But mostly because I wanted to belong.”
“What are you rattling on about?”
“I never did. Never belonged. I was always the odd kid out at school. Always had my nose in a book. At home, too. My dad was a good man, in his way. I found that out later when we got to really know each other, like, as adults-back when I was first on the run with Sprout, and he swallowed a lot of his prejudices and preconceptions to help us because he thought that was the right thing to do. But back when I was a boy he was super competitive. Never could figure out why I wasn’t interested in athletics or following him into the military.”
Tom tried to say something. But Mark wasn’t paying him any attention. Tom lunged at his nemesis. And ran right through him as if he were less than shadow.
“I wanted to belong,” Mark said. “To be part of something. To have a sense of purpose. Have shape, you know? Then later, after I got you, got to be you for just one night, that wasn’t what I wanted anymore. Oh, I wanted those things too-got them all, too, in their own ways-and wasn’t always happy with how that turned out. But I found what I really wanted was something else.”
“So you turned out to be just a fucking adrenaline junkie? Just did it for the rush?”
“No. Well, maybe a little. But after I’d had a taste of being you-the Spirit of Revolution-I wanted that certainty. That wild, pure conviction of knowing you were right, and being able to act without doubt or compromise. Of being certain. That most of all. To get rid of my confusion. And that was the cause of my greatest sin: the hunger for the one thing I couldn’t have. Certainty. ”
“So you want to fucking atone for me. For me. The only thing in your life you ever got right.”
Mark smiled gently. “You see it the way you see it. I see you as the greatest mistake of my life. I did some good along the way, man. I helped people. It cost me a lot of pain. Along the way I made mistakes that cost others pain. But it was all just trying to do the right thing.
“And it turns out… that’s no excuse. Intention doesn’t matter. Results matter. If you hurt people, it doesn’t mean a thing that you thought you were doing it for your own good.”
“That’s why you’re such a loser, Meadows,” Tom said. “You were never willing to do what it took.”
“Ah, no. I was too willing. In that I was like you. That was what gave rise to you. And if you’re going to tell me you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs-that metaphor only makes sense if you’re a cannibal.”
Tom could feel titanic forces surging around them: electricity and explosions and equally palpable eruptions of rage and triumph and lust. “This can’t last,” he said. “Monster will run out of rage eventually. And then I snap back in charge. And you’ll still be nowhere, man.”
Mark shook his head. “No. There are too many of them. You’ve done too much damage-to them as well as others. You’ve made it personal. If you return to the world of form they’ll simply kill you.”
“That’ll kill you too, you stupid cocksucker.”
“Yes. We’re trapped in a burning house, you and I. If my death is the only way to stop you, and I believe it is, then I’m happy to die.” He shrugged. “That’s the way of the world anyway, isn’t it? No one here gets out alive. Did you think your ace powers made you any different?”
Tom’s thoughts had cleared. “They won’t kill me,” he said. “Not if I’m helpless. Their bourgeois sensibilities won’t let them. And if I’m not helpless-”
He grinned.
Wally felt like a sack of broken bones rattling around inside an iron whiffle ball. Except whiffle balls didn’t have as many holes as he did.
The Radical had hurt him bad. His ribs were broken. Maybe even shattered. If he weren’t a joker, they’d be sticking through his side right now. As it was, he could feel bone scraping on iron every time he moved, like fingernails on a blackboard. The pain spiked with every breath. It took everything he had not to pass out.
He tried to stand, to push himself to his feet. But a rivet on the inside of his shoulder caught something squishy, like a tendon or a flap of muscle. It pinched a nerve, chewed it, mangled it. White-hot pain surged up his neck and into his brain. Wally staggered, but he grabbed hold of a branch of the tree that had exploded through the Red House, and made himself keep going.
He had to get to Jerusha. She could still get out of this. They’d find a way to cure her. He’d failed to save Lucien, but he sure as heck would save Jerusha. Nothing mattered but that. The Radical fella had turned into a giant monster. Bubbles was fighting him, but that did not matter now. There was no more he could do to help. All that mattered was Jerusha.
A bullet pierced a weak spot behind his shoulder. It ripped through the meaty part of his bicep, but ricocheted back inside when it hit solid iron on the way out. It sliced through something else on the rebound. His arm went numb. It didn’t move right anymore.
Wally came around the corner just in time to see a boy emerge from the wreckage of the house, toward Jerusha.
“Jerusha! Look out!”
She didn’t hear him. She was watching the boy. It was too dark and chaotic to see what he lobbed at her.
But not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the fear flash across Jerusha’s face.
Not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the explosion.
Not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the concussion fling Jerusha backward. Not so dark that he couldn’t see her land, crumpled, like a rag doll.
Not so dark that he couldn’t see the seeds pouring out of her pouch… the blood pouring out of her belly, black as ink. Then lightning flashed from the talons of the giant monster, and turned it red for an instant. So much red.
He staggered to her. “Jerusha!”
She called his name. “Wally. I’m sorry.”
And then he was kneeling over her, cradling her, stroking her hair, calling to her again and again. “Please don’t go,” he cried. “You’re the best friend I ever had.”
But she was gone.
The boy who’d killed her watched it all with a cold smile. His eyes were just as dark, just as soulless, as Ghost’s had been that first night she appeared to Wally.
Wally stood. “You killed my girlfriend.”
Something inside him screamed in rage, called for justice, demanded revenge. One punch is all it would take.
But something else inside him spoke with Jerusha’s voice, the voice of reason. He’s just a little boy.
If Ghost could be fixed, so could he.
Whatever the boy saw in Wally’s eyes, he turned and ran deeper into the ruined mansion. Wally caught him in a few strides. He pushed the boy down, pinned him face-first to a shattered tile floor with one foot on his back. Wally looped the rebar around the kid’s wrists and ankles.
It was difficult because he couldn’t use one arm. But when he finished, the boy who’d killed Jerusha was stuck hog-tied in an iron lariat.
Wally collapsed.
Ellen lay on the ground, staring up at the night sky as if in surprise. Her skin all down the right side was black where it wasn’t bloody. The fedora-Nick-lay five or six feet away, the last low flames smoldering in the ruined felt.
“Are you okay?” Bugsy said, but he knew that she wasn’t. That she wasn’t going to be. “Medic!” he shouted. He was standing naked in the middle of a battlefield. The roaring detonations of Monster and Bubbles drowned his voice, but he kept shouting.
Lilith appeared at his side. “Get down, you idiot,” she hissed, but Bugsy ignored her.
“She needs help,” Bugsy said. “She’s hurt!”
Lilith bent down and looked at Cameo’s ruined body with a passionless eye, and then shook her head.
“You can get her to a hospital,” Bugsy said. “Something.”
“I have an idea,” she said, and a moment later was gone.
“Bugsy,” Ellen gasped. Her voice was thick.
“I’m here,” he said, taking her hand.
“It hurts,” she said.
