Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007) (15 page)

"Fine. The truck weighs five, five and a
half tons."

"Think I can lift five tons?" Gideon
asked.

"Probably not," Barny said. "This is
dumb.You'd just break a piece off trying to lift it. A truck isn't
one solid block."

"No, I want to see if he can push it,"
Delilah said. "How easily, I mean. So we can see how strong we are.
Relative to one another."

"Fine," Barny said. "This would be easier
with free-weights."

"Do you have free weights in your truck?"
Delilah asked.

"No."

"Gideon, go push Barny's truck."

CHAPTER TWO

One after another, Gideon, Barny, Delilah,
and Lily took turns pushing Barny's truck around the parking lot.
Jessie alone abstained, citing that she wasn't too much stronger
than normal, and they let her time each person as they pushed the
truck from one side of the Spot to the other. Gideon's time was
fastest, and he seemed to be able to roll the truck along without
too much effort. Barny's time was perhaps half that. Lily was
between the two, though it seemed to be more of an effort for her.
Delilah found she could barely rock it at all.

"I'm stronger," she said, "A lot stronger. I
don't think I could have even nudged it before. But I'm nowhere
near as strong as you three."

"That doesn't seem fair," Gideon said.

"Life isn't fair," Barny said.

"It sort of is," Delilah said. "After all,
you can do the heat thing. Gideon is just super-strong."

"Stronger than I am," Lily said.

"You're faster," Gideon said.

"Way faster," Barny said.

"How fast?" Delilah asked.

"Fast," Barny said.

"Well, I run track," Lily said, shaking her
hair out.

"No, you're
fast
." Barny waved a
hand.

"How fast?" Delilah asked.

"Fast enough that everyone noticed when she
was running the track the other night."

Lily felt her chest tighten, and her face
paled. "They did?"

"Hell yeah they did. That's why I was trying
to talk to you before asshole here picked a fight with me."

"You picked a fight with me!" Gideon
clenched his fists.

"Boys, focus," Delilah said. "Are you guys
faster than normal?"

"I don't think so," Gideon said,
shrugging.

"I can time you," Jessie said, holding up
her phone.

"Okay," Delilah said. "It's about a
half-mile around the Spot's perimeter. Let's run it and time
ourselves."

"Man." Gideon groaned. "I hate running."

"No shit?" Barny said.

"Shut the fuck up."

"Both of you shut up," Lily said. Their
constant bickering was really getting on her nerves. "800 meters?
Okay, I'll go first. Two minutes after I start, Barny goes. Two
minutes, then Gideon. Then Delilah. Got it? That should stagger it
enough so that you can record everyone's times."

Jessie took the notebook and pen from
Delilah. "Got it."

Lily picked up a chunk of wood from the
bonfire. It was lighter than she expected, and she dropped it near
the wall. "Here's our mark. Ready Jessie?"

"Ready."

The track star took a standing runner's
stance near the log. "Ready."

Jessie held the phone up, staring at it
intently. "And.... go!"

Lily exploded into motion, following the
curve of the wall around the Spot's interior. The footing was far
from ideal, gravel shifting below her feet with every step, but her
long strides carried her so far with each stride that it almost
felt like she was flying. She slipped almost immediately into her
runner's zone, and it wasn't long before she returned to where the
others were standing.

They all stared at her.

"What the hell, Barny," she said between
breaths. "Why didn't you start after two minutes?"

"It hasn't been two minutes," Jessie
said.

"What?" Lily asked.

Jessie handed the phone over. "You're not
even at one."

"No way." Lily stared at the stopwatch app,
reading 59 seconds, and jerked her gaze away. "This is... this is a
second faster than my time in the 400. I ran at least twice that
far."

"You were a blur," Gideon said.

"This can't be right," Lily said, euphoric.
"The 800 world record is only 1:40."

"You were really fast," Gideon said.

"This is ridiculous." She sat in a crouch
against the fence.

"As ridiculous as turning sand to glass?"
Barny asked. "Or fat-ass slamming my truck around like a
paperweight?"

"Who wants to go next?" Delilah asked,
grabbing the phone from Jessie. "Barny?"

Jessie gently reached over and plucked her
phone from Delilah's grasp.

"It's late," she said. "I really should be
getting home."

"What? No! We need to see how fast Barny
is."

"Not that fast," Barny nodded towards
Lily.

Delilah pulled on the strings tightening her
sweatshirt's hood."And we haven't even talked about your visions or
any other potential abilities."

"My visions aren't the kind of thing you can
quantify."

Lily glanced towards town. "It is getting
late. I should get going, too. School tomorrow."

"School? Who cares about school? This is
important!"

Barny shook his head. "What's important is
keeping a low profile until we figure out what to do about this. I
don't want one of you making some dumb mistake that exposes me
before I'm ready."

"You're full of shit," Gideon said.

Something about what Barny had said left
Lily twitchy. "Ready for what?"

"I don't even know." Barny sighed. "It's
late, and I got a lot to think about."

She didn't know whether to believe him or
not. "Yeah. Sure. We should talk about this later."

"When?" Gideon asked.

"Not too soon," Barny said. "Maybe next
weekend."

"Maybe," said Lily.

She took a last glance at the track, trying
again to comprehend having just run the world's fastest 800-meter
dash.

***

Delilah's head spun
with the implications of last night's testing. Her parents hadn't
commented on her return so close to midnight on a school night, and
she hadn't managed to get any sleep after returning home. Maybe it
was the excitement, or maybe she'd evolved past the need for rest.
That would be amazing -- the idea of what she could accomplish with
an extra 56 hours a week wasn't to be underestimated. Was she
smarter? She felt smarter. She didn't feel significantly stronger
or faster since the accident, so her abilities probably weren't
physical.

That was fine with her. Physical was boring.
Maybe she could stop time. Or reverse it. Lying in bed, waiting for
the sun to rise, she was pretty sure she couldn't make it go any
faster.

That was the downside to a more subtle gift.
She would have to work up a methodology to test different possible
capabilities. Potential abilities out of a nearly infinite set.

It was almost three in the morning when
Delilah rose and crept to the bathroom, unable to lie still any
longer.

The reflection facing her in the mirror
didn't look any different. But neither had Lily, Barny, or
Gideon.

The only ability she'd manifested was the
black smoke that Gideon had said that her blood had become after
she'd landed on the fence jumping from the tower. That had been
painful in the moments before she'd lost consciousness, but
ultimately worth it.

She picked up one of her father's razors,
examining its edge in the fluorescent light. Melchizedek had said
that a second near-death experience had brought him more obvious
powers. Stronger powers. She looked at herself in the mirror,
holding the razor, and contemplated hastening the process.

She didn't.

Delilah didn't live an easy life. Her
parents were absent even when they were present. She couldn't
relate to those her own age, and the older teens saw her as little
more than a hyper-intelligent freak. She was, most of the time,
desperately alone. Isolated enough to have considered checking out
early.

She hadn't.

Part of the reason why was the social outlet
she had in Gideon, and part of it was the intellectual
understanding that the only way to ensure that things didn't get
better was to take that irrevocable step. As sad as she might be,
as desperately lonesome at times, she just didn't have it in her to
make emotionally charged choices that weren't in her best
interest.

Swan dives from water-towers
notwithstanding.

Her gaze shifted to her other hand.
Remembering what Barny had said about his heat-generation, Delilah
clenched her fist and concentrated, willing something -- anything
-- to happen.

At first, nothing did.

Delilah visualized the smoke as Gideon had
described it, and she felt a tingle running from fist to elbow. It
didn't look any different, but she could feel it. She could tell
that something was happening, under the surface. Under her
skin.

Pausing for only a moment, Delilah brought
the razor's edge down across the back of her forearm in one clean
swift swipe. It only took a moment for a line of crimson to appear
in its wake.

It only took a further moment for that line
to turn black.

"Oh heck yeah."

She kept her arm tense and doubled her
mental efforts to concentrate on the blackness. It began to rise
from her, not like Melchizedek's almost opaque mantle of shadow,
but a gauzier, more transparent miasma. It seemed to shimmer in the
air in front of her, twisting and billowing between her and the
mirror. With a little effort and a growing sense of awe she found
that she could guide the diaphanous film through the air.

"This is too cool."

She heard the floorboard creak overhead. Her
parents' room.

The moment her concentration waned, the
blood-smoke retracted, flowing back into the cut in her arm, which
was healing as she watched.

Delilah caught her own gaze in the mirror,
and was momentarily startled to see a dark film over her eyes,
fading rapidly. This too warranted further investigation.

The smoke was neat, but it didn't seem as
immediately useful as superhuman strength or the ability to start
fires. There was more to it. There had to be.

She'd have to be careful, though. Meticulous
in her methods. She'd need to document everything.

She left the bathroom to grab her
notebook.

***

Monday dragged on
slowly, filled with too many questions and not enough sleep.
Delilah drifted oblivious through her classes, preoccupied with her
discoveries and the questions they'd raised. Her teachers noticed
her distraction, calling on the young student with an almost
vicious regularity, and seemed put off when she had answers to
every question put to her, unaware that she'd read and memorized
her textbooks the first week of school.

Delilah had stayed up all night cutting
herself and directing her blood like a conductor, recording its
behavior through a series of rigorous scientific experiments. Her
control over the smoke had an astounding degree of precision, and
she found that she was able to create complex latticework
structures out of it in the air. The more she manipulated it, the
less she had to concentrate, and the greater her control
became.

She had also discovered that the smoke
exerted a small degree of pressure, enough to push talc across the
surface of the mirror. Even more exciting was the fact that she
sensed feedback when the smoke touched the mirror. It wasn't quite
like the sense of touch, but something different. Something new.
More testing was called for.

All through her experimentation her eyes had
developed a black smoky film. At first it faded when she ceased
concentration, but the easier manipulating the smoke became, the
longer the ocular film persisted and the more opaque it appeared,
despite not impacting her vision. By the time she ceased her
experimentation in the morning, the film had lingered almost until
she left the house for school. She'd tried concentrating on it,
willing it to dissipate, but there'd been no noticeable effect.

She'd need to be careful, but she'd learned
what she'd needed to.

Of mild disappointment but not surprise was
Gideon's absence from school. No big deal.

She knew where to find him.

CHAPTER THREE

Gideon wasn't at the
water tower.

Delilah found him at the culvert. It was
bone-dry this time of year, but mid-June the brief rainy season
would begin, and the pipe would become passage for monsoon
waters.

Gideon waved her over as she approached, the
bright cherry of his cigarette glowing in the dimness. "Hey."

"You're truant, Mr. Cermak," she said.

"Bill's got his guys looking for me," he
said. "Did you see any patrol cars at school?"

"I wasn't really paying attention."

"You look like shit."

A smile quirked at her lips. "Thanks,
Gid."

He grinned back. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Up all night practicing. With the
smoke."

"Smoke? Oh." He took a draw from his
cigarette. "You mean from your blood?"

"Yeah," she said. "I can control it when it
leaves my body."

"Wild." He turned away. "I went back to the
Spot and tried running it like Lily did."

She pulled her notebook out of her backpack.
"Are you any faster?"

"Not really," Gideon said. "But I was able
to run the whole half-mile without getting winded."

"That's new." Delilah noted the change in
her notebook.

"Top speed."

She put the notebook back in her pack. "Do
you want to get out of here?"

"Back to the Spot? More tests?"