gasp a gulp of sweet air.
An insight about frost giants danced beyond the reach of Cal’s mind. If only he could remember. Hesz and Kraten looked in the direction of the flare. They failed to notice the figure coming from the other direction. All of a sudden, Kraten’s head was introduced to the broad side of a Louisville slugger. He fell like a sack of bricks.
Hesz hit the batter with a backhanded slap, which sent the man tumbling down the stairway. He turned toward the floating flare, which had subsided to mere illumination. A tall young woman with red hair held a ball of crackling blue-white light in her palm. Hesz released Cal and charged her. Cal leaned on the door frame and tried not to slip down farther as he watched the fight, unable to help. A devious smile graced the woman’s lips. She turned around, exposing her back to Hesz, then bent over as though picking up a penny. Hesz had nearly reached her when suddenly he went flying across the hall in the other direction, and smashed through the wall at the end of the landing.
Hesz shook his head. He slowly got up and brushed the debris from his suit. He looked to the girl across the hallway with some understanding of what she had done. A murderous smiled spilled across his face. “Your bag of tricks is small, acolyte. Could they not find a grown-up for this mission? Or are all your sorcerers dead?”
“They may well be, giant,” she answered, solemnly. “But you are one mage short at the moment, and all the dead sorcerers in Aandor are of no advantage to you right now.”
Cautiously, Hesz stepped through the hole. He ripped off a large chunk of the banister to use as a club, and moved toward the girl. The woman stepped back into a defensive stance, her arms and hands raised, elegantly poised in a precise manner.
The giant hesitated a moment… then continued toward the girl, raising his club, intent on creating carnage. As he did so, Hesz exposed his underside to Cal, who was still groggy on the floor braced against the door frame and trying to pull himself up. Then it occurred to the policeman, the thing that was just beyond the border of his thoughts a moment before; something about a nerve cluster. Cal braced himself against the door frame, gathered his remaining strength, and kicked upward, hitting Hesz’s external oblique muscle. Hesz let out an inhuman howl. He dropped his club and fell to his knees, clutching his side shaking. Pleased, Cal slumped back to the floor.
The woman approached Symian, who still lay on the floor holding his face and whimpering. Blue streams like ink from a busted pen flowed from his tear ducts. She pulled a small piece of the flare out from the larger ball, which crackled in her palm, and dropped it on the gray man. The residue on his skin caught fire, burning blue like a gas jet. Symian screamed again and tumbled down the stairs.
“YOUR RACE WILL DIE, WITCH!”
“Hey,” Cal managed, attracting his female rescuer. He pointed to Hesz. The giant had gathered the bronze swordsman and went through the hole he had made. They could hear his clanging as he flew down a rear fire escape.
“We had the element of surprise,” she said to Cal. “I was able to incapacitate their magic user before they realized they were under attack. Only a fool stays to battle a sorcerer without protection. It’s best not to push our luck.” The young woman crouched over him. Her face was broad and her eyes were deep as fjords, repositories for all the deep mysteries of the world.
The man with the bat rejoined them. He had a great welt on the side of his face. He reminded Cal of a young John Lennon.
“Fucking shit! This isn’t worth having a place to crash!” he yelled. “I’m better off at a shelter! You never said we would be fighting eight-foot linebackers with fucking swords!”
“Are you with Anti-Crime?” Cal asked. He could hear sirens approaching. He felt hot and groggy.
“The troll bit him,” she said. “We have to treat the wound before it festers.”
“Take him to the hospital! I’m done with this crap!” John Lennon insisted.
“What’s going on? Where’s Erin?” Cal insisted.
“Your partner? She’s on the second floor!” John Lennon said. “Both pieces!”
“The hospices won’t know how to treat him. We’ll take him to my place,” the woman said.
“No,” Cal said. His strength was draining every second. He struggled to talk. “Cat! Bree! They know where…”
John Lennon found Cal’s wallet and revolver on the floor and handed them to the woman. “They know where he lives. We need to tell his cop friends and let them handle it.”
She studied the wallet. “He has a woman and child,” she said, pondering. “This will cause problems for his family.”
“Please,” Cal said, barely conscious.
“Will they really go after his family?” the Beatle asked.
“Anything’s possible,” the woman answered. “At some point maybe… if they’re desperate.”
The sound of police running into the building echoed up the stairwell. Radios blared, footsteps pounded, threats were issued. Cal’s vision turned gray. The girl pulled an ornate compact from her satchel. Great time to do your makeup, Cal thought. Then everything went black.
CHAPTER 4
1
Daniel Hauer worked at his latest masterpiece: an ink drawing of the Green Lantern blasting away a Khund armada with his magnificent power ring. The hero’s primary weapon being in fact a ring and not a lantern never seemed odd to Daniel. What made a hero great was his strength of character; he must be a true paladin of virtue and honor. Although there were many manifestations of this hero, dating back to the 1940s, Daniel preferred the second variation, test pilot Hal Jordan. He suspected that other incarnations since Jordan had been designed by a marketing department that had read too much Spider-Man (a good character in his own right, but not appropriate for the Green Lantern).
The ballpoint scratched a groove into the varnished wood as it traced the pattern of the lantern logo on the hero’s chest. As Daniel put the finishing touch on it, a gray shadow sprawled across his desk. The young man looked up into the dour face of Mr. Palumbo.
“That’s a beautiful illustration, Mr. Hauer. Can you explain to the room how this drawing relates to societal class structure in precolonial India?”
Daniel glanced at his friend Adrian Lutz and flashed him a look that said, You should have warned me. Behind Mr. Palumbo hung a series of world maps showing the evolution of political boundaries over the centuries. Daniel locked on to India, circa 200 B.C., and called up the proper information from his brain.
“Huh… sure.”
“Really?” said Mr. Palumbo.
“Yeah, see… Green Lantern is a Kshatriya warrior who takes his orders from the priestly Brahmans represented by the Guardians of the Universe on Oa. The Khunds are a warrior race trying to expand their influence, in much the same way as Alexander the Great. And this drawing is like… when the Indians fought off the Greek general Seleucus Nicator as he tried to invade Punjab.”
Adrian rolled his eyes in disbelief. Giggles erupted throughout the classroom. Mr. Palumbo, aware that few students were as well read as Daniel, nevertheless was not going to suffer any excuse for ignoring his lesson.
“I’m giving you a zero for the day. And, one other thing… all of your desks throughout the school are covered with these drawings. You’re destroying public property.”
“Destroying? You can still use them.”
More chuckles erupted.
“One of your pictures ruined Katie Millar’s white blouse after she rested her arm on it,” Palumbo said.
Daniel’s heart sank. Katie was one of the few kids to befriend him after he had transferred to George Fox
