Blood of the Masked God (Book 1): Red Wrath Read online

  “It’s nice that you care so much for her.”

  “She’s great. She’s all I got. Crazy, but she cares in her own way.”

  So he had a clingy sister that required a lot of hand-holding. I didn’t have a problem with that, but I realized anything Carter knew about me might be discovered. Someday Carter would either share something with her or accidentally reveal it. I was up to my eyeballs in activities that would get me arrested. His nutty nervous sister wouldn’t sit idly by once she found out about me.

  “You were busy on the phone,” I said, “but something weird just happened outside the clinic. Maybe it’s just another crazy coincidence or all in my head, but there’s a new element to my condition to consider.”

  As I told him my tale of saving the kid, he listened without comment. Then the corner of his mouth turned up in a sly smile.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Super reflexes. Now there’s something we can test.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  He took us to a Brooklyn health club up in Dumbo where he had a membership. Up on the roof the tennis court was empty but for one older guy knocking balls against a wall. Carter checked out a pair of rackets and a basket of yellow tennis balls and had me stand on the opposite end of the court.

  “Even with superpowers I couldn’t return a serve,” I said.

  Tossing a ball up in the air, he hit it my direction. I let it bounce past.

  I twirled the racket. “Your club has a snack bar. How about we get something to eat? I’m finally hungry.”

  Another ball went sailing past, but no magic urge to return it came over me. The third serve almost hit me.

  “Not funny,” I said.

  “See if you can hit it back.”

  I swatted the next ball, and the one that followed. Both went bouncing into the net.

  “What does this prove?”

  “Nothing yet. I’m just getting warmed up. Now close your eyes.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  I shut my eyes and waited. I heard the serve. The ball hit my left boob. “Ow!” My eyes opened and I glared at him. “That hurt!”

  “I used to play regularly. The next one’s coming faster.”

  He hit more balls at me but I kept stepping out of the way.

  “You’re supposed to keep your eyes closed,” he said.

  “This is ridiculous. I can hear you hit the ball.”

  “Then shut your eyes and dodge the next one.”

  I tried. A few flew past. I couldn’t help but peek. But then one smacked me in the hand, and another my knee. Soon he had hit all the balls in the basket and we had to collect them.

  “It’s getting hot already and I’m wiped,” I said.

  Carter bounced a ball on his racket. “You can hear the ball when I hit it,” he said as he contemplated. Then he seemed to get distracted by something behind me and stared. As I turned to look, my hand caught a ball that was streaking my direction. Carter had thrown it just as I was turning away. Just like with the kid in front of the clinic, it was like my body went into action even as my mind was playing catch-up.

  “Did you see that?” I asked.

  “Maybe you got lucky.” He got a headband from his bag. “Put that over your eyes.”

  I did as he asked and put the racket down. My hunger and fatigue forgotten, I waited. One thrown ball came and I swatted it away with my left hand, and I caught another with my right. I dodged a third. It was like a live wire was running through me. I felt exhilarated, as nothing he threw could touch me even though I couldn’t see anything.

  Twelve balls, twelve misses. I removed the headband, picked up a tennis ball, and flung it back. Carter made an exaggerated show of being hurt as it struck him. But he was smiling too.

  The older man who shared the roof with us was staring.

  We both laughed a little too loud.

  In the snack bar, we bought wheat-free soy muffins with some sort of seaweed inside them. They were gummy and hard to swallow. But the coffee tasted like the best thing ever as I sipped carefully at the edge of the cup.

  “It’s like it’s ebbing away,” I said. “This could all be gone by the end of the day.”

  Carter hadn’t touched his muffin. “We need to write everything down. Figure out what you can and can’t do. Even if it fades, we can learn.”

  “I’m thinking that too. We have a window into what makes Chronos tick.”

  I told him about the record player and how Chronos seemed out of it when he returned home.

  “I’m thinking he’s got sensory overload by the time he gets back in,” I said. “If I experienced just a fraction of what he feels and hears, it must be overwhelming. He jams on loud music to wind down and drown out the world.”

  “But what about the house?” Carter asked. “It must play some part in all of this. He must secrete something that permeates the air there.”

  I nodded and finished my muffin. When I eyed Carter’s, he pushed it my way. He kept talking but now I was thinking. I had reflexes like Chronos. What else could I do? I wasn’t about to jump off a building or try to throw a car. I was still me and the tennis balls had hurt. No invulnerability. But what if Chronos felt just as much pain as anyone and was just incredibly resilient to damage to his body? Again, there were reams of articles on the man filled with speculation on his abilities, but no one really knew a thing.

  And then there was the locket. I hadn’t taken the time to closely inspect it yet. Surely it was just a piece of forgotten jewelry. Nothing important, like the rest of the old clothes. Yet it was something taken from his home. I hadn’t told Carter about it.

  I ate Carter’s muffin and washed it down with coffee.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s get out of here. You have work.”

  “But what about you?” Carter asked, clearly disappointed. “We can’t stop now.”

  “I have some stuff I need to take care of. Go to work. Keep your sister off your back. I’ll touch base with you this evening.”

  I had some research I wanted to do without his help. And a few tests I wanted to run on my own.

  The Nikom Dojo was where I’d gone for six years while learning martial arts.

  Knowing how to throw a punch and then throw a person is pretty cool, and it comes in handy when a goon thinks you’re just a 130-pound girl waiting to become a victim. The thought of driving a knee or an elbow into Chronos’s soft parts warmed many a night. But even martial arts had limits. Goons carried weapons, and even an untrained blow by a 200-pound man would mess up a bantamweight like me. Duking it out was a last resort. Plus, I didn’t intend to engage an invulnerable man with Southeast Asian fighting styles.

  Even though the place was busy with hundreds of students in the course of a week, it always smelled clean. I waited as an intermediate kickboxing class finished its cooldown exercises and the dozen students filtered out. A few lingered to speak with the instructor, but they too left eventually. The short, lithe Asian man teaching the class had seen me the moment I entered, but he didn’t acknowledge my presence as he tidied up, placing knee pads and gloves into a bin.

  I walked barefoot across the training mat in his direction.

  “What do want, Lily?” the man asked as I approached. “Or whatever you’re calling yourself these days.”

  I couldn’t miss the frosty tone in his voice. “To visit. How are you, Mark?”

  He turned to face me. “I’m fine. The business is doing well. My mother is still sick but alive. That about covers it, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re still angry with me.”

  “I let go of anger a long time ago. Now I’m just cautious. And tired. Is this something we could accomplish through a text message?”

  “No. I need to talk to you about a sparring round.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss. I won’t train you anymore.”

  “And I’m asking you to help me out with something that might take just a couple of minutes
of your time.”

  He heaved a sigh. “You want to learn to beat people up? Go to a boxing club. There are dozens of them and many have classes for women.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened between us. I know you don’t want to hear my apologies. Our last night together, I was angry and got carried away. But you’re the only one I’ve talked to about what I do and the only one I trust with what I just found out.”

  “Why? Are you sick?” A look of genuine concern crossed his face. It was an expression I knew well, from a time when it had shown his love and affection for me.

  “No, nothing like that. It’s…I was exposed to something and I think it changed me.”

  Whatever momentary consideration he was willing to give me evaporated. “This is more of your crazy talk. Lily, this is why we broke up. I can’t compete with your obsession. And look at you. You look half-starved like you’re strung out on something. You need professional help.”

  “I’m not on anything and never have been. It’s just been a rough couple of nights for everyone. But this has nothing to do with that. I need five minutes of your time, here.”

  “No. No more free ride from me. You took advantage of me for the last time. Now I need you to leave my dojo.”

  “Make me.”

  His jaw clenched tight. He moved to walk around me but I got in his way.

  “Lily, I’m not going to spar with you.”

  “I don’t want to spar. I just want you to hit me.”

  He raised both palms. “Okay. Now you’re getting weird and I’m going to call the cops.”

  As he tried to step past I once again blocked him, this time pushing him with my hand.

  “Five minutes of your time and I’ll be gone,” I said.

  “Does this approach work in your world when you don’t get what you want? I said no. Whatever game you’re playing isn’t funny. In fact it’s clear you really do need help.”

  I raised my hands to let him pass. “Okay, fine. I’m sorry. I’ll get my things and go. But Mark, I found out something important last night that might make all the difference with what’s going on with my life. All I was here for was a second opinion. You’re the best friend I ever had. I’m sorry I wrecked our relationship. But I need you to see something, and you’re the only one who might help make sense of it. If you’re not able to do that, I understand. I’ll go.”

  He was no longer heading for the front desk. Whether he would have called the cops, I didn’t know. He watched as I headed for the edge of the mat where my shoes and bag waited.

  “An opinion on what?” he asked.

  I tried not to smile. “Let’s call it a new technique that I learned.”

  “I’m not going to hit you.”

  “I can show you without you throwing a punch. Five minutes is all it will take.”

  “Five minutes. But I catch a whiff of crazy and you leave without another word.”

  Ten minutes later Mark was throwing sparring gloves at me while I had a yellow ranking belt tied around my eyes. As long as I relaxed, my body did the work and I reflexively dodged, ducked, and jumped to avoid the glove. He couldn’t hit me as long as he threw them one at a time.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “What’s the trick? You can still see under your blindfold.”

  “Maybe a little, but not enough to see what you’re doing.”

  “So who taught you this?”

  “No one. This morning I stopped a kid from stepping out into traffic, but it was like I knew what he was going to do before he did it. Then a friend of mine took me to a tennis court and tried to hit me with tennis balls but couldn’t.”

  “Which means this isn’t a very good test.”

  I lifted the blindfold. “No. That’s why I need you to try to hit me. Like you mean it.”

  “And you’re not recording this so you can have me arrested for punching your lights out.”

  I gave him an are-you-serious look. But he was serious. Maybe I deserved it. A little.

  He pulled on sparring gloves and walked down to the front door and locked it.

  “I don’t want anyone seeing this,” Mark said. “And you wear a head guard. And the first blow that lands, we’re done.”

  I raised a hand as if testifying. “I promise.”

  We moved to center mat. Bowed to each other. And I tightened the head guard, pulled down the belt over my eyes, and got ready. I could hear him come closer on his padded sparring shoes, cautious, balanced, taking one step at a time. I couldn’t help but raise my hands. He could hit hard, and my defensive instincts were impossible to ignore. But whatever was going on with me had to be tested by fire. I lowered my hands by my sides.

  “Come on, Mark. Don’t be such a wimp.”

  A fist was flying towards my face. I bent at the knee and let it sail past. Mark stepped in close, threw an elbow, but I ducked and blocked with my left hand. Without pause, he drove forward, knees and the heels of his hand coming at me high and low. I sidestepped, blocked with my right arm, then with my left, and then deflected a kick with my raised shin.

  We squared off.

  I heard him breathing hard. It hurt where he had struck me on my legs and arms, but not as much as it would have if his blows had landed on my body.

  “Are you holding back?” I asked.

  Again he launched himself forward. I heard him exhale with each attempted strike. Meanwhile I was forgetting to breathe, and I forced myself to let out a sharp “Ha!” with each block and dodge to remind myself to take in enough air. A fist snapped past my head. I caught a hard knee with my raised right leg, then my left. He was fast and I was out of practice. Not being able to see should have sealed the deal.

  But Mark couldn’t hit me.

  “Bring it!” I said, panting.

  “I’m trying. How are you doing this?”

  “Superpowers. Now give me your all and connect.”

  I didn’t miss the irony of telling my former trainer things he would say to an intermediate student.

  He closed in and tried to crowd me and trip me up with his footwork. For the purpose of my test, knocking me on my ass would be just as good as landing a punch. Letting my reflexes do the work was feeling too easy, like letting someone else do the driving. Then I threw up my right arm to block and connected with his jaw.

  He grunted in pain. I hesitated and started to say “I’m sorry” when he drilled me with a backward elbow that caught me in the side of the face, sending me down to the mat.

  That’s when things got weirder.

  I didn’t hit the floor.

  It was like the air got thick beneath me.

  “What the hell is happening?” Mark asked.

  I tore the belt from my eyes and saw I was floating six inches from the mat. I put my hands and feet down and was suddenly supporting my own weight. Mark backed off a couple of steps with his hands up to signal the bout was over.

  “Lily, you were…”

  “Floating. Yeah, I saw.”

  I took a moment to examine my arms and legs as if something new had become attached to my body.

  “How is that possible?” he asked.

  “It’s like I said. I have superpowers.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Mark didn’t want me to leave. He said we needed to talk and see what was going on with me. I felt the tug of an old friendship and promised I would call him, but I had the results of our test and had to process what had happened. Besides, Mark didn’t believe in my cause like Carter did. If he ever got superpowers, he wouldn’t change a thing about his life. It was something we had talked about not too long before he told me he wanted to have kids. I couldn’t remember what lie I had told him when it was my turn to answer.

  Any discussion about my plans would have run headlong into another issue Mark had. Morals. Normal people don’t try to kill others no matter the justification. We had laws, governments, society, and even faith to rely on for recompense. Ignoring those meant becoming as bad as the ones who wrong us. T
hat’s what Mark believed. And he would try to corner me in a philosophical argument where I didn’t have the words to explain my feelings and why I couldn’t let Chronos get away with what he did.

  So I left Mark at his dojo and headed back to my apartment.

  Crosstown traffic was bad. I heard sirens. I needed time to think, so I navigated my scooter between the cars and drove as fast as I could. There was a thrill rose up as I sped along, wondering if my reflexes were up to the challenge of city driving. If they weren’t, I might be killed. Then, as I was cutting through a crosswalk, a lady walking three dogs stepped out in front of me and I had to swerve. She pulled back on the dogs just in time for my front tire to miss one of them. I heard a string of curses as I raced off, but once I was half a block away I slowed down and stopped driving like a maniac.

  Was this how it started? A taste of superhuman ability and you turn into a psycho?

  Because I was driving safe and sane, I noticed the white Ford van across from my apartment in time to avoid being seen. This one looked newer than the others Princess Pike had, but it was the same make and model.

  I drove behind a utility truck and turned in at a gated parking garage opposite my building. I couldn’t get inside, but a hedge gave me cover. I studied the van.

  A big guy sat in the driver’s seat. It was hard to tell if he was one of her goons. He wasn’t wearing a mask. There must have been ten thousand vans like that one in the city. But in my gut I knew it was one of her muscle men. How they kept finding me I didn’t know. I felt a rush of worry. If they knew I lived here, did they now know about Carter? It had been his car they had followed on the bridge.

  I texted him. You at work?

  Be here until a little after five, he replied after a long minute of me worrying.

  KK. Keep your eyes open. Someone watching my apartment.

  I knew I shouldn’t have added that. He instantly responded.

  Get out of there and go to my place. Call the police if you think they see you. I’m heading over now.