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Part Two: Elements
“… and have I mentioned that I really hate magic?”
Lex didn’t try to turn his head. “Repeatedly. And if you intend to keep on, might I suggest some synonyms?” Even moving his jaw to speak was painful. He really hated magic too.
“Hey,” the girl said, surprised. “You’re awake.”
He stopped trying to flex his wrists and ankles against his bonds. It wasn’t doing much good in any event. “Yes.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“I don’t know. How often have you been saying you hate magic?”
There was a pause. “Every five minutes or so, I guess.” The voice was familiar. It was some minor Justice Leaguer, one who only occasionally gave interviews. Young, maybe mid-twenties –
Despite the sticky black ropes (he devoutly hoped they were ropes) holding him in the air rather like a ham in a smokehouse, he managed to wrench his head about twenty degrees in her direction, enough to see the perky blonde hair and appalling red-and-blue costume, though the effect of both was diminished by the dirt and gunk smeared liberally on her. “Then I’ve been conscious for about fifteen minutes, Supergirl.”
It had been a long time – nearly half her life, in fact – since he’d seen her in person, but she looked much the same. Not unlike Clark, who’d looked twenty-five for roughly a quarter century, moving from surprisingly mature to surprisingly boyish. Supergirl merely looked gorgeous. Reflexively, he checked to see if he was still wearing his ring. He was, and it was still on its standard setting, twisted shut.
“You weren’t at the fight, Senator Luthor.”
Lex had been trying to remember how he’d been attacked since he woke up. He’d had a moment of agitation, thinking that he’d already missed at least half a day of campaign stops, two weeks before Super Tuesday. Then he realized that if he got out of this there’d be a sympathy bump in the polls, so mortal danger was his main concern. “The last thing I remember was leaving my office at around ten-thirty at night on Wednesday the fourteenth of February.”
“Um, right,” Supergirl said, evidently put off by all the detail. Once she’d been knocked out enough times, she’d learn better. Right now, she seemed largely unimpressed to be hanging in an unknown location like a puppet waiting for its master. “So he got me before that, when he was trashing League HQ looking for something. What does he want with you? Maybe one of your campaign proposals put a bug up his butt?”
She shared her cousin’s deep-seated belief that Lex always knew what was going on. “It might help if I knew who he was,” he suggested.
He saw a blue-under-black shoulder twitch in what was meant to be a shrug. “Dunno. Guy in a big red robe with white trim, big cuffs, kinda like that Santa Claus guy. Only balding, with black hair and totally ridiculous sideburns. Oh, and big gold earrings.” As if the earrings would help disambiguate the man in question from all the other men like that running around doing magic.
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” he said, and concentrated on getting the best possible view of their circumstances. Lex couldn’t see much other than more black ropes, hanging between them as if they grew from the ceiling, which was lost in darkness above them. The only source of light was behind him somewhere, yellow but nothing like sunlight. The chill air was heavy with the smell of rotting paper – it was sweet, almost like raisin bread. He knew it from the lower levels of Princeton’s library, where no one else ever went. If their captor was a magician, he smelled like the theoretical kind.
“You’re sure the inhibition of your powers is magical, not Kryptonite-based?” he asked.
He could see her toss her head in his peripheral vision. “I know what Kryptonite feels like. This isn’t it. Plus, do you know any non-magical way of getting big black spider-leggy things – ew, just creeped myself out – big black pipe cleaners to tie people up?”
“That’s classified,” he said, just on general principles. “But I take your point. If he’s a magic-user, that at least explains the site of the attack on me. LuthorCorp Tower is very well warded against magic, among other things.” After all, once the walls were lined with lead, it was a minor additional expense to have protective sigils carved into the metal. “There are numerous powerful devices stored inside, and I wouldn’t be surprised if our captor wanted access to one or more of them.”
That failed to explain Supergirl’s presence, but she didn’t comment on the omission.
“Good, you’re both awake,” a man said pleasantly from behind him.
The ropes holding them swiveled, turning them like pieces of wood on a lathe, and the ones dangling from above moved out of the way like curtains lifting. The overall effect was biological and very, very disturbing.
What they revealed was arguably worse – a man just as Supergirl had described, accompanied by an assortment of minions dressed in hooded capes of varying colors. The hoods were thrown back.
They didn’t have faces.
Lex couldn’t help rearing back in his bonds. The uncanniness of their appearance, the space where faces should be as flat as if they’d been planed, was so great it made his stomach twist. They weren’t even ovals, the way a mannequin’s head might be, but had all the variations and imperfections of ordinary human heads, except for the missing features.
A magician who could do this to the people under his control, if they were even people, was frightening indeed.
“I am Effron the Sorcerer,” the man announced, “mystic of Veliathan. I demand the return of my Golden Eye.”
“Oh good,” Supergirl said. “Another James Bond villain.”
Assuming the description was not metaphorical, Lex had a pretty good idea what object Effron meant. Superman had acquired it in some battle – with Effron, it now appeared likely – and had stored it at League HQ, at least until it had been pilfered by a minor superhero who fell on hard times (or really was pushed, but that was a detail) and sold it to Lex. He’d never figured out how it worked or what exactly it did, though his researchers believed there were mind-control possibilities. If it worked by turning people into faceless puppets, he was glad they’d never gotten any further.
Lex looked him up and down – a black-haired Santa Claus was about right, except not that jolly – and nodded. He’d negotiated with worse. “What are you offering?”
Effron looked caught between anger and mere pique. “Your life, and the life of the girl. She will be my surety.” The faceless minions shuffled their feet, as if frightened for Supergirl. He could see her better from this new angle, and there wasn’t a molecule of fright in her.
Regardless, this wasn’t a hard game to play. “What guarantee do I have that you’ll release her if I bring you the Golden Eye?” Not that he would – if Effron were stupid enough to let him go, he’d let the Justice League take care of the rescue.
The sorceror smiled. “You have my word.” He even sounded sincere, neither smug nor self-righteous; he sounded like any businessman who wanted to form a long-term working relationship. Lex would almost have preferred it if he’d elaborated with more standard villain-talk; despite the surface annoyance of it, bad dialogue was often useful guidance.
Lex made a show of considering the offer. “I don’t appreciate blackmail,” he said at last. “But I can deal with it.”
“Very well,” Effron said –
“Wait, wait, wait,” Supergirl piped up, her angry voice carrying well through the chamber. “You’re going to let Luthor go and keep me as a hostage? I don’t know how it works on Velcrothon or whatever, but here enemies don’t make good ransom material.”
“Enemies?” Effron turned to her, his robes swinging slightly, giving him the air of a man forced to answer the door in his bathrobe.
“Yeah,” Supergirl said, making it sound like ‘duh.’ “If he doublecrosses you and you hurt me, you’re just taking care of one of his problems for him. Kind of a win-win.”
Effron looked back at Lex. “Kara,” he said to Supergirl, ignoring Effron, “it’s not worth it.” She gaped at him. “I won’t take the risk of losing you.”
The sorcerer glared at them in turn. Supergirl rolled her eyes. “We are not secret lovers! I don’t know what Luthor’s game is. But it’s his word – you know, Lex Luthor, notorious bad guy and politician, which means he’s a lying liar – versus mine. I’m a member of the Justice League!”
Lex saw Effron make up his mind to believe her. Lex sighed and began surreptitiously wriggling in his bonds again, in case the sorceror’s recent manipulation had loosened something. “I see a stunning inability to bluff runs in the family.”
Effron moved closer, examining his apparently extraneous captive. Supergirl couldn’t move, but her face showed her disgust. “News flash, Luthor: I’m not on your side.”
“Since we’re both tied up, you should at least consider the possibility –”
At this point, Effron intervened, perhaps miffed at being nearly ignored. “The augury said quite clearly that the Kryptonian was the love of your life, the one you’d do anything to save.”
Lex shrugged as best he could. “I defy augury.”
Effron scowled.
“Wait a second,” Supergirl said, with the tone of someone who’s just had a very bright idea. “The Kryptonian?”
Lex tried very hard not to wince. Inconvenient insights must also run in the family. Effron stared at him, Supergirl stared at him, and he had the distinct impression that the faceless minions were also staring at him, at least metaphorically.
“Dude, you’re telling me I was kidnapped by homophobia?”
“Technically, it’s heteronormativity,” Lex said, but she was already going on –
“I cannot believe this. I seriously cannot – oh, this is just the best gossip in the history of ever, and I am tied up in some sorcerer’s cavern?”
“Shut up!” Effron snarled, and a black strand wrapped itself around Supergirl’s mouth. Lex hoped it tasted like spider leg.
Supergirl was of course right that Lex would never trade five dollars, much less a priceless magical artifact, to rescue her. But what she hadn’t seemed to think through was that Effron’s understanding of that truth – which Lex’s plan of walking out of there would have delayed – was likely to prove injurious to her health. Effron was presently too discombobulated to realize that keeping Supergirl around had no upsides, but he wouldn’t overlook that for long.
“I don’t think you’ll do quite as well with a second pass through the Justice League,” Lex said lightly. “So now we really do have matters to negotiate.” Supergirl was making appalled protest noises from behind her gag, but Effron turned away from her to focus on Lex.
“I sincerely doubt it,” Effron said. “Did you think I had no alternate plans?
“Your wards have defeated my magic thus far. But my subjects –“ he waved one hand in an arc – “can physically attack your precious tower. The cost will be high, but once I regain the Eye I can replenish their ranks from your own Metropolis, and rule over a greater kingdom. Perhaps I will even use your tower as my seat.”
“I know something I want to do with your seat,” Supergirl said, having somehow managed to wriggle free of the gag; both Effron and Lex looked at her askance. She was still struggling against the black rope – rope, Lex kept reassuring himself, it was rope – to no avail.
“Pathetic Kryptonian,” Effron said – this was good, he was getting grandiose and that usually meant sloppy – “my magic feeds on your powers.” He snapped his fingers and the gag returned to its place.
Turning away from her, Effron made some complicated hand motions, and masks appeared in his minions’ hands. As one, they raised the masks to their faces, where they adhered with no apparent attachments. The magic made the masks lifelike, only slightly inhuman in their fixity. Seeing them only for a moment, one might mistake them for truth. If Effron were smarter, he’d keep his peons faceless and therefore paralyzingly horrifying. Lex was willing to bet that some significant percentage of people would break down, unable to resist, from mere exposure to those terrifying absences.
The minions assembled in a group, each holding some sort of gun. Lex had been hoping that the robes portended edged rather than distance weapons, but he still had faith in LuthorCorp security. With another set of showy flourishes, Effron stamped his foot, and a hole opened in reality. Sunlight streamed through. Lex could see the entrance to Metropolis Park, and passing traffic – it was the view from the front of LuthorCorp Tower, though oddly not a view of LuthorCorp Tower. The masked minions would have to go through, then turn and walk around the portal to begin the attack. Lex felt a renewed surge of confidence, though he knew it was a bad idea to base predictions on opponents’ flaws.
And in the event he hated the mis-orientation of the portal, because he had no idea what was happening in Metropolis. Havoc was being wreaked, that was clear from the occasional car or chunk of building that came flying past their line of sight, but he had no information on the overall situation. The portal showed only the visual, so he couldn’t hear anything helpful either. Effron kept sending his people through. For a man who considered the cost of an attack on LuthorCorp high, he had a huge number of bodies in his army, and the line waiting to go through the portal didn’t seem to be getting shorter.
After about ten minutes of fighting, Superman flashed by the opening, then returned a moment later. He started tossing minions aside as they emerged. Then he flew directly at the portal, trying to reverse the transfer, but it was evidently a one-way portal and all he accomplished was bouncing off in a way that Lex couldn’t help but find humorous.
Superman, these days, acted like everything Lex touched turned to Kryptonite. He hadn’t been this close to LuthorCorp Tower since – well, since everything changed. The break seemed to have worked for him; the Justice League had never been more effective or more beloved with Superman at the helm.
Demonstrating the benefits of teamwork, more superheroes arrived soon thereafter. They had a brief shouted conversation with Superman as they fought with the army streaming through the portal. It looked as if the masked folk were going to be contained. Effron cursed and spat out a quick series of incomprehensible words, coupling them with hand motions that resembled a mime cleaning an imaginary window. An invisible force buffeted the superheroes, sending them flying apart like debris from an explosion in a spandex factory. And still the disguised faceless soldiers moved through the portal, like worker ants sent out to retrieve a leaf.
As long as Effron could stand back here, wherever here was, and send his magic through, the people and superheroes in Metropolis would be fighting a losing battle. Effron’s attention was fully engaged in his task, so Lex looked over at Supergirl.
“Supergirl!” he said, as low as he could manage and still be heard. After the second try, she turned to him.
Telling the truth was unpredictable – for one thing, it seemed to be disbelieved more often than his lies and omissions – but it was his only tenable option. “I have a Kryptonite ring. If this magic feeds on your powers, it might be vulnerable to Kryptonite too. I’m going to activate it, so you may feel something.” Clark would have been largely unaffected at the same distance – just over ten feet, Lex estimated – but he thought that body mass might play a role, and he wanted to minimize her chances of accusing him of unprovoked attack.
She frowned, but didn’t object, which was better than any response he’d imagined. By wrapping his left hand around the rope holding him and pulling up, he was able to shift his weight so that he had some room to maneuver with his right. It was hard to twist the ring open just by rubbing his thumb against it (another redesign to plan; maybe what he needed was voice activation), but after a bad start he felt the shielded compartment slide back.
“Well?” Supergirl asked after a minute. Lex tested the ropes again.
“Nothing,” he said. He could see, through the portal, that one of the pillars holding up the Art Deco Metropolis Park sign had been destroyed, and the sign itself was now lodged in the gravel of the entry path. “Any ideas?”
“Can you throw me the ring? Maybe it only works against his magic if his magic is working against me.”
Odd, but not out of the question for magic, and he didn’t have better options. There was no way he could or would coach her through the protocol for opening the ring, so he left it as it was and worked it off his finger until he had it curled in his fist. The metal was warm from his exertions, and he could feel the refined meteor rock where it brushed against his skin. It felt almost adhesive, as if it were hungry for human contact. He shuddered and lurched against the ropes, trying to get the best angle for the throw.
“Here it comes,” he said, and put everything he had into the cast.
Because everything he had was rather securely tied, the ring barely made it across the space between them. In fact, Supergirl had to twist like a pole dancer, thrusting her legs out parallel to the floor and catching the ring, improbably, on her right boot. It trembled and nearly slid, stopped only by fetching up against the knob of her ankle as she executed a painful-looking series of gymnastic twists. Lex could only watch, impressed, as she brought her heel up nearly to her waist, folding her leg in and up and simultaneously curling her body forward so that she could snag the ring in her mouth. All the while, her face was contorted in pain, and veins were pulsing greenly on the exposed flesh of her legs, hands and face.
When she had secured the ring, she sagged back into the ropes, panting. The green glow of the activated Kryptonite lit up her face like a Halloween fright effect. He would give her a minute, and then he’d encourage her –
The rope holding her left hand parted, and she swung out of his line of sight. Then she groaned – Lex looked around, but Effron was still staring at the battle in Metropolis like it was free internet porn, and none of the queuing minions seemed inclined to take any initiative here in the cave. She groaned again, and then she popped up right in front of him, the green veins that betrayed her alienness already fading as she rubbed the black smudges at her wrists. He’d thought the trick of closing the ring required some skill, but either she was smarter than she looked or his self-assessment was overly favorable.
“Come on,” she said as she tore him free. “Get to the side and stay out of my way.”
“You’ve got to shut down the portal,” he said, and she frowned at him.
“Thanks for the color commentary, but do you have any ideas?”
“You could always dump a bunch of rocks from the ceiling on it.”
She looked up, into what was to him a great rope-filled darkness. “Not actually a bad idea.” He found himself shoved up against the cave wall, unable to see the more than flashes of the portal and Effron’s army through the remaining dangling ropes. He heard a series of crunches, then a larger rumble, and smelled the distinctive ozone-tinged compounds that accompanied the use of heat vision, combined with a more organic scent like burning hair, which was probably the damned rope.
With a crack like a dam breaking, a shower of rocks and earth came rushing down into the center of the cave, burying the portal and an unfortunate number of faceless minions. Lex heard Effron roar, however, so the fight wasn’t over.
Supergirl came back to his side, panting and seemingly unbothered by the dust that had replaced most of the air. “That was cool. Hey, now that we have line of sight to the outside world, maybe my communicator – this is Supergirl, lock on to my signal, I have the source of the disturbance in Metropolis and I need backup.” She cocked her head and ignored Lex. In his turn, he patted himself down, looking for his own transmitters, but none of them seemed to have survived the trip. He concentrated on breathing – at least he still had a handkerchief, which he wet with spit and used as a makeshift air filter.
Supergirl didn’t seem to need his participation in the conversation anyway. “I hate magic, but at least this magic was the kind you can just hit with a big rock. I’m good at that. Hey, what about those freaky faceless guys? Do they need air? Do you think they need air? I’d better go dig them out just in case they need air.” With that last breathless rant, Supergirl flew off, leaving Lex to fend for himself. There was something familiar about that.
Natural light streamed in from above, but the slowly settling dust still made it difficult to see. Lex pressed himself against the wall, wanting to avoid Effron. He saw a disturbance in the thick gray air, a clearer bubble that the sorceror must have cast around himself. It was bobbing towards him, and Lex braced himself for a conversation about vengeance.
Just then, the Big Three burst through the hole in the roof, backlit into Kabuki shadow-puppets, fierce and iconic. Batman was wearing some sort of jetpowered exoskeleton-cum-cape that allowed him to fly. They split in three directions. Wonder Woman targeted Effron, her battle cry rising above all the other chaotic noises in the cave. Lex watched her carefully, marking how she used her bracelets to fend off bolts of magic as effortlessly as she could use them against bullets. Batman, Lex thought, was casing the joint, making sure that Effron didn’t have backup of any kind. He cut down the remaining spider-strands as he went, increasing visibility with every step.
Superman helped Supergirl dig out the minions, who had no apparent inclination to further Effron’s cause without direct orders from the sorceror himself. Both Kryptonians had identical expressions of discomfort when they had to look at the missing faces.
Batman buzzed over Effron, throwing various snares and nets at him. There was a purple flash of sorcery, blinding for a second, and then he was gone from the air. Lex didn’t hear a crash, but he saw the edge of a non-flight-powered cape disappear behind one of the piles of fallen black rope – it was like a junkyard down in the cave now, what with all the rubble and other flotsam – and knew that whatever Effron’s trick had been, it hadn’t been fast enough to clip the bat’s wings.
With Supergirl safe, it was clear that there was no need for all the heavy artillery. Wonder Woman had been joined by a few of the League’s significant magic-users, and they had Effron cornered. He’d begun the ranting and threatening portion of the event, even as her lasso wrapped around him and the magicians began chanting in unison. The Kryptonians had finished rescue operations, and Lex saw Supergirl say a few words to Clark, who did not look over in Lex’s direction.
In between one breath and the next, Superman was gone, as if he’d never been there.
No matter. Lex had been fine.
****
Effron was led off in handcuffs reinforced with magic, which looked a lot like purple glitter. He’d be going to Leavenworth’s expanded metahuman wing, at least if the Leaguers consented to give him over to human justice. They probably would; they hadn’t yet refused. It was the fact that they might refuse one day that bothered Lex.
“No, I’m telling you, the wizard did it,” Supergirl was saying as Lex approached the cave exit, where various superheroes were engaging in self-congratulatory postgame analysis. She chatted unselfconsciously despite her tattered uniform and the dirt coating her; and why wouldn’t she be unfazed, when she was still a standout in a group of highly toned humans and humanoids? “I’m sure it’s around here somewhere – it’s just tiny now, you know? And since it turns out it’s designed to be invisible to X-ray vision – and don’t think we won’t be talking about that later – I can’t help find it.”
“Supergirl,” he said, breaking into the conversation.
Five assorted superheroes glared angrily at him, the three men more than the two women. Supergirl looked more wary than angry. “Excuse me,” she said to the others, and followed him outside. They were in a meadow, but he had no idea where; if someone didn’t offer him a ride back to Metropolis, he was going to have to go through the embarrassment of asking. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the brightness. It was midday, and the sky was cloudless. In natural light, her coloring was perfect. Even the primary colors seemed more reasonable.
“So, I’m not really going to tell anyone your big secret,” she said, not looking at him. “It’s not like –”
“Anyone would believe you?” he suggested when she hesitated.
“Yeah, that, too.”
The grass was green and soft under his feet. The air was sweet and alive. None of it would have been the same if he’d left Clark’s Fortress untouched.
“You’re a strange man,” she said at last.
“I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I don’t think superheroes are good for humanity. That doesn’t mean I like magic any better, or want you eliminated.”
Now she was scrutinizing his face. “But if you love …”
The word made him irrationally angry. “If it helps any,” he bit out, nearly snarling, “I’ll use small words. It’s not personal. It’s never been personal.” He knew the reaction contradicted the sentiment, and it only pissed him off more. “It’s about,” he paused and knelt, putting his hand to the damp breathing earth, drawing strength from it even as he looked up at her, “this world, what it needs, what will let it thrive.”
Supergirl was silent again, her arms folded across her chest. She had her head cocked, as if she were trying to solve a puzzle. “Seems personal to me.”
He looked at her, wondering whether she was very stupid or very smart. Clark had been that way, oscillating between seeming innocence and seeming knowledge, offering apples and going on about commandments.
“Don’t you want to know what he thinks about you?”
That was a trap; if he let it close, he’d be lucky to get out without chewing off his own arm. “Not enough to listen to gossip.”
She raised one well-shaped eyebrow. “He always says you have your own code of honor –” He turned and started walking away. “—too bad it’s encrypted!”
He stopped and set his shoulders. “I may be a villain,” he said. “But that doesn’t give you license to humiliate me.”
She said nothing. What could she say? Clark cries himself to sleep missing you – unlikely. He hadn’t taken up with Lois or anyone else, that Lex knew of, but he was still the golden unblemished idol of the world. The idea that he could want for anything seemed impossible.
“I’m keeping the ring,” she called out, her tone halfway apologetic. “You can keep the toy.”
Lex looked at the bulge of the magic-miniaturized flight exoskeleton in his pocket. He doubted there’d be anything useful left to analyze. But he liked the gesture.
“… and have I mentioned that I really hate magic?”
Lex didn’t try to turn his head. “Repeatedly. And if you intend to keep on, might I suggest some synonyms?” Even moving his jaw to speak was painful. He really hated magic too.
“Hey,” the girl said, surprised. “You’re awake.”
He stopped trying to flex his wrists and ankles against his bonds. It wasn’t doing much good in any event. “Yes.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“I don’t know. How often have you been saying you hate magic?”
There was a pause. “Every five minutes or so, I guess.” The voice was familiar. It was some minor Justice Leaguer, one who only occasionally gave interviews. Young, maybe mid-twenties –
Despite the sticky black ropes (he devoutly hoped they were ropes) holding him in the air rather like a ham in a smokehouse, he managed to wrench his head about twenty degrees in her direction, enough to see the perky blonde hair and appalling red-and-blue costume, though the effect of both was diminished by the dirt and gunk smeared liberally on her. “Then I’ve been conscious for about fifteen minutes, Supergirl.”
It had been a long time – nearly half her life, in fact – since he’d seen her in person, but she looked much the same. Not unlike Clark, who’d looked twenty-five for roughly a quarter century, moving from surprisingly mature to surprisingly boyish. Supergirl merely looked gorgeous. Reflexively, he checked to see if he was still wearing his ring. He was, and it was still on its standard setting, twisted shut.
“You weren’t at the fight, Senator Luthor.”
Lex had been trying to remember how he’d been attacked since he woke up. He’d had a moment of agitation, thinking that he’d already missed at least half a day of campaign stops, two weeks before Super Tuesday. Then he realized that if he got out of this there’d be a sympathy bump in the polls, so mortal danger was his main concern. “The last thing I remember was leaving my office at around ten-thirty at night on Wednesday the fourteenth of February.”
“Um, right,” Supergirl said, evidently put off by all the detail. Once she’d been knocked out enough times, she’d learn better. Right now, she seemed largely unimpressed to be hanging in an unknown location like a puppet waiting for its master. “So he got me before that, when he was trashing League HQ looking for something. What does he want with you? Maybe one of your campaign proposals put a bug up his butt?”
She shared her cousin’s deep-seated belief that Lex always knew what was going on. “It might help if I knew who he was,” he suggested.
He saw a blue-under-black shoulder twitch in what was meant to be a shrug. “Dunno. Guy in a big red robe with white trim, big cuffs, kinda like that Santa Claus guy. Only balding, with black hair and totally ridiculous sideburns. Oh, and big gold earrings.” As if the earrings would help disambiguate the man in question from all the other men like that running around doing magic.
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” he said, and concentrated on getting the best possible view of their circumstances. Lex couldn’t see much other than more black ropes, hanging between them as if they grew from the ceiling, which was lost in darkness above them. The only source of light was behind him somewhere, yellow but nothing like sunlight. The chill air was heavy with the smell of rotting paper – it was sweet, almost like raisin bread. He knew it from the lower levels of Princeton’s library, where no one else ever went. If their captor was a magician, he smelled like the theoretical kind.
“You’re sure the inhibition of your powers is magical, not Kryptonite-based?” he asked.
He could see her toss her head in his peripheral vision. “I know what Kryptonite feels like. This isn’t it. Plus, do you know any non-magical way of getting big black spider-leggy things – ew, just creeped myself out – big black pipe cleaners to tie people up?”
“That’s classified,” he said, just on general principles. “But I take your point. If he’s a magic-user, that at least explains the site of the attack on me. LuthorCorp Tower is very well warded against magic, among other things.” After all, once the walls were lined with lead, it was a minor additional expense to have protective sigils carved into the metal. “There are numerous powerful devices stored inside, and I wouldn’t be surprised if our captor wanted access to one or more of them.”
That failed to explain Supergirl’s presence, but she didn’t comment on the omission.
“Good, you’re both awake,” a man said pleasantly from behind him.
The ropes holding them swiveled, turning them like pieces of wood on a lathe, and the ones dangling from above moved out of the way like curtains lifting. The overall effect was biological and very, very disturbing.
What they revealed was arguably worse – a man just as Supergirl had described, accompanied by an assortment of minions dressed in hooded capes of varying colors. The hoods were thrown back.
They didn’t have faces.
Lex couldn’t help rearing back in his bonds. The uncanniness of their appearance, the space where faces should be as flat as if they’d been planed, was so great it made his stomach twist. They weren’t even ovals, the way a mannequin’s head might be, but had all the variations and imperfections of ordinary human heads, except for the missing features.
A magician who could do this to the people under his control, if they were even people, was frightening indeed.
“I am Effron the Sorcerer,” the man announced, “mystic of Veliathan. I demand the return of my Golden Eye.”
“Oh good,” Supergirl said. “Another James Bond villain.”
Assuming the description was not metaphorical, Lex had a pretty good idea what object Effron meant. Superman had acquired it in some battle – with Effron, it now appeared likely – and had stored it at League HQ, at least until it had been pilfered by a minor superhero who fell on hard times (or really was pushed, but that was a detail) and sold it to Lex. He’d never figured out how it worked or what exactly it did, though his researchers believed there were mind-control possibilities. If it worked by turning people into faceless puppets, he was glad they’d never gotten any further.
Lex looked him up and down – a black-haired Santa Claus was about right, except not that jolly – and nodded. He’d negotiated with worse. “What are you offering?”
Effron looked caught between anger and mere pique. “Your life, and the life of the girl. She will be my surety.” The faceless minions shuffled their feet, as if frightened for Supergirl. He could see her better from this new angle, and there wasn’t a molecule of fright in her.
Regardless, this wasn’t a hard game to play. “What guarantee do I have that you’ll release her if I bring you the Golden Eye?” Not that he would – if Effron were stupid enough to let him go, he’d let the Justice League take care of the rescue.
The sorceror smiled. “You have my word.” He even sounded sincere, neither smug nor self-righteous; he sounded like any businessman who wanted to form a long-term working relationship. Lex would almost have preferred it if he’d elaborated with more standard villain-talk; despite the surface annoyance of it, bad dialogue was often useful guidance.
Lex made a show of considering the offer. “I don’t appreciate blackmail,” he said at last. “But I can deal with it.”
“Very well,” Effron said –
“Wait, wait, wait,” Supergirl piped up, her angry voice carrying well through the chamber. “You’re going to let Luthor go and keep me as a hostage? I don’t know how it works on Velcrothon or whatever, but here enemies don’t make good ransom material.”
“Enemies?” Effron turned to her, his robes swinging slightly, giving him the air of a man forced to answer the door in his bathrobe.
“Yeah,” Supergirl said, making it sound like ‘duh.’ “If he doublecrosses you and you hurt me, you’re just taking care of one of his problems for him. Kind of a win-win.”
Effron looked back at Lex. “Kara,” he said to Supergirl, ignoring Effron, “it’s not worth it.” She gaped at him. “I won’t take the risk of losing you.”
The sorcerer glared at them in turn. Supergirl rolled her eyes. “We are not secret lovers! I don’t know what Luthor’s game is. But it’s his word – you know, Lex Luthor, notorious bad guy and politician, which means he’s a lying liar – versus mine. I’m a member of the Justice League!”
Lex saw Effron make up his mind to believe her. Lex sighed and began surreptitiously wriggling in his bonds again, in case the sorceror’s recent manipulation had loosened something. “I see a stunning inability to bluff runs in the family.”
Effron moved closer, examining his apparently extraneous captive. Supergirl couldn’t move, but her face showed her disgust. “News flash, Luthor: I’m not on your side.”
“Since we’re both tied up, you should at least consider the possibility –”
At this point, Effron intervened, perhaps miffed at being nearly ignored. “The augury said quite clearly that the Kryptonian was the love of your life, the one you’d do anything to save.”
Lex shrugged as best he could. “I defy augury.”
Effron scowled.
“Wait a second,” Supergirl said, with the tone of someone who’s just had a very bright idea. “The Kryptonian?”
Lex tried very hard not to wince. Inconvenient insights must also run in the family. Effron stared at him, Supergirl stared at him, and he had the distinct impression that the faceless minions were also staring at him, at least metaphorically.
“Dude, you’re telling me I was kidnapped by homophobia?”
“Technically, it’s heteronormativity,” Lex said, but she was already going on –
“I cannot believe this. I seriously cannot – oh, this is just the best gossip in the history of ever, and I am tied up in some sorcerer’s cavern?”
“Shut up!” Effron snarled, and a black strand wrapped itself around Supergirl’s mouth. Lex hoped it tasted like spider leg.
Supergirl was of course right that Lex would never trade five dollars, much less a priceless magical artifact, to rescue her. But what she hadn’t seemed to think through was that Effron’s understanding of that truth – which Lex’s plan of walking out of there would have delayed – was likely to prove injurious to her health. Effron was presently too discombobulated to realize that keeping Supergirl around had no upsides, but he wouldn’t overlook that for long.
“I don’t think you’ll do quite as well with a second pass through the Justice League,” Lex said lightly. “So now we really do have matters to negotiate.” Supergirl was making appalled protest noises from behind her gag, but Effron turned away from her to focus on Lex.
“I sincerely doubt it,” Effron said. “Did you think I had no alternate plans?
“Your wards have defeated my magic thus far. But my subjects –“ he waved one hand in an arc – “can physically attack your precious tower. The cost will be high, but once I regain the Eye I can replenish their ranks from your own Metropolis, and rule over a greater kingdom. Perhaps I will even use your tower as my seat.”
“I know something I want to do with your seat,” Supergirl said, having somehow managed to wriggle free of the gag; both Effron and Lex looked at her askance. She was still struggling against the black rope – rope, Lex kept reassuring himself, it was rope – to no avail.
“Pathetic Kryptonian,” Effron said – this was good, he was getting grandiose and that usually meant sloppy – “my magic feeds on your powers.” He snapped his fingers and the gag returned to its place.
Turning away from her, Effron made some complicated hand motions, and masks appeared in his minions’ hands. As one, they raised the masks to their faces, where they adhered with no apparent attachments. The magic made the masks lifelike, only slightly inhuman in their fixity. Seeing them only for a moment, one might mistake them for truth. If Effron were smarter, he’d keep his peons faceless and therefore paralyzingly horrifying. Lex was willing to bet that some significant percentage of people would break down, unable to resist, from mere exposure to those terrifying absences.
The minions assembled in a group, each holding some sort of gun. Lex had been hoping that the robes portended edged rather than distance weapons, but he still had faith in LuthorCorp security. With another set of showy flourishes, Effron stamped his foot, and a hole opened in reality. Sunlight streamed through. Lex could see the entrance to Metropolis Park, and passing traffic – it was the view from the front of LuthorCorp Tower, though oddly not a view of LuthorCorp Tower. The masked minions would have to go through, then turn and walk around the portal to begin the attack. Lex felt a renewed surge of confidence, though he knew it was a bad idea to base predictions on opponents’ flaws.
And in the event he hated the mis-orientation of the portal, because he had no idea what was happening in Metropolis. Havoc was being wreaked, that was clear from the occasional car or chunk of building that came flying past their line of sight, but he had no information on the overall situation. The portal showed only the visual, so he couldn’t hear anything helpful either. Effron kept sending his people through. For a man who considered the cost of an attack on LuthorCorp high, he had a huge number of bodies in his army, and the line waiting to go through the portal didn’t seem to be getting shorter.
After about ten minutes of fighting, Superman flashed by the opening, then returned a moment later. He started tossing minions aside as they emerged. Then he flew directly at the portal, trying to reverse the transfer, but it was evidently a one-way portal and all he accomplished was bouncing off in a way that Lex couldn’t help but find humorous.
Superman, these days, acted like everything Lex touched turned to Kryptonite. He hadn’t been this close to LuthorCorp Tower since – well, since everything changed. The break seemed to have worked for him; the Justice League had never been more effective or more beloved with Superman at the helm.
Demonstrating the benefits of teamwork, more superheroes arrived soon thereafter. They had a brief shouted conversation with Superman as they fought with the army streaming through the portal. It looked as if the masked folk were going to be contained. Effron cursed and spat out a quick series of incomprehensible words, coupling them with hand motions that resembled a mime cleaning an imaginary window. An invisible force buffeted the superheroes, sending them flying apart like debris from an explosion in a spandex factory. And still the disguised faceless soldiers moved through the portal, like worker ants sent out to retrieve a leaf.
As long as Effron could stand back here, wherever here was, and send his magic through, the people and superheroes in Metropolis would be fighting a losing battle. Effron’s attention was fully engaged in his task, so Lex looked over at Supergirl.
“Supergirl!” he said, as low as he could manage and still be heard. After the second try, she turned to him.
Telling the truth was unpredictable – for one thing, it seemed to be disbelieved more often than his lies and omissions – but it was his only tenable option. “I have a Kryptonite ring. If this magic feeds on your powers, it might be vulnerable to Kryptonite too. I’m going to activate it, so you may feel something.” Clark would have been largely unaffected at the same distance – just over ten feet, Lex estimated – but he thought that body mass might play a role, and he wanted to minimize her chances of accusing him of unprovoked attack.
She frowned, but didn’t object, which was better than any response he’d imagined. By wrapping his left hand around the rope holding him and pulling up, he was able to shift his weight so that he had some room to maneuver with his right. It was hard to twist the ring open just by rubbing his thumb against it (another redesign to plan; maybe what he needed was voice activation), but after a bad start he felt the shielded compartment slide back.
“Well?” Supergirl asked after a minute. Lex tested the ropes again.
“Nothing,” he said. He could see, through the portal, that one of the pillars holding up the Art Deco Metropolis Park sign had been destroyed, and the sign itself was now lodged in the gravel of the entry path. “Any ideas?”
“Can you throw me the ring? Maybe it only works against his magic if his magic is working against me.”
Odd, but not out of the question for magic, and he didn’t have better options. There was no way he could or would coach her through the protocol for opening the ring, so he left it as it was and worked it off his finger until he had it curled in his fist. The metal was warm from his exertions, and he could feel the refined meteor rock where it brushed against his skin. It felt almost adhesive, as if it were hungry for human contact. He shuddered and lurched against the ropes, trying to get the best angle for the throw.
“Here it comes,” he said, and put everything he had into the cast.
Because everything he had was rather securely tied, the ring barely made it across the space between them. In fact, Supergirl had to twist like a pole dancer, thrusting her legs out parallel to the floor and catching the ring, improbably, on her right boot. It trembled and nearly slid, stopped only by fetching up against the knob of her ankle as she executed a painful-looking series of gymnastic twists. Lex could only watch, impressed, as she brought her heel up nearly to her waist, folding her leg in and up and simultaneously curling her body forward so that she could snag the ring in her mouth. All the while, her face was contorted in pain, and veins were pulsing greenly on the exposed flesh of her legs, hands and face.
When she had secured the ring, she sagged back into the ropes, panting. The green glow of the activated Kryptonite lit up her face like a Halloween fright effect. He would give her a minute, and then he’d encourage her –
The rope holding her left hand parted, and she swung out of his line of sight. Then she groaned – Lex looked around, but Effron was still staring at the battle in Metropolis like it was free internet porn, and none of the queuing minions seemed inclined to take any initiative here in the cave. She groaned again, and then she popped up right in front of him, the green veins that betrayed her alienness already fading as she rubbed the black smudges at her wrists. He’d thought the trick of closing the ring required some skill, but either she was smarter than she looked or his self-assessment was overly favorable.
“Come on,” she said as she tore him free. “Get to the side and stay out of my way.”
“You’ve got to shut down the portal,” he said, and she frowned at him.
“Thanks for the color commentary, but do you have any ideas?”
“You could always dump a bunch of rocks from the ceiling on it.”
She looked up, into what was to him a great rope-filled darkness. “Not actually a bad idea.” He found himself shoved up against the cave wall, unable to see the more than flashes of the portal and Effron’s army through the remaining dangling ropes. He heard a series of crunches, then a larger rumble, and smelled the distinctive ozone-tinged compounds that accompanied the use of heat vision, combined with a more organic scent like burning hair, which was probably the damned rope.
With a crack like a dam breaking, a shower of rocks and earth came rushing down into the center of the cave, burying the portal and an unfortunate number of faceless minions. Lex heard Effron roar, however, so the fight wasn’t over.
Supergirl came back to his side, panting and seemingly unbothered by the dust that had replaced most of the air. “That was cool. Hey, now that we have line of sight to the outside world, maybe my communicator – this is Supergirl, lock on to my signal, I have the source of the disturbance in Metropolis and I need backup.” She cocked her head and ignored Lex. In his turn, he patted himself down, looking for his own transmitters, but none of them seemed to have survived the trip. He concentrated on breathing – at least he still had a handkerchief, which he wet with spit and used as a makeshift air filter.
Supergirl didn’t seem to need his participation in the conversation anyway. “I hate magic, but at least this magic was the kind you can just hit with a big rock. I’m good at that. Hey, what about those freaky faceless guys? Do they need air? Do you think they need air? I’d better go dig them out just in case they need air.” With that last breathless rant, Supergirl flew off, leaving Lex to fend for himself. There was something familiar about that.
Natural light streamed in from above, but the slowly settling dust still made it difficult to see. Lex pressed himself against the wall, wanting to avoid Effron. He saw a disturbance in the thick gray air, a clearer bubble that the sorceror must have cast around himself. It was bobbing towards him, and Lex braced himself for a conversation about vengeance.
Just then, the Big Three burst through the hole in the roof, backlit into Kabuki shadow-puppets, fierce and iconic. Batman was wearing some sort of jetpowered exoskeleton-cum-cape that allowed him to fly. They split in three directions. Wonder Woman targeted Effron, her battle cry rising above all the other chaotic noises in the cave. Lex watched her carefully, marking how she used her bracelets to fend off bolts of magic as effortlessly as she could use them against bullets. Batman, Lex thought, was casing the joint, making sure that Effron didn’t have backup of any kind. He cut down the remaining spider-strands as he went, increasing visibility with every step.
Superman helped Supergirl dig out the minions, who had no apparent inclination to further Effron’s cause without direct orders from the sorceror himself. Both Kryptonians had identical expressions of discomfort when they had to look at the missing faces.
Batman buzzed over Effron, throwing various snares and nets at him. There was a purple flash of sorcery, blinding for a second, and then he was gone from the air. Lex didn’t hear a crash, but he saw the edge of a non-flight-powered cape disappear behind one of the piles of fallen black rope – it was like a junkyard down in the cave now, what with all the rubble and other flotsam – and knew that whatever Effron’s trick had been, it hadn’t been fast enough to clip the bat’s wings.
With Supergirl safe, it was clear that there was no need for all the heavy artillery. Wonder Woman had been joined by a few of the League’s significant magic-users, and they had Effron cornered. He’d begun the ranting and threatening portion of the event, even as her lasso wrapped around him and the magicians began chanting in unison. The Kryptonians had finished rescue operations, and Lex saw Supergirl say a few words to Clark, who did not look over in Lex’s direction.
In between one breath and the next, Superman was gone, as if he’d never been there.
No matter. Lex had been fine.
****
Effron was led off in handcuffs reinforced with magic, which looked a lot like purple glitter. He’d be going to Leavenworth’s expanded metahuman wing, at least if the Leaguers consented to give him over to human justice. They probably would; they hadn’t yet refused. It was the fact that they might refuse one day that bothered Lex.
“No, I’m telling you, the wizard did it,” Supergirl was saying as Lex approached the cave exit, where various superheroes were engaging in self-congratulatory postgame analysis. She chatted unselfconsciously despite her tattered uniform and the dirt coating her; and why wouldn’t she be unfazed, when she was still a standout in a group of highly toned humans and humanoids? “I’m sure it’s around here somewhere – it’s just tiny now, you know? And since it turns out it’s designed to be invisible to X-ray vision – and don’t think we won’t be talking about that later – I can’t help find it.”
“Supergirl,” he said, breaking into the conversation.
Five assorted superheroes glared angrily at him, the three men more than the two women. Supergirl looked more wary than angry. “Excuse me,” she said to the others, and followed him outside. They were in a meadow, but he had no idea where; if someone didn’t offer him a ride back to Metropolis, he was going to have to go through the embarrassment of asking. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the brightness. It was midday, and the sky was cloudless. In natural light, her coloring was perfect. Even the primary colors seemed more reasonable.
“So, I’m not really going to tell anyone your big secret,” she said, not looking at him. “It’s not like –”
“Anyone would believe you?” he suggested when she hesitated.
“Yeah, that, too.”
The grass was green and soft under his feet. The air was sweet and alive. None of it would have been the same if he’d left Clark’s Fortress untouched.
“You’re a strange man,” she said at last.
“I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I don’t think superheroes are good for humanity. That doesn’t mean I like magic any better, or want you eliminated.”
Now she was scrutinizing his face. “But if you love …”
The word made him irrationally angry. “If it helps any,” he bit out, nearly snarling, “I’ll use small words. It’s not personal. It’s never been personal.” He knew the reaction contradicted the sentiment, and it only pissed him off more. “It’s about,” he paused and knelt, putting his hand to the damp breathing earth, drawing strength from it even as he looked up at her, “this world, what it needs, what will let it thrive.”
Supergirl was silent again, her arms folded across her chest. She had her head cocked, as if she were trying to solve a puzzle. “Seems personal to me.”
He looked at her, wondering whether she was very stupid or very smart. Clark had been that way, oscillating between seeming innocence and seeming knowledge, offering apples and going on about commandments.
“Don’t you want to know what he thinks about you?”
That was a trap; if he let it close, he’d be lucky to get out without chewing off his own arm. “Not enough to listen to gossip.”
She raised one well-shaped eyebrow. “He always says you have your own code of honor –” He turned and started walking away. “—too bad it’s encrypted!”
He stopped and set his shoulders. “I may be a villain,” he said. “But that doesn’t give you license to humiliate me.”
She said nothing. What could she say? Clark cries himself to sleep missing you – unlikely. He hadn’t taken up with Lois or anyone else, that Lex knew of, but he was still the golden unblemished idol of the world. The idea that he could want for anything seemed impossible.
“I’m keeping the ring,” she called out, her tone halfway apologetic. “You can keep the toy.”
Lex looked at the bulge of the magic-miniaturized flight exoskeleton in his pocket. He doubted there’d be anything useful left to analyze. But he liked the gesture.
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