TITAN

If you’re Jim McNulty on the night of his fight with Titan, you are rage personified. But you are trapped inside of yourself because your body is so beaten and bloodied that you cannot unleash that fury physically. On the inside, you are thrashing through the rooms of your mind, knocking over tables, breaking windows, smashing bookshelves, and tearing down doors.

You go to places that were once happy, where good memories lived. But these memories only infuriate you because they remind you of what you used to be: weak, small, and without control. And they remind you that you were once whole, with a family, friends, and a body that didn’t shed its skin like a snake.

No matter how much you destroy, everything remains. You still used to be Jim McNulty: son, friend, and student. But now you’re Bone, a hideous experiment designed by people who hide in the dark. They won’t go into the light, so they send you. And with all the strength and power that you have, you still failed. Your old friend still lives. You hit him as hard as the hate in your heart would allow, but deep down you know… You have been friends too long to not know if he was dead or not. And besides, you share his gift with him. The faint humming that speaks to your friend speaks to you, too, but yours is corrupted and violent. You know your friend is alive because every place he hit you burns with an unquenchable fire. His death would extinguish it, but the agony still plagues you. Eric lives and you suffer.

You fear what Beth will do when she sees you. You’re covered in clotted, dark blood and chunks of your skin are missing. You’re not stupid—you know that you’ll never be healed again. All of the pain that drives you into yourself is focused by the single goal of saving your sister. Your life doesn’t matter because it never did. Your parents washed their hands of you when they sent you away. You’ve always only had yourself. But Beth is not part of that. She never spurned you or treated you badly. She is the one person who looked up to you. Who loved you. And now she needs your help. For defense. For salvation. She’ll understand.

Eric said that these people hurt his sister, Sarah. You don’t know if that’s true, but there is a part of you that wonders. Something in you remembers a time when that information would have mattered. It doesn’t seem to now, though. No. All that matters is killing Eric.

Yes. Killing him.

Trying to take him alive was your first mistake. You held back. You remembered what was and not what is. Eric does not care what happens to you. That is what you tell yourself as you assail the walls in your mind, enraged that they will not fall before you. You remember hearing these things somewhere… in the dark… at night… like a voice had whispered them into your ear for hours. But that’s not important. The part of you that resisted believing is now weary. It is tired and wants to rest. What remains is sure that it’s true, so you believe it. That’s all that’s important.

If you’re Jim McNulty, you think about all of this and more as you fade in and out of consciousness while surrounded by evil men in the back of a van.

* * *

The Steele’s front door swung open with a twist of the knob and a little push. It had been unlocked. Something stank like dead fish. The floor was slippery and the mens’ shoes squeaked. No one inside seemed to notice.

A bundle of blankets on the couch cloaked the target. The two men crept further into the house and peered around the corner down the hallway. A muzzle flash erupted and the first man’s head rocked back in a spray of red drizzle. Someone had noticed.

The dead man’s partner fell back, dodging the crumpling body, and fired a few rounds down the hallway to cover. The surviving gunman climbed back to his feet and angled to get a shot down the hall.

“Lady, I won’t hurt you if you just gimme the kid.” He was lying, but he thought it was worth a shot. Another round exploded into his dead partner’s head splattering splinters of brain and blood droplets across his mask. He had his answer.

The man lifted his gun and held it in front of him as trained. His finger rested on the trigger, ready to kill. But then a curious thing happened. His hand disappeared in a blur. He wasn’t sure what happened at first. The gun was in his hand, aimed to kill the mom so he could take the kid, but then it wasn’t there anymore—just the back half of his forearm and a collecting pool of red underneath his feet. Pain hit him at about the same time he realized that his hand had just been chopped off above the wrist.

He screamed. But it didn’t feel like him. It seemed more like someone else’s arm had dropped to the rug. And it seemed like it was someone else who saw the bloody, gray shape step out in front of him with a long scythe extended from its arm.

Yes, a scythe.

The kid.

He was awake. He snarled like a demented Rottweiler. The kid’s arm moved up and down before the man in black could react. Blackness stole him away the moment the long blade cleaved his heart in two. He was dead and matters of perspective no longer mattered to him.

The gray shape slumped to the ground and fell into his own world of blackness.

* * *

Eric didn’t dream that night.

* * *

Days passed. Eric healed. He didn’t talk much—he didn’t want to so his parents left him alone. They didn’t insist upon long talks about his feelings. What could he say? What shouldhe say? The first fight Eric ever had in his life was with his best friend. They tried to kill each other. How do you talk about that? You don’t.

Long, gnarled scars faded to dim lines and soon disappeared. His parents told him he could stay home from school—that he probably should—but Eric went. Scars and all. This was his life and he wouldn’t just give it up. He told people that he’d been in a car accident. The questions faded just as his scars did. In about five days, his scars were down to slight, pinkish trails on his skin. And by the following weekend, his scars were all but gone. No one seemed to notice how fast he had healed. Not all of the scars healed, though.

There was a scar deep inside that wouldn’t ever heal. Eric felt like there was broken glass in his chest. It jabbed him wherever he went and kept him awake at night. The shards of jabbing pain were made up of every blow, every punch, and every throw of that night. This pain would never diminish. Eric’s grief gradually turned to anger at everything associated with what had happened to Jim. Something changed him. He was a monster now. There wasn’t a standard emotion available to reconcile that knowledge. It didn’t seem to fit into a category of sadness or fury—it was both and neither.

Eric hadn’t felt anything from The Source in a while either. No darkness. No danger. And no draw toward something he didn’t understand. He felt like himself. He felt the way he used to feel before he’d been burned alive from the inside out. But he didn’t talk about it. His dad might have suspected but said nothing. There was an abundance of “saying nothing” in the Steele household.

Eric didn’t say much until he saw Rose.

* * *

Time moved slow since the fight. Eric felt like a year had passed since his best friend had tried to kill him when it had only been a week. His memories of that night were becoming dim. Eric supposed that his mind was trying to protect him by suppressing the bad ones. They weren’t gone; they were just under the surface.

The drive to Rose’s house was quiet. Usually, Eric would listen to a CD or the radio while he drove, but this time he drove in silence. The car noise soothed him. Everything disappeared in the thrum of the highway. For the briefest of moments, he thought he might keep driving. Just leave. Just go. He was made of metal. Gold is a metal. He could survive on it. Leave everything behind and stop caring.

No.

He took the exit to Rose’s house and abandoned those thoughts with his memories of Jim, gnarled and monstrous.

* * *

Rose was still beautiful. Her eyes were a little darker and her hair was less fine—more tousled—but she was stunning. Her spirit was alive. Rose wore a pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt with a picture of Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World. The clothes weren’t curve hugging like what she wore on their date, but Eric knew the curves were there. Despite everything that had happened, he still felt drawn to Rose’s light.

“Hi.” Eric couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You look better,” Rose said.

He smiled, which hurt his face. “I heal pretty fast. Apparently, I have a lot of minerals and vitamins inside.”

Rose stepped back from the doorframe, her invitation implicit. Eric crossed in front of her and caught a whiff of something flowery.

Does she ever smell bad?

“Thanks,” Eric said. He slipped his coat off and held it in his hand. “Look, I came because I didn’t get to say goodbye the other night. And to apologize… I laid a lot on you at dinner and… what happened after was...”

“Unbelievable? Crazy?”

“I hope you can understand why I didn’t tell you. I don’t really understand it myself and I thought it would be dangerous for you to know. I think I was probably right.” Eric wanted to look at her but couldn’t. Her eyes were too demanding—too honest. The fact that she hadn’t thrown him out or shut the door in his face seemed to suggest that she felt something genuine for him, but whatever it was, it was tenuous and he saw it on her face. He wanted to keep it alive.

There was only one way to do that. He decided to do something a teenage boy would never do: be completely honest with a girl about his feelings. “You know, I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time. I know this sounds like high school melodrama, but I didn’t think I could feel this way. It’s not the same as before… it’s better. I want it to keep going. I can’t know what this sounds like to you… only a few days ago you saw me getting smashed into brick walls. But this is how I feel. Of everything that’s happened to me lately, this is the only thing I feel for sure. The only thing I know.”

The thin sheen of water hugging Rose’s eyes told him everything he needed to know. She moved to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders and squeezed. Eric hugged her and every ache and pain in his body faded away.

“What does this mean?” Rose said, barely a whisper.

“I dunno. I just want to be with you. You make me feel good.”

She chuckled. “So that’s what that is…”

* * *

While driving home, Eric took the I-395 north ramp instead of south. He didn’t notice. He just drove. Soon he was in Washington, D.C. The city swallowed him up. The buildings cast large shadows and guided his way. Eric kept driving. There were other cars and people, but Eric didn’t notice them. He just kept going. Eventually, he parked along the curb. His was the only car on this particular block, but he didn’t notice that either.

It wasn’t until Eric was walking down the hazy alley that he realized where he was.

What?

He stopped in his tracks, disoriented, and examined his surroundings. The alley was surprisingly clean—for an alley. Dumpsters dotted along each side, running against the buildings. A few slips of paper, wrappers, and other garbage swept across the ground past him. There was no one in sight. The lights in the alley were dim ochre and provided little illumination. The sky above was also of no help, offering only pure black. Even the moon hid tonight.

That’s when he felt the curious pit in his stomach like anxiety but pervasive. Darkness. It had drawn him here. But why?

“Why?” A voice. Definitely real. Not in his head. It was in front of him—but there was nothing there until a shape stepped out of the shadow beneath the nearest light fixture. It was a man, but Eric couldn’t make out anything beyond that. He was tallish but not terribly broad. Although the figure was in sight, he was still bathed in shadow. But Eric felt his stare and something disconcerting occurred to him: not human.

“Who are you?”

“That’s not as important as who you are. Do you know?” There was something threatening in the tone.

“Uh-huh... now back to my question.”

A laugh. Very throaty and thick—if a laugh could have thickness. “I’m a demon. What are you going to do about it, Titan?”

Eric clenched his fists but didn’t know it. He felt the power stir inside. Whatever Titan was, it had instincts of its own. Just the word “demon” set him on alert. He knew that Titan fights demons, but he had never met one…

Why should just the mention of a demon put me on edge? Maybe my Catholic upbringing?

“It’s who you are,” the demon said, having heard Eric’s thoughts as clearly as words. “Fish swim. Monkeys climb. Dogs sniff assholes. And you fight evil. You killit wherever you find it.”

Eric shook his head as though he could shake the demon out of his thoughts. “How do you know what I’m thinking? If I kill demons, why would you come to me?”

Finally, the demon stepped from the shadows. It was bald with skin that wasn’t quite skin, something akin to dried-out cactus hide. Its eyes were set deep in its skull and glimmered like a cat’s eyes, but they were not green or yellow, no, these eyes were red. They looked into Eric. He could feel it.

The demon stepped closer—its every move was deliberate and dangerous. It wore clothes that Eric would have imagined on a cool 1970s pimp: a double-breasted mahogany leather jacket with dark slacks or jeans and stylish shoes. Its face was something like a piranha crossed with a lizard—a mouthful of tiny, sharp teeth gleamed out from behind its thin lips. Its mouth was a perpetual smile.

Eric held his ground. “Don’t come closer.”

The demon’s smile grew into a demented, sharp-toothed grin. “Or what? What will you do, hero? Huh? Do you even know? Can you kill?”

Eric was blinded by the sight of the man with the gun in his living room—his arm on the ground, twitching, and then the man split right down the middle. Eric did that. The haze in his mind lifted so he could see it with clarity. Eric’s sure tone was lost as the memory repeated again and again…

“I already have.”

The creature dismissed Eric with a croak, its cruel eyes narrowing. “Instinct in a moment of panic. It wasn’t you; it was the thing inside you that wears your skin as its suit. It’s hardwired to protect you. That only goes so far. Can you kill?”

Eric knew the demon was right. He had done it, but he didn’t remember meaning to kill the man. He never thought: You sonofabitch, I’m gonna kill you dead. In court, the distinction would hardly matter, but he wasn’t in court. This was a dark alley with bad lighting and a demon for his judge.

Eric couldn’t answer the demon’s question. When Jim had been beating him to death and Eric was looking at a kill-or-be-killed situation, he still didn’t know what to do. Jim was his friend… still… No. Eric refused to think of him as anything else. Jim didn’t choose to become a monster—it was done to him.

“Does it matter?” The demon began to circle Eric. It had heard his thoughts again. “Whether or not he’s your friend, he tried to kill you. Obviously, he doesn’t hold you in such high regard. He was going to kill you, your girlfriend, and everyone else to get what he wanted.”

“He tried to help me…” Eric said. “He called and tried to warn us, but they got him. They brainwashed him.”

“Did it ever occur to you that they gave him a better offer? Hmm? Maybe he weighed the pros and cons of being Eric Steele’s friend and decided that what they offered was better. Who can say why we make the choices we do? What you need to know is that he made a choice… a bad one for you… and why he did it isn’t important. If a man tries to rape a woman, do you stop and ask him why he’s doing it? No. You draw upon that medieval arsenal and stop him.” The demon continued to circle Eric not unlike a predator.

“How do you know all of this? You’re just a demon,” Eric said.

It glared at Eric through eyes like blood, glittering in the sickly yellow light. “Just a demon… yes, just a demon. I know what I know because I need to. Just like you’re Titan because you need to be. It’s important that Titan exists. Especially now. Your sister was a cripple and sheknew that. Just like I know that you’re too weak. Too conflicted to do what you need to do. Too in love to see the danger right around the corner.”

The demon lunged. Eric had been lulled by the casual conversation that he didn’t see it coming. A maw of teeth rushed at his face. Eric caught him but was driven down onto the pavement. The demon, as skinny and lithe as it was, had real weight to it and Eric was using a lot of his strength to just keep it at arm’s length. Its snapping teeth glittered at him from only inches away.

“Don’t you get it, yet?! Huh, boy? I’m not your friend! I’m a message from on high: you need to get your shit together! Evil’s coming. You’re not here to play Dawson’s Creek with the cute redhead… you’re here to be God’s instrument on Earth. His warrior against evil like me!” Delight was written all over the demon’s face as Eric struggled to hold him back. “C’mon, HERO! Man up!”

Eric searched deep inside himself and found what he was looking for. Just like his dad had said, it gets easier every time. Raw strength pumped into his muscles and lined his bones with steel. He let the demon get close just as the mask sealed over his face and hardened. The demon’s teeth shattered as they bit hard metal. It recoiled with an awful howl. Eric planted both his feet against the creature’s chest and as it rose up, Eric launched it back. Then he climbed to his feet and he was wearing Titan.

The demon slithered to its feet and wiped its clawed hand across its mouth. The hand came away dripping with blood. Despite obvious pain, the demon smiled revealing the jagged remains of its teeth and pieces of torn gums. It spat a big wad of blood and saliva onto the pavement. “You fight dirty, kid… that’s good. You’ll need to.” It moved again, this time with murder in its terrible eyes.

“Stay where you are or I’ll kill you.”

“Let’s find out.”

The demon ran at Eric. Its hands were cocked, ready to stab with impossibly long and sharp claws. Eric’s arm snapped to the side and a long rod of metal extended from his grasp and coalesced into a sword. He cocked it back and met the demon with its point. A loud shhhlacckk ripped through the demon’s body as the sword stabbed clean through it. A roar escaped the monster’s lips as it threw its head back and mewled with death.

The demon grabbed Eric’s shoulder and pulled itself closer, impaling itself deeper. Thick, viscous blood dribbled from between its broken teeth, yet the demon still wore its knowing smile. Its face was only inches away, but this time it made no move to bite.

“How does it feel? Hmm? Do you feel my life draining out of me? It’s all over your hands… you should. Look me in the eye, boy. Do you see it? Look close and know it well.”

Eric didn’t want to, but he realized that was the point: he needed to see it. He needed to watch this monster die. He had to feel it shudder and shake. He had to feel its breath quicken and then sputter out.

Before the demon’s life spilled out of it, it whispered. “Who are you? Eric Steele or Titan?”

The demon died on the point of Eric’s sword. Eric retracted the blade into himself and the demon slumped to the ground. The mask slipped from his face and Eric looked up at the sky. It wasn’t black any longer; the moon shone down at him, queer and orange.

He knew the answer to the demon’s question. He didn’t like it.

* * *

Tim Steele filled the bucket with warm water for what seemed like the hundredth time. He watched the suds froth on the water’s surface around the column of water pouring from the faucet. Watching the water almost helped him forget what he was doing. Almost. When he reached for a new rag and saw all of the others, he was silently reminded.

Nancy was on all fours beside the large dark red stain next to the entertainment center. She scrubbed at the stain with a lot of elbow grease, but it only lightened a bit. Looking up at Tim, she said, “I think we’re gonna need a new rug. This isn’t coming out.”

Tim knelt beside her. “Probably.”

“Do I want to know where the bodies went?” Nancy looked at Tim, but he didn’t look back.

“No.”

Tim dug into the carpet. The fresh soap and water mix was working a little better, but Nancy was right—the stain was too deep, too dark, and too in the open. The rug had to go.

Nancy stared at Tim. “We have to go, don’t we?”

Tim finally looked at her, his face a mask of steel. “We ran once. They found us. We’re not running again.”

“Timmy, these people break into people’s houses and set kids on fire! They’re not above torturing and experimenting on people… Jim… Sarah…” Nancy almost choked on her daughter’s name, but she held it together.

Tim couldn’t look at her and say what needed to be said. “That’s why we have to kill them. Every last one of them. If they’re not alive, they can’t come after us.”

Nancy chose her words with care. “Did that work last time? Sarah was still sick and what happened to you? Is that what Eric’s supposed to do now? Pick up where you left off?”

Too many bad choices had led them here. Tim didn’t know anymore, but the only way to change it was to start making good ones. At the very least, better choices.

Almost as if on cue, the front door opened and Eric appeared. “It’s time, Dad.”

Tim climbed to his feet. There was something unspoken between them. Eric looked like he was carrying something new on his shoulders. As a mother, Nancy could always see changes in her child, even if she didn’t understand what they were. Every instinct she had told her the change was grave. It was a burden from which he would never escape.

Eric kept the door open. Calvin, the cat, tried sneaking by, but with a glance from Eric he darted back the way he came. Tim circled around Nancy and grabbed his keys.

She called after them, “Where are you going? Time for what?”

“Time to be who I’m supposed to be,” Eric said with resignation. He exited the house. Tim met Nancy’s eyes before he left the house too.

Nancy was alone with the blood.