Chapter Ten
Decibel, an A-class audiokinetic, is suing the State of California for violation of his civil rights in the wake of passage of
Proposition 12, the special initiative which includes both the Watch List Act and the Public Security Act. As a superhuman with “
powers of mass-destruction” and a criminal record, Decibel is banned by the Public Security Act from entering public buildings,
including government offices and schools, without submitting to restraint. Since Decibel’s criminal record consists of
convictions for extreme vandalism from his time as an eco-terrorist with the Green Knights—crimes nearly a decade old and for
which he served time before joining the LA Guardians—legal experts have called his case the perfect test of the new law’s
constitutionality.
The Wall Street Journal
* * *
I thawed and cooked up a breakfast of hash browns, pancakes and syrup, and reconstituted and seasoned eggs to keep my hands busy,
then wandered the little valley like I’d planned. I found the doe and her fawn, and around noon I called Shelly and asked her to
commit a serious felony for me. Sunset painted the sky with spilled oranges and violets, and, knowing what to listen for, I heard
the drone when it returned to circle high above the cabin. When Artemis came back upstairs I was changed and ready to go. Before
she could ask, I hugged her.
“Thanks Jacky,” I said. “Fly safe? I’m going back to LA.”
She smiled a predator’s smile. “Don’t do anything I would do.”
I flew to catch the sunset, hitting the coast as the last rays faded over water, and stopped first at Restormel, where their
Willis waited for me with a stuffed book-bag and an improbably bored look. One of Platoon’s duplicates, Restormel’s Willis knew
me as well as our Willis did, and had been happy to pull everything together for me no questions asked—not that there’d been
anything illegal about this part of it. After I changed back into civvies, he brought a car around. An old sedan, it looked like
it belonged where we were going, but it was probably armored and tech-pimped in every possible way.
Shelly had found me an address, a name, and, hacking the LAPD database, an arrest file. I tied my hair up while Bob drove, put on
the baseball cap and sunglasses he’d stuffed in the bag on top of the money, and went over my notes. He parked us in front of an
old apartment tower, one of the survivors of the quake. Nine Ninety-Nine Cypress Road.
“Thanks Willis. I shouldn’t be long.”
He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Good. I’d hate to get ticketed while we’re in there.”
“Can’t you stay with the car?”
“It’ll tell me if anybody tries to mess with it. I’m more concerned someone will try and mess with you and you’ll have to go
all Astra on them.”
I looked out the window. Half the streetlights were dark, and probably had been before the quake. Boards still covered a lot of
storefront windows, and the few pedestrians on the street hurried, on their way somewhere else. The address next to the tower was
an empty lot, like a missing tooth, with a clap-board construction wall around the cleared space. If I wasn’t what I was, there
was no way I’d get out of the car. Willis looked… prohibitive. Plain dark suit, short dark hair, narrow face. A face that said I
’m a nice guy. Don’t mess with me, and I’ll stay nice. I was back in cargo shorts and cotton cami; together we’d look like a
child-star and her bodyguard, but at least random strangers with evil intentions would be cautious.
I sighed and nodded, then bit on a nasty thought.
“Willis? Blackstone told me you’ve got duplicates everywhere. CIA, NSA, DSA. What will they say about tonight?”
He smiled. “Nothing. My right hand never talks about what my left hand is doing, unless the bodies begin piling up.”
“That’s…okay then.” I shivered and hoped he wasn’t being literal.
We got out and went in. Shelly had found the place by hacking Orb’s agency computer and going over her bank statements. The
apartment, far from her own home and unconnected to her business, practically jumped up and down and whistled look at me! A raid
on the apartment management’s files found several resident complaints about the occupant, a Rafael Jones; apparently he liked to
get high and play really loud concert music—Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony being his favorite—at wall-rattling decibels. The mug-
shot from the police report on one of the public disturbance arrests belonged to our Dr. Cornelius.
The old elevator took us to the top floor, where he lived in apartment 909. Uhuh.
Shelly had done some research based on the numbers and what he’d said at Lunette’s. In hermetic magical theory the ninth decan,
Kurtael, was the decan of death, decay, fear, and disorder, personified by a corpse in armor, a black horse, and a skeletal,
black-cloaked figure.
The door was painted black, and I smelled myrrh. Willis snorted, unimpressed.
I took a deep breath. I was best-friends with a vampire, for goodness sake.
Then somebody inside screamed. Willis swore and suddenly had a gun. I dropped the bag, grabbed the doorknob, and pushed. The
doorframe broke with a sharp snap.
The small apartment was way too crowded.
Mr. Jones hung suspended in the grip of a guy in a suit who looked like carved obsidian. Two obvious minions flanked him, one with
a hand full of Orb’s hair, gun to her face, as I came through the door. She looked more mad than scared.
“Drop him!” Willis shouted behind me. Amazingly, obsidian-guy did.
“Shelly?” I whispered, and just like that she was there through my earbug.
“Wow! Blacktop,” she said. “A-class Ajax type, suspected transformer. General warrant issued.”
General warrant—open arrest warrant, extremely dangerous, need not be brought in alive. I froze, but only for a second. Last year
Ajax had spent three months training me to fight; it had been like stepping into a fight-club ring every day, and he’d taught me
just how much I could take and still give it back. Atlas had taught me the tactical side.
Dangerous subject, hostile, engaged, surrounded by potential victims? Remove to safer surroundings.
Open palmed, I launched myself at Blacktop’s center of mass and kept going. Jones’ apartment overlooked the empty lot, and his
window didn’t even slow us down. I put speed into it so we hit the ground before the bits of window and frame did.
He kicked me on the bounce, skidding me across the lot before I got control. I came back in under a swing that could splatter a
normal person into dis-jointed bits and red mist. Obsidian-guy might look brittle, but he wasn’t; it was like punching solid
rock. His second swing caught me and threw me, stunned, into the apartment building wall.
“Hope, he’s high A-class! You’re stronger, but he’s tougher!”
“You think?” I shook my head, ignoring the gunshots above me, and pulled myself out of the wall. Somehow my cap had stayed on,
but my sunglasses were in little bits somewhere and my top was getting holy.
Maybe I couldn’t hurt him, but under his messed-up suit Mr. Statue was cut like Mr. Universe, all overdeveloped muscle. I hoped
he was as inflexible.
I dusted myself off. Be confident. “Give up?”
He looked up at the hole we’d made coming out. There were no more gunshots.
“To a little girl like you?” He sounded like a soft-spoken avalanche.
“Under the teeniness I’m Astra. Give up?”
“And bow to the princess? Naw. General warrant—I go into the Block I’m not coming out.”
I launched myself again, and this time I jinxed for the swing. When it whistled by I grabbed his shoulder and flipped behind him,
dropped, reached around past his pits, pulled up, and squeezed. With his huge pecks, there was no way to lock my hands behind his
neck, but strong as I was I didn’t have to. The hold forced his arms up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and took us up as
he squirmed.
The street dropped away as he tried to claw at me, but in my hold he could only reach back over his head—and his bulging muscles
didn’t let him reach far enough to even touch me. His feet kicked uselessly. He tried to curl up and my arms burned with the
strain, but I kept the hold as we climbed.
“Bitch!” he spat, all coolness gone as the ground dropped away.
And then he screamed. A film of inky shadow poured out of the night and wrapped around him like a living thing, freezing wherever
it touched. Then it was gone and he hung in my arms.
Holy mother of God!
I wanted to cross myself. When he sagged, changing into a much lighter person, I almost dropped him.
“Hope? Willis says you can come back now.”
“What was that?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve been listening through Willis’ earbug and Mr. Jones did something.”
* * *
Shelly patched through the LA Knight’s dispatch to alert the LAPD of the incident. I had no certification in California, but they
remembered January and responded professionally. I stuck the bag behind Mr. Jones’ couch and re-tucked my hair so no platinum
strands showed. Amazingly Willis had a second pair of shades for me, and I managed to be over the shakes before they arrived. They
took a plain-clothed superhero completely in stride.
The LAPD sent a special paddywagon, five squad cars, three ambulances, and two heroes from the LA Guardians since the Knights were
still out of town. Most heroes in LA are wannabe Hollywood heroes, and the two they sent were no exception. Warrior, an Atlas-type
hero in pressed paramilitary fatigues, liked to loom, while Stasis used her blue and white spandex catsuit to show off her gym-
and-trainer curves. Warrior’s black beret set off his Tom Cruise looks nicely, inspiring unheard comments from Shelly.
As pretty as they were, they got the job done; Blacktop woke up in the wagon wearing hundred-pound titanium body-cuffs, ready for
delivery to The Block, California’s main superhuman containment facility. The paramedics offered Orb a ride to the hospital, but
with only a torn scalp she declined. The two minions, on the other hand, hadn’t faired so well. The one who’d had her by the
hair when I came through the door had a hole in his gun-hand where her orb had morphed into a needle-sharp lance and stabbed him.
He’d been lucky; it could have been his eye. Willis had shot the other one, but only, to use Artemis’ favorite phrase “a little
bit.” That little bit had been through both knees.
Statements taken, the cavalry departed (Warrior gave me his card on the way out). Mr. Jones tried to close his broken door, then
wandered into his kitchen and came out with two fistfuls of Blue Moon beers. I sat on the old, dusty couch, and politely put the
bottle he offered me next to the bag on the stained carpet. Willis took a deep draw on his while Orb sipped hers elegantly. She’d
restored her hair as much as possible to hide the bandages.
“So,” Mr. Jones said. “Thank you?” His voice rasped from the near-throttling.
“Not yet,” I said. “What did you do?” Blacktop had been sloppy-crying when they closed the doors on him. Mr. Jones had only
answered the police with questions.
“I gave him fear. It’s called Death’s Shadow, I just had to be able to speak.”
“Death? Fear? You saw the face of God and you’re one of the bad guys?”
He looked at me over his bottle. “I didn’t ask for it. And death and fear aren’t evil—they’re part of the world. Necessary. I
use Kurtael’s energies to balance the Words inside me, to ground me. What are you afraid of?”
I realized my hands were shaking again. Okay then.
“Killing somebody,” I said, returning his stare. “Have you ever killed anybody?” I still dreamed about Volt and woke with cold
sweats.
He looked away, taking another swig, but Orb tag-teamed for him.
“So what brought you back?” she challenged me.
“Blackstone. He’s going to die because I was nice.” I focused on Mr. Jones. “You said you didn’t think you could help, didn’
t want to try, and I accepted it because I was raised that way. But you’re the only real possibility I have right now and I’m so
not going to bury my friend. So here’s a carrot.” I shoved the bag across the floor with my foot. “Fifty thousand dollars,
enough to float you to nirvana for months. And the stick’s in there too.”
He opened the bag, pulled out a copy of his police record, and looked at me. Despite my resolve I flushed, but I pushed on.
“The people of California just passed the Watch List bill, and it puts any superhuman with a police record on probation. With
your drug and disturbance arrests, all I’ve got to do is pass the word about your enlightenment and you’ll have the LAPD
climbing up your butt. Try and get your prescriptions filled then.”
Willis took a breath, impressed or ready to fight. Or both.
“And you don’t think I owe you now?” Mr. Jones asked.
“I don’t know you well enough to count on gratitude.”
He nodded. “You’re on somebody’s watch-list yourself. They were here because of you. Wanted to know why you were talking to a
PI in LA. And to me. Making someone nervous?”
He kicked the bag back. “We both have sticks.” Orb made a noise, and he put a hand on her knee.
“But I owe somebody something now. You can buy me a ticket to Chicago. Two.”
Willis and I were back on the street five minutes later. The police and the news-wagons were long gone, the neighbors out of
sight. Somebody left us a parking ticket.