“What—” I coughed wetly. “What did you do to O’Connell?”
“I never hit a lady,” the caped man said. He stepped over O’Connell’s body, picked up the pistol. “But she was no lady.” He gripped the gun by both ends and frowned in concentration, like George Reeves working on a rubber prop. The muzzle snapped away from the base, and metal parts clinked to the floor.
He shrugged, tossed the two pieces at me. The pistol grip struck the floor and broke open. Bullets bounced out of the cartridge and rolled, glinting in the yellow light.
O’Connell had lied. She hadn’t thrown away my father’s .45. She’d kept it, probably as protection against me.
“Nobody’s a threat here,” I said to the Boy Marvel. “I’m not trying to get past you. I just—”
“No!” the Angel screamed. She bunched her fists and glared at me. “You promised. You said you’d help me!”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Suddenly she spun toward the caped man and dove between his legs. She wasn’t fast enough. He grabbed her by one ankle and hauled her into the air. Her gown fell over her head, revealing ruffled white bloomers.
“Now wait just a gosh darn minute!” he said.
She screamed and clawed at his chest. Whatever the Angel’s power, he was immune. He lifted her higher, and his free hand closed into a fist.
“You’re not acting like a young lady,” he warned. The body he inhabited belonged to an innocent man: some mechanic or dentist or cable repairman who’d been a little too handsome, a little too square-jawed. He didn’t deserve to die. But neither did the girl who’d been possessed by the Little Angel. Somewhere a mother and father had awakened to find their daughter vanished. I stooped to pick up one of the copper-colored bullets, gasped as ribs grated against each other. The slingshot was still in my back pocket. I tugged the weapon free. Tucked the bullet into the leather pouch. Pulled back the old black rubber until gray cracks opened in its skin. The Angel angrily jerked and swung in the man’s grip, arms pummeling the air, intermittently blocking my view of his face. A one-in-a-million shot, I thought.
“Hey Marvel,” I said.
The Boy Marvel glanced toward me, eyes widening in surprise. I fired. His head jerked back, and his body pitched backward into the room. The Angel dropped to the ground almost on top of O’Connell. I let go of the slingshot and glanced behind me. The Truth and the Painter were watching, but they made no move to stop me. I shuffled forward until I could crouch next to O’Connell. I touched her throat. Her skin was warm, but my hand trembled too much to discern a pulse.
“My goodness!” the Angel said. She rose to her feet, brushed off her gown. She shook her curls at the caped man. “No one’s ever done that before!”
I glanced up. There was only one patient in the room—an ancient man who lay propped up and unmoving in the bed. His thin arms, pale as onionskin, lay atop the blankets. Wires and tubes connected him to the machine beside him.
I stood up, stepped carefully over O’Connell and the caped man in the doorway.
The old man was as unmoving as a corpse, eyes half-lidded and unblinking. One thin, clear tube dropped from an IV stand and disappeared down one nostril. Only the beeping of the machine told me he was alive.
His face was cracked and yellowed as old paper. Little remained of the boy in the pictures, the boy on the rock. Barely enough to recognize him.
“Hey, Bobby,” I said.
He didn’t move. He stared out the windows, where the glass pulsed with blue: squad cars on their way, or already at the entrance below the window. The sky was the color of fog.
“Uh-oh,” the Little Angel said.
I turned, and the Boy Marvel sat up, a wide grin on his face. His right eye was a pulpy mess, and red tears ran down his cheek. He reached into the bloody socket and pulled out the bullet. He flicked it at me, sending it whistling past my ear.
“You are a little hellion,” he said. He hopped to his feet, smoothed back his greased hair.
“And you’re a meanie,” the Angel said.
The caped man lunged for the girl. She screamed and danced back. I threw myself across his arm.
He lifted me easily, and I hung on. “That’s enough, gosh darn it!”
he said sternly. He spun me, jerked his arm, trying to shake me off. I clamped down, arms wrapped around his steely biceps. He whipped me back and forth, and I cinched tighter.
I shouldn’t have had the strength for this. The pain in my chest should have paralyzed me or driven me unconscious. He smashed me into the wall, pressed a forearm into my neck. He gritted his teeth and bore down. Somehow I hung on. Like a man possessed, I thought. I would have laughed if I could. The room’s only patient ignored us. Outside the window I could see dawn light striking the tin roof of the farmhouse, the stark posts of the barn, the toppled sections of the silo. Spots appeared in my vision, and my thoughts began to spiral down strange paths. How many years had Bobby watched his farm—decades? I wondered how many years he’d lain there, trapped, before he started longing for someone to end it.
Of course the Boy Marvel couldn’t perform that task—it was against his nature. He’d never allow anyone to hurt the boy. Not even another demon.
But the Angel had her job to do. O’Connell must have understood what was happening. Last night she’d figured out that Bobby Noon was alive, that he was watching them from the hospital. Or maybe she’d known for longer than that. She’d been the Angel’s avatar for so many years that she’d probably felt the call too. Maybe she’d come to Kansas with me because she knew she’d have to play the angel of death one more time.
Someone needed to play that role. I thought of Commander Stoltz, hauling me along the dock: We can’t live like this—we can’t live with these monsters.
I heard a distant drone, but my attention drifted back to the caped man. He leaned into me, his arm like an iron bar at my throat. The wound I’d given him was too bloody to have ever been depicted in Bobby’s golden-age funny books. I was struck by several other uncomic details: the stubble on his jaw, the stink of his breath. The frayed cape was homemade, the red uniform too tight and pulling apart at the seams, as if he’d outgrown it years ago.
The drone grew louder, as did the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears. No: Del’s pulse. Del’s ears. If this body stopped breathing it wouldn’t be me who died. The demon and its cohort would remain. I’d understood last night that out of the hundred demons in the world, my own little family had been born out of the boy who lived there. I just hadn’t realized we’d be reuniting so soon. The gang’s all here, I thought.
No. Not the whole gang. The Truth and the Painter had come, and the Little Angel, and Captain and Johnny. The Boy Marvel and I made seven.
One of us was missing.
I kicked weakly at the caped man’s shins, tried to speak. We had to get out of the building, get everyone out, but any croak I managed to make was drowned out by the noise. The drone had become a roar. Outside the window, sunlight flashed on metal. It dove toward us out of the sky above the farmhouse: A blur of propeller, a bright bubble glass canopy, and wings like a silver knife edge. The Boy Marvel abruptly dropped his arm and turned toward the window. I fell to the floor, gasping, and covered my head with one arm.
The engine roar seemed to fill the room—and abruptly fell away. We were on the top floor of the hospital, and the aircraft must have passed only twenty or thirty feet above our heads. I looked back toward the doorway. O’Connell still lay on the floor, her mouth bloody, but her eyes were open.
The Boy Marvel stood at the window, hands on his hips. He laughed. “Well that was a close one, eh?”
