Dark Hunter (20 page)

“Scuff! It's me … Jake …,” he spluttered.

Scuffer seemed to relinquish his grip—but Jake's relief was brief. Scuffer yanked Jake away from the container, then repeatedly pounded him into the steel. With each impact Jake could feel his strength ebb as the metal crumpled around him.

“Scuff! Warren … Feddle! That's your name!”

Scuffer hesitated and pulled Jake closer for scrutiny. Overhead, a pair of Chinook helicopters appeared; the tail ramps opened and a squadron of Enforcers aimed their weapons out of the door.

“Scuff … we used to be friends. Remember?”

Scuff grunted. It could have meant
anything
, but Jake chose to interpret it as a sign of recognition.

“You don't want to hurt me, do you? Remember the fun we used to have?”

Scuffer's eyes narrowed, and Jake wondered if he'd suddenly triggered a bad memory—such as what Jake had done to him in Moscow after he'd tried to rob him.

Bellowing with rage, Scuffer tossed Jake overhead like a ball. Jake soared through the air, completely out of control. For a horrible second his vision was filled with twin whirling rotors as a Chinook banked into position—but Jake was traveling fast enough not to get caught in the rotors' suction.

Jake curved back to earth and crashed through a row of parked commuter trains that had been covered in graffiti. He soared through one window, across the car and out through the opposite side in a shower of glass. He landed hard across the steel tracks, and felt the cold metal of a rail press into the back of his neck. He suspected that his shield's strength was beginning to weaken, and he felt a little wobbly.

He silently berated himself for not being better prepared. He was so consumed with finding Psych that he had failed to take care of himself.

He looked up through bleary eyes to see Scuffer bound across the yard in a single leap. The ogre landed on the track next to Jake and roared savagely. Jake tried to move—but the entire weight of the mutant was suddenly on top of him. Scuffer pinned Jake's arms with his knees, then punched him repeatedly across the face. Jake felt a tooth knock loose. Another punch cracked his jaw—which he felt snap back into place, a fresh tooth pushing from his gums as he healed.

Jake tensed his body, but only had free movement with his legs. He kneed Scuffer in the small of the back, but it was like kicking a rhinoceros.

Then Jake felt his neck tingle and realized it was because the train track was vibrating. Scuffer punched him again, and now he was facing the right direction to see a train speeding toward them. It was probably slowing down as it passed through the rail yard, but it was still easily doing seventy miles an hour.

Jake tried to push Scuffer aside, but for some reason he felt heavier than anything Jake had lifted before, as if his entire body had become denser, and Jake could only lift Scuffer a few inches.

Scuffer cupped both his hands together to form a huge fist to mash Jake's head. With his hands pinned
down, Jake had only one option left. He squinted his eyes and hoped that he had correctly recalled the icon he'd carelessly clicked on.

A beam of red energy shot from Jake's eyes—and hit Scuffer full in the face. The beast fell backward, giving Jake the opportunity to slip free and roll off the track. He jumped to his feet—just as four hundred and sixty-six tons of Pendolino train struck Scuffer right in front of him!

Jake had to fight for his balance to avoid being sucked toward the express. The train's brakes screeched in a shower of sparks as it attempted to stop. Jake saw flashes of startled faces peering from the windows at him as it passed.

Jake half expected to see limbs scattered across the tracks, but instead was astonished to find that the collision with the train had done nothing more than to throw Scuffer across the yard and into a row of boxcars.

“He's completely indestructible!” Jake exclaimed aloud.

He glanced up at the Enforcer helicopters circling like vultures. The soldiers had not fired a shot; they were enjoying the fight too much. The Chinooks were hovering
just
beyond the range of his powers.

Jake glanced at Scuffer as he climbed to his feet, shaking his head woozily. At least the express train had had
some
effect on him. Jake looked across at the
construction site, and his own advice rattled through his mind. He had to
outthink
Scuffer.

Unable to fly, Jake had to resort to sprinting across the yard as fast as possible. He reached into his energy reserves and hoped he possessed some type of super-speed … but his luck had run out.

Scuffer saw him run and beat his chest. That gave Jake precious seconds to reach the fence separating the rail yard from the construction site. He fired his radioactive blast ahead of him as he ran, and jumped over the molten metal as it formed a puddle.

Luckily the construction site was empty. All types of machinery lay around it: bulldozers, JCBs, cranes, cement mixers. Port-O-Potties lined the edge of the site, built around a towering steel skeleton of red iron girders that stretched up, forming the core of a new ugly tower block.

A plan was forming in Jake's mind. He didn't like it at all, but it was the only thing he could think of.

Scuffer bounded into the yard with a howl. He picked up a dirty yellow dump truck with both hands and lobbed it overhead. Jake jumped aside. The truck smashed into the mud beside him and flipped less than an inch over his head before landing upside down, and providing cover between him and Scuffer.

Jake rolled behind the truck and slid into a drainage ditch. He scurried forward on his hands and knees,
spitting out the foul brown water that splashed into his mouth.

Scuffer was puzzled that he couldn't see Jake. He lumbered over to the truck and lifted the machine, expecting to find his prey underneath the scoop. He flipped it back onto its wheels with a howl when he saw that Jake had escaped. Then he raised his nose to the air and sniffed hard, his head turning as he caught the scent. Jake was crawling out of the ditch on the other side of the site. He ran for the iron girders and started to climb the steel frame like a lizard.

Jake was thankful he hadn't lost his climbing ability. As he reached the fifth floor he glanced down to see Scuffer looking up at him and pacing back and forth as he decided whether or not to follow.

Jake laughed to himself. “You're as dumb as a dog, Scuff old pal.”

Scuffer walked around the framework as Jake reached the tenth floor and edged across the narrow steel beams to the side of the structure opposite Scuffer.

From the top, Jake had a good view of Glasgow. The river and hills to the north, drab housing developments to the south. He waited for Scuffer to follow him around before he extended both hands and fired a supercharged radioactive blast to the ground … but what came out was a feeble splutter of energy.

“Aw, no!” wailed Jake. His old faithful power had
deserted him too. He screamed, annoyed with himself for having let his powers dwindle so much, especially after using them so heavily. It was one thing to wean himself off them, but a foolish mistake to walk into battle without
any
weapons.

Scuffer must have sensed Jake's anguish because he moved to the foot of the tower. Jake was fairly certain that Scuff didn't have the balance to climb all the way up. And he was right.

Scuffer grabbed a beam and started to shake it.

At first nothing happened. Then Jake felt the iron quiver under his feet, and after twenty seconds the entire tower was shaking as if it was caught in an earthquake.

Jake's feet slipped from the wet metal and he fell, latching an arm around a beam to save himself. His feet pedaled the air. His climbing power had just vanished.

Unable to fly and unsure if he still had a protective shield, he was certain the fall would kill him. Scuffer shook the tower as if he was trying to dislodge a cat from a tree. Jake felt his grip start to give on the slick steel. And then he fell—CLANG!—landing on his back across another cross girder two floors down. He winced from the pain, but luckily his shield was still working to some degree. Jake rolled onto his chest and gripped the girder with his arms and legs. He didn't suffer from vertigo when he flew, but now that he only had one direction to go—down—he was
terrified
.

The sound of wrenching steel made him look up. The vibrations had started to loosen bolts. With a ping, steel bolts came free and a heavy girder plummeted down. Jake closed his eyes, his teeth rattling as the falling girder smashed against the one that he was clinging to before bouncing off several others and crunching against the concrete floor.

He watched as another girder ricocheted from the tower with a clang and smashed into the Port-O-Potties, squashing them flat.

All around Jake, girders began to collapse and plunge to earth. One barely missed whacking Scuffer across the head. Jake was trapped in a life-size game of Jenga.

Jake renewed his grip with one arm and extended the other. He just had to hope all his powers hadn't expired. He concentrated and shot an enormous fire-ball straight to the ground in between Scuffer and a line of construction vehicles. It was a wide shot, and left nothing but a deep impact crater that rapidly filled with water. But the force was enough to throw Scuffer away from the collapsing tower.

Startled, Jake lost his balance and fell.

His arms thrashed as he tried to latch on to something, but he rebounded like a pinball as he fell eight stories into the concrete foundations. Seconds later a pair of girders smashed down on either side of him before bouncing like poles and landing in the mud.

Jake groaned. One of his arms was broken, but the rest of him was in relatively good shape. He could teleport to safety, but where would that get him? He'd have to return at some point to get the information he needed.

Jake knew he had to fight this one to the end.

Scuffer pounced on him before he could stand. Jake's leg felt as if it was being plucked from its socket as Scuffer lifted him by the limb, then tossed him across the building site.

Jake smashed into the side of an empty cement mixer. He slid to the ground, winded. He watched, mesmerized, as the entire shaking tower collapsed in a thunder of metal, kicking up a cloud of dust that blotted out the ever-present Chinooks.

By throwing him, Scuffer had unwittingly saved Jake's life. The brute was flat on the ground and several girders bounced off him, but with no apparent harm.

Jake shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

As soon as Scuffer got to his feet and strode through the crater caused by Jake's blast, Jake shot a fireball against the tail of the dump truck beside him—then leaped for cover under the cement mixer as thirty-eight tons of gravel cascaded from the back of the truck and filled the crater, crushing Scuffer. As the last piece of gravel settled, a dusty gray cloud rose across the suddenly silent construction site.

Jake ran for the tree cover at the edge of the yard. The rain would dispel the cloud soon enough, but it would take some time for the patrolling Enforcers to realize that Jake was not buried beneath the destruction. He didn't for a moment think that Scuffer was dead under all that weight, but he hoped that he couldn't break out.

All Jake had to do now was get back to the woman in the apartment, and somehow persuade her to tell him what he wanted.

Chromosome sat quietly in the shuttle's pilot seat. In her youth in South Africa she had flown small Cessna planes, which had given her enough grounding to easily take control of these sophisticated machines, although she was too lazy to do so and always relied on the autopilot now. An alarm rang over the base and she frowned.

“Seal the island,” instructed a voice over the PA system.

Chromosome started to feel a little worried as the reinforced hangar doors rolled closed in front of her. She would have to open them if she intended to fly out of the hangar.

Then the siren stopped and a new voice came over the PA, so cold and lifeless it made the citadel's staff shiver: Necros.

“We have a murderer among us. A slaughterer of our own kin. Ambassador Grutt has been murdered.”

Chromosome could see the reactions across the hangar, mostly shrugs of indifference, as Grutt was not a well-liked man. But, surprisingly, murder on the island was something new.

“All Council members must return to the chamber for an emergency session. Anyone who doesn't will be deemed a
traitor
.”

Chromosome sighed. She knew that she'd been caught. Still, she did not fear Necros too much; after all, she was planning to overthrow him. But the entire Council together would pose a problem and she still wasn't certain who her coconspirators were.

Through the craft's panoramic windows she saw somebody enter the Command Post—and run out seconds later screaming. Another body had been found. Chromosome rolled her eyes; she was just too kill-happy at times. Now it looked as if she would have to slay everybody in the hangar just to keep the discovery secret.

Then she noticed that people were pointing at her from the balcony area. They had obviously connected the dots. She rose from her seat—but it was too late, a female technician already had a radio to her mouth. Seconds later Necros's voice came over the PA.

“So, Chromosome. I never thought you had it in you.”

The hangar lights flickered, causing the technicians to flee. They knew what was coming next. Chromosome stabbed the control button that sealed the ship's doors and sank back into the seat.

“Come on, Ernie …,” she whispered.

She strapped the harness tightly across her just as the hangar plunged into darkness; only the red emergency lights hinted at shapes and obstacles. The technicians who hadn't fled the hangar now cowered in the corners as Necros emerged. His voice echoed uncommonly loud across the hangar.

“Chromosome, I know you're here. I can smell your fear.”

She held her breath as Necros's head scanned the hangar. She could just make out the rusted helmet that crowned his head, and the rotting cape that hung from his shoulders and trailed behind him. He walked past the shuttle, oblivious to her.