Читать книгу PROTECTED - Marcus Calvert - Страница 7

Omar Trinns ran up to the front entrance of the Trifecta Club, an ultra-swank nightspot that catered to Philadelphia’s urban elite. At 33 years old, the 5’7” cop wore rumpled street clothes over a wiry, coffee-brown physique. Sweat clung to his bald-shaven head and short black goatee as he came to a stop. Light, late-evening rain began to fall from a darkened sky as he eyed the two huge bouncers at the door. They wore matching black slacks, black t-shirts, transparent radio headsets in their ears, and even had the same thick necks. Omar glanced at the line for the club, which ran around the block.

No way was he going to wait to get in.

Even if he did, the bouncers would keep him out on the basis of dress code alone. Were he simply out for a night on the town, Omar would’ve gone home, cleaned up, and come back with a little “entrance tip” for the bouncers. But this was different. It was about Monica Asbur: his fiancée and the love of his life. She was inside the club and a lot of bad folks were looking to kill her – or worse – because of him.

Omar rushed over to the bouncers and drew his badge, which he wore on a chain underneath his blue shirt.

“Detective Omar Trinns, Homicide,” he announced with a no-nonsense cop tone. “I need to talk to one of your staff.”

The two bouncers chuckled at the same time as they folded their massive arms.

“You must be the fifth motherfucker to flash a badge at us this month,” said the bouncer on the left.

“And none of the other four were cops,” said the bouncer on the right.

As tempted as he was to show them his police-issued ID card, or perhaps his Glock, Omar just didn’t have time for this.

“Well,” Omar defiantly replied. “I’m gonna be the first one you let in.”

Their grins went away. The bouncers unfolded their arms and stepped up, ready to fight. Combined, they weighed over five hundred pounds and towered over Omar. The closest patrons whispered amongst themselves in anticipation of a one-sided beat down.

“Oh really?” Asked the bouncer on the left. “And just how’re you gonna do —?”

Omar interrupted the bouncer on the left with a triple-tap of punches to the groin, right floating rib and left jaw. Then he stepped aside to let the bigger man fall. The bouncer on the left was unconscious before he hit the asphalt. The bouncer on the right rushed in and threw a heavy right roundhouse. Omar ducked under the punch, gave him a quick uppercut to his chin, and then dealt him a quick knee to the groin. As the bouncer doubled over with a grunt of pain, the cop stepped in very close, wrapped both hands around the back of the larger man’s neck and then gave him a vicious head butt to the nose.

Witnesses cringed as the larger man fell backwards with a severely broken nose. Omar gave the dazed man a guilty glance, checked his watch, and then headed for the door. Some of the assembled crowd of waiting patrons cheered. Others even cut in line and rushed inside. He simply tossed a twenty to the frightened lady behind the register and ran into the club. Omar cringed under the super-loud torrent of profanity-laced hip-hop as his keen brown eyes took in the scene.

The place was packed with a few hundred people, most of whom were on the dance floor. He headed to the second floor to get a better view.

“Where are you, baby?!” Omar muttered to himself as he reached the top of the stairs and waded through a sea of people on the second level.

Finally, his eyes landed on her.

Monica Asbur: the gal of his dreams. To his surprise, she was on the second floor, instead of the first-level bar section. At twenty-seven, she was tall, voluptuous and gorgeous – all in one sweet package. Tonight, she wore a tight red mini-skirt that both accentuated her perfect curves and those long, caramel-colored legs. Then there were the intangibles that drew Omar in. She was kind, intelligent, funny, and patient. Her patience was what he liked best, seeing as he was out fighting crime when he’d rather be home with her.

Then it hit him.

She was sitting in a corner of the club in the VIP section, surrounded by burly men in high-priced thug wear and jewelry. Monica told him that she worked here as a bartender. But tonight she was dressed more like a “ho” on someone else’s expense account. Monica was supposed to be a struggling law school student. But right now, she sported expensive jewelry that he sure as hell didn’t give her – minus the engagement ring he put on her finger last winter.

He’d worry about that later. Right now, Monica was in trouble and didn’t even know it. On impulse, Omar checked his watch again. The cop briefly turned toward the front entrance and muttered a curse. A pack of five pissed-off bouncers had gathered and were spreading out. Fingers on their headsets, they were undoubtedly looking for him.

As he turned back toward his fiancée, Omar froze in his tracks. A handsome, skinny black guy was now with her. Almost Omar’s height, he wore really expensive clothes and looked familiar. He was someone famous … Black Noyze: multi-platinum rapper extraordinaire. Omar loved his CDs. Apparently, Monica loved making out with him. The cop’s heart fell as he watched them trade spit less than twenty feet away. Amidst the shock, he could only stare.

“There he is!” A voice yelled from behind Omar. “Beat his ass!”

Omar spun around just in time for two huge bouncers to tackle him like an unwary quarterback. In spite of their combined weight, the cop didn’t budge one single inch.

And that’s when Omar lost his cool.

He right-handedly swatted one of the bouncers aside like he was a tennis ball. The poor man’s screaming flight abruptly ended as his back connected with a nearby wall. Glasses dropped, bodies collided, and people screamed. The second bouncer tried to wrestle him to the floor. With both hands, Omar easily broke the man’s grip. Then he tossed the bouncer over the second-floor railing as if he was a stuffed toy. The poor big man flailed and screamed as he crashed into the crowd below.

As of that moment, Omar officially found himself in an unpleasant moral dilemma. It wasn’t easy being a cop, super hero, and loyal fiancée at the same time. His powers were technologically granted by a suit of alien nano-armor and could be passed on to someone else, which he planned to do after the wedding. The suit itself was sentient and had actually half-trained Omar on how to use it. But the cop had simply grown tired of the burden of being Philly’s only costumed vigilante.

With a scowl, he headed over to Monica’s table.

Scared partygoers got out of Omar’s way as Black Noyze’s entourage drew handguns and pointed them at the hero cop. Black Noyze himself wasn’t packing. He was still on probation after a minor “incident” in a Miami night club, last fall. Monica clung to the rapper and shouted something over the music. Omar couldn’t read lips, but he was fairly certain that she said something like: “Please don’t hurt him!”

The vigilante sneered, because he knew that they couldn’t. One of the entourage stepped into Omar’s path and jammed a Glock 9-mil against his forehead. The trembling thug had the gun knocked out of his hand and then took an open-palmed strike to the sternum. Then, to add insult to injury, Omar ended up using the wheezing thug as a human shield while he drew his own Glock. Almost instinctively, he pointed it at Monica and cocked the hammer with a snarl. She began to scream hysterically. The thought of emptying the clip into her perfect face was almost too much for Omar to resist.

The rest of Black Noyze’s entourage hesitated, unwilling to risk shooting one of their own. Omar didn’t care if they shot him. The nano-armor was inside his skin, which made him more than bulletproof. If he wanted to, Omar could conjure up enough weapons and explosives to wipe out this entire fucking place…

But then Omar took a deep breath and remembered that he wasn’t a killer. He was a hero: a good man having a really bad day. He slowly lowered the gun as his human shield continued to gasp for air.

Suddenly, the front entrance was blown inward in a cascade of concrete, ice shards, and billowing blue fog. A pair of frozen bouncers was thrown a few feet past the fog. Their corpses shattered like bloody glass as they hit the floor.

Then IceShadow made her entrance.

Her dark-blue face had a heartless, elven-like beauty to it. Her raging blue eyes glowed through strands of her black hair, which were tangled by the cold winds she unnaturally generated in her wake. IceShadow’s skin was a much lighter shade of blue, with thin segments of white ice covering her shapely upper torso and slender arms.

She always reminded Omar of a blue-and-white mermaid - minus the fish tail. Her legs had shattered during the lab accident that caused her mutation. In time, IceShadow learned how to float along currents of chilled air. To add to her menace, she simply wrapped a column of sub-zero fog beneath her, which was capable of flash-freezing bare flesh almost instantly. In spite of her handicap, IceShadow was arguably one of the most powerful villains on the planet.

And she called Philly home.

Afflicted by delusions of grandeur, IceShadow wanted to take over the world, with Philadelphia as her capital. She recruited henchmen, caused a lot of property damage, and killed a few dozen people during her two-day rampage. When they fought, just over a year ago, Omar barely managed to stop her. He beat her with a negation grenade, which rendered IceShadow both human and helpless. The judge put her in a local nuthouse for consecutive life terms. That should’ve been that.

Somehow, IceShadow got her powers back. With Omar’s secret identity leaked, the deranged villainess was here for Monica. Since the arrest and trial were both covered extensively throughout the past year, most of the club patrons present recognized IceShadow.

Panic ensued.

Omar tossed his human shield aside and ignored the thug’s painful collision through a table behind him. He turned to stare down at the fleeing patrons below. They were heading for the back of the club, trampling each other to get out through the narrow pair of rear exit doors. More innocent people were about to die.

Omar sent a mental command to the nanite processors embedded within his skin. They conjured up a black bandolier of six high-tech stun pulse grenades. Appearing out of seeming thin air, they resembled typical frag grenades. But the gleaming metal orbs were far more complex. He flung the bandolier - grenades and all - over the railing as IceShadow searched for him in vain. In mid-descent, the bandolier jettisoned the grenades in different directions. The grenades went off the instant they hit the floor. Anyone with a second-floor view of the chaos below watched six white circles of energy suddenly erupt. Much like ripples in water, they spread out in all directions, swept over everyone on the first floor, and stunned them on contact.

A fleeing stampede turned into a mass of falling, unconscious humanity. Omar figured that while these people were still in harm’s way, no one else would be crushed to death. Even IceShadow was a bit dazed as she floated over to a nearby bar and grabbed it for support. He could’ve killed the lunatic right then and there. Or he could’ve thrown another negation grenade her way. But then the next super villain would come … and the next. Omar realized that he was wrong to have tried to simply grab Monica and run away.

Ever since his ex-partner figured out his secret and sold the information for a half-million bucks, the hunt for Omar’s proverbial scalp was getting worse. From what little information he could piece together, half of the city’s underworld wanted him dead. The other half wanted to get their hands on anyone close to him. They figured that whoever controlled Omar’s loved ones controlled him, which was also a logical objective.

What they’d soon realize was that the vigilante/cop had no surviving family, few friends, and a waning interest in keeping Monica Asbur safe and sound. Nevertheless, he still cared about the innocent, who needed saving right now. The folks upstairs, while not hit by the ground-level detonations, were smart enough to stay put. Omar looked over their frightened faces and knew what he had to do.

Without even looking her way, Omar conjured up a black injection pistol and shot Monica three times. Tiny, black, diamond-shaped projectiles punched through her torso. She started to scream … then she gawked as her wounds closed almost instantly. Even the pain abruptly stopped. Then Monica looked up and gawked as her fiancée became the Iron Snake.

His clothes ripped as black-and-white armor poured out of his skin and formed around him from head-to-toe. While it felt like a lukewarm slice of ham to the touch, his armor was harder than titanium. On the chest and back of the black armor were the white emblems of a fanged serpent head, which had earned him his nickname.

Now a foot taller and more muscular, the vigilante hopped onto the railing and crouched low, like a predatory creature defending his territory. Iron Snake conjured up a high-tech heat blaster in his right hand and a fiery-white plasma katana in the left. IceShadow glared up and spotted him with ease. Driven by her hatred, she shook off the effects of the stun pulse and floated a few feet away from the bar. Churning currents of blue energy formed on the palms of her outstretched hands as she eyed her hated foe.

The vigilante took a deep, cleansing breath and prepared to lose this fight.

If he didn’t, hundreds could die in the crossfire. Even if Iron Snake could take IceShadow down with a minimum of carnage, his life was still worthless. Anonymity was almost as important to the super hero as his powers. Without it, he had a big fat bulls-eye on his ass. IceShadow wasn’t the only super villain in town. There were dozens of them out there – all of whom would happily kill the Iron Snake: either for bragging rights, his powers, payback, or just for any number of bounties on his head. If they took him alive, they could learn the secret of his armor and use it for evil.

That he would never allow.

Also, with him dead, Monica would be off the menu. In the end, Iron Snake didn’t want to leap into certain death for a woman who didn’t deserve it or for a bunch of people he didn’t know. But he did it anyway, because that’s what heroes do.

The instant he cleared the railing, IceShadow fired short bursts of spiraling blue energy at him. She snarled as he shot each one out of the air with the blaster. Both beams cancelled each other out, leaving only a cloud of steam through which he menacingly descended. Iron Snake hit the floor and rushed in for the “kill.”

IceShadow jerked her head away from his slashing katana, which sizzled through most of the hair on the left side of her head. Had she been a bit slower, he could’ve taken her left arm off, too. Iron Snake skillfully twirled the blade for a deathblow as he positioned his back to the entrance. The hero grinned under his mask at the realization that he could’ve killed her a dozen ways with the plasma katana. Instead, he raised the heat blaster, as if he wanted to scare her into surrendering.

IceShadow whipped both hands forward and blasted him with a torrent of ice shards. The sharp projectiles ranged in length from a few inches to three feet long. Instead of dodging the volley, he let them hit. Iron Snake staggered back as her unnatural ice cut through his armor, his body, and chilled him to his dying bones. Blood spurted from forty-six different exit wounds as he fell.

The cop/vigilante landed on his back, convulsed for a few moments, and then died amidst screams of horror from the patrons above. The katana deactivated as it fell from his lifeless fingers, as did the blaster. The armor fell off of him like a shower of smoldering black ash, which faded away before their eyes. All that remained was a corpse and his tattered clothes.

Omar Trinns was just a man now.

Blood pooled out from under the detective’s prone form. IceShadow triumphantly cackled for several loud seconds. Then she leaned down, grabbed her fallen foe by the throat, and floated toward the front entrance. As she dragged him away, the villainess left a trail of Omar’s blood behind her, which froze in her wake.

Just like that, it was over.

Monica staggered away from the railing and leaned against a nearby column. She slid to the floor in blinding grief and wept for her fiancée. Black Noyze briskly walked past her and signaled the able-bodied members of his entourage to follow. With his probation status in mind, the rapper abandoned Monica and wanted nothing to do with this crime scene. The other patrons followed his lead as someone (finally) turned the music off.

Through her sobbing tears, Monica felt something vibrate within her.

“Armor transference … complete,” a female voice (her voice) echoed within her mind. Monica quickly wiped her tears away and looked down at the three little holes in her dress. She realized that Omar had given her his powers, probably in case someone came after her. If she wanted to, Monica could become the next Iron Snake. The realization made her slowly stand up and walk over to the railing again. Sirens wailed in the distance as she looked down at the hundreds of unconscious people Omar had died to save …

Then she regarded his frozen blood.

All this time, he had been a super hero?!

Monica thought he was fucking around behind her back. All those late nights and lies about his sudden departures. Her friends were telling her to break off the engagement. But she loved him too much. She just wanted to get back at him by having a harmless fling and rubbing his nose in it the next day.

And now she’d never be able to explain herself …

Anger, guilt, and grief welled up in Monica as she realized what needed to be done. Omar deserved better than to end up some ice-bitch’s trophy.

“All right, armor, show me what you can do,” Monica’s commanded as she angrily wiped tears from her brown eyes. “Show me everything.”