screeching buckle of steel. Arachne's glassy hookvine broke, and fell to the road, where it splintered into a thousand tiny fragments. She hopped like a dervish in delight, and flung out another, heaving a second car high into the air and dashing it to mangled scraps on the road.
My heart clogged my throat. That one was empty. The next might not be.
Glimmer skidded the bike to a halt, and we jumped off. Already, the bridge began to shake. My pulse raced. Too much more of this, and there'd be serious damage as the wires stretched and bent. Not to mention injuries, broken cars, the traffic snarl from hell…
Glimmer cocked his pistol and wiped sweat back into his hair with his forearm. His midnight eyes glittered inside his mask, no longer warm but sharp black icicles, deadly. "Can you lift a car?"
"Sure." I cracked my neck, left and right. Hell, I hoped so. My power hadn't exactly been cooperative over the last forty-eight hours. Still, a car shouldn't be a problem. Putting it down quietly might be another matter, but Glimmer didn't need to know that.
"Then stop her breaking anything else." And he ducked for cover and ran. Leaving me no time to argue or say no.
Gallant little skunk, wasn't he? I swore, and got on with it.
Arachne saw us, and hooted laughter. "Pretty things in masks," she gloated. Augmented fire ignited in her eyes. Her scarlet-painted lips curled, a sharp bloody smile soaked in hatred. "Come get it."
Glimmer leveled his pistol at her, two-handed. "First, last and only chance, lady. Give yourself up."
"Go fuck yourself." She rolled her skinny wrists, and flashed out twin glassy vines. They crawled across the ground like psycho snakes, searching for prey.
Glimmer didn't say anything. He just fired. I like a man who keeps his promises.
Quick as a jumping spider, Arachne leapt, impossibly high. The bullet sang harmlessly between the steel cables. Her vines split, their evil claws glistening like wet glass, and crunched onto the roof of an orange-striped white bus. People still clambered about inside, the ones who hadn't worked up the guts to run. Now, escape was impossible. They screamed, slapping their palms on the windows, wild and ripe with terror.
Arachne landed in a whippy-legged crouch, hair streaming aloft. She let loose a triumphant wail that shivered my bones, and pulled.
I sprinted, heart thumping, and flung out a wall of power on one outstretched fist. Hot wind seared my face. The bus slammed into my invisible wall and stuck there, shuddering on its side in mid-air, her hooked vines still attached to the roof.
Inside, the people tumbled and squeaked like trapped rats. A window broke, and a girl fell out, dropping twenty feet to the road. She lay there moaning, and Glimmer ran for her and dragged her from the bus's looming shadow.
Arachne cursed, spitting little drops of poison that caught the air like a cloud of angry gnats, and dived for me. The backs of my hands blistered. I braced myself, legs apart, and held on. Arachne yanked her vines harder, gritting her teeth. Still I held on. The bus shuddered and groaned, metal twisting under the opposing forces. Sweat poured down my temples, soaking my mask. My head ached, bright and stinging like sunburn. I couldn't see. The stink of hot metal choked my nose, and I could feel my back stretching under the stress, muscles popping fibers and bones twisting.
But damn, it felt good to let my power loose.
I flexed my fist, and the bus's steel shell twisted, just a few inches. The metal creaked in protest. My blood burned, urging me to more, harder, darker. A bad person would crush Arachne with this bus. Hurl it on top of her and grind her to bloody pulp, and damn the consequences…
Glimmer ran forward. Now he was between Arachne and the bus. Damn it. I gritted my teeth, and held on.
Arachne spat poison at him, and whipped her wrists downwards. Her vines snapped off, only a few inches from her palm. The long ends dangled from the bus, slapping lifelessly onto the ground. Quick as a striking snake, she speared them out anew, five wicked barbs on each, like twisting hands clawing for Glimmer's face.
I wasn't sure whether what happened next was real.
Glimmer ducked, so swift he blurred. The snaking spikes shot past him, writhing, searching blindly for prey. She howled and tried to whirl, to re-attack from a different angle. But Glimmer kept running at her. He grabbed her hair and yanked, forcing her to look at him, and snapped his fingers an inch from her eyes. "Watch me," he commanded.
Her flame-bright eyes shuttered black.
She froze, her body motionless except for her flapping hair. The fierce glassy vines halted, rigid, snapped frozen in mid-air.
I stared, warm and chilled at the same time. That was some hypno-mojo.
"Lose the spikes." Glimmer's voice was calm, cold, resonating, even above my bus passengers' screams. He didn't drop his dark gaze. Didn't blink. Didn't let her go.
Arachne obeyed, staring blankly into his eyes. The glassy spikes sucked back into her palms, a slicing sound like sword blades. No blood. No ripped flesh. Just something she was born with. Did it hurt, I wondered, when she let them out?
"Cross your arms," Glimmer ordered softly. "Palms on your chest. Then don't move."
She did as he told her. Like a black leather mummy, those dangerous palms pressed flat to her own shoulders. If she spiked now, she'd run herself through. Clever.
I licked dry lips, sympathy itching. I was a freak, sure. But my freakdom was invisible compared to hers. If I had glassy spikes growing inside my hands, what would my life have been like? Would it be so easy for me to choose good over evil?
I flexed my aching fist, and slowly lowered the bus to the ground.
Crunch! The dust settled, and people started climbing out. One guy was already filming us on his smartphone. A few windows were broken, but all in all, I'd done well. Probably a good thing I hadn't squashed Arachne. But like always, it niggled me like a phantom itch that being a good guy meant leaving the sick mofos alive.
I popped my stiff spine, twisting left and right. Ahh. Inside my head, my power coiled and relaxed, and a pleasant afterglow ache flooded my muscles from head to toe. I stretched, lazy and content despite my raging headache. My thighs tingled. Someone pass me a cigarette. Was it wrong that my augment felt better than sex?
Was it like this for other augmented? I'd never asked. It wasn't the kind of thing I liked discussing, especially not with Dad or Adonis, and I sure as hell wasn't about to ask Glimmer. Maybe I was just doing the sex thing wrong.
Whatever. I didn't have time to ponder my choice of pleasures now. At last, the distant howl of frustrated police sirens from the east inched closer. We didn't have much time. Even with FortuneCorp's full powers at my back—we helped the police, they helped us, it had been that way ever since the PD realized all those years ago that Blackstrike and Illuminatus were in Sapphire City to stay—I'd only ever had an uneasy relationship with cops. Now I was a loner. A vigilante. An outlaw. Cops were bad news.
Seemed Glimmer knew it too. He jerked his chin at me, never taking his eyes from Arachne's. "Duct tape, please. On the back of the bike."
I scrambled over broken iron and glass to the bike. Sure enough, in the little saddlebag was a fat black roll of tape. I tossed it to him. He caught it, and ripped the end free with his teeth. I stepped up to help, and in half a minute, Arachne looked even more like a mummy, wrapped from collarbone to solar plexus in tape, her hands bound immovably to her chest. Another couple of twists bound her ankles tight.
Still she stared straight ahead, into Glimmer's masked eyes. Her red lips had dried. She didn't lick them. Didn't move. Didn't even blink.
"Nice," I commented, tossing the empty roll away. "Remind me never to let you tie me up." Or hypnotize me, I added silently. Like I'd be able to do anything about it if he did, judging from the way Arachne stared like a dead thing into his eyes.
Glimmer plastered the last scrap of tape over her lips. Gently, sufficient to silence her but