“Wow,” Michelle said softly. “Didn’t expect that.”
Weathers was growing. Surging up into the air like Gardener’s baobab tree. His flesh turned the color of rotten plums. Horns sprouted on his head. Long white teeth like knives filled his mouth. His hands curled into claws. His eyes turned into burning yellow slits. He was ten feet tall, twenty, thirty. And an impossibly enormous erection grew from his crotch, pointing at her like an accusing finger.
“You should really put that thing away before something happens to it,” she said.
The thing in front of her bellowed. It was a mindless sound: harsh, earsplitting, filled with rage. Michelle had a moment of panic. She’d never seen anything like this. She had no idea what it was. But it didn’t matter. She was going to do her best until she couldn’t do anything at all.
The thing-the monster-bellowed again. Then it started toward her, Fire Boy, and Rusty.
“Hey!” Michelle hurled a medicine-ball-sized bubble at it as she led it from her friends. “I’m the one you want. Come on, big boy. Here’s where the action is.”
The monster howled in pain and staggered as the bubble exploded on its thigh. Lightning danced across its claws and crackled from its horns, blue-white against the night sky. A bolt stabbed down at her, just missing as she leapt aside. The earth smoked where it hit.
Michelle let a stream of bubbles go, aiming for the ground below the creature. A crater opened up and the monster gave a frustrated scream as it tumbled down into the pit. Michelle tried to bulldozer earth on top of it with a stream of bubbles, but it roared again and jumped out of the hole. It landed hard on its hooves, making the earth shake all around her. A turret on the Red House came crashing down behind them.
“Crap,” Michelle said as it ran toward her. The monster leapt into the air, and then landed on top of her.
Her body blossomed as she was squished into the ground. She bubbled, forcing the monster off balance. It staggered and slipped off her.
As Michelle climbed out of the monster’s footprint, she started bubbling again. She was beginning to think there was no way she could defeat this thing. On the other hand, it didn’t appear as if he could hurt her, either.
“See what you’ve done now?” said Mark Meadows.
The hippie floated in what seemed like midair. He sat in full lotus, naked but for the long grey-blond hair streaming down around his skinny shoulders. The space Tom found himself sharing with his nemesis seemed lit by a violet glow. Behind Mark glowed, for want of a better word, a backdrop that looked like a sort of great big Rorschach blot tie-dyed in a gaudy rainbow of colors. The bright golden sunburst ball in the middle surrounded Mark like a full-body halo from a medieval painting of a saint.
“Fuck me,” Tom said. “You’ve got me trapped in a fucking hippie poster. And you’re quoting Oliver Hardy at me.” He shook his head. “All it’s missing is bad sitar music and dope barely masked by sandalwood fucking incense.”
Mark raised two fingers. Marijuana and sandalwood filled the air. Sitar music began to play. “Welcome to my subconscious. Or should I say, welcome back.”
“What happened?”
“You got really, badly hurt. The trauma shock was enough to kick Monster free. Now neither of us is in control. Happy?”
“Oh, I’m fucking overjoyed. You hippie piece of shit! ” Tom launched himself at Mark. The cross-legged man simply receded before him. As if he were chasing his own image in a mirror. Screaming with rage Tom raised his hands and willed forth sunbeams. They did not shine. “Your powers don’t work here,” Mark said, shaking his head half sadly, half in seeming gentle amusement. “The few that you have left.”
Tom launched a flying kick. But the floating man turned sideways. Tom flew past. Then, somehow, was facing him again. He tried throwing punches. Kicks. Spitting.
All had the same effect on his enemy.
At last Tom felt himself hunched over, clutching his thighs and panting. “Don’t think you’ve won,” he wheezed. “You can’t beat me. You’re nothing! I’m everything you could ever hope to be in your miserable pencil-necked life. I’m more!”
To his surprise Mark nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “I tried to bring you back for years. Dedicated my life, my whole existence, to that holy quest. Neglected my job, neglected myself. Neglected my family, even though I loved them desperately. I did it because I wanted to do right. Wanted to save the world. And because I wanted the girl. But mostly because I wanted to belong.”
“What are you rattling on about?”
“I never did. Never belonged. I was always the odd kid out at school. Always had my nose in a book. At home, too. My dad was a good man, in his way. I found that out later when we got to really know each other, like, as adults-back when I was first on the run with Sprout, and he swallowed a lot of his prejudices and preconceptions to help us because he thought that was the right thing to do. But back when I was a boy he was super competitive. Never could figure out why I wasn’t interested in athletics or following him into the military.”
Tom tried to say something. But Mark wasn’t paying him any attention. Tom lunged at his nemesis. And ran right through him as if he were less than shadow.
“I wanted to belong,” Mark said. “To be part of something. To have a sense of purpose. Have shape, you know? Then later, after I got you, got to be you for just one night, that wasn’t what I wanted anymore. Oh, I wanted those things too-got them all, too, in their own ways-and wasn’t always happy with how that turned out. But I found what I really wanted was something else.”
“So you turned out to be just a fucking adrenaline junkie? Just did it for the rush?”
“No. Well, maybe a little. But after I’d had a taste of being you-the Spirit of Revolution-I wanted that certainty. That wild, pure conviction of knowing you were right, and being able to act without doubt or compromise. Of being certain. That most of all. To get rid of my confusion. And that was the cause of my greatest sin: the hunger for the one thing I couldn’t have. Certainty. ”
“So you want to fucking atone for me. For me. The only thing in your life you ever got right.”
Mark smiled gently. “You see it the way you see it. I see you as the greatest mistake of my life. I did some good along the way, man. I helped people. It cost me a lot of pain. Along the way I made mistakes that cost others pain. But it was all just trying to do the right thing.
“And it turns out… that’s no excuse. Intention doesn’t matter. Results matter. If you hurt people, it doesn’t mean a thing that you thought you were doing it for your own good.”
“That’s why you’re such a loser, Meadows,” Tom said. “You were never willing to do what it took.”
“Ah, no. I was too willing. In that I was like you. That was what gave rise to you. And if you’re going to tell me you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs-that metaphor only makes sense if you’re a cannibal.”
Tom could feel titanic forces surging around them: electricity and explosions and equally palpable eruptions of rage and triumph and lust. “This can’t last,” he said. “Monster will run out of rage eventually. And then I snap back in charge. And you’ll still be nowhere, man.”
Mark shook his head. “No. There are too many of them. You’ve done too much damage-to them as well as others. You’ve made it personal. If you return to the world of form they’ll simply kill you.”
“That’ll kill you too, you stupid cocksucker.”
“Yes. We’re trapped in a burning house, you and I. If my death is the only way to stop you, and I believe it is, then I’m happy to die.” He shrugged. “That’s the way of the world anyway, isn’t it? No one here gets out alive. Did you think your ace powers made you any different?”
Tom’s thoughts had cleared. “They won’t kill me,” he said. “Not if I’m helpless. Their bourgeois sensibilities won’t let them. And if I’m not helpless-”