Spiderman 3 (34 page)

Elated beyond all measure, Peter sprang out onto the dance floor again and swept Gwen out of her chair. Even though there was no longer any music, he dipped her low, his lips moving toward hers. Then, slowly and deliberately, he looked in Mary Jane's direction to ensure that she was watching.

Mary Jane started to sob. Tears were streaming down her face, her mascara running. Peter noticed that the manager had also seen it and was starting to move toward Mary Jane. Good. Maybe he was about to fire her. Wouldn't that just be the perfect end to the perfect—

"That was for her, wasn't it."

Peter looked down at Gwen—she had seen him looking toward Mary Jane. Gwen scowled fiercely, finally catching on. "That's why you brought me here. You son of a bitch!"

She struggled in his grasp, but he didn't care. Gwen had served her purpose. Peter released her, and she stumbled away, almost falling, one hand touching the floor and stabilizing her before she tumbled over. She managed to stand, then backed away from Peter, treating him like a stranger. She grabbed her purse off the table and headed toward the exit. But before Gwen did, she headed to Mary Jane. Peter could make out from where he was standing that she said, "I'm so very sorry," to Mary Jane.

Figures. In the end, the women always stick together.

Suddenly he was annoyed with Gwen. He hadn't given her permission to leave—who the hell did she think she was? Where did she get off, ditching him on their first date? He started moving to intercept her as she went for the exit, and abruptly the manager was in his way. "Hey, you're making trouble," he snapped at Peter. "What're you doing?" He glanced toward Mary Jane and said, '"You know this guy?"

Nose to nose with the manager, royally angered that this gnat was trying to shove himself into his affairs, Peter demanded, "You got a problem?"

A large, burly guy with a thick neck and a jacket that barely closed over his chest now stepped into view.
Of course, here comes the bouncer
. "Paul, everything okay here?"

He spoke with a thick Brooklyn accent, so Peter mimicked him. "Yeah, Paul, ever'ting okay heah?"

The bouncer didn't wait for the manager's okay. He grabbed Peter by the arm and said, "Let's go, pal."

"Where are we going? I like it here!"

"Let's just step over—"

Peter grabbed the bouncer's arm, twisted it, and flipped the larger man up and onto the floor. The crowd gasped as one. What had begun as simple entertainment was rapidly devolving into anarchy.

The manager, no slouch himself in the strength and speed department, tried to put a choke hold on Peter while Peter was distracted by the bouncing bouncer. An instant before Peter attended to him, Mary Jane—knowing what the men were up against, and knowing they had no chance—cried out, "
Peter! Stop
!"

"I'm just getting started." Peter laughed. This time he didn't even bother with the pretext of a judo throw. He simply picked the manager up and chucked him across several tables. The customers at those tables tried to intercept the manager in his flight and wound up going down with him in a tumble of arms and legs.

Gwen Stacy was long gone by the point that the melee broke out… rather unfortunately since she could have had police there within seconds. But things were now happening so quickly that no one even thought about summoning the authorities.

Total chaos had been unleashed in the Jazz Room, and Peter was in the center of it.

Probably assuming that Peter was high on something, customers came at him from all sides, trying to wrestle him to the floor.

No one even came close to stopping him. Peter was completely out of control, and he didn't care. He had willingly tossed self-control away, surrendered to the sheer joy. And he wasn't just taking joy in the battle; he was wallowing in his superiority. He loved it that no one had a chance against him. It was one lone guy against everybody in the place, and he was mopping up the floor with them.

And it didn't bother him; that was the best thing. Once upon a time, long ago, his annoying conscience would never have allowed him to enjoy what he was doing. He was mopey old Peter Parker, given great power but bending under the weight of the responsibility. No longer. A spine had grown seemingly overnight, and nothing was ever going to drag him down or make him feel guilty again.

Nothing.

The piano player who had taken a break came back onto the stage to discover the rest of the band had deserted him, choosing instead to throw themselves against some demented guy who was apparently kicking everybody's collective asses. He did the only thing that seemed appropriate—he started banging out the
William Tell
overture on the keyboard.

Peter threw two people in either direction and turned just in time to see Mary Jane coming straight at him. She was in no way trying to attack him. Instead she was crying out to him, begging him to stop, to put the people down, what was he trying to prove, had he lost his mind, and on and on…

Without hesitation, without even a thought, Peter grabbed Mary Jane and threw her across a table. She skidded across it, kept going, and landed on her back on the floor.

Everything stopped.

Mary Jane approached Peter, completely torn up inside. She knew she had this coming as a result of her unceremoniously dumping him in the park. She'd had no choice: Harry had made her do it. Harry, who had lost his mind. Apparently somehow he'd transformed into something horrifying, and forced her to break it off with Peter.

She was terrified to try to tell Peter the truth, for Harry, as this New Goblin, had warned her that he would be watching her every moment of every day. That wasn't possible, but she wasn't about to test him on it. But now things had gotten out of hand. Peter needed to be dragged somewhere private and talked to, no matter what the risk. He'd understand. He had to.

At no time as she advanced on Peter did she believe that he would hurt her. Not for a second.

The shock barely registered when Peter cavalierly tossed her aside like a sack of wheat.

Fortunately, Mary Jane had taken enough lessons in stagecraft to know how to fall. When she hit the floor, she slapped it with both hands to absorb the impact, so she wasn't really hurt. Nevertheless, she was still stunned by what had just happened. As she lay on the floor, unmoving, silence descended over the club. Until now, Peter had been dispatching burly men without a second thought. But when he started tossing women half his size around, that apparently crossed a line.
Chivalry is not dead? Could have surprised me
.

Peter quickly shoved other people aside to get to her. None of them tried to get in his way, which was probably a wise move. Peter looked down at her, his own expression as incredulous as hers.

"What's happened to you?" she whispered. Her face was covered with dried tears, but she wasn't crying anymore. She was too caught up in trying to comprehend what was going on.

Slowly Peter shook his head. He looked like someone waking from a dream. "I… don't know…"

The top of his shirt was open and she glimpsed the black costume beneath it.

The black costume.

Mary Jane was no scientific genius, no whiz kid on par with Peter Parker or Curtis Connors. She didn't know about chondritic meteorites, or symbiotes and parasites. She had absolutely no way of knowing the true origins of the black costume that she'd recently seen pictures of Peter sporting around town in.

But she did know two things. One was timing. And the other was Peter Parker.

In a leap of deductive logic that would have impressed Hercule Poirot, she concluded that Peter Parker was acting nothing like himself, and that behavior was traceable almost to the day that he'd started wearing the black costume. She had no idea how it was possible, no clue where it had come from, but with a flash of insight that only she could possibly have had, she realized that Peter wasn't actually wearing the costume.

It was wearing him.

"It's the suit," she whispered.

Peter looked down—yes, she had seen the top of his costume peeping through the dress shirt. He quickly covered it and turned toward the exit. The crowd of people parted like the Red Sea before Moses.

And Mary Jane did something she hadn't done in a long time.

Dear God… hear my prayer… help him… help him and bring him back to me… please.

THE HOST WITH THE MOST

It is said by many that God moves in mysterious ways.

It was also said by Voltaire that God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

Both explanations, and many more besides, could explain just why, with all the churches in New York City, both Eddie Brock Jr. and Peter Parker wound up at the same one at exactly the same time: just as the sun was beginning to creep up over the horizon. The sky, however, was thick with clouds and rain was coming down, so the sun wasn't having much success in making its presence known.

At that moment, however, they were unaware of each other's presence, for Peter was in the upper bell tower while Eddie was just coming in out of the downpour and walking slowly down the aisle of the empty church.

Having put the pieces of the game into their proper places, God made His moves. The audience remained afraid to laugh.

Still wearing the black costume, Peter sat in the bell tower, looking off toward the horizon. His fancy Italian suit was piled in a heap on the side.

He had no idea what to do. The words of Curtis Connors were haunting him. When he'd first heard them, he'd laughed them off. But he kept replaying the image of his swatting aside Mary Jane, and it was like having ice-cold water repeatedly dousing him in the face.

A huge church bell hung above him. It was three times his size, but he wasn't really paying attention to it. He was caught up in his inner torment, oblivious not only to its presence, but to the timing mechanism nearby that was ticking down toward the moment when it would set the gears into motion and send the bell ringing.

A part of him was urging him to forget everything that had happened. Find a way to make it up to Mary Jane if he had to, but not to dwell on it.

Even as he thought that, though, he knew it would be impossible. Not only had too much happened, too much more could
still
happen. Just in wearing the costume for a couple of days, he felt as if he was losing touch with his soul. What in God's name would happen a couple of weeks or months from now? Would he even be recognizable as himself? What would he become?

He couldn't chance finding out.

Peter stood and started pulling on the suit, figuring that he would be able to peel it off as easily as he had the last time.

Wrong.

Perhaps sensing that matters had reached a crisis point, the suit refused to yield. Peter pulled at it harder, using the full power of the amazing adhesive abilities that lay in his fingertips. Nothing. The suit stretched like Silly Putty, then snapped right back.

He started digging into it with his nails, pulling as hard as he could.