New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative (8 page)

Her instincts kept her going. She throat-punched Jimbo while he doubled over and followed that with a sweeping kick to knock him down. She refrained from stamping on his neck, in the name of not breaking the Sixth Commandment; instead, she gave him a couple kicks to the ribs, just to make sure he stayed down.

Little Jimmy’s downfall happened so fast that the Lowells didn’t realize anything was wrong until she walked over the closest one and punched him in the kidney. She pulled the punch, but from the way Lowell Number Two whimpered and fell to the ground, he was going to be peeing pink for a good while.

Christine didn’t care all that much. She was scared and angry. She’d watched people die, she was stranded without her powers in the shittiest of all possible worlds, and she wasn’t in the mood for any of this crapola. The last Lowell standing saw the expression on her face and backed off.

Robb looked up from the ground when the kicking stopped. It looked like he’d taken a couple of solid hits to the face; his nose and mouth were bleeding. He also was as shocked as his tormentors.

“I don’t need any of this shit,” Christine hissed at the astonished Lowell boy. “So get the fuck out of here or I’m going to rip off your face and wear it like a Halloween mask.”

She hated using that kind of language, but it was the kind of language that might just reach a testosterone-addled brain. Might. Some guys might decide to accept the challenge. This particular guy ran away without saying a word. He looked like a scared child, and a part of Christine felt ashamed about the violence she’d visited on the other kids. That was what they were. Kids.

Those kids were committing assault and battery and possibly sexual assault
, her brain countered.
In Mark’s immortal words: fuck ‘em
.

“Go see a doctor and fuck off!” she yelled at the two prone figures on the ground. Little Jimmy appeared to be unconscious, but the Lowell brother’s eyes were wide open, so she wasn’t completely wasting her breath. “And if you give us any more shit, you’d better have a plot saved up for your grave!”

She helped Robb up. The running Lowell was already out of sight. She hoped he wasn’t running off to get a gun or something.

“You bitch,” Little Jimmy gasped as they walked past him; he’d woken up, but seemed to be having trouble breathing. “You broke my balls.”

“Come near me again and you won’t have any balls to whine about.”

He didn’t say anything else.

Would the show of force and viciousness be enough? Inspirational fiction to the contrary, most bullies weren’t cowards. They might decide that the solution to their problem would be to come back in overwhelming numbers. Christine hoped for the best, but if there was a next time, they wouldn’t be caught by surprise. She knew all kinds of Kung Fu, but if all three of them attacked her at once, she’d probably be toast.

Violence begat violence. That was why it wasn’t an optimal solution to every problem.

Robb didn’t say a word until they’d gone around the barn and were almost to his house. “What the hell was that, Nellie?”

“That a-hole was going to lay hands on me,” she said.

“I’ve never… You’ve never…”

Before he could articulate whatever it was they’d never done, the front door of the house burst open and a middle-aged woman wearing a long skirt and a flannel shirt came out. “Robb! Robb, you’re bleeding all over your uniform!”

“Oh, crap,” Robb said. His nosebleed had stopped gushing, but the damage was already done. The school uniform was severely stained, and from the look on his face, that was a bad thing.

“They’ll fine us,” the woman said.

“Wasn’t my fault, Ma,” Robb protested feebly. “The Lowells…”

The woman’s expression changed from fear to anger. “They did this to you? Because of the City Council?”

Robb nodded, looking very much like a child. A whiny b-word of a child, actually, the mean part of Christine’s brain decided.

“That’s it! I’m calling the Watchers!”

“Ma, no! You know how they are! Don’t call them, it’s just going to make things worse!”

Before Robb’s Ma could say anything, Christine heard a car come to a sudden stop behind her. She turned around in time to see a pack of Watchers getting out of a pickup truck, along with the unhurt Lowell brother.

He hadn’t run off to get a gun. He’d off run to narc on them.

“Uh, oh,” Robb said.

Dreamland, July 16, 2014

She had to take a break.

“Is that where they got you?” Mark asked her. He could tell that what was coming up was bad; he just didn’t know how bad.

“Not quite. It got complicated. And bad.”

“Christine.”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Mark.”

“Whatever happened over there isn’t going to change that.”

I wish I could believe that
, she thought.

Secret Facility, Upstate New York, July 16, 2014

MUNNIN DEVICE ACTIVATED

DOWNLOADING

Alive
.

Daedalus Smith could still hardly believe he was breathing again. His last memory was of Chastity Baal’s wire garrote sawing through his neck.

The world needs me
.

He’d died believing that. Without him, the world was going to hell. That was why he’d taken precautions even as he prepared to abandon Earth, which at the time was indeed going to hell, with or without him. And, as it turned out, those precautions had paid off. Stealing the plans for Doc Slaughter’s Munnin Device, had been child’s play. Duplicating the modifications Hiram Hades had made on the gadget, turning it into a regular resurrection engine, had been a bit tougher but not much. He’d made himself a clone, hooked it to the device, and kept it hidden in Australia, just in case. The funny thing was, he’d almost shut it down when he left on his trip into outer space.

Good thing he hadn’t. How long had he been out? Probably only a few hours. He could still get back to the
Puta Madre
, his private spaceship. Get out, build a new homestead for the human race, and maybe come back to reclaim the old one after the imbeciles in charge were done wrecking it. The world needed him, but if the world didn’t know what it was good for it, too bad.

Something was bothering him, though, something he couldn’t put his finger on. What was it?

The nutrient vat containing his new body finally drained off, and he was able to step out, shivering in the cold, sterile room. His eyes couldn’t focus; everything was a blur. For the time being, his body was merely human; it would take a couple of days before his Neolympian abilities returned. He hadn’t felt this weak and helpless in a very long time. No matter. He…

He wasn’t alone in there.

“Heya, Daddy Smith,” someone said. Female. A voice he’d only heard once in person, and very briefly, before she teleported away and proceeded to fuck up all of his plans.

“No.”

“Except yes. Although not exactly the way you think.”

He tried to back away from the voice, still blind as a bat, and ended up slipping and falling on his ass. The sudden pain only reminded him how frail he was. How helpless. The woman came closer; he could sense her standing over him.

“How did you find me?”

“Well, you see, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I killed you, and you used the device to come back, and then I killed you again, this time for good. As it turns out, you kept your copy machine in the same place in this universe. Unfortunately, something went wrong with it, and you’ve been trapped in its hard drive for several months. Lucky for you, I found the device and fixed it, and now the transfer is complete.”

Very little of what she was saying made any sense. Or maybe… He fought off surging waves of panic and forced himself to think. If she wanted him dead, he was dead. Might as well go out thinking. He went over her words carefully, and she stayed quiet while he worked things out in his head.

“You’re not Christine Dark,” he finally said. “Not the one I brought here, at least. You’re from a different timeline. One where you killed me.”

Was parallel history about to repeat itself? He’d find out soon enough.

“People kept telling me how smart you were, Daddy D. In my universe, all you accomplished was become an outlaw and until I found you and put you down. Twice. But maybe you do have some brains in there. And maybe I won’t open up your skull to take a good look at them.”

Jesus Christ. Daedalus had dealt with plenty of psychopaths before, enough to know one when he heard her. He’d never faced one without even his paltry Neo abilities, let alone naked, blind and weak as a kitten. Still, they were talking. Maybe he could figure out a way out of this.

“And your timeline is some time ahead of this one,” he added. It made sense; the many-worlds interpretation basically predicated the existence of a near infinite number of universes. In some of them, the Big Bang might have started a few years, or centuries, or eons before his did. In some other universe, in a myriad other universes, Daedalus Smith had triumphed against the host of cretins of his world and was dealing with the problems of kingship. Of course, from his own personal point of view, that didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

“Bingo,” the madwoman said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’m on a quest for revenge. It’s all very
Princess Bride
, all ‘my name is Inigo Montoya’ and stuff. Or
The Count of Monte Cristo
, for you culturally-deprived Earth Alphans. My sweet little baby sister, Pissy Chrissy, did some very bad things in my universe. She was tots a pain in my ass, and I’m going to make her pay.”

“I can sympathize,” he said, honestly enough. He loathed the girl with all his heart. “Is that why you brought me back to life? To help you?”

“Your eyes aren’t focusing too well, so you probably don’t see me tapping my nose, but yeah, I’m tapping my nose. You got it, Dee. I need a henchman. A useful henchman. Someone who knows all the players, who can help me get things done.”

“Maybe we can work something out,” he said.

Daedalus Smith was no one’s henchman, but he could play games with the best of them. He’d go along with the crazy bitch for now, but sooner or later he’d turn the tables on her.

“I need to be able to trust you, D-Dog, and right now you’re about as trustworthy as Hitler on meth. But that’s okay, I can fix that. In some ways, the fix is already in.”

“What are you talking about?”

“See, when you died and got put back together, you ended up with something extra. All that exposure to the Outsider stuff finally caught up with you. Did you think you could play in shit and not get some on you?”

“No.”

It couldn’t be. He’d taken precautions, done everything to prevent that from happening.

“To quote the Kool-Aid guy: Oh, yeah! You drank the Kool-Aid, Dee. You got infected, and that shit doesn’t wash off. You’re capital-T Tainted. Your hatred of everyone opened the door for the stuff, and death left you vulnerable enough.”

“No.”

He didn’t feel any difference. Maybe she was lying to him.

“The changes would normally take a while. It would start with little things: short temper, sadism, a tendency to choose the most assholish way of doing things. For a stubborn d-bag like yourself, the process could take years. I don’t have that kind of time, though, so I’m going to have to jumpstart things.”

His eyes were beginning to clear up. The figure looming over his prone form came into focus. The woman did look just like Christine Dark. Same red hair, pale skin. He didn’t think the Christine Dark he’d abducted had ever had that insane glint in her eyes, however.

“I picked up a few gifts from the Outsiders during my adventurous life,” she said. “I can nurture their little seedlings and make them grow, as long they’ve got fertile soil to grow on. And you are chock full of fertilizer, Dee. We’re going to raise a bumper crop of toxic energy from your shriveled little soul.”

“No.”

“There are many ways to do that. A blood transfer would do it, now that you’re already infected. But I think we can do better than that.”

Her grin widened. She started undressing.

“I hear you’re a real lady killer, Dee, and I could do with a bit of shagging, as the Brits would say. So let’s get it on.”

“No.” He’d rather stick it into a meat grinder.

“You say no but you mean yes, right? Haven’t you ever used that line on anybody?”

He didn’t answer.

“It’s been a while for me, and I’ve gotten used to a lively sex life, Dee. And while I’m fucking with John as part of my plan, I won’t get to fuck him right away, not until I get all my ducks in a row. Meanwhile, you get the honor of being my sex slave as well as my henchman. And we get some more dark in you.”

“No.”

She pounced on him. He tried to fight her off, but she was a Neo, stronger than a normal man. And able to manipulate his emotions, to make him want her. Soon enough, fighting her became unthinkable. He was too weak to resist her.

Too weak
. That was his last thought as himself.

* * *

They shared a cigarette afterwards.

His whole body ached. She had ridden him mercilessly, long past the point all pleasure was leeched from the act, using her powers to coax his body into rising to the occasion, again and again. It became torture. Feeling the shadowy, corrosive stuff of the Outsiders as it began to spread through him made it even worse.

At some point, something awoke inside of him, and the torture became unimportant.

“So this is what it’s like,” he said, exhaling and watching the puff of smoke with a mixture of curiosity and loathing. His hatred – for the girl, for the imbeciles who always ignored his advice, for the masses who knew nothing and didn’t care – had become sharper, better defined. He was beginning to feel what Mister Night had felt. It would take a while to get there: he was still human, with the wants and desires of the species. But he was on his way.

“It sucks in some ways, but there’s plenty of bennies,” the woman said. “Nothing feels better than hurting people. It’s better than sex. ‘Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women,’” she quoted. “Best feeling in the world.”

Images danced inside his head: John Clarke, Doc Slaughter, Chastity Baal, being crushed like so many insects. “Yes,” he said. He started getting aroused, pain and exhaustion forgotten.

“See? I knew you wanted it, slut,” she said.

“Yes,” he growled.

“Later, we can grab some hobo, or better yet, a hooker, and we can really go to town. Torture porn makes for great foreplay.”

He got on top this time.

“Yes.”

“That’s my boy.”