The Indestructibles (21 page)

Chapter 47:

Can't go back

I thought you didn't trust the old guy," Titus said, watching Kate test out some sort of mobile taser weapon Sam gave her.
She had a set of these tasers, which were somewhere between throwing stars and stun darts. Kate practiced on a human-shaped target dummy, experimenting awkwardly with overhand, underhand, and sidearm tosses. In spite of all the completely terrifying things Kate was capable of, Titus thought, she really couldn't throw very well.

      But as with everything Kate did, she was trying to perfect her technique. He already witnessed her improvement with the taser discs and she'd only been practicing for a few hours.

      "So?" she said.

      "He gives you a bunch of gifts now you're cool with him? He's like a creepy uncle buying his niece off with presents."

      "First, I can't be bought off," Kate said. She hurled the disc again and it landed with a disconcerting noise on the forehead of the dummy. "Second, he's not creepy, he's completely bugnuts crazy."

      "Well, that's reassuring," Titus said.

      "No, I mean, he's one of us. Crazy and wants to make a better world. I don't entirely trust him but he's on our side," she said. "I have a feeling about these things."

      "Took you at least three weeks to trust me."

      "You didn't give me presents," Kate said. "And, Sam doesn't lose control and change into a murderous werewolf when he gets in a bad mood."

      "Touché," Titus said. "Kate?"

      "What?" she said.

      This time the disc nailed the dummy above the heart. She walked to retrieve it, returned, and then threw again, repeating the heart-shot. Kate nodded to herself approvingly.

      "You ever wonder what'll happen when this is all over? When, y'know. We stop the bad guys. What happens to us then?"

      "We find more bad guys, Titus," Kate said. Ambitiously, she now took two discs in hand and flung them together. They spun out of control, missing the dummy entirely. Titus retrieved one, Kate the other. "There are always more bad guys . . ."

      "I know," he said. "But does all this mean we totally forfeit, like, any sense of normalcy?"

      "You're a werewolf. Normalcy? I'd say that shipped sailed."

      "I don't know. It'd be nice to go to college or something," Titus said. "Although the application process would be a trip."

      "Like to see the essay."

      "How I spent my summer saving the world, by Titus Talbot," he said. "Billy and Em have families. Jane talks about the people who raised her all the time. Bet she misses them like hell."

      "And then there's us," Kate said.

      "Yeah," he said. "Seems like a really lonely life, y'know? I mean — I bet there haven't been three dates total in the lives of anyone in this building."

      "I bet Sam was a player in his youth," she said.

      "You know who I mean. Us. The gang. The team. Wouldn't it be nice to, y'know . . . have a life?"

      "It's overrated," Kate said.

      "Have you tried it?"

      She narrowed her eyes.

      Titus put his head in his hands. "You know what I mean."

      She exhaled harshly, then threw her hands up in the air.

      "I don't know if I could."

      "What?"

      "Have a life," Kate said. "What's it like when you wolf out? How does it feel?"

      "Lately, not so bad, but for a long time it was completely out of control. Felt like I couldn't stop moving no matter how much I wanted to."

      "That's me all the time. I don't sleep. If I sit still, I worry. I've got to be on the go. Can't have a life."

      Titus stopped rubbing his forehead and looked at her in silence for a few seconds.

      "I know," he said.

      "You can't keep following me when I go patrolling, Titus," she said. "When you transform, you're a two hundred and fifty pound werewolf. It's like being followed by a dump truck with fangs."

      "Just wanna watch your back."

      Kate smiled — a rare treat.

      "I know," she said. "I appreciate it. But you don't have to."

      "I'm sorry."

      "It's okay," Kate said.

      They stood in silence a while, Kate whipping the taser discs at the dummy repeatedly, developing a good rhythm.

      "One of those three dates yours?" she asked, finally.

      "What?"

      "You said we had three dates between the lot of us. You ever been on a date, or did the wolfing get in the way?"

      "Maybe once."

      Another long pause, more flinging of discs.

      "I've never been on a date. The training seemed more imperative. Always something more important to do," Kate said.

      "It was really difficult to see someone when I was on the run and howling at the moon," he said.

      "We should go . . . When this is all over."

      "You'd go out with me?"

      "I'm not asking you to marry me. Just saying. It could be fun — the blind leading the blind."

      "You'd date a werewolf?"

      "Why not? I think I'd rather date a literal werewolf than a figurative one."

      Titus smiled broadly.

      "Now all we have to do is save the world," he said. "Guys have had to do worse things to convince a girl to go to the movies with them."

Chapter 48:

The other side

On the other side of the looking glass, everything was luminous.

      Doc never ceased to be amazed at the beauty of it all, the shimmering glow of the new reality layered over the mundane — everything lined in light and dusted with silver. He waved his fingers and a blue path rolled out in front of him like a carpet. When he walked, his tattoos glowed, leaving trails of light in his wake.

      Eventually he found the place where he'd left the bodies of the demons that had been sent to attack the girl in the storm. Still dead, but unchanged, without signs of decay or rot. Death's got a different meaning on the other side.

      Carefully, he examined wings and teeth, eyes and skin. These weren't constructs, nor magical illusions dredged up from another sorcerer's mind. They were real, flesh and blood and bone, creatures from dark and terrible places that existed only in myth to the average person.

      If their enemy could control real demons, then this was indeed a true threat. They had access to dangerous tools.

      Doc lay one of the demons on its stomach, spread the wings out, and drew a symbol between the creature's shoulder blades. He did the same to another, and then a third. As he completed tracing the rune with his fingertip, a thin trail of light spilled from it, running off into the distance, a tiny trail of breadcrumbs back to where the creature had come from. Unsurprisingly, the lines converged, became brighter, racing off into the sky.

      Doc took a step back and saw his own shadow. He reached down and tugged, lifting the shadow from the ground with his fingertips. It separated easily. Doc stood the shadow on its feet — on
his
feet — and breathed into it. This shadow, now a full-fledged man shape, featureless and dark, stood awaiting orders. He placed a hand on either of the shadow man's shoulders and pulled. Shadow man split in two, creating an identical, faceless version of himself. Doc split this mirror image in two also, pointed at the glowing trail, and the shadow golems flew off into the strange night sky.

      With his shadow men acting as bloodhounds, Doc began dissecting the demons, peeling them apart, looking for sigils of control. Most often, creatures like this were controlled with a brand, a binding that enslaved them to the magician who etched it into their skin. All three were scarred, but all demons of this sort were scarred, skin covered in keloid bumps and old lash marks. Yet Doc discovered nothing — no marks, no symbols. He checked between fingers and toes, inside their mouths, on the insides of their eyelids.

      If they were not bound by traditional means, that meant any of several other possibilities. They could have been acting out of general malignance, which, for little gremlins like this, was not unheard of. But the situation — driving a storm, the science involved — it all felt too organized and deliberate, and when left to their own devices, small demons were always poorly disciplined. They might terrorize a fishing vessel but they would never bother with something on this grand a scale.

      Alternately, they could be under the influence of a like-minded creature. Something similar to them, yet more powerful, more malicious, more organized. Doc and his friends had fought several demon lords over the years, immortal, malignant, pitiless things. But again, the technology. The lab. Creatures from the other side don't have time for science, they never do. They work in bargains and night terrors . . .

      Still, there are those who work exclusively in bargains, Doc thought with a twinge of panic. Please don't let it be her. Don't let her be involved.

      He felt his shadow men as they were destroyed, a twinge of pain in his fingertips and between his shoulders. The men were constructed from his willpower and when they were gone that power came flooding back, but so did the pain that wiped them out of existence, an incredibly swift negation of the spells Doc utilized to build them from his own shadow.

      He discovered the incoming attack just in time, an arcing ball of red flames racing along the threads he weaved from the backs of the dead demons. Doc projected his most powerful protective spell in front of him and the fireball crashed into it, changing the blue and silver world to purple and gold. The tattoos all over his torso swam and spun, forming new, alien words, building spells faster than his own mind could formulate them. They surrounded him with armor, erased his footsteps, and masked his face from probing eyes in the distance.

      Doc pulled a small, hooked knife from his pocket. Spying another attack heading his way, he stabbed the knife deep into his own palm. He gasped at the pain, but the astral world began to fade, to reduce back down into the mundane . . .

      Jane hovered over him as he came to, his strange purple eyes flaring brighter than ever. Doc's tattoos burned under the palms of her hands but his skin was ice cold, hair tarnished with sweat.

      "What happened!" she yelled, helping him lay down on his back. Doc was shivering. She grabbed his long coat and draped it over him. He smelled different — a bizarre blend of charcoal and freezer burn. "Are you okay?"

      "I have . . . had better ideas," Doc said. "Please start kicking those patterns in the sand. Break them up so they're not readable."

      "I wasn't able to read them," Jane said, but did as she was told.

      "I just want to make sure I can't be traced back," he said.

      "What happened?"

      "I think I know who's working their magic angle for them," Doc said, pushing himself up onto one elbow.     

      "Someone like you?"

      "Lady Natasha Gray," he said. "Don't know why she'd be caught up in something like this though. Experimenting on kids seems beneath her. She must have an angle."

      "Sounds like you know her," Jane said.

      "Taught me everything I know."

Chapter 49:

The Voice

All Emily knew was she missed some weird stuff today.

      It was partially her own fault because she'd spent the day harassing her nemeses online, but it wasn't as though anyone had invited her along to help with whatever they were doing. Now Titus and Kate sat next to each other at the meeting table — Kate never sits next to anyone, she barely ever sits, Emily thought — and then Doc walked in looking like he caught a bad case of the flu, seeming so worn out that Jane's death grip on his arm was likely the only thing that kept him standing.

      He grunted like an old man when he sat down, also with Jane's assistance, and Emily didn't like that one bit.

      "I've done some digging," he said, his voice exhausted. "I wanted — why are you smiling?"

      His question was directed at Titus who was, in fact, grinning like an idiot.

      "I'm not smiling."

      "Been smiling since you walked in here," Emily said.

      "Everything okay?" Doc asked.

      Titus looked at Kate.

      Kate glanced back at Titus.

      He stopped smiling.

      "Everything's perfectly normal — not different at all," Titus said. "Morose werewolf boy at your service."

      Doc shook his head.

      "I want to warn you that it looks like we've got a big player in the game now, a world-class sorceress. Let me tell you one thing, and one thing only: don't engage her. Don't even talk to her. If she tries to talk, run."

      "What if — " Kate started.

      "Run," Doc said. It was the hardest he'd ever spoken to any of them, and Emily picked up on real worry in his voice. "Leave her to me. Magic is . . . Magic has its own rules. I haven't prepared you well enough to fight someone like her."

      "Or like you," Kate said.

      "Nor someone like me," he said. "Until I do, just promise you won't try to fight her."

      "You gonna to tell us anything about her?" Jane said. "You said — "

      "Let me figure out how we're going to deal with her first. Then, I will. Where's Sam?"

      "Out," Kate said. "Do we get to know this woman's name at least?"

      "Out?"

      "Said the food in this place still 'tastes like 1980's space food' and wanted to get a deli sandwich," Kate said. "Name?"

      "That picky old man," Doc said.

      "Her name is Lady Natasha Gray," Jane said.

      "That's historically inaccurate," Emily said.

      Everyone turned to look at her as if she'd said something strange.

      "What?"

      Meanwhile, Kate engaged in a stare down with Doc. 

      "She's dangerous, Kate," he said. "Even more dangerous if you let her speak with you. She makes deals. Makes promises. It's worse than it sounds. We need to plan ahead before we engage her."

      "That's all I'm asking for, Doc," Kate said. "Thanks."

      He stood up wearily. "That process took the life out of me. I need to sleep it off and try to develop some methods to deal with this latest threat," he said. "Stay out of trouble for a while?"

      "Sure thing," Emily said.

      "Especially you," Doc said. "Someone please wake me up if Sam gets back."

      Neal, the Tower's computer, chimed in with a gentle warning bell. It was so unexpected, yet so polite, nearly everyone in the room jumped out of their skins. Everyone but Kate of course. It startled Titus so much he cursed under his breath.

     
"Designation: Silence,"
Neal said, courteous as always.
"There is a broadcast occurring right now you should be aware of."

      "Where?" Doc said.

     
". . . everywhere, sir,"
Neal said.
"I have not confirmed its worldwide distribution but it appears to be cutting into all cable and satellite television, as well as streaming video from all major providers."

      "So play it, Neal. From the beginning."

     
"Yes sir."

      The wall-sized screen behind Doc lit up. It revealed a simple image of what appeared to be a bank branch manager with a deep purple sock over his head. A squid design was etched on the front of it.

      "Oh my gawd it's the Cthulhu people!" Emily yelled.

      Doc waved his hand and shushed her.

      "I'm the designated Voice for the Children of the Elder Star," the man said. He had a good voice, Emily thought. He could record audiobooks. "We've been silent for too long. The world has forgotten us."

      "The demands," Kate said.

      "I speak for us, but I don't command us — we're many, and all around you. You're in our world. You simply don't realize it yet."

      "What could they want?" Jane asked.

      "You've seen a series of unnatural hurricanes strike the Atlantic coast. A raging forest fire in the American west. Acts of destruction perpetrated by children. I'm here to tell you that those are the least of what we can rain down upon you.

      "We control the weather, and have an army of human bombs and walking weapons at our disposal. You'll do as we say, or be taught to understand that this is no longer your world, but ours."

      Titus suddenly stood up and cocked his head, listening to something outside the room. He walked softly around the table, his eyebrows drawn tight in concentration.

      "We know you'll find this difficult to believe, and so, to prove our threats are real, we'll launch one final attack. You'll see that we not only control the weather, and are able to burn your forests to the ground, but can initiate earthquakes at will. As such, there'll be an earthquake in the city momentarily."

      "Do you guys hear that?" Titus asked.

      Jane was on her feet, heading for the landing platform. "Emily, come on," she said.

      "Nations of the world, our demands will follow shortly. We sincerely hope you choose to cooperate and not force us to deliver another demonstration."

      The screen blipped blank.

      Then, the entire Tower shook.