman cases?”

“Yeah. Is that weird or something?”

“Not at all, Ms. Yates. You see,” he said in an almost boyishly excited voice as he extended one arm in an arc to show off one half of the floor like a gameshow prize, “a lot of this floor is forensics. State-of-the-art lab computers and stuff—the actual labs and clean rooms are a floor above us. Lots of great equipment in there, but that floor looks pretty much like standard police issue architecture. Fortunato actually paid for a lot of this floor as a goodwill gesture to the city. But this—this is what you’re really gonna wanna see.”

He pointed toward the other side of the floor, and led the way to a door marked “SO/GT Div.” Opening it, he waved her in and followed right behind her. It was one of the few parts of the floor that wasn’t open and airy, and there were no windows to let anyone see into this section from the rest of the floor or see out onto the main part of the floor.

“Why do I feel like I’ve been ushered into a secret lair?”

“In a way, you have. This part of the department doesn’t get talked about a lot. I wouldn’t say it’s secret, but it’s probably best if you kind of behave like it is. We talk about it too much, and it may not work as well for us as it does.”

“As what does?” Andrea probed.

“Well, remember how Detective Sergeant Lindemann kind of read you the riot act a few weeks ago about not pushing the department to arrest transhumans on weak evidence?”

“Good God. Is he telling that story all around the department or something? Am I going to be like the village idiot around here?”

“Oh, hell, nothing like that. He’s discreet as hell. But I asked anyone in the department who feels like they have any sense of you or any major interactions with you to come and talk to me before our appointment today.”

“Why, Lieutenant?”

“So I know what your level of knowledge is and what I need to teach you about what we do here. What did Joe tell you was one of the biggest problems about arresting transhumans?”

Andrea sighed and didn’t bother to try to mask the exasperation in her voice. “Making a positive ID and linking them to a crime, since they typically wear masks and gloves—hell, whole costumes that make it less likely they’ll even drop hair as evidence. Plus some of them use body doubles as misdirection.”

“Bingo!” the detective said eagerly. “Even if you get good video, making an ID is hard, because unless the mask is pretty form-fitting, you might not even be able to use facial recognition software to match a suspect to the perp you caught on tape. And that’s why we have the SoundOff Program. That’s the ‘SO’ part of what was on the door back there. We have high-quality recordings of the voices of a lot of transhumans—criminals, vigilantes, heroes, whatever—and we can use those to match a suspect with their voice on file to help make the identification stick when we charge ‘em and you try to convict ‘em.”

With a rush of awareness, Andrea realized what felt strange about this area. Much of it struck her like it was a sound recording studio or radio station.

“But you’d only have them recorded if you’d captured them before, right?”

“Oh, no. We estimate we have voiceprints—good, thorough ones—on probably a third of the trans crooks in town, regardless of whether they’ve ever been caught or even questioned,  and average to middling quality on another third.”

“How?”

“They call us.”

“No, seriously.”

“Dead serious, ADA Yates. Dead serious. Transhumans who put on costumes tend to be the ones most touched in the head. They’re the ones who often want the attention, or why would they put on costumes and give themselves these crazy names? They love to call and taunt us right before or after a crime. Or just to try to strike fear into our hearts when they first enter the scene. Or to complain to us when the press is mischaracterizing them or we’re supposedly slandering them. And of course the heroes and vigilantes call in to let us know there are bad guys to pick up—so we’ve got them recorded and stored, too.

“Attention,” Lt. Greene continued. “The biggest mental block most any costumed transhuman has is a desire—on some level—for attention or validation. So we sometimes know the villain’s name before anyone’s even seen the creep in action in costume, and we have a voice to match to it—all because he called to introduce himself—or herself. We’ve even been able to nab a few who changed their costume and name later thinking it would help them avoid capture, and charged them with the crimes committed under their previous identity.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“We’ve had this division and this equipment—or earlier generations of it—for a decade, give or take. There are similar centers like this in Manhattan, D.C., Chicago, L.A., Dallas, Philly and Gryphon. Marksburgh flat-out refuses to adopt the technology, even though God knows they need it more than anyone else.”

“And they still call you? No one’s caught on? Surely you have to reveal to the defense and the judge that you have a recording and how it was obtained.”

“Yup.”

“Then why don’t the newer transhuman villains stop calling you and giving you evidence to help identify them?”

“Same reason people see shows on TV like CSI or Law & Order or some cheesy Lifetime woman-gets-murdered-by-crazy-husband movie and know the police have special sprays and lights that can show bloodstains that aren’t visible to the naked eye and yet still clean up all the blood and think they’re free and clear. Or rape a woman without wearing a condom. Or don’t wear gloves even though fingerprinting technology’s been around forever. They’re either dumb, overconfident or want too badly for us to realize how amazing they are. And it’s not like we go trumpeting the fact we have all these technologies—that’s why I say behave like it’s a secret, even though it really isn’t.

“But in the end, who knows?” the lieutenant continued, “Ego? Stupidity? Both? I dunno. Maybe just ignorance in some cases. Doesn’t matter, though. In the end, we have these trans guys and gals on file—and non-transhuman folks who crave attention, too, like serial killers or activist extremists. And that’s where we get into the ‘GT’ part of this division’s name. The GeneTrapper Program. Genetic material when we can get it from a crime a trans villain is known to have been at, cross-referenced with the voiceprint and with the gene records and voiceprints of known associates and enemies. And other stuff, too. But showing’s better that saying, and I’ve got some people for you to meet. C’mon, Yates—let’s show you what you’ve got to work with when you go after these costumed nutjobs.”

Barely even looking at him—her head swimming with the realization of just what kind of people she was about to start making the focus of her work and the strangeness of them—she followed in his wake.

I guess we’re not in Cleveland anymore, are we, Toto? Andrea mused as her guide continued to regale her with tales of technology and transhumans as he led her farther down the long hall. Or maybe I’m picking the wrong fantasy analogy. Maybe I just fell down the rabbit hole like Alice did.

* * *

Pushing a comic book just slightly to cover an errant view of the dull, pitted hardwood of his apartment’s floor, the man leaned back. He admired the wall-to-wall “carpeting” of his small, dingy place in the part of the city known as The Hollows—the sea of comics. This tiny place was more than he deserved, really. Crazy Jane had told him that so many times, even as she stroked his hair and called him her good little puppy. Or her bad little puppy.

In the end, both terms were usually used for the same behavior.

He didn’t deserve this little hovel furnished with nothing but two wooden chairs, a small table, and hundreds of comic books to cover the floors. He didn’t deserve Jane. But in the end, he’d played that small part in her escape because she was his world by then. He needed her. Craved her attention. Even now, he shook with stress over the fact she hadn’t been to see him since two mornings ago, and rubbed his hands nervously across his black-hooded face.

Usually, she’d visit him daily—sometimes a few times in a day—to monitor his progress. To see how he was developing.

Her art project. Her pet project.

Her pet.

And her toy.

Oh, never to play with sexually—such a thought repulsed him. Not because he didn’t desire her. He did. Oh so much. But it would repulse her he was certain. And it would anger Janus, which might cause him to be permanently removed from Crazy Jane’s attentions. He couldn’t disappoint her like that. So he would never overstep that line.

Besides, he could slake his desires on other men and women just like Crazy Jane had taught him. Just as she had molded him to do. Because she’d imprisoned the sanity that had always held him back from glory. She’d freed his mind to the wonder of what others called madness.

But it was really just truth. Problem was, most of society couldn’t handle the truth.

He admired the colorful, paper carpeting of his abode. Comics with Doctor Doom on the cover. Or Doctor Fate. Or Doctor Strange. Doctor Octopus. Doctor Light. Doctor Silvanus. And so many others.

He’d need to get a tarp today. And then a victim. Mustn’t disappoint Crazy Jane, who’d expect him to have some kind of project to show her when she arrived tomorrow. That’s why she was making him wait, probably—he’d been slack in giving her new pieces to admire. It had been a couple weeks now. He needed to find someone new to—modify.

But first, the tarp.

It wouldn’t do to bloody all these famous comic book “doctors.”

Even if his own name was Marcus Blood, M.D.

Dr. Blood.

* * *

Janus looked out through the broad window of the conference room in which he and Underworld were ensconced. Toward the figure sitting outside on a small sofa. Long-legged and busty with silver-streaked dark hair pulled into a pair of pigtails. Black, sleeveless top and plaid miniskirt. Fishnet stockings with a big pair of lacy white garters at the swell of the thighs, matching the four smaller garters on the arms, over black opera gloves. High-heeled red pumps with their own lacy garters. Face shining with pale powder and highlighted with a black circle at each cheek and equally black lips. And to top it all off, contact lenses that made the eyes look red as burning embers.

“I cannot believe you convinced me to let that on my team,” he sighed.

“Our team,” Underworld corrected him. “And you can’t deny the test results and reports. She’s everything I promised you she would be. Her powers are incredible, especially now that my team has honed them with vocal training and couple technological additions. She’s a goddamn work of transhuman art.”

“She? She has a dick. Cleverly secured back between his ass cheeks or not—a dick. That’s a man, and I wish he would act like one.”

“She already agreed to change her name from Shrill to the more intimidating Caterwaul—and go Goth for you so that she doesn’t look too frilly in a fight. And I have to admit, she does Goth so well. She’s made her concessions. I’m not going to make her dress in slacks and a button-down for you.”

“That is not a woman,” Janus insisted. “I cannot believe you are enabling this ridiculousness.”

“She feels like one, and I’m on her side,” Underworld said. “A chick with a dick, as she likes to say. Variety is the spice of life, Janus. I’ve even found a Regenerator who assures me he can get her body to start producing estrogen consistently. With that and a little cosmetic surgery help, she won’t need the padded bra anymore.”

“A fucking she-male on our team. Just what I wanted,” Janus sneered.

“She hates that term; so do I. You know, for someone who wears masks that express some kind of duality and has the name of a two-faced god, you’re awfully persnickety about sexual identity issues,” Underworld observed.

She also observed, silently, that there was a subtle difference to his mask today compared to others he had worn. The forward-facing central part of it struck her as angry and male. On each side were two other faces, one looking right and the other left. Both of them seemed feminine, with one smiling and the other’s mouth exhibiting a more neutral affect.

In a sense, he’s wearing three faces today instead of his usual pair, and it mixes masculine and feminine. A little outside his box and perhaps a sign of confusion. I do believe I’ve hit a nerve and found a new way to make Janus uncomfortable, Underworld considered. And that’s always a good thing for me.

“I’m a superpowered kingpin. I reserve the right to be a hypocrite. I just happen to believe that when it comes to gonads, you play the hand you’re dealt,” Janus said. “Or you go under the knife and change your hand to a whole new one. You don’t mix up two different decks.”

“She likes having a dick. It’s like her big, fat juicy clitoris,” Underworld taunted him in a syrupy sweet tone. “And for a pussy she has—”

“Oh, God, please shut up,” he groaned. “Will he go all the way in a fight if necessary? Does he have the killer instinct?”

“She’s sexy and pretty, not a pushover,” Underworld said. “She’ll perform. She will get the jobs done. She. C’mon…say it. Sheeeeeee.”

“It…has…a…dick,” Janus enunciated slowly. “He’s your responsibility, so just make sure he—”

“She.”

“If I start using ‘she’ and ‘her’ can you promise me we will never again discuss its sexual anatomy or who and what it sleeps with?” Janus said with quiet intensity.

“Oh, of course, my dear,” Underworld said with even more exaggerated sweetness. “That sounds just lovely.”

“Then I look forward to her proving herself. If she fails me by showing the slightest hesitation—if she crumbles at any crunch-time—I will not hesitate to crush every one of her protuberances before I kill her.”

“Fair enough, Janus,” Underworld said with a smug undertone. “You’ve gotta admit, though, she has a great ass and gorgeous legs.”

Janus sighed heavily. “In hindsight, I suppose I should have made you agree not to talk about any part of Caterwaul’s body.”

“Yeaaaaah,” she responded, slowly and softly.

“I think we’re done today,” said Janus. “Tell the others to come back in a couple days and we can finish sorting out the final roster and backup members. Hopefully, you’ll be over your gloating by then. I trust you can see your Goth-tart protégé out by yourself.”

“Of course, darling,” Underworld said as if addressing a small child, her glee at ruining his day a little taking some of the edge—a sliver at least—off her burning daily desire to murder him. “Wouldn’t want Caterwaul to get any of her transvestite cooties on youuuu, would weeee?”

“Go,” Janus snarled, then smiled brightly beneath the angry frown of his mask. “Please go before I forget how much I need to keep you around.”

Return of the Heroes…and a Call for Writers

So, I don’t actually have the project I mentioned in my last post (“Vital” Matters) done yet, but it’s far enough along that I suppose I’d better juggle its completion with the production of some new fiction around these parts.

As such, another chapter of “The Gathering Storm” should be along this week.

But I also wanted to extend a hand of fellowship and invitation to any writers out there, be they you my faithful readers or friends or yours, or whomever.

It’s long been in the back of my mind that I’d love to have other people contribute to this universe with their own fiction. I’m hesitant to hand over any kind of access to some of my characters, if only because I have some firm thoughts about their past, present and future that I don’t want muddled, but there are so many characters I’ve only barely mentioned or that haven’t appeared at all…or whom I haven’t even thought up yet that some of you might like to create…that there is still ample opportunity for others to bring their own work into this blog.

Now, if any of you want to do this, simply contact me by email. Anything you write remains your property. Even though it would be part of my Whethermen universe, if you can find a way to profit from it through publication somewhere, more power to you (just please drop a mention of where it first appeared…pretty please?). The only caveat to that is that while you own it, by submitting it here, I pretty much reserve the right to use it myself here or elsewhere, as long as I don’t personally and directly profit from it.

Like I said, there’s a wide-open field here, as long as you stick within the “rules” of this universe as described in the various “About…” pages you can access from the top of the blog pages here.

Some ideas, though…

• A story from the past of now-retired Fishboy (and/or Madman, The Hydra, Ocular and Lord Jurassic, who are also noted in the story Fishboy and Madman Strike Again)
• A tale from the past of deceased Beastman (and/or the villains Mister Mimic and Reprisal, also noted in the story Fallout)
• Tales involving such actively working supporting characters as Burlesque (The Rule of Opposites), Cheshire (mentioned in several tales, including Fresh Wounds, Old Scars and Curiosity Thrills the Cat), Buttress and Peregrine (whether individually or as a couple), Fugue, Hellfire, Mister Conviction, Ringmaster, The Vegan Manhunter, Speed Demon, Carl Beacham, etc.
• An origin story for any character that’s only been briefly seen and for whom I haven’t started to develop a backstory in my head, such as The Vegan Manhunter, Hellfire or Speed Demon
• Or suggest something of your own

One caveat, though, if you use any characters I’ve already mentioned (whether in passing or as main characters), please touch base with me before writing anything, as I would need to share some basic history and info to maintain continuity with other stories here.

“Vital” Matters

Should have new fiction up soon, both stand-alone and new chapters of “The Gathering Storm,” but have to take a few days (give or take) to tackle a little project. Seems that it’s taken me this long to realize (as I hit some 2.5 years of doing this blog) that I should probably have semi-detailed vital stats/bios for all recurring characters (and any who are likely to recur). That means things like height, hair and eye color, physical build, date of birth, occupation, spouse/child info, notable hobbies, etc.

I had the foresight to put all the stories in a chronological list so that I wouldn’t have continuity errors (at least not too often) in terms of how events intersect and flow, but I’m only just now realizing how much potential I have for things like getting hair color wrong, or having some hero be described as having a nice ass in one story and a flat ass in another. Most people probably wouldn’t notice these things if they did occur, but it’s the kind of prospect that makes me break out in cold sweats.

After all, I already realized that my date for when “Hippocrates Deferred” took place didn’t jibe with the age of Tooth Fairy’s daughter in “The Gathering Storm” and had to change that to about a year earlier in the timeline…something that had me kicking myself despite being an easy and minor mistake.

So, once I have those bios together in one file for easy referencing, I can get back to fiction writing.

Hard Ride

The tinkle of bells intruded on her solitude—well, perhaps solitude was the wrong word, with the owner of the shop behind the counter in front of her, laying out herbs and vials for her to inspect. Setting out wares in hopes the mambo would buy even more of them than she had intended when she entered.

But for a glorious half-hour in the curio and voodoo shop, it had been her and the shop owner alone, she thought, as she pointed to the jimson weed and sulfur with one long, clear-glossed nail, nodding to the owner that she wanted both added to her order.

For some 30 minutes, there had been just the two of them. No curious tourists stumbling in from too much drinking on Bourbon Street to “experience” voodoo first-hand like gawkers at a zoo. No ignorant locals who thought a few exotic powders or dried leaves would give them magical power over the world. No fellow practitioners whom she typically chafed.

And it would, of course, end up being one of the latter, she thought, sighing inwardly as the door to the shop closed and the bell hanging from it progressed quickly toward silence. A houngan who held her in particular disdain. He cleared his throat with a noise that communicated all too well his disgust and irritation. She half expected him to spit a thick wad of phlegm on her.

“Unruly child. Undisciplined whore,” Harmon de la Croix said, spitting words instead of saliva. “How long will you be here?”

“I am not a child or a whore, Harmon,” answered Christine Barrow, turning toward him and regarding him with a face made up half black and half white to make it seem skull-like beneath her black top hat. “I am a mambo in need of supplies. I’ll be done soon and remove my presence from yours.”

“You are no proper mambo. You are a heretic and I would have you remove yourself from New Orleans—and from Louisiana—if I could,” Harmon sneered. “Baroness Samedi indeed. You offend him and all loa with such pretention naming yourself that. You particularly offend his wife, Maman Brigitte.”

“If he is so offended, why does that particular loa ride me so often, Harmon?” Christine answered. “I am Baroness Samedi when I dispense justice and protection with my transhuman powers. I am Mambo Barrow when I preside over ceremonies with the faithful. I intend no offense; instead, I honor him. I am an earthly consort whom he blesses to be of service to others, making my transhuman powers stronger when he rides me, and I thank his dear Maman for letting me be such to him.”

“You are a foul-mouthed, immature woman who has delusions of superiority and probably a touch of Tourette’s syndrome. Even Baron Samedi would blush at the obscene phrases you speak when he supposedly rides you. And certainly he is offended by the way you use your powers of illusion—your transhuman abilities—to make ghostly images of him descending upon you. Tricks to lure followers to your ceremonies. Sacrilege!”

Christine flushed with anger and hurt, and found herself in a rare moment of cursing the fact she had a white father and that her mother’s brown skin was so light. Christine looked very nearly Caucasian to the casual eye, and the blush was probably visible on her neck below the makeup, letting the houngan know he had actually scored an emotional blow.

I do sometimes regret using my powers during ceremonies, she thought. But the faithful often benefit by being able to see what I see or feel, or some semblance. My faith is real, and my devotion to the good god Bondyè is true. And if I name myself after Samedi, is it my fault? I know there are other loa who serve Bondyè, and sometimes they ride me. But Baron Samedi comes to me so much more often. I am a mambo, not a loa nor the Good God. It is not my place to refuse to be ridden, only to moderate Samedi’s actions sometimes when he is upon me and to make him dismount if he overstays his welcome.

“I am a mambo and act with the power of faith and true conviction, Harmon. You are a houngan and I respect your practice as a priest. But I spit on your value as a gentleman and regret that you fail as a peer, making me an outsider.”

“I’m not the only one,” Harmon said as Christine paid for her supplies and passed by him, ready to patrol the streets for a few hours as Baroness Samedi before she removed her makeup and dressed less garishly for tonight’s services with her small but growing flock. His small, dark eyes bored into her and he stroked one side of his thin black-and-gray mustache absently. “Many of us refuse to be associated with you, lest you corrupt our relationships with the loa and our commitment to the good god Bon Dieu.”

“Thank Bondyè and his loa, then, that a few houngans and mambos have more sense and give me the same respect I offer—the respect I wish you would let me offer you.”

“I want nothing from you, heretic,” he answered her as she stepped out to the sidewalk. “Nothing but your absence. And thank our creator Bon Dieu that I am finally granted that.”

* * *

Christine sat at her vanity table, staring for long minutes into the mirrored glass before her. For perhaps the thousandth time since she had developed her transhuman powers at age 12 and later entered the voodoo priesthood, she considered using her powers of illusion to make herself look more like the black woman she was. So many women like her over the generations had been happy to pass, but she wasn’t one of them. Mama said they could trace their family back to Marie Laveau and even farther back to priests of Haitian vodou. Yet on days like these, she felt her paleness mocked all of that.

But changing how she looked wouldn’t change who she was—who she was proud of being most days. Moreover, it would dishonor both the mother and father who had raised her. Besides, people had seen her with this lightly tanned skin for the entire 31 years of her life that she’d been in the Orleans Parish; what good would it do to use powers of illusion to darken her visage and hands? And where would she stop after that? Make her hair appear kinky and black instead of straight and brown?

I am as Bondyè’s will and world have made me. I am a mambo. I am also a transhuman protector of this city. My illusions are for patrolling and for ceremonies. Not for vanity or to soothe regrets and emotional wounds that I refuse to let go of or let heal.

She considered the array of makeup before her, both mundane and exotic, and considered whether she should do up her face as a skull again and work out her frustrations on some thugs in the dark side streets of the French Quarter so that a few less tourists would go to their hotel rooms as mugging victims tonight. She was tired, though. It has been a good ceremony tonight, and the loa Ayida-Weddo—the rainbow serpent—had ridden her tonight. Usually it was Baron Samedi or one of his fellow sexualized and profanity-loving Ghede. It had been far too long since one of the Rada loa had visited her congregation. Longer still since one of the Petro loa had, either, but Christine dreaded the violence they sometimes brought with them.

Baron Samedi and his Ghede kin might bring an air of debauchery and mischief to my ceremonies, but better to have bawdiness than brawling. Bruised thighs are usually more pleasurable in the aftermath than black eyes.

As she struggled with decisions and realized how dark the circles under her eyes were tonight, a light tap at her door demanded attention.

“Yes?” she inquired.

The door opened and a tall man with skin so dark it could almost legitimately be called black peered in. He smiled disarmingly in that usual way of his that suggested he meant no intrusion and at the same time wanted very much to brighten the room with a ribald joke or a loud, long laugh.

“Matthew. What can I do for you?” she asked of the man, who was one of her chief assistants, both in the conduct of this small voodoo church and the carrying out of her transhuman duties in costume.

“I have good news for you, Mambo,” he said. “I have gotten word from some of our friends abroad. We finally have a fix on Mister Voodoo.”

Christine smiled a grin so wicked it was like a razor-sharp sickle. Most people wouldn’t smile at thoughts of Mister Voodoo, much less two people in the same room express glee at the speaking of his name. But they had been hunting for him a long time. And any hunter is happy when the quarry is finally in sight.

“Where? Where is he, Matt?” she asked breathlessly. Harmon may have called her a heretic but Mister Voodoo was the one carrying out true sacrilege. In name and in deed, he exemplified everything in popular culture that made her religion of voodoo and its Haitian cousin vodou seem like something wicked and perverse.

“Atlanta, Mambo. The outskirts, anyway. He is here in the South again, but this time, he didn’t hide so well. Several hundred miles from us, sadly, but from what I’m told, he seems like he won’t be leaving Georgia any time soon. We have him, Christine. Baroness Samedi has him.”

“I don’t have him until he’s actually down—dead or, preferably, in someone’s custody,” she reminded Matthew. “Let everyone know there won’t be services for at least a few days. Have them say prayers and perform rituals on my behalf at home. I’ll need all the blessings I can get for this.”

* * *

Christine, in her full Baroness Samedi costume and makeup, stepped out of the rental van, smoking pouring forth before her from a cigar clutched between her teeth and embraced by her black-and-white-painted lips. The taste of expensive rum was on her tongue—not enough for a serious buzz but enough to entice Baron Samedi, she hoped. Tobacco and booze were the lures to bring him forth, and she feared she would need him soon. She’d need to risk a little of her edge to do that.

Setting the cigar down at the edge of the van’s side door, next to an open bottle of rum, and trailing smoke in her wake, she led three men—one of them a heavily armed Matthew—from the van toward the house in which Mister Voodoo was said to be holed up. She and Matthew headed for the front door, and the other two headed around back; this wasn’t going to be a subtle operation. The strategy might not be the best, but she intended to kick in the doors and take Mister Voodoo down hard and fast. The more finesse and stealth, she figured, the less likely they’d attack strongly and the more likely their approach would be seen.

Besides, Baron Samedi adores disruptions and chaos—if I want his help today, I need to do what will attract his attention and draw his blessings upon me, she theorized. It’s worked before; I really need it to work today.

Before she and Matthew could reach the front door, hoping to be more or less in sync with Leroy and Vic kicking in the back door, Baroness Samedi heard a sharp cry from the back of the house and recognized it as Vic. She heard Leroy shout, “Remember, the zombies are victims!”—then heard several shots fired. She and Matthew hesitated as they tried to figure out whether to head around back to help or continue toward the front door. Finally, she barked, “Move! Knock it in!”

Matthew surged forward, and kicked the door with a Doc Marten-booted right foot, which was attached to a 6-foot-3-inch,  240-pound body that rarely missed a daily trip to the gym. The door framed splintered, the door flew inward—suddenly, a gaunt, desiccated person lunged at him, flailing meaty fists attached to a pair of withered arms. For a person that looked like a corpse, the swings had a great deal of energy and inertia behind them, forcing Matthew to backpedal. Mister Voodoo appeared in the doorway then, a gun leveled at Baroness Samedi’s right-hand man. Three shots rang out, hitting Matthew in the bicep, shoulder and finally his chest. He tumbled to the ground and the “zombie” that had preceded Mister Voodoo out of the house fixated on her and charged.

She didn’t want to kill him—or her. So hard to tell given the condition of the shirtless, shoeless body in wrinkled jeans. The horrid thing in front of her, as much as it looked like a member of the undead, was just some poor victim—a living person consigned to an earthly hell. Mister Voodoo had the power to control minds, though it seemed he needed considerable time to establish a link and control, since he’d never simply wrested an enemy’s will away in a fight. Why these poor thralls looked the way they did was still largely a mystery. Baroness Samedi’s sources had liberated one zombie from Mister Voodoo years earlier and nursed her back to some semblance of health, and they theorized that either he had Necro or Disruptor powers he used to damage their tissues and organs, or that he was a Vamp that slowly fed on their bodily fluids.

Opinion leaned toward the latter, since he seemed to go through zombies fairly rapidly, with what seemed to be a new set of three to five of them every few weeks.

Disruptor, Necro or Vamp—whichever it is I almost certainly don’t want him touching me or I’m probably finished.

She didn’t want to kill the zombified thrall, but she also couldn’t afford to be grappling with the wretchedly altered person, so she fired at its legs. Not being all that good an aim, though, and mostly used to relying on her powers, it took six bullets to finally bring the zombie to the ground. Meanwhile, Mister Voodoo was firing at her. He wasn’t any kind of marksman himself, and actually hit his own zombie several times. A few other bullets whizzed past Baroness Samedi as she emptied her gun on him, hoping she’d hit something vital or at least incapacitating. A bullet finally caught her in the left hip and she stumbled. She saw him take careful aim and tumbled away quickly, crying out as she rolled over her hip wound several times and left wet, red stains in the grass. Two bullets sprayed soil and grass from the spot where she had been, and then Mister Voodoo was clicking on an empty magazine.

Baroness Samedi struggled back up to her legs unsteadily as Mister Voodoo charged toward her, seemingly free of even a single gunshot wound despite her volley of bullets. Seeing her regain her bearing, he slowed up to prepare for an attack, and grinned cockily at her.

“Oh, this is rich! A voodoo mambo coming to take me down. Too bad you’re just gonna fail, bitch,” Mister Voodoo said. “Your two dudes are being pummeled and chewed on in my backyard and your wingman is down in my front lawn. I’ve heard about you, Baroness Samedi. Such a joke. Superstitious cunt! Delusional slut with a need to justify the fact she like the occasional gang-bang by the superstitious coons that follow her. And you think your powers get stronger when Baron Samedi rides you. You’re too stupid to realize it’s just adrenaline or whatever, and your powers kicking up under stress. Well, I’m gonna stress you out; no doubt of that. But whatever that stresses squeezes out of you in terms of power, it ain’t gonna be enough. I’ll be beating you down and maybe fucking you ‘til you’re dead. Or maybe I’ll make you my newest zombie. Wouldn’t that be freakin’ ironic?”

He charged her, reaching for her arm. He snapped his fingers around her wrist as she tried to pull the limb away from his grasp.

And he closed on thin air.

Startled, he stepped back and then, as he reoriented, he saw her a few feet away. Whatever satisfaction Baroness Samedi had felt over tricking him, using her illusion powers to make herself appear much closer than she was, they were dulled by the knowledge she was bleeding and limping, and wouldn’t be able to stay out of his reach for long—or continue to generate complex illusions, for that matter.

She felt nothing of her favored loa’s presence in her. She was operating on her power alone, against a transhuman villain who’d never been captured and had killed dozens of people over the course of his career—hundreds perhaps if he did indeed consume the very life essence of his withered and mind-controlled slaves.

She regarded her enemy, searching for a weakness. Searching for a plan of attack. Circled slowly as she limped on a throbbing, blood-soaked leg.

Mister Voodoo just kept smiling, his teeth glistening white and just a single gap in front where a canine had either been knocked out or extracted. His eyes were a sharp, light brown—mottled hazel and boring into her with intense concentration. His costume was a canvas tunic with all kinds of supposedly voodoo paraphernalia adorning it—chicken claws, shark fangs, mummified fingers and toes, and more—some of them oddities she’d never seen in any voodoo shop. In a few places, mandrake roots were sewn to the material, and from his neck hung a voodoo doll of beige felt that was pierced with at least a dozen pins and nails, with red spots around them that could be fake blood or might real, though fake seemed more likely unless he’d just recently applied it.

Voodoo doll! That pisses me off on top of everything else. He’s made it into the violent, curse-associated tool that movies and stories love so much. I’ve never known a houngan or mambo who ever used a voodoo doll for anything other than a blessing or—in the worst-case scenario—to exert some control over someone whose behavior needed to be reined in.

She realized he probably had some sort of body armor under the crude, totemic tunic. Probably a codpiece of some sort, too, so she wouldn’t be too quick to aim for his balls. He sported heavy leather and steel gauntlets to protect his hands and forearms, shoulder and elbow pads, and heavy steel-toed boots and knee pads. She was facing off against a man more heavily protected than a football player, except for his lack of helmet. His head was the only place she was sure to do some damage. Now she just needed an illusion to distract him so she could—

Baroness Samedi grunted as she was hit from behind and as frail-looking but strong arms wrapped around her and dragged her to the ground. One of his other zombies, having snuck up behind her.

“This is where it ends, bitch,” Mister Voodoo said, now sauntering toward her with slow, arrogant steps. “This is where you die or end up my newest bony-ass slave. So sweet. Another win in the Mister Voodoo column.”

“Fuck that, you pompous cunt-waffle,” she snarled, surprised at her language. Then she smiled. She almost never swore unless Baron Samedi or one of the other Ghede were upon her. Her patron hadn’t abandoned her. He had come to lend his power. She sighed as she felt the spirit of the loa settle over her. Mount her. “We ain’t even danced yet sugah, and here you are getting ready to suck the life outta me. How goddamned rude of you. What ever happened to romance?”

She stood up, ignoring the pain in her hip and leg now, standing and dragging the zombie back up with her, its arms still pinning her arms to her sides. Baroness Samedi felt a warm ripple of comfort wash over her injured limb and smiled. The loa Baron Samedi was a trouble-maker and charmer, the lord of the dead and an aficionado of tobacco, alcohol and sex. But he could also heal and cure disease in whomever he desired. A power she enjoyed when he rode her at times like these.

“So you’re standing. Big deal. You still ain’t going nowhere,” Mister Voodoo taunted her. “Not in time, at least. You ain’t even trying to throw illusions against me. Weak cunt.”

“My cunt’s wet and strong, darlin’,” came the sensuous voice from Baroness Samedi’s mouth. “Too bad you won’t get to find out, fuckwad. Maybe you’d like some cock from me instead, baby. Like you’ll be getting a daily dose of in prison, peckerwood.”

The ground exploded all around Mister Voodoo as gauzy-looking but substantial tentacles—five in all—burst from the ground. Quasi-matter constructs that flailed, slapping him around and then slapping him to the ground. One whipped toward Baroness Samedi and pulled one of the zombie’s arms from her roughly. She pushed the poor thing away and stepped toward Mister Voodoo, who had scrambled through the morass of tentacles spawned by the Ecto powers Baroness Samedi had never even known she had access to before. Her heart sang at this newest gift from the loa.

“I ain’t scared of you, bitch! What? You came after me because you don’t like my little take on voodoo. My special branding. I was raised in that superstitious shit. Fuck your stupid-ass religion! I’ll mock it and make people fear it more until the day I die. All while I kill and steal and take what I want.”

Unstable as quasi-matter was, the tentacles began to dissociate, and he batted one away, satisfied to watch it quiver and vanish.

“You can’t keep your fake cock up, can you, Baroness Samedi? Worthless cunt. Dead woman walking.”

“You’ve used death words a couple times now, limp-dick,” Baroness Samedi crooned. “And that’s just the problem. This is the lord of the dead riding this woman’s body and soul, and he’s a little sick of you sending quite so many people to him before their natural time. Just because I let the dead into the next life don’t mean I want a fucking crowd at my door of confused bastards. You insult this woman’s religion and you insult me and all the loa, cock-wad. And my dicks have spiritual Viagra flowing like rum on Bourbon Street, he-bitch!”

Three new tentacles coalesced from the air, batting Mister Voodoo around as Baroness Samedi walked calmly to where Matthew lay on the ground. He was breathing, but erratically, and she passed her hands over his wounds, the bullets slowly pressing out of his flesh and the holes sealing as if he’d never been shot. Only the smears of blood on his skin showed anything had happened. Baroness Samedi turned at the snap of a branch, Mister Voodoo racing toward her through the flurry of quasi-matter tentacles.

She snapped her finger, and a new tentacle appeared in front of him, rigid and straight, and his forehead ran straight into it. He stumbled, stunned, and then fell back as it punched him in the face four times.

“I ain’t done with the stud down here. Gotta fix up this rich piece of beefcake for my mambo. Wait your goddamn turn, Mister Frou-Frou.”

Passing her hands over Matthew one last time to complete the regeneration of his wounded body, Baroness Samedi walked to Mister Voodoo and gazed down at him, her head cocked and eyes curious.

“Did you think I’d forget about ya, sweetie?” she asked almost demurely. “I still got a treat for you. I’ll love you long time, soldier!”

A shimmering, ghostly tentacle struck him in the mouth several times, splitting his lip, and then hit him six more times. He struggled to his knees, coughing, and spit up several teeth in a spray of fine red mist. Then the tentacle slid quickly into his mouth and down his throat. He went rigid, scrabbled at it with his fingers, and stumbled, gagging desperately but nearly silently, breath lost to him.

“I loved the movie ‘Deep Throat’ back in the day. The loa like the movies, too. I just always preferred the X-rated ones,” Baroness Samedi said. “How do you like that cock, fucker? This day just isn’t motherfucking going your way all of a sudden, is it?”

When Mister Voodoo went still, the tentacle vanished and the zombie that had attacked Baroness Samedi before simply wandered aimlessly in circles, its unconscious master unable to give it direction. Baroness Samedi sighed as she felt the loa’s presence lift away from her, surprised with how gently she’d been mounted and dismounted today.

She shook her head, got her bearings, and then handcuffed Mister Voodoo. Once she confirmed that her other two men were—as she feared—dead, she roused Matthew and called the police.

Nothing ever goes as planned, she thought sadly, but at least the job is done.

* * *

In a show of coincidence and symmetry so contrived that Christine could only assume it was engineered by the loa themselves, houngan Harmon de la Croix walked once again into the same shop where they had traded words days before, just as she was ready to leave.

“Hmph!” Harmon snorted as he saw her. “At least today you’re not flaunting your heresy by dressing like Baron Samedi. Some of the other houngans and myself thank you, though, for dealing with Mister Voodoo. You’re still a whore and a fraud, though.”

Christine smiled wanly, responding, “It was my honor to serve the loa and the creator god in doing so. But what, Harmon—what will finally get you to stop calling me those horrible names and accept me as a mambo?”

“Can you make the Christians and Hollywood and all the rest stop misrepresenting and fearing us?”

“No, Harmon. I’m no miracle worker. Just a mambo.”

“Not even a mambo,” he retorted. “Just a foul-mouthed slut pretending at being a priestess.”

Christine gave him no response as she brushed past him. Outside, she pulled a hip flask from the pocket of her jeans and swallowed a slug of rum. Once it was slipped back against the curve of her ass, she pulled out a slim cigarillo and lit it up, feeling the gentle caress of Baron Samedi on her mind and soul as she puffed.

You are the constant thorn to keep my mindful, Harmon, she mused, exhaling a thick cloud of acrid smoke into the air, relishing its taste as it mixed with the rum in her throat and belly. At least I know Baron Samedi is proud of me.

________________________________________
Baroness Samedi photo (actual title by artist/photographer is “Baron Samedi II”) is used with permission of Koen, whose work can be seen at DeviantArt under the moniker KoenNya [click here to view her account]. Use here should NOT be implied as permission for the photo to be redistributed or re-used elsewhere or for any other purposes, commercial or otherwise, by myself or others.)

The Gathering Storm, Part 29

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It was an alien feeling for Solstice alone in the skeez lab. It wasn’t her first time in such an environment, but usually when she was in a place like this, it was to kick ass, leave soon thereafter and call the cops.

Instead, she was alone and surrounded by all the equipment, chemicals and other accoutrements of a drug lab. All arrayed around her as if they were her own. In a sense, they were now. She’d claimed this place and Query’s hired hands had removed the people who had been here previously. They’d picked this lab out precisely because it wasn’t affiliated with organized crime or any gangs in the area. Just a boutique operation that hadn’t been gobbled up yet partly because it wasn’t really squarely in the middle of anyone’s territory.

Her drug lab.

What a weird damn feeling. And I’ve been here a night and most of a day so it just feels weirder and weirder, Solstice mused. I know the slow tink-tink-tink of the dripping pipe over that metal plate on the floor. I know the squeak of that one ancient ceiling fan. My drug lab. Even though I have zero interest in or intention of slinging skeez.

On the other hand, being the owner and operator of this skeez lab was precisely what Marty the Hun was supposed to think of her. That was the fiction that Query had slipped into ears of a few select people on the street—that Solstice had gone rogue and went over the dark side. That perhaps her crime-fighting before had been nothing more than a sham for winnowing out the competition.

It would be an easy thing for Marty to envision; it would resonate with his black heart, Solstice thought. His bigoted, sexist self would expect just that kind of thing from her, especially being a Goth, Wiccan, Asian transhuman who’d humiliated him and gotten him arrested.

If only he knew I was bi, he’d really think me the scum of the earth, probably.

Creating the notion this was her lab was precisely why she’d been camping out here for more than 20 hours.

By now, Marty the Hun knew where she was and no doubt he still wanted blood. Except now he thought he was doing more than getting revenge. He’d also be taking out someone whose own drugs and money could be added to his own—if, of course, Query’s team hadn’t removed most of the finished drugs and taken the money, too.

I won’t begrudge him the money, even though under other circumstances I would have helped myself to plenty of it after a bust; I’ve certainly gotten major assistance from Query on this little operation, so if he has his own plans for the cash, so be it, she thought. Now we’ll see if his help and this crazy plan Isabella and I hatched gets me killed or if I get clear of Marty’s wrath for good.

The screen of the smart phone Query’s team had left behind for her lit up suddenly, revealing a floor plan of the building and two flashing red circles that indicated someone had slipped in through the front and the back almost simultaneously, tripping a couple of the sensors Query’s people had installed inside the building’s perimeter.

Marty won’t be in the front of the crowd, but he will almost certainly be here with his goons, Solstice reminded herself. He likes hands-on, and given what he’s heard on the streets and from whom, this wouldn’t smell like a trap. After all, he’s been thinking all this time since he got off that I’ve been running and hiding from him, when I didn’t even know he’d been hunting me until Query told me.

Marty the Hun would also be here, she realized, because the lab was too valuable a target to let his crew be running loose here without him.

The intruders didn’t expect her to know they were here, so she moved swiftly toward the rear of the building to keep that edge. Marty wasn’t the type to slip in through the back of anyplace, and she wanted to deal with him last of all. She spotted three men slinking in, wary and guns drawn. Her Attractor powers yanked the weapons from their hands and as they all gave out confused cries of irritation, she tossed a flashbang grenade into their midst and slipped back around the corner, closing her eyes and covering her ears as the grenade made the room a frenzy of light and noise.

She had been a little too close to the action, she realized, as her ears rang and she felt herself sway a bit as she rose to her feet—not even realizing she had dropped to her knees in the first place. She mostly regained her bearings in time to see the butt of a shotgun stock rushing toward her face, and clumsily blocked it with her left arm. Her arm vibrated and throbbed from the impact as she heard the man shout, “Got her for ya Marty!” and swung the shotgun in a tight, hard arc as he added, “Softenin’ her up.”

Oh, Marty wants me intact so he can do me himself—how romantic of him, she thought, and ducked under the attack, dropping to the floor. She lifted her legs, wrapped her ankles around one of the attacker’s thighs and poured an intense burst of thermal energy through them, then ran her ankles down toward his feet, burning his leg all the way down. His pants smoldered and the stench of burning flesh assaulted her nostrils. As he screamed in agony, she used her feet to pull him off balance, and relieved him of the shotgun. Taking a cue from his attack on her, she slammed the stock of the gun into his head half a dozen times in quick succession.

Another man came into view in front of her, bringing his pistol around. She lowered the temperature around him abruptly to startle him and slow him down just a hair, and aimed hastily at his legs with the shotgun. Her  aim was sloppy, but good enough to take out one of his kneecaps, and she hurried over to his prone body to take his gun before he could recover his wits.

“G’night, bitch-whore,” came Marty’s voice from behind just as she touched the pistol, and the shock and humiliation of him getting the drop on her was enough to throw her off. Instead of reacting, she froze for just a moment. Just a moment too long.

I’ll never swing around in time and he’s going to put a bullet into my head and oh fuck and…

Marty grunted, and then his towering body fell onto her, a heavy dead weight. There was stickiness between their bodies and Solstice wanted to retch with the knowledge it was her blood, or his, or both. That she was finished.

But why did he fall? she suddenly considered, and frantically shoved at his body to prepare for another attack. I didn’t hear a gunshot why would either of us be bleeding? She couldn’t dislodge Marty’s body from her own and she began to thrash, keening with fear and rage.

“Calm down,” said a firm and quiet voice, and Solstice saw Query above them, a large Bowie knife in one gloved hand. “Hold still and I’ll cut you free. I shot him with a rubber slug and then hit him with a tangler. You got caught up with the tangler threads.”

There were a few quick slashes, and Solstice rolled free of Marty.

“I took the liberty of trussing up the guys in the back,” Query said, grabbing Marty’s half-stunned body by one arm and dragging him to another room. “Kindly take care of the guy you roasted, please, and the one you shot, while I see to Marty.”

Solstice got the burn victim’s hands behind his back and cinched a plastic tie around his wrists, did the same for the hobbled thug, and then followed Query to the office where he’d dragged Marty.

“What brings you to the party?” she asked. “I thought this was my mess to clean up.”

“I came because I’m not half the asshole I let you think I was,” Query answered. “I don’t like dead peers, not even the young, headstrong, sometimes idiotic ones.”

“Goddamn you’re a charmer, Query. The girl heroes must be throwing themselves at you.”

“Only when we’re sparring or one of them confuses me with one of the bad guys,” Query said, then jabbed Marty in the ribcage. “Evenin’, Hun. How’s it hanging?”

“You’re both dead,” Marty the Hun slurred as he regained his senses. Then, with more gusto: “I’m gonna see you fucked up in every possible way I can think of; both of ya!”

Solstice slipped up close, and got in his face, almost nose-to-nose. “Gonna be hard to do from behind bars, Marty. Especially given how long you’ll be going away, seeing as how I’m going to leave you here for the police with lots of nice, strong evidence that makes it look like you run this place. Judges like to put skeez-cookers away for long, long time. They send lots of cops to skeez busts, Marty. Not a chance that you’ll only have your pet cops on the scene. You get to go down, down, down—for years before you see any shot at parole.”

“Don’t matter, because I hold grudges forever. Same to you, Query. And I got ways to touch people from prison.”

“You’re a pretty decent-sized fish, Marty, but not that big,” Query said. “There isn’t anyone who’s going to have anywhere near the tenacity in going after us on your behalf as you would, even if you can lay hold of money to pay them. And I’m not sure you’ll have much in the way of support from your friends on the outside when the child porn comes to light after your arrest. In fact, you won’t do too well with the guys on the inside when that gets around.”

“I’m not into kiddie porn any more than this is my lab!” Marty growled.

“You may believe in the motto ‘old enough to bleed, old enough to breed,’ Marty, but fucking 14- and 15-year-olds is plenty sick enough for me—it’s kid-fucking—and Query says that shit’s confirmed. Not to mention all those women you tortured and killed thinking they might have been me. So I don’t feel bad at all planting downloads with little kids on your computer—well, the computer that’s going to seem to be yours, especially when we finishing putting your fingerprints all over it. When you do get out someday, Marty—you know, if you don’t get killed behind bars first by a convict who thinks you might fuck his little kid when you’re released—you’ll want to be rethinking this whole concept of ‘If you want something right, do it yourself’ and stick to letting lackeys do the work.”

“Dead! That’s all I got to say to you, bitch.”

“Congratulations, Solstice,” Query said. “You have your first arch-enemy. You know, if he gets out of prison. As my own little gift to honor that occasion, here’s a little of the lab’s cash,” he added, tossing a bulging fanny pack to her. “Also, I’m going to let you take credit for all this. I wasn’t here. You’re the hero who took this place down solo.”

“Oh, fuck no,” Marty hissed. “You’re gonna boost her street rep like that? Oh, no. I’m not only gonna tell everyone I know that she needed your help, but I’m gonna tell them she didn’t take down a single guy tonight and you’re covering for her. Let’s see how long she lasts in the streets when people think she’s a pussy can’t protect herself.”

“You might want to rethink that, Marty,” Query said. “Not one of your guys out there had any wits about him to see me here. And everyone knows I leave dirty, street-level shit like busting drug labs to the younger and more impetuous generation of heroes. Start trying to convince people the big, bad Query was here, and they’ll be thinking you’re the pussy who not only got his ass handed to him by a girl but that he’s not even man enough to suck up that fact.”

“Gosh, Marty, that would go together real well with your new kiddie porn rep,” Solstice taunted. “You’ll be such a bigger hit with the other cons then.”

“Dead,” Marty repeated. “One way, one day. Dead.”

* * *

On her third day in Fortunato’s high-rise, Zoe found herself in what she considered an obnoxiously gargantuan office, finally meeting her benefactor.

“I hope your stay has been pleasant so far,” Fortunato almost purred.

“Can’t complain,” Zoe answered disinterestedly. “Query said if you took me in you’d treat me right. I appreciate that you’ve given me up to four months to stay. Not sure if I’ll put you out for that long, but it’s nice not to have two transhuman psychos breathing down my neck for a while.”

Bowing his head slightly in acknowledgement, Fortunato said, “You could stay longer. Room and board for as long as you like, free of charge.”

“Oh. Really? Sir, I’m not in the market to become a kept woman. Ain’t going for the mistress look, no thank you. No matter how rich you are.”

Chuckling and waving one hand dismissively, Fortunato reached into a humidor on his desk and extracted a cigar. “Do you mind if I partake?”

“Only if I get to flaunt the city’s no-smoking-in-the-workplace laws, too,” Zoe said.

“Fine with me. Cuban or domestic?” he offered.

“Cigar? No. I’ll stick with good old Virginia Slims, thanks,” she said, retrieving and lighting up a cigarette from her purse as Fortunato toasted and lit his Havana with a wooden match.

As he puffed silently, Zoe regarded their slowly growing and mingling smoke for a minute or so before saying, “I’m still not interested in living here as some sort of sex-toy, by the way. Especially now. I’m not attracted to men who smoke.”

“Ironic. And hypocritical,” he said, eliciting only a shrug and a haughty exhalation of smoke from her. “But that’s not what I had in mind. I wish to employ you for your transhuman abilities. Query provided only a very meager file on you. No doubt to pique my interest so that I’d be more inclined to give you shelter in case I decided his payment for hiding you wasn’t good enough.”

“He paid you? Didn’t know his pockets were that deep. I bet your help is expensive.”

“It is. That’s why Query paid me in a currency more valuable than cash. But back to you and me, shall we?” Fortunato said. “I am in need of talented transhumans. You somehow got the very intense interest of Janus, which means you must be something special, perhaps even beyond just the powers Query mentions in the file. I’d like to hire you at a very generous salary and benefits, plus the free room and board I offered. A much bigger suite, of course, than you occupy now.”

Zoe took a thoughtful drag on her cigarette. “I’m not really the costume-wearing and crime-fighting type, sir,” she said through her exhale.

“Please, call me Fortunato. And I think it’s a career you should very much consider, since I’d be financing it. Not many transhumans who put on tights are able to find any kind of benefactor, much less one as flush as I am.”

“I rejected Janus and Underworld and hired Query to get them off my back,” Zoe responded. “They offered a lot to me as well.”

“True, but I think you like to fight—mostly in a verbal or metaphorical fashion but still, you’re a fighter. And I suspect that despite your recent and harrowing little adventure that a big part of you would like to find an excuse to put your powers into action again,” Fortunato said, pointing the smoldering tip of his cigar at her. “And the main reason you turned down Janus and his crew was because you’re not criminally minded. You have too many moral compunctions. Well, about robbing, killing and that sort of thing. You certainly didn’t mind hiding from the NCAA and your college that you’re transhuman. Now that’s something that could come back to haunt you.”

“Let me guess: If I don’t take your generous offer now, my college and the NCAA will conveniently find out about my fraud, and you’ll swoop in with a less generous offer of employment that I’ll have to accept so that you’ll bail me out of the lawsuit they’d threaten me with.”

“That’s a cynical line of thought,” Fortunato said.

“True, too, isn’t it, Fortunato?”

“I know Vanessa approached you. I didn’t know that she put such slanderous thoughts in your head.”

“The fact that you know she talked to me for less than a minute tells me that I should invite Query to my room soon to find the hidden cameras and mics,” Zoe said. “Also, it’s nice of you to confirm that you must have extorted her in some way because she really didn’t give me quite that much detail when she warned me about you.”

“Oh, I’m sure she dropped big enough hints to get your imagination going, Zoe. Allison…I mean, Vanessa…has some issues with me, but I assure you…”

“She dropped the name Allison, too. What the hell?”

“Sorry, it’s her codename for costumed work. Allison Wonderland,” Fortunato clarified. “I sometimes get it…”

“Anyways,” Zoe said, cutting him off, “it was Query who warned me you’d probably make a pitch and I should be on the lookout for possible snares and blackmailing.”

“Query? He has more issues with me than Vanessa…”

“Plus he gave me a file on you, just like he gave you one on me,” Zoe continued. Reaching into her large shoulder bag, she pulled out a manila envelope and tossed it onto Fortunato’s desk. “As you can see, it’s way bigger than the one you have on me. You have an interesting history for someone who’s on the side of the good guys. I think Query left out a lot. You’re probably even a way bigger ass than he’s letting on to me.”

Fortunato set his cigar aside even as Zoe reached over to the same ashtray to stub out her half-smoked cigarette, and he said, “None of that changes anything about my offer or about your circumstances.”

“No, but it changes the nature of our negotiations, Fortunato. I’ve had a few days to think, knowing this meeting was likely to happen after you did the due diligence and digging around about me, and I’ve decided that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to work more or less on the right side of the law since it’s clear I’m being dragged into this costumed world whether I like it or not. I’d probably have to leave the country to have a normal life in the short run, and I don’t want to do that. I’d also like to make some good money, because I’ve got grad school in my plans and a desire to get through life debt-free and without two bankruptcies like my parents did.”

“What, pray tell, is going to change about our negotiations simply because you expect duplicity from me?”

“First, you’re going to make sure that neither UConn nor the NCAA drags me into the courts, and that means you don’t tell them that I withheld information to get my free ride. It also means that if they come to that conclusion on their own, you’ll do whatever you need to in order to make sure I don’t get sued by the college. Like buy them a new library or whatever,” Zoe said. “You’ll also make sure that no one ties my civilian identity to my costumed one. If I’m exposed, or sued or any of those things I want you to protect me against, you will pay me the equivalent of ten years of my most recent annual salary with you in one lump sum, immediately. A penalty. Or severance. Or whatever you wanna call it.”

“You mean I’ll pay if I’m somehow responsible for any of those things happening.”

“No, you’ll pay regardless,” Zoe said. “Consider it incentive to be very protective of me.”

“That means that you could, theoretically, expose yourself at some point in the future on purpose, at any time in your life, and collect on ten times the last salary I paid you before you left my employ,” Fortunato said.

“Yeah. Well, you need to take risks for big payoffs. I’m pretty sure I’m a five-power transhuman, Fortunato. That’s about as rare as we come. So I’m worth it.”

“You’re more ruthless a negotiator than I expected, Zoe. I think I like you.”

“I don’t know if I can say the feeling’s mutual, but thanks. We can talk about the other details now, but I won’t be signing anything until I have a lawyer look things over. Query’s going to lend me his attorney friend.”

“Oh, how she twists the knife,” Fortunato said with a smile, retrieving his cigar. “Zoe, I might have to watch out or I could fall in love with you.”

[ - To view the next chapter, click here - ]

What a Character!

This is kinda, sorta a throwaway post…but not really.

In part, I wanted to post this because I hate posting back-to-back chapters for “The Gathering Storm” without some kind of post in between them, for fear that people might not notice they are two separate chapters (and I will be posting the next chapter later today). I know, overly paranoid, but that’s me. I don’t want anyone who cares to read the ongoing story to miss anything.

But while I’m here, how about I ask you for some input?

Obviously, my stories are more about character development and character interactions than they are about super-powered folks just fighting each other (though I certainly provide my fair share of that as well). With that in mind, do you enjoy and/or find realistic the way these characters behave, speak, interact, etc.?

Is there too much “intelligent” dialogue (i.e. should there be more average/boring/dumbed-down folks)?

Given that many of the characters are non-white (and I myself am white), do they come across as they should, or do they seem like white people dipped in some brown or golden coloring?

Are there any traits/trends I use too much with characters? Or not enough?

And so on.

I know I don’t have a ton of readers yet here and I know that commenting on blogs has sort of become passe, but I would welcome and encourage comment, whether it’s praise or constructive criticism.

Thanks!

EDIT: And then he realizes he already *did* have a post after the last chapter and before this one. I don’t even know my own blog anymore…

Apologies About the Archive

If you happened to visit to read yesterday’s posting of a new chapter of “The Gathering Storm” and decided to go back to look at old chapters through the link to the archive, you may have discovered, as I did, that the archive no longer lists posts by headline and snippet, but does the full post, making it hard to navigate. Easier would be to go to the “Stores and Series List” drop down menu at the top of the page and you can get to chapters through the full list of stories.

In the meantime, I’m working on a special menu with links to each chapter of “The Gathering Storm” as well an a synopsis of each chapter. Stay tuned.

UPDATE Feb. 2, 10:10 p.m.

Now have a much easier to navigate (and more informative) list of chapters so far in “The Gathering Storm,” which can accessed from the drop-down menu for stories and series lists at the top of the page, or by clicking here.