I couldn’t help the reflexive tightening of my jaw. “I don’t need to know this,” I said, and then: “Why are you telling me this?”

  “So you don’t feel too bad if this doesn’t work.”

  Josh closed his eyes. The muscles on his brow went tight. A flicker of energy rippled up his arms, and over his chest.

  He had to be marshaling his healing factor. Making one last grasp to cling to life.

  The blood flowing underneath Black Widow’s palm slowed. Then it stopped. His breathing slowed, and steadied.

  He grabbed Black Widow’s arm. Her broken arm. She flinched, but, with her concussion, she didn’t have the reflexes to move away fast enough.

  There was an awful grinding noise – bone on bone, the same thing I’d heard when Josh had altered his own body. When Black Widow pulled back, her arm no longer bent at the wrong place. She wiggled her fingers.

  Josh had been pale with shock and blood loss before, but somehow he went even whiter. His hand lolled back. His fingers went limp. He’d fainted with the effort.

  I hoped he’d saved some of that healing energy for himself, but couldn’t count on it. He seemed stable for the moment. We needed to get him to a hospital. Most mercs have some amount of medical training – it’s a job necessity – but no one in Neena’s posse was a doctor. There had to be a phone or functioning communications system left on that ship.

  At least Black Widow was still woozy. He’d known better than to try to heal her concussion. But that thought came with a cold feeling in my gut.

  I don’t have second sight, danger sense, Spidey-sense, the Force, or anything else that super hero-types call a bad feeling in their gut. I just had the bad feeling. And a prickling on the back of my neck. My heart juddered against my ribs.

  I turned. Neena was still standing atop the wreck, gun in hand. She was looking around as if dazed – or getting her bearings.

  “Drop your weapon!” I called. “Kick it as far away from you as you can!”

  Neena looked behind her and around her. Then she set her hand on her chest as if to ask, “Who, me?” Still no sign of Shoon’kwa, Rachel, or White Fox.

  I would have had plenty of time and opportunity, while under Johnny Dee’s influence, to get DNA samples of all my friends. That postage receipt I’d found, drenched in rain, the last time I’d lost myself – whose DNA fragments had I mailed that time? God forbid Johnny Dee had gotten anything from Tony Stark while I’d been near him, or any of the mercs and heroes our business regularly brought us into contact with.

  “Peaches,” I called, “if you never trust me in your life again, I need you to trust me now.”

  Neena raised her gun hand.

  I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. I was having trouble catching my breath. Now that I’d stood still for more than a few seconds, all my pains were catching up with me. It felt like my energy was leaking out through the gunshot wound in my shoulder. In fact, I was pretty sure it had opened up again.

  I was more than tired. I was worn through. I was old. I didn’t have it in my heart to fight Neena if Johnny Dee had gotten a hold of her. Fact was, if she aimed that pistol at me, I didn’t know what I would do. Probably not even move.

  Neena swung her arm and released the pistol. It flew far away. I breathed out.

  “Bet you’re wondering how I ended up in this situation?” Neena yelled. She held up her hand as if another thought had occurred to her, leaned against a raised engine nozzle, and, calmly and businesslike, threw up. That crash landing must have been as rough as it looked. When she was done spitting, she added, “Me, too.” She started clambering down the side of the wreck.

  A pale hand reached from the hatch behind her, seized her ankle, and yanked.

  Neena’s luck power is prickly. The way she explained it to me is that she has to actively be trying to do something for it to kick in. She could be caught unawares, and her luck would never save her. Similarly, she can’t sit back and wait for something lucky to happen. She has to be out there, putting herself in danger, doing things, for luck to find her.

  And so nothing saved her as she crashed bodily onto the airship’s hull, knocking the wind out of her. She rolled down the sloped side of the wreck, toward a thirty-foot fall to the jagged remains of a wing below. It wasn’t until she spread her arms that her luck found her. Her fingers snagged the rim of a thruster exhaust nozzle. She dangled from the edge, gasping for air.

  White Fox climbed out of the hatch, her face a mask of rage that looked utterly alien on her. She climbed toward Neena and tried to stomp on her fingers.

  It turned out I had some energy left, after all. I left Black Widow holding Josh’s guts in place and started running. I didn’t remember making the decision to go. But, by then, Neena was herself again. She dropped from the ledge and, without even looking, landed in the one spot of clear ground underneath her.

  By the time I reached the airship, Rachel had started to crawl out of the hatch. Her dazzling violet hair was unmistakable. It fluttered like a flag in the rising smoke. “What in the nine circles of Hell is happening?” she demanded. Neither Neena nor I had the breath to answer.

  White Fox stepped away from the edge, and answered her with a hard kick to her stomach. Rachel’s rattled, indignant voice whoofed out of her.

  White Fox didn’t need weapons. She was a kumiho, last of a mystical species of nine-tailed fox. She had retractable claws that came with the form. But she wasn’t using them. She wasn’t fighting like herself in general. Johnny Dee was a cruel, vicious fighter, and he had White Fox’s strength to draw on. But he lacked her finesse and had no grasp of her subtler powers. No claws, no hypnotic voice, no long-distance jumping.

  Johnny Dee probably couldn’t sense what the people he puppeteered had on their person before he took them over. I was glad he hadn’t picked Rachel. Her belt was studded with the diamond-shaped explosives that had been her trademark since her days with the Serpent Society.

  I jumped onto one of the airship’s tail fins, ran up its curve, and tugged myself onto the airship. Neena had found her breath again. She was just a few steps behind. There was no time for reunions or questions. Just a shared glance that asked What NOW?

  White Fox battered Rachel against the side of the open hatch. Rachel was shielding her face with her hands, but her guard had started to droop. Once that happened, White Fox would be able to land a killing blow.

  I rushed White Fox. She must’ve heard me coming. In a blur of motion, she whirled. Pain speared through my cheek as her fist connected. White Fox was trying to turn aside my momentum, but I didn’t let her. I crashed my good shoulder squarely into the center of her chest.

  She wasn’t a mutant, but, as a kumiho, she had strength equivalent to mine and braced herself against the hull plating. In the contest of my strength against hers, it was the plating that gave out first. The metal pushed up behind her heels, crumpled, and then snapped loose. It flew out from underneath her. Then we crashed onto the wreck. I drove my elbow into her stomach.

  White Fox gasped in pain. I figured that meant it was her. Johnny Dee wasn’t that good an actor. I took my weight off White Fox at once.

  Neena’s fist slammed between my shoulder blades.

  The shock reverberated through my bones, into my lungs. I staggered forward, breathless. The muscles in my throat convulsed. For several seconds, I couldn’t draw in air.

  One thing that’s hard to understand about these kinds of fights until you’ve been in one is that they’re not so much about inflicting pain as sapping energy. Pain can be tolerated, especially when you fight on the level of a super hero. But no one, not even the invincible Wolverine-types, can fight if their heart just can’t get oxygen to their muscles.

  I was at an immediate disadvantage against Neena. And that was before her advantages kicked in. I spun, raised my arms in guard position. Neena’s mouth twisted in a snarl. Her luck was still working for her. Her punch “just happened” to slip through the one gap in my guard large enough for her to do so. My world turned to stars and sparks.

  My counterpunch missed by fractions of an inch as Neena spun away. My fist had come so close I could feel the warmth of her skin. She stuck her leg behind mine, apparently without meaning to – actually, definitely without meaning to – and tripped me as I took a step she couldn’t have predicted. Lucky lady.

  I slammed onto the airship’s hull, landing on my back. I couldn’t force myself up, and I couldn’t beat her in a straight-up fight, even with Johnny Dee at her controls. All I could do was keep my hands up to shield my face.

  White Fox caught her unawares. Her heel landed in the small of Neena’s back. Neena lost her balance, staggered to her knees.

  White Fox rolled to her feet. Neena was already bouncing up. White Fox swung a second kick toward her. Neena reached down as if she knew exactly where the kick was going to land, and caught White Fox’s foot under her arm.

  But something had changed. The snarl was gone. Her stance had loosened. Neena released White Fox’s foot without doing anything to punish her for letting herself be caught.

  Johnny Dee had left Neena. I didn’t understand why. She could have kept smashing us. The only thing she’d accomplished was get all three of us in the same space–

  Well, damn. OK.

  I rolled to my side, just in time to see Rachel finish pulling herself out of the hatch. Every trace of pain in her expression had vanished, replaced by naked rage. Johnny Dee must have seen the diamond-shaped explosives on her belt. She grabbed for them.

  I couldn’t move in time. My chest burned for lack of air.

  Neena stepped in front of us as Rachel threw. She swiped her arm at just the right time and just the right angle to deflect a spread of three grenades, and without any of their razor-fine points digging into her. They careened past us, and exploded over her shoulder a second later.

  My hearing must’ve been in bad shape. I hardly heard the detonations. The heat, though, felt like standing next to an open incinerator door. Neena’s hair ruffled in the searing breeze.

  Damn. I wished I could look that cool. I was just kind of boggling at everything, trying to suck in air. “Love ya, girl,” I said, when I had the breath for it.

  Rachel’s eyes widened. She took a step back, and reached for the other side of her belt. If Johnny Dee had any brains – and I was starting to realize that he did – she would be throwing more grenades in a wider spread this time.

  Gunshots popped across the horizon. I recognized the reports. They were from Dad’s old Beretta M9.

  Black Widow had torn Josh’s shirt into a bandage, wrapping it tightly around his stomach. She’d grabbed my fallen gun, and propped it on a rock to steady her aim.

  With that concussion, she couldn’t be thinking clearly. She certainly couldn’t shoot straight. All her shots were going wide, pinging off the hull to Rachel’s right.

  No – not just hull.

  Sparks ricocheted off the hump of one of the airship’s dorsal main engines. The hull there had bent and warped, exposed the airship’s exquisitely engineered guts, its dark spiderweb filaments of sensors and circuitry. And, among them, a fuel reservoir. That was what Black Widow was aiming for. A spark bounced off its surface. The next shot–

  The boom was loud even to my ears. The shockwave knocked Rachel and Neena flat to the hull. Rachel’s knees cracked against metal, but she hardly seemed to feel it. Johnny Dee was still in control. She was once again reaching for her explosives.

  But Black Widow’s clever shooting had given me enough time to catch my breath and shove myself to my feet. I booted Rachel’s head down, and then cuffed the heel of my hand into the back of her skull. Her forehead cracked against the hull. She went limp.

  I was feeling bad about many things just then, but also, absurdly, for mussing up that perfect hair of hers.

  “Head injuries,” I blurted, now that I had breath and a second. “It’s the only way to keep Johnny Dee from controlling you.”

  Somewhere in the distance, I was aware of Black Widow, dizzily trekking her way toward the airship. She left a confused, wobbling trail in the sand behind her.

  “Johnny Dee?” Neena asked, although with less of a question mark and more of an interrobang.

  “Johnny Dee,” I confirmed.

  “Johnny Dee,” she said, and this time her voice was more of a growl.

  “Why do you keep saying his full name?” White Fox asked. “Is that an American South thing?” Then, a moment later: “Also, who?”

  The top of the hatch banged against the hull. Shoon’kwa pulled herself up. Her golden arm guards glinted in the sun. Her braids were as artfully cared for as ever, but one side of her face was a red-violet splotch of bruising. She snarled.

  She could have gotten injured in the crash, but I knew what had happened. She was the one Johnny Dee had puppeteered to crash the airship. The others, not knowing what was happening, had tried, too late, to force her out of the pilot’s seat. She’d fought back. They’d had to do the same.

  It made my heart hurt to see that my friends had done this to each other. I was going to make Johnny Dee’s heart hurt worse.

  But, for the moment, I didn’t have the means. I was unarmed. And Shoon’kwa held a Wakandan ring blade tight in her grip. She stalked toward us.

  The ring blade’s edge gleamed with sunlight. It shone into my eyes and kept me from seeing which angle she’d meant to attack.

  Neena’s hand wrapped around my neck. She held me between Shoon’kwa and herself like a shield. I’d made a fundamental mistake. The rage on Shoon’kwa’s face was her own. Johnny Dee had hopped back into Neena’s body.

  Neena grappled to get her palm on my chin, trying for a stance to break my neck. I tried planting my foot atop Neena’s to trip her. She nimbly sidestepped, probably without realizing it. She turned toward White Fox. White Fox had thrown a punch at her, but, as soon as Neena saw her, the warped hull plating under White Fox’s feet shifted, and the punch went wide.

  But Neena was outnumbered. She couldn’t keep an eye on us all the time. Johnny Dee didn’t have the real Neena’s practice dividing her attention. As soon as Neena’s focus was off me, her hand slipped off the sweat on my chin. I whirled her around, and Shoon’kwa swung the flat of her blade toward Neena’s head. Shoon’kwa only clipped Neena, but the blow must have been strong enough to shake Johnny Dee loose. Neena released me immediately. She took a step back, hands raised.

  A second later, and Johnny Dee’s rage was on White Fox’s face again. She came at Neena, but Neena saw her in time. With a hasty step back, she clotheslined White Fox.

  Neena and I made a good team – when White Fox crashed to the hull, I was right there to grab her head and slam it into metal. Another concussion, another person Johnny Dee couldn’t reach.

  Neena caught my eye and nodded. Then, without waiting for Johnny Dee to seize her or somebody else again, she turned and tackled Shoon’kwa.

  The two of them rolled toward the side of the airship, and dropped to the sand below. I couldn’t tell which of them, if either, were controlled by Johnny Dee. It could have been that neither of them were, and that Neena was making a preemptive strike.

  I hoped Shoon’kwa had figured out what was happening. In one sense, it didn’t really matter. But it made a difference to me that she knew her friends hadn’t betrayed her.

  I heaved in air. For the first time in minutes, the dark fringes around the edges of my vision receded. I jogged to the edge of the airship.

  Whoever had been in control when they’d fallen, as soon as I saw them, I knew Johnny Dee had taken Shoon’kwa now. She scrambled away from Neena, hate frozen on her lips. She still held onto her ring blade. Neena stepped back, waiting for Shoon’kwa to make her move.

  In a moment of terror that froze my voice in my chest, Shoon’kwa raised the blade toward her own neck instead. Neena wouldn’t be able to reach her in time.

  Johnny Dee had been trying to take us out all at once, as efficiently as possible. My stolen memory of that awful shock he’d gotten when he’d killed Milos still burned in my head. He couldn’t kill all of us like that, not without stopping to recover between each death.

  But he could get a head start on killing us one by one.

  Shoon’kwa jerked, and stood rigid for a moment. Her weapon hand fell by her side. Then she dropped, still convulsing.

  A few dozen feet behind her, Black Widow dropped to her knees. Her stunner pistol shook in her hand. Leave it to the super-spy to have an appropriate gadget.

  I’d never been so grateful for her. Black Widow groaned, and fell facedown in the sand. Falling asleep was the last thing anybody with a head injury should have been doing, but I couldn’t do anything for her at the moment.

  Neena stepped over Shoon’kwa for the ugly, delicate work of giving her a concussion to protect her from Johnny Dee. I didn’t watch. I couldn’t bear it. I’d seen enough of my friends getting hurt today.

  I grabbed onto the edge of the aircraft, and dropped to ground level. I landed in the sand.

  “I think that’s everybody with a head injury but you and me,” Neena said.

  “I’m already protected,” I said. For a while.

  “Then I need to–”

  A fragment of loose hull plating, dangling from one of the airship’s starboard wings by a sliver of metal, fell free. It was directly above Neena. I didn’t even have time to wince.

  After the impact, Neena’s eyes widened, as if mildly surprised. She stepped forward, her balance faltering. Then, for a moment, she seemed fine.

  “My lucky day,” she said, and collapsed.

  Then I was alone, at the bottom of a canyon strewn with wreckage, standing among the fallen bodies of enemies and friends. Panting for air, and waiting for all the pains I’d accumulated to catch up with me.

  My lucky day, too.

  Eighteen

  I couldn’t let my friends stay unconscious. Not with head injuries. They might never wake up. Fortunately, they knew that as well as I did. As soon as I climbed back onto the wreck and shook White Fox into the world, she started struggling to stay in it. Pinching herself, and biting the inside of her cheek. She crawled over toward Shoon’kwa and Rachel to rouse them.