Seven Wonders (43 page)

  "The power core. Come, we are in danger."

  Sam looked at Joe, who stared back. She then looked around the immediate area, turning a complete circle. Three patrol cars, a handful of uniforms, some taking a break, the thin trickle of stragglers from the city.

  "Where are Conroy and Blackbird?"

  Joe's eyes widened as he joined Sam's search, their whiteness contrasting even more against his dark skin in the artificial light cast by the patrol car lights. "Oh shit. Not…?"

  Sam met his eye. "The Cowl and fucking Blackbird. God
damn
, I knew it."

  Before they could say anything else, the air fuzzed blue and purple, the Dragon Star's bubble surrounding them again and lifting the pair from the ground with a sudden jerk which threw them against the side of the sphere. Sam felt the bubble tingle against the heel of her hand.

  "Hey! Where are we going?"

  The Dragon Star pointed with her staff. Soon they were flying over the interstate bridge and to the North Beach hills.

  "There. The power core is there. But…" She paused, and their flight stalled.

  Sam looked up at her. "But what?"

  The Dragon Star didn't reply immediately. When she did, Sam could see her mouth was pulled downwards at the edges, the closest that she'd ever seen the alien had got to an emotional expression.

  "I cannot contact Aurora or any of the Wonders in the city. Even Bluebell's mind is closed."

  Sam took a breath. Joe looked like he was ready to say something but she held a hand up, motioning him to keep quiet while she thought things through.

  "First things first," she began slowly. "If the Cowl and Blackbird get the power core, the city really is history. That's number one. Number two, once we get the power core and those two assholes sewn up, then we go into the city and check on the heroes. For the moment we just have to assume they can handle themselves."

  Joe's mouth closed, then he nodded. "Agreed."

  "I too agree," said the Dragon Star, turning in the air and pulling the detectives behind her.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

"Ah, a home away from home," said Jeannie. "Such sweet memories."

  Conroy couldn't resist a laugh, but as he did he tripped and bumped into the corner of the building. Here, on the side facing away from the city and harbor, it was quite dark and he was forced to feel his way forward around the back of his old North Beach mansion.

  "We do it your way, this is gonna take all night."

  Jeannie strode past him, her bright overalls nothing more than a deep gray shadow. He took a delicate step forward, then tripped again as he started at the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood. He swore, called for Jeannie, then stopped as the outside lights flooded on.

  "OK, that works."

  He stepped around the corner, grimacing at the smashed French windows of his former mansion. Jeannie stood inside an airy dining area, furniture covered with white sheets.

  "So what are we doing here, exactly?"

  Conroy clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Well, seeing as we were in the neighborhood, there was just something I wanted to pick up."

  "What about the evacuation of the city?"

  Conroy waved a hand. "The heroes have that under control."

  "Uh-huh." Jeannie put her hands on her hips. "I thought
you
were a hero now?"

  Conroy laughed. "You could say that, yes, but a hero without powers? Useful, but only to a limited degree."

  "Still feeling… impotent, eh?" Jeannie snorted.

  "Oh, catty. I like that." Conroy hopped down a short flight of three wide stairs that led down into a broad lounge area. A massive copperfaced hearth stood cold against one immaculate white wall. Jeannie went to follow, then paused on the steps. On the floor in one corner was the crumpled cloak The Cowl had dumped millennia ago.

  "And what are we looking for?"

  "Oh, we're not looking for anything. I've found it." Conroy reached under the artfully angled frontage of the hearth, groping for a secret compartment. He let out a long "Ah-ha!" and withdrew his hand. He turned to Jeannie and held up a thick black cylinder, its surface shiny and glass-like.

  "Prison life rotting the brain, eh?" he said with a smile. "We only raided a dozen secret locations and killed even more to build this."

  "So that's where you hid it," said Jeannie. She frowned. "I didn't think we'd finished that project?"

  Conroy rolled the device over in his hands, running his fingers over every square inch of its smooth surface.

  "Oh, we didn't," he said. "There's no way to couple it with the core itself and charge it up, and of course we never got to the gun part. But it'll help locate the core, anyway. The city is a mess, I thought we might need it."

  Jeannie reached out a hand, palm up. Conroy hesitated for a second, then handed the slim device over. It was featureless and smooth, with no controls or readout. Jeannie handed it back.

  "I prefer my alien artifacts to have buttons. You know how to use it?"

  Conroy looked at the cylinder. "You don't need to know how to use it. It'll do all the work."

  Right on cue, the device blinked into life. The black metal surface changed hue, becoming a shiny gray like a TV set that's just been turned off in a dark room.

  "Drop it!"

  The blonde detective stood in the smashed doorway, legs splayed, pistol held firm in a two-handed grip. Behind and to her left, her partner adopted the same position, aiming squarely at Jeannie. The Dragon Star hovered at the rear, head and shoulders above the two detectives and hefting her powerstaff horizontally over her own head.

  Conroy took a step forward. The color of the wand shifted to a lighter shade of gray. "Sam, I…"

  "That's Detective Millar, SVPD, Mr Conroy. Another step and I'll put a hole in that fancy suit of yours."

  "It's armored, detective."

  Sam twitched the gun up a fraction, maintaining her precise stance. "Well I'll just have to aim a little higher, won't I?"

  Conroy raised his hands in surrender, making sure the power core detector was as visible as possible.

  "Sam, you're making a mistake. I came here to collect this−" he waggled the device in the air "−which I thought would be the easiest way to find the power core."

  Sam's expression didn't change. "Yeah, right."

  Jeannie threw a sideways glance at her former lover. "Now what?"

  "Now what nothing."

  "No, like now what, what are we going to do?"

  Conroy shrugged. "Like, nothing." He nodded at the Dragon Star. "Will this be useful? Take it."

  The Dragon Star floated to the ground, and walked around the two detectives, obscuring their line of fire as her cloak spread out behind her. She walked up to Conroy, close enough that they almost touched. The Dragon Star looked up into his face, her eyes searching his features. Conroy imagined the alien mind inhabiting the body trying to read the expression and judge what the true intentions of this human were. Conroy smiled, and brought the device in front of the hero's face.

  The Dragon Star reached up and took it. Conroy let got with no resistance. "I told you. I wouldn't betray the Seven Wonders."

  Jeannie hissed. "You sonovabitch. You really have changed, haven't you?"

  The Dragon Star took a step back and Conroy used the space to turn to Jeannie. "Damn right, honeybun." He looked at the detectives. "Happy?"

  The Dragon Star turned and walked back up the stairs and towards the exit, holding her powerstaff in one hand and the detector in the other. Without stopping, she walked past the detectives and out into the grounds of house.

  "Paragon speaks the truth. The power core is near – come."

  Joe relaxed and holstered his gun, shaking his head but not arguing. Sam held the gun a moment longer, keeping Conroy in her sights.

  "Sam?"

  Sam's face was flushed red and her eyes were wet. But she took a breath and lowered her gun. She fixed Conroy with a dark look for a few seconds, then turned and followed the Dragon Star outside.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Sand Cat opened her eyes, seeing nothing but a rough, monochrome surface. For a moment a memory of the moonbase flashed before her eyes, and she wondered what she was doing lying – impossibly – outside on the desolation of the moon.

  Then the fire. She sucked in a breath, the air bringing with it a choking grit. She coughed, her back arching from the uncompromising surface with each spasmodic expulsion of air. The movement was good, clearing her mind. The first thing she saw as she coughed was a hand attached to an arm − the hand was bare, the arm wrapped in a striped blue and white spandex sleeve. The fingers of the hand twitched as the owner groaned, Bluebell's face also pressed in the ground.

  Sand Cat coughed again and was soon on her knees. Each spasm of her lungs helped push blood back into her head, clearing synapses and shocking her body back to normal function.

  The fire, the city. She focused on the black chipped rock that covered the tarmac on which she had lain, the color far darker, she realized, than the light gray of the moon. Next to her lay Bluebell, unconscious. Next to Bluebell, Aurora and Linear. Neither moved except for slow breaths. Bluebell was the second to stir.

  They were in a city square, small and plain and gray, nondescript bench seating surrounding a featureless paved open area. Sandwiched between high-rise office blocks, this secluded spot would be busy on a weekday lunchtime with office workers eating salads and drinking coffee. Around, the buildings were smoking shells, their glass-fronted facades shattered.

  It was dark. Sand Cat stopped coughing and blinked, her magical vision gifted by the Goddess enabling her to see in low light. But this was different. It was night but the square, the buildings, were…
veiled,
somehow. It was like looking through a muslin sheet.

  Footsteps, behind her. Sand Cat was on her feet, crouching low, spinning around in preparation for a fight. Nothing. The footsteps stopped, then restarted on the opposite side of the square. She turned again, calling out a challenge, curling her fists as she readied herself for a quick transformation into her spirit form in a heartbeat. The footsteps stopped, to be replaced by laughter. It was loud, brackish, the laugh of a drunken oaf at a frat house party. It bounced around the square then sounded immediately in Sand Cat's right ear. She flinched, ready to strike, but was met with a punch just as her head turned. She flew across the square, landing badly against one of the bench seats. She slumped to the ground, cried out and closed her eyes, but immediately started to pick herself up. The fight was on.

  The man walked toward her, stepping over the comatose forms of Bluebell and Linear that lay in his path. Sand Cat squinted, trying to focus on him, but there was something odd about his costume. Like an optical illusion, as soon as she could make out a feature, more of the man's shape became indistinct, one part coming into sharp relief only for a different part to dissolve into headache-inducing fuzz. What she could see was simple enough − humanoid, male, a black silhouette, white eyes with black pupils. There were no other features, no depth at all to his shape or form. From her position, as he walked across the square, Sand Cat could only make him out in two dimensions. And then a white-toothed smile split the face, too wide to be human, teeth immaculate but monochromatic, like a child's drawing of teeth in chalk on a blackboard.

  The shadow stopped. As he did so, Sand Cat saw the black haze around the square shimmer, ripple almost. Particulate black matter, dust-like but fine and smoky, hung around the figure, increasing in density around his neck and stretching out to envelop the square. A cloak of dust and shadow, of darkness, un-light. Hovering above his head by a good six inches was an indistinct shimmer of spikey shapes; Sand Cat realized with a start it looked like a crown.

  The superhero drew herself up, ignoring the white-hot sear of pain that cut across her back after her violent impact with the bench. By the time the fighting began, it would be healed. Her balled fists fizzed with magnetic animal power.

  "Who are you?" Sand Cat spat the words through teeth clenched in pain and anger.

  The figure's smile broadened, the white shape sickly against the flat blackness of the face. "Oh, Sand Cat, what's the matter? Don't you recognize me? Don't you recognize one of your own?"

  Sand Cat's eyes darted to the slumbering forms of Linear and Bluebell, lying on the ground. Bluebell continued to move her limbs in a very slow recovery.

  One of our own? Who was he?

  "I repeat, who are you?"

  The smile shrunk. "I'd say I'm disappointed, but that would be a supervillain cliché." He walked up to Sand Cat, and bent down, bringing the black mask-like face to within an inch of her own. Sand Cat did not shrink back, did not show any sign of weakness, but even so close the man's face was… indistinct, indefinable.

  "See," the man said, his voice now a whisper. "You should know me, and know me well. You're responsible for my death. Fortunately, I have new friends who are responsible for my rebirth."

  Sand Cat expelled a short breath of surprise.

  "The Justiciar?"

  The figure smiled, and inclined his head in mock politeness. "Once, yes. Once a man called Tony. But now I bring the Living Dark to the city. I've been sent on a mission, you see, by friends who know what trust and responsibility are."

  "Is that so?"

  "It is, because–"

  The Living Dark dropped from Sand Cat's eye line. She stood, and looked up to see the resurrected form of Tony being carried by the ankle into the sky by Aurora, corona blazing in anger. So close to the unleashed solar energy of the hero, the Living Dark appeared to whither and become thin and stick-like, his cloak of shadow all but vanished. Even with the increasing distance between them, she could see the sharp white outline of the mouth curved into a circle. The Living Dark cried out in pain, a wail so terrible that Sand Cat was forced to cover her ears.