Chapter 37
I FLEW SOLO to New York City.
Actually, I teleported there, a skill my dad had taught me a while back. But to pull it off, I need to fully grok the topography of where I want to go and do some serious GPS mental gymnastics. As you might guess, such intense grokation requires a ton of focus, so, typically, I don’t bring along any excess cargo, like my four best friends.
I sort of wished I had at least tried to bring Joe, Willy, Emma, and Dana. For a couple of reasons.
Reason one: I felt horrible about abandoning Dana before I completely healed her. Joe and Willy were right: Dana is a hundred-percent pure product of my imagination. I should have been able to erase any trace of the wound simply by imagining Dana the way I always imagine her. But, for whatever reason, it wasn’t working.
This logic problem made me wonder: Did I subconsciously want to leave Dana slightly “flawed” as I kept falling deeper and deeper for Mel? I might need to check in with Dr. Phil or Xanthos on that one.
Reason two for wishing I had brought the gang: I sure could’ve used some backup going up against Number 2. If the guy could turn the Empire State Building into a trash heap even King Kong wouldn’t recognize, what could he do to me?
I popped into New York a full ten city blocks away from Number 2, but he was extremely easy to spot because he was the only speck of color in an otherwise bleak landscape. He sat astride his bright red horse in a crater-strewn plane of gray dust and destruction. Using my telephoto vision, I zoomed in on the black-hooded beast as he and his scarlet stallion pranced around the ruins of Grand Central Terminal, the city’s biggest commuter train station. A mob of New Yorkers was pushing and shoving its way down mangled staircases to the subterranean train tracks.
And New Yorkers really know how to push and shove.
“Get outta my way!” I heard somebody shout.
“Are you talking to me?” an angry man shouted back. “Are you talking to me?”
Meanwhile, Number 2 calmly circled the madness on horseback, looking like an NYPD mounted cop nonchalantly patrolling the city’s annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. When a fistfight broke out between a bunch of guys in Yankees caps and another group in Mets hats, he just reared up on his crimson steed and laughed.
My disgust for this alien invader was about to overwhelm me.
How dare he destroy this planet and enslave all of its people?
Suddenly I felt a buzzing in my chest.
I figured my anger was raging so intensely it was ratcheting up my blood pressure.
Sorry, Xanthos, I thought. I was about to give sway to the negative way—big-time. I was going to obliterate Number 2 before he got the chance to demolish any more of the world I had vowed to protect.
The buzzing in my chest intensified.
I touched my jacket and realized I had set my cell phone on vibrate.
I pulled the quivering thing out of its pocket. Mel’s image was glowing on the call screen.
“Daniel? Where are you?”
“New York.”
I could hear Xanthos whinnying in the background, so she must have been calling me from inside the horse barn.
Then I could hear his voice in my head.
Choose wisely, my yute. Do not gain the world and lose your soul.
You said the red horse would be a sign! I telepathically thought back at him. A sign of what?
What is written in the book.
What book?
All of them.
“Daniel?” Mel spoke again. “I’m not so sure about this multiple-personality thing. It’d be great having four of you to hang out with, but I want the one guy I’ve ever really, really liked to come home. Now, please!”
Home? I thought. I have no home. Number 1 had made certain of that, years ago, when he wiped out my entire family. And now Number 2 was laying waste to everything on the surface of what had become my adopted home. Earth.
“I’m sorry, Mel, but I feel like there’s a bomb inside my chest that’s going to explode if I don’t take out this creep right here, right now.”
“Wait a second, Daniel….” I heard Mel cry as I flung my phone to the ground.
Do not give sway to the negative…
“Shut up, you stupid horse!” I yelled. Call ended.
Furious, I bounded up into the air and soared ten blocks above the horde of rowdy New Yorkers fighting for their chance to hop on an express train down to Number 2’s slave pens.
When I landed, Number 2 was standing right in front of me, but his flaming-red stallion was nowhere to be seen.
We were face-to-face in the pile of marble and tile that used to be Grand Central’s magnificent main concourse. I could feel Number 2’s foul, death-stench breath chilling my whole body.
“Hello, Daniel,” he said with a sneer. “I see that I have finally earned your undivided attention.”
“Whatever!” I sneered back. “Fight me. Right here. Right now.”
My challenge seemed to amuse the colossal freak. “Don’t be absurd, Daniel. This isn’t as it should be.”
“I said fight me. Come on.” I poked out my chin to give him an easy target. “Give me your best shot.”
I was so blinded by my rampaging rage that I hadn’t worked out exactly how I was going to defeat this demon. I figured once we were fighting, inspiration would hit me. I’d improvise a winning strategy after Number 2 showed me exactly what I was up against.
“Fight me!” I hollered again.
Number 2 smiled. Then something hit me—BAM!—right on the chin.
And it sure wasn’t inspiration.
In a blindingly fast, hypersonic instant, Number 2 socked me with a punch so powerful it knocked me straight into tomorrow.
Literally!