She nearly clocked him for getting slurpy on her, but Ria pulled her back, as she hissed, “We need to move,” and then we were all charging past the rope, going down old, rusted stairs, explosions behind us as we descended into darkness.

  “On it,” Ria said, her horns glowing bright and a ball of blue light forming around her hand, then commencing with the rotating around her outstretched wrist thing.

  “Wait,” I said, turning back to the rope, now dangling on the floor. “Do we have anything more than a rope to keep them out?”

  “He’s right,” Gloria said. “If they didn’t see us come in here, they’ll figure it out before too long.”

  Ria shook her head, frowning. “Not… not that I’ve given anyone here, nor have access to myself.”

  “But you do have the power in there,” I said. “You just… didn’t give it to any of us.”

  Death Girl moved back to the entrance, scanning the situation. “There are two starting toward this building. We better move, quick.”

  “Shit.” Ria motioned us to follow, but paused when I put a hand on her shoulder. “We don’t have time for this, Contra. We have to get down there, lure them in, then pick them off a few at a time. At least, until we’re ready to make a move on one of the ships.”

  “Give it to me,” I replied.

  “What?”

  “The power. I’ve been with mine the longest here, and have started to get the hang on how to handle what I’ve got. I can take another.”

  She scoffed. “It has the potential to kill you, or maybe drive you insane even if you live. To try so soon—”

  “It’s necessary.”

  “Actually,” Meher started down the stairs, calling over her shoulder, “it’s not. You’re thinking we have to protect the Per-Neter. But as Ria just said, our goal is to kill them off, to do real damage. This is bigger than us hiding.”

  Damn, she was right. I nodded, man enough to admit when I was wrong.

  “Fine, but… this better work. I’m not letting another billion or whatever number it is of enemies through to help the overwhelming force already trying to take out my planet.”

  Ria nodded, accepting that as enough, and we all charged down the stairs. We emptied out into the first room, one where several passages led out, and here Meher paused, turning back up the stairs when we were all down.

  “Why stop having fun at the bowling alley?” she said with a grin. “Let’s go Home Alone on these mother-fuckers.”

  I couldn’t believe she knew that reference, and was even more pleased to see her icing the stairs. Bubblegum chuckled, the rest of us moving off to a passage on the left. Meher joined us and Death Girl lingered at the doorway, gesturing us through. Two seconds later there was a yelp, two supers slipping down the stairs and landing with thuds on the ground, followed by a quick, suction sound as Death Girl impaled each of them.

  Two down.

  “Did that happen in this Home Alone thing?” Death Girl asked, following us through the passage.

  I chuckled, nervously considering the danger we were in. “Not exactly.”

  “Was that a quivering in your voice?” Meher asked, and we entered another open area, this one with a side room leading off of it, that looked like it had been used for planning, or maybe storing gear. We paused here, and Meher came up to me, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “Remember, fun. Make it fun.”

  “You want me to try to enjoy hiding out in a dark, confined space, while supers or aliens or whatever are trying to hunt us down and kill us?”

  She considered this, then shook her head. “I want you to have fun running around in the dark with a bunch of hot ladies, saving the world one life at a time. Life taken, that is.”

  I pursed my lips, then laughed. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Let’s set up here,” Ria said. “Until the next batch comes, then we can close that door,” she indicated the door on the far side of the room, leading to another passage, “with us on the other side, Move, find a new place to ambush them, and keep going like that.”

  It sounded like as good a plan as any, so we went to it.

  22

  Waiting to ambush our soon-to-be-attackers, I stood my ground. “We need more powers.”

  “I explained this,” Ria replied, then turned to Death Girl. “You have a sensor?”

  “Scanning system, yes,” Death Girl replied. “A group of four, moving in pairs and incoming.”

  Ria nodded. “Good. We can handle four.”

  “Help us,” I said. “Power us up, guide us in the inner core stuff you spoke of. How to get stronger at our powers, so that we might get more.”

  “Using them effectively is part of it,” she replied. “But there’s more than that. There’s letting yourself loose, finding that natural point where your body reaches out for the power instinctively instead of you forcing it.”

  “Haven’t we been doing that?” Hasn’t the lovemaking and all that amped up our passion levels to where we’re more open or susceptible to this stuff?”

  “You don’t understand,” Ria growled. “You don’t know where these powers come from. What it means to take a new one.”

  “Help me, then.”

  She glanced back at the door, then flexed her wings even though they wouldn’t be much use down there. “Where I come from, nobody sees themselves as the bad guys. Empire builders, maybe. Conquering for the point of unification, you get the picture.”

  “Sure.”

  “And yet, lines are crossed every day. Lines many of us don’t think about, lines that, when I looked into the mind of a super from the Oram system, I understood made all the difference. How could my kind, for example, go around sucking others dry of their powers, leaving them as useless—no offense to the state I found you all in—simple ones. That’s the word we have for beings without power. The simple, some say. How many times would a man take his own life upon learning his powers were gone? And how often would we use that power, maybe give it away, without so much as an afterthought to that life that was at a minimum, destroyed?” She shook her head, long and hard.

  “Not often, I’m guessing,” Death Girl said. “For the others.”

  “The others…” Ria glanced up, nodding. “But sometimes we, too, would go mad. Sometimes we’d take on more powers than we were ready for. We’d go from sane and powerful but not knowingly evil, to extreme levels of insanity and pure evil. Once the powers took an incubus I knew, and that man was no more. He tore through a village doing the unspeakable, and then came against us, even had me in the air at one point, held by invisible shackles, swords forged of flame rendering flesh, and he stepped into the pain of it all, absorbing it… loving it. If not for my own powers at that time, my ability to appear dead right before the moment of striking, he likely would have ended me. Instead, I ended him.”

  “It was his power you gave me,” I said, voice low with the realization.

  She nodded. “After seeing what he became, the gift I received soon after felt like a blessing. To be done with all that horror. But then it became clear I needed something more than to just be done with it all. I needed to fight it.”

  “Bringing us to this moment,” Meher said, standing tall and heroic.

  “Right.” Ria gave her a humored glance, then turned to me. “I’m not ready to have one of you turn as he did, and at my hands no less.”

  I nodded, trying to understand. “Fine. But… how will you know when we’re ready?”

  She scrunched her nose. “Only you can tell.”

  “Well then,” I held my hands out. “I’m ready.”

  “Fuck, Contra,” Gloria said with a chuckle. “Did you listen to a damn thing she said?”

  “Yes. But I also have to wonder… how insane was he? He turned against a village, then went up against his team.” Eyeing Ria pointedly, I raised an eyebrow.

  “Fuck me,” Ria said.

  “You think he might not have been insane, after all?” Bubblegum asked. “Well, damn. That kind of throws a wrench into it all.”

  “He might have been,” I admitted. “But it’s also possible he became more clear-headed. Gained enough power to reach a level of enlightenment, maybe, where he was finally able to see that line. That line that has caused you,” my eyes stayed on Ria, “to now turn against your kind as he did.”

  “Don’t say that,” Ria said. “Dammit, don’t…”

  The sorrow in her eyes finally registered for me, realization hitting. As much as she had turned against her people, it wasn’t simply because she’d realized what they were. She hated herself for what she’d had to do to that incubus, because she had feelings for him. When he died, instead of blaming herself, she blamed her people. Add that to the images she’d taken from supers in the Oram system and whatever else she was going through, I started to understand where she was coming from.

  “You already know all of this,” I said, letting the words hang out there.

  She nodded. “Maybe. Maybe not exactly know, but… wonder?”

  “I’m sorry,” Bubblegum said, coming over to put a hand on Ria’s shoulder.

  Ria nodded, and when she looked at me at that moment it felt different, like she was seeing me and the ghost of this incubus she’d maybe once loved as one and the same person.

  “Give it a try,” Death Girl suggested. “Worst case scenario… I put him out of his misery.”

  Everyone turned to her, startled.

  “What?” she looked at me, skull unwavering. “A joke.”

  “But not really,” Gloria pointed out. “Because if he did go insane and try to kill us… we would have to kill him.”

  “Ah, right.” Death Girl turned back to the door. “I’m not the best at jokes. Either way, we might want to hurry, they’ve found the other bodies.”

  Ria took a step toward me, pulling me in close the rest of the way. A hand went to my cheek, eyes staring into mine with an intensity that wouldn’t have made sense if I hadn’t known what I did then. “What sort of power would you have?”

  “A complimentary one,” I said. “One that gives me a weapon while I’m waiting for my charge?”

  She nodded, forehead against mine. So close that I could smell her sweet, citrusy breath. “Look inside, find all of the pain you’ve ever felt, and embrace it. Not only physical, but emotional.”

  I blinked. “For the upgrade?”

  “Do it. Quick.” She tilted her head, bringing her lips to brush against mine, barely. “And when you do, focus on those moments of passion, combining pain and pleasure. See them as one.”

  “Kinky,” Bubblegum whispered, but nobody else commented. All tense, waiting for the enemy to come our way.

  I did as she said, hands going to rest on top of hers, very aware of her presence, but going back in my mind to pull on my memories. What pain? For a moment nothing came, but then my chest twitched and I was wrenched back to a memory, one where I caught someone I’d thought was a good friend of mine going at it with a girl I’d been dating. Nothing huge, but the memory was there, along with the memory of that confrontation that ended with me punching him. Odd, that my emotions with the memory came through as more guilt over hitting him, than losing him as a friend. Then there was the cousin who they’d found dead in the woods, never an explanation. Frustration over that, over the fact that we couldn’t get answers. A feeling of hopelessness and unresolved sorrow. The empty spot in my heart that my cousin had once occupied. Digging deeper, in a matter of seconds I was pulling up everything I could possibly recall, embracing the pain of those moments, and trying to piece that together with the physical pain and pleasure I’d recently experienced.

  And then I waited.

  Voices sounded. They were coming.

  “It’s not enough,” Ria said, forehead still pressed to mine. “Focus, stay with it—harness it.”

  “I’m trying,” I replied through gritted teeth.

  She pushed back, pulling her hands away, and shook her head. “Sorry… you’re not there, yet.”

  In that moment, the enemy attacked. They pushed through led by two more of those goat men, and I was beginning to get that they were some race from this other system out there in space. In addition to them, there was a winged creature, not at all like Ria. This one was bent over, moving on all fours, but rising to attack with a tongue-like projectile, sharp and spinning that emerged from the smooth, curved membrane of a face. Last to enter was a cyborg-looking mother-fucker, a fucking mountain of a man with cannons on his shoulders and blasters on each arm. What he didn’t seem to have, at least, was any sort of close-combat attack other than his fists. An oversight on their part, especially in close quarters like this.

  Gloria and Death Girl had been the first to meet the attackers, while Bubblegum finally landed a good shot with her power that caused one of the goat men’s heads to implode. A disgusting sight, but I was a bit preoccupied with the way Meher’s ice didn’t do a damn thing against the cyborg, and the winged creature was holding its own against Death Girl. Gloria took a few quick strikes from the remaining goat man, but then managed to snatch it up by one of the legs and use it like a club to knock the winged creature aside. The spinning tongue cut into his ally and Ria was there to finish off the one with wings by ripping off his head.

  She tossed it aside, and at my look said, “Rendens are known for their weak necks.”

  “Of course.”

  The cyborg had aimed in at me just then and I braced for it. Only, Gloria leaped in, catching its firing arm and slamming her head into its nose. Both stumbled back, as apparently this thing was tougher than she’d planned on, and that’s when I took my chance. I charged in, got in two good punches to a soft spot on its side, then braced for its return strike.

  It came, and I took it like a champ. My body hit the wall behind me, then two more strikes from the remaining goat man. My legs gave out, but I could take this, I could—a scream interrupted, and I looked up to see that a shot had just hit Bubblegum, taking off one of her arms! The arm lay there on the ground, limp, while she stared in horror at the wound. At least it had shot her with something that cauterized the wound as it made impact, because blood wasn’t gushing out.

  Thrashing out and knocking the goat man on his ass, I stood in a rage, emotion boiling through me, about to explode. Except I didn’t let it. A realization took hold of me that this was how I could grab hold of my pain, by taking it to the boiling point and then devouring it, making it my bitch.

  With that thought, pulling it all forth, the emotions from before and so much more, a burst of energy hit me and I realized my skin was glowing a faint yellow. Not quite gold.

  “Welcome to the next stage,” Ria said, and she had the goat man’s throat in one hand, squeezing as she lifted him off the ground. Her other hand took me though, pulled me in for a kiss, and the light of power rose up from her chest and carried over to me.

  She pulled back as she ripped the enemy’s throat out, blue blood dripping and covering her hand, then turned to me and wiped the blood on my cheeks.

  “What the fuck?” I asked, too horrified to respond.

  “Power over blood,” she said, “can be both terrifying and amazing.”

  As she said the words, that blood on my cheeks started to sting. My instincts worked this time, though, as I embraced the pain. When she pointed at the last of the enemy and told me to give it a try, I did.

  “Pull on the power of the blood,” Ria said, “turn it into what you want it to be.”

  As little sense as this made, I thrust out and focused on the blood of the fallen goat man so that it barraged the cyborg in the form of a horde of small creatures. Basically, the blood became a group of little elf-like beings, all red and kind of looking like large, red gummy bears. The little blood elves swarmed over him, charging up his legs, entering his armor and going into his orifices and crevices, and immediately he started screaming, the writhing of his body setting off his guns which were shooting all over the place.

  Gloria leaped forward and took hold of his arm, aiming it away from us, back the way we’d previously come from, so that the shots were tearing up the wall in the other room, anywhere but at us. Meher got him with ice, finally, so that his legs froze in place. Then I tried something I’d read about in a book once, causing the blood to boil. Only, either the book hadn’t been specific enough, or I hadn’t recalled, changing the heat levels of blood took it right out of me. As his blood started to boil from the inside and the attack from the blood creatures continued from the outside, I suddenly became incredibly cold.

  “Shit,” Ria said, putting a hand on my neck and sending warm, healing pulses through me. “Don’t pull that when I’m not around.”

  The cyborg collapsed, but as I let up, not being used to my new power, or else being unable to hold it long, it gave him the chance to catch his breath momentarily. However, I wasn’t done yet. I looked up at him, made eye contact, and then pulled on the elf-blood army that I’d sent to attack him. Since, by now it had mixed with his own blood, the result was nasty. It was spurting out from his eyes, nose, ears—basically anywhere it could. Cracks formed in his cheeks, and then exploded, but I thrust out a hand and stopped it before it splattered all over us so that there was a wall of blood there. He made a gurgling sound and I threw the blood back on him, so that as he collapsed, covered in a blanket of red. Not quite blood, anymore, I realized, but almost a gelatinous substance.

  I couldn’t believe it had been me to take down the cyborg, but there he was, dead by my hand. I was seriously impressed with my new powers, too. They were insane. I couldn’t begin to imagine the potential. For a moment I stood there, proud, until Bubblegum’s whimpers registered and I remembered her arm.

  Ria dashed over to her, about to heal the wound as best she could, but Death Girl held out a hand as she knelt beside the cyborg.

  “Wait,” Death Girl said, and then cut into the cyborg, detaching its fully metallic arm from the body.