Shad tried to move his left foot, was successful, and managed to move the left leg a few inches. More or less as he intended. Then he tried the right leg.
I'm Black Shadow. Black Shadow. The words becoming a mantra.
More guns fired. Shelley paced back and forth at the parapet, muttering. Shad wondered if the police were winning. "Yeah! Yeah!" Shelley chanted. "Run for it!"
A storm of fire erupted. Shelley leaned out over the parapet, apparently following someone escaping around the corner, and then she sighed. "Good." She came back to stand by Shad's side and looked down at him. "You're gonna get yours, asshole."
Black Shadow. Black Shadow. I'm Black Shadow.
He looked at the woman next to him. And you're not Shelley.
Shad moved. His coordination wasn't very good, so he chose a move that could be done without any real precision. His kenpo teacher called it sticks of Satin. He dropped his right leg against the front of Shelley's ankles, then slammed his left leg against the back of her knees. His accuracy was none too great, but the leverage was still good enough to pitch Shelley forward, landing hard on hands and knees.
Shad lunged upward and grabbed her gun arm by the sleeve, then dragged her toward him. He clubbed one fist and tried to bring it down on the back of her neck, but his accuracy was wretched, and he hit the back of the head instead. He kept hitting. Shelley struggled, almost got free, but Shad lurched atop her and bore her down to the asphalt.
"I'm Black Shadow," he said. "Black Shadow." His arms wrapped Shelley's head, right forearm folding across her jaw, left cupping the back of the head.
"No," Shelley begged. "Don't." Shad's heart twisted. "Black shadow!" he screamed, and snapped Shelley's neck.
He pulled the. 38 from twitching fingers and staggered to his feet. The sky whirled around him. He tottered to the parapet and looked down.
The Triumph was on fire. Angela Ellis was on the pavement, moving feebly as police figures crouched over her shouting into their radios. Other officers lay sprawled across the pavement, some in pools of blood.
They'd blame Black Shadow for it, he realized. How could they do anything else?
There was a noise on the fire escape, and Shad spun to face the sound. Dizziness almost brought him sagging to his knees. Black Shadow rose from the darkness. He looked at Shad and the sprawled figure of the lifeless jumper.
The cloaked silhouette approached. He was carrying a police M-16. "Man. I thought I was cornered there for a second. I musta jumped twelve times before I ended up back in this body." He dropped the rifle and grinned. "Turns out this guy can walk up walls. Lucky for me." His look turned puzzled. "Why are you in my body?" Thinking Shad must be his friend. He looked from one to the other again, then alarm entered his eyes. "What are="
Shad lurched toward him, swinging up the pistol on the end of his right arm. "I want my body back, motherfucker." Black Shadow looked uncertain. Then he smiled. "Maybe," he said. "If you drop that gun."
"Bullshit." The gun swayed. Shad grabbed it with both hands.
Black Shadow's eyes narrowed inside the mask. "Maybe I can cross that distance before you pull the trigger."
"Just try it, motherfucker. I know I ain't faster than a speeding bullet, and neither are you."
The jumper hesitated. Apparently he didn't know that he could hide himself in darkness or freeze Shad solid, because he didn't try it. Maybe he hadn't been alive to read Aces magazine in 1976.
Shad blinked sweat from his eyes. The gun jittered in his hands.
"You don't seem too coordinated, asshole," said Black Shadow. "Why don't you put the gun down?"
"I want my body back," Shad said, "and if I don't get it, I'm gonna hurt you."
Black Shadow looked at him. "How you gonna do that?" He grinned insolently. "I'm in your body. You aren't gonna hurt this body, are you? Look at yourself. You're fifteen years old. I'm a grown-up."
Bang.
Black Shadow's eyes widened as the bullet whipped over his head. "Shit!" he said. "Will you put that thing down?" Shad blinked eyes dazzled by the muzzle flash, a problem his regular body didn't have. "If you give me my body back," Shad said, "you can have this body. This body has a gun, motherfucker. Maybe you can kill me with it before I snap your fucking neck."
Black Shadow hesitated, licking his lips. "Let me think." Bang.
The bullet clipped him in the leg, and he went down with a yell. "Stop that!"
"Give me my body back!"
"Fuck you!"
Bang.
The bullet took Black Shadow in the torso somewhere, and he went down, suddenly limp, hands clutching at the roof. "You're crazy!" he shouted.
And then his eyes narrowed as he looked at Shad. Triumph sang through Shad's veins as he realized what was about to happen. He gave his hand a command to drop his pistol, but suddenly the world was spinning again, and he couldn't be certain if the command was obeyed.
Asphalt hit him in the face. I'm Black Shadow, he thought, and laughter rang through his mind.
He ate every photon he could reach. Heat blazed through him. He rolled across the roof as blind pistol shots snapped out.
The jumper loomed in his awareness, a flaming infrared target that staggered around the roof, blinded by darkness.
Shad's body had been exercising hard, and it was starved for energy. Shad concentrated on the figure and drank in its heat.
The jumper swayed, staggered, collapsed.
Shad gasped for breath and tried to rise to his feet. The wounded leg seemed willing to support him; the bullet had gone through the fleshy part of the thigh. The other bullet had gone through the right shoulder, and Shad could feel bone grating as he tried to move it. Blood was soaking the jumpsuit, coursing warm down Shad's right arm.
The wounds were in shock, and there was no real pain yet, just little crackling twinges of what was to come. He was going to need a doctor real soon. Except that the police had fired a lot of bullets at him, would have no idea whether they'd hit, and would be searching the hospitals for him. The jumpers too, probably.
He'd have to find a doctor he could trust, a junkie or alcoholic or someone who would want his cash and not turn him in. He searched his mind.
Nothing. Shit. He'd settle for a vet.
He could hear police shouting, the pounding of boots on pavement. They'd heard the shots and figured something was up. Time to leave. He squatted over the jumpers and Shelley's body, and ate every bit of heat in them, feasted on photons until the two lay with frost covering their glassy eyeballs. Shad rose and headed off the roof. A tornado of heat swirled in his heart. Blood drizzled on the cold pavement below as he eased himself over the wall.
I'm Black Shadow, he thought.
A glowing green landscape burned in his mind. The night covered him with its velvet mask.
He collapsed two blocks away. He panted for breath, ate photons, tried to gather himself together. He became aware of someone moving cautiously across the street, watching him with dilated cat's eyes.
"Wait!" He called the darkness, staggering toward her trailing a boiling black shroud and a trail of red. She hesitated, then began to retreat. "I need help." He sagged against the wall and slid to the pavement.
Chalktalk turned. Her dilated cat's eyes seemed big as the moon.
A bolt of pain shot up his arm. "I've been shot," he said.
"I need to get out of here." He sagged against a brick wall. Chalktalk stood, undecided, five long yards away. "Can you take me somewhere?" Shad asked. "Someplace where I can… get better? I can't have police involved."
She said nothing.