Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

It had started with a chase, a simple chase but one of Rick’s engineering. He had driven Atlas to the point of madness. He had ruined his plans and destroyed his purpose for being – and so he would do everything he could to destroy every single one of them. Simply, brutally and with his bare hands.

As the chaos of battle began Atlas’ only and prime focus was on Rick – which was exactly where he wanted it. His first slam of fists against the ground produced a fissure that nearly got him, but Rick was one step ahead and flung himself to one side. The worst it did was knock them around a little bit inside the bunker where PM and his aides were no doubt wondering why they could hear eighties Cher blaring from outside.

He hoped they wouldn’t get curious.

He turned and ran away from the main battle, heading into one of the tiny side streets in the warren that was the city centre within the walls. He felt another thunderous reverberation and once more dived to one side to avoid the fissure opening in the ground. He was successful he knew not only because of not being swallowed into the ground but also because of the roar of impotent frustration from his chaser.

He led him on a merry dance, turning left and right through ginnels and gullies, alleyways both back and front. They passed charity shops, tearooms, quite a few of the many, many pubs in the town centre. Through it all the blundering bulldozing fury of the Dominion followed him, shattering walls, glass shopfronts and the occasionally cobbled ground beneath his feet.

Eventually, he got close to where he was planning, hooking a right through a particularly narrow crack that had him momentarily worried he’d get stuck. After all, wouldn’t it be embarrassing to die at the hands of your lover’s clone because of an excess of doughnuts? It’d be bloody typical.

He saw it in front of him, the bridge and the river. Atlas may have only been seconds behind but he didn’t allow that to affect him. He calmed his mind, he concentrated and he drew on something he’d never tried before. He called to the molecules in the water, hearing the siren song of his element sweet in the air. An instrument he didn’t know but played through muscle memory. The moment was sowed, as these things often are, his concerns falling away to the needs of another Rick.

When the milky spread began to appear in the water below he knew he’d been successful. He could hear the roaring fury of the Titan behind him, coming forth not to conquer but to destroy. He grinned, knowing how it would look and threw himself over the railing.

When Atlas reached the bank of the river he glared down at him in surprise, where Rick now stood upon an undulating sea of frozen river, grinning up as if happy to meet an old friend.

“You’re so happy fighting on your element, fancy joining me on mine?” he asked him, a casual invitation.

“It will make no difference,” Atlas sneered at him, “I can crush you with my bare hands.”

“Well, many men have promised me that but most have been found wanting,” he threw back, “Had my back put out a couple of times though. Care to join us? Global warming means this’ll be gone shortly.”

The god’s face dropped, became business-like once more. He leapt across the railing and landed hard on the solid ice a few feet away.

“I will never get you,” Atlas told him, “You are one of the strangest people I have ever met, certainly the most irritating for aeons, and yet you somehow still have the cocky arrogance of a child.”

“Um, people in spangly armour shouldn’t throw stones,” Rick threw back, “I mean, seriously, who was your designer? It’s like the love child of disco and Warcraft.”

“You know I don’t get any of these cultural references, right?”

“Yeah, you didn’t miss much with disco.”

Having had enough Atlas finally launched at him, unleashing a flurry of blows that Rick sidestepped with ease. A raging bull might have more power but often was a victim of its own clumsiness. He was crystal clear, focused.

The thumping of the helicopter blades brought him around, the spotlight letting him know that the world was watching him. Or at least whatever bored world was on social media at that moment in time, getting pissed off with their slow broadband speed. They watched them fight, brutal and swift.

He was pile-driven into the ice but it extended down. It did not break or spew, a spider-web of cracks simply wounded through the block. Maybe in a few days, when the warm summer weather would turn the river banks into the largest ever cocktail glass. He held him there, glaring into his eyes.

“I’m going to enjoy this…”

“Ooh, that’s cold.”

“Was that a joke?”

“No, a distraction.”

Rick pulled himself from his grip, pushing himself back across the slick surface of the ice like some kind of curling champion. Atlas remained in place his feet having been frozen into the surface of the river. He tugged but they were pretty well in there.

“This won’t hold me for long,” he snarled.

“No, it doesn’t have to.”

An object clattered across the ice skidding to a stop under Rick’s boot. Andrew, Sandy, Angel and Louise stood on the river bank nearby, looking over the railing. They too had come to bear witness to this final act. The final moments. The object was a rifle – one of those Atlas’ people had brought themselves. Ironic.

“How do you know that will kill me?” Atlas sneered at him.

Rick picked it up, checked the chamber and fired one round into his shoulder. Atlas roared in fury, blood spurting out of the wound. He realised two things - the armour wasn’t made for modern weapons. And Gods could bleed.

“It’ll kill you,” he confirmed and levelled the barrel. “I think we’ll say that one’s for Drake.” He spared a glance up. She had arrived, been watching and waiting as planned, standing on the bridge over the river. She had been his second ace-in-the-hole before they’d left Home Base.

“You can never get rid of War,” he growled, “You can kill this vessel but you can never stop me. I am coming, relentless, waiting for you to have one bad day.”

“You know you have to do it,” Andrew’s voice came to him from the side-lines. Rick looked at him, “I understand more than anyone else why. I forgive you.”

“No you don’t, but thanks,” he answered him, before turning his attention back to Atlas.

His face was Ben’s face, beautiful, lined only by the efforts of battle. It was a face he’d seen before he went to sleep on so many nights. A face he’d loved, stroked, held in his hands when he died. It was the face of a man who’d deserved more than the shitty hand he’d been dealt. Even if it wasn’t the same one as before.

It was being contorted now by the hate beneath the skin, by the being who called itself a God, but it was still his face.

“You can’t do it,” Atlas realised, “You’re still so weak, you still see him don’t you?”

“Every day,” Rick answered. As he tossed away the rifle, skittering across the ice to parts unknown, he looked up at Drake, “Do you have it?”

She nodded, producing with her one unslung hand a familiar-looking orb, removed from the seat of Atlantis days before and retrieved swiftly from the MOO storage facility they had been attempting to take it into. He had pled his case for why he needed it and she had relented. Although whether her boss agreed, that was for her to deal with.

It glowed brightly in the night as if eagerly awoken by the presence of its master. She gently, underhand, tossed it down to him. It hung suspended almost unnaturally long before gravity brought it down into Rick’s waiting arms. Atlas’ look was weary, almost as if he knew what was coming. Rick knew he’d made the right call.

“This body is blank, right? Tabula Rasa,” he started, twirling the orb that suddenly seemed so very fragile in his hands. “You’re just the invader, the – what did you call it Drake? The possessor? An echo that’s clawed its way into a vessel from whatever other side there is out there. You are a dead God, forgotten about in time, now just a myth – and you only appeared when the vessel and the orb came together.”

“You have no way of knowing what the consequences will be,” Atlas warned, “What makes you think it’ll turn out the way you want?”

Rick grinned.

“Hope.”

Atlas struggled but he brought it down with all his force, crushing the orb and winking out its light against the frozen ice below. Crystal met metal, there was an almighty crunch and the whole thing crumbled into dust.

The God roared in fury, the connection severed. He was gone. What was left, looking up into Rick’s eyes with all the confusion he saw only a week ago in a Spanish hospital, was not Him. He then slumped and landed hard on the ice, completely unconscious.

Rick looked up into the whirling blades of the helicopter, into the bright light of the waiting world and could think of just one thing to say,

“It was him!”