Timothie Hill and the Cloak of Power

Chapter Three

Chapter ThreeZAP! Timothie's head reeled. His brains were scrambled. He staggered to his feet, Timothie the son of Jevil and Tara from Draxxt, the parents whose death in the Troll wars had orphaned him as a young lad in the badlands. Saving people, including himself, was what he'd been taught to do. For most of his life, he'd been forced to live in the shadows, never revealing his true powers. Now, faced with the cowering Reginald and the simmering drain on the floor, the superhero bent and grasped his sparkling sword. On the planet Draxxt he had been almost inconsequential, a mere orphaned boy, until the king's court and the great Troll Mindbender molded and formed his character and physique to be this, an Angel's favorite on an alien world.

Reginald grinned in the corner. There was something odd about his appearance. Timothie swirled his Cloak of Power around his shoulders, the tight white lace of his shirt rippling across his chest.

“It almost had you there, Tim,” Reginald said. “If I hadn't sent it back where it came from, you'd be a grub on the far wall.”

“I owe you, Reg,” agreed Timothie. “We go back a long way. Maybe I had you wrong.”

His former friend cracked his knuckles. “Clever.”

“I've never known you to crack your knuckles.”

Reginald's face wavered. “Trying to butter me up, Tim? Think you can get a hold of the dark side that way? Win your fight without your precious Angel?” He cracked his knuckles again.

“My old friend never cracked his knuckles. Bael, the shapeshifter, doesn't have a policy against using his friends for professional reasons. Where is Reginald?” Timothie strode across the room in two strides, gripping the shuddering creature by his throat. Reginald's face dropped into gaping, bloody fangs and a core of putrid smell. It was Bael, the master shapeshifter, and the human lay inert, as though asleep, on the other side of the room.

“It is you!” Timothie cried and threw the demon against a wall of scrolling obscenities. “What have you done to my former friend? Is he dead, you monster? I swear I'll send you back to Hell, and you'll stay there!”

“HUMAN,” Bael roared and dissolved into a pool of thick black fluid surrounded by crimson eyes. Only white slits in the eye sockets showed Timothie the demon's soft spots. The stylist planted his feet into the mire. Forks of lightning flashed from the mirrored panes of the windows. He hovered above the swirling fluid and the white slits that glared and sparked; the crimson eyes pulsed below his red shoes as he levitated six feet from the floor tiles.

“You're stronger than I thought,” Timothie said. “Let's talk.” He drew his sword and plunged it into the midst of the froth. He grinned his crooked smile and rubbed the stubble on his chin. Translucent in the ambient lighting, his close-cropped salt and pepper hair sparkled like the blade. Slouched in a corner, the real Reginald roused himself and watched.

“I have a spell. I won't use it, though,” his human friend offered, lifting a limp hand in greeting.

Timothie's sword slurped as he pulled it from the mess on the floor. He catapulted to the ceiling and spread his sinewy arms. “I have a spell, too.”

The demon heaved. Reginald pounded his fists on the wall of crude caricatures. “You're no match for his magic, Tim.”

“Magic,” Timothie said. “I learned it on my world.”

“Your world? You mean Vancouver?” Reginald, his former friend and nemesis, rubbed his eyes and waved his arms in a circular pattern. “You're a simple hairstylist from Vancouver. You learned your trade at Marvel Beauty Schools. I know you. You are nothing. Get him, Bael!”

“If spirits threaten me in this place, Fight Water by Water and Fire by Fire, banish their souls into nothingness, and remove their powers until the last trace. Let these evil beings flee, through Time and Space.”

Huge snowy wings beat-beat. The Angel of the West spread her arms around Timothie, the black, star-spangled cloak secure on the stylist's shoulders. A river of scalding water cascaded from the vaulted ceiling and washed the demon toward the center of the blue tiles. Bael screamed and slithered down the drain. Timothie bellowed another incantation. “It's fine, Uriel. Thank you, my Defender of the Element of Water and of the West.”

Bael in the form of Reginald was gone. The real Reginald adjusted his glasses, stood, and lit a joint. Outside, grey spires struck through the morning fog. Traffic crawled below. All seemed like a normal day in downtown Edmonton.

Timothie's mobile phone played “Dixie.” The small blue instrument squawked. “Cut and color at one thirty tomorrow? Just a minute, let's see. Okay, can you make it for three? I'm down for that.”

A normal day for superhero Timothie Hill.

Something obscene swirled on the edges of the blue tiles. It would be back.