Black Onyx (12 page)

Men were firing at him from behind. He leapt into the air and landed on a black Mercedes, the tires blowing out
from the weight of the suit. He flipped off and lifted the Mercedes, throwing it into the other car. The men were running and shouting in Spanish. All except one in a white suit.

“White suit?” Dillon said. “Really?
Kinda cliché isn’t it?”

The man didn’t move as Dillon floated over to him and hovered above him. The man lifted his assault rifle and fired several rounds directly at Dillon’s head. The
y bounced off, one grazing the man’s shoulder. Other men ran over and helped him up and they had to pull him away.

Dillon turned toward the officers. They were running over to the injured. Behind them a woman in a wheelchair was coming out. She spotted him and sat perfectly still. He floated over the injured and lifted one man that had been shot in the neck. He brought him over and laid him down as two other officers grabbed
him and ran off toward some police cruisers.

“Those were some bad dudes,” he said.

“What…what the hell are you?”

“Onyx. Onyx has nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“What…I mean…”

“Shame I destroyed that Mercedes. That was an SL55.”

“I…”

“Woman of few words. I like that.” He began drifting higher. “
Probably be pretty easy to get ’em, we are on an island.”

He flew off, glancing back once to see the woman still staring up at him. Farther down the road, the men were at a full sprint.
The one in the white suit staring up at the sky.

25

James
Mentzer picked up some take out and called Niles to say he was going to be a little late. He left a message for him and then stopped at a local wine store and picked up a bottle of Montrachet for six hundred dollars. Worth it, he thought. Besides, he’d spoken to Dillon yesterday and George and Henry had accepted the buyout. They were millionaires, all of them, and though the jewels were technically stolen, taking from warlords and slavers wasn’t exactly an immoral deed.

He drove down the interstate and got off on his exit. The beach was
empty as night had fallen. He turned on the local talk-radio station and they were discussing the weapons smugglers that had been arrested yesterday. Apparently a shootout had occurred but had been stopped by a man in a bulletproof suit. James shook his head. He was glad Dillon had told him about it rather than his finding out on the news. Still, it was too much. This suit was dangerous. At some point, after things had settled down and the excitement of a new toy had worn off, he would convince Dillon to sell it. They were not equipped to deal with it.

He pulled into his driveway and saw Niles’ BMW. Taking the food, he went and opened the
unlocked door and stepped inside. What he saw made him drop the food, his heart nearly jumping into his throat.

Niles was strapped to a chair, his face bloodied and bruised. Several men sat around him. There was one in a white suit who smiled at him.

“Hello,” he said. He pulled out a pistol from his waistband and shot Niles’ knee, fragments of ligament and bone flying in every direction. Niles screamed.

“Stop!”
James said. “Who the bloody hell are you?”

“I am a man in need of something, Mr.
Mentzer. A suit, that apparently, your son seems to have. Please, sit down.”

James
sat. “You can have the suit, please let him go.”

“Very nice of you. Where is it right now?”

“I don’t know.”

El
Sacerdote pointed the weapon at Niles’ other knee.

“No! Don’t, please. I really don’t know. He should be here soon.”

“I see,” he said, holding the pistol up. “Well, I can wait.”

“What do you want with it?”

“Do you have to ask?”

“You can’t do anything with it but study it.”

“What do you mean?”

“No one can use it except Dillon. It won’t take anyone else.”

He tapped the barrel against his temple. “Really? That is disappointing. Well, I suppose then that neither of you are any use to me.” He pointed the pistol at Niles’ head.

“No! Wait. You can’t use that suit but I know where you can get another one.”

He lowered the pistol. “There’s more than one?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see them.”

“But your son did, didn’t he? Niles here has been kind enough to inform us of your trip to Antarctica. Under a little persuasion of course. Isn’t that correct, Niles?”

Niles began to cry.

“He’s not in the mood for talking I guess.”

El
Sacerdote stood. “Looks like we’ll be spending some more time together, Mr. Mentzer.”

26

Dillon played in the African savannah before exploring Nairobi. He flew to the top of the tallest building, exhausted, and lay down on the soft black roofing. He had a date tonight with Jaime and he wanted to be sharp and rested. Lying on his back, he closed his eyes and slept.

After waking and flying home, he showered and dressed and tucked the suit away in the garage before picking up Jaime in his car.

They ate and watched a movie and then took a long walk on the beach. He spent the night at her house after an evening of drinking and talking. She wouldn’t sleep with him, but it didn’t matter. He just lay in bed with her and smelled her hair and had such butterflies in his stomach he couldn’t sleep.

They spent the next day together. He called
James once to check in with him and it went to voicemail.

When the day was done, he
drove her home and dropped Jaime off in front of her house. She kissed him again and he nearly blushed. He had wanted it for so long, now that he had it, it felt surreal.

“Hey, so who were those guys?”
she said.

“What guys?”

“Some guys came by the day before yesterday asking about you.”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know. They had Spanish accents. They said they were friends of yours. My mom told them you lived next door.”

“Friends?”

“Weird right? You don’t have any friends.”

He pinched her. “Funny.”

“Yeah, it is.” She kissed him again and got out of the car. “Surfing tomorrow?”

“Sure. Wake me up.”

He pulled out and then into his own driveway. Both James’ and Niles’ cars were already parked there. Which was odd because James hated parking outside. He thought it affected the paint job. Dillon got out and went inside. The house was empty.

“
James, you home?”

He was about to run up to his room when he saw that one of the kitchen chairs was in the front room. Dillon
walked to it. Duct tape was on it and underneath the chair was a stain. He touched it. It was still wet. Bringing up his fingertips, he could see that it was blood.

He jumped up and ran to Jaime’s house.

“What guys?” he said by way of greeting.

“What?” she said.

“The guys that were asking about me. Who where they? What were they driving?”

“I don’t know, a…some Beamers I think. Nice cars.”

“What did they look like?”

“Mexican, I think. One of them had a white suit. One had a—”

“A white suit? With a light blue shirt underneath?”

“Yeah. Dillon, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.”

He leaned against the doorframe. It felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. “How’d they find me?” he said to himself. “Someone said something…the cops. How’d they do it though…” He looked around to his neighbors. He wondered if someone had told the police or the press about what they’d seen.

“Dillon—”

“I have to go.”

“Where you going?” she shouted after him.

But it was too late. He ran into his garage and within a few seconds was tearing through the air.

27

Dillon scanned the entire i
sland. He felt in his gut that it was the wrong approach. They wouldn’t be here. They wanted the suit. The man in white…it wasn’t shock or fear that the man had staring at him, like Dillon had thought. It was envy and curiosity. He wanted the suit…

But if
James or Niles told them he couldn’t have it. That no one could have it because it had ‘bonded’ to him, would they be crazy enough to try and find another one? He couldn’t just sit at home and hope they would turn up.

He turned south,
speeding away from the island and over the vast expanse of ocean.

Dillon kept his arms and legs in a straight line. He had found that if he concentrated on speeding up, he would.
The suit responded to his thoughts. The last time they had spoken, James told him he had researched possible substances that the suit could have been made of. The only one that made sense was dark matter.

Theoretically, the universe was made up mostly of dark matter
, a substance whose properties were almost completely unknown. Was it possible that the earth had a reserve of dark matter and that this civilization had preserved it? Harnessed it and hid it away?

It didn’t matter now. All Dillon could think about was
James taped to a chair, bleeding and helpless. It filled him with rage and the rage fueled the suit. Even though he was a hundred feet above the sea, he was traveling at such a reckless pace the water below him was splitting apart.

The Falklands came into view, and not much farther was the familiar blue ice of the Antarctic.
He weaved in between two ice canyons and ducked underneath a natural bridge before slamming hard into the water below and slicing through it like a knife before raising himself out. The suit, apparently, could travel through water as well.

He came to the opening and flew down.

El Sacerdote stood before the tower of ice. The trip, even by plane, had taken twenty-one hours to complete. The hike was something else. They had bought gear and boots and clothing, but it was all last minute and not the type of clothing you needed for this environment. His men were all shivering, holding thermoses filled with hot tea to warm their hands.

But he didn’t care. This, he knew, was what his life was for. The reason he was here.
He turned to James.

“I was going to flood your country with guns and I thought that I was a master. That by taking something your country loves and turning it against you I could hasten your collapse. And then this came into my life. It was meant for me. I am
meant
to be here.”

James
didn’t respond.

El
Sacerdote put his bare hand on the tower, feeling its warmth, and it slipped through as if the tower weren’t there. He laughed, and walked inside.

The stairs were there, as
James had said they would be, and he climbed them to the top and saw a lever across the room. He walked there and touched it: it was warm, as all this ice was warm. He pulled on it, and the floor collapsed around him.

He laughed as he slid down and into another room. He crashed into the floor and took a moment to reorient himself before rising.

He was in a chamber of some sort. Through the walls were holes, as if a truck had rammed through them. He went through the first one into another room—and saw what he had come for. Suspended in transparent ice was a suit. This one was brown. He walked to it, his heart pounding in his chest, and touched the ice. It immediately fell to the floor and the suit was lowered, splitting open at the center.

He laughed to himself and stepped inside.

Power. That’s what it felt like. Pure power. He moved around and felt the balance. It took him only a moment to grow accustomed to the dimensions. He walked to the wall and punched at it and it shattered like glass. He was staring at his hands, the thought of what he could do racing in his mind as he heard something behind him. He turned and a black liquid was pooled around his feet.

It thrust out like a snake and attache
d itself to him. He saw images…burning buildings, blood, smoke, corpses, and horrific screaming that filled his ears. His hands went to them to try and block the sound but it didn’t help.