Prepare to Die! (40 page)

“Here?” she said, putting a question (and so very much more) into her voice. “You want to have sex here? Now?” I hadn’t wanted to. Before. Hadn’t been thinking of it (a lie) and had only wanted to save her life. Now, though, I had saved her life, right? Shouldn’t there be a reward?

I was reaching beneath her dress when a laser beam pierced the entire boulder and nearly my head as well. It startled me into sanity (not all the way into it, but within yelling range, I’d say) and I remembered that I was in a fight.

So I moved my hand from where it had been touching Siren (my hand argued about this in an almost perceptible voice, and I’d swear the intimate area where I’d been touching Siren complained about the loss of my fingers in an entirely audible voice) and I braced for some super heroics, and I picked up the boulder.

It wasn’t that difficult. Couldn’t have weighed more than twenty thousand pounds. Well within my range.

It wasn’t a wieldy weight, though, and so I wobbled a bit as I moved forward, and I took a laser to my shoulder and worried about the next few shots, because I wasn’t exactly moving at full speed. Luckily, behind every good man (and even behind me) there is a good woman, or in this case a beautiful one, which is largely regarded as the same thing.

Siren called out, “Darling. The lasers are nearly hitting me.” That was the end of the lasers. No more incoming shots. That gave me time to waddle forward (Siren was moving along with me, whispering into my ear, telling me how big and strong I was, and how her little body was trembling) with the flames soaring up and around and over the boulder, turning it red hot, igniting my uncovered legs, and at one point a fire hook lashed around my foot (Siren jumped over it with a little “Whoop!” of surprise that sounded so sexually adorable that I nearly came in my pants and dropped the boulder in pleasure) and a huge chunk of my foot was snatched away, forcing me to slow myself even further, but I made progress, and I made progress, and I made progress, until I finally nearly stumbled on Firehook’s leg, giving me a clear idea where he was.

Which is exactly where I dropped the big rock.

By then, by that time, due to the deprivations of the flames and all the incoming blasts, the boulder had probably lost five thousand pounds. Not a bad weight loss program.

In this case, though, that still left fifteen thousand pounds of weight, which was more than enough to squash a man who well deserved to be treated like a bug. I had no regrets about snuffing out his flame… none past how the method of his execution meant that I hadn’t had a chance to see his expression when the rock was coming down.

When the rock hit, the shudder of the impact knocked Siren off balance. The surrounding flames left us with a WHUFFF of an explosion and Siren’s dress fluttered as she began to tumble with an unconcerned look… the expression of a woman who knew that men were put on Earth to catch her when she falls.

I did.

I lost a couple seconds doing it.

I lost even more seconds having done it.

She nuzzled against me with a smile of gratitude and asked if there was anything she could do in return. Her face was alluringly lit by the green glow that was coming from my legs, from where they’d been exposed to the flames. I was lowering my lips to hers (and picturing images that would have sent a Satanic porn star to confessional) when Laser Beast leapt onto me from behind.

He bit at my neck. Maybe he’d been driven mad by how I’d just killed his friend (I assumed Firehook and he were friends, since they were teammates and since people like them have no one else in their lives, no one to be close to, no one to pass them beers and to tell vulgar jokes) or maybe he’d transformed, finally, to nothing about lasers and all about the beast. It’s even quite possible that the animal in him had seen my lips about to touch Siren’s own lips (a moment he had STOLEN from me) and was defending his territory. Siren, of course, is no one’s territory… but we all have our dreams.

“Free-grack KILL you!” Laser Beast said. I couldn’t entirely understand him. There were more words, or more attempts at words, or something. His teeth were grating on my neck (not strong enough to penetrate) and I was idly wondering if I would turn into a werewolf if he did manage to sink his teeth into me (of course I knew that such stories were myths, but I’d often had lunch with personages of a far more mythological bent) and about half of me was trying to kill him because I needed to pay more attention to Octagon (where the hell was she and what was she doing?) and the rest of me was paying attention to Siren… because I knew (oh hell yes) exactly where she was and what the two of us should be doing.

So I wasn’t paying much attention to Laser Beast and I did not feel it when his lasers began to warm up. I’d stupidly (listen…
everyone
is stupid in a fight) assumed that he’d gone so bestial that I didn’t have to worry about the lasers, so it took me by ludicrous surprise when the lasers began emitting from his arms (wrapped around my chest from behind) and his stomach (pressed against my back) and even his teeth, which hadn’t been able to bite their way into my neck, so they just blew open a hole and kicked in the doors.

Lasers pierced me from every angle.

The world went swim-y.

I dropped to one knee.

Then two knees.

The rocks all around me were being showered by a mad mess of laser beams, ones shooting across the quarry, shooting into the sky, shooting wildly, shooting most definitely into and through me. Siren had taken a few steps back and was simply watching, glowing with some sort of force field, protected from the barrage by means of either her own personal powers, or perhaps some technological marvel that had been constructed and given to her by the girl from the grocery store. To be honest, I’ve never really understood Siren’s powers… the ones besides her appearance and her raw (cosmic, galactic, thrusting) sexuality, because I (and everyone else) have just never been able to pay much attention, otherwise.

She seemed pleased to have a good view of my death, though.

And I was certainly dying. The wounds were trying to heal, but… there… were… so many holes being shot through my body. Blood was spurting from my neck and unidentifiable
somethings
were sliding out from my stomach (the laser that hit my midsection was a good god-damned two inches in diameter) and my spine had been severed, meaning I was flopping to one side.

Siren was clapping.

It was, even then, sensuous.

My hand was clenching. Opening. Clenching. Opening. It was my left hand. The one that had let Paladin fall into the lava. It had done the right thing, then. I was sure that it had. My dying thoughts were that it had done the right thing. My dying thoughts were that I shouldn’t have kissed Adele. It wasn’t fair. My dying thoughts were that I should have kissed Adele so much more often. My dying thoughts were that it was strange how I could no longer control my hand… that some quirk of my brain was making it open, clench, open, clench. My dying thoughts were that there was suddenly something in the way of my fingers, something that had slid into my grasp, blocking my clench. It made me angry. All I wanted to do was open and clench. Open and clench. Open and clench. Something was taking even that away, and it was all that I had.

I spared enough notice to see that Laser Beast’s leg, wrapped around my waist as he clung to me from behind, with the two of us flailing all over the quarry floor in Greenway, Oregon, had fallen into my grasp when my hand had, at one point, opened.

I clenched.

My grasp was just below his calf muscle on his left leg. My grasp was on the muscle and blood and bone beneath a fine pair of sharkskin pants. My grasp can squeeze steel like putty. Sharkskin pants are nice, but they don’t protect a leg for shit when it’s caught in a superhuman vise.

Laser Beast’s scream was partly a howl, and it was right in my ear, and as he fell away from me I meant to turn and continue my attack, but I wasn’t ready yet. Not quite. The green spectre of Tom Clarke was still doing its job, healing me. Laser Beast’s leg would never heal… not unless I lost the fight… not unless Octagon could give Laser Beast that fucking potion that’s distilled from the protective instinct of my dead brother. I wasn’t about to let that happen. I crawled. I crawled to Laser Beast (
I’m already healing, you son of a bitch… and how are YOU doing?
) and I brought a fist down on his injured leg (
bam… a year… and how’s THAT feel
?) and I inched forward and slammed a fist down on his chest (that’s two years of Laser Beast the universe would be spared) and then I was at his face (I’d managed to clamber up onto my knees, and my spine was reforming, providing me support, and clamoring for some justice and a lot of revenge) and I had one moment where the voice of morality, the one that sometimes whispers in my ear, the one that always sounds like Paladin, was telling me that Laser Beast wasn’t one of the invulnerable ones… that if I punched him, he’d die.

I told the voice, “Yeah. I know.”

I told Laser Beast, “Take some time off!”

And then I punched him in the face.

I didn’t hold back.

My fist sank a foot deep into the rocky quarry floor.

There was a moment of silence except for the heaving of my breath, and whatever whispers were coming from my mouth. What I was saying, I have no idea. The moment lasted for one second. Maybe two. I was glowing green from scores of puncture wounds caused by the lasers. It probably looked like polka dots.

I heard someone scream out, “Yes!”

I heard someone, someone enthusiastic, yell, “Reaver!”

There was a huge burst of applause.

Looking up, I could see the edges of the quarry, the tops of the rock walls, were lined with hundreds of people. The citizens of Greenway. I immediately thought of Octagon’s arena… how he (I mean
she
, dammit) had set me up as some sort of modern gladiatorial entertainment, and now she was doing it again. She had, apparently, ordered one of her underlings to gather the citizens of Greenway, for Mistress Mary was among them, was moving through them, running to and fro, carrying a bullhorn, exhorting them to do as she wished (which they were all doing, without question) and of course Mistress Mary was now a member of Eleventh Hour. Maybe she even had a badge. A secret handshake. A clock that only went to eleven. That sort of thing.

The bitch used to be one of us.

Now, in Mistress Mary’s
post-good-guy
era, I could see her up there, and with a combination of my very good ears (not superhuman, just good) and the simple fact that she was yelling through a bullhorn, I could hear what she was saying to the people of my hometown.

She was saying, “Don’t get too close to the edge! You could fall!” This was just good advice; I couldn’t blame her for that. The walls were forty or fifty feet tall in some areas, and the rocks were shale, crumbling, and the edges weren’t the wisest places to stand.

She was saying, “Applaud! Applaud! This is the apex! You’ll never see a better show!” At least I was supposedly a good show. Give me a bit more of a chance and I’ll whittle Eleventh Hour down a couple more notches. Just… give me half a chance.

Mistress Mary was yelling, “This is
good
versus
evil
, Greenway! Choose your side!” Yeah. Piss on that. Piss on
you
, Mistress Mary, telling people that they had a choice. You’re the only one who had a choice. You chose Eleventh Hour, and everyone falls in line, because your voice is…

Mistress Mary said, “Reaver is a hero. Remember your heroes! Remember the fight! Every morning! Every day! Remember the heroes! If you always remember the heroes, you always remember what you can be!”

Now how the hell was that supposed to help Eleventh Hour?

Mistress Mary said, “Do you love him? Do you love him? Answer me!”

And they did answer. I saw Frank O’Neill and his Channel Five camera crew, reporting. And there was Gus Ferkins. There was the girl who sold me crab cakes at the convenience store, and even Grace Shanahan, the crab cake maker. Greta and Felix Barrows, Greg’s parents, were standing with their adopted daughter, Chase. Next to them was Judy, who had once been my brother Tom’s handjob queen, and who now stood with the family she’d created after he was gone. There was Tim Grady, the mailman who always joked about the obvious packages of sex toys he’d delivered throughout the years. I saw the Gorner twins, still looking the same, not only identical but as if they hadn’t aged. Slightly bigger breasts, that was all, on both of them, of course. I saw John Molar. I wondered if he still had a driver’s license… how many stop signs he’d run throughout the years… how many people had been forced to leap out of his way. I saw Brett Turle, who used to come over to our house to play cards with my parents, up until the day he told my mother (he had, by then, drank near to a bottle of wine) that she had “
by far the most sweetest of asses that he probably shouldn’t ought to touch
.” And I saw Laura Layton. And I saw Adele. It was only an hour ago that she had kissed me on the lips in what had been, still, the greatest revelation of my day.

She was standing with all of Greenway.

They were all saying that they loved me.

They were all applauding.

There was so much noise that I couldn’t hear any one voice in particular. The clapping hands became a single flock of noises, gathered into one.

Then…

“No,” I heard.

It was a single voice.

Someone didn’t love me.

“No,” she said. It was a woman’s voice. Not from anyone who was ringing the heights of the Greenway quarry. No. It was coming from just behind me.

The voice said, “No. I have to tell the truth. I don’t love you.”

It was Siren.

She was moving closer. Slinking closer. The air hummed around her and my senses were flaring. I could feel the healing charging within me; I could feel it racing into overdrive, believing there was new damage to heal, wounds that needed to be closed, physical threats that needed to be addressed, but my senses were confused because there was no threat, no new wounds, nothing but an ocean of restless desire. An ache. A twist.