Page 62 of Lovesick Titan (Lovesick #2)

“Did you really think I’d make it this easy?” Ludgate spoke from behind Danny like a ghost out of the reflection, and Danny’s stomach flipped as he was pulled into the mirror world with a jolt.

The image of his father and the power plant shimmered in front of him like ripples in a pool. He tried to reach out to him but met the resistance of the glass.

“Now you get to know what it feels like,” Ludgate whispered beside his ear.

John rushed the mirror after Danny, but he couldn’t get through.

“Dad!”

There was a blur, indistinct movement, and a flash—bright light, red and yellow from the blast, from the flames . Suddenly, everything was on fire through the narrow rectangle of the mirror.

“D-Dad…”

“This time you get the pleasure of watching ,” Ludgate said, “just like I did.”

Danny roared as he spun to face him, lashing out with both hands to grasp Ludgate tightly, but his fingers fell through the air with nothing to show for his agony. Ludgate wasn’t there, it was just another mirror.

No . Danny couldn’t lose somebody else, he couldn’t , not so close to how his mother died. But as much as he felt the desire to let himself spiral, he sucked in a breath and steeled himself to remain level-headed. He had to see this through. He had to be better.

Dad got out , he told himself, thinking of the blur he’d seen before the explosion. Oz got to him in time. They got out. He had to believe that or risk tearing Ludgate into pieces.

It was time to focus on catching the man, but when Danny moved on shaking, heavy legs and peered around the maze to find him, he couldn’t deny that his resolve faltered when he saw Ludgate standing amongst the shards from earlier, holding Mal by the arm with a fragment of glass pressed to his neck.

Mal coughed, staining his lips in red just like those of his apparition, though Danny couldn’t see any wounds.

Ludgate looked far worse at first glance, so much of his silver suit burnt away, leaving behind charred, flaking flesh, half his face and hair sticking out of the ruined cowl.

He had to be running on pure adrenaline to stare Danny down through so much pain.

“You really do ruin everything, you know that?” Ludgate said with a sneer on his melted face.

“Even him ,” he shook Mal, “who used to make this city quake almost as much as my father did, and now he’s going to die begging because he fell in love with your perfect image and tried his hand at playing hero. ”

Clenching his fists before he’d fully formed a plan, Danny started to spark.

And then he remembered what Mal told him last night about his untapped potential.

R

“You might have one more trump card up your sleeve.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Your powers are built on electromagnetic waves, right?” Mal had said as they lay in bed together, enjoying the brief reprieve from what they’d face the next day. “It’s possible you could use your lightning to project your own field just like our amplifiers.”

“I don’t know about that,” Danny had said. “It would be pretty destructive. We’d need time to test it.”

“That’s why we decided against adding an amplifier for you. But I’m talking do or die here, Sparky. You might be able to short out Ludgate’s belt without even touching him or without shooting off a bolt of lightning he’d see coming.”

“I don’t know, Mal, I don’t think I could do that.”

“You did it once before to get out of that mirror trap he had you in. Pretty sure it was do or die then too, and the Zeus I know, the Danny I fell in love with, never says die.”

R

“You know you’re not fast enough, right?

To save him before I slice his throat,” Ludgate said, pushing at Mal’s skin with the glass until a bud of dark red began to form.

“Your lightning jump isn’t that fast. And if you fail and he dies, what will you have left, Zeus, but a heart broken like so many pieces of glass. ”

Danny was so tired. He’d jumped too many times, and a burst of power like what he had planned would be all he had left, but that’s what this had come to.

Ludgate wasn’t an illusion. Not this time. He wasn’t in a mirror. And while there were many mirrors around him, he was still more than a step away from any reflections he could escape into. Moreover, he was standing perfectly aligned in front of the mirror gilded in ice.

“I want you to suffer like I suffered. To feel powerless like I felt!” Ludgate cried, pressing the glass harder against Mal’s neck, causing him to cough up more blood, too similar to the awful vision Danny saw earlier.

It was the only reason Mal had been taken down, Danny knew—because he was hurt, badly hurt, barely able to stand, and it was all Danny’s fault.

No . No. It was Ludgate’s fault. There was plenty that Danny was at fault for, and he’d have to live with that—with killing Thanatos most of all—but this, here, now , was built on Ludgate’s choices.

Danny could only try his best, his hardest, to make better choices in the future.

That had to be enough. It would be enough.

“You took everything from me!”

“Because Thanatos took everything from me,” Danny said, “but that doesn’t excuse what I did to him.

I never wanted to hurt anyone, Cassius. Not your father, not you, not anyone else.

I shouldn’t have given in and let myself kill him.

Sometimes losing the people closest to us makes us lose a part of ourselves too. For what it’s worth…I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Ludgate spat. “You think that changes anything?”

“For you? No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

Letting the sparks surrounding him grow and flicker brighter, Danny charged himself with his lightning running hot and vibrant through his veins and slowly started to expand the invisible waves from his core.

“What are you thinking, Zeus?” Ludgate asked .

Mal, despite looking fatigued and fading, recognized what Danny was doing and straightened his posture.

“I’m thinking…” Danny said, sparking brighter, impossible not to notice now, as the arcs of electricity flaring out around him expanded as if he were a lightning rod—though not as much as the unseen waves were expanding, “without that belt, you’re nothing.”

Surprise flashed in Ludgate’s eyes—his eyes, which no longer wore any contacts to hide that they were grey.

“Clever kid. You figured out my secret. So what now, huh? You think you can short it out? You idiot . Do you know what that would do? You’re grounded in this reality because of this belt.

It isn’t only my power that prevents me from getting lost in here.

“Without this belt, the entire mirror world will reform, implode . Oh, it’d throw us out of the maze, and we’d be fine— normally —but we’re in the middle of that trap you made for me, remember?

When the mirror world goes, so goes the anchor, and right now I’m anchored to your little fun house.

That means the second you destroy this belt, we’ll all be cut to ribbons when those mirrors burst from the aftershock. ”

Danny’s charging static dimmed, simmering low as he contemplated what it meant if Ludgate was right.

“You wanna risk that?” Ludgate taunted him—always taunting, even when he was bloody and breathless.

“All your friends, they’ll be fine. But he won’t.

” He shook Mal again. “He’s not doing so hot already, is he?

And that’s just it, isn’t it? Because of your little love affair, you’d do anything to save him.

“Oh, I think you’d do it if it was just down to you and me—end it all.

We both know about that niggling little death wish of yours.

Poor me ,” he said sarcastically, “all alone and hurting, with some of the greatest power this city’s ever known.

What a burden.” He rolled his eyes, and Danny saw the pain and fatigue on Mal’s face give way to rage.

Frost crept up his hands but receded before it could thicken into ice.

He was too hurt and exhausted to fight back.

The rage melted as he looked at Danny with nothing more than pleading, not for himself but for Danny to not listen, to not take Ludgate’s words to heart, to have faith that they still had a way out of this.

They did. Danny saw it now, in the angles, in his own sparks, in the distance between him and Ludgate.

He could calculate it all at a glance, and he’d had more than enough time.

He wasn’t only a good detective because he was an Elemental.

The mirror leading home was the key, and Ludgate had given Danny the perfect setup.

“But you won’t go out like that with him here, will you?” Ludgate said. “So I guess we’re at a standstill, Zeus. Tell you what. You leave first, and I’ll send him along after you. We’ll call the day a draw.”

Mal all but scoffed at the absurdity, which Danny didn’t buy for a second either, even if Ludgate had tried to veil his words with less venom. He wouldn’t let either of them out of here alive without fighting to his own last breath, but that wasn’t what Danny wanted. Not this time. Not anymore.

Danny couldn’t change the past, but he could forgive himself for it. He had to be a better hero. He had to be what Mal and the others believed of him.

“That’s your problem, Ludgate. That’s everyone’s problem.” Squaring his stance, he let the sparks around him grow again. “They think it’s always a choice between A or B. But I see a third option.”

Ludgate laughed derisively. “Yeah? What, you kill me and take the belt for yourself, that it? How heroic . But I guess you would think that, since you’d be saving him. A necessary evil.”

“No,” Danny said, letting the force of his lightning fill his voice, causing it to echo around them. “Killing is never necessary. Not unless it’s life or death, and right now it doesn’t have to be.” He met Mal’s eyes, then returned his glare to Ludgate. “I don’t have to kill you to end this.”

The sparks jumped off of him like the inside of a plasma globe, and Danny took a step forward. Ludgate backpedaled, right where Danny needed him to be.

“Maybe I can save all of us. Maybe I can’t. But you can’t stop me from trying.”

“Sparky,” Mal spoke up, his voice raspy but adamant, “what are you doing?”

“What I have to, to be better than him. To be better .” Readying himself to jump, he knew he only had seconds to get this right as the electromagnetic waves rippled out closer and closer to Ludgate.

“ Zeus ,” Ludgate snarled.

“I love you, Mal. ”

“No, wait—”

Danny erupted with his power at the same moment he jumped forward, and the world slowed.

He watched Ludgate shift like moving through deep water, pulling the shard of glass from Mal’s neck to point at Danny instead, as Danny disappeared into his lightning and reappeared right in front of them, having only a split second where the world still seemed slowed, and he spared a moment to look at Mal and memorize his face, even if right now it was distraught with panic.

The invisible electromagnetic waves reached Ludgate seconds before his hands did, which was all the additional time Danny needed, fritzing out the belt moments before he pushed Mal and Ludgate as hard as he could into the reflection of the mirror leading home.

Danny tried to follow them, meant to follow them, he was right there , but the destruction of the mirror world happened faster than he could move. Mal and Ludgate made it, but Danny...

He’d been so close .

Before everything shattered.