The Invincibles (2 page)

Bounding over to check on the children, Nightshadow stopped just short as some of the smoke cleared. He went numb and almost became sick at what he saw. This couldn’t be! It couldn’t!

The boys and girls smiled with rotten, ugly teeth and had pasty, lopsided skulls painted onto their faces. Decked out in small white Nazi uniforms with black armbands displaying cackling skulls, they snickered and saluted him.

Nightshadow found himself at a sudden loss, and not just due to the children’s appearance. He’d memorized the faces of the kidnapped children and none of them were here. Where was the next generation of the city’s elite? The sons and daughters of the most powerful politicians, lawyers, doctors, and businessmen? Who were these deformed children he was now looking at and when had they been taken? What had been done to them?

Leviathan-like, the children rose up all at once, letting their ropes fall to the floor. They hadn’t actually been bound up at all. They breathed the smoke and tear gas in and out like it was nothing, and snorted and giggled. As a pack, they rushed Nightshadow, grabbing and climbing onto him, clawing, biting, and hitting him with their tiny, bony fists.

The shock of what was happening overwhelmed Nightshadow and made him too slow to react. So the children knocked him over and piled up on top. A couple slapped the fighting sticks out of his hands, and they rolled noisily away across the floor. Nightshadow triggered a charge in his utility belt, and the resulting electric shock sent most of the children reeling back. A couple still held tenaciously on, convulsing and enduring the electro-shock, but he managed to bat them away with his hands.

Meanwhile, the Death Reaper howled with unholy laughter, slapping his knees at the apparent hilarity from across the room. Glaring at him, Nightshadow staggered back up to his feet. Like a magic trick, one of Nightshadow’s escrima fighting sticks slid down out of the Death Reaper’s sleeve. He aimed and fired too quickly for Nightshadow to dodge.

Ninja stars slammed into him. He stumbled about with little sharp pentagrams sticking out of his head and side. The escrima stick then came hurling through the air and cracked right into his temple. He hit the floor. Chuckling, the Reaper picked the fighting stick back up and started wailing down on Nightshadow with it. Nightshadow passed out not long afterwards.

***

With a skull-spiking headache, Nightshadow stirred awake and groaned. He felt like one overly sweaty, man-sized bruise. The Death Reaper’s thrashing had cracked his mask’s visor lens. That, plus the knocks he’d taken to the head, had turned his eyesight into a blurry mess. Worse, his mouth tasted like a gasoline-soaked bag of cotton balls.

Despite what had to be a powerful concussion, he blinked and focused. He found himself tied to a spit rod like a hunk of roast beef, turning over a churning toxic blue fire. The wispy flames nicked across a miniature, room-sized replica of Salome City, setting each small, sharp-pointed little skyscraper ablaze.

The replica city stood upon a massive soundstage with blood-red curtains draping down at the back. Hot white lights splashed down from above. Mounted cameras shot the scene from all angles. The kidnapped kids took up every seat in the audience. Despite being tied up and gagged, many still cried and shook. A little reaper child fidgeted in the seat next to each, sloppily finger-painting skulls onto their sunken, shock-whitened faces.

Nightshadow’s spit rod stopped turning. The Death Reaper noisily banged a short ladder down in front of Nightshadow at the city’s edge. He climbed up top. Flames wreathed the ladder’s legs, but the Reaper paid them no heed. His hideous face loomed over Nightshadow like a deformed albino moon.

Along with his white Nazi uniform, he wore shiny black gloves and knee-high boots. A short, messy, dyed black Mohawk topped his head. Unlike the children, he had actually carved a skull onto his face and cut off his lips. Nonetheless, an ugly, deformed grin stayed perpetually plastered onto his mouth, showing off his glistening, star-white teeth.

Cradling his hands under his chin, he gazed adoringly down upon Nightshadow. “You know how hard it is to get that mask of yours off?” he asked, rapping his knuckles against it. “I tried a crowbar AND pliers! The thing still wouldn’t budge! I got that damn utility belt off though! That gets me a gold star, doesn’t it? Even if I couldn’t crack the stupid thing open?”

Nightshadow glanced down at the small flaming city below. His utility belt draped across the streets and burned. Luckily, Nightshadow had fireproofed its contents. Otherwise, all his gas and smoke pellets, miniature explosives, and flash grenades would be going up.

The Reaper sighed. “I only wanted to see that handsome face of yours,” he purred. Sick, unnatural yellow swirled around in the irises of his big, love-struck eyes. “Still, I got you this time, didn’t I? You fell right into the trap and now I can do whatever I want with you, sweetling!”

He lightly caressed Nightshadow’s chest and Nightshadow shuddered. “Yep!” The Reaper cackled. “I win! Finally! Once and for all! And the prize, accomplishment, and glory I get at the end of our long, long struggle? Why love, of course!”

Above the audience seats, a sign dropped down and on it the word “Applause” glowed. The little reaper children bashed their stubby little hands together.

On top of his ladder, the Death Reaper took a bow and then another. “Thank you! Thank you!
No, thank you!
” He snickered and licked the torn edges of his mouth where his lips used to be.

“
Bet you’re wondering about our LIVE studio audience?” he asked Nightshadow, jerking his thumb back at the children. “You thought I had only a baker’s dozen of the city’s most prominent boys and girls? Only the ones with parents that have the money and connections to ransack the whole damn world for them because they know I have them? Because they know I don’t want a ransom but was looking to play with them instead? No, there was more. There have always been more!”

He snorted and chuckled. Another sign dropped down above the audience, this one reading, “Laugh.” The reaper children guffawed with eerie, echoing shrieks.

“
These weren’t the first kids I’ve snatched, you know,” the Reaper said. “No, I’ve been collecting for years and years! Even long before you and I ever met! From this city here and that city there. From the suburbs you big hero types never really bother to patrol. I take them in, groom them, and sometimes I let them grow up and rejoin society. They live their boring, insipid, torturous little lives, dreaming of the days when they lived down in the dark with Big Daddy Death Reaper. Then one day I need them, and they’re always there for me. Always! Policemen, lawyers, maids, building owners, aldermen, morticians, scientists, soccer moms, actors, and whatever else Daddy needs! They run EVERYTHING and love to obey Daddy, oh yeah!”

The Death Reaper slowly and meaningfully rubbed his hands together. “You of all people should have known that I couldn’t have pulled off all my zany schemes alone! Of course, I had help! Lots and lots of it!”

He paused and gestured with his hands. “Come on now. I can’t see the shocked look on your pretty face with that mask. What do you have to say? What’s your oh-so-clever retort? Go ahead! Tell me! What’s the one detail that I’ve missed? The one small thing I overlooked? What do you see that I don’t?”

His neck cracking, Nightshadow shifted his head toward the Death Reaper. “Light,” he croaked.

“
Light?” The Death Reaper asked.

“
V-V-V-Voice identify and activate! LIGHT!”

Dots brightened across the full moon on Nightshadow’s chest and flared. A pulsing, powerful beam of fluorescent orange light flushed up right into the Death Reaper’s face. It shocked and scared him, sending him tumbling down off the ladder to the floor, and the ladder toppled down across the small, blue-burning miniature city.

Having snuck his lock picks out of his gloves and freed himself while the Reaper was ranting, Nightshadow shrugged off his chains and grabbed onto the spit rod. Two-handedly, he swung himself up and over. After pirouetting with Olympic grace through the air, he caught the Reaper with a side kick to the face as he struggled back up to his feet. That knocked the Reaper into a camera, which crashed down to the floor with him.

Nightshadow eyed the little reaper children up in the audience. He shot his search light up at them. It swallowed them up in its fierce glow. The reaper children wailed and screamed, hiding behind their own hands or ducking down to the floor.

“
RUN AWAY!” Nightshadow hoarsely shouted.

Fleeing, the reaper children fumbled and crawled all over each other and the bound, helpless kids down the aisles. Doors flapped open and slammed closed after them. Nightshadow intended to catch up with them later. Their little legs wouldn’t carry them far and he should find tracking them down fairly easy. They were still kids after all. For now, at least, they had left the other children alone.

The Death Reaper whipped Nightshadow’s own burning-hot utility belt right into his facemask. Nightshadow grunted and cursed as he flailed back and away. He shouldn’t have let himself get distracted like that.

***

Not feeling his gloved hands burning or simply not caring, the Reaper repeatedly beat and lashed the belt against Nightshadow’s back. Finally, Nightshadow caught it and snagged open a pouch. The Reaper jerked the belt back and a flash grenade went off in his face.

Dropping the belt, he fumbled back, frantically rubbing at his eyes. Without looking, he nimbly sidestepped, falling onto a pair of blazing skyscrapers. He blinked a few times and gazed back up at Nightshadow. He shuddered, growled, and pounced. He bludgeoned into Nightshadow, scratching, clawing, and biting at him. Entangled together, they fell stiffly and painfully down onto the unforgiving stone floor.

They wrestled and struggled, knocking over cameras and becoming tied up in cords. Nightshadow managed to knee the Reaper twice in the groin and, using his superior leg strength, kicked him off, hoisting him up and over onto the blazing city replica. The Reaper smashed down through the toppled buildings and ashy wreckage, actually banging his head on the fallen ladder. The flames jumped and danced all over him, blackening his pale white skin and suit.

Nonetheless, he rose up, wiping off soot and gruffly laughing. “Every burn feels like a kiss,” he said before kicking the fire-blackened ladder into Nightshadow, who was still on his knees. It smacked him hard in the chest and he went down.

After tossing the ladder aside, the Reaper grabbed Nightshadow up by the collar. With surprising strength, he hurled him up and spiked him down hard onto the flaming wreckage. Nightshadow even felt the pointed top of a miniature skyscraper stab into his back and break before the whole building collapsed under him. Fire wound up and down around his armor, and the heat punished all his aching bruises.

Nightshadow locked all the pain away inside a deep box in his mind. He still felt it and knew it was there. It just no longer bothered him. This old meditative trick allowed him to still function despite the punishment he took and his own physical limitations, though he’d pay for it later.

Ignoring that for now, he stumbled clumsily back up to his feet and tried to prime himself for more combat. However, he found the Death Reaper pointing both his escrima fighting sticks at him, having produced them from wherever he’d secreted them away in the room. In a moment, the ninja stars would swarm out in a sharp, bladed storm that’d finish Nightshadow once and for all. However, the Reaper grinned and instead aimed up at the children he’d kidnapped, who were still bound and helpless in their seats.

“
NO!” Nightshadow rushed him and the Reaper turned, catching him in the face with a strike so hard it broke the fighting stick. Nightshadow crashed down to the floor in a heap. Tossing the broken fighting stick away, the Reaper stood over him.

“
Oh you, my darling dark angel,” he said, happily licking some blood and patchy, burned skin off of his own face. “You’re my forever.”

Solemnly, he reared back the remaining fighting stick, ready to bust open Nightshadow’s skull with it. Nightshadow braced himself for the blow and the sweet oblivion that’d likely follow.

Neither came.

Instead, the Death Reaper staggered wildly back, gagging and choking. He dropped the fighting stick to clutch at his chest. His face contorted and seized up. Nightshadow managed to sit up and was unable to believe what he was seeing.

The Reaper looked pleadingly down at him. His eyes widened and his lipless mouth curved up into a ragged zero. He toppled over onto the burning city, slamming his face down through the crumpling buildings. He lay still as the flames ate away at his flesh and clothes.