Page 94 of Lovesick Gods

“What?”

But even if Mal could have turned his mic back on to call for help, Danny ripped the device from his ear and the sound went dead.

“You really had me going, Cho,” he said darkly, close and menacing and not giving Mal any room to breathe. “Taking care of the people in your neighborhood. Agreeing not to hurt or kill anyone. Acting like you cared. But that’s all bullshit, isn’t it? In the end, you’re still the one conningme.”

Before Mal could answer, Danny slammed him into the wall harder, making him cough as the air pushed from his lungs.

“Was it fun laughing at me with Ludgate while I ran around in circles losingmy mindtrying to catch him?!”

“Danny—”

“Well I hope it was, because I might not be able to catchhim,” Danny held Mal firmly with one gloved hand twisting into the collar of his duster, while the other pulled back into a fist that started tospark, “but you’re not going anywhere.”

Chapter22

Pinned by Danny to the wall, amplifier currently useless, with a fist sparking with lightning speeding toward his face, Mal did the only thing he could to avoid the blow. He went limp.

Danny lost his grip from the unexpected lack of tension between them, and Mal dropped to the floor just as that powerful fist slammed into the wall above him with an impressive impact.

Mal shot his hands up and blasted Danny’s midsection with a burst of ice before he could react. He wanted to take a moment to get his bearings, to get his breath back, but Danny wasn’t listening, wasn’tthinking, and Zeus on the rampage was more dangerous than anything Mal had ever faced.

Scrambling to his feet, he flipped on the switch for the cold field, scanning the area in front of him to see where Danny had landed.

Nothing. He’d already gone invisible.Shit.

Mal’s goggles revealed the ring of the cold field’s radius. Knowing Danny was being smart, biding his time, he had no choice but to expand the field outward. It wouldn’t hurt Danny, he didn’t want tohurtDanny—even if Danny was dead set on hurting him—but he had to slow him down.

“Zeus!” Mal called, trying to remember that there could be ears and eyes everywhere with what Ludgate had just pulled; he couldn’t risk using Danny’s name again. “Get your head on straight! I’m not working with Ludgate!” He scanned the floor. Where was his earpiece?

“Liar!” Danny called back, his voice too loud and shrill for Mal to discern its origin. “All you know how to do is lie! He’s just another one of your Titans!”

A shimmer in the air caught Mal’s attention as frost built on what appeared to be nothing—the suit! Mal blasted Danny again, knocking back the frost that had been suspended midair. Quickly, he scanned beneath his feet again. If he could just find his earpiece, call Dom and Lucy back…

No. They wouldn’t understand. What he needed was to get through to Danny, throw him off his game somehow to snap him out of his rage.

“What the hell…?” Danny hissed from the direction Mal had struck him, but a faint blast wasn’t enough to stick on a suit like that, and the frost that had formed before had already melted. “I knew there was something about that cuff. New amplifier, huh?” he said, at most three meters away at the edge of the cold field, invisible but close. “Smart.”

“Zeus, listen to me. I amnotworking with Ludgate.” Moving slowly away from the wall toward the center of the room, Mal faced the direction he believed his nemesis to be and expanded the radius of the cold field further, looking for signs of forming ice.

Things had been going so well, better than he would have ever dreamed of between him and Danny in the midst of a heist. Everything Mal had done to pull this job off with immaculate precision had worked in his favor, and yet Danny had still come running to save the day. Mal could have fought back when he first saw him, but he’d been curious, and Danny hadn’t disappointed. Now, he just needed to get through to Danny, and if he couldn’t, the police would be a better plan B than calling the Titans to return.

Mal didn’t need his comms. He needed to find one of the pressure plates.

“Come on, Sparky, you think I’d trade the offer you gave me for splitting the loot with that maniac? Never even met—”

A bolt of lightning arched toward him, and Mal sidestepped just in time, causing it to shatter a vase, one of the few displays not encased in glass, into a dozen tiny pieces. By the time he whipped forward again, the frost outline of a figure running toward him was already too close. Mal raised his arms to fire off another blast of ice, but Danny had him. Strong, invisible hands gripped his shoulders and threw him across the room into the wall.

With an oomph, Mal’s ribs and the left side of his cheekbone exploded in pain as the breath knocked from his lungs a second time. He told himself to just stay conscious,stay conscious, before he whirled around and blasted Danny to the floor once more.

“Listen, damn it!”

“Shutup!” Danny screamed as the ghostly form of him outlined in silvery blue pushed up to his feet and continued to pursue Mal across the space between them, but slower now, sluggish the longer he remained in the cold field.

Upping its range again, Mal prepared to blast Danny as many times as it took. Finally, he spotted a pressure sensor, just one foot to his right. He inched toward it, keeping one hand trained on Danny, and pushed his foot down on it firmly. “Zeus—”

“You’re a l-l-liar!” Danny shivered inside the cold field’s power. “Aliar! I k-kept telling myself what a m-manipulative b-b-bastard you are…but you had me s-so certain I was wrong…that m-maybe you were d-different.”

“Sparky…” Mal held himself against the wall as Danny drew closer. He was like some ice demon out of a nightmare, empty space painted in frost, and he wasn’t stopping. Mal had to blast him again. He had to.

---