Integration Read online

  “Fangs,” Angela whispered.

  Oh yeah, right. He’d forgotten to retract them. “Sorry,” he whispered back then pulled in his fangs. To the crowd, he said, “Show’s over, folks. Have a nice night.”

  No one said a word, and he wondered if they understood the meaning of the word gratitude. Sighing, he walked into the store, retrieved his basket then paid for his goods. Once outside, he asked Angela, “So, are we going home?”

  “I think we’ve done our good deed for tonight.” Her ice-blue eyes shone brightly.

  “The police don’t seem to appreciate our help.”

  It was a sore point with some of New York’s finest. As the government-established protectors of the city, naturally, they thought of themselves as being the sole purveyors of the law. They didn’t like it when a vigilante group, as certain members of the press had labeled the Nightmare Crew, took the law into their own hands and took care of business on the streets.

  To make things run more smoothly, Paul and his friends had held a number of meetings with the police and eventually forged an uneasy alliance. On the surface, they got their support from the chief of police and the commissioner, but, all the same, some patrolmen thought their power was being usurped.

  Angela turned to him and kissed him fondly on the cheek. “We’re doing our job. Never mind what they think of us. We’re doing the right thing.”

  Offering a grunt, he decided to let it go. Tired and hungry, he wanted nothing more than to call it an evening, but knew Angela had other plans in mind. “So, what’s on the menu?”

  “You know where I want to go.”

  Inwardly groaning, he nodded. Dancing… She loved dancing. “There’s a Goth club not far from here,” she said then nodded at the bag he held in his hands. “I’m sure they have a refrigerator there, and you can always buy something to eat there.”

  Paul hated dancing, but being with her made all the difference. He’d muddle through it. He usually did. “Okay, dancing it is.”

  She grabbed his hand, and they walked along the street. Some of the passersby gave them wary looks while others hurried along. Angela noticed the stares, though, and a frown briefly crossed her face as she echoed his earlier thought. “You’d think they’d be a little more appreciative, wouldn’t you?”

  Paul didn’t answer right away. The populace should have shown at least a little appreciation, but things didn’t change overnight. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to go home, but being with Angela… Well, he’d suffer through looking like a fool on the dance floor. It was a price he willingly paid. “I appreciate you,” he finally said.

  “And I love you for it,” she answered with a brilliant smile sans fangs. “C’mon. The club’s just up ahead.”

  Chapter One

  Meet the Press

  Manhattan

  Five minutes past midnight, December 1st

  The search for bad guys continued, as it had every night from when they’d started their crime-busting efforts. Tonight they’d decided to search for crime in the biggest potential hotspot of all. Paul waited in the shadows of an alley close to Times Square and watched for trouble. Chances were it would happen soon. A light coating of snow fell, but he ignored it and focused his attention on the crowd.

  In spite of the frigid temperature, the area was full of midnight revelers. Those who were partying, those who were drunk and those who simply wanted to get out and see the sights—everyone came to sample what the Big Apple had to offer. Young and old, rich and poor, they’d come here, the number one city for entertainment. It also happened to be one of the most crime-filled areas in North America.

  “Here comes some trouble,” he murmured, poking his head out briefly to take in three men who were making their way down the main thoroughfare. They were dressed in jeans and tight leather jackets, and the clothes didn’t hide their overdeveloped biceps and underdeveloped triceps. They had the look of weightlifters who didn’t know balance or proportion. They only wanted to look tough.

  Yeah, they were big—but he could take them. With his enhanced strength and speed, he could handle anything that came their way. He and Angela had taken on the baddest of the bad, but recently, with the exception of the night before, crime had decided to take a holiday to leave them with only small pickings. They’d busted up a few muggings, one attempted rape and had taken down two drug dealers, with nary a scratch to show for it.

  Of greater concern were some happenings on the national front. The news reports had shown a series of savage killings out in the greater Los Angeles area—fifteen so far. People burned to death, ripped apart and melted. The police had no answers. The press demanded them, and the public was scared. Paul had an idea of who was behind this—an old adversary—but he didn’t dare believe his old foe had resurfaced.

  Turning his mind back to the matter at hand and angling his gaze upward, he saw Angela stationed on a building a hundred feet away and two hundred feet off the ground. She favored heights, as she liked to swoop down on the unsuspecting scum that thought themselves immune from attack. As usual, she wore her leather outfit, along with her cape. He waved and got a quick wave in return.

  His gaze shifted to their targets. The men kept up their walk, striding along in a lats-out pose, the favored look of many weight trainers. They moved along the road, shoving others out of their way effortlessly.

  A few shocked pedestrians yelled variations on, “Hey, watch where you’re going. We’re walking here,” but the trio paid them no mind. With expressions of toughness—sneers accompanied by curled lips—they moved as if they owned the streets.

  “You don’t own anything,” Paul muttered, still checking the hustle and flow of human traffic along the sidewalks.

  Fortunately, no one bothered to look down the alley. Had they done so, they’d probably have screamed ‘monster’ or something of the four-letter variety. Even with his vaguely lupine features, he was human.

  Or was he? Since the change, roughly a year ago when he was just about to turn eighteen, he’d been wrestling with the ‘is he or isn’t he?’ scenario. It wasn’t easy being different.

  ****

  But being different made all the difference. Once ordinary, short and weak, he’d been a resident of an orphanage where his father, now dead, had dumped him. CliffsNotes—he’d hated living there. The environment had been decidedly unfriendly. A year ago, almost to the day, he’d taken flight from the orphanage, been attacked by a gang and had been rescued by someone decidedly unusual. After a series of events too complex to mull over in his mind again, he’d gone through the transformation and become one of them.

  At first it had been him, Angela, Ooze, Sandstorm and CF going off to fight crime and terrorize those who sought to terrorize others. They had been the mystery people, the ones who took down gangsters, drug dealers, petty thieves, potential rapists and more. The papers hadn’t known what to call them, then one of the more enterprising minds dubbed them the Nightmare Crew. It sounded good. It stuck and they’d soon became a force to reckon with, all four of them.

  No, check that, Paul mused. The two of them, him and Angela, fought crime. Sandstorm wasn’t really a joiner, and he’d gone off on his own a few months back to live in California. He didn’t speak, but formed words with his sandy body. I want to be on my own, he’d signed at the time in a series of shifting grains. If you need me, look in Baha. I’ll be there.

  Ooze controlled water, but he preferred to stay in their rented warehouse, creating new gizmos and studying the science of what they were. “Hey, I’m not much good against heat,” he’d once said. “Sunlamps just don’t do it for me. I can be of more help fixing up gadgets to protect you.”

  Protection was where it was at. The problem lay in how to protect those who needed it, and who would do it? The Nightmare Crew had started out working in New York—mainly the Bronx, moved out to Los Angeles after six months, then f
inally, after a series of encounters against other hybrids, moved back again to New York.

  There, they’d met with more suspicion than the first time around. People simply weren’t used to being rescued by those who looked different, as if they’d come out of some misbegotten horror tale. Oh, they accepted the help, but getting a ‘thank you’ proved to be a hard-won and often not achieved goal.

  “They’ll never accept us,” Angela had said in despair one day. “They think we’re freaks and mutants. You know we can’t go out in the daylight without someone saying something.” She’d swiveled her head to lock eyes with Paul. “You know that.”

  It was impossible to disagree with her. They’d gone out to meet the public in LA, done a few interviews, but fear and mistrust remained. “We want our city protected by the police,” many people had chanted, “not by freaks and mutants!”

  Los Angeles simply hadn’t been the place to be, so they’d moved back to New York. There, Paul had gotten in touch with someone from his orphanage days. Brother Max Dickinson, who preferred to be addressed only by his first name, asked Paul in an email to meet him at an address in Manhattan, near the Bowery. It won’t take very long, the email had said. I have something to show you.

  They’d driven over in their van at night. Paul had felt a little nervous at meeting his mentor again. He’d helped them when they’d had a little trouble in Los Angeles. He wondered why Max had agreed to help him so readily. “Here we are,” Ooze had said, pulling in at their destination.

  It had turned out to be an abandoned warehouse. Max had stood outside the front door. He’d changed in the interim six months. Formerly a large bearlike man, Max’s physique seemed to have shriveled, and his overcoat hung loosely on his frame.

  Max had nodded at everyone. “It’s good to see you all again.”

  “Uh, is something wrong, sir?” Paul had asked. From the sallow skin, hollow eyes and trembling hands, he’d been able to tell that something was most definitely wrong. He hadn’t wanted to be nosy, but Max had always been a friend as well as a mentor. Saying nothing in this situation would have been rude. “I know I shouldn’t be asking you this, but—”

  “Yes, I have cancer,” Max had said in a gentle way, cutting him off. “It’s pancreatic cancer. The doctors have given me six weeks at most.”

  There had been nothing to say…nothing that could have been said. Ooze had stared at the ground, and Angela had immediately gotten a look of concern on her face. “Uh, is there any kind of treatment they can do for you…?” Paul had begun, but his voice had trailed off when Max had shook his head.

  “Stem cell treatments, chemotherapy… They only delay the inevitable.” Max hadn’t sounded overly bothered by the fact of his impending demise. In fact, he’d sounded calm, almost too calm. “I’m ready. In the time I’ve got, I want to help, and getting you this”—he’d waved his hand at the warehouse—“is something I want to do.”

  Angela had bobbed her head. “Thank you,” she’d whispered. “But why are you helping us?”

  With a good deal of passion in his voice that belied his illness, Max had made it clear where he stood. “You do a lot of good in the world,” he’d answered, as he’d unlocked the door and showed them inside. The interior, stark and empty, was large enough to house approximately twenty cars. It consisted of four unadorned concrete walls, a concrete floor and overhead lighting. That had been it.

  “When you first came around, I asked myself if you were good or evil. It’s my upbringing, I guess,” he’d said and had offered a somewhat self-deprecating-sounding chuckle. The chuckle had soon turned into a ratchety cough, but he’d waved off any form of assistance. “I wondered if you were demons or something unholy. But then I realized you were here to help people. I saw what you did here around a year ago. I know about what happened in Los Angeles. And when Paul contacted me, I knew he was a good young man. I wasn’t wrong.”

  With an expansive gesture to indicate the room, he’d added, “This place belongs to one of the churches in the neighborhood, Saint Agnes’. It used to operate as a soup kitchen and homeless shelter, but the people in charge moved to a different place. They’ve agreed to let you use it. No strings attached.”

  He’d tossed a set of keys to Paul. “Make me proud of you. I’ve always been on your side. I always will be.”

  The door had closed softly behind him. “Go to him,” Angela had whispered. “He needs you.”

  Paul had run out into the night to where Max had been getting into a taxi. “Sir, uh, isn’t there anything I can do?” he’d asked. “I mean, my friend Ooze… He got a lot of scientific knowledge from the scientist who created him. He might be able to help—”

  Actually, he’d been thinking Ooze would be able to recreate a chamber. The chamber had the power to alter a person’s DNA and enhance their immune system and regenerative abilities. No reason why the process wouldn’t work in this case.

  “No, I’ve made my decision,” Max had interrupted in a firm voice. His hands had stopped shaking as he placed them on Paul’s shoulders. “No medicine, no life extension and no changes. I know what you went through. I was given one life, here, on Earth, and I’ve always tried to help. What you have to do is to remain on the side of the angels. That’s how you help others.”

  In a swift move, he’d turned away and had gotten into the taxi. The cab had roared off and Paul had stared after it, remorse flowing through him. He’d watched his father, the father he’d never really known, die from cancer not so long ago. Now the same thing was happening all over again…

  A touch of a hand on his shoulder had made him start. Angela had walked around to face him, her eyes locked on his. “He cared for you,” she’d said. “He cared for all of us. You remember he visited us when we lived out West. You should go to him when you have the chance.”

  “I will.”

  Paul had promised himself that much. Once back inside the warehouse, he’d shelved his personal feelings and asked Ooze, “What do you need?”

  “It’s going to be tough,” the answer had come. “What I need is specialized stuff, and I don’t think we’re going to find it in a dumpster.”

  They’d managed to find the basics through second-hand shops. Paul had gone in and bought what they’d had to have. The shopkeepers couldn’t have handled dealing with a watery guy in a containment suit or a vampire. It’d freak them out too much. As it was, their eyes had always held wariness, trepidation mixed with fear. Still, when they’d seen the cash—courtesy of the late Dr. Bolson—they’d become slightly friendlier, but only by a little.

  Furnishing the place had taken time, so between shifts of fighting crime, they’d bought furniture, as well as lengths of lumber, and they’d fashioned separate rooms. Angela had wanted her privacy, and Paul had needed his as well. Ooze had needed no special room, just a couple of buckets or access to a sink or free-flowing water supply.

  However, he had needed a lab area in which to work, but with no equipment, no centrifuges, microscopes or anything else, progress had been impossible. “Guys, I need to run tests,” he’d complained. “I know it’s hard to find, but keep an eye out, will you?”

  Fortune had smiled upon them one night a month after they’d moved in. Paul and Angela had arrived back shortly after midnight and found Ooze standing outside the warehouse next to five large wooden crates, each of them the size of a refrigerator. “Guess what I found? I heard a truck stop, came out to look and voilà.”

  “Open them up and let’s see,” Angela had suggested.

  Once they’d dragged their newfound cargo inside then opened it, they’d seen the latest in lab equipment—centrifuges, blood analyzers, electron microscopes and a DNA differentiator. Another crate had held the newest in night vision goggles, stun grenades, Tasers and more.

  The last crate had held only two items—a large flat-screen television and a computer, the latest model around, w
ith a twelve-gigabyte memory. Ooze had bubbled over with joy as he’d taken it out and lovingly caressed it with his oversized hands before setting it up. A note had been folded on top of the computer.

  “What does it say?” Paul had asked.

  “It’s the password,” Ooze had said then murmured, “This is Candy Land.”

  “Home defense is what it is,” Angela had muttered as she’d inspected the goods, running her hand over each one of them. She’d picked up a grenade, studied it and put it down. “What are we facing, an army?”

  “You heard about the killings out West?” Paul had asked. “Think our friend Peterson is still alive?”

  Her eyes had flashed an icy blue. “I’m betting on it. But who’s giving us this stuff?”

  “No return address,” Ooze had said as he hooked up the modem. Once done, he’d turned on the computer and began to check things out. “Yeah, this is going to help me a lot,” he’d stated with satisfaction.

  If Ooze hadn’t seemed overly concerned about who’d given them their latest bounty, Paul had been. However, more important than the mysterious benefactor was who’d committed the latest string of murders. The name Peterson kept running through his mind. The former owner of Rallan, a genetics research company, Andres Peterson, a scientist and researcher in his own right, had undergone a similar mutation to Paul’s.

  However, his mutation had gone too far, and he’d turned into a monster. In a final battle deep within a subterranean lab in a mountainous area, Paul had managed to defeat him and two other hybrids. One of them had been Catherine, another vampire, a hideously deformed version of Angela. The other was called Hija, a hybrid who shot fire from his hands.

  Angela had torn out Catherine’s throat and ended her reign of terror, but they’d never found Peterson’s or Hija’s bodies. Since they had no evidence, it only seemed they were still alive and well and committing mayhem. However, no one had any proof. The police beefed up patrols, but it hadn’t stopped the public from getting antsy, though, and worst of all, it hadn’t stopped the killings.