The Darkest Hours

Chapter 24

The murky light of predawn fell on the auto yard. Colors were washed out to various shades of blue, darkening to perfect black. The streetlights nearby were mostly broken, but where they were on, they added the occasional shaft of yellowish light. The low light softened edges and deepened shadows. It made the stacks of crushed cars and mounds of discarded parts look positively alien, and the mounds and mounds of deceased vehicles created an oxidized labyrinth. The place smelled like rust and rot and old motor oil. Pools of liquid rippled under a ghostly wind, and the light reflecting from them danced through too many colors for them to be puddles of water.

The whole place was on a long lot, behind a high fence. It was maybe a hundred yards in length, maybe half as wide. About the size of a football field, in fact. Maybe that was just a coincidence. But then again, maybe Mortia picked it for that exact reason—to tell me that I was simply a game to her.

If so, that was all right. I can play games, too.

Two features in the yard stood out: first, an enormous industrial machine, one of those dinosaursized hydraulic car-crushing gadgets. The other, not far from the entry gate, was a small and run-down building with the word "Office" painted on the door. A small and dilapidated mechanics' garage was attached to the building.

My spider sense started twitching when I was a block away from the junkyard. By the time I actually swung over the fence to land high atop the car crusher, it was screaming at maximum volume. The Ancients were there ahead of me.

I remained in place for another two minutes, just to be punctual, and then called out, "Mortia! Thanis! Malos! It's on!"

The three of them appeared from the interior of the run-down garage, their pale faces visible first, so that they gave the appearance of three skulls drifting toward me. Eventually, they came out enough for me to see that once again, they had all come in pseudo-formal attire. It made sense, I supposed. MJ and I dress up a little when we plan on a nice dinner, too.

Mortia stopped a step ahead of her brothers, smiling up at me. "Ah. I am glad that you saw reason."

"I'm a reasonable guy," I said. "Which is why I have a proposal for you."

She tilted her head to one side. "Oh?"

"A trade," I said. "I looked it up and it turns out that Spider-Men my size only make a decent meal for two, not three, and that I'm full of carbs and bad cholesterol. I thought I might be able to arrange something healthier and more profitable."

And with that, I pulled the Rhino, once again bound limply into a cocoon of webbing, off of the papoose-style carry on my back, and began lowering him to the ground. "I figure this ought to stick to your ribs better than me. I'm all string and gristle."

Mortia touched a forefinger to her chin, a pensive gesture. "And why would you offer such a thing?" she asked.

"Because I'm not an idiot," I said. "What happened with Morlun was a fluke. I'm never going to be able to survive the three of you."

Mortia gestured at the Rhino. "Yet it is a poor gift you offer. We can take him at will."

"Think of him as a down payment," I said. "I can set you up with all kinds of totemistic super folk. I can point you to a Lizard, an Octopus, a Vulture, a Scorpion, a Sabretooth—oh, and Serpents. There's so many of them that they formed their own society."

"You would doom others of your ilk to preserve your own life? It seems uncharacteristic of your behavior."

"They're all enemies," I said. "Criminals, thugs, and good riddance to them. I can't beat you, but I

do want to survive. It's an acceptable compromise from which both of us profit."

Mortia turned and looked at each of her brothers in silence. They returned an equally placid, in-human gaze. Then she turned back to me and said, "Lower the brute."

My mouth felt a little bit dry. "Here we go," I whispered. "All set?"

"Da," the Rhino whispered.

I lowered him slowly, steadily to the ground. Mortia and her brothers walked over and stood there in their little formation as the Rhino sank to the ground at Mortia's feet.

She regarded the Rhino with hooded eyes, then looked up at me.

"Do we have a deal?" I called.

Mortia's sharklike smile returned, and she murmured, "Arrogant worm. Kill them both."

Let the games begin.

"You're going to wish you hadn't said that," I predicted.

She regarded me with scorn. "Why?"

"Because even a blind man can find you when you yammer on like that."

The Rhino ripped out of the cocoon as if it had been made of tissue paper—and parts of it were— and seized Mortia by the ankle. Then he grunted, rolled, and threw her.

Here's a business secret not everyone knows: Super strength, after you get to a certain point, suffers from a case of diminishing returns, especially in combat. That's just physics, old Sir Isaac rearing his oversized melon. When you lift something heavy, you're pushing up at it, but it's pushing down at you, and through you to the earth. That downward force eventually gets to the point where it starts forcing your feet into the ground.

Sure, the Hulk can free-lift better than a hundred tons, but when that much weight is pushing down on a relatively small area—like his feet—it tends to drive them down like tent stakes. (Not to mention that there just aren't all that many hundred-ton objects that won't fall apart under the stress of their own weight when lifted.) Similarly, the Thing can throw a big punch at a brick wall, but if he uses too much of his strength, the impact of the blow will shove against him, pushing his feet across the floor or even throwing him backward. He has to brace himself if he's really going all-out.

(Which is one reason I've done pretty well in slugfests against guys a lot bigger and stronger than me, by the way—my feet always hold on to the ground, or wall, or whatever, allowing my punches to be delivered far more efficiently than those of most of the powerhouses.)

Anyway, once you get into the heavyweight division of super strength, the differences are kind of academic, and they only really stand out in a couple of different areas.

Ripping an object apart between your hands is one of them. It's isometric.

Throwing things is another.

The Rhino can trade punches with the Hulk. He can flip an Abrams main battle tank with one hand. And, apparently, he can throw gothed-out brunettes halfway to Jersey.

Mortia shrieked and flew out of the junkyard like a cruise missile in a red cravat. She clipped the edge of a ten-story building a block away, sending up a cloud of dust and a spray of shattered bits of masonry. The impact didn't even slow her flight down. She just kept on going, tumbling end over end, over the nearest buildings and out of sight, screaming in feral rage all the way. The scream faded into the distance.

For a second, the remaining Ancients were stonestill in surprise, and it was time enough for the Rhino to come to his feet in a fighting crouch, arms spread. He might have looked intimidating if he hadn't been facing approximately ninety degrees to the left of his foes.

Malos moved, quick and certain, his body darting for the Rhino, dropping, spinning, so that he kicked the big man's legs out from under him. The Rhino had far too much of a mass advantage on the Ancient. Malos's kick was viciously strong, but he wasn't properly braced to transfer enough of that strength into upsetting the Rhino's balance, and all he was able to do was kick the Rhino in the ankle hard enough to annoy the big guy.

The Rhino kicked him back. It was a blind kick, and didn't land with full force, but it was still strong enough to send Malos flying into a half-stripped old pickup truck, slamming him through the safety glass to a painful impact with the steering wheel and dashboard.

We had to work fast. The Rhino had taken Mor-tia out of the equation, at least for a little while. I had no idea how far he'd actually thrown her, but if she didn't hit something solid, wind resistance would slow her down eventually—say, within half a mile. Then she'd land and head back. Given how fast I'd seen her move, we had maybe a minute to take out at least one of the other Ancients; ninety seconds, tops.

That made me eager to mix it up as soon as I possibly could—but that wasn't the plan. We had to see if my theory was correct, and to do that I had to let them start on the Rhino. So I clenched my hands into fists and waited.

Thanis closed on the Rhino in perfect silence, and as a result slammed his first couple of hits in without opposition. Hits like that probably would have broken my neck. The Rhino just grunted at the first, and was a savvy enough brawler to roll with the second. He swiped one huge hand in an arch and got lucky, more or less. The blow landed, and Thanis staggered back a pair of steps.

Great. Of all the times to have a great opening round, the Rhino picks now, when he's supposed to be losing.

At this rate, he'd probably rough them up just long enough for Mortia to return. I debated tripping him or something. It wouldn't be like I was trying to get him killed. I would just be sticking to the plan, which was everyone's best chance of survival.

As it turned out, I didn't need to do it. Malos came back into the fight with a vengeance, literally seizing the Rhino by the horn and sweeping him up and over to slam the big guy's back onto the ground with earth-shaking force. The impact stunned the Rhino. Malos stepped forward and, with brutal efficiency, stomped a heel down on the Rhino's head, a motion similar to that of a man crushing an empty can of beer. The Rhino's thick skull withstood the impact (of course) but the sheer power of it drove his skull six inches down into the gravel and mud of the junkyard's ground, and it seemed to daze him even more thoroughly.

"Take him," Malos snarled, and lifted his eyes to me.

Thanis bared his teeth in a nasty smile, lifted a hand, fingers spread, and then drove it flat against the Rhino's chest, where another burst of sickly light flared out between his fingers. The Rhino screamed again, and the sound sent a surge of adrenaline and rage through me.

I went into a swan dive, aiming for the Ancient kneeling over the Rhino. As I expected, Malos threw himself in the way, leaping up to meet me in the air. I folded into a roll and, as the Ancient met me, brought both heels into a lashing kick that tagged him squarely on the forehead and killed both his momentum and mine. We dropped the last fifteen feet or so to the ground and landed ten feet apart, facing one another over one of the chemical-spill puddles of various auto fluids.

On the way down, I hit the top tire of a stack behind me with a short webline, and used the elasticity of the line and my own strength to fastball it into Malos's chest. The blow knocked him back— because super strength doesn't mean you suddenly have more mass. Malos might have checked in at around two hundred and fifty pounds, and the tire hit him hard enough to take him off his feet and dump him onto his butt. Best of all, the old tire had been half-full of stagnant water, and it splashed all over his fancy clothes. He looked up and directed a snarl of hatred in my direction.

"Welcome to New York, chump," I said. Then I bounded up onto the tire stack, and from there went over a twelve-foot-high wall made of crushed cars.

Malos let out an angry snarl and chased me. He came sprinting around the corner, focused entirely on my red and blue costume, intent on catching up to me and neutralizing me before I could take a swing at his brother.

Of course, if I had been in the costume he was chasing, it probably would have worked better.

Instead, I hopped up to a shadowy section of the wall of cars and froze, while Felicia bounded through the predawn dimness in my backup costume. In better light, or if she'd been still, there would have been no way anyone with eyes would have mistaken her for me—but wouldn't the Ancients have thought of that kind of thing before they set up the time and place for the showdown?

Malos ripped free a heavy mirror that had somehow survived its parent truck's crushing, and flung it after Felicia. The Black Cat dodged it with contemptuous grace, cleared the wall of cars, and hit the car crusher with her grappling line, then retracted it, hurtling through the air as it pulled her, just ahead of the enraged Ancient, leading him away from the Rhino.

I went back over the wall and flung myself at Thanis. Once upon a time, I probably would have said something cute to make him turn around before I hit him, but wasting time on such a thing in this kind of fight could get me killed.

That said, though, I'm freaking Spider-Man.

"Warning!" I shouted. Thanis blinked and halfturned his head, just in time for me to lay a haymaker directly across his jaw. He flew back from the Rhino and slammed into the side of a junked school bus, and I followed right on his heels. "The surgeon general has determined that attempting to eat the Rhino may result in unanticipated side effects." He bounced off the bus and ran into my fist. I heard teeth break, and felt a rush of furious satisfaction. "Including but not limited to dental problems." I gave him a double-handed sledgehammer blow to the guts. "Nausea." I sent a flurry of jabs at his head, pretending it was a speed bag, and bounced his skull off the bus maybe fifty times in seven or eight seconds. "Headache."

Thanis wobbled forward, his eyes gone glassy, his face broken, bleeding, swelling. He could barely keep his feet. "And," I said, drawing back. "Drowsiness."

It's rare for me to go all-out, but I hit the jerk with every fiber of my body and sent him clear through the bus's metal siding.

The bus rocked a time or two, but the Ancient did not arise. He lay sprawled and motionless inside.

Not bad. Maybe it wasn't as impressive as a Rhino-strong blow, but for a guy who weighs in at one sixty-five, it was a pretty good hit. Even better, my hypothesis had been proven. Thanis had indeed been vulnerable as he fed.

"Don't let me down, Doc," I muttered, and flicked one of the three Alhambran agates at the downed Ancient.

There was a whisper of sound, no louder or stranger than that of a door sliding closed, and Thanis— and the agate—vanished. Gone. Poof Just like… well. Magic.

Hot diggity dang, it worked!

I threw myself over to the Rhino's side. He lay on the ground, his breathing labored. "Aleksei," I said. "You all right?"

"I," he wheezed, "think I do not like these Ancients. Did it work?"

"Yeah. One down. Can you move?"

He shuddered, and after a second I realized that he was trying to get in a sitting position. He gave up with a groan. "It would seem not."

"Okay," I said. "I'll get you out of here."

"No!" he wheezed. "You must finish them before they realize the danger. You may never get a second chance like this one."

"I can't just leave you here. Mortia won't be gone long, and she'll be angry."

The Rhino growled, and swiped an arm weakly at me. It was an improvement, of sorts. "Will be fine in a moment," he said, glaring in my direction. "Now, you must fight. You are using your wits. Speed. They have only strength. And they do not know the danger they are in. This is your kind of battle, Bug Boy. Take it to them."

"Bug Boy?" I said, and felt myself grinning.

"Spidey!" called Felicia's voice from the other end of the junkyard. "I lost him! He's heading back to you!"

A vise-clamp settled on the back of my neck, and bounced my head off the nearest car. Which was twenty feet away. It hurt.

An undetermined amount of time later, I managed to sit up, only to find Malos standing over me. He leaned down and grabbed the front of my costume, hauling me to his level. "You forget that you touched me," he said in a quiet voice. "It struck me that while I seemed to be pursuing you, my sense of your presence told me that you were, in fact, behind me. A clever enough ruse, little spider. But your bag of tricks is now empty."

My spider sense's terror-reaction was nothing to that of my mind, as I scrambled to gather up my wits and try to defend myself.

I was too slow, the blow to my head too severe. Malos held me high off the ground with one hand, made a talon of the other, and his fingers suddenly dug into my abdomen.

Pain.

Pain.

White hot. Ice cold. Nauseating. Terrifying. My senses were overloaded, the pain something that somehow gained sound and taste, color and texture and scent. The pain was as fundamental, solid, and real as I was—in fact, more so. I tried to scream, but the pain had priority on reality, and no sound came out. This was worse than what Morlun had tried to do. He'd barely touched me for a second. This went on for an eternity, and mixed itself with a horrible sensation of something being ripped out of me, like someone had shoved a blender into my belly and turned it to puree.

Somewhere behind the pain I could dimly sense the real world, but it was disconnected and unimportant, a shadow play being performed far away. I saw it all through a hallucinogenic haze. Saw myself running atop a wall of crushed steel. Saw myself take off my mask and become Felicia. Saw her look up at the power lines passing by on the street, saw her raise her baton, saw a thin black line extrude from it as the hook arched up and up, sailed over the power lines, and then fell—onto Malos.

The Ancient's expression was quite calm—except for the maddened frenzy of hunger dancing in his eyes—and he paid the shadow-play world no mind. But his expression turned to shock and sudden agony as the Black Cat's line touched him and electricity from the power cables surged through to him.

I felt it, too. It hurt, but not necessarily in a bad way. The burning tingle was an honest pain, a real-world pain, not the nightmare agony of the feeding Ancient. I felt my body contort along with Malos's—and then the agony was gone and I was in my body again, burned and breathless and utterly exhausted.

I lifted my head enough to see Malos stirring, attempting to rise. I had to get on him right away, knock him out before he gathered his wits and focused his power into his defenses. I managed to wobble upright. Then I staggered over to him and kicked him in the chops. The blow was weak, and it knocked me down, but it got the job done. He fell to the ground in a pile of loose limbs beside me.

I fumbled out the second agate and flicked it at his nose. It missed and struck his cheek, but once more, without a flicker of showy lights, with barely more than a whisper of sound, the Ancient simply vanished.

I heard Felicia come running toward me. "Spidey?"

"Mmm, fine," I slurred. "Jusht ducky." I started to stand up and staggered again.

Felicia had to catch me. "Is that all of them?"

"Two," I managed to say. "We got two."

"What about Mortia?" Felicia hissed, looking around.

She turned her face directly into a blindingly swift blow. The Black Cat went straight down, body gone instantly and entirely limp—unconscious or dead.

Mortia, her dark clothes and hair soaked from her landing in the river, looked coldly down at Felicia for a moment. "Don't worry, darling," she purred. "I'm sure she'll turn up."