The Wounded World
A Story of Mantra
By Aladdin
Originally written 2006
Posted April 21, 2022

Edited by Christopher Leeson
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CHAPTER 21

FRENEMIES

Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache:
Do be my enemy for friendship's sake.  

William Blake
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There was something that I had to tell Strike, something that I’d been putting off for too long.

"Brandon, there’s something you have to know, but I’m not sure how to say it right. As bad as things are, there are worse things coming."

"For you?"

"For me, too. But I’m what I’m saying is that things can get very bad for you."

"What things?"

"Life-destroying things. Maybe if I warn you, you can avoid disaster."

"So tell me."

"A good part of New York City is going to be blasted this coming Sunday evening. The effects are going to be like a small nuclear missile strike."

That opened his eyes. "Who's making the hit?"

"No one knows. But right after it happens, you and some – companions – are going to be seen near the blast zone and you’ll be blamed for causing it."

"What companions?"

"The only names I saw reported were yours – as Strike -- and Amber Hunt’s."

"Amber Hunt? The nutcase who almost destroyed the world last year?"

"The same."

"How do you know this? You‘ve never been a prognosticator before. Prediction is my job."

"I’ve been in the future – as late as next Thursday night."

"You’ve got quite a story to tell then."

"I do, but that has to wait until after we get this job done.

"Not so fast! You’ve just said that something horrific is going down. Shouldn’t we be figuring out how to stop it?"

"All I know is what I’ve read in the papers. Maybe you did try to stop it, but whatever you did, it failed. I’m just telling you that it’ll be lose-lose situation if you go blundering in there. You’ll save nobody, but you’ll be treated as a world-class terrorist."

"Grim," he muttered. "But how am I expected to take this time-travel story on faith?"

"I’ll tell you everything, but we don’t have the time for it right now."

"Are you sure that you have your priorities straight?"

"If you don’t like the job, I’ll do it alone,” I said, taking another glance at Necromantra’s lair.

"We definitely need to talk as soon as possible," Strike said.

"That’s for sure. But, for now, do you have anything in your pack that could soften up Necromantra? If I have to take her on in top form, the outcome will be like flipping a coin."

"I’ve got a knockout gas," he replied. "It’s dispensed by a hose and works best inside an enclosed space.

"That should do. Bring it along."

He went to get his gear from his cycle’s carrier. I went out ahead, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. Tark, c0ming up behind, was surprisingly light on his feet for a man of his size and weight. We stopped under the dense shadow beside the brick warehouse. The windows were board-covered, but one sealed window had a knothole to see through. I took a peek, but the glass was too filthy dirty make out anything in the dark interior.

Still determined not to use magic, I started to pry off one of the boards. As usual, I Eden Blake’s muscle power proved to be pathetic. "Here, let me help," Brandon said and began tearing the nails out with little apparent effort.

"Do you have a glass cutter?" I asked.

"I never leave home without one." The mercenary took the tool out of his side-pack and cut a small disk from the windowpane. While he stood back with the tank, I manipulated the dispensing tube.

This I pushed through the perferated windowpane and then signaled Tark to open the valve. The gas came out hissing. Should the toxin knock Necromantra out, or at least reduce her capacity for self-defense, I intended to go in and slice off her head. In the eyes of the law, I would be committing murder. But I saw it as answering to a much older law than that of the United States of America.

The gassing had hardly begun before I sensed a magical surge, like a powerful generator switching on.

"Look out!" I warned Strike.

I sprang into the air and tossed a force field around myself. It was more than for my protection; I wanted to give my enemy something so strong to sense that she’d overlook Strike. The death-witch would be able to assassinate him with a single, magic-backed, concentrated thought.

I ascended with Necromantra’s sorcery sputtering behind me like an Independence Day sparkler. "You bitch!" she telepathically yelled, "You'd actually try to kill me with poison?"

"It wasn’t poison," I shouted back. "I was just softening you up."

"When did you turn into a back-shooter, Lukasz? You’re contemptible!"

"Look who’s talking," I said.

I deliberately made my ascent erratic, keeping Necromantra from drawing a clear bead on me. Once we were high enough to minimize possible damage to anything or anybody at ground level, I swung around to face her. I touched the magical ring on my belt, activated it to take the form of the Sword of Fangs.

Now I had a battle royal on my hands, but I was game for it! This feud had to be ended before the psychotic witch could do any more harm. Thanasi was a deadly foe, but a small part of me was glad that my fight would now be an honorable one.

Necromantra sent a rippling laugh through the air. "What do you expect to accomplish? You ran me through with that butter knife once already and the wound barely slowed me down."

I braced for action. I knew that Thanasi often hurled abuse at a foe, to get him off guard before his strike to kill.

True to form, that spiked whip of hers came whirring my way. My magical shield saved my life and I tossed a crackling bolt at her -- one energized by the incandescent power of my hatred. The rage of friends who fall out often rises to a psychotic degree. That’s why civil wars are so brutal.

The bolt I threw could have burned a hole through a stone wall, but – as Strike had warned -- Necromantra was no pushover. My missile flared uselessly against her concentrated force field.

My enemy – my false daughter – then came back strong, hurling a fireball like a pitcher throws a softball. I cast a sizzler right back at her. After that, the brawl devolved into a free-for-all with too much dodging, lunging and striking to remember. The kill-shots we were trading rattled the neighborhood windows with the fury of wind and storm. To any onlooker, our death-duel might have been mistaken for a fireworks display given on the Fourth of July.

I wasn't at my peak, but Necromantra didn’t seem to be either. Probably she had gotten a tiny whiff of Tark’s debilitating gas. A dirty trick, but a necessary one.

I heard yelling below. We must have looked a sight, two athletic-looking sorceresses with lots of skin showing and going at each other like a pair of foxy boxers. In the old days, the two of us would have resembled a pair of grunts from Wrestlemania. The existing situation was absolutely absurd, even to me.

Reflex and instinct guided me in my fight for life. Being evenly matched against my nemesis, a single wrong move could have ended the battle for one of us. My wild exertions were raising my fatigue off the charts. Some of the energy coming at me was bleeding through my force-shield like electrical shocks. I had no choice but to weaken my rear-side defense and reinforced my front against her attacks. Maybe she was doing the same thing.

Ours was a war of attrition, for sure. I think we both were determined to end feud here and now. It seemed like the outcome would depend on whose empowering rage was the stronger.

But I had one thing working against me. The woman I fought was the same person whom I had loved like a brother for hundreds of years. That was a fact that sapped away some of my rage and I couldn’t afford that. I wondered if it could possibly be the same for Necromantra.

Suddenly I was tossed by a jarring blast. Through my shock, I could see Thanasi free-falling toward the warehouse roof. She struck it like a sack of meal, to roll down its pitch and plummet over eve trough – to bounce upon the concrete walk below. I hung there in mid hair, too rattled to believe that the ordeal was so unexpectedly over. My deadly enemy been reduced to a pile of broken bones and I had had nothing to do with it. Was the shooter a friend or a foe?

#

I descended, wary of ambush. Strike was there on the ground, his rocket-launcher on his shoulder. Alighting alongside Necromantra's broken body, I saw blood running from her nose and mouth and shattered bones protruding through bruised and abraded skin. The woman looked too battered to live, but my magical receptors told me that Necromantra was still holding on to a flicker of life.

Strike’s boots clunked up behind me. "I didn't know if you'd want me to butt in," he huffed, breathless, "but like you said, we have to treat this as pest control."

I nodded, a response from the reptilian side of my brain. My feelings were entirely unfocused; everything around me felt unreal. My emotions, so overheated a moment before, now lay like a dead lump inside me. I wasn’t sure whether I was angry or grateful for what Strike had done.

Lukasz! You’re in danger! I suddenly realized.

I flashed into my Blackbird outfit. As soon as I'd done so, I felt a little weaker. People were running up. Had any of them recognized Mantra before I’d changed?

A low moan drew my attention. Aghast, I realized that Thanasi had always been able to repair what should be mortal wounds with breathtaking rapidity. Though reduced to pathetic human wreckage, she was going to be on her feet and at my throat again in a couple minutes -- if I permitted it.

"Let me finish this, Blackbird," the mercenary rumbled.

"No!" I said.

In a way, Brandon had become the friend that Thanasi could no longer be. I didn’t want to give him the cup of murder-guilt meant for me. But, at the same time, like a drowning person, I was seeing flashes from the past, images from before Thanasi had become my bitterest enemy. At that instant, it was hard to remember that those days were dead and gone. If she rose, this terrible ordeal was going to be renewed -- unless I took action.

That’s when I deliberately reached out to the barbarian that I still remained under the skin – the barbarian that I had been born to be.

I raised the Sword of Fangs, letting it hang there for a couple seconds, as if stuck to the sky. In that tiny space something told me that without Thanasi in my life there was going to be nothing left of the obscenely long life that I had already lived. His death would leave Lukasz absolutely alone in the universe, a sole survivor of a past of bewildering complexity. I didn’t want that but….

I don’t even remember striking the blow. The next thing I knew, Necromantra's head was rolling from her slim neck while her severed arteries pumped scalding gore over my thigh-high boots. My nerves crashed. I had just slain my daughter, my friend, as well as my bitterest enemy. The finality of what I had done, what I had given up left, me horrified. I shuddered to feel the splaxh of my child’s blood turning cold. I’d never felt so befouled. How I could ever feel clean again?

Thanasi, why? I mentally asked the corpse.

A collective gasp broke the stillness. The crowd had just witnessed a Dark-Age vengeance-killing and was shocked, as would be all soft modern people. Theirs was a place much different from mine. They couldn’t understand the terrible world into which I had been born, a world in which I had learned to fight at the utmost every day just to stay alive.

With dismay, I realized that these people were seeing that Blackbird was a murderer. She would always carry the foulness of my act. I had to make her disappear and create some new alter-ego and the thought of that made me sorrow for her as much as for Thanasi. I had killed a part of myself and I would mourn her, too.

I took one last look at my enemy, my former friend. What affected me even more was that I was looking down at the dead flesh of my own flesh.

Why did did it have to be this way, Marinna? I whispered.

#

Okay, I was in a bad state, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t remember that Strike and I had to get away. We ran in a circle to avoid the crowd and made for our cycle. My shame kept me from looking at my comrade’s face. When we drew up on opposite sides of the vehicle, we kept silent for a few uncomfortable seconds.

"We’d better get out of here," he said.

He mounted his machine and I climbed on behind him like an automaton. He took us away, weaving through the residential streets behind Hollywood Boulevard. Before long, Strike braked in the shadow of cultivated dogwood trees.

"Feeling better?" he asked, his masked face looking over his shoulder.

"Don't be funny."

"What happens now?"

What indeed? I had vowed to put an enemy’s corpse on top of my son’s grave, but by doing that I done him any honor? I shut my eyes, trying not to see the red stains still flooding through my memory. Why couldn’t I stop remembering Thanasi as my friend? Why did he have to become my enemy? What she had told me about her motives didn’t jive and her words had made her sound mad. One thing that I did know was that Necromantra’s bloody head was going to haunt my nightmares for as long as I lived.

But even in that strait, I knew that nightmares for worse were coming down the tube.

Soon, so very soon, I would have to confront Evie and let her know how her brother had died. Would she hate me? Would that still be true even if I told her that I had taken revenge against her mother’s murderer? But what I feared worst was that it might make her smile. The last thing I ever wanted to see was that kind of smile on a child’s face.

If a child could be made to smile about something like that was one who could never be a child again.

Why was my life like this? Why did my every attempt to protect Eve Blake always go wrong?

"You really seem to be out of things, Mantra," Strike said. "Anything I can do?"

I shook my head. "I have to call in to Aladdin, but I told Wrath that I didn’t have a phone with me."

"For safety, you’d better not use mine, either. There’s a cafe. Maybe you can phone from there."

I flashed into my Eden Blake clothes in the next instant, something that Strike couldn’t do. He waited under the dogwoods while I went inside. You can’t find a place with a public phone anymore, but the manager on duty let use his personal cell phone because I said it was an emergency. Also, he must have thought that I looked like hell.

The Aladdin Outside Desk patched me through to Wrath.

"Where in hell did you disappear to?" demanded the A-Team commander.

"I-It's hard to explain," I croaked, fighting down a lump in my throat.

"Blake, are you all right?" asked Wrath.

"F-Fine," I said. "I’ve had a rough time of it."

"What happened?"

I had a lie ready to go. "After you left Evie and me in the van, I suddenly heard Gus's voice calling. He was ordering me to come to him. I couldn't hold myself back. I told Evie to stay with the driver, and then took off into the dark. I didn’t even know where I was supposed to be going. The next thing I knew, I was lying at a construction site bound and gagged. I don’t know how long it took; I kept blacking out. But suddenly I was loose. The bonds must have been magical because they’d dissolved suddenly. I got up and ran away as quickly as I could."

"What’s your location?"

"I don’t know. I’ll have to ask somebody."

Several seconds of silence followed. "I hate to be the one to tell you, Mrs. Blake," Tunney finally said. "But we've intercepted a police call. It’s very bad news."

"About Gus?" I asked, bracing myself.

"Yes." Then he told me what I already knew.

"W-Where's Evie?" I stammered.

"She's still with us. I thought it’ld be best if we kept her with the team."

"Y-Yes, thank you," I replied. "Does Evie know yet?"

"No. Telling a little girl that sort of thing is no job for a stranger. When we link up, I'll be willing to stand with you -- when you talk to her, I mean."

"How did Gus...die?" I asked.

"Two big-name ultras were waiting by his body. Hardcase and Yrial, that Indian girl from the Strangers."

"Did they attack the boy?" I asked, letting anguish seep into my tone.

"The exchanges we intercepted says that the two of them pursued the boy from the school, intending to apprehend him for arson. He’s supposed to have fought back when they were crossing Runnymede Park. Their contention is that they used no lethal force, but that the little guy passed out and died from some sort of seizure."

"D-Do you think that's how it really happened?"

"Damned if I know. For the time being, it’s in the hands of the city police. The body is being taken to the Woodland Hills Medical Center. I’ll notify the Company about what we know so far. What do you want me to do -- about your little girl, I mean?"

"Would you take her over to her grandmother's house? That’s where I intend to go next." I gave him the address.

"You don’t sound so good, Mrs. Blake. Should we come pick you up?"

"No," I said. "I can deal with this. I’ll summon a cab from here."

"What phone are you using?" he asked.

"I’m calling from a cafe." I next found myself listening to a mutter of voices in Wrath’s background. When Tunney’s voice returned, it was crisp with excitement:

"Something else has gone down."

"What?"

"There was a sighting of two Mantra-style babes fighting an aerial battle over West Hollywood. One of them fits the description of the flying woman we sighted near the school. The other one was a redhead with a snake tattoo on her leg."

"Two new Mantras? That doesn't make sense."

"There must be a whole sorority of them. Anyway, the gals were going at each other like lunatics. The snake girl was blasted out of the air by some sort of explosion. Then the one in black followed her down and cut off her head. Oh, and the killer had an accomplice, a heavily-armed male in a mask. One witness said that his outfit looked like Strike’s. We'll check that out. The suits will be glad to have an excuse to go after that guy."

"I-I’m sorry," I said. "I just can't talk anymore."

"I believe it. As soon as we can see clear, we’ll take the girl over to your grandma’s place."

"Good."

"See you soon. Out." Wrath disconnected.

I handed the phone back to the manager. I wouldn’t need a phone to contact Yrial.

I rejoined Tark outdoors, under the trees. "I need to contact Yrial," I told him.

I made a telepathic linkup with the Stranger and she brought me up to speed. She and Hardcase were still at the Canoga Park police department answering questions. Besides what I already knew, there wasn’t much more the sorceress could tell me.

I told Tark the little information that I’d learned.

He gave me a thoughtful frown. "Do you want a ride over to your mother’s place?"

I shook my head. "No, you should go to cover. One of the bystanders tipped off the police that Blackbird’s accomplice looked like Strike."

"Damn! More complications."

"But, like I’ve said, you’ve got worse problems."

I brought up New York again and told him to go inactive for the next couple days. My advice was to stay at home in his civilian identity and not go out for any reason, except to establish an alibi. And I emphasized that he shouldn’t be caught anywhere within five hundred miles of New York state.

"You still haven’t explained how you got to be time-traveling," he said.

"I’ll give you a call when I can afford the time, but right now I have to get Evie back from Aladdin. Whatever you do, be smart! I don’t have so many friends that I can afford to lose any more."

He nodded gravely, without agreeing to heed my advice. With a mumbled, “See you later,” Strike mounted and rode off. I stood watching him go, his pale exhaust darkening to invisibility within the September night.

TO BE CONCLUDED IN CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE