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

  But I readied the revolver anyway and put on the holster. It was heavy and would look awkward even with my coat over it, but for now I wanted to wear it. I took comfort in its presence, even though my skill with the weapon was limited and the revolver might not do anything to the man I wanted to kill.

  I opened the old flip phone and said goodbye to my parents. Once finished, I left the phone in the safe.

  Carter was waiting where I had left him. I climbed into the car and asked, “Do you have work you have to do today? I get it if you don’t want me in your place while you’re not there.”

  “I don’t think I have any more secrets to keep,” Carter said.

  But he did have work. Even though it was a Saturday, he said something about corporate tax extensions being due.

  He drove me back to his place and dropped me off, handing me his apartment keys before I got out. Even as he drove away, I realized being stranded there wouldn’t do. I had to get my scooter a parking spot. But for now I had to assume it would be recognized by whoever was looking for me. If only I could get some clue as to how hard they were looking. I yawned. The lack of sleep was catching up. I needed a nap, so I went up to Carter’s place and discovered his couch was a little too comfortable.

  Four hours later, and it was evening. Carter wasn’t back yet. I luxuriated for twenty minutes under his fancy showerhead. Once I got dried off and into some fresh clothes, I went through the rest of his things.

  In his closet he had a few long boxes full of comic books, all neatly arranged in bags with backing boards. Mostly old stuff, all superhero. Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse. Lots of stuff I didn’t recognize with a myriad of heroes and villains wearing elaborate costumes. Seeing the various characters in their action poses fighting whatever evil the writers threw their way that month made me feel squeamish, like I was looking in at a foreign world of fetishized violence that had long ago spilled off the page and into the real world. I couldn’t help but wonder why Carter of all people would even have such a collection. It felt obscene, like a stash of dirty magazines.

  I put it all away and once again sifted through the kitchen. He had milk. He had cereal. I was in business.

  Carter rolled in around 7:30 with a big bag of Thai food. I wasn’t particularly hungry but I helped him polish off at least half of it, even though it looked like he ordered enough for a family of five. When I stole a hunk of green curry chicken off his plate he blushed.

  “Is this…are we?” he started to ask.

  “Best not to overthink it.”

  I didn’t get the reaction I expected. He seemed uncomfortable, so I didn’t do it again.

  Once we finished eating, he tidied up and wiped everything in the kitchen down. He even rearranged my dishes I had set in the dishwasher. I could tell by his face he was stressed but I didn’t comment. Either it was our new dynamic or the fact that I was in his meticulous space and making waves. He calmed down a bit when he got on the computer to start going over his data, only to tense up when I put a hand on his arm.

  “You’re not used to this, are you?” I asked.

  “I haven’t been close with anyone since Eden.”

  I took my hand away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Nothing to be sorry about. I can’t say I even know what a normal relationship looks like. My record is about a year, with my martial arts instructor. But he wanted things to be serious and my life was always in chaos. Still is. I’m not a good influence.”

  “And here I am enabling you.”

  “Show me what you got.”

  He pulled up a map where all the data points, confirmed and unconfirmed, tracked Chronos’s activity since the meteor strike. His program had gathered quite a few new numbers. There was a large cluster around the event site where Chronos had been busy rescuing all the fishermen. A number of red, green, and yellow lines connected more dots and ran between the impact site and New England. Carter hovered the mouse over each. Pilots, radar techs, air traffic controllers, and civilians had posted sightings somewhere online, and Carter’s software gathered it all. While there were a few outliers further north and south and even as far away as the Bahamas or Chicago, the majority of data formed a solid path.

  “That’s where he flew out, and that’s when he returned,” Carter said. “Around five p.m. this evening.”

  “Looks like he spent all day out there,” I said. “And then he comes back home. Which is where exactly?”

  “That’s when the reporting always gets funny.”

  “How so?”

  Carter tapped his lips with a finger. “He’s usually seen north of us, and flies over New England. Sometimes it looks like he’s going to Canada and then he vanishes. Other times he shoots west, and there are multiple sightings which place him going in different directions. He’s always north of the city. Upstate, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire.”

  “So there’s a chance he lives in Canada. I’ve heard that before.”

  “Me too. But we’re also not the first ones to track him. I’m sure he’s got plenty of people wanting to find out where he goes at night. Reporters, fans, bad guys.”

  “But I doubt anyone has all these cool lines on their map.”

  I made a cup of black tea in the microwave as he pored over the information. I couldn’t find any sugar anywhere. About thirty minutes passed as he kept eliminating lines until there were very few left. He grumbled irritably.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Carter leaned back from the computer and rolled his neck. “It’s all the sightings when he’s over land. Few of them are reliable. He can’t be two places at once. It doesn’t help us at all. Every time I lay it over previous days’ observations, I run into the same thing. It’s like he’s everywhere. And then just vanishes.”

  “Chronos isn’t as dumb as he comes across. I believe this is what he does to keep people like us from finding him.” I put a hand on his shoulder and looked at the map. At least he didn’t flinch this time. If he kept on being so jumpy around me I was going to start taking it personally. “Pull up everything for me. Can you do an entire month?”

  Carter tapped away and a minute later the map was full of squiggles. The colorful spaghetti covered much of the Northeast, with most of it running through New York. That made sense. It was Chronos’s playground. But his comings and goings into the city appeared to be random. Points of ingress and egress varied, and where he came from and went to at the end of the day remained a mystery.

  I sagged in my chair.

  “Want me to turn it off?” Carter asked.

  “No,” I said with a yawn. “If it’s okay with you, leave it. I’m going to stare at it for a while.”

  Chapter Twelve

  That night the dream came back with a vengeance.

  Again I was in the pit with walls of red fog. I heard voices of others trapped there too. None of us could get out, and as the fog closed in so did the crush of men and women clawing to climb out yet unable to do so. Bodies bumped me from all sides. Soon they were pressing in, crushing me so I couldn’t breathe. The fog only grew thicker, clogging my throat. I was drowning. Above it all was a resounding thump, thump, thump. I knew that encountering whatever was out there behind the fog would be so much worse than dying inside it. I pushed feebly at the crowd around me. A woman’s nails raked across my face as she tried to clamber above the choking mist.

  Then I heard my name and the banging only grew more persistent.

  I opened my eyes and discovered I was curled up in the bathtub. Carter was knocking at the door and calling my name. It took me a moment to regain my senses.

  “Hold on,” I called.

  My whole right side was tingly from lying in a weird position within the tub. I stumbled out and unlocked the door. Carter stood there in a white undershirt and briefs, his hair mussed. The lights were on in the living room.

  “You were screaming.”

  “I was?”

  “What happened?
”

  I raised a hand for him to wait. At the sink, I splashed cold water on my face. I had a welt next to my nose. Had I scratched myself? While the details of the dream were evaporating quickly, the feeling of terror lingered and I couldn’t shake a gripping sense of unease.

  “I thought someone was attacking you,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t remember screaming. I don’t even remember leaving the couch. How long was I screaming?”

  “Long enough to scare me. I thought I’d have to break the door down.”

  “If it’s any consolation, this has never happened to me before.”

  I plodded past him. The nest of blankets and pillows on the couch were thrown around as if I’d cast them off in every direction. I picked it all up.

  “Would you like me to get you something?” Carter asked.

  “Are you offering me a drink or a sedative?”

  “I don’t have anything besides beer and Tylenol.”

  I shook my head. “Nothing, thanks. But I’m going to pass on sleep for a little while. I’m really keyed up.”

  When I turned on the TV, Carter went back into his bedroom and closed the door. I muted it and found a news channel where I could zone out. At first I thought it was showing more footage of the meteor strike near Iceland, but it turned out to be something new.

  A second rock had impacted in the Pacific Ocean near Micronesia. This time the result was catastrophic, and the disaster was spreading by the hour as massive waves assaulted New Guinea, the Philippines, and hundreds of islands. More waves were coming, and every nation that touched the Pacific Ocean was on alert. It all had to be part of a bad dream. At any moment I would wake up. Maybe I was still in Carter’s bathtub screaming my lungs out.

  Two earthquakes were now being reported as part of the second impact’s aftermath. One had struck just off the east coast of Indonesia and another in Japan near Kyoto.

  I turned the TV off and stared at the darkened screen.

  The view out the apartment window was of a row of townhouses across the street. Nice places. I could see the flickering reflection of monitors or televisions in several windows. Some of the neighbors had their lights on even though it was quite early. Had I not been the only one suffering from crazy dreams? Down on the front steps of one townhouse I noticed a woman sitting in the dim light with her face in her hands. She appeared to be bawling. I felt weird watching, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. After a few minutes she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her T-shirt and went inside.

  The memory of my own dream made me itch. All those bodies, pressing in, the red fog, all those voices.

  I had done my share of therapy, mostly for grief after my parents’ murder. My uncle didn’t believe in it, so when the insurance-paid sessions ran out, I stopped going. Did I have lingering issues? No doubt. But I felt like I would be crazy to believe that whatever was going on was more than just stress from too much bad news.

  I began thinking dark thoughts.

  I wanted my heavy bag so I could punch something. I settled for a series of push-ups, burpees, and high-impact floor exercises that, if I were being considerate, I wouldn’t be doing at such an hour for fear of making too much noise.

  Soon enough I lost myself in exhaustion, and I was a quivering, sweaty mess by the time I was done. I followed this up with another shower. Afterward I stood in front of the window with another bowl of cereal, looking for signs that there was actually going to be a tomorrow.

  There was superhero news that morning. Atypical for a Sunday. I kept the TV off and read about it online. Videos from news copters and minute-by-minute uploads from bystanders kept rolling in. Villain Attacks New York Ferry, the top of the news thread read. It was a commuter boat from Astoria, a quarter as full as on a normal morning. The situation was still unfolding and many questions remained unanswered. But as more footage came in, along with one close-up from someone onboard the vessel, it became clear who the attacker was.

  It was Slingshot.

  He had always been a hero and was maybe the closest thing Chronos had to a sidekick. The nimble, wisecracking gymnast was instantly recognizable with his purple shades and bulging bare arms. He was super fast and super strong and a real brawler. Some speculated he was faster than Chronos. He could chuck a small car over his head with ease.

  But now Slingshot was jumping from person to person on the lower level of the ferry and throwing them about or smashing them down onto the floor where they didn’t get up. Several survivors, including the one shooting the video, were huddled on the stern behind a row of benches, trying to keep out of sight. Slingshot gripped one of the crewmembers wearing a white faux naval shirt with epaulettes and began slamming him repeatedly into a metal column.

  Why was Slingshot going nuts?

  He dropped the bloodied crewmember and began tearing up the bolted-down benches closest to him.

  I felt a twinge. I could snag Carter’s keys and get on the road and take a chance I might get to a vantage point in time if Chronos showed up. Carter wouldn’t be able to stop me. And this time…and this time…

  Who was I kidding?

  Even with light traffic I was over thirty minutes out from where the ferry would dock. I was hoping to be in the right place at the right time with a man who unpredictably showed up, could fly, and apparently could dodge bullets.

  And there on one of the live feeds, as if to mock me, Chronos appeared. Whoever was filming him was standing near a boathouse. The ferry had cut its engines and was drifting midriver. Chronos descended from on high, floating downward, his black cape fluttering behind him. I clicked on the view inside. Slingshot was nowhere to be seen.

  “Looks like he went downstairs,” the man holding the phone whispered. “We’re going to make it to the port side of the ship and grab some life preservers and jump overboard.”

  The view shook and swayed and it was impossible to see anything. All I could tell was they were on the move. The man with the phone paused near a group of five bodies that had been beaten to a bloody pulp. Muffled conversation followed and the phone was put down, which gave the viewer a static shot of the ceiling.

  “She’s still alive,” the man said softly.

  A garbled response followed.

  “Get going, then,” he said. “I’m going to stay and help.”

  Someone moved past the camera. The man was speaking consolingly to someone. “You’re going to be okay. Just hang on.”

  I heard a woman’s voice, frantic. “It’s…my leg.”

  “Shhh, shhh,” the man said. “You’ve got to keep quiet. He’s here somewhere.”

  The sound of rending metal echoed, followed by a loud banging.

  “I think he’s below deck.”

  Then came screams. The phone was picked up and aimed through a set of doors, where a small group of fleeing passengers were being chased along an outside railing. Slingshot vaulted into view. He grabbed one man and punched him repeatedly before casting him over the side into the water. Slingshot seemed poised to move when he paused, looking upward. Chronos appeared, flying straight into the purple-clad man and driving him through the doors. The camera shook and went dark.

  I had to return to the outside view, but it wasn’t showing anything inside the ferry. The scrolling text only amounted to speculation as to what was happening. The comments feed was going nuts.

  Chronos is here.

  Chronos will stop him.

  I’m praying right now. Please, Jesus, please.

  But why are they fighting? What happened to Slingshot?

  They’ll figure that out later. He has to be stopped.

  I hope Chronos kills him for what he did.

  He’ll save all of us from what’s happening.

  It was too easy to get drawn into the constant stream of knee-jerk drivel.

  Abruptly, the footage from inside returned. The guy holding the phone was on the ground at the bottom of a stairwell. He was finally holding the phone still, but it was zo
omed in too far. Every time he moved the screen swam. But I could just make out what was happening.

  Chronos had Slingshot backed against a wall and was speaking softly. The words were unclear but it sounded like he was trying to talk the rampaging hero down. Slingshot’s purple glasses had been knocked from his face. The man’s eyes shifted from side to side like he was a cornered animal. Slingshot sprang towards Chronos, but he moved out of the way just like he’d done when I had tried to shoot him. It was the briefest blur. One moment Slingshot was leaping, the next Chronos had him by the neck and arm and was flinging him across the passenger compartment and into a wall.

  Before Slingshot could recover, Chronos walked up to the sprawled hero. Ever so calmly, he knelt over him and began punching. The steady smack-smack-smack of his fists was audible over Carter’s computer speakers. Chronos paused to look up at the watching phone, and he stared straight at me. His lips moved but no words could be heard. Then the camera shook and went dark.

  Police boats swarmed around the ferry. Cops boarded and within a minute they were escorting the passengers and crew off. Chronos was out on one of the back decks, but he flew away as one of the officers approached. But the black-clad superhero lingered, hovering nearby as a pair of medics brought Slingshot out strapped to a stretcher. He had a high-tech collar fixed around his neck. I’d seen them plenty of times. It’s what the cops used to disable super bad guys, not that Slingshot was in any condition to try anything. Supposedly it kept their powers in check, but real facts about the devices were surprisingly hard to come by.

  Chronos stuck around even after Slingshot was taken away. The perfect target. If only I had headed towards the action when it all had started. Perhaps he would be in my sights right now.