And It Arose from the Deepest Black (John Black Book 2) (15 page)

3

The hardest part about getting home was not getting caught. Funny, considering how we pushed so many minds while traveling across the country. Yet when faced with hovering helicopters, their pilots too far overhead to reach with our minds, we had to revert to simpler tactics.

We split up, took the most obscure routes we could think of, and paused for lengthy, random breaks. Frankly, I think I was lost for most of the night, since I wasn’t familiar with the area at all. Luckily, I could keep tabs on Bobby and Pip from their beacons, giving me a general sense of direction, and I knew Pip would be the first home.

Hours later, under cover of darkness, with our masks thankfully tucked away, we finally met up once more at Pip’s.

Bobby, last to return, sighed dramatically as he entered, squinting as he stepped across the starkly contrasted line between the dark outside and the brightly lit room. “Ah, back in the secret underground lair,” he said.

“Will you quit it with that?” Pip hardly looked up from the book she was reading on the faded couch, pretending not to care, but her left foot twitched with irritation. It was like she was keeping beat to a song that no one else could hear.

“With what?” Bobby said, tossing his yellow mask onto the short counter. “Calling it your secret underground lair?” Pip nodded sharply, so Bobby turned to me for backup. “Johnny. Is this place a secret? I mean, do we want anyone to find us here?”

“No, we don’t,” I said, not really wanting to be dragged into Bobby’s needless teasing of Pip, but still amused in a juvenile way.

“And, are we or are we not underground?”

I scanned the basement room, where two doors exited to the street outside, although most of the apartment was indeed underground. “Sort of.” I waggled one hand.

Bobby grasped onto it anyway. “
Sort of
counts. And finally, Johnny. Answer me this. Can you call this our
lair
?”

I started to roll my eyes when a blur streaked across the room. One of Pip’s daggers, plucked from the rack on the wall, tossed Bobby’s way with deadly accuracy, causing his torso to bend into an exaggerated C shape. Behind him, the dagger thumped deeply into the frame of the door, shivering like a diving board just after the diver jumps.

Bobby’s torso slowly reformed. “Feisty one, isn’t she, Johnny?”

Pip stood and turned toward the back room, and we knew this was her way of declaring lights out in 10 minutes. Not that either of us complained. We’d had a rather exhausting day.

Nine minutes or so later, with Pip closed in the bedroom, Bobby on the couch, and me on a blanket in the middle of the floor, we called it a night, each of us quickly falling into a sound sleep.

Superpowers or not, when you’re really tired, you’re really tired. In moments, I was out cold.

* * *

There was a sound. A very strange sound. I barely had time to pull open my heavy eyelids.

The front door splintered, ripped from the hinges. Something flashed past me, over me. Then someone pressed two of Pip’s long swords across my throat, an unholy metal cross against my jugular vein.

“If I do it, do you think the powers can save you?” he said, a frothing male voice that whispered in anger. I blinked, trying to understand what was happening, to really wake up. “Do you think your head will jump back on your body if I cut it off?”

“Jesus, Jake, settle down!” Bobby shouted, leaping up from the couch. Pip was already in the doorway, the light in her bedroom spilling into the living room. From my left and right, Pip and Bobby both crouched slightly, in ready poses. But they didn’t move forward.

I realized that Jake Weissman was asking a really good question, one for which I didn’t have an answer. It occurred to me that he might be able kill me. It was completely possible that Jake was about to end my life. “Jake, please. Can we talk?”

His hold on the swords tightened, and I felt them cutting into my neck. “Tell your friends to take a seat.”

“Sure, sure. Guys?”

“No way! Get the hell out of here!” Bobby said, inching closer.

The swords tensed, narrowing the space between the two blades, the space where my living flesh was. “Bobby! Don’t! If he cuts — I… I don’t know what will happen.” Although he tried to remain focused on Jake, Bobby spared one quick look at my eyes. Instantly he knew what he had to do.

Bobby sat down on the couch, gesturing for Pip to do the same on the chair next to her. “Fine. We’re sitting. But let me tell you something, Jake. If you do
anything
to my friend there, it won’t be half as bad as what Pip and I will do to you next.”

Jake chuckled, just inches from my face. “That’s a bet I might be willing to take…” I felt the blades tighten. Had it not been for my body’s innate ability to sluice and morph away from trouble, I’m certain I would have been bleeding. A sort of trembling feeling came into my neck, telling me that my physical powers were ready to kick in. But to what end? Could I really reattach my own head, even if it was only separated for a millisecond?

How did I miss this? What else have I missed? And does it even matter anymore, if Jake decides to cut me?

All at once, I felt afraid — not just in that moment, but for all the other times I might have been randomly decapitated. Such as by Gorgol Omicron only hours before. Involuntarily, my body shook with the knowledge that I might have been near death so many times in my recklessness.

Having superpowers really distorts your sense of infallibility. Regular dangers fail to hold their normally distinct weight. The instinct to avoid putting your hand on a hot stove disappears when you know it can’t hurt you. But realizing that I might have been overlooking a rather significant and simplistic loophole sent the whole feeling of immortality crashing around my feet.

What can I do?

Fire. I can use my fire. Because one thing is for sure: I don’t have to sit here and wait to die.

The bloodlust came again. The urge to hurt, maybe kill.

Jake’s attention was partially focused on Bobby, concerned that he might leap forward at any moment.

Good, keep looking at someone else. I like being underestimated.

I snatched at the blades, taking one in each hand. Jake tried to react in time, but once my fingers were wrapped around them, he couldn’t undo what had already been done. He pressed down, but that just helped me. Leveraging his weight, I pulled and flipped my body backward, swooping the two swords in large circles from down to up again.

And in a second, I was standing over Jake, his body sprawled on the floor. I hovered above him with the two swords, hilt out. Without a pause, smiling insanely, I dealt the murder stroke — the upside-down, hilt-forward blow Pip had shown us from ancient times.

I figured that if Jake was like me, he might have the same fear of being decapitated. I told myself, in that instant, that it was a feint, that it was all about making him afraid.

But part of me wanted Jake to die.

Jake’s body moved like liquid, away from me, toward the shattered front door. In an instant, my sword hilts had splintered the floorboards, but Jake had pulled back, clearly panting from the effort. 

I released the swords and stood in a ready pose, knees bent. “How about a more fair matchup?” I said, with Bobby and Pip stepping up to each side of me.

Jake Weissman turned and ran into the night.

4

I don’t care who you are, there’s something decidedly weird about sleeping in a room where the front door has been ripped away. It’s like walking around with your fly open — sure, you’re probably gonna be fine, but if anything does pop through that opening unexpectedly, you’ll be having a bad day.

So I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night.

I don’t know about Pip, off in her room with the door closed, or even Bobby on the couch above me. But me, well, I was on edge.

I think I was asleep — I think — when Pip appeared over me.

“When are you going to finally wake up and do something right?” Pip said.

I felt cold. Very cold. I wanted to reply,
What are you talking about?
Some sort of reply. But my voice didn’t work. Pip looked at me in anger.

“Well? Are you planning on answering me?” she said, before turning and making a disgusted face. From somewhere, she pulled out a cigarette and lit it, sucking in then exhaling a puff of smoke.

Pip? What’s —?

“Your father is going to be furious at you,” Pip said, breathing smoke like a cinematic dragon.

My dad? You know my dad is…

Blinking, I shook my head.
Something is wrong. Pip looks… older
. “But, Mom!” I said.
What? Why did I call her that?
But my voice sounded strange. Not me. I wanted to look down at my hands, body, ensure I was still me, but my viewpoint wouldn’t change. And that’s when I realized that I was only watching, not participating.

A movie in my mind, seeming so real. I had done this before. The vivid dreams of Sol’s team, moments plucked from other people’s minds.

I’m seeing into Pip’s head.
The feeling was remarkably awkward. I felt like a peeping tom. At the same time, it was fascinating.

“But, nothing, young lady! Go inside and get ready for bed!” Older Pip — Pip’s mother, I assumed — huffed, and a huge cloud of smoke jetted from her mouth. She turned away, dismissing me. Or Pip. If I was watching one of Pip’s memories, her mother was dismissing her. In fact, Pip’s mom didn’t seem like the nicest person.

My view changed, turning and dashing through a screen door, up a flight of stairs, into a brightly lit yellow bathroom, closing the door. I looked in the mirror and I was Pip. But this Pip was younger, maybe 13 years old.

She was crying.

I didn’t want to watch anymore. I wanted to stop my eavesdropping mind, but since I hadn’t done anything to start the connection, I had no idea how to cut it off. I willed my mind to look away, stop seeing the weeping face of Pip.

Then there was the loud
pop
of a door slamming somewhere in the distance. Low thuds of someone climbing the stairs. My view turned toward the bathroom door, and I could feel the fear. Pip’s fear.

The door flew open, and a man stood facing me. He was pale, but his skin was flushed from some sort of exertion. His hair was close-cropped and light, and it dribbled down his cheeks into stubble that was tinged orange and brown with bits of white. From the side of his mouth, a lit cigarette dangled. “You just can’t do as you’re told, can you?” he asked, with the quiet kind of anger that’s so much more frightening than actual yelling.

It must have been Pip’s father. He took a step forward, blowing too much smoke into the small bathroom, filling the air with the haze and smell of it.

I shut my eyes, Pip shut her eyes, willing him away.

Don’t.

When I opened them again, I was descending along a rugged hillside, orange rocks growing dark and grey in the fading light. The wind whipped around me, so hard it hurt. Small stones and debris broke free of the hill and spun in the air. Sand rained on me from seemingly every direction at once.

Sand?

Sol.

I was in a desert, and all around me, a powerful sandstorm raged.

Sol, will you just die?

I struggled down the hillside. The sky darkened as I reached an impassable section, where the path seemed to have been cut off by a vertical wall that stretched high above me and sank deep below. I was stuck. Still, without hesitation, I moved toward the cliff. Mentally, I steeled myself for the fall, but as my mind’s eye approached the edge, I saw my boot easily find a rock for support, then another. I moved with an ease that said I expected this path, I knew it was there.

No, this isn’t Sol’s mind, this is someone else. Someone who knows this desert plac
e
.

Two more awkward steps and I left the vertical chute behind, stepped back onto a normal path. I started to run, hard boots crunching along, kicking up orange dust to join the general swirl. “Come on… Come on…” I said in a familiar voice.

Of course. Jake.
Jake was still somewhere near the secret underground lair, and I was picking up his dreams, too. A vision from his time as a park ranger.

The wind gained force and blasted against me, against Jake. My view swiveled as he faced directly into a shower of orange dust.

And smoke.

The smoke and dust and wind blew, turning yellow. A man stood before me. Pip’s father again.

“Your mother told me everything. Got anything to say for yourself?” He took a long pull on his cigarette.

The view darkened to orange and brown as the wind raged again in my face. I could feel Jake’s fear as he raced against the weather. He kept running, trying to turn away from the storm, although the storm seemed to be everywhere.

Finally, he rounded a tall outcropping of rock, where the path bent down toward the canyon floor and, with luck, some kind of safety. A feeling welled up — excitement, relief? Then, as Jake turned the corner, those feelings fell away instantly, like a popped balloon. Ahead, the darkness intensified, to the point of becoming nearly black.

The wind rose to meet me, to meet Jake, and we turned away, but behind us was the same. Darkness pressed in from all sides.

There comes a time in every overwhelmingly tragic situation when the best advice is probably
Stay where you are and pray.
We reached that moment.

Milliseconds before the dark walls of wind crushed together with us in the middle, Jake shouted, “Ohhhhh, shhhiiiii—”

All senses blurred together. Vision became an endless array of darks and lights, like static on a TV tuned to nothing. My ears heard an endless scream, the wind howling, relentless and swift. And I felt pain. Like a million wasp stings, a million crows’ beaks pecking at me, pushing yet pulling me apart.

Then, as the dark wind threatened to tear apart everything, I smelled tobacco. Somehow I managed to blink. To release the manic squint enough to let in light. I saw Pip’s dad before me again. Too close. Eyes bloodshot, wisps of smoke still curling through the large gaps in his teeth. Pip closed her eyes and my view started to go dark. “Just remember,” he said, leaning in. “You brought this on yourself.”