New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl (3 page)

Not this time. Even as I lined up the
shot the Lightning King raised up his hands in a defensive stance. By the time
I pulled the trigger, a ball of crackling electricity had appeared in front of
him, a big lightning ball, big enough to shield him from head to toe. My
bullets went into the lightning ball and did not come out. Fuck.

The Lightning King stopped wasting his
breath and got down to business. He threw the giant ball of energy at me. It
was moving faster than a baseball pitch but slower than a bullet. If it wasn’t
for my own leopard-on-catnip reflexes, I would have ended up as a greasy
smoking smear on the floor. I leaped out of the ball’s way, and it hit one of
the metal shelves and exploded, sending up a spray of molten steel, flaming
cardboard bits, and shattered jars of pickles.

The smell of electrically fried pickles
has to be experienced to be believed.

I cursed Cassandra under my breath while
I rolled away. My spiritual guide had mentioned one of the kidnappers had been
a Neo, but I’d expected him to be a Type One, a lesser talent who could burn
out surveillance cameras and maybe Taser somebody. The Lightning King had to be
a Type Two, with enough mojo to take out a SWAT team. That made me the underdog
in this little death match. I hate being the underdog. I hate fair fights too,
to be honest. A fair fight means you lose half of the time, and in this business
losing means they carry you out in a body bag, or in several small evidence
bags.

I came to a stop on my hands and knees
and realized my suit jacket was no longer singed; it was on fire. I hadn’t
dodged quite fast enough.

Some people think Neos are impervious to
pain. Don’t believe that for a second. Pain is too useful a warning system. We
may be hard to kill, but we feel everything that happens to us, from a paper
cut on up. I’ve been shot, stabbed, blown up, dipped in acid (don’t try that at
home, kids) and once had an icepick shoved into my temple and then swirled
around inside my brain for good measure, and man did I ever feel that. All of
which means I was quite aware that my right arm and back were burning merrily
while I dodged a couple more lightning bolts the fucker sent my way. That guy
was beginning to piss me off.

I’d dropped my gun sometime during the
festivities. I tried to close in on the Lightning King, but he was pretty fast
on his feet. He kept his distance and forced me to keep mine by throwing a
steady barrage of lightning bolts and flying energy balls. In between dancing
around the electrical attacks, I managed to rip off the burning jacket before I
got more than a few first and second-degree burns. The burns would be gone in a
few seconds – we hurt, but we heal quickly – but I wasn’t going to be around in
a few seconds if I didn’t finish this fight quickly.

A weapon would be nice just about now. I
looked around and spotted the little guy’s big gun where it must have fallen
after he went down. I leaped for the gun as a pretty impressive forked
lightning bolt barely missed me and destroyed several boxes of restaurant
supplies. I grabbed the gun and rolled on the ground, getting singed by a
near-miss. As I leveled the gun at him, the Lightning King created another
sphere of energy to protect himself. The shots were swallowed by the crackling
energy ball. My guess was the shield was vaporizing the bullets before they
could get through, even the big .500 caliber ones I sent his way. Two shots
emptied the revolver anyway.

I got an idea even as the revolver made a
harmless click on my third trigger pull. I flipped the gun so I had it by the
barrel and flung it at the Haitian with all my strength. It hit the sphere, but
the energy that will vaporize a seven hundred-grain lead bullet will only
partially melt a three-pound chunk of high quality steel. The oversized
revolver was still mostly in one piece when it emerged on the other side of the
energy sphere and smacked the Lightning King right in the mouth.

Like I said, Neos feel pain just fine,
and nothing will ruin your concentration like having a red-hot three pound
piece of metal hitting your face at fastball speeds. A human would have been
killed instantly by the impact, but the Lightning King was only stunned for a
few seconds. Unfortunately for him, that was more than enough time for me to
get into hand to hand range. I was in a piss-poor mood; second degree burns
will do that to you. I didn’t hold back as I punched and kicked him. You can’t
when it’s a fight for your life and the other guy is as hard to kill as you
are. The Haitian tried to fire more electrical blasts my way, but he couldn't
aim for shit after I broke both of his arms. By the time I was done, I’d
cracked several knuckles in my hands and my feet were sore, but the King was
dead, long live the King. He wasn’t a pretty sight anymore.

That was the entire crew, unless they’d
kept a tactical reserve somewhere. I looked around, but neither saw nor heard any signs
of life. Several hundred pounds of assorted goods were smoldering, but no major
fires had started. I headed back to the office, hoping I’d find the kidnap
victim there.

And there she was, lying on a couch,
wearing nothing but one of those embarrassing hospital gowns that lace in the
back, plus several dozen feet of duct tape. Somebody had used
the better part of a roll of silver duct tape and wrapped her wrists, ankles,
arms and legs with it. And also covered her mouth and eyes under even more
tape, all wrapped around her head and over her hair. Nice going, fuckers. If
she was a vanilla human and started sniffling and clogged up her nose, she
would have been dead in short order. Luckily, she seemed to be breathing
normally.

That was crazy. Unless these guys were
bondage freaks, wrapping someone up in tape like that made no sense, unless
they were scared of her. Duct tape in those quantities might subdue one of the
less physical Neos, however, especially Type Ones and low-range Twos. Cassandra
hadn’t mentioned the girl was a Neo, only that she was important. Sometimes
Cassandra likes to be cryptic for no good reason.

I ignored the pain in my healing knuckles
and pulled off the tape gag and blindfold as gently as I could. The girl
stirred and moaned when I pulled the tape off her head, along with a few chunks
of hair, but her eyes never opened. Probably drugged as well; these guys really
hadn’t taken any chances with her.

Under the tape she looked ordinary
enough. Most Neos look perfectly human, though – I am one of the freakish
exceptions – so that could mean anything. Red hair, pale skin, pretty; she
looked awfully young in her current unconscious state. It took a while, but I
got her unwrapped and covered her up with a blanket I found in a closet in the
office. The chemical burns the tape had left on her skin had begun to heal even
in the few seconds since I removed it. Definitely a Neo, then; we can pretty
much fully recover from anything that doesn’t kill us outright in an indecently
short amount of time. That begged the question of what she was doing at a
hospital when she was abducted. Most Neos only need medical attention after
some serious injury, as in dismemberment serious.

I carefully carried her down to where
Giamatti’s car awaited. I don’t own a car, being a confirmed New Yorker
Pedestrian, and Giamatti wouldn’t need a ride wherever evil assholes go when
they die. It was a nice car, too, a brand-new Tucker Raptor, all tricked up.
Too bad I wouldn’t be able to hold on to it for long. I made a little nest with
the blanket for the girl. She was sleeping peacefully, and snoring softly. She
had a cute snore.

I’d put her somewhere safe and go get
some answers from Cassandra.

Chapter Two

Christine Dark

New York City, New York, March 12, 2013

Christine opened her eyes. She was lying
in bed in her dorm room. The last thing she remembered was falling into a dark
place shortly after experiencing the mother of all acid trips. And puking.
There had been a lot of puking involved. Had any of those things really
happened?

“Still no signs of consciousness, but all
her vitals seem normal, except for an unusually low BP.” The voice was young,
female and competent-sounding. Christine had watched enough hospital dramas to
tell that whoever was talking was a medical professional of some sort. What she
couldn’t tell was who the heck was saying the words.

The voice seemed to come from somewhere
above her head. She looked up, and realized she no longer was in her dorm room
but in her old room at home. Well, Mom’s home now that Christine had left for
college. It was her old room just as she remembered from high school, with the
faded Sailor Moon poster over her bed and the bookcases stuffed with paperbacks
and hardcovers and the desk with her ancient desktop PC. Except none of that
stuff was at Mom’s house anymore; she’d boxed up all the books and that PC had
gone to the great Circuit City in the sky, replaced with a neat little Dell
notebook.

This couldn’t be real. She must be
dreaming, although she’d never been this aware she was in a dream before.

“It is a dream, my dear, but not an
ordinary one.” A new voice, but this one was coming from somebody close by.
Christine turned and saw a tiny woman – four foot and not too many inches tall
– standing by her bedroom door. She’d never seen her before, in dreams or real
life, and she hadn’t been standing there a moment before, either. The woman had
long black hair and a dark complexion that could have been Hispanic or Native
American, but her features looked like neither. She didn’t look old – late
twenties or early thirties, maybe – but something about her said ‘old’ to
Christine. The woman’s eyes were sightless solid white orbs. That would have
normally creeped the crap out of Christine – and immediately made her feel
terribly guilty for feeling that way – but in the dream she wasn’t all that
bothered by it.

“Uh, hello?” Christine said dubiously.

“I am very sorry to intrude in your mind
like this, but I’m afraid this is the only chance we’ll have to talk,” the
woman said. She was smiling, but it was a sad smile. “My name is Cassandra. It
is nice to meet you, Christine.”

“Nice to meet you. Am I going insane? Are
you going to be the imaginary friend I talk to when the meds wear off at the
happy place with the padded walls? Or did I die when I was puking my guts out?
If I’m dead, are you an angel?” Whenever she felt nervous or uncomfortable –
and this was a twofer – Christine either talked too much or shut down
completely.

Cassandra started to say something but
the voice coming from above came back. “What are you doing here? This is a
restricted…” There was a sharp metallic sound, and the voice was cut off.

“Fuck, Danny, why did you go and shoot
her?” a man’s voice came in.

“I thought you said everybody was going
to clear out before we got here.” Another male voice, snarling, angry and
scary. “Somebody fucked up. Not my problem. No fucking witnesses,
capisce
?
Just grab the bitch and let’s go.”

“I’m sorry,” Cassandra said. “This is
going to be unpleasant.”

Christine was still trying to figure out
what the hell the woman was talking about when she felt rough hands grabbing
her. She jumped at the touch, but she couldn’t see anybody. It was terrifying.
A sharp stinging pain on her arm followed, kind of like the last time she donated
blood, but much more painful. She looked down and saw blood running from a
puncture, right where an IV needle would go. “What’s happening to me?”

“Some bad men are taking you from your
hospital room. It’s my fault. Your physical body is unconscious. Unfortunately,
contacting you mentally has raised your awareness enough to experience what is
happening around you. Help is on the way, however.”

“What..?”

More outside sounds. Another man’s voice.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” More sharp metallic noises. Gunshots? They
didn’t sound loud enough, but she thought that’s what they were.

Christine was thrown face down on the
bed, and realized all of a sudden that she was wearing a hospital gown.
Somebody was holding her arms behind her back. There was a tearing sound and
she felt clingy tape burning her skin, being wrapped tightly around her arms
and legs, over and over, binding them together. More tape covered her mouth, her
eyes. She couldn’t see, couldn’t talk. She felt a sharp flare of pain as
someone jabbed a needle on her backside. She screamed, but the sound was
muffled by all the tape over her mouth.

“Christine.” Cassandra’s voice was firm.
“Look at me.”

She couldn’t look at anybody, her eyes
were taped shut! But a second later she found herself back in her bed, no
longer bound and gagged. Cassandra was sitting on the bed, holding Christine’s
hand. She could still feel the tape on her skin, but she could move, see…

Talk? “I’m so going to freak the frak out
if you don’t tell me what’s going on!” Christine shouted. Maybe this was a
hallucination her brain was making up while in the real world her body was
being abused by murderous strangers. Or the whole thing was some delusion and
she had finally gone out of her effing gourd. “Freaking out right now!”

Cassandra squeezed her hand. “Please
believe me, child. You will be all right. I have seen that much, if nothing
else.”

It was sheer insanity. Christine was
experiencing two sets of feelings at the same time. She was sitting on her old
bed in her favorite Hello Kitty pajamas, the ones she had stopped wearing when
she was eleven. She was also strewn on the cold and dirty floor of a moving
vehicle – probably a van – tied up with duct tape and with her ass hanging out
of a freaking hospital gown. She forced herself to concentrate on the Hello
Kitty pajamas experience. It was a lot less traumatic that way. “What’s
happening to me?”

“I had to see you,” Cassandra said, which
was kind of funny considering her eyes were obviously not in working order. “I
wouldn’t be able to do this if you were awake. It would be like staring into
the sun. You have so much power, child. I had to see what kind of person you
are. I had to see if you can be trusted with all that power.”

Power? Several of Christine’s teachers
had used words like ‘gifted’ and ‘brilliant’ when describing her, but even Mr.
Gardener, the math teacher who had called her ‘a prodigy,’ had never referred
to her as powerful. So now she was having delusions of grandeur mixed in with
an abduction horror fest. It didn’t make any sense.

Cassandra started playing a violin she
hadn’t been holding until just that moment. Trippy. Christine recognized the
tune – one of Mozart’s sonatas, Number 18, wasn’t it? Christine loved music.
She’d never quite managed to learn to play any instruments herself, but she’d
learned to appreciate music. Mozart in particular fascinated her, with all the
mathematical symmetry embedded in his work.

Christine listened to Cassandra’s playing
and for a while she was able to deal with the other set of sensations without
panicking. The music got her through the feeling of being picked up and carried
off over someone’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She was finally dumped on
some piece of furniture, like a couch and left alone, still wrapped up in tape.
None of that seemed to matter as long as she could be in her old room listening
to the strange woman play the violin.

Eventually, however, her brain kept
asking questions she couldn’t ignore. “Uh, Cassandra?” The music stopped and
the blind woman turned towards her. “So, what happens if I cannot be trusted
with all that power you were talking about?”

Cassandra’s smile vanished altogether,
and all that was left was sadness and grim determination. “In that case, I
would have to make sure that power was not abused.”

I think the nice blind lady just
threatened my life
, Christine thought. That
scared her more than the whole kidnapping bit.

“You seem like a nice young woman,
however,” Cassandra went on. “You have suffered, mostly small hurts, but they
have marked you nonetheless. You have been an outsider, an outcast. That could
be dangerous for someone with your potential: the temptation to turn against
everyone will be strong. On the other hand, your hurts and disappointments have
taught you about suffering and made you sensitive to the pain of others.”

The patient’s deep feelings of inadequacy
and demonstrated inability to fit into normal social patterns led to the
creation of elaborate delusional constructs. She fashioned an illusory world
where she was powerful and important. The patient’s fascination with fantasy
fiction and computer games may have contributed to the development of these
delusions.
Oh, yeah, the psych evaluations just
wrote themselves.

Cassandra smiled again, and despite
Christine’s overwhelming need to believe all of this was just a weird-ass
dream, she felt a surge of relief. “You will do, I think. You have a solid
core, for which I think we must all thank your mother.”

Back in Abduction Land, she heard a bunch
of gunshots and other loud noises she could not identify. It sounded like a
small war had broken out.

“That’s your rescue,” Cassandra
explained. “A young friend of mine is risking his life to save you.”

New pain and discomfort. Someone was
taking the duct tape off her. It felt just the way she imagined duct tape would
feel coming off her skin, except more painful. Her hair! “Can you tell your
friend to watch the hair? ‘Cause he’s pulling my hair worse than Ellen Weathersby
did back in sixth grade.” The tape coming off her eyelids was the worst. “Son
of a bee! That hurt!”

“I can’t contact him while I’m here with
you, unfortunately,” Cassandra said. “But now you are safe, at least for the
time being.”

She could feel herself being wrapped up
in a blanket, and whoever was carrying her off was being a lot gentler than the
previous bunch. Knight in shining armor rescue fantasies annoyed her, but they
were better than nightmares about being victimized by maniacs.

“Okay, so I pass the test and I’m the
Chosen One and all that good stuff. What now? Do I get to go on a quest to find
the Golden Dildo of Gondor or something?” Among all the fear and bewilderment,
a brief flash of excitement poked through. A quest? That would actually be, really,
really, wicked cool.

The delusions have become so strong the
patient may never lead a normal life…

Screw you, imaginary shrink! I’m off to
find the Golden Dildo of Gondor and stick it down the nearest Crack of Doom!

Cassandra said nothing, but Christine got
the feeling the blind woman could hear her inner dialog just fine. Stupid dream
know-it-alls.

“You will see, my dear. It’s going to be
a difficult time for you. Try to keep in mind you are stronger than you think.”

“That should have been ‘Stronger than
think you are, remember you must try.’ And you should be green and about two
feet shorter,” Christine replied, surprising herself. Smart comebacks weren’t
her thing; she could think of smart comebacks, but usually minutes or hours
after the actual conversations when the comebacks would have been relevant. Her
dream self was quicker on her mental feet, apparently. And sassier. She’d
always wanted to be sassy and had never made it past awkward and
unintentionally funny.

“Sleep now, Christine.”

And sleep she did.