U P TO my elbows, then my shoulders, in this monster’s mouth. Its huge, shiny eyes were only inches from my face, and the whirling tentacles at its maw seemed to be gibbering at me in hideous, hellish laughter. There was no doubt in this creature’s mind: I was lunch, a hatred-fueled snack.

Fine. If it was going to pull, then I was going to push.

I closed my eyes and felt the dark energies of the city, the fuel for our fires. Like a ham radio, my mind found the core frequency, the seething black heart of the city’s hate-flow, and tuned into it. Be a conduit, Locke. Use it. Your powers are the same as his, just a different form. Attach one to the other.

There. The pain, the evil. Every drop of innocent blood, every life shattered.

Focus it. Move it through your heart and into his.

My costume flared, grew, twisted. With one great push, I used every ounce of darkness I had and fired it into this beast’s obsidian heart with one concentrated blast.

And then, fireworks.

My hands exploded in shadows, sending crackling energy and burnt sludgelike tentacle flesh firing into the sky. The bolts of obsidian light rippled through the future-Blacklight’s system, burning away and absorbing every ounce of power he was deriving from the city’s black core. There was the sound of a thousand people screaming in anguish, and then the monster flew away, its flesh cracking and blowing away with the river breeze as ash, nothing more. I reeled back, taking a deep breath-I’d never released such a concentrated amount of energy before, and I’d never absorbed so much at one time.

My costume rippled and shook. So much darkness. So much avarice and guilt and hatred, pulsing throughout me. I was a god-no, God, the one, the only. I was power and strength, pure and unfiltered. It was incredible.

I stood, watching his slumped form, and remembered the three words he had spoken. The ones that mattered the most.

“I killed her.”

The costume twitched. I knew what I had to do.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THERE’S THE SATISFYING tension of my knuckles hitting meat and bone, followed by the stiffening pain down my arm of the pressure from the punch, and then it’s dynamite, explosive, out of sight and into the stands.

Casey reels and falls to the sidewalk, but rolls on his back and scrambles to his feet just as I begin to shake off the pain in my arm. I feel my throat already begin to bruise at the points where his fingers gripped it, and the back of my head throbs from being slammed into a wall. My balance feels fucked-up. I’m pretty sure my face is bleeding. Wooo. Party.

“Stop it!” shrieks Renée, looking angrily between the two of us. “Stop it right now!”

Doesn’t matter what she says. The words enter my ears, but they’re indistinguishable and meaningless, like a bird or a rodent. From the moment that first swing was thrown, this was no longer about talking or having a good cry. This was about pain and anguish, violence and tears and hatred. Casey is completely absorbed by the black, and as hard as I’ve tried to contain it, the venom has taken over completely. We aren’t two friends arguing-we’re Frankenstein and the Wolf Man, two monsters ready to tear each other apart for the simple reason that the one doesn’t deserve to be alive in the presence of the other.

The point is, me and Casey are overdue to mindlessly beat the shit out of each other. It was the way we’d met, and the only thing we knew.

Casey charges me and throws me to the ground. I throw my arm around his head as we hit the concrete, and start punching him in the back and kidneys, but it’s no use, because he knocks the wind out of me with one strong fist to the stomach. The world swims. I will not pass out. As I try to regain my breath, he lets out a scream and punches me hard in the temple. I stumble headfirst into a wall and then hit the ground again, the concrete cheese-grating my face. White again. Fuzzy.

GET UP.

The venom grabs my limbs, twisting them into movements of precise violence. As he’s bent over me, savoring my pain, I lean back on my tailbone and send the toe of my boot arching right across his chin. His head snaps around as blood starts drooling down his lower lip, but that’s time enough for me to get back on my feet.

My mind is a cacophony of barked orders. Do as much damage as possible. Make him hurt. Make him bleed. Don’t do so until he stops saying “please.” Go for the eyes. The throat. Knees.

I throw a right hook at Casey’s jaw, and he takes it like a bitch, an arch of blood whipping widely out of his mouth. As he staggers backward, I throw all my weight into my shoulder and send it firing into his solar plexus. I manage to take him off his feet, give him a few seconds of air before he slams loudly into the side of a parked car. The alarm goes off, a high-pitched rhythmic wail. It’s incredibly appropriate.

I suddenly realize that, disgustingly, I’m yelling, “MOTHERFUCKER! TAKE IT, MOTHERFUCKER! TAKE IT!” which is about the least dignified thing anyone could do in a fight, but whatever, this is the venom talking, not me. I change it to just guttural throat-noises, things that sound like I’m scraping my own windpipe with a violin string. I feel my fist swing out and collide with his mouth, his lips and teeth becoming a squishy mishmash with hard edges; I actually feel blood drip off my knuckles as I pull my hand back. I make a note of it and get ready to swing again-

Pain. The worst kind of pain.

Casey’s knee hits my groin and doesn’t move, just keeps pushing harder and harder. I yelp, feeling my testes lunge up into my intestines, and curl over on my side, clutching my aching manhood.

Heh, aching manhood. It’s like a line out of a romance nov-

He’s up on his feet and kicks me in the stomach before I can reach out and grab his leg. I feel my gut cave in on two sides now, from between my legs and from its front, and something in the back of my mind prepares itself for the loss of my stomach contents. I lean my head back, grit my teeth, put out my hands, and wait for a second kick.

“STOP IT RIGHT NOW!” screams Renée, launching herself onto Casey’s back. He sways and stumbles like a lush, caught in midkick and now trying to regain his balance while a harpy bites his shoulder, screams into his ear, drags her nails across his scalp. A crowd has gathered around us, watching with something between horror and amusement on their faces. For the first time in a while, clarity explodes into my mind-Jesus, what are we doing?

Casey reaches around his shoulder, grabs Renée by her shirt, and in a single swift, brutal motion, whips her around his front and tosses her onto the ground. She lands with a thud and a small cry.

Clarity vanishes. The venom is everything. The pain in my groin and face slowly, piece by piece, flows out of the rest of my body and nestles itself in my heart.

I’m on my feet. Casey growls obscenities at me. I don’t listen. I send the back of my hand booming right into his cheek, smashing his face to the side with a small shower of blood and spit. He stumbles back a few steps, wipes off his eyes, lets out a bestial war cry, and then charges me.

And for once, everything slows down. Normally, the venom doesn’t act this way. There’s none of the car-crash-slow-motion fear that one gets when something goes horribly wrong before your eyes. But this time, things change. This time, I watch intently, knowing just what will happen.

Casey charges me. I sidestep as he pulls back his fist. His knuckles nearly graze my cheek, but just miss it. And with Casey swinging at air, I take one step forward and send my fist arching up into where his stomach and chest meet.