That’s the difference between me and some of these idiots running around on the street with spandex sticking up their asscracks tighter than a second skin. I don’t need to fight to win. I will if I have to, a theory Checkmate was always good at putting to the test, but it’s not essential. Sure, there’s less glory, but I would rather have victory than glory any day. When it’s all over, a pile of bodies lies at my feet, alive, but deeply wounded.
“I was hoping you’d show up.” His voice is slick with menace. I’m a little impressed that his casual demeanor has remained in the light of the fate of his companions.
I’m going to enjoy this.
“Kaye?” I sink to one knee in front of her, and it’s like I’m not even there. Her eyes stay fixed on a point only she can see, pupils blown wide. Her shoulders shake with uneven, staccato huffs. “What did you do to her?”
“I stopped the legendary Checkmate for good. You’re wel—” His voice cuts off as my hand wraps around his throat, his head thunking against the brick.
Your hands are numb, Stanley. They are cold and clammy and useless.
Power pulsates in my palm and it passes into his skin. It carries the sound of my voice in its stream, a compulsion none can deny.
You don’t feel a thing. Are those even your fingers anymore, Stanley? Fingers aren’t real if they don’t feel.
Make them feel again, Stanley.
Then it’s not just words that flow. An idea rides that tide, its seed planting into Stanley’s mind until?—
CRUNCH.
Stanley lifts up the mangled mess at the tip of each palm and vaults it back into the brick once more for good measure. The fingers don’t break; he’s lucky. The nail beds, torn and rubbed with gore, weep the yellow, viscous remnants of whatever poison he injected into Kaye. I have no doubt the phalanges at his tips are shattered.
He drops to the ground, the ruin of his hands a pulpy crimson mess clutched to his chest as his howls break the night. I barely register the pounding of his feet as he races a few feet blindly down the alley and then collapses as his own poison spreads through his veins.
“Kaye, can you hear me?” I sink beside her. Her clothes are stretched in spots, torn in others, but she looks whole except for that path of scarlet tracks decorating her right cheek. Her pulse beats an erratic, stilted rhythm under my fingers.
“What happened to Stan?”
A boy stands a few feet back from us, watching. His hair is combed back under the hood of his jacket, a small poof of it rising out before flattening under the weight of the fabric. His features aren’t what I would call handsome. They have a symmetry to them that’s almost too perfect and something in his posture makes me think of the prep school jocks I ignored as a kid.
Kaye shudders. Her eyes focus on mine, her wild, dark intensity communicating so much in that moment, before narrowing.
She’s fighting to stay in control. My lovely, brilliant adversary.
“He said you’d come.”
I almost topple forward, thrown off-balance by his sheer proximity. I hadn’t even heard him move. He towers over us and the urge to forcibly move him away from Kaye almost overwhelms me.
“He didn’t say anything abouther. I don’t think he’ll be pleased.” Shadows mask bits and pieces of his face, but what I can see of his expression is smooth, unlined. I would place him at seventeen. Eighteen tops. There’s something in the way he carries himself. Something foreign and intense. Maybe it’s the way he’s lurking over us now, or the way he seemed to appear from thin air. Whatever it is, I don’t like it.
Kaye’s shoulders convulse beside me, and for one second, my mind flashes to the worst. Then she stills, gains control again, and I allow myself to breathe too. I place my fingers back to the hollow at Kaye’s throat. The rhythm of her life is faint, slowing and stuttering, but persistent, just like her.
“She needs help. If I can just get her to the car—” And then what? I can’t take her to a hospital. We’re both fugitives now. But I can take her somewhere safe.
The kid doesn’t answer and I realize that his shadow isn’t covering us anymore. He’s crouched next to Stanley, examining the mess of his hands, the pad of one finger poised over a ruined nail.
“Don’t touch him,” I warn. “He can produce?—”
“Poisons. I know.”
He doesn’t look particularly fazed. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a knife, thin and black with a sharpened silver edge. It opens with a click. I fight back a gag as he slips the blade carefully into the broken flesh, coating its surface in the virulent pus.
“Got to say, I wasn’t expecting you to be so squeamish.”
“Listen, Little Baby Sociopath, why don’t you put the knife down and go back to taking candy from children or whatever it is you do in your spare time. I can promise this is one fight you won’t enjoy in the end.”
The kidsmiles, sinister and threatening. His young features seem transformed as if into a grotesque mask, innocence parodied. “I have orders.We all have orders.He wants you.”
