A cold little smile touched her mouth. "Little Morlun was one. We are three."
Little
Morlun? That wasn't encouraging. "I don't suppose it matters to you that I didn't kill him," I told her.
Her lips twitched a little. "He hunted you?"
"Yes."
"He died."
"Yes."
"You saw it. You allowed it."
"I…" I swallowed. When it came down to the wire, I'd had him at my mercy. I knew full well that if I'd let him live, he'd only come back another day. I hesitated. And before I could go through with it, Dex, Morlun's demented little attache, had emptied a Glock into him from ten feet away and blew him to dust.
I'd like to think that if I'd been aware of Dex and his gun I would have stopped him. Part of me is sure I would have. But more honest parts of me aren't so sure.
"I did," I told her quietly. "Then for his sake, you die."
"What if I'd tried to stop it?" She smiled a cold little smile, showing me very white teeth. "Then you would die for mine. I am hungry, spider. I will devour you."
"Gosh, that's kinda intimate," I said. "We haven't even been introduced."
She lifted her chin a bit, and then inclined her head to me. "Mortia." She moved a hand in a simple gesture to indicate the other two. "Thanis in the suit. Malos in the silk."
"Spider-Man," I said. "I'm the one standing in the shoes which are going to kick all three of you back to wherever it is weirdos like you come from." Mortia threw back her head and actually laughed a cold little laugh. "Such defiance." Her eyes widened, showing the whites all the way around. "And it makes you smell sweet."
"Well," I said, "they tell me my deodorant is strong enough for a man—"
She flung herself at me in mid-quip. She was fast, as fast as anyone I've ever seen. As fast as me— and my spider sense, already howling at maximum intensity about how much danger I already knew I was in, gave me no warning at all.
I moved, barely ahead of her—and if I hadn't been watching her, ready for it, I would have been too slow. I never thought I'd actually have a reason to be glad that that symbiotic maniac Venom had obsessed over me and done his best to make my life a living hell between bursts of attempted arachnocide. My spider sense never registered him, either, and it had forced me to learn how to bob and weave the old-fashioned way, using only five senses.
Her hand flashed out toward me as she passed by, and missed me by less than an inch. I hit the ground moving. Tweedle-Loom threw a television set at me, while Tweedle-Doom went with a classic and flung a rock with such power that the projectile actually went supersonic in a sudden clap of thunder, like a gunshot. I did not oblige either of them by behaving like a good target.
Besides, they were just distractions, and they knew it. For the time being, the woman was the real threat, and she was hot on my trail. She got better air than me, but she didn't have handy-dandy weblines to play with, and I was able to stay ahead of her—barely. I went bouncing around Times Square like a racquetball, playing a lunatic version of tag with the mystery lady while I struggled to come up with a plan. It was harder than usual. Normally, between my reflexes and my spider sense, things just sort of flow by, and it feels like I have all the time in the world to think. That's how I'm able to be all funny and insulting while duking it out with the bad guys. It feels like I've had hours to come up with the material.
This time, my spider sense had ceased to be an asset, and my speed was only just sufficient to stay ahead of the three of them. It took all of my attention to avoid her, plus dodging the occasional portion of landscape her homeys pitched after me—complicated by the fact that if I led them out of Times Square, which the Rhino's efforts had already cleared of most civilians, bystanders would get hurt. Morlun hadn't blinked an eye at the notion of murder, and I didn't think these three would be any more safety-conscious than he was.
It's hard to gauge passing time in circumstances like that, but I gradually got the impression that maybe the reason I couldn't think of a plan of action was that there wasn't one. I'd taken Morlun out with the aid of material from the core of a nuclear reactor, and I didn't see one of those around Times Square. The only Plan B I could come up with was for me to keep doing what I was doing until some of the other New York hero types turned on the TV, found out what was going on, and showed up to lend a hand.
Although "hope someone rescues me" was a pa-thetically flawed Plan B. I mean, I'm supposed to be a superhero. I'm the one doing the rescuing.
Thanis took the decision out of my hands. He threw something heavy that hit the car I'd landed on and knocked it cleanly out from under me. I dropped to the ground unsteadily and looked up to find that Mortia had anticipated her brother's action. She was already two-thirds of the way through the pounce that would pin me to the ground and kill me. Thanis's distraction hadn't cost me much, maybe half a second.
It was enough.
As fast as I was, I still wasn't going to be fast enough to get out of her way.
Chapter 7
Once in a while,
Plan B actually works out.
As Mortia came down at me, there was a phoont sound of expanding compressed air, and a small, metallic grappling hook flew over my head and hit her right on the end of her upturned nose, trailing a line of fine, black cable. The instant it touched her, there was a flickering of blue-white light, and Mortia's body convulsed, hit by what I assumed was a hefty amount of electricity. She went into an uncontrolled tumble, and I got out of the way in a hurry. "That's new," I said, hopping to my feet—which I happened to plant ten feet up a handy streetlight, so that I could be sure to keep an eye on Clan Goth. "I went legitimate," Felicia replied tartly. She landed in a crouch on the streetlight's arm, above me, pushed a button on a small baton, and the cord and grapple reeled swiftly back in. "I never said anything about not finding new toys to play with."
Mortia came to her feet slowly, looking down at the concrete dust clinging to her suit with undisguised annoyance. She traded a look with Thanis and Malos, and then all three of them turned to stare at me.
Absolutely no one moved. The only motion in all of Times Square came from rising smoke and the whirling bulbs on the police cars. The only sound came from a few stubborn car alarms that had survived the fracas (evidently Thanis and Malos found them as annoying as I did), and the harsh clicks and buzzes of transmissions on distant police radios. Nothing happened for a long minute.
What the heck. Every tableau's got to be broken by something.
"What we need," I drawled to the Black Cat, "is a couple of tumbleweeds. Maybe a rattlesnake Foley effect."
"Grow up," she sneered, watching Mortia and her brothers as carefully as I did. "What we need is the Avengers."
"Only because we didn't bring them," I said. "If we had, we wouldn't need them."
"Well, better to have them and not need them than—"
"Do I criticize your equipment list?" I asked. "And, oh. Don't let one of them touch you."
"We aren't dating anymore," she said archly.
I grinned, underneath my mask. "Very funny. Just don't do it."
"Why not?"
"Because once they do, they can track you down. Follow you anywhere. Find you anywhere."
She pursed her lips, the expression made tough to read by the visor, and said, "Got it. We should leave now, then." I hesitated.
It wasn't a macho thing. I had no idea what Mortia and company might try if I left the fight. In a bid to keep me close enough to kill, Morlun had promptly started brutalizing whoever was handy when I tried to break contact with him for more than a minute or two. That was why I was hesitant to leave.