Seven Wonders (27 page)

  Tony looked Jeannie in the eye. She smiled, looking almost apologetic. Tony sighed, and shook his head. The cops had got it wrong, there was no way Jeannie was the Cowl's dumb bitch. No way.

  Right?

  "We have to leave," she said at last, quietly. Tony nodded.

  The pair turned around. Behind them, the two detectives had retreated into the corridor, but if help was on the way, the front door was not the best exit. Tony turned, glanced around the apartment, and decided on the main windows that led out to the street below.

  "Mr Prosdocimi," called the female detective from the corridor. "I don't know who you really are or why you're protecting her, but Blackbird is wanted on multiple counts. We need to take her in, to stop the city being torn up. It's just one step from her to the Cowl."

  Tony smiled. "You really don't know who I am?" He looked at the wrecked bodies of the two armored cops. Smoke curled around the apartment's front door as the body of the third continued to smolder out of sight.

  "You're not one of the Seven Wonders," she said. "You're not the Cowl either."

  Tony puffed his chest up and addressed the empty room.

  "How do you know I'm not the Cowl? If I'm shacked up with Blackbird…"

  There was a sound from the corridor. Tony turned his hearing up and caught the end of a whispered conversation between the two detectives. The Seven Wonders, apparently, had acknowledged their call and were on their way. Then the female detective answered Tony's question.

  "We know you're not the Cowl, Tony."

  Jeannie pulled on Tony's arm, but he shook it off and glared at her. So he wasn't the Cowl. Well, he'd be something else. Something worse.

  "And how do you know that, exactly?"

  The detective's snort echoed down the corridor. "Come on. You're too short, too young, just for starters. Don't flatter yourself."

  Tony's lip curled. "You're right, detective. I'm not the Cowl. I'm the Justiciar."

  There was a pause. Tony had hoped for some reaction. The silence was insulting.

  Then the male detective spoke up. "The Seven Wonders are on the way. All of them. Give it up before they teach your sorry ass a lesson." The words were slightly braver than their delivery.

  Jeannie grabbed Tony's arm again. He flinched, irritated at the interruption to his thoughts. He was calculating an escape, working out whether the detective was right or not. Maybe he was… it would only take a second to kill the pair, evaporate them with a plasma blast perhaps, but if that second was enough for the superheroes to arrive, they'd be finished. So much for becoming the Eighth Wonder. In his haste he'd killed three police already. But… he'd had to, hadn't he? It was necessary, to control the situation and to stop them all making a big mistake, thinking that his girlfriend was Blackbird.

  A… mistake, right?

  He turned to Jeannie.

  She looked him in the eye, and nodded at the window. Tony grabbed Jeannie in a bear hug that buried her head in his chest and under his arms, and exited the apartment via the apartment window. The force of the impact tore half of the exterior wall open as well.

  The Justiciar and Blackbird made their escape.

Detectives Sam Millar and Joe Milano gingerly walked back into the apartment, now half in the open air. The pair stood there, unmoving for a moment, then lowered their guns. Sam ran to the hole in the wall in time to see Tony and Blackbird speeding across the sky. Then the wind from the opening changed direction and caught her hair, pushing it in front of her face. She brushed it away, and gasped. Floating in the air outside the apartment were Aurora, Bluebell, Linear and the Dragon Star. Aurora's arms were folded and his face set as he floated forward, stepping onto the apartment floor, the others following. Sam stepped back, giving the team room and trying to get away from the heat of Aurora's rippling corona.

  Joe slapped his thigh. "Gee, thanks for coming, but you're too late!" He waved at the partially demolished wall in frustration. "Pardon me for saying this, Mr Aurora sir, but Blackbird and that new creep with superpowers just took off, and you don't seem to give a shit. You should be chasing after them right now!"

  Aurora stepped closer to Joe, his gray hair swimming with agitation in the plasma that flared off the top of his head. Still his mouth was set in the expression that wasn't quite a smirk, his eyes empty white ellipses in his half-mask. Now the context of the conversation had changed, Aurora didn't look quite as friendly as the noble leader of San Ventura's finest should.

  "Don't worry, Detective Milano," the superhero said after a beat. "Hephaestus and SMART are tracking the felons, and even now are moving to apprehend the pair with Sand Cat." He glanced at his team, then turned back to Sam and Joe.

  "I think, detectives, we need to talk."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Humility.

  
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.

He'd hidden during the day, afraid of being seen, afraid of the fact that it was all out of control. He'd seen the headlines on the newspaper displays on nearly every major street corner. Geoffrey Conroy had vanished: medical leave, a mystery illness, the famous businessman was in Mexico seeking alternative therapies or had gone to Canada to seek a renowned doctor.

  He knew he couldn't be seen, so he'd kept a low profile, waiting for the night. The night felt comforting, homely somehow. He wanted to see the city at night. In the meantime, he sat in the shade behind a closed-down factory and said his prayers and counted his rosary beads until the sun went down.

  He'd made a mistake, taken the wrong path. But he knew there was hope, somewhere, deep down. Hope, forgiveness, salvation. And then justice and punishment.

  But it was… the right thing.

  It was after midnight when Geoff Conroy found himself in Moore– Reppion Plaza. Someone said something and he scooted to one side, realizing too late that he was walking far too slowly along a sidewalk that was bursting with life despite the hour. A drunken hen-night swaggered by, ignoring him completely, while a not-so-drunken couple power-walked across the street, heading in the direction of a tall parking garage. With Conroy out of the way, the traffic on the sidewalk picked up the pace appreciably, and the street itself was as busy now as on a Saturday shopping morning. San Ventura was a big city. It was called "night life".

  Conroy knew all this. Most of his work as the Cowl took place under cover of darkness, usually in a seedy corner of the city populated by freaks and crackheads and police patrol cars nervously crawling the curbs. But not always. Sometimes an audience was important – you couldn't instill fear if there was nobody to see. He'd loosed killer robots on San Ventura's club scene back in 2009. Just last year, Sand Cat had uncovered Blackbird mapping the sewer system under Maass and Decker, and their fistfight had exploded into the middle of the Gaslight Quarter at ten on a Friday night. The Cowl had cruised in and forced Sand Cat's retreat, but he remembered the sizeable bar crowd out in the street, jeering and hooting at the superpowered catfight.

  But this… this was different. People walked, talked, ran, sat, laughed, drank, ate. People were noisy. People were quiet. But all of them were getting on with their lives. None of them, as far as he could tell without superhearing, were talking about the Cowl. None of them wondering where the next attack would come from. None of them were looking over their shoulder in fear. None of them were creeping slowly under the brightly lit streetlamps.

  Business −
life
− as usual.

  And the Cowl realized just how
wrong
he'd got it.

  He thought he owned the city. Ruled it. He was the country's number-one terrorist, a home-grown superthreat. People feared him. Even the Seven Wonders were too scared to take him on, content instead with a policy of appeasement, happy to let him get on with his business, and only limiting his more audacious schemes. As Geoffrey Conroy, billionaire industrialist and charity king, he was known among the city elite, although not quite famous enough among the general populace for anyone to take that much notice here. A few heads turned here and there as they passed him, but the newspapers said he was out of town and the stock photo they'd used of him was a few years out of date. And besides, everyone was more concerned with their drink, or the next club, or to get home, and it was more likely they were just glancing at a guy in an expensive linen suit counting rosary beads absent-mindedly with one hand, rather than the sick Geoffrey Conroy. Just another weirdo, albeit one with better taste in clothes than most.

  He stood in the street as a completely normal, vulnerable human being. Nobody knew he was Geoffrey Conroy, city benefactor and leader of commerce. Nobody knew he was the Cowl, the criminal mastermind behind San Ventura's reign of terror. Nobody gave a shit.

  He'd got it
wrong.

  
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

  Conroy sat on a fire hydrant and watched people walking, talking, sitting in the open-air spread of restaurants and bars, dancing in multicolored silhouettes behind the windows of clubs. Nobody was scared of the Cowl. Life was too important to stop and worry and fear. Everybody ignored the danger and got on with it.

  He'd failed.

  Had he really fooled himself that much that he hadn't seen what was right in front of his eyes? Perhaps. Drunk on power? Or high on his own superpowers, locked away in his underground Lair and his hilltop mansion, plotting, scheming, calling himself a king… yet doomed to irrelevance, a mere mischief-maker that made the news in the second before the viewer flicked the channel? A mischief-maker who killed, yes, but if you do something often enough it loses its punch, you get desensitized.

  Well, how's that for a comedown?

  He stood and loosened his shirt collar, the rosary beads clacking against the ring on his right hand. It really was hot. So many people, too many. Conroy suddenly felt alone, despite the crowds, and stupid, and vulnerable. What if someone knew who he was? Not just the superrich Geoffrey Conroy, with a thousand dollars of loose change in his wallet, ripe for robbery. What if someone knew he was the Cowl? What if someone knew he didn't have superpowers anymore? Someone had to be responsible, of that he was sure. The loss of flight, invulnerability, superspeed − it wasn't a natural phenomenon. The Seven Wonders claimed publically to have never uncovered his identity, although he knew that to be a lie. And who else could be responsible for draining the powers of a supervillain? In fact, he was surprised they hadn't done it earlier. Maybe they'd needed time, perhaps entering into a covert alliance with another superteam? Perhaps the superheroes of the world were all about to come out of retirement and turn the tables.

  He wracked his brains, trying to remember who else had ever discovered his true identity. Silverlord − but he was dead. The Ultimate Hero − dead. Lady Daylight and Kingkiller? No, supposition on his part. Kingkiller wasn't exactly a hero either, and he was locked in the bowels of the Earth in the supercrime prison built by the United Nations. Lady Daylight was missing, either off-world or, more likely, dead.

  "Hey bud, you OK?"

  Conroy turned his head slowly, trying to focus on the portly, bearded man in front of him. His face showed concern behind the whiskers, and he was wearing a plain dark suit, the white shirt glowing almost fluorescently in the neon strip light of the bar opposite. There was a black nametag pinned over the left breast, indicating the man was known as Brother
somebody somebody.
The man smiled but the smile was weak, and Conroy watched as the man's narrow eyes flicked to the rosary beads.

  
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

  "Ah, yeah, fine," said Conroy. The Samaritan's face swam in front of his own. Maybe it was him? Perhaps the Mormon suit was fraudulent, the concern a sham? Conroy backed off and almost tripped over the curb behind him. Shit, it could be anyone. He turned on his heel, dodging past another gaggle of partygoers, and headed uptown. He needed to get away.

Uptown was quieter. A mix of small businesses and apartments, the only activity at this time of the night/morning was centered around a convenience store on the corner. Beyond was a small park, playground and basketball court visible under the streetlights, but the trees vanishing into the gloom beyond. A pinprick of light flared, suggested the presence of a cigarette smoker. A drug dealer, or maybe a wouldbe murderer or rapist. Conroy couldn't say. Maybe one of his faithful fans, a member of one of the Omega gangs.

  Conroy's fingers found the next large bead on the rosary, and heart pounding, he ducked into the store.

• • • •

Love thy neighbor.

  The bright artificial light inside stung his eyes, causing him to blink to adjust. His vision was now human-normal. This was going to take some serious getting used to.

  It was quiet in the store, just the hum of the refrigerators and the slush machine at the counter. Conroy was surprised to see the counter was unprotected, no after-hours screen or hatch. Then he saw the damage.

  The counter was new, as were the shelves behind it. So new they hadn't been restocked with cigarettes and condoms yet. At first Conroy just assumed it was ongoing maintenance, but then he saw the spider-webbed glass on a cabinet to the left of the new counter, clearly part of the older, original structure. The floor in front of the counter was marked with two distinct patterns – regular, almost rectangular burn marks, where the linoleum had been torn and then melted, and an irregular series of blobs with soft edges. Conroy had seen the second set of marks before, many times. The telltale afterimage of spilt blood. The convenience store had been robbed, and recently.