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  THE INVINCIBLES

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, places, incidents, and dialogue are the product of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real, or if real, are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Michael McNichols

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  The Zharmae Publishing Press, L.L.C.

  5638 Lake Murray Blvd, Suite 217

  La Mesa, California 91942

  www.zharmae.com

  FIRST EDITION

  Published in Print and Digital formats in the United States of America

  The golden Z logo, and the TZPP logo are trademarks of

  The Zharmae Publishing Press, L.L.C.

  The Invincibles

  Michael McNichols

  Seattle | Las Vegas | San Diego | Los Angeles | Spokane

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Three

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Credits

  PROLOGUE: DARLING DARK ANGEL

  Nightshadow rode the wind down to the rooftop, gliding on the thin, bat-like wings stretched out underneath his suit’s armpits. Creeping up to the skylight, he peered into the old, abandoned movie studio. Black flames swirled across the padded, skin-tight duramax leather armor that made up his stealthy-gray wing-suit. A pale blurry-white moon emblem whirled across the chest. His ghostly gray mask resembled a demonic gargoyle’s face with jagged, pock-holed eyes. Dressed as he was, Nightshadow blended almost perfectly into the murky midnight swallowing up the city around him.

  Inside the studio, a scene had been set on an old soundstage. A classic 1950’s rusty-red Cadillac cruised by a backdrop of white, bright suburban houses and dull green lawns. Dummies dressed up as teenagers in letterman’s jackets packed into the car. Burn marks smudged and deformed their blank faces. A dummy mailman with a knife in his head waved to them. Two mothers riddled with bullet holes pushed baby carriages filled with rotten, rancid-smelling meat past the car. Cheap, glow-in-the-dark plastic skeletons took up the rows and rows of seats in the audience.

  After finding the latch, Nightshadow gently opened the skylight and climbed nimbly through it. Soundlessly, he dropped down to the floor. His mask’s night-vision lens automatically switched on, and he scanned the entire soundstage. Layers of dust caked the studio and choked up the air. A trail of heavy footprints led away backstage where a blood-crusted pair of child’s underwear lay. Escrima fighting sticks slipped out of Nightshadow’s forearm guards down into his hands. He twirled them around and tightened his grip.

  For the past week, he’d been working non-stop, devoting all his time and energy into this investigation. He’d scoured every criminal haunt and dive he knew, roughed up all his usual contacts and their friends, and broken even more bones than usual. The police and FBI had helped some, but rules and regulations kept them from doing more. A couple of other superheroes had joined in on the hunt as well. Hyperman, Silver Seraph, and Dynamo-Man swept through the city, block by block. The Briar Bowman and Red Scoundrel hit the streets. Much to everyone’s shock, the Spider-Specter even came out of retirement to search around downtown. Only Nightshadow seemed to be getting anywhere though, knowing which of the Reaper’s old lackeys to track down and bloody to get them talking. One tip after another eventually brought him here to this studio. He chose not to call for back up.

  The Death Reaper planned for everything and loved having super-beings and the authorities trip all over themselves trying to catch him. Despite all their amazing abilities and resources and good intentions, most superheroes never managed to find the Reaper or halt his schemes. The majority of the time, their bungled efforts only made things worse, though that wasn’t completely their fault. The Reaper tended to stay a step or two ahead of everyone except Nightshadow.

  They’d been playing their twisted little game for seventeen long, bone-aching, heart-wearying years now. The Death Reaper went out of his way to antagonize Nightshadow, designing all his crimes to challenge and provoke him. He always made it personal, and Nightshadow saw the Reaper as a burden he alone had to bear. After all, only he understood the Reaper and only he ever stopped him, though there were always casualties, much to his shame and chagrin.

  So far, Nightshadow hadn’t spotted any explosives, tripwires, or other traps around the studio. Though his suit rendered him invisible to surveillance cameras, he hadn’t sighted any of those either. Slowly, he swung the backstage door open. Inside, the hallway was trashed. Mirror glass shards gutted the walls. Old, pungent-smelling trash and clothes heaped up in and out of the dressing rooms. Crumpled papers littered the floor everywhere.

  Nightshadow picked up a torn sheet of paper and saw it was a page torn from a script. He speed-read through it. The italicized stage directions described him skulking around backstage and coming upon a training bra. Sure enough, a padded little bra hung from a nail in the wall farther down the hallway, torn up and stained with dried, coppery blood.

  An uneasy tingle flared up the back of Nightshadow’s neck. He hated cases when children were hurt or threatened. One way or another, they never turned out well. The fact that the Death Reaper was somehow telegraphing his movements also put him on edge.

  Thinking he heard a sound, Nightshadow stalked around a corner and crouched down ready to fight. However, he found nothing but more festering trash. Farther down the hall, an old, rotting doorway plastered with stickers of shiny silver stars loomed. A battered, broken door still hung loosely from its hinges. Splashed above the frame in loud red paint, a message went, “Nightshadow, come on down!” The Death Reaper had signed it with a smiley skull face.

  Nightshadow peered down into the doorway. A chalky, candelabra-lit stone stairway arched away from the crooked doorframe down into the depths below the studio. Reaching into his utility belt, he grabbed a couple of smoke and gas pellets and a flash grenade. If the kidnapped children were actually down there, this was going to make them choke, gag, and get sick. Still, it couldn’t be worse than what they’d already been through.

  He threw the pellets and grenade before charging downstairs.

  ***


  The flash grenade went up in a shuddering series of dazzling-hot, eye-searing explosions. The pellets sparked, crackled, and flared loud as firecrackers. Gritty black smoke and white vapory tear gas seeped about. A horrible, vomit-inducing stench whipped up.

  Dozens of young, tired voices cried out, but the Death Reaper roared with high-pitched hyena laughter. Nightshadow’s mask protected him from the flash and gas, so he dove down into the midst of the chaos he’d created.

  His mask’s visor registered the heat outlines of the children through the smoke and gas. Grouped together, they sat packed into a corner, the dozen of them all tied up, but out of the way, at least for now. Like a wraith, the Reaper flittered about through the smoke and gas, too quick to pin down, tapping Nightshadow on the shoulder, pinching his arm, and slapping his back. He always darted away before Nightshadow could respond. Left and right, Nightshadow turned and twisted, lashing out with his fighting sticks at shadows in the smoke, desperately trying to strike the Reaper down. His finger pressed a button, and one escrima stick fired a round of pentagram-shaped, katana-sharp ninja stars. They pounded loudly into a stone wall, just missing the Reaper as he ducked away.

  Bounding over to check on the children, Nightshadow stopped just short as some of the smoke cleared. He went numb and almost became sick at what he saw. This couldn’t be! It couldn’t!

  The boys and girls smiled with rotten, ugly teeth and had pasty, lopsided skulls painted onto their faces. Decked out in small white Nazi uniforms with black armbands displaying cackling skulls, they snickered and saluted him.

  Nightshadow found himself at a sudden loss, and not just due to the children’s appearance. He’d memorized the faces of the kidnapped children and none of them were here. Where was the next generation of the city’s elite? The sons and daughters of the most powerful politicians, lawyers, doctors, and businessmen? Who were these deformed children he was now looking at and when had they been taken? What had been done to them?

  Leviathan-like, the children rose up all at once, letting their ropes fall to the floor. They hadn’t actually been bound up at all. They breathed the smoke and tear gas in and out like it was nothing, and snorted and giggled. As a pack, they rushed Nightshadow, grabbing and climbing onto him, clawing, biting, and hitting him with their tiny, bony fists.

  The shock of what was happening overwhelmed Nightshadow and made him too slow to react. So the children knocked him over and piled up on top. A couple slapped the fighting sticks out of his hands, and they rolled noisily away across the floor. Nightshadow triggered a charge in his utility belt, and the resulting electric shock sent most of the children reeling back. A couple still held tenaciously on, convulsing and enduring the electro-shock, but he managed to bat them away with his hands.

  Meanwhile, the Death Reaper howled with unholy laughter, slapping his knees at the apparent hilarity from across the room. Glaring at him, Nightshadow staggered back up to his feet. Like a magic trick, one of Nightshadow’s escrima fighting sticks slid down out of the Death Reaper’s sleeve. He aimed and fired too quickly for Nightshadow to dodge.

  Ninja stars slammed into him. He stumbled about with little sharp pentagrams sticking out of his head and side. The escrima stick then came hurling through the air and cracked right into his temple. He hit the floor. Chuckling, the Reaper picked the fighting stick back up and started wailing down on Nightshadow with it. Nightshadow passed out not long afterwards.

  ***

  With a skull-spiking headache, Nightshadow stirred awake and groaned. He felt like one overly sweaty, man-sized bruise. The Death Reaper’s thrashing had cracked his mask’s visor lens. That, plus the knocks he’d taken to the head, had turned his eyesight into a blurry mess. Worse, his mouth tasted like a gasoline-soaked bag of cotton balls.

  Despite what had to be a powerful concussion, he blinked and focused. He found himself tied to a spit rod like a hunk of roast beef, turning over a churning toxic blue fire. The wispy flames nicked across a miniature, room-sized replica of Salome City, setting each small, sharp-pointed little skyscraper ablaze.

  The replica city stood upon a massive soundstage with blood-red curtains draping down at the back. Hot white lights splashed down from above. Mounted cameras shot the scene from all angles. The kidnapped kids took up every seat in the audience. Despite being tied up and gagged, many still cried and shook. A little reaper child fidgeted in the seat next to each, sloppily finger-painting skulls onto their sunken, shock-whitened faces.

  Nightshadow’s spit rod stopped turning. The Death Reaper noisily banged a short ladder down in front of Nightshadow at the city’s edge. He climbed up top. Flames wreathed the ladder’s legs, but the Reaper paid them no heed. His hideous face loomed over Nightshadow like a deformed albino moon.

  Along with his white Nazi uniform, he wore shiny black gloves and knee-high boots. A short, messy, dyed black Mohawk topped his head. Unlike the children, he had actually carved a skull onto his face and cut off his lips. Nonetheless, an ugly, deformed grin stayed perpetually plastered onto his mouth, showing off his glistening, star-white teeth.

  Cradling his hands under his chin, he gazed adoringly down upon Nightshadow. “You know how hard it is to get that mask of yours off?” he asked, rapping his knuckles against it. “I tried a crowbar AND pliers! The thing still wouldn’t budge! I got that damn utility belt off though! That gets me a gold star, doesn’t it? Even if I couldn’t crack the stupid thing open?”

  Nightshadow glanced down at the small flaming city below. His utility belt draped across the streets and burned. Luckily, Nightshadow had fireproofed its contents. Otherwise, all his gas and smoke pellets, miniature explosives, and flash grenades would be going up.

  The Reaper sighed. “I only wanted to see that handsome face of yours,” he purred. Sick, unnatural yellow swirled around in the irises of his big, love-struck eyes. “Still, I got you this time, didn’t I? You fell right into the trap and now I can do whatever I want with you, sweetling!”

  He lightly caressed Nightshadow’s chest and Nightshadow shuddered. “Yep!” The Reaper cackled. “I win! Finally! Once and for all! And the prize, accomplishment, and glory I get at the end of our long, long struggle? Why love, of course!”

  Above the audience seats, a sign dropped down and on it the word “Applause” glowed. The little reaper children bashed their stubby little hands together.

  On top of his ladder, the Death Reaper took a bow and then another. “Thank you! Thank you! No, thank you!” He snickered and licked the torn edges of his mouth where his lips used to be.

  “Bet you’re wondering about our LIVE studio audience?” he asked Nightshadow, jerking his thumb back at the children. “You thought I had only a baker’s dozen of the city’s most prominent boys and girls? Only the ones with parents that have the money and connections to ransack the whole damn world for them because they know I have them? Because they know I don’t want a ransom but was looking to play with them instead? No, there was more. There have always been more!”

  He snorted and chuckled. Another sign dropped down above the audience, this one reading, “Laugh.” The reaper children guffawed with eerie, echoing shrieks.

  “These weren’t the first kids I’ve snatched, you know,” the Reaper said. “No, I’ve been collecting for years and years! Even long before you and I ever met! From this city here and that city there. From the suburbs you big hero types never really bother to patrol. I take them in, groom them, and sometimes I let them grow up and rejoin society. They live their boring, insipid, torturous little lives, dreaming of the days when they lived down in the dark with Big Daddy Death Reaper. Then one day I need them, and they’re always there for me. Always! Policemen, lawyers, maids, building owners, aldermen, morticians, scientists, soccer moms, actors, and whatever else Daddy needs! They run EVERYTHING and love to obey Daddy, oh yeah!”

  The Death Reaper slowly and meaningfully rubbed his hands together. “You of all people should have known that I couldn’t have pulled off a
ll my zany schemes alone! Of course, I had help! Lots and lots of it!”

  He paused and gestured with his hands. “Come on now. I can’t see the shocked look on your pretty face with that mask. What do you have to say? What’s your oh-so-clever retort? Go ahead! Tell me! What’s the one detail that I’ve missed? The one small thing I overlooked? What do you see that I don’t?”

  His neck cracking, Nightshadow shifted his head toward the Death Reaper. “Light,” he croaked.

  “Light?” The Death Reaper asked.

  “V-V-V-Voice identify and activate! LIGHT!”

  Dots brightened across the full moon on Nightshadow’s chest and flared. A pulsing, powerful beam of fluorescent orange light flushed up right into the Death Reaper’s face. It shocked and scared him, sending him tumbling down off the ladder to the floor, and the ladder toppled down across the small, blue-burning miniature city.

  Having snuck his lock picks out of his gloves and freed himself while the Reaper was ranting, Nightshadow shrugged off his chains and grabbed onto the spit rod. Two-handedly, he swung himself up and over. After pirouetting with Olympic grace through the air, he caught the Reaper with a side kick to the face as he struggled back up to his feet. That knocked the Reaper into a camera, which crashed down to the floor with him.

  Nightshadow eyed the little reaper children up in the audience. He shot his search light up at them. It swallowed them up in its fierce glow. The reaper children wailed and screamed, hiding behind their own hands or ducking down to the floor.

  “RUN AWAY!” Nightshadow hoarsely shouted.

  Fleeing, the reaper children fumbled and crawled all over each other and the bound, helpless kids down the aisles. Doors flapped open and slammed closed after them. Nightshadow intended to catch up with them later. Their little legs wouldn’t carry them far and he should find tracking them down fairly easy. They were still kids after all. For now, at least, they had left the other children alone.