Death Makes Me Stronger, page 26
Pscythe’s attention was on the cop and my mentor when I turned back around to look at him, and another pulse of rage shot through me. I took a step closer, balled up my fists, and then slammed one into his stomach before he even noticed how close I was. The villain stumbled backwards and spewed blood onto my boots like I’d shattered some of his ribs, and it sounded like the jackass had a bunch of rattling maracas in his chest when he tried to breathe.
“I’ve got to give you some credit for the spiderweb,” he gasped as if he wasn’t fighting to stay upright. “But there’s no way a little spider and some invulnerable douche is going to take down the Great and Powerful Pscythe.”
A bruise had already started to form around the villain’s neck from where Anora had put him in a chokehold, and he swayed a little like a strong breeze could knock the villain out, and I knew that the Great and Powerful Pscythe was at the end of his abilities.
He still had the long blade clutched in his hand, and it was definitely dangerous, especially since it was imbued with psychic power, but his reaction times were slower, and all that I had to do was stay alive. Golden Weaver wouldn’t be able to help for a few minutes, even though the hero had already started to recover from the last attack by the time the cop had reached her. If I could just knock him out, then she would be able to help me wrap him up, and my first encounter with a supervillain would be over.
“I don’t know,” I said as he forced himself to stand upright like he wasn’t about to keel over. “I think that you’re pretty much done for. You’ve got a hell of a burn on your neck. It actually looks like a really nasty rash. Definitely not going to make a good impression with that. Not unless you’re trying to scare away the ladies. Or the men. Either way, you’re not getting an invitation to any of these gallery openings.”
“That’s not what I want,” he snarled like I’d hit a nerve.
“Whatever you say,” I chuckled and circled around so that his back was to my mentor. “But I do think that I hit a nerve.”
“I’ll hit a nerve,” Pscythe said as he lunged forward with the blade.
Pain sliced through me as the psychic energy from the blade made contact with my forearm, but it was nothing compared to his earlier attacks. I brought my fist up into the villain’s chin, and blood spurted out of the side of his mouth as he bit down hard on his tongue.
The knife clattered to the street and went dull as Pscythe reached up to hold his mouth. Tears poured down the villain’s cheeks as drool and shattered teeth dripped from between his lips. Rage filled my opponent’s eyes and turned them red with power as he gathered the last of his strength for one last attack.
Golden Weaver had managed to regain her composure by then and tried to release her webs. One small string leaped out of her wrists, but it fell to the ground a foot away from her, and I could swear that she started to curse. Anora shook herself with the vibration again like that would reset her system and then tried again, but with no luck.
So it was up to me to finish this jackass off before he could do any more damage. Pscythe seemed like he was out of steam, but Inferno had used the same trick and managed to kill me, and that wasn’t an experience that I wanted to repeat, especially since Golden Weaver wouldn’t have the energy to stop him once I was dead.
I took a deep breath to steady myself and then balled my hands into fists again. It would be helpful for the future if Pscythe managed to kill me so that I could become immune, but if he managed to release any more of those psychic sickles after I was down, then those lives would be on my hands.
“Face it, it’s over,” I said.
I took a few steps toward the cops and the ruined web so that he’d have to follow after me. Some of the civilians had come out of the galleries to take videos like the fight was already over, so my best bet was to get him close enough to the webbing that he’d get stuck again. I was sure that he was on his last leg, but cornered animals were always the most dangerous, and the limping villain had a murderous glint in his eyes as he stumbled after me.
“Look at you,” I said to keep his attention on me while we neared the stringy webs. “You’re practically dead. I broke at least a few ribs. You sound like a rattlesnake every time you breathe. And your jaw is broken. You’ll need a good dentist to fix those teeth.”
“You’ll pay for this,” the villain slurred through a swollen tongue as he balled his hands into fists.
I’d moved slow enough that Pscythe could keep up with me, and the villain’s movements were so janky that he telegraphed every time he threw a fist at my face.
I spun to the side as the fist came rushing toward my head, kicked out with my left leg, and heard the satisfying crunch of his kneecap breaking as my boot slammed into him. There was no time to waste, so I brought my fist around and hit him in the temple with all of my strength. I shoved the villain backwards into a curtain of webbing, and they caught him like the ropes of a boxing arena.
Pscythe’s eyes started to roll into the back of his head as the villain collapsed, but one last blast of psychic energy washed out of him. The red sickles formed just enough to slam into my head, and pain sliced through me the same way it had when they’d gone through my body.
I fell to my knees as Golden Weaver rushed forward with handcuffs made out of webbing. She said something as she gestured to the villain in front of me. I was pretty sure that she told me that I’d done a good job, and that everyone was safe, but it was hard to hear over the pounding of my blood in my ears.
Darkness closed around me.
I’d defeated my first supervillain.
All I had to do was resurrect.
Chapter 18
“You must protect them.”
The words echoed through my mind as I bolted upright in bed. Black curtains blocked out most of the sunlight, but a few golden rays peeked through like it was almost sunset. The comforter draped over me was the darkest ebony with bright red mushrooms and ferns crocheted into it, and I realized with a jolt that they must’ve brought me back to Raven’s apartment.
A camera on a tripod was pointed right at me, and the red light blinked in the inky darkness of the room. There was another camera in the corner that looked a lot like the night vision one that Raven had set up in my apartment, and a stopwatch sat next to a pitcher of water on the bedside table.
I reached over to stop the count and blinked a few times to make sure that I was reading it right. Thirty-nine hours had passed since it had been started, though the girls might have added the extra time from when I collapsed in the street. Still, that was the longest time that I’d ever been out, and my body hurt worse than when Inferno had lit me on fire or when Anora’s venom had made me bleed out.
My muscles ached as I threw off the blankets and forced myself to stand, and it took all of my energy just to stay steady and not fall backwards. I felt queasy as I walked toward the master bathroom, but there wasn’t any physical sign of injury in the bathroom mirror. It just felt like I’d run a marathon in the middle of summer without water, and my first order of business was to stumble back into the bedroom and down the pitcher of water.
Everything came into focus once the water had rehydrated me, and I even managed to turn off the camera in the darkened room. A pile of clothes was set out on the chair in the corner, along with a few items from my own bathroom, and I decided that a hot shower was exactly what I needed to finish the reset. I stayed in the scalding water until my fingers started to prune and wondered how my body could still get wrinkly even though my skin was indestructible.
That was something that we could experiment with later, though, and I made a mental note to see if my skin was still impervious to knives even when it was all wrinkly. There probably wasn’t a villain that would dunk me in water for that long, especially since it wouldn’t drown me, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Just because we hadn’t found the limits of my abilities yet didn’t mean that they didn’t exist.
Something about the thought tickled a memory in the back of my mind, and the words that I heard right as I woke up. The voice had told me to protect them, and every ounce of my being wanted to do that, but I couldn’t remember who “they” were supposed to be. It was like the dream that had slipped through my fingers the last time that I’d resurrected, but I was sure that someone had been in the room with me.
I walked over to the camera and rewound it a few minutes until right when my chest rose and fell for the first time. A shadow moved across the room, but it had come from the direction of the window, so it could’ve just been one of the heroes flying around the city. I watched it again a few more times, but there was no way to tell what it was, or where it had come from, and I decided not to tell Raven for the moment, because the goth woman would be sure that it was one of the gods of death instead of just a plane passing by and the remnants of a dream.
In any case, it was time to face the new day, so I headed for the bedroom door and what I hoped would be a feast. I heard Raven’s voice drift through from the other side, and Anora’s voice made a reply, but Briar and Paul didn’t seem to be present. The clock on the bedside table showed it was almost six in the evening, so the blonde vampire-like woman was probably just getting off work, and I had no doubt that she and her husband would be over the second that they could to see if I was alive.
It was strange to think that my new friends just waited around every time that I died to see if I’d come back to life, but then again, my life had taken a very weird turn ever since that manhole cover hit my face. Including, but not limited to, the fact that I was officially a member of the Hero Society in New Liberty, and I’d taken down my very first supervillain.
“Life is a state of impermanence,” Raven said as I reached for the door handle. “My guests do not even stay the same despite their departure into the hereafter. They come to me broken, and I discover the reason for their demise. Then their family comes to collect them, or rather, they send a funeral home to come get them, and then a mortician embalms them. That does slow down the rate of change since those chemicals are designed to maintain some form of homeostasis, but decay always wins in the end, and we all become dust.”
“That’s all the more reason for us to make our present time memorable,” Anora responded in a dry tone. “It is why we supers must do what we can to protect others. And while impermanence is an existential state of being, the truth, and what is right and wrong, never changes.”
“You say that, but haven’t you ever killed anyone?” my girlfriend countered in an excited tone like they were having the best conversation ever. “I’d bet that you’d say that killing another human is wrong. But it’s still a necessary evil in some cases.”
“It is still an evil, though,” the spider-like woman replied. “And that cannot be changed. It will change the inner state of whoever conducted the evil, and that is the sense of impermanence that we must all face. It will either change someone for the better, and in so doing make them a better superhero, or they will devolve into darkness and become a supervillain.”
“I die for over thirty hours and this is what I wake up to?” I teased as I pulled open the door. “The eternal debate between good and evil?”
“And that nothing ever stays the same,” Raven said with a smile so bright that she should’ve turned in her goth card.
“Never a dull moment,” I laughed.
The petite woman jumped up from the couch and ran toward me so fast that I barely had time to brace myself before she threw herself into my arms. Raven covered my face in kisses and then pressed her lips to mine so long that I thought we’d stay like that forever. It felt good to have my girlfriend so close and to feel her heartbeat against mine.
“I was starting to think that you weren’t going to wake up this time,” she confessed and took a step back to stand on her own. “I kept checking in during my breaks, which is why you’re at my apartment. Yours is just a block further, but I wanted to make sure that I could get there and back in time.”
“Makes sense,” I said and brushed one long black braid over her shoulder. “I’m glad that I woke up. Did it really take me thirty-nine hours?”
“Just about,” the goth woman said with a glance at her phone. “Anora did a great job of keeping everyone back.”
Anora stood up from the couch and walked over to join us with a small smile. There was a little wobble in her walk as if she was still unsteady, and I wondered if the psychic attack had a permanent effect on the superhero. Golden Weaver would never let anyone know that a villain had managed to hurt her that much, but the woman in front of me looked tired and ready for a long vacation.
“I had to call in Raven to help get you out of there,” Anora said. “My webs didn’t want to work properly. They’re fine now, but the ability has only regained full power in the last twelve hours. I think that we should both have The Designer add more psy-blockers to our masks.”
“Good idea,” I nodded and wrapped an arm around Raven’s waist. “I appreciate you guys getting me out before anyone realized that I was dead.”
“There’s some speculation about that,” my girlfriend said and bounced up and down excitedly. “Wait until you see it. Briar has been keeping your social media account hopping since you died, and there are a lot of videos of your fight with Pscythe. Of course, it did happen in the artsy area of town, so there were tons of actual photographers there, and the shots came out glorious.”
Raven rushed over to grab her laptop, but I held my hands up, and my stomach let out a growl loud enough to overpower the startup sound of the computer. It had been almost two days since I’d eaten anything, and the first thing on my to-do list was devour a huge meal. Preferably steak, but at the moment even a salad sounded delicious.
“I almost forgot,” the goth woman said with a knowing nod. “Food first. Then I’ll show you everything.”
Anora strolled into the kitchen as if it was her apartment and pulled out a tinfoil-covered dish. The smell of garlic wafted through the air, and I practically drooled at the sight of leftover alfredo. The superhero shook her head and warmed up a huge plate while I rummaged around for coffee.
“So,” Raven asked as she grabbed herself a plate. “Did you see any of the gods of death this time? It did take longer, so it might be possible. Anything that you remember could be helpful.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think I had a dream, but it faded right after I woke up.”
The goth woman made a face that was a mixture of excitement and disgust, but then she seemed to settle on the former emotion. A smile tugged on her black lips as hope bloomed, and I could almost feel the joy that washed off of my girlfriend at the thought of being one step closer to an encounter with one of the gods of death, though there were a lot of them, and we had no way to know which one might reach out first, if they existed in the first place.
“I’ll want an update after your next death,” she declared and uncovered a bowl of yeast rolls. “I bet that one is going to contact you soon. You’ve already died so many times that it just seems like the natural next step.”
“We’ll see,” I said and took my plate from Anora.
“Before you get into a conversation with the ancient gods,” the spider-like woman said as she started to warm up her own dinner. “The Hero Society is waiting for your report. I’ve already turned in mine, but I’ll show you the rough draft so that you know what they expect. Try to add as much detail as possible so that the file on Pscythe will be complete. It might help future heroes that have to fight him, and we share our findings with Briar’s museum as well as the governments of the world. At least, we share it with the ones that don’t harbor supervillains that need a place to hide out.”
“There are really countries like that?” I asked around my first bite. “I thought that was just one of those crazy conspiracies.”
“Sadly, no,” she huffed and joined us at the table. “It’s a real thing. They’re rare, and they don’t necessarily say that they’re a safe haven for villains, but they won’t extradite anyone that we request.”
“That’s because they say that the people that you’re looking for aren’t actually in the country,” Briar said as she and Paul strolled through the front door. “Which isn’t technically wrong since they change their names, but it’s still pretty skeevy.”
“Look at you,” Paul boomed with his classic golden retriever smile. “See, Rave, I told you there was nothing to worry about. Our Osiris can’t stay dead for too long. How are you feeling?”
“Like death,” I chuckled and reached up to fist bump Paul. “This is probably the worst resurrection that I’ve had so far. Not sure if it’s just because it was a psychic attack that killed me, or if I’m getting closer to staying dead, but it took me a while to get up, shower, and dress.”
“Psychic fights are always the hardest,” Anora said as everyone sat around Raven’s black wooden dinner table. “I have not entirely recovered, either. It will take at least a week, but we should never give the public any reason to think that we’ve been damaged. At the moment, everyone thinks that you’re either dead, in critical care, or reevaluating whether you want to be a superhero.”
“It’ll be easier to say it’s the latter,” Briar pointed out with a mouthful of dinner roll. “It would make sense for a new hero to have second thoughts after their first real supervillain attack. Especially since he was so hard to take out. I can tape you and post it on your social media account. You should talk about how, after a reprieve to decide if this is what you really want, that you’ve decided that serving New Liberty is a great honor, and you take your oath to protect the citizens very seriously.”
“I’ll say something like that,” I laughed. “Raven said that you combed through all the videos and posted them on my page?”
“Naturally,” the vampire-like woman said with a fanged grin. “There’s nothing that I love more than making someone more popular than Admiral Freedom. That guy is such a douche, and the people are really warming up to you.”
