"Cayley--"
"It's him!"
Jeremy, hands glowing with orange light, with energy gained from eating Byron, ran at me.
I lowered my center of gravity, mimicking what I thought someone should do when preparing a tackle. Hips back. Head up. Feet wide. A god-favored specimen, radiant with power so savagely wrested from magical flesh, convinced that I had condemned his family to the trauma of captor malevolence, was two steps from touching me. I could fly, I thought. Grab Cayley then fly. Yeah, he had kidnapped me. Yeah, he wanted to drain my blood then use it for dunking an otherworldly lifeform in a bucket. But was that so egregious that being pummeled to death was an acceptable risk for vengeance? Wondering the answer, I pre-winced for impact.
Cayley, airborne, her leg stuck out in front of her to deliberately concentrate blunt force, collided with Jeremy. The distance he flew caused me to doubt his return. My guardian, the party girl in barely-anything clothes, stood at the point of interception--no pose, no fighting stance, and apparently no concern. She shrugged at me before turning to face the next threat, because a flying kick such as that was pure casualness for her.
The other woman had launched herself at Cayley, cape dress and bonnet parting the air like a rocket’s nose cone. A straightened arm, a slender wrist, slammed a punch into Cayley’s mouth. Her head snapped back with a flourish of hair.
Double underhooks from behind set-up a standing Nelson, ripping me from spectatorship. As interlaced fingers pinned my chin to my chest, a free punch to the solar plexus shattered all upright ambition. My body curled into non-responsiveness. I saw Jeremy's white shirt and blue pants. Saw burgers and fries dropped on the ground as though no one cared about them. The bone-warping pressure on my neck, the compounding pit of agony in my stomach, shackled me with synergistic pain. I couldn't fly.
I sputtered. "Is this your dad?"
"Family Night milkshakes at the only place open after ten."
"I see everybody survived."
"A particular church might be down a few worshippers because of me."
"Down a few. You killed them all."
"They begged," Jeremy said. "As though any combination of wailing and biographical detail could shake apart the mosaic in my head. Of course, I splattered those weaklings into mush for their sins. And now your friend, that demon presenting as a human? Mom will eviscerate her."
I could hear the melee. Two distinct sets of feminine grunts and shrieks. Soles scuffing on the pavement. Skin-wrapped bone crashing into skin-wrapped bone. Plus encouragement.
"Go Mom! Kill her."
Kyle, the brother. The Good Mood Dude supporting his family. It was almost heartening.
"Did they get their powers from you?"
"According to the will of Bjorn Prime did they receive augmentation."
"My bullshit translator tells me that's a 'yes.' Even the kid?"
"Kyle!"
I assumed the child had been motioned over. Jeremy's dad still controlled my neck.
"He wished for you to die. For me to die. He wanted the evil men to kill Mom and Dad. It's okay to sock him."
A flash of light. Then a hundred more. My skull had been dropped into a religious-themed pinball machine, bouncing between a kicker and a pop bumper. Inside the double-windmill fury of little kid punches, I fought to raise my head, check on Cayley. Maybe avoid the pitter-patter blows that would eventually rack-up enough attrition to kill me.
"Got her."
I glimpsed a few images when Kyle the Six-Year-Old Piece of Shit stopped hitting me. Jeremy's mom wrenched a fistful of Cayley's hair in one hand, squeezed her windpipe in the other. Cayley chopped and grabbed at the pioneer's arm, kicked at shins obscured by copious, pleated fabric. As The Mom stared past her opponent in a challenge to all, with an expression that could have derailed a train or shooed Fate off the sidewalk, Cayley's hitting and proof-of-life thrashing slowed. Her struggle shrank. The final two-handed effort to peel The Mom’s fingers off her throat wilted away as her body went limp. The Mom maintained the fatal grip, dragging the bounty to Jeremy and his dad.
Jeremy, fist aglow with orange light, drilled a punch to the bridge of my nose. Blood sprayed from my nostrils when a follow-up body blow compressed my stomach. Of course, I had made enemies with the only people on Earth powerful enough to kill me.
"Is she dead?" Jeremy asked.
"Ooh, I'll check," Kyle said, scampering to Cayley's body then crouching by it. He brought a double-hammerfist down on her face. When nothing happened, he tried again. And again--
"Here," The Mom said, nonchalantly stomping, turning Cayley's head into a papier-mâché bomb filled with strawberry jam. Because exploding a girl’s brain was akin to stepping on a cricket. I stared at the headless girl, at the splatter zone of gore intermingling with spilled French fries. Did she deserve better than Mateo? Than Heidi and Maria?
"She went to parties. Ate bacon and waffles."
"She was a demon," Jeremy explained. "We are commanded to eliminate them."
"I'm questioning her devotion to the holy war."
"Her commitment or lack thereof was not my concern."
I sighed. "Yeah, of course."
I drove the heel of my athletic shoe backward, angling a kick through my restrainer's shin bone. The crunch felt like a reward. Like validation for every choice, every breath, that led me to that moment. The resulting scream instantly raised horripilation on my arms and neck, a thousand-hair salute in honor of maiming people who deserve it. After folding The Dad’s leg in the direction of ruin, I flew, aiming for a zenith yet to be determined.
Then I rocketed back down, feet first, going opposite Jeremy's pursuit, passing him untouched in the air. The Dad laid on his back, crippled by the snapped limb I had given him, bore the penance of all absentee fathers despite his obvious familial participation. The Mom knelt, shielding her smallest boy with her body as I crushed The Dad's chest with my landing.
He didn't scream this time.
I immediately hopped off. A belch of blood covered his white shirt, his neck and chin, with a hope-drowning amount. Jeremy, too late, appeared in front of me, blocking me from seeing his dad's expiration.
"Mom."
She understood the command, rising from her post as boy-barrier. Jeremy replaced her, putting an arm around Kyle then guiding him toward the station wagon, looking back to monitor my location. The Sodbuster, the inverted ice cream cone, had been deputized to avenge Papa. Cayley would be avenged by default depending on who died and how.
"He killed Pastor?" The Mom asked.
The Mom was stern. The affinity she had always felt for paintings and photographs of granite cliffsides informed her demeanor, how she viewed her own soul. If a woman's energy promotes "dutiful" before "genial," that's undeniably sufficient, she probably thought. Even if un-powered, she still would have fought me. Just like her son did in the basement-church.
"Yep," Jeremy confirmed.
"You...are too small," I told her. "And if there's enough recognizable anatomy left over, I'm going to incestuously arrange all your corpses. I plan to sicken myself."
She threw a high kick. The top of her ankle touched the side of my neck. Faster than she could bring in her leg, I punched her nose. Faster than she could raise her hands, I headbutted her, repeating the nose. Her back slammed on the pavement. Holding her face, she rocked from side to side while groaning.
"We're even. One dead each. We should clean up and leave before witnesses arrive."
Jeremy's eyes glowed with orange light. Cayley and The Dad glowed similarly, brighter and brighter until they sparkled from existence.
"We'll never stop hunting you," Jeremy said. "Revenge is a major precept for us. But even without divine instruction, I'd still probably want to kill you."
"I was joking about arranging your bodies a certain way. I would have...respectfully disposed of you."
Jeremy stared as though recounting a century's worth of enmity between us. As though trying to shred my gullet with a look.
"Mom."
The Mom got up in stages, extracting as much rest as possible between positional advancements. So I kicked her stomach. Stepped in then cracked her face with a single knee. Teeth flew like candy from a parade float. In unison, the heel of my left hand bashed her temple as a horizontal chop from my right hand compressed her neck. She collapsed, a doll too joint-worn to properly stand. Something important had broken, and her final expression matched this realization. Jeremy twinkled her away in an orange lightburst. Only her bonnet remained.
"You gonna blink me out of this life, too?"
"It works only on the dead. So, yeah. Soon."
Jeremy grabbed the bonnet off the ground. He walked with it to a dumpster behind the restaurant.
"You're not sad?" I asked him.
"Of course I'm sad. I'm hiding it from you."
"Really, we can stop fighting."
"I know. But I choose continuing. You killed Pastor, Mateo, and both of my parents. The only quarter available to you is that any suffering will be random."
"Everyone you named either attacked me first or entangled me in a plot that was centered on my complete exsanguination."
Jeremy answered without pausing. "I'm obviously not focusing on that aspect."
I pressed my lips together, clamping down a laugh. Jeremy was someone that, minus a few peccadilloes concerning religion, I would have otherwise liked.
"Kyle! Come out here."
A door opened on the station wagon. Kyle got out, ran to Jeremy's side.
"Where's Mom and Dad?"
"They had to go home. We'll see them later, okay? But before that, me and you, buddy. The Brother Team. The Brother Team is going to beat this bad guy."
Kyle was an orphan because of me. Combined with "former hostage" and "child soldier," a supervillain genesis had already bloomed. Preserving Jeremy, leaving the fight, was potentially the difference between Kyle enacting sackcloth, barley-ration tyranny or genocidal megalomania.
Jeremy punched at my head. The wind from his errant fists abraded with tornado strength, uprooting temple hair on both sides. I squinted and grimaced and frantically backpedaled. Sidestepping the blitz, I threw a counter right hand.
"Fuck," I said as Kyle, leaping for my arm, bit down on it, a nightjar seizing airborne prey. A six-punch combination from Jeremy stuck my brain inside a paint can, that paint can inside a mixer. I flailed, trying to escape the baby tooth bear trap chomping through my skin. Jeremy, hands wrapped in actual thunder, pounded my ribs. Hook, hook. Hook-hook-hook. When I crumbled into sitting down, Kyle let go, leaving a ragged Lamprey circle on my forearm. Jeremy kicked me under the chin; the follow-through on the arc of his foot convinced me that decollation was the goal.
I got up. Kyle hugged my leg then bit my thigh. Jeremy blasted my face with an overhand haymaker then knocked me down with a simple shove. His hands weren't even glowing. I scrambled off my back, my ready stance obliterated by Kyle running-start punching my scrotum. Before I could fall down as a pile of paralysis, Jeremy put me in a guillotine choke, lifting me off the ground by my neck, squeezing until he trembled. When nothing snapped, severed, or went limp, he dropped me onto all fours then elbowed my spine--One! Two! Three!--until I was face-down on the pavement. The pain pulsing through my vertebrae screamed a single message: Something is really wrong. You are actually hurt.
"Stomp on his head," he told Kyle.
Shoe rubber scuffed--burned--my ear, cheek, and scalp. I rolled to my back. Jeremy knelt perpendicular to me, blotting the sky from the optionless peasant beneath him who, physically and figuratively, in that moment and for all time, had to lay there and take a beating. Flashes of orange light indicated every blow as he elbowed my face, threw knees into my skull. Fixed joints imitated my willpower as they flexed under pressure to damage my brain. Jeremy straddled me for a full mount. And this is when I fly! Dramatically delayed, but narratively satisfying. Because injury and pain and earthquake blows to my vestibular apparatus have no effect on anything. Okay. Get ready. Now!
Kyle kicked the top of my head as Jeremy dug his thumbs into my eyes. I bridged, bucking Jeremy forward to grab his hair.
"Fuck you...church fuck."
Twisting to my side, I, as though I could splinter the world, slammed down my arm, cratering the pavement with Jeremy's face. A punch to the back of his head as I got up deepened the concave. A stomp, then four stomps, put him on "Pause."
Kyle attacked me. A ratel with the power of 10,000 elephants went berserk on my leg. Punching and kicking in volume.
"How can you stop him?" Jeremy asked, already standing, brushing concrete dust out of his hair. "Hit him? Tie him up in the attic? He's a kid, Greg."
Lifting him overhead then smashing him on the ground would solve my "Now" problem, as well as my "Later" problem. I ran (with a limp) away from the cyclone of hammers that pounded my one extremity, grabbing my thigh to check for damage.
"Get him. He killed Mom and Dad."
Kyle stopped chasing me. "But you said--"
An orange pillar of light materialized around Kyle, completely swallowing him from view. I turned from the blinding brightness.
"Jeremy?"
The light receded. Tatters of burst clothing hung off a six-foot frame, off a man whose blonde hair matched his brother's and dad's. He looked at his own hands, then up and around, conveying bewilderment beautifully.
"Jeremy, what happened?"
I punched through his stomach. Through his spine. Through his twenty-five-year-old life. Magically-aged blood coated my arm. His shirt, torn apart by the rapid growth of his body, was still draped over his shoulder. Five or six "Os" remained intact.
"Still counts," I said, pushing him to the ground.
Jeremy froze, arms hanging as non-combatively as marble pothos. Sadness or self-hatred about sending his baby brother to die in a parking lot jihad expressed itself as catatonia, as an invitation for me to punish him. Or he was a coward sacrificing himself to avoid guilt. Either way, my sleeper hold drained his consciousness, gave his grieving heart a painless coup-de-grace, uncontested. His final bit of vitality flashed from his eyes, spiriting Kyle away via orange supernova. I loaded the station wagon with Jeremy's body then carried it to a field out in the country. After digging a hole to bury the car, then burying the car, the sensation of compacted earth under my fingernails lasted for several hours.
"Do you have a toothpick or a paper clip...or a knife?"
The gasp. The gaping eyelids. I could have worn a cowl, gripped a scythe, based on his reaction.
"Scream and your family dies. I'll go to your funeral, get all their names. We're leaving. I'm going to drop you in a lake."
"Because of the restaurant?" Paul asked. He sat up on the couch, where he had fallen asleep in his work clothes.
"And also because I want to confess my powers to someone else, and if more than one person knows, the secret loses cachet, in my opinion."
"You chose to tell me. I didn't pick that."
"Okay. Then it's only because of your behavior at the restaurant. Is that more...anodyne for you?"
"No. It's not."
"Then don't whine about the reason," I said, grabbing his arm then guiding him toward the balcony.
"What happened to your face?"
"I killed the people who did this to my face."
We both paused. In tandem, we willed fate to a three-second halt. I looked at Paul to affirm this blip of synchrony.
"I'm not begging for my life. Not to you."
"Oh, and his dignity lived on as the rest of him perished."
"I disagree with the tone you chose. But yeah."
"You’re not a rebel. You’re just a contrarian bitch. I mean--"
Paul collapsed before we reached the balcony. Blood, a crimson invader conquering enemy land, spread a pool on the carpet.
I asked if he had a knife, I thought, leaving Paul on the floor.
Chapter Sixteen