Masked Read online

  It’s time for this to end. I walk to the far end of the room, to the one body that I haven’t yet uncovered.

  I pull the sheet back, gently. Donna Porter’s world-weary face looks blankly up at nothing. “Do you recognize her?” I ask.

  “No,” says Toni, forcing herself to look.

  “No, of course you don’t. Donna wasn’t much of a hero. She was terrified of fighting, couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Her power was a curse to her. She hated using it, and I think—and this is just a theory, okay?—I think she let herself get killed.”

  I pull the sheet down from her, exposing her nakedness, her total vulnerability. “You know what Donna’s power was?” I ask.

  Toni shakes her head, unable to speak.

  I pick up a scalpel and carefully cut away a square of Donna Porter’s leg. I hold the morsel up for Toni to see.

  I pop the bit of meat into my mouth, chew slowly, swallow, making sure that Toni watches it all. Not for her sake, but for mine. “Donna’s power was mind control.”

  Toni’s eyes widen. She steps back from the table, stumbling over her own feet.

  “Donna could have ruled the world with her power,” I say. “But it disgusted her, just like mine disgusts me. The difference, though, is that I keep doing it, despite how much I hate myself.”

  I can feel Donna’s power rushing into me. I can feel Toni’s mind in my mind. It’s like an intricate web, constantly in motion. The tendrils of that web are clearly outlined in my mind, each strand representing a thought or a memory. I can feel the currents in her mind: the disgust, the fear, the nausea. I can sense her decision to turn and run.

  “Stop,” I say, feeling the nerve impulse rush down to her feet and stopping it. Toni freezes, wavering.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say. “You’re going to take your little recorder and you’re going to erase any evidence of your time here today. Then you’re going to go back to your office and destroy any notes you may have about me.”

  I take her by the chin, gently, forcing her to look at me. “Are we clear so far?”

  I allow her to nod.

  “If you’ve discussed your suspicions about me with anybody—an editor, say—and they ask you about me, you just tell them that there’s no story there. Tell them that the UNC student’s dissertation turns out to be right on the money.

  “And then you forget all about this. Whenever you think of me in the future, you’ll think about how uninteresting I am. Thinking about me at all will make you feel bored.” I’m saying all this aloud, but the words aren’t really necessary. I’m rearranging the web of thoughts in her mind, putting all of this information directly into her cerebrum.

  “You’re going to leave here now, and you’re going to forget you were ever here. By the time you get back to your apartment, you’ll already be thinking about other things. Nice things.

  “And you’ll feel good about yourself. You’ll think of things that you always wanted to do and you’ll make plans to do them. You’ll let yourself love freely. You’ll forgive yourself for everything you’ve ever done that you regret.

  “Do you understand all of that?”

  Toni nods and I let go of her.

  “Let’s go, then.” I lead her gently by the elbow back to the elevator.

  At the door to my apartment, I kiss her on the cheek. “I’m sorry about this,” I say. “I really am. But I’ve reached a point where one more immoral act barely weighs in the balance. And I don’t think you’ll suffer for it.”

  “You had it all worked out,” she says, her voice weak. I admire her willpower. Speaking at all under Donna Porter’s spell must be nearly impossible.

  “You’re not the first reporter who’s asked those questions,” I say.

  After she leaves, I sit down on the couch and try not to throw up. I give myself five minutes to despise myself, and then I put it out of my mind and move on. I have to.

  Someday I really need to send that bastard at UNC a thank-you note.

  On the machine there’s another voice mail from the widow Verlaine. I delete it without listening to it. Then there’s one from Captain Salem asking me to come see him at League HQ. My stomach clenches into a knot. My first thought is: He knows.

  Of course, that’s what I always think.

  As League Chairman, Captain Salem gets a nice cozy office on the top floor of the building. Said building, I learn from a sign in the lobby, is being renamed Verlaine Tower. Captain Salem waves me in and shuts the door, sits me down in a comfy chair, and then just stares at me from across his desk.

  “What’s up?” I say.

  In response, he opens a desk drawer and takes out a gold pin, pushes it across the desktop toward me.

  “Welcome to the League, David,” he says. “Lifetime member, as of today. No more of this Reservist bullshit.”

  This is the moment that any B-list hero dreams of, being pinned and getting your code name etched onto the granite block outside and getting your own chair at the big table. I feel like a fraud. But I take the pin anyway.

  “We would have had a proper ceremony,” he says, “but with the whole Verlaine thing it just seemed…”

  “No, I understand,” I say. I don’t have to tell him that I don’t want any ceremony; he knows me well enough to figure that out on his own.

  “Verlaine always told me that I’d be a lifer over his dead body,” I say.

  For a second I think the Captain is going to jump over the desk and throttle me with his massive fists. But he laughs, louder and longer than is really necessary over such a tasteless and untimely joke.

  “He really liked you, you know,” says Captain Salem. “He said you were the real deal.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Don’t be a dipshit, David. You know exactly what it means.” He stands and tugs down on his costume front, but it does his profile no good. “Russell Verlaine saw more than the rest of us. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah,” I say. He’s not talking about the X-ray vision.

  “I miss him,” I add.

  “Me too.”

  Captain Salem walks around the desk and lays a giant hand on each of my shoulders. “Welcome to the club, Wildcard. I wish it was under better circumstances.”

  There’s nothing really to say to that.

  “Oh yeah,” he says, clouting me on the back, knocking the wind out of me, “Analytica’s satellite intelligence thinks it knows where the Ghoul King’s going to strike next. As a full member, you get to be one of the first in line to have your ass handed to you by the thing.”

  He stops me by the door on my way out. “If you’ve been saving some really fantastic power for a special occasion, David, now would be the time to debut it.”

  Operation Interceptor is planned for 0600. I spend the night before in the basement, looking at the dead bodies laid out in my own lair. “Who’s it going to be?” I ask them. “Which one of you stands the best chance in this thing?”

  It occurs to me for the first time that everyone here is dead for a reason. Whatever powers they had, it wasn’t enough to keep any of them alive.

  After hours of deliberation, Human Shield gets the dubious honor. I slice a chunk the size of a sugar cube from his left buttock and choke it down. Fifteen seconds later I punch the concrete wall and don’t feel a thing.

  At 0540 I’m standing on a beach in Wisconsin in cutoffs and flip-flops with nine other Leaguers. It’s cold and the capes are snapping in the wind. Spandall keeps out the cold fairly well, but only if it actually covers your body. It’s clear that Kate Frost and the Muse are freezing their asses off in their skimpy little outfits. Kate hasn’t said a word to me since Chicago, which is fine with me.

  Analytica’s satellite intelligence has given us an 89.4 percent probability that the Ghoul King and his minions will show up to ravage downtown Milwaukee sometime between now and noon. The Army and National Guard are on standby—in monster situations the League always get
s the first crack. The government likes it that way because it doesn’t cost them anything, and the Leaguers like it because it gets them on TV more often.

  At 0725 or thereabouts, Captain Salem and Power Pat are taking turns seeing who can pound the biggest hole in the sand when it happens. There’s an explosion of spray and the Ghoul King erupts from the water, surrounded by roughly sixteen billion of his Ghoul friends. The actual number, I will learn later, is more like six hundred, but still more than we’ve ever seen in one place. Hell, it’s more than we even knew existed.

  Captain Salem waves us forward, himself in the lead, heading straight for the King. Over the comm he’s alerting the military to what they’ve already figured out, which is that this has suddenly become a weapons-free, all-hands-on-deck, get-the-fuck-out-here-now situation. All hell then promptly breaks loose.

  What not even Analytica has predicted is that the Ghoul King has given his army the ability to fly. We discover this when the first Air Force jets hiss low over the beach to strafe the enemy, only to find the enemy leaping up into the sky and tearing their wings off as if the planes were giant houseflies.

  Kate Frost is the first to die. I watch a Ghoul literally tear her head from her shoulders. It makes a wet sucking sound.

  He grabs me next and tries the same trick, but because I’m surrounded by Human Shield’s force field, he’s unable. In what I assume is frustration, he leaps up into the air and hurls me down onto the beach from a height of about a hundred feet. The impact takes my breath away and makes my ears ring, but through some miracle of physics doesn’t pulverize my bones. For a solid minute, all I can do is lie on my back and watch the bloodbath going on around me. Automatic weapons fire sizzles over my head; mortars concuss in the water. I can hear the sonic booms of Power Pat and Captain Salem’s punches. I feel the ground vibrate as Muse unleashes her subsonic growl at some nearby Ghoul, and then hear the sound of its bones snapping to shards in response.

  I pick myself up and stagger around for a second, trying to get my bearings, but bearings elude me. Ghouls are everywhere, in the sky, on the ground, in the water. They’re clawing and biting at anything they come near. One of the Lyme Twins is lying bloodied on the beach, thus rendering the other one both terrified and powerless. Power Pat is either unconscious or dead, on her back in the surf, the waves rolling over her massive biceps. To the good guys’ credit, the beach is also practically carpeted with Ghoul corpses, and the sulfuric smell of their blood is nearly overpowering.

  A hundred feet or so, down the beach, Captain Salem is duking it out with the Ghoul King. The King has a distinct height advantage, but the Captain moves incredibly quickly for such a fatass. The famous fists are pummeling the King pretty badly, but the Ghoul King gives the impression that he could do this all day, whereas Captain Salem is already starting to flag.

  My head clears and I’m running across the beach to help the Captain, dodging downed Ghouls and soldiers alike. I get tripped up a couple of times, and I’m swiped and bitten at more times than I can count, but the Human Shield has yet to fail me.

  I get within striking distance of the Ghoul King just in time to see him take Captain Salem’s right fist in his own and crush it. The Captain, for all his machismo, screams like a baby, and I don’t blame him. He pulls back a bloody lump of flesh, his eyes wide. The Ghoul King pauses, as if giving the Captain a moment to realize how dead he is before the Ghoul King finishes the job. Then the monster seems to lose interest in him and just tosses him aside. The Captain hits the ground with a soft thud, still more or less alive.

  I check my back pocket, and my emergency rations are still there. I take out the baggie and grab the hunk of raw meat that was once part of the Nightingale’s shoulder. In the heat of the battle I barely even notice the taste. I count to fifteen, then crouch down and leap into the air with all the strength I have left. Whatever crazy shit it is that resides in the Nightingale’s cells that allowed him to fly kicks in and I’m airborne. Ten seconds later I’m halfway across Lake Michigan, but the acrid smell of dead Ghouls doesn’t leave until I’m almost over New York.

  I’ve crossed so many lines in my life that I didn’t think there were any more left to cross. But it turns out there’s one more.

  I fly home for some supplies, and then to the cemetery, where I touch down on the ground in front of Verlaine’s grave. I sit down and look at the fresh earth, sifting it in my hands, knowing I’ve got to hurry and not wanting to. I’ve got a bit of Digger Jakes wrapped in cellophane and I’m unwrapping it when I hear footsteps behind me.

  It’s Jeanie Verlaine, bringing flowers to her dead husband’s grave. She doesn’t seem surprised to see me.

  “Hello, David,” she says, forcing a smile. “I was wondering if I’d see you here. I’ve been watching you guys on the TV all morning. I saw you fly away.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I…” I trail off.

  Jeanie sits down next to me and places the flowers on the fresh dirt. They’re daisies. For a second, neither one of us says anything.

  “I know why you’re here,” she finally says.

  “What do you mean?”

  She looks at me, forces me to look at her. “David, Russ had powers nobody knew about. He could look at someone’s DNA, just standing in front of them, and know how a particular gene would be expressed. He understood people; he could see right into their hearts. You know, their secret hearts.”

  I look away.

  “No, David, listen. Russ always knew how you got your powers. He knew it five minutes after meeting you. But don’t worry; I’m the only person he ever told about it.”

  “I’m not sure what to say.”

  “Russ knew that someday you might need him. You know, that you might need his powers. Especially if… you know.”

  “If someone killed him, you mean.”

  “Right.” She takes a deep breath. “He knew that if he ever got killed, then you might need to…”

  “I would have to eat a piece of him, Jeanie.” I’m sweating and I feel cold at the same time. “I would have to dig him up and cut off a piece of him and eat it. Don’t tell me that doesn’t revolt you.”

  She stands up, holding her hands to her head. “Of course it revolts me. I think it’s disgusting!” She turns away. “I’m not Russ.”

  She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “But it doesn’t matter what I think. Russell knew and it didn’t bother him at all. He pitied you.”

  “I don’t want his pity!” I bark.

  “Yes, you do. You want his pity. He was a better person than us. He had a perfect moral worldview, can you imagine that? He just knew right from wrong. He never felt jealousy, never felt sorry for himself, and he never condescended to anyone. He knew how hard it must be to be you. He knew how much you hated yourself for doing it, and he knew that you did it anyway because you were willing to sacrifice your own self-worth in order to do the right thing.

  “Don’t you get it? He loved you for that. He said that it made you a better person than him, because he never had to make the choice that you did.”

  As usual, I can’t think of anything to say.

  “Look,” she finally whispers. “We’re wasting time. We both know what you need to do here. I can’t watch you do it, so I’m going to leave. But I needed you to know that you had Russ’s permission. You had his blessing.”

  She turns to go, then says, “He figured you probably couldn’t bring yourself to do it otherwise.”

  “He was right,” I say.

  I wait for her to go. She hurries along the path and disappears from view. I choke down Digger Jakes and start clawing at the dirt. I can feel the grit sinking into my fingernails, cold and eternal. Then Digger’s power kicks in and the hole opens wide. In less than a minute I’m in a dank hole, standing over the coffin of my best friend, looking down at his face. Even in death, his body refused to be tarnished. The hole in his chest has sealed itself, leaving him perfectly whole in his spotless gold Spandal
l costume.

  Before I even touch him, I realize my stupid mistake. Verlaine’s body is virtually indestructible. I have no idea how I’m going to eat it.

  I’ve got just enough Nightingale left to fly myself home, praying that nobody comes across Verlaine’s open grave in my absence. I rifle through the basement, thinking furiously. What am I going to do? I go through about a dozen of the containers in the freezer, tossing them aside one by one, before I remember the Rock.

  The Rock was known as the Indestructible Man until a chemist with a grudge found a way to destruct him. Then the Rock was just known as “deceased.” Rock’s been sitting on a gurney in the freezer for months. It took weeks to plan and execute the removal of his two-ton body from Highland Cemetery, where he’s still believed to be buried, just a couple rows down from Verlaine. Now his dead eyes are staring up at me from inside their granite-like lids. His skin feels like polished marble; he is all over a dark green speckled with silver veins. His particular mutation left him without genitalia, so he never bothered to wear a costume. He just went around naked, wearing nothing but a fanny pack to keep his keys and wallet in. Aside from the fact that I’m certain to take on his very distinctive appearance if I eat him, the lack of genitals is another big reason why I’ve never done it.

  There’s nothing to do about that now. I get a fresh scalpel and look down into the wound in Rock’s chest where the mad scientist hit him with his chemical spray. Though unfortunate for the Rock, the hole is a godsend to me, because I couldn’t bite through Rock’s skin any more than I could bite through Verlaine’s. But inside the hole, his guts are just as soft and pink as anybody’s. I slice out something that might be a bit of lung and pop it into my mouth.

  It’s not something you get used to.

  When Rock’s power suffuses through me I suddenly feel heavy and cold, and every part of me aches. God, is this how Rock felt all the time? I never heard him complain about it, not once. He was actually one of the most upbeat guys you ever met. For my own sake, I tell myself that this pain is just a side effect of the admixture of Nightingale and Digger Jakes and everybody else I’ve been snacking on the past few days. I’ve learned the hard way that a mixed diet is fraught with peril.