I Am Titanium (Pax Black Book 1) (7 page)

School must have just let out. The two kids were in matching gray and blue uniforms with gold trim. They were maybe ten years old, a black kid with a shaved head and big ears, and a white one with a beak of a nose and no chin. They were both holding long, greenish willow branches with the bark peeled off.

“Whoa! Look at that lady! Is this some kind of special effect? Is this a movie?” the black kid yelled.

Scarlett waved her burning hands in front of her. “Stay away from me!”

Pax stood in front of her with his arms spread out. If he’d been human, the heat would have blistered his skin, blackened his clothes, and caught his hair on fire. The air already smelled like something was burning.

“No!” he shouted, sounding like an idiot. “Stop!”

The kids stopped on the other side of Pax and peeked around him.

“Yow, lady, you’re hot!” yelled the white kid and they both laughed honking, goosey laughs.

The white kid tried to poke Scarlett with his stick but Pax grabbed it, broke it in half, and flung it away.

He threw it so hard the two halves of the stick flew up and over the trees, disappearing over the edge of the park.

“Wow!” said the black kid. “What are you? Superheroes? Where are your superhero suits?”

“You’re naked, dude,” the white kid added helpfully.

Crap.
In the middle of all this, he’d forgotten about clothes.

“Just back off,” he said.

“Gimme your stick,” the white kid said. “They’re not superheroes. It’s just special effects. Here.” He reached toward the black kid, took his stick, and swung it at Pax.

The stick made his skin ring like a church bell.
Donnnng!

“Holy shit,” the white kid said.

“Stupid kids,” muttered Pax. He flicked his fingers, and a blue wave of energy slammed into the two kids, carrying them backward and throwing them into the grass.

“I told you they were superheroes!” the black kid screamed at the top of his lungs as he sailed through the air.

A dozen other heads were turned toward Pax and Scarlett now.

No, no, no!

He threw up a shield. It resisted slightly when he tried to surround Scarlett, but he pushed, and it snapped over her. Now he and Scarlett were inside the sphere. Hypothetically safe, all their problems solved. Except he wasn’t sure how much damage the sphere could withstand…

…and it didn’t seem to be doing anything about the dark tentacles pouring off the people around them.

The tentacles were black and kind of wet-looking, like slugs, and they oozed over the grass and even through the air toward the two of them. When the tentacles hit the sphere, the shield rippled and gave way, allowing them to ooze through.

Scarlett stumbled backward with her burning-coal hands held up in front of her until she hit the wall of the sphere and slid down it, landing on her ass on the charred ground. The tentacles shoved themselves onto her. Some of them latched onto her feet. Others onto her thighs. The ones she tried to push away just stuck to her hands.

They were absorbed into her charcoal skin with sick, bulging twitches, like leeches sucking up blood.

Negative energy.

The black kid ran toward the shield at full speed and hit it with a spray of blue sparks before being thrown backward.

The shield flickered. Brightened.

The kid got back up again. The white kid stood beside him. They looked determined, like they were getting ready to fight the bad guys. They were stupid. They were ten.

Both the kids charged the shield. This time they were joined by several adults, some of whom were trying to catch the kids to stop them, and some of whom seemed to be charging at Pax’s sphere on the general principle of “If it’s weird, kill it.”

The sphere sent up more sparks as it threw the group of people back. Dimmed. Brightened.

But not quite as bright as before.

The kids were dragged off by a group of adults, but that wasn’t the end of it. The sphere was still being charged by several adult men who all wore orange and white shirts and looked like they were on the same soccer team. One of them charged the sphere and got flung back by the sparks—but the blow pushed the sphere a few inches off the lawn and toward the trees behind them. The next man charged, and the sphere slid farther. There was no sense to it. No reason for it. They were doing it
just because they could.
Pax was trying to save their lives, and all they could see was a giant soccer ball.

“Knock it off!” he shouted.

The men kept charging.

The wall jerked out from behind her, dropping her head on the ground. Big waves of fire whipped around her face like they were trying to choke her. She screamed and tried to scrape them off—then realized they were her
hair
.

She grabbed it all in a hank and flipped it up into a bun. It wouldn’t stay, so she grabbed a pointy stick and jabbed it in.

The stick burst into flame, and her hair just got all over the place again.

Why did everything have to be so damn
hard
?

The sphere was dimming. In a few seconds, it was going to pop or explode or disappear or something, like a soap bubble. And then the men who kept charging at them would run into Pax. Or worse, her.

Scarlett looked down at herself.

Her belly button was almost white-hot in the center. Flakes of ash crumbled off the side and drifted upward with the heat. Flakes of ash were everywhere. Flakes of burnt grass. Flakes of burnt Scarlett.

The ground was black just from being too close to her.

She had to get control of herself again.

But how?

A horrible little voice in her head whispered that when Pax’s bubble burst, she should start shooting fire at the people attacking them.
They were threatening Pax.
They deserved whatever she did to them.

Hotter.
She should be
hotter
.

She tried to ignore the voice. She’d been ignoring it her whole life. Everybody has those urges. That didn’t mean you had to
follow
them.

Not a problem.

But hotter would be good.

She could burn them up before they could say
wow, that’s fucking hot
. They’d look like hot dogs that’d been on the grill too long. They’d smell like burnt meat.

She could
taste
them.

The black tentacles pushed farther into her, and fire drooled down the side of her mouth and splashed on her knees.

Scarlett curled up around the burning hole in her belly button and started to cry.

Pax felt the bubble burst deep in his chest.

It twanged the same way a bubble of mucous rising out of his lungs would have, if he still had lungs and could still get pneumonia.

But it still left him feeling dizzy and weak. And numb. He couldn’t feel his legs.

He didn’t feel like a superhero anymore. Right now he was paper.

His legs bent and dropped him to the ground. He caught himself on his hands and knees. His lungs were burning. He couldn’t feel his heartbeat. It reminded him of being back in his old body. Good times.

The heat was blasting out from behind him, turning the grass on either side of his hands from bright green to shriveled brown in seconds. Scarlett was getting hotter. Pax dug his hands into the dirt.
Get up, Pax. You have to fix this. Get up!

But he couldn’t. He didn’t have the energy.

After a few moments of fucking power, he was, once again, too weak.

The edge of the grass caught on fire.

Pax coughed. Someone grabbed his shoulder and pulled him to his feet. Suddenly he was staring at the beet-red face of an Irish cop whose white shirt was smudged with ash. The guy opened his mouth to start shouting at Pax. Beads of sweat hatched out of the cop’s forehead, ran down his cheeks, and dried before they hit his chin.

“Run,” whispered Pax.

He was being swung through the air and pitched onto greener, cooler grass.

The cops must be trying to save him from Scarlett. It was almost funny enough to make him laugh.

Pax rolled with the fall and dragged himself back up on his feet. His energy must be regenerating—but not very quickly. He had to find another source, and fast.

People had already crowded between him and Scarlett. The Irish cop was shouting and trying to direct people away from the area, but nobody was listening. People in business suits and skirts. Joggers with and without big-wheeled strollers. Hipsters dragging bicycles and wearing black-framed glasses. Senior citizens. Japanese tourists. Everybody was taking pictures of Scarlett on their iPhones.

Everyone gasped and swore at the same time, and the people in the center tried to take a step back at the same time as the people outside the circle pushed inward and stood on tiptoe with their phones over their heads, trying to see what was going on.

Sirens were going off; cops were rushing in and shoving people back. Fire trucks were closing in.

Pax staggered forward, grabbing onto the shoulders of a couple of senior citizens in front of him to keep from falling down again. They both turned around to look at him. They were wearing matching sunglasses and “World’s Best Grandparents” sweatshirts.

“Move,” he said. “Run.”

The man shoved Pax’s hands off their shoulders and turned back to face the action.

Gotta love New York.

Pax grabbed their shoulders again and shoved them to the side. “Get out of the way! I’ve got work to do.”

The man whimpered while his wife gave Pax a dirty look from behind her sunglasses.

“The fuck is wrong with you people?” he demanded, pushing his way forward again.

A burst of flame shot up into the sky.

Everyone’s faces turned skyward for a second. The flame, shaped like a weather balloon, rose up about a couple of hundred meters and disappeared into the deep blue sky, leaving a short trail of black smoke. The wind caught it and carried it out toward Queens.

Scarlett was getting worse.

The crowd pressed tighter.

Scarlett knelt on her hands and knees and panted.

Another blast of heat was building up in her gut like a stomach full of bad seafood. She burped. It tasted like rotten eggs mixed with matches. A six-year-old kid wearing a Batman shirt screamed, “
Mom, that lady stinks!
”

Scarlett moaned, “Lady… I can’t hold onto this much longer. Get—”
burrrrp
“—your kid out of here as fast as you can.”

Her stomach heaved, and she had to swallow back burning acid. She was gonna hurl again. She sat back on her feet and looked upward. She didn’t know what would happen if she puked downward. Probably the heat would blast all over the place and kill everyone.

Just kill him. Put him out of his misery. He’s just going to grow up to be a waste of space anyway.

She balled up her fists on her thighs and waited for the next wave of vomit.

Her face itched. When she scratched it, a black mask made of ash fell into her hands. For a second it looked back at her with blank eyes. Then it fell apart like melting snow.

Don’t hurt anyone. Don’t hurt anyone.

It was coming. It was coming.

She threw her head back and puked fire.

It blasted straight up, almost hitting one of the helicopters circling above her.

Hey, yeah, that suspected terrorist in Central Park? Right here.