Mage among supers 2, p.1
Mage Among Supers 2, page 1
Mage Among Supers 2
Dante King
Copyright © 2023 by Dante King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
v002
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Contents
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
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Immortal Swordslinger
Bone Lord
About the Author
Chapter 1
I sat in the sunshine on the roof of a stone-built housing block, legs dangling over the edge, watching the streets of Caliber City five stories below. Over the years as a private detective, I’d gotten used to spending hours sitting and watching, waiting to see what happened next. Whether you were pursuing a cheating husband or a corporate fraudster, it was easier to wait for your target to give you new evidence than it was to go hunting in their wake. Patience was an important part of the job.
Mel wasn’t so used to it.
“They’re meant to be criminals, Ben,” she said. “Shouldn’t they be doing some crime?”
I glanced with a fond smile at the gorgeous blonde. She was wearing her superhero suit—a figure-hugging riot of swirling psychedelic colors that helped flatter her full chest and model-worthy curves. The domino mask dangling from her neck only drew further attention to her fine assets and made me wish we had time to do something other than sit out here. But we had a job to do. Fun could wait for later.
“You’re the high-powered lawyer,” I said. “I would have thought you’d know just how much time criminals spend not drawing attention.”
She shrugged. “By the time I deal with them, the crime’s usually done. We don’t spend much time lingering over the boring parts.”
“I doubt that the Scorpions will stay boring for long. Based on everything I’ve seen in the past few days of watching them, they’re looking to expand their hold in Hightower Hill.”
The Hill wasn’t the only reason why we were after the Scorpions, but it certainly helped to keep me motivated. Ever since I’d come to Earth, I’d been living in an apartment in Hightower, one of Caliber City’s friendliest neighborhoods but also a poor one. I’d got protective over the place, with its population of struggling families and honest folks trying to get through tough times. I’d already taken down one criminal conspiracy that threatened to destroy Hightower, and if another came, I was damn well going to get in its way.
“God knows the Scorpions have made enough trouble elsewhere in the city,” Mel said. “I talked with one of my contacts in the police last week, and they think that these guys are the most dangerous gang in the city right now.”
“Then why haven’t the police brought them in?”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Because they’ve got to gather the evidence for convictions first?”
“Partly that, but partly it’s about how tough the Scorpions are. They might not have superpowers, but they’re better fighters than any other gang in the city—hundreds of gun-packing martial artists ready to defend their leaders and their turf. The cops have tried to take some of them down and lost good people in the process. They won’t risk a run-in unless they’re very sure of themselves.”
I couldn’t blame the police for that. I might be part of the super-powered community, but a bullet through the brain would take me down as easily as anyone else. Some of the city’s heroes didn’t even have super-science powers, just martial arts skills and a collection of gadgets, and they held their own as well as some of Prime Guard. These guys were like that, except without the fancy costumes, and there were hundreds of them.
Behind us, the door of the stairwell opened. Jade Cho emerged and tossed aside the coat that she’d used to cover her superhero outfit—a form-fitting black catsuit with circuit board patterns accentuated by a selection of punky spikes and chains. Carrying a cardboard holder full of coffee cups, she came over to the roof edge.
“Here.” She handed a cappuccino to Mel and a black coffee loaded with sugars to me. “It’s not as bitter as the sludge you make with your office machine, but I hope it’ll do.”
“I love that machine,” I said.
“It’s not a healthy love, and it’s definitely not healthy coffee.”
With her own coffee in her hand, Jade sat down at my other side. Her belt of tools and gadgets jingled as she settled herself, and the sunshine that made her purple hair glow also shone off her piercings. A hint of her tattoos showed at the wrist as she raised her cup and took a sip.
“Any action?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I replied.
Two known members of the Scorpions gang, both dressed in generic black tracksuits, were lurking in the street below. Everything we knew about the gang’s operations said that they were up to something, but until they made a move, we couldn’t tell if this was the chance we had been waiting for.
“Can’t you do something with your magic?” Jade asked.
“Like what?” I asked.
“I don’t know, you’re the wizard. Magic up a crime for them to commit?”
I laughed. “You don’t think people will notice if the world’s only wizard stages a break-in?”
“They won’t know that it’s magic and not just some new super gadget.”
“And technically, you’re not the world’s only wizard,” Mel pointed out. “Unless you’ve given up on finding your old mentor here.”
She was right, of course. I pitched myself as Caliber City’s only magician, but I wouldn’t even have been on this version of Earth, never mind in Caliber City, if another magic user hadn’t come from my world ahead of me.
Fenton Ashbearer, who had taught me so much of what I knew, was out there somewhere, and I was responsible for capturing him and bringing him home. This was one more reason why we were watching the Scorpions—a link in the chain of evidence that I hoped might finally let me complete my mission.
There was a blur in the sky overhead and a gust of wind that blew the trash around the street. A second blur and a sharper gust followed.
“Who was that?” Mel asked, turning her head to squint after the blurs.
“Probably Kid Invincible chasing the Eviscerator again,” I replied. “They’ve been at it all week. Eviscerator says he’s never going back to jail, and the Kid’s got a reputation to protect.”
“Not to mention his sponsorship,” Jade said with a cynical tone. “Hard to keep your endorsement from the sneaker company when your archenemy keeps getting away.”
A paper burger wrapper, blown up by the wind of the supes’ passage, landed near my hand. On it was an image of Slide and Escapologist either side of the Prime Guard logo. I couldn’t see much of a connection between fast food and Caliber City’s leading super team, but then I didn’t work in marketing, and I was never going to make it into the big leagues.
“Look, more of them have arrived,” Jade said, as more tracksuited figures swaggered down the street, sweeping up the two we’d been watching in their wake. “And they’re up to something.”
Setting aside our coffees, we got up and followed the Scorpions. We kept to the rooftop, where they were less likely to notice us, and from where we could watch whatever they got up to. They turned a corner and approached a diner with a picture of a smiling bear out front. The gangsters definitely weren’t smiling.
“What’s that all about?” Jade asked.
“I doubt they’re all hangry and looking for good fries,” I said. “So I’m thinking a shakedown. Protection money, maybe?”
“This place was in the police reports,” Mel said. “This spot gets a lot of party kids from the club up the block and the student dorms in the other direction. It used to be a prime spot for small-scale drug sales until the owner drove the dealers out a few years back. Now the Scorpions have taken over the local trade, and they want to deal here.”
“But the owner’s still saying no?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Looks like they’re planning to change his mind the hard way.” I pulled up the hood on the billowi
Jade drew up a cowl to cover her face, too, becoming Crypto, the super engineer, and Mel put on the mask of her persona as Mind Game. I caught hold of one of the amulets I wore around my wrist, this one shaped like a boot, and whispered two words to channel the magic of the element of air through it, then wrapped an arm around the waist of each of the ladies. A gust of wind whipped up under our feet, and we walked on air down to the street.
As we reached the sidewalk, customers were hurrying out of the diner. You didn’t live in Caliber City for any length of time and not learn to recognize when trouble was brewing. Seeing our outfits, they parted around us, leaving a path to the diner doors. A couple of them even pulled out their phones and snapped pictures as we approached; it was nice to know that we were considered newsworthy.
I pushed the door open, and an old-fashioned bell rang as I stepped inside, the others just behind me. The diner was an old-fashioned place, with a pale tiled floor, a traditional cash register on the counter, and plastic ketchup bottles in the shapes of tomatoes on the tables.
I didn’t think that the waiter lying unconscious on the floor was part of the retro vibe, any more than the terrified owner being pinned against the wall by a tattooed thug in a black tracksuit. A dozen more like him stood around, arms folded or fists at their sides, doing their best tough-guy act.
“We’re here for the beef,” I said.
“The place is closed,” the leader of the Scorpions said.
“No, you see, you’re meant to say ‘what beef?’, and then I say…” I shook my head. “Never mind. Just let go of that guy, and we’ll let you leave.”
By now, they were all looking at us.
“You’ll let us leave?” The leader of the Scorpions looked amused.
“Most of you. We’ll need to keep someone to question.”
“Sure you will.” He let go of the diner manager, cracked his knuckles, and took a step toward me. Even wearing that loose tracksuit, I could see the substantial muscles bulging in his arms. “You think I’m scared just ‘cause you’re dressed in your big sister’s Halloween outfit?”
“No, but maybe this will do the trick…”
Clutching my bird amulet, I muttered the words for that amulet and for the element of fire. A dart of flame flew from my hand straight at the leader, who flung himself aside.
The gangsters were surprised, but they weren’t cowards. Regardless of our costumes and the weird gadgets in Crypto’s hands, they charged at us.
I pulled out my wand, a foot-long stick of enchanted walnut, and called on the element of fire once more. A blade of flame leaped from the end, insubstantial but deadly. As one of the thugs swung a punch at me, I sliced at his arm, and he staggered away screaming in pain from the burns the sword inflicted.
Another of them came at me. With the open-palm amulet, I projected an air shield. His high kick struck the barrier of whirling wind, which flung him aside, and he hit the counter with a crunch.
To my right, a pair of Scorpions charged at Mind Game. She stepped aside before they even got close, dodged a kick before it could even be seen, then grabbed a fist as it came past and pulled the Scorpion down, even as her boot went up to kick him in the nuts.
To an outsider, her moves might seem like magic or poorly planned choreography, one side of the fight always a step ahead of the other. But I knew what these guys didn’t: that in the right circumstances, Mind Game could read their thoughts, and that let her get ahead of them with all the moves she’d learned in self-defense classes. As long as they kept on an emotional wavelength that flung their plans out for her to catch, they stood no chance.
To my left, Crypto was taking Scorpions down in a very different style. They came at her with elaborate, high-kicking martial arts moves, things I’d only seen in MMA matches and kung-fu movies. She responded with a stun gun, hitting them with flying jolts of electricity that left them twitching on the floor.
One of them managed to get around and knocked the stun gun from her hand. For a moment, there was a look of triumph on his face. Then the coffee machine behind the counter blasted him in the face with a jet of super-heated steam, the machine obeying Crypto’s mental instructions, and before the Scorpion could recover, she hit him in the chest with an electrified baton like a cattle prod for urban crooks.
The leader came at me. He was the biggest guy there, six foot five and as solid as a slab of stone. As well as his black tracksuit, he wore a shining medallion in the shape of a silver skull.
For all his bulk, the guy moved fast. He’d clearly trained with experts in martial arts because he flowed with an elegance and efficiency that was almost balletic but with all the force of a monster truck. He easily dodged a swipe from my flame sword, ducked around my defenses, and swung a kick. I got out of the way, and his foot crashed through a table, splitting it in half. His next blow caught me in the shoulder, and I went staggering back.
“Maybe I should serve up a different attack,” I said as a punch past my shoulder scattered menus across the floor.
I leaped up onto the counter and, grabbing my bird amulet, flung an air blast at the leader. It should have staggered him, but he didn’t even flinch, so I switched to fire. A bolt of flames hit him in the chest but seemed to vanish before it could do any harm.
“Don’t tell me you took out fire insurance,” I said.
He flung himself forward, trying to grapple my legs from under me. I leaped clear and swung the fire sword down, but again, the flames did him no harm. They all but vanished as the blade hit him, then reappeared when I pulled it away.
The silver skull amulet was glowing. That had to be what was protecting him from my magic, which meant that my best chance was to get it off him.
I backed toward a refrigerator full of canned drinks. The leader charged at me. At the last possible moment, I stepped aside and launched a burst of flames into the fridge. The drinks, suddenly hitting boiling point, exploded, showering him with sticky, steaming liquid. As he wiped it from his eyes, I grabbed the skull and pulled hard. The chain snapped, and the amulet came away in my hand.
Immediately, the magic of the skull started flowing through me. I felt a protective field flowing across my skin—a tingle that anyone other than a magic user might miss.
More than that, there was a flow of energy through my body, a second enchantment that ran through my arms, down my chest and belly, and along my legs. It felt cold but potent, not the sort of magic I used but something with potential. What had I got myself into here?
As I turned to face the dripping thug, I realized that my feet had, without my thinking, slid into an unfamiliar fighting stance like something out of a martial arts movie. Following some inner instinct, I lashed out with my hand. Instead of using a fist, I hit the Scorpion leader in the neck with the side of my palm—a move I’d never even tried in my life—and he collapsed, gasping and red-faced.
I laughed in excitement. The amulet wasn’t just protecting me from magic; it was enhancing my fighting skills as well, giving me martial arts knowledge I never had before.
If I thought about this too hard, I was going to end up fighting against the directions of the skull, so instead I followed my instincts, letting its instructions move me.
I flowed through a series of spinning kicks that took down two more Scorpions, then hit another with a fingertip punch that felt almost delicate but knocked him out cold. I flipped, feet over head, heels crashing down on a thug by the counter, who slid groaning to the ground.
I looked around. Mind Game had just taken another Scorpion out with a choke hold, and Crypto had hit one in the back with stun darts from a floating drone. That left one guy who stood in the doorway, staring in shock at us.
“Time to give up,” I said. “If you answer a few questions, the police might be lenient on you.”
He shook his head, turned, and ran out the door, the bell ringing as he went.
I ran after him, expecting a pursuit down the street, but I was barely out the door when something small and dark whistled past my head. There was a wet thud, and the Scorpion fell to the sidewalk, clutching his thigh and groaning in pain, the flights of a crossbow bolt protruding between his fingers.
