The Darkest Hours

Chapter 6

It dimly occurred to me that at this point, if I was Han Solo, faced with a genuine threat to my life, I would officially have moral license to shoot first.

The thought flashed through my mind as swiftly and lightly as a wood chip passing over the surface of a rushing river, but it gave me something to grasp toward, and I was able to get my head above the surface of my instinctive terror long enough to grab on to another thought:

If one of them touched me, just touched me, I was as good as dead.

Right then. Don't let them touch me.

Tweedle-Loom and Tweedle-Doom stalked forward with a predator's economic grace, but I didn't want to give them time to shift gears when I scampered. I waited until the last second to pop them both in the face with bursts of webbing and jump back out of reach. A quick hop landed me twenty feet above the road on an enormous billboard, and I crawled up it, turning to study them. If they were anything like Morlun, they'd be walking tanks with nearly limitless endurance—but not a lot swifter, on foot, than anyone else.

As it turned out, the boys were apparently a lot like Morlun. They tore off the webbing with about as much distress as I would feel wiping off shaving cream, gave me dirty looks, and continued stalking toward me.

The woman had evidently stood in a different line when they were handing out superpowers. She hit the spot where I'd been standing with one foot and leapt—with grace and elan—up to the top of the sign I was scaling. She crouched there, her head still tilted at that odd angle. "You must know this is pointless," she said dispassionately. "You cannot stop us. You cannot save yourself."

My spider sense was still gibbering at me, but enough of my voice had come back for me to say, "Now let me think. Where have I heard someone like you say something like that before? Hmm."

A cold little smile touched her mouth. "Little Morlun was one. We are three."

Little

Morlun? That wasn't encouraging. "I don't suppose it matters to you that I didn't kill him," I told her.

Her lips twitched a little. "He hunted you?"

"Yes."

"He died."

"Yes."

"You saw it. You allowed it."

"I…" I swallowed. When it came down to the wire, I'd had him at my mercy. I knew full well that if I'd let him live, he'd only come back another day. I hesitated. And before I could go through with it, Dex, Morlun's demented little attache, had emptied a Glock into him from ten feet away and blew him to dust.

I'd like to think that if I'd been aware of Dex and his gun I would have stopped him. Part of me is sure I would have. But more honest parts of me aren't so sure.

"I did," I told her quietly. "Then for his sake, you die."

"What if I'd tried to stop it?" She smiled a cold little smile, showing me very white teeth. "Then you would die for mine. I am hungry, spider. I will devour you."

"Gosh, that's kinda intimate," I said. "We haven't even been introduced."

She lifted her chin a bit, and then inclined her head to me. "Mortia." She moved a hand in a simple gesture to indicate the other two. "Thanis in the suit. Malos in the silk."

"Spider-Man," I said. "I'm the one standing in the shoes which are going to kick all three of you back to wherever it is weirdos like you come from." Mortia threw back her head and actually laughed a cold little laugh. "Such defiance." Her eyes widened, showing the whites all the way around. "And it makes you smell sweet."

"Well," I said, "they tell me my deodorant is strong enough for a man—"

She flung herself at me in mid-quip. She was fast, as fast as anyone I've ever seen. As fast as me— and my spider sense, already howling at maximum intensity about how much danger I already knew I was in, gave me no warning at all.

I moved, barely ahead of her—and if I hadn't been watching her, ready for it, I would have been too slow. I never thought I'd actually have a reason to be glad that that symbiotic maniac Venom had obsessed over me and done his best to make my life a living hell between bursts of attempted arachnocide. My spider sense never registered him, either, and it had forced me to learn how to bob and weave the old-fashioned way, using only five senses.

Her hand flashed out toward me as she passed by, and missed me by less than an inch. I hit the ground moving. Tweedle-Loom threw a television set at me, while Tweedle-Doom went with a classic and flung a rock with such power that the projectile actually went supersonic in a sudden clap of thunder, like a gunshot. I did not oblige either of them by behaving like a good target.

Besides, they were just distractions, and they knew it. For the time being, the woman was the real threat, and she was hot on my trail. She got better air than me, but she didn't have handy-dandy weblines to play with, and I was able to stay ahead of her—barely. I went bouncing around Times Square like a racquetball, playing a lunatic version of tag with the mystery lady while I struggled to come up with a plan. It was harder than usual. Normally, between my reflexes and my spider sense, things just sort of flow by, and it feels like I have all the time in the world to think. That's how I'm able to be all funny and insulting while duking it out with the bad guys. It feels like I've had hours to come up with the material.

This time, my spider sense had ceased to be an asset, and my speed was only just sufficient to stay ahead of the three of them. It took all of my attention to avoid her, plus dodging the occasional portion of landscape her homeys pitched after me—complicated by the fact that if I led them out of Times Square, which the Rhino's efforts had already cleared of most civilians, bystanders would get hurt. Morlun hadn't blinked an eye at the notion of murder, and I didn't think these three would be any more safety-conscious than he was.

It's hard to gauge passing time in circumstances like that, but I gradually got the impression that maybe the reason I couldn't think of a plan of action was that there wasn't one. I'd taken Morlun out with the aid of material from the core of a nuclear reactor, and I didn't see one of those around Times Square. The only Plan B I could come up with was for me to keep doing what I was doing until some of the other New York hero types turned on the TV, found out what was going on, and showed up to lend a hand.

Although "hope someone rescues me" was a pa-thetically flawed Plan B. I mean, I'm supposed to be a superhero. I'm the one doing the rescuing.

Thanis took the decision out of my hands. He threw something heavy that hit the car I'd landed on and knocked it cleanly out from under me. I dropped to the ground unsteadily and looked up to find that Mortia had anticipated her brother's action. She was already two-thirds of the way through the pounce that would pin me to the ground and kill me. Thanis's distraction hadn't cost me much, maybe half a second.

It was enough.

As fast as I was, I still wasn't going to be fast enough to get out of her way.