Perennial by Edward M. Erdelac

Author:Edward M. Erdelac
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: superhero, action, adventure
Publisher: Edward M. Erdelac
Published: 2021-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jim didn’t know how long he’d been lying curled up in the car.

One time his Mom and Dad had left him in the backseat overnight. It had been the last leg home from their camping trip to South Dakokta and despite his mother’s arguments, Dad had pounded down a thermos of coffee and sworn up and down he could make it back home by morning.

It was pleasant sleeping curled up in the backseat. Dad let him unbuckle his seatbelt so he could lie across the seats, though Mom hated that too. He would drift off listening to the rumble of the road beneath his ear and the hum of the engine, the wind outside the window.

He’d awoken afraid of warm sunlight on the hot seat, thinking his Dad had fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed in the night and they’d been lying in some ditch somewhere, only to find the car parked in their own driveway.

He’d stumbled blearily into the house to find his parents at breakfast. They hadn’t wanted to wake him.

But it wasn’t the backseat of their car he’d been sleeping in this time. It was the floor of the elevator, and he remembered his parents weren’t waiting for him at any breakfast table. They were dead.

He whanged his head on the railing of the elevator. All the bodily pain hit him, the raw burns on his back, the hole in his side, the general exhaustion of the fight with Karasu.

The elevator was stopped.

“Thought I lost you, kid. How you doing?”

The Brown Thrasher, close in his ear.

He curled on the floor in his own blood, not wanting to move.

“PAN? CAN YOU GO ON?”

That androgynous electric voice on the PA.

“Where am I?” Pan muttered into his gloved hand so the cameras wouldn’t see him speaking.

“Stopped somewhere between the fourteenth and fifteenth floors. The gymnasium’s right above you, and I can make out one target on thermal imaging. He’s waiting there for you. No idea yet what he can do. That last asshole wasn’t War Gods, so could be anybody.”

He sat slowly up and hung his head between his knees.

“Is he dead? Karasu?”

“He’s alive, but he’s out of commission.”

“CAN YOU STAND?”

He wasn’t sure. Nothing felt broken.

“STAND UP, PAN, AND LET ME KNOW YOU CAN GO ON, OR SLIGHTLY AND THOSE CHILDREN ARE THROUGH. FINISHED.”

Pan coughed and sighed heavily into his gloved hands.

“Are they even alive?” he muttered.

“TI says yes,” The Thrasher answered in his ear. “I got twenty four heat signatures.”

Christ. Who was this monster?

Pan blinked his eyes and looked down at the floor of the car, dark with his blood. He found his knife and slipped it into its scabbard.

He pushed his back against the wall and eased himself slowly to his feet. Fresh blood leaked from the wound in his side, but only from the front. Apparently the hot teppan had cauterized the hole in his back.

“THAT’S IT. GOOD. GOOOOOD. OK. GOING UP.”

The elevator car lurched and ascended. That slight motion nearly pitched him off his

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