John McKinley calmly ascended the marble steps of City Hall, bathing the surfacing in pure white, bleaching out the earth toned scars in the rock. He looked with contempt on Coda. The beast was struggling to stand.
McKinley walked without urgency, shooting Reggie a casual glance. The boy’s face was twisted up in a peculiar fashion an amalgamation of a snarl and a smile. Coda wasn’t as mystified by McKinley’s resurrection. His only concern seemed to be putting the old man down again.
Don’t worry. The feeling is mutual.
“I don’t know why you aren't still buried under a pile of rubble and ash, but if it’s going to take another beating to put your holy spirit to rest then I’ll be glad to-“
A ball of pure white light sent Coda back to the ground. McKinley figured the energy blast was a more effective rebuke than shut up. Coda wiped the blood from his cracked lips and rose to his feet, rubbing the back of his head as it wrestled with gravity. McKinley waited.
“How?” Coda hissed. A stream of saliva tainted with blood chased his words into the snow-laced air.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific,” McKinley replied.
“Lose the arrogance, priest. Three days ago I dropped a church on you and I’ll gladly do it again in front of all these people,” Coda’s eyes were crackling with lightning. The electricity looked like crow’s feet as it creased out from his pupils and caused his flesh to singe.
“In front of all these people?” McKinley asked, goading him further.
“You’re damn right,” Coda said, marching forward. His shirt turned to ash as the voltage surrounding his body became to great.
“All these people who can hear your every word?” McKinley said.
Coda froze as McKinley turned to the crowd, to meet their increasingly skeptical gazes.
“Do you hear your savior now? Your savior who tried to kill me three days ago?”
“No,” Coda whispered. McKinley could hear the crackle of wild lightning as it grew increasingly violent.
“Your savior tried to kill me three days ago! Your savior attempted to commit murder!”
McKinley smiled as a stray bolt flew over his shoulder. The clouds turned to shadow and the snow drove harder. The storm was coming, he was in the thick of it and there was no place he would rather be.
“Funny things, saviors and three days, don’t you agree?” McKinley’s words took flight just as Coda opened his palms chased by a feral scream escaping his throat. McKinley let angelic light silhouette his body as he took to the sky, letting Coda’s attack dissipate uselessly into the suddenly dark and stormy night.
The crowd began to get off of their knees. A cacophony of whispers began to emanate from the people. Their eyes were unsteady, their expressions unsure. McKinley hadn’t yet won them over, but he’d at least prevented Coda from doing so.
“HOW? HOW DARE YOU?” Coda howled as he flew after McKinley. The two looped around each other, creating a light show that was obscured by a very vengeful Mother Nature. The snow sped up. The temperature plummeted. The wind was reaching the point where it burned as much as it chilled.
Coda dove in and out, firing lightning, throwing punches, flailing and kicking out of pure frustration, taking no consideration for aim. McKinley maintained his newfound agility, bobbing and weaving as if his name were Cassius Clay. Their motions created a double helix that scarred the backdrop of violent clouds and jagged ice.
Coda stopped his chase, letting himself hang in the air for a moment. Snow fell onto his body, melting as it made contact with his electrified skin. McKinley smiled at the water under Coda’s eyes, he knew that it was warm, and that it had never been snow.
“I killed you...I know I killed you,”
McKinley was sure that desperation was a foreign emotion to Coda.
“I thought you did too,” McKinley said. Some of the emotions from his time spent beneath St. Agnes resurfaced. He saw darkness everywhere. He hadn’t had claustrophobia before, but a man’s fears tend to rearrange after being buried alive.
A burst of lightning to the chest sent McKinley flying backwards. Snow exploded all around him, sending a torrent of water down towards the now standing crowd. McKinley cursed himself for making small talk as Coda flew towards him and drove a shoulder into his chest. The two spiraled down towards a high-rise building. The energy radiating from Coda caused them to resemble a massive lightning bolt.
McKinley’s back hit the building first, kicking up a spray of mortar and brick as the two tumbled into the rooftop. Coda’s hand found its way around the priest’s throat, burning McKinley’s flesh and cutting off his oxygen supply.
“You stupid son of a bitch, you couldn’t just stay out of my way!” Coda screamed and punched McKinley in the face, loosening a tooth.
“Do you have any idea-”
Another punch and the tooth flew free.
“-how long it took-”
Another punch and the tooth fell back towards McKinley’s throat.
“- FOR ME TO SET THIS UP? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA THE POWER THAT I COULD HAVE HAD?” Coda resumed choking McKinley. The priest felt the world go black. Blackness like the underbelly of St. Agnes. Blackness that he would never return to again. A beam of light jumped from McKinley’s eyes, startling Coda, giving the priest the proper leverage to kick Coda off of his chest.
McKinley was up now, firing a spiral of light from his hands, striking Coda in the chest and sending him teetering to the edge of the roof. McKinley lurched forward. One uppercut later Coda was falling back towards the crowds that had revered him moments earlier.
McKinley took flight again, chasing Coda downwards. He turned to the side just as Coda reversed his freefall and dove upwards towards him. McKinley opened and closed his hands once, drilling Coda in the back with a short burst of light. Coda spun out and went crashing to the ground like a downed fighter jet. McKinley followed.
He took a second to notice the thick sliver of bone scratching his uvula. McKinley landed and coughed violently, spitting up one of his front teeth. He wiped his blood -stained mouth clean and walked towards Coda.
The seconds McKinley had spared to clear his throat were all Coda needed. Lightning leapt from the ground with an unholy fury, as if a hundred power lines had all exploded at the same place. McKinley fired light beams to suppress the energy, but he couldn’t intercept them all. One bolt caught him in the shin, forcing the priest to a kneeling position. Coda rose from the cement cutout he had made upon impact.
“So how did you do it McKinley? Not only do did you come back from the dead, but on top of that, you obviously increased your powers exponentially. Must have been one hell of a life insurance policy,” McKinley remembered how much of a talker Coda had been during their first encounter. He decided to respond. If nothing else the words would distract him from the pain in his leg.
Coda picked McKinley up, locking his fingers around his white collar.
“Answer me before I kill you. How? Who gave you these new endowments?”
“You did,” McKinley laughed.
Coda slapped the priest back to the ground. He strutted over McKinley and earned an energy blast to the stomach for his troubles.
“You entwined my powers directly to Reggie’s,” McKinley said.
Coda’s jaw dropped.
“So when I increased his power,” Coda mumbled
“You increased mine,” McKinley smiled back. His teeth shined, silhouetted in neon. He gave Coda a moment to let the concept sink in.
“You took everything away from me, Coda,” An explosion of light and ghost flame enshrouded McKinley’s body. He shined brighter than anything in the city’s artificially fluorescent skyline. The snow became radiant in McKinley’s aura. It reflected the light and reached blinding status in seconds.
The winds screamed and the clouds expelled more fury onto the crowd. The blizzard had arrived.
“Do unto others -”
The rest of John McKinley’s words were lost in a screaming blast of light.
The storm had reached its’ breaking point, and so had John McKinley.
Shadestalker #10
“Crusade”
(Higher Ground Part 5 of 5)
by James Queally
Mayor Bisell stumbled through the corridors of City Hall, locking every door behind him. He highly doubted deadbolts were going to keep lightning hurling, darkness wielding, light embodied freaks at bay, but the sight of a closed door made him feel better. His entourage was out in the melee, his security probably suffering the same fate. Injured, dying, or dead.
Myers wife just gave birth, if any of those monsters...
No. He couldn’t worry about possibilities; he had to work in the here and now. There were three dangerous entities waging war outside of his office window, tearing the city down in front of a live audience. One of them had tried to kill him, the shadowy one. He’d torn through security effortlessly and placed his hands, his filthy hands, around his neck. He had apologized before trying to murder him, as if civility would make the act any less heinous.
The lightning creature had saved him, only to make demands of the crowd. Politicking. They were all politicking. They all had something to gain, and they didn’t care how many lives were lost or how much collateral damage was done in the process.
Save you one day to kill you the next.
Bisell reached for the knob to his office door, but a crash of thunder outside caused him to fall over, his arm crashing against the edge of his secretary’s desk. His elbow was skinned and his forearm bruised. Bisell pushed himself back to his feet and opened the door, stumbling into the relative safety of his office.
The disarray outside had not reached his office yet. Everything was as it had been earlier in the day, except the large window behind his desk, which was now useless. A combination of radiance and frost had made it impossible for anyone to see through the window, unless of course they possessed x-ray vision. Bisell shuddered at the thought of more powers. Lightning, energy, and shadow were enough for one day. They would be enough as long as he was mayor of Lorrington.
The horror stories of Pacific City ran through his mind. Jim Finnegan’s mangled corpse fell to the street again. Millennium Man’s face remained apathetic while the civilian’s blood dripped from his gloves. He saw them all infesting his city. Capes and masks. Heroes and villains. There was no need to discern, there wasn’t even a thin line between the two. They both endangered his people. They both endangered him.
He remembered how Pacific City’s mayor, Cliff Jerrod, had fallen despite his valiant efforts to rid the city of the supers. His killer had been another super named Romanov, a psychopath with ominous black wings and a menacing sword. Jerrod, of course, had gone off the deep end well before hand, and had earned his own death. Unleashing super villains and a giant robot to eradicate the local super population? Idiotic.
A light beam reduced Bisell’s window to pieces. The energy flux continued on through, striking the monitor of the Dell computer sitting atop his desk. It exploded in a wave of orange sparks and flaming wire. The shards flew backward as if they’d been fired from a flechette gun. A piece of jagged glass caught Bisell under the eye, ripping away the skin all the way to his cheekbone. The mayor let out a howl of pain and put his arms up to block his face from any further damage.
The screaming winds and freezing snow began to filter through the remains of his window. Bisell got up from his crouched position and pressed his hand to his face, trying to convince the blood to stop leaking from his face. Bisell felt a crunching noise under the soles of his wingtip shoes. Bisell looked down and saw the thin coating of white beginning to take shape on his crimson carpet. He loathed the idea of having to shovel out his office.
Bisell made his way to the window, facing the storm head on, glaring at the two figures fighting in the night sky. His eyes narrowed until they became hate-filled slits. He clenched his free hand and walked out of his office, avoiding the snow and broken glass while exiting. The first super-powered battle in Lorrington’s history was happening under his watch. Bisell made a silent promise to himself that it would be the last.
***
“All the planning, all the time I took to handpick that boy. All the years my masters have suffered and you seek to end it all the name of what? Truth or Justice? What makes you so righteous anyway? You’re just a man with a title, a collar, and an all- encompassing fallback to justify everything you do! Since when does that give you the right to take my life away from me?” Coda roared.
Coda’s eyes were burning. His body was definitely outdoing itself this time. The lightning had begun to scorch his corneas and obscure his vision. What he saw was McKinley and a haze of shapes surrounding him that resembled buildings and people depending on their size. He was literally being blinded by his rage.
“Take your life away from you?” McKinley shouted back. “You want to talk about lost lives? You destroyed my church, tainted my faith, and corrupted the one thing that I devoted my entire life too. My purpose was finding that child and guiding him to his destiny.”
“He’s already reached his destiny, and it’s a glorious one at that.” Coda let a smile slip through the pain he was feeling.
“He’ll be the first martyr to my cause.”
“Over my dead body,” McKinley shot back
“You’re wish is my command.”
The two men charged, power surging and twisting around them. McKinley fired prematurely. Coda leapt into the air but didn’t take flight, choosing to use his athleticism rather than his powers. The change in tactics surprised McKinley as he had taken flight again. He must have been quite surprised to find himself alone in the sky, and he was probably even more shocked when a lightning bolt struck him in the side. Coda smiled as McKinley nursed the wound to his abdomen.
Too bad it couldn’t have been a spear, you might have appreciated that bible-freak.
McKinley was stunned but not down, he had hovered towards the asphalt but righted himself at the last second, kicking up and leaving a light trail that was similar to a crescent moon. Coda gave chase and the priest had no choice but to bring the fight back over the shell-shocked crowd. Coda imagined humans had an appetite for their own destruction. Somehow, despite a blizzard, a public assassination attempt on the mayor, and the imminent danger of two super-powered entities brawling overhead, most of the crowd had remained.
McKinley finally regained his balance, floating at a consistent altitude rather than zigzagging like the line of a heart monitor. Coda flew forward, tackling the priest again. Coda accelerated horizontally, continuing the spear maneuver until McKinley’s back crashed through the neck of a streetlamp. The metal dented and groaned upon the impact. It had to be a miracle of McKinley’s god that the neck didn’t fall of completely. Coda wrapped his hand around McKinley’s throat again, trapping the priest.
“You know, you had me going for a few minutes there, padre. You were kicking my ass pretty good. I was thinking maybe, just maybe, you grew a pair after I slapped you around like a little bitch. But, seeing as your tongue is turning a lovely shade of blue and your eyes appear to be bulging out of your head, I’d guess those balls never dropped did they, McKinley?”
McKinley’s body started going limp and Coda smiled.
“You know, my plan here might be fucked, but that doesn’t mean that I’m through. I think first I’ll kill everybody in this shit stain of a town, and yes, that includes your pride and joy Reggie and then I’ll start somewhere fresh. Pick a new kid, a new priest to fuck with. You don’t object do you padre?”
McKinley still wasn’t answering. Coda thought for a second that he was dead. He loosened the chokehold and checked the priest’s pulse.
McKinley coughed and sputtered, narrowed his eyes, and began to speak in a raspy voice.
“Coda?” he asked
“Yes my son,” Coda replied, fully enjoying his complete destruction of this man.
“How many watts do you think are going through this lamp right now?”
Coda looked down and saw the black, serpent-like wire in McKinley’s hand and frowned. The minute the copper endings touched Coda’s wrist, he exploded. Fire engulfed him. He fell back to the asphalt screaming all the way. His clothes had completely disintegrated. He smelled of cooked meat. It was only after his shoulder collided with the asphalt that he realized his own flesh was smoking.
Coda looked up and saw nothing. Between the explosion, the smoke, and his already damaged corneas, Coda was nearly blinded. White streaks cut through the blackness, and Coda was disgusted to find that the only thing lighting his way was McKinley’s aura.
“I asked you a question Coda, how many watts?” McKinley’s raspy voice revealed his position. He was directly in front of Coda’s naked body. Lightning shot forth and the resulting shriek signaled to Coda that he’d hit his target. His vision began to clear somewhat. His ears were still bleeding and his head was still ringing as if someone had transplanted the Liberty Bell into his cerebellum, but he could at least see the man he intended to kill now. He could at least see the blinding white light flying his way.
“FOR MY CHURCH!” McKinley screamed, landing a right cross, sending Coda reeling.
“FOR REGGIE!” he shouted following with a kick to the ribcage.
“FOR EVERY PERSON IN THIS CROWD YOU TRIED TO MANIPULATE!” McKinley landed an uppercut, knocking Coda flat on his back, causing the rage to build up even more.
McKinley surrounded his body in white light. The energy flew wildly throughout the street, and then folded in on itself. For a moment, Coda though the energies had imploded on top of the priest. The streaking white bullet coming for his head reassured him that they had not.
Coda felt his skull dent as the beam dragged him to the center of the crowd.
“For me,” the priest whispered.
McKinley’s eyes stalked Coda, who was rocking slowly back and forth, clutching at his head, trying to somehow alleviate the concussion he had sustained. Coda stopped squirming as McKinley approached, craning his neck towards the priest, changing the shape of his scowl hoping to show McKinley that this particular look of disdain was for him, and not the head trauma.
“So what now padre? What’s the next step in your grandiose plan? You’ve bested the villain in an open forum. The crowd is going wild for you McKinley! They’re on their feet, hanging on your every word and motion. I can hear their thoughts, padre. Do you know what they’re thinking? I can hear a million thoughts using varied diction to form one coherent idea,”
Coda’s vocal chords made a sickly gurgling noise and when he spoke again, he spoke in a deep all-encompassing voice
“Oh no, what happens when he kills him? Is he going to demand something of us? Will he...”
Coda’s voice trailed off as McKinley stared off into the crowd, meeting every single worried and battle fatigued glance. They may not have been in the fight physically, but they had just as much at stake, maybe more.
“Citizens...Citizens of Lorrington,” McKinley stammered, obviously not sure what words should follow.
“They’re not going to believe you, we both know that,” Coda saw McKinley’s shoulders sag. He felt the priest’s confidence drain away into some forgotten recess at the back of his mind.
“So what will we do now?” Coda asked, wincing as he rolled onto a piece of glass that had been lying in the street. The shard now bit into his side, drawing a small amount of blood below his rib cage. Coda blinked a few times, a silent negotiation with his mind to ignore the pain and keep talking.
“Are you going to call the proper authorities? Are you going to have me put away? Do you think that wise, Father McKinley? Do you really see a point in putting me behind bars that I could tear through in a matter of minutes?”
Coda let his words settle in McKinley’s ears. Once he felt the priest was flustered enough, he whispered.
“If you’re really a man of your words, if you’re really here to protect these people, then you know what you have to do”
“I’m not going to kill you.”
“Why?” Coda hissed, surprised at the urgency of McKinley’s response and the subsequent reply that leapt from his throat.
“Why are you asking? Can’t you just pluck the answers out of my brain?”
“I could, but I want to see how deep your convictions run, I want to hear you tell all these people why they’re going to die at my hands,”
“Nobody’s going to die today,” McKinley said, his eyes regaining their luminescent state.
“I asked you a question McKinley. Why aren’t you going to kill me?”
“You know why.”
“I want you to tell me.”
“I don’t need to.”
“I think you do.”
“You know why.”
“But they don’t, and I think they have a right to know why I’m going to-“
Coda’s threats found their escape route blocked as McKinley’s palm came crashing down into his jaw, stifling him. McKinley ripped the crucifix from around his neck and held it in front of Coda’s face.
“This is why. Because that’s not the way He would want things.”
Coda took a brief moment to admire McKinley’s sudden resurgence of faith before firing a bolt of lightning into the man’s chest, knocking him to the ground.
“Still on this god trip are we? You’re still worried about the way He wants things? How do you even know He’s up there? Have you ever met Him, or anything directly from His hands? Oh, so you seem to think you have. The angel with the cute butt. Agnes, was it? Well here’s a question for ya, sonny. What if she wasn’t from Him either?”
Coda let his voice rearrange again as McKinley leapt up for him. Coda sidestepped and kicked the priest in the chest, driving him back down.
“But she had wings and a halo and a healing touch. She had to have been from God,” Coda said in McKinley’s voice as he backhanded the clergyman.
“C’mon padre. If I’d wanted I could’ve taken a form with wings, halos, horns, three eyes, double D breasts or spider legs. I could’ve had a healing touch, a Midas touch, a green thumb, a black thumb, four hands, or no hands. You name it; somebody could’ve made it. That’s the fun thing about being one of those celestial types up there; they get to fuck with regular Joes like you and me.”
“I’m not like you,” McKinley spat through labored breath and thin streams of blood.
“Sure you are. We’re both zealots for our respective deities and we’re both fighting for their survival. You call me evil, I call you evil.”
Coda’s eyes narrowed. Curved, visceral lightning exploding from his pupils.
“Cause when you come right down to it McKinley, evil, is just another man’s good.”
Coda let the rage and repressed philosophies subside. The shell-shocked look on McKinley’s face had a calming effect on him. Coda smiled and let a massive collection of lightning come into his hands. The snow seemed to part around them.
“Now padre, somebody’s gotta die today, so it might as well be you,”
Coda clasped his hands together to make the strike just as the air to his right began to shriek in agony. Something was wrong with it. Something foreign had invaded it. Something was flying through it at such speeds that it was tearing it in two. A black spike pierced Coda’s calf muscle, forcing him to one knee, forcing him to lose control of the lightning. The bolt lurched upwards diagonally, hitting a satellite dish on the top of a nearby office.
“You were right about one thing Coda,” said an unsteady Reggie Evans.
“Somebody’s gotta die today.”
***
Reggie raced forward as several menacing shapes began to explode out of his body and into the ground around him. He hit Coda, hoping that one of the bladed objects drew blood. Coda groaned as the two collided. Reggie imagined that the tackle had forced him to bear weight on his injured leg. Coda stumbled backwards. His legs flew up over his head and he landed flat on his face. Reggie kept moving, kicking Coda squarely in the jaw. He felt a shadow stab down into the cement. He hadn’t intended for it to fire, but it just went without him. The point of the blade had landed a few centimeters left of Coda’s head. He looked up. The word surprise may as well have been written in red ink across his forehead.
He sprang up, hovering this time to avoid the pain of the leg wound. Reggie charged again. He felt instinct and adrenaline overriding his more established levels of thought. He let them do what they had to. Reggie knew that if he thought about this fight in any complex way, he would lose. He let the rush of combat drown out the nagging, albeit rational, voices in his head. The ones telling him that this was suicide. The ones telling him that his body was in no condition for this. The ones that Reggie ignored as he ran on tired legs that were drowning in lactic acid.
Reggie threw a spire at the same time Coda hurled a ball of electricity. Reggie smiled as he saw the blade sink neatly into the sinew that kept Coda’s arm attached to his shoulder. Coda smiled when the ball of electricity made contact with Reggie’s chest, blackening his already dark skin. The concussive force drove Reggie to the ground. Both combatants got up slowly.
“Why are you doing this boy? You’re bleeding and you’re burnt. You can barely stand. Why are you desperately trying to stave off the inevitable?”
“You’re not looking so great yourself, Coda. You’re bleeding and you were a walking five-alarm fire a few minutes ago. You’re plan is fucked. Why are you fighting a pointless battle?”
Coda smirked as he hovered in place. The lightning around him was decreasing. Reggie imagined the banter was calming him.
“Guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree then, won’t we?” Coda said.
“We’ve been doing that since day one.”
By the time Reggie got the last word out he had learned the meaning of the expression lightning quick. Coda must have been charging an attack during their brief conversation. He fired a blinding white and blue blast on the last syllable. The energy wrapped its way around Reggie’s body in coils, setting joints on fire and forcing his knees to buckle. He convulsed and seized and shook as his body crashed to the cement. Reggie hit the ground and immediately began to writhe in pain. He grabbed at his skin, trying to rub the places where it hurt. The pain spread like an overzealous cancer. The more Reggie tended to it, the more he hurt.
“Well that was...pathetic actually,” Coda floated upward and turned his fist into a ball of lightning.
“Thanks for the memories kid,” Coda swooped down, his right hand fully extended, ready to punch a hole through Reggie Evans body. Reggie rolled over just in time to see his killer diving at him.
“Die!“ Coda screamed, just in time to get hit by a huge blinding wall of white light. Coda went careening through the crowd and through the side of a bus. The side of a building eventually stopped his progress.
Reggie crawled over to Father McKinley, who was doing his best to not collapse after the massive expenditure of energy.
“Well, I guess that’s fair. Now we’re all on the verge of death,” Reggie spat
McKinley formed a dry, solemn smile. Reggie’s eyes narrowed as he took in the full sight of the man whose guidance he’d always ignored but sorely missed anyway.
“How-”
McKinley shushed Reggie, and the two helped each other to their feet.
“Son, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few days, it’s that we aren’t meant to find all the answers. Suffice to say, I was in good hands.”
Reggie clutched the priest’s shoulder.
“Looks like I am too.”
The two began a slow walk across the cracked pavement, heading in the general direction of their downed enemy. The crowd parted as light and darkness passed through them.
Several moments later, Reggie and McKinley stood together on the front line facing down a bleeding, battered, but still deadly Coda.
The endgame was approaching. The snow had stopped.
***
“I want this taken care of Commander Hastings,” Bisell’s voice was beginning to rival the decibel level of the explosions outside of what used to be his office window.
“Sir, I understand your position and the gravity of the situation, but I can’t in good conscience send my men into-”
Bisell cut Hastings off, sickened by his incessant politeness.
“They can barely stand Hastings. There is no better time to do this than now.”
“I understand how opportunistic this is, sir, but these aren’t run of the mill supers, these three seem to be high-class, extremely dangerous, and-”
Bisell cut in again, the hiss of his voice causing excess static.
“I know that, you imbecile. They’re fighting right outside my goddamn window. I’m not giving them the chance to flee and recuperate. I want this over, and I want this over now.”
A pause ensued, and then Hastings regretfully submitted to Bisell’s will and hung up. Bisell slammed down the receiver as a shark-toothed grin spread its’ way across his face. He could taste the blood in the water.
***
McKinley fired a beam of holy energy from his hands pressing Coda further down into the pile of mortar and brick that he had been buried in. He couldn’t let up this time. He wouldn’t kill, but he would make damn sure that Coda wouldn’t be forming a coherent sentence anytime soon.
Sparks shot up from the wreckage. Coda was crouched; a static field was emanating from his eyes and hands in a feeble attempt to repel the light beam. Reggie produced a lasso in his hands and threw it towards Coda’s wrist. He dropped the lightning immediately and leapt sideways, letting the beam slip behind his naked form and obliterate the rubble. Coda was moving at a good clip until he flew face first into a shadow wall. McKinley couldn’t help but smile. It looked like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon.
Coda cleared the cobwebs from his head and took flight, trailing blood and ash as he soared. McKinley fired several light beams, missing each time. The clergyman took flight after the fleeing Coda, who had abandoned all offense at this point. He was deadest on escape. McKinley kept firing, hoping to force Coda to swerve and slow down somehow, but the priest was quickly learning that his enemy was no novice. Coda banked right and made it over the roof of a building. McKinley was forced to slow down to make the turn. He landed on the tarmac roof and found himself alone amidst the packed snow and satellite dishes.
Gunshots rang out on the street below, capturing McKinley’s attention. The priest turned his back on where he thought Coda was, something he wholeheartedly did not want to do, to get a bird’s eye view of the chaos enveloping the asphalt.
A S.W.A.T team armed to the teeth was firing on Reggie, their bullets and buckshots wearing away at the shield he was holding up. McKinley had not come this far to loose the boy to misguided law enforcement. He leapt from the roof, his body glowing white, burning up the air molecules around him, causing him to fly. McKinley dove down to a chorus of holy shit and the hell is that as he began firing huge energy blasts, caving in cement, breaking sewer mains, and shattering ice. He was causing any kind of destruction that would suppress their shots. It was all the diversion Reggie needed.
The boy was up and charging, getting in close where their weapons were useless. The police wouldn’t fire on each other. McKinley hovered towards the melee as he saw Reggie throwing fists and javelins, knocking down officers as quickly as he could. McKinley lowered the severity of his shots, picking off the officers he could see through the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Reggie take down a charging officer with an arm drag, sending the heavyset man tumbling into two of his fellow boys in blue. Light and darkness dissected the officers in minutes, leaving them nothing more than a groaning and battered heap of riot gear.
McKinley landed beside Reggie to survey the damage.
“This isn’t going to look good in the morning papers,” Reggie muttered
“Huh?” McKinley replied. His hands were still illuminated.
“Second time I threw down with the police today.”
A gunshot rang out again, narrowly missing the duo. They both turned to find a second wave of officers racing towards them.
“Guess they’re learning,” Reggie hissed, darkness enshrouding him once more.
“Guess so,” McKinley replied, taking flight. “Guess we’ll have to uhn-”
Shoulder... on fire.
McKinley crashed to the ground, blood leaking from his back. The bullet had entered under his right shoulder blade. One of the downed officers must have been playing possum. Reggie spun around as McKinley slumped over.
“Shit!” he screamed, throwing a shadow wall up around both of them. McKinley rolled onto his chest, looking through the semi-permeable darkness, finding the smoking barrel. He fired one quick burst, catching the officer in the eyes. It might have been enough to blind him. It was definitely enough to render him unconscious. Reggie looked around frantically. McKinley watched his eyes begin to water. When the boy noticed McKinley watching he wiped them clean and assumed a more resolute expression. He stared at the half-dozen armed officers approaching their haven.
“I have to kick some ass now, Father, try not to die on me okay?”
McKinley nodded solemnly as Reggie ran off.
***
“Son of a bitch!” the first officer yelled as Reggie dug a shadowed knife into his shoulder.
“My thoughts exactly,” Reggie replied, using the cops’ body as a battering ram, driving him into a nearby officer who was wielding a twelve-gauge shotgun. The trio fell down to the asphalt. Reggie used the wounded officer’s chest as a springboard, forming two staffs on his forearms as he catapulted back up. One of the sticks caught an officer under the jaw as he was leveling his firearm. The cop fell backwards his shot going far wide, making a clank noise as it hit something behind the fray. Reggie rolled to his feet as soon as he hit the ground. A bullet buried itself into the street behind him. Reggie got up and through a flurry of jagged shadows around him. The three remaining officers were stabbed in the legs, forearms and face. Blood trickled from their wounds in thin rivers. Reggie leapt on the nearest one, drove him to the ground with his shoulder, and began beating him across the chest with one of the staffs he’d formed. Reggie pummeled him without remorse. He had felt sorrow for the damage done to the cops in the morning, but all bets were off now.
Reggie finally ceased his assault, turning around to find the remaining two officers fumbling with their weapons. His barbs had caught them both in the hands, which made holding a handgun a daunting task. Reggie threw one of the staffs, catching the officer to the left in the midsection, driving the air from his lungs. He was up and moving before the cop could recover, kicking him in the face and sending him on a crash course with the asphalt. Reggie hadn’t expected the second officer to level his weapon in time.
“I swear to God, if you move a muscle, kid, I will drop you,” The officer’s voice was trembling from a mix of pain and nervousness.
Reggie had never made a cop shaky in his life. At any other time, he would have taken joy in the accomplishment.
“Get on the fucking ground!” the cop yelled, his voice still unsteady
Reggie didn’t move. Enraged as he was, this officer was not going to shoot. He was too scared. Reggie let a dense shadow encase his fist. It must have felt like a sledgehammer when it hit the officer’s face. Reggie let the man drop and checked over the six officers, making sure nobody intended him to meet the same fate as McKinley.
Satisfied, Reggie began to jog back to McKinley, snow grinding under his shoes as he moved. The priest was sitting up, keeping his right arm pressed firmly against his stomach. He looked up at Reggie. His lips began to curl into a smile, but then something changed, something traumatic crawled into his eyes. He was screaming something. It was only after the lightning bolt had struck him in the back that Reggie realized it had been, “Look out!”
Coda glided over Reggie and scanned the scene. He smiled at the piles of beaten police officers and tipped an imaginary hat towards them.
“Thanks for the hand boys,” he spat, and flew on towards McKinley. The old man rose to his feet and prepared an attack but Coda was too quick, too determined. He scooped McKinley up into the air, taking a glancing blast of energy on his shoulder as he did so. Reggie looked for something to climb on; something to glide off, but there was nothing he could ascend fast enough.
He stood there helplessly as Coda dragged McKinley into the sky.
***
Coda flew straight up, letting the chilled air cleanse his wounds. Every nerve ending was on fire. His body was burned, cut, and torn in every place imaginable. His body hadn’t known pain before today. McKinley made his heroic, albeit foolhardy, return. Everything had gone to hell today, sans hand basket. The only solace Coda could take in the whole ordeal was that he was going to make the priest feel a hell of a lot worse than he did.
“Sky’s a beautiful thing isn’t it padre?” Coda hissed as they rocketed up further, getting lost in the silent black storm clouds... McKinley groaned in reply.
“I asked you a question, Padre!” Coda screamed, punching McKinley with his free hand. The rushing air stole the force from the attack, reducing it to a mere glancing blow. It served as little more than a wake up call for the priest, who was fading fast from the long exhausting battle. McKinley groaned again.
“Not feeling very talkative are we?” Coda noticed McKinley’s eyes were closed and that his lips were moving slowly, passionately. He looked down at the rosary beads still tightly wrapped around the old man’s wrinkled fist.
“Having a separate discussion are we?” Coda hissed, slapping the priest across the face, knocking a stream of saliva from his fumbling lips.
“How rude.”
Coda stopped his ascent and held McKinley out by the throat with one hand.
“If this is how you’re going to act, old man, then I might as well drop you now and end the theatrics. You’re really killing the whole villain-desperate hero dynamic here! I’m supposed to demand you beg and plead for your life and laugh maniacally!”
Coda head butted McKinley, opening a ravine of blood and tissue in the older man’s skull.
“Give me one reason not to drop you right now!”
McKinley opened his eyes for the first time since Coda had grabbed him.
“Because I can fly.”
Coda began to laugh out loud as the priest’s body returned to its brand new status quo of limpness.
“You made a joke old man. You. Mr. Serious. Mr. Devout. Mr. Faithful to a fault. You made a joke. Sign of the apocalypse I guess.”
Coda’s eyes narrowed. The momentary euphoria dispersed. It left behind no scars of amusement, no sliver of glee. Coda felt his lips return to their natural scowl, to the desired expression of pure discontent.
“And the apocalypse is just what’s coming for you and this whole city, padre. Everything, every man, woman, child, and dog will become nothing but dust beneath my heel. I’m going to kill and burn and defile for seven days and seven nights. Unlike your God, I won’t be requiring a Sabbath. I can endure.”
“Would you stop talking and just do it already?” McKinley hissed.
“Excuse me?” Coda shot back, wholly surprised,
“You go on and on, and on about how you’re planning this mass destruction, this humongous chaos, all because I ruined your plan here. I’ve been listening to you non-stop every time you get the upper hand. But now, just now, I figured out why you talk so much.”
“Oh, do tell,” Coda spat arrogantly
McKinley coughed for a moment, sucking in air through his most likely bruised trachea, and continued.
“It’s because you’re afraid,” McKinley hissed weakly.
“I’m afraid?” Coda said the words slowly, trying to discern their meaning.
“I’m AFRAID?” he asked again, louder, growing infuriated at the priest’s declaration
“Yes you are,” McKinley continued. “Everything you clung to, everything you believed in, is fractured now. You have no idea where to go from here. So you kill everyone, then what? You say you can just start over, but you know it won’t be that easy, you know nothing ever is. You know that for the rest of your miserable life, you’ll have to swallow everything with a grain of salt. You’ll become even more skeptical and cynical then you already are. You’ll have no rock to stand on.”
McKinley inhaled once more, grimacing as he did.
“You’ll be just like me. I’ve left you just how you left me.”
Coda’s body became encased in lightning again.
“Poetic justice, don’t you think?”
Coda let out a scream that he would have deemed ungodly, if he held any reverence towards god in the first place. He pumped hundreds upon hundreds of volts into McKinley’s body. The old man convulsed, shook, and seized, but he did not scream. Coda began to dive downwards, incinerating the air around him as they spiraled to the street below. The faster he flew, the louder the words reverberated through his mind. He couldn’t get rid of McKinley’s voice, but he could sure as hell get rid of McKinley.
Thirty feet above the ground, Coda began to slow his fall. In one motion he hurled McKinley to the ground. The old man hit the ground as a ball of seared flesh, jagged lightning and pure white light.
***
Reggie ran towards the cloud of smoke billowing out from the cement. He knew he would find Coda at the center of it. He knew he would find peace there with him. The ash and dust began to sting Reggie’s eyes, as he got closer to the epicenter. The asphalt he was running over became unsteady. It had cracked from the enormous impact. Reggie stumbled through the mist until the ground beneath him became wet. He looked down, and found himself standing in his mentor’s blood.
“He thought he was a savior,” Reggie heard the voice, the brooding, methodical, sadistic voice that could only belong to Coda. It drifted into his ears while the ash cloud sank into his clothing.
“He thought he could defy me, defy fate, defy powers well beyond his comprehension all for the sake of this.”
The cloud coughed up a broken pair of rosary beads, marred in read. They were still warm. Coda had most likely pried them from McKinley’s death grip.
“It’s always said when the pawn tries to be more than he is. Father John McKinley knew this well. It was how he lived his life,”
The voice was moving, Reggie tried to follow it, but the commotion outside the impact site was too loud.
“John McKinley tried so hard to be a real player in this game. He tried so hard to deter me from my intricately designed path.”
A static spark lit up a circle emanating from the center of the smoke. A smearing of blood and bone was illuminated. The stain was all that remained of McKinley.
“But look where it got him.”
Coda stepped out of the smoke, his hands folded neatly, over each other, head bowed reverently.
“Would you like to say a few words about dear old Johnny?” Coda looked up, smiling devilishly.
“Murderer!” Reggie screamed, producing a long black sword from his hands and running at Coda, who floated back to dodge the slash. Reggie swung wildly, missing. Coda continued to drift lazily backwards, until Reggie pulled up midway through an attack and kicked Coda in his wounded knee.
“Arrrgh!” he cried, losing his balance. Reggie swung again, this time catching the off-balance Coda in the abdomen, opening up a gaping wound that ran red with blood just above his pelvis. Coda fell to the ground. Reggie kept moving, driving his knee up into Coda’s face, breaking his nose.
“Bastard!” Reggie screamed again stomping on Coda’s chest, forcing him to cough up a sickly mixture of blood, saliva and phlegm.
“He didn’t think he was a savior you arrogant son of a bitch!” Reggie screamed again, continuing to stomp down on Coda.
“He knew exactly what he was!” Coda caught Reggie’s foot and sent him tumbling backwards.
“And what was that?” Coda hissed, firing a ball of lightning uselessly into a diagonal wall of shadow.
“He was a martyr!” Reggie leapt up and under another thin stream of electricity leaping from Coda’s hands, tackling him down with his shoulder.
“He died so I could kill you!” Reggie screamed driving his fist down into Coda’s throat.
“He knew I couldn’t take you out head to head!” His voice was accompanied by another punch.
“So he weakened you!” Reggie’s palm found its way against Coda’s chest, bruising his clavicle.
“Cut you!” Reggie’s fist was accompanied by dark flechettes that wounded Coda’s face.
“Bruised you! Burnt you! Damaged you!” Reggie kept rattling off the priest’s attacks on Coda’s body while delivering punishment of his own. After he had turned Coda’s face into three different flesh tones he paused to exhale. Coda began to whisper through a fractured jaw and crooked teeth.
“But...here is...the fatal flaw...in all of your prattling...I know... you won’t... kill me. I know ... you won’t kill...”
“I would’ve thought so too Coda. But I know if I let you live. You’ll come back after me, after Christina, after my family and my friends. I know killing is you wrong, but it’s only wrong by conventional methods. And it was you who taught me to stop thinking by those methods. So when I try and choose between killing you or watching the few good things left in my life be destroyed, I only have to ask myself one question,”
Reggie rose to his feet and raised the sword over his head.
“Who would I miss more?”
Coda’s eyes went wide and then fell dead, along with the rest of him, as the sword ran through his stomach, and liver. Reggie pulled the weapon out and began to hack apart the rest of Coda’s body. Piece by demented piece. When Reggie had finished his justified mutilation, sirens rang out in the distance. Reggie looked up for the first time and noticed that the cloud had faded, and that the crowd had been watching the whole ordeal. Some looked on with shock, others horror. Children cried.
Reggie bent down, picked up McKinley’s rosary beads and put them in his pocket. Then he turned his back on everything. The chaos, the crowd, the blood, the bodies at his feet, and on Lorrington itself. Reggie turned his back and began to walk off, hoping to find something more than the horizon waiting for him when he got wherever he was going.
***
Somewhere...
John McKinley woke up; surprised to find his body was no longer resembling tomato puree. He patted himself down to make sure all of his parts and pieces were in order, and took notice of his surroundings. He was standing on a street of light and smoke that rose to his face in gentle, ticklish wisps. On either side of him he found houses, churches, seminaries, and schools. Places he’d grown up, places he’d worked, places he’d preached and places he’d learned. Each one was lit up. Each door was unlocked. He couldn’t see every window or reach every doorway, but somehow he knew they were all inviting him in, with fresh coffee and a peach cobbler waiting for him.
“Okay so I lied. It’s nothing like the DMV.”
McKinley turned to see a radiant, stunning, and even more beautiful version of Agnes Alara standing behind him.
“But I like scaring the newbies,” She smiled and took McKinley by the hand, leading him down the physically impossible street to a building that stood proudly above all the others. McKinley couldn’t believe his eyes. Standing there before him in all its stained-glass splendor and religious glory was St. Agnes Church. The old man felt warm joyful teardrops coming to his eyes. Agnes leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
“You did good, old man,” she whispered as McKinley enjoyed the feel of wet lipstick against his skin and the smell of Agnes’ cherry breath wafting around his face.
McKinley ran down the street leaping into the air on suddenly fresh legs. The legs that he’d run track on when he was sixteen. He stared at his grammar school, his childhood home, St. Joseph’s seminary, and all the rest. He ran back to Agnes and shook her by the shoulders. She smiled through it all.
“Am I where I think I am?” He screamed, leaping and feeling like a kid on Christmas morning.
“That depends where you think you are,” Agnes replied.
“I think I’m home,” McKinley whispered.
“I think you’re right,” Agnes returned, taking McKinley’s hand and walking him to the end of the endless street. Once they got there, they sat down together and prepared to watch the world go by.