Naked, Stoned, and Stabbed by Bradley Denton

Author:Bradley Denton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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One of the enraged nats grabbed Adesina around her knees, and he rose a few feet with her as she struggled to ascend. Then a second nat grabbed the first one, and a third grabbed the second. Two or three more joined in, and they started pulling Adesina back toward the asphalt.

I took a step toward her as Peter came abreast of me—but then a silvery bubble the size of a grapefruit shot up from the center of the nat cluster, and it caught the first maniac in the spine. He shrieked and lost his grip on Adesina, and the whole string collapsed. Adesina zipped upward.

“Stay there, Peter!” she cried. “I’ll get you!” The street was full of shrieks, and more and more sirens were coming closer. I heard a helicopter closing in. But Morpho Girl’s voice rang out over all the noise.

Peter twisted sideways and skittered to a halt a few yards ahead of me. His axle expanded as he came to a stop, his wheel splitting in two again.

Adesina flew toward us, and she spotted me.

“Freddie!” she called. “You’re okay!”

Peter looked back at me. “Freddie?” Then he recognized me and rolled closer. “You’re the dude who blew the holes in the wall and ceiling! Nice work!”

I was nonplussed, and I became excessively polite. “Er, well, thank you very much indeed. And you did a fine job helping others exit. Well done. Peter, is it?”

Liam stomped past us into the middle of the street. “Write each other a couple a’ epic poems, why don’tcher,” he said, and knocked down two charging maniacs.

“Thank you!” Peter said to Liam. Then he turned back to me. “It’s Peter, but some of my friends call me Segway.” He pointed at my chest. “Cool tattoo. What happened to your shirt?”

I gestured toward another crazed nat Liam was fighting off, and then at the screaming mob in the plaza. They were coming closer and closer to overwhelming the thin blue lines protecting the jokers, and some of the cops had started swinging their batons. I saw one make contact, and the nat went down to the bricks. Which enraged those around him even further.

“A riot happened to my shirt,” I said.

Peter grimaced. “Yeah, we need to get out of here. I was just at Houston Street, and the cops up there said SWAT teams are on the way. They don’t know what’s made the nats go berserk, so they’re just gonna zip-tie everyone and take ’em to the Tombs. But I don’t see how they can do it without a bloodbath.” He tapped his helmet. “One of the cops tossed this to me when I started back. They don’t expect the night to end well.”

Morpho Girl landed between us, her wings brushing me as she threw her arms around Peter’s neck. “Thanks for finally answering my texts!” She sounded irritated, but the neck-hug said something else.

“Hey, I was kinda busy!” Peter said. “None of the people I took out of the Ballroom went crazy, so I had to help them get clear.

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