Two of the things were almost upon him, as the crowd and the soldiers drew back. Dave tried to pick Ethan up, but the boy fought free, and now Dave had to retreat too because it was certain death to stay where he was. Ethan remembered these things eating the Gorgon ship, and he recalled thinking that the claws and fangs could likely tear through concrete and metal. He heard Olivia screaming his name, and suddenly Major Fleming was beside him firing a .45, and Captain Walsh was on his other side firing a pistol, but the red sparks flared and jumped and there was no stopping these monsters.
Ethan braced himself and thrust his right hand out, his palm aimed at the closest spider. He was his own weapon, his own force of destruction, and now in needing to destroy these things he felt the awesome power move and build within him from its secret place, only a matter of seconds, until he thought he himself would explode into flaming, bloody pieces.
The air between them rippled, as with tremendous heat. A swarm of a thousand burning hornets shot out between his hand, and the spider he had targeted, and maybe no one else could see it, but to Ethan the thrust of deadly energy was clear.
Every hornet was incinerated by the thing’s force field before any one of them could penetrate, and suddenly Ethan realized he was not yet strong enough to kill these things.
They were upon him. The major had the back of his t-shirt and was pulling him away as Fleming emptied his clip, and Captain Walsh continued to fire as she scrambled back.
In the crowd behind them, Burt Ratcoff felt a tremendous pain that began in his midsection and coursed through his arms and legs. He cried out in agony, a pain that made the tears burst from his eyes. He had a sudden vision of himself striding down Fifth Avenue in his life that used to be, happy to be alive, with his wife beside him and their son healthy and well and studying to be an insurance adjuster, and just that quickly the human being who had been Burt Ratcoff was gone and in its place stood a Gorgon-engineered weapon.
The body burst into blue flame. The body elongated, the blue-burning clothes flying away as the people around him screamed and tried to put distance between them and a thin figure that was growing to be seven…eight…nine…ten feet tall.
The burning, featureless giant strode forward as Ethan, Major Fleming and Captain Walsh retreated, and standing to one side of them it began to fling from its flaming hands blue spheres that exploded against the Cypher spiders’ force fields, sending blue and red sparks of energy spinning into the air. One of the spiders was overwhelmed and caught blue flame, and as it sizzled it began to turn in a tight circle of what might have been agony and panic, around and around, as the three others scrabbled past it.
Ethan stood his ground, shaking off the major’s hand clasped to his shoulder. He tried again, summoning up power from a well he knew was full but that terrified him with its fearful depths. It was there when he needed it, and he needed it now. Sweat broke out on his face in an instant. He felt the surge of storms within him. From his fingers or from the palm of his hand—possibly from his entire body, he wasn’t sure—came thousands of the small, flaming bullet-shaped projectiles and what looked like jagged silver bolts of lightning. The force field around the spider he had targeted sparked a thousand times in two seconds and then was breached. As the creature advanced across the tiles between the remnants of a Brookstone and a Foot Locker, it blew apart into black fragments that smashed into the walls oozing ebony fluids.
The burning blue giant had grown to twelve feet tall, as thin as a shadow, and was throwing fiery spheres past Ethan at the remaining two spider-shapes. Ethan felt no heat from them, but as they zipped past him with their soundless power, he felt the flesh crawl on his bones. One missed its spider target and punctured a hole with melting, dripping edges in the concrete wall next to the Build-A-Bear Workshop, a seccond, third, and fourth sizzled out in the creature’s force field, but the fifth got through and lit the thing up in blue fire. The first spider that had been hit was collapsing in a black puddle, making a tock…tock…tock noise like a machine running down.
The fourth spider scrabbled toward Ethan; at the same time Cypher soldiers began to materialize through the walls.
“Back! Get back!” Major Fleming was shouting to his own men. He didn’t need to issue the order twice. Captain Walsh was down on one knee emptying another pistol clip at the Cypher spider, but again the bullets were quickly incinerated. Ethan willed loose another burst of concentrated energy, which once more might have issued from the center of his body but was being directed to its target by his hand; he was aware of his runaway heartbeat, what seemed like a stream of heat flowing out of him to warp the air between himself and the spider-shape, and thousands more burning bullets and silver spears of lightning flew into the creature’s force-field. At the same time, one of the blue giant’s spheres penetrated and a dozen or more of Ethan’s flaming projectiles got through, and as the red maw opened to consume Ethan’s head, the monster burst into blue fire and then exploded into pieces.
Eight faceless Cypher soldiers had emerged from the walls. As one they fired their fleshy black weapons at the blue giant that had once been a human being. Fourteen orbs of white-hot flame hit the thin twelve-foot-tall figure at the same time, two missing the target and whirling over the heads of the Army soldiers, the civilians and Jack the Gorgon to blast holes through the mall’s ceiling.
Ethan had little time to think, just to act. A swarm of the little fiery bullets and the silver bolts of energy crackled out to blow one, two, three and four Cypher soldiers to smoking shreds that smelled of grasshopper juice. Two of the white-hot orbs hissed over Ethan as he threw himself to the floor, and just that quickly he took aim with the weapon of mass destruction that his hand had become and destroyed the fifth, sixth, and seventh Cypher in spinning, burning fragments. The eighth turned, disappeared into a wall, and was gone.
The blue giant staggered. Its flame was going out. Ethan saw the last of the blue fire flicker and go dark. Exposed there was a tall thin figure made of gray ash. With a sound like a quiet sigh, the ash collapsed into a pile, and that was the end of whoever and whatever the short bald dude had been.
Back in the stunned crowd, among those who had crouched down on the floor to find whatever cover they could, Jefferson Jericho looked up at Vope, who had remained standing during this confrontation. Only Jefferson had seen the prickling of small black spikes and a yellow discoloration on Vope’s hands, as if the Gorgon wanted to join the fight but was constrained by his mission. Then the spikes were gone and the false flesh color returned, and Vope looked down at Jefferson Jericho with a faint sneer of derision at the earthman’s puny lack of courage.
Ethan felt a wave of exhaustion pass over him. He sank to his knees. He heard behind him the confusion and terror of the crowd. A hand grasped his shoulder and helped him up, but his knees were weak, and he nearly toppled again.
Olivia had come to help him. Behind her were Dave and a little further back Nikki. JayDee was limping forward on his rebar cane, and following close behind him was Hannah Grimes. The second burning Cypher spider was still, its body crisping away. The mall smelled of acrid burnt plastic and grasshopper juice. Major Fleming was approaching Ethan. Captain Walsh and three other soldiers were standing over the pile of ashes that had once been a human being.