CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Midnight Madness, Part 1

The bald man in the crisp maroon suit and multicolored polka-dot tie drifted forward so that the moonlight filtering from beyond the hole in the roof pushed back against the shadows that clung to him.

It was definitely him, Sam knew. He couldn’t forget that pale angular face with the pair of crimson eyes underneath those long, thin eyebrows. He remembered the straight nose with its flaring nostrils and that mouth beneath it which was at this moment grinning in a way that made Sam’s skin crawl.

“Look who it is,” the bald man said in that high-pitched voice of his. “If it isn’t my old friend, caw-caw,” he’d mimicked a crow’s sound on that last bit, “and his… new sidekick?”

The bald man raised a thin eyebrow while his creepy smile turned upside down.

“Why, Crow, you wound me… Here I thought we had something special,” he added, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “And yet I find you in the dead of night cavorting with someone else?”

He stepped further into the light, and it was only then that Sam noticed that he was dragging an arm along with him.

“Oh, gods,” Sam breathed. “That’s…”

No, it wasn’t just an arm. Sam wasn’t squeamish like that. But it was an arm attached to a man whose face was so bruised he looked like he’d been beaten black and blue by an entire mob of people.

Sam recognized the uniform, and he knew instinctively that the bald man was dragging along one of the police officers who’d stood guard outside the Met’s front doors. If the man looked that bad, Sam could only guess at the condition of his friends.

“Let him go!” Sam snapped.

He couldn’t help himself because Sam was a healer at heart and he couldn’t bear to see life get treated in such a foul way.

“Oo~~oh, this one’s got spunk, Crow,” the bald man chuckled. “Wherever did you find such a greenhorn?”

Crow-Man’s non-verbal response was to reach into his utility belt and pull out something Sam barely glimpsed before Crow-Man threw it forward. It whistled through the air and embedded itself on the ground right in front of the laughing villain.

“Feather-shaped throwing knife,” Sam, who couldn’t help but fanboy at that moment, briefly forgot how dangerous the situation really was. “Cool…”

A second after the three-inch blade hit the blackened piece of floor, Crow-Man formed a Mudra-style hand gesture for a bird with his gloved fingers. Then, as if responding to this hand sign, the shadows on the ground rose to wrap around the throwing knife and changed its shape into that of a black-feathered bird whose beak was facing up toward the bald man.

Sam had heard of it before, the Shadow Crow that Crow-Man could summon to do his bidding. From what he knew of this delta-level power, it had several capabilities, one of which Sam was just about to witness.

The Shadow Crow emitted a localized high-pitched “cawing” sound that caused the bald man to stumble forward as if he’d suddenly lost his sense of balance.

Go, kid! Chiron's disembodied voice urged.

Sam didn’t need telling as he was already dashing toward the villain with his right hand reaching out for Cranium Smasher’s handle behind him.

The Shadow Crow continued to emit that debilitating ‘cawing sound’ just long enough for Sam to cross the short stretch of distance between him and the bald man, and with his hammer held high, Sam roared, “I told you to let him go!”

He swung Cranium Smasher down on the villain’s head—and hit nothing but air because the body before him disappeared in a shower of shimmering sparks, which Sam knew was the telltale signs of a low-level illusion.

Sam skidded to a stop while confusion flickered across his face. “He was a fake?”

Where the bald man had stood, there was now a chunk of a blackened pillar that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Even more confusing was the barely breathing body lying on the ground, which had remained after the bald man’s disappearance. This might have meant the police officer at least was real.

Sam’s eyes darted right and then left. There, over by the left corner of the atrium and just in front of a gigantic pile of rubble, a shimmering form materialized—and Sam saw an amused look on the villain’s face as he stepped out from the illusion that hid him.

“I’m over here, new guy,” the bald man laughed.

It was a laughter that was short-lived for Crow-Man suddenly appeared within striking distance of this laughing villain like he’d already guessed where the bald man would appear.

Crow-Man sent a fist flying at the bald man’s face, but he deftly dodged it at the last second by sliding underneath the outstretched arm and placing himself in a position to take Crow-Man’s back.

This sudden reversal didn’t worry Sam, however, because he’d experienced Crow-Man’s fighting skills first-hand and knew that taking his back didn’t really put him at a disadvantage. Plus, there was the Shadow Crow too. Sam noticed that it had lifted off the floor and was now soaring in the air above its master.

They stood back to back for a long moment while the bald man kept up the banter.

“Always straight to the violence,” he commented. “We really should add more foreplay to our little tango, don’t you think?”

“Shut it, Trickster,” Crow-Man growled.

Crow-Man sent his left elbow toward the back of the bald man’s head, but the villain dodged this attack. It wasn’t over yet, however, as Crow-Man quickly followed up with a backward swinging right fist.

The bald man raised his left arm in time to block this second attack too. With his other hand, he grabbed Crow-Man’s outstretched arm and yanked him backward, causing the hero to lose his footing and twirl around.

If it were Sam, this counter would have put him at a disadvantage, but Crow-Man simply used this spinning momentum to his benefit. He let it carry him around while raising his right leg high so he could send a spinning heel kick smashing into the bald man’s jaw.

The impact knocked the villain back and put him right in the flight path of the Shadow Crow, which had dived at that exact moment to pierce the bald man in his side with its sharp beak. Or it would have if the villain’s body didn’t just disappear in another shower of shimmering sparks.

Something heavy and charred looking fell on the ground right where the bald man had disappeared. Meanwhile, a second shimmering form materialized behind Crow-Man with outstretched fingers reaching out for his back. The bald man might have grasped Crow-Man’s neck tightly in his fingers too if the Shadow Crow hadn’t looped around its master to slice at the air between Crow-Man and the sneaky villain.

The threat of its passage forced the bald man back a step, giving Crow-Man just enough room to turn around and launch another series of jab and straight combos at this villain.

As for Sam, well, Sam wasn’t doing much of anything because he’d been standing as still as a statue since he heard Crow-Man call the bald man Trickster.

“Trickster,” It was his first word since stiffening up. “But… that’s impossible. The Trickster’s dead.”

No, it couldn’t have just been someone else taking up the ‘Trickster’ moniker either. The priestesses of the gods often preached that names held power, especially the monikers that are given to the gifted whether they be heroes or villains. It couldn’t just be taken up by another either but needed to be passed on to a proper successor. Why this was necessary was unclear to Sam, although he knew it had something to do with the gods accepting who the moniker belonged to. Otherwise, they might just ignore the pretender, and to be truly ignored by the gods meant the loss of one’s gift. No one wanted that. Not even the villains.

Sam’s eyes searched for any similarity between the bald man who’d just received another dose of Crow-Man’s fist to the face of that villain he’d met over three years ago.

“It can’t be the Trickster,” Sam whispered.

At first glance, the two seemed as different to each other as night and day. The Trickster from Sam’s memories wasn’t bald or had a deathly pale complexion, but a man of sandy brown hair who had freckles on his brown face. Also, Sam’s trickster was perhaps a head shorter than the tall bald man who was at that moment laughing hysterically despite getting pummeled by Crow-Man’s fists.

“It can’t be…” Sam repeated just before he glimpsed the fierceness in the bald man’s expression that sort of reminded him of the zeal in the Trickster’s own look as he railed against the unfairness of society to a captive audience. “No way…”

Sam! It was the first time the master ever called him by name. Wake up, lame-brain! You’ve got a job to do!

The master’s urgent tone caused the agitation that held Sam tight to break, allowing sense to return to him.

The officer needs your help, kid, the master urged.

Sam glanced down and saw that the police officer the villain—Sam refused to think of him by that other name—had dragged around was still there. As he watched the chest heave and fall erratically, Sam realized that he really wasn’t an illusion.

Illusion, that was the Trickster’s power too. Although his ability was nowhere near as powerful as the villain exchanging blows with Crow-Man, Sam realized, while he fell to his knees and checked the police officer’s neck for a pulse.

“He’s definitely still alive,” Sam reported.

Sam inspected the man’s injuries, noting the bruises all over his face and neck. His right arm was broken in two places too.

“There’s a lot of damage here,” he added.

Sam ripped open the front of the man’s uniform next, and he saw that there was major bruising on the chest area as well.

“Holy Zeus… it’s like he was run over by a car,” Sam breathed.

His hands moved down to the man’s right leg where he could see a broken bone sticking out of the blood-soaked pants. As he lowered his face to inspect this injury, the iron scent of blood made Sam’s nose wrinkle.

“This is going to take a lot of my life force to heal…” he deduced.

That would be a problem, Sam knew, because he might need more of his life force to help Crow-Man against the villain. This thought sent Sam’s gaze darting toward the ongoing fistfight to his left.

The battle raged on with both hero and villain pulling off some decent close-quarters-combat moves on each other. Crow-Man had more technique to his attacks, and he had the Shadow Crow supporting him too, but the bald man’s chaotic way of dodging and then counterattacking at random kept Crow-Man on his toes.

“There’s just no way he’s the Trickster I met before,” Sam decided. “That Trickster got beat by a single punch…”

His mind drifted back to that moment where Sam’s mentor sent the Trickster flying straight into that experimental lab. He was sure no one could have survived the colorful explosion that followed.

Sam made a split-second decision to let Crow-Man handle the enemy while he would try his best to save the police officer’s life. And so he laid his hands on the man’s chest and chanted, “Healing Hand,” to trade his life-force to heal the man’s injuries.

“It’s alright now,” Sam said as his gaze traveled down to the nametag stitched to the man’s uniform, “I’ll save you, Officer Schmidt.”