The Legends of Forever by Barry Lyga (books to read for beginners .txt) 📕

with nothing to gain for myself or for Brie?” Larvan sneered. “I only inveigled my way into your clique so that I could gain access to Ambush Bug’s bees for my own purposes.”

“To get revenge on the world for what it did to your precious sister, right?” Joe sighed wearily. “I’ve seen this movie before, Bert.”

Joe figured he might be able to bat away one of the bees before the other one stung his eye. Could he recover the gun, aim one-eyed, and fire before another bee could get to his good eye?

Yeah. Yeah, he thought he could.

The idea of being stung in the eyeball did not fill him with joy, but he couldn’t see another way out of the predicament. He figured he’d let his left eye get stung—he fired his gun right-handed and would need to sight down the barrel with his right eye.

I can’t believe these are the kinds of things I have to think about. Man, I’m actually starting to miss the days when Gorilla Grodd would kidnap me for a while.

“Think carefully, Detective.” Larvan gestured and the bees quickly crossed paths, switching eyes. “I am in complete control of the situation. Your life and the life of Wild Dog are in my hands.”

Yeah, definitely feeling nostalgic for ol’ Banana-breath. At least he didn’t try to monologue me to death.

Without so much as a word, Joe slapped out with one hand, knocking a bee aside, sending it spiraling off against a wall. At the same time, he lunged for the gun, squeezing both eyes shut, hoping that the thin flesh of his eyelids would provide some protection from the sting.

The sting never came.

He felt the cold steel of the pistol’s handle, closed his fingers around it. Momentum carried him bodily to the floor and he rolled once, thinking, This used to be easier, knowing that he’d need a day in a hot tub and a ton of ice packs for his back to feel normal again. He popped open his eyes, somewhat amazed that both of them still functioned, took aim—

Bert Larvan was already on the floor, struggling with Dig, who had a headlock on the putative Bug-Eyed Bandit II.

“His ear!” Joe yelled. “In his ear!”

The bees buzzed around them, zeroing in on Dig. Spartan’s body armor would protect most of him, but Larvan could still direct them up under his helmet and to his eyes or ears. They had to remove the control bud from Larvan’s ear.

But they had a weapon that Larvan couldn’t take away.

Dinah opened her mouth to let loose with her Canary Cry—but at that very instant, a bee darted between her lips. Dinah’s eyes bulged out in shock and pain as the bee zipped out of her mouth.

“I ung!” she cried in pain, clapping her hands to her mouth. “I ung!” My tongue! My tongue! The bee had stung her tongue, and right now the thought of using her power was furthest from her mind. Her mouth and throat clogged as the bee’s apitoxin swelled her tongue to three times its normal size.

Dig had Larvan pinned down, but the bees were getting closer, now buzzing around his head, looking for a way under the face shield as Dig jerked his head back and forth, evading them.

Joe scrabbled along the floor on all fours, releasing the gun. His knees protested with blunt, hard claps of pain down each leg, but he forced himself along until he was a body length from Larvan. Then he launched himself at the Bug-Eyed Bandit, landing with a painful thud, the air propelled from him as his belly hit the floor.

Still, he was close enough to reach out and grab Larvan by the ear, which he did, twisting it until Larvan cried out in pain. The little bud lay nestled in the ear canal. Joe’s fingers were too thick and too clumsy to reach in there, so he kept twisting and pulling at Larvan’s ear. He suddenly remembered a time when Barry—age ten, maybe—had come down with a terrible ear infection. Joe had had to put drops in Barry’s ear and then tug at Barry’s earlobe to get the medicine to travel down into the ear canal properly. Barry hated the sensation and fought him every time.

Absurdly, it felt the same now, tugging and twisting at Larvan’s ear. The major difference was that he didn’t really care how Larvan felt about it. He would rip the ear right off Larvan’s head, if that’s what it took.

Finally, the earbud fell out. Joe croaked out a bark of triumph, and Dig slapped away the last bee, now rudderless and buzzing randomly through the air. Together, he and Joe wrestled Larvan into submission and slapped cuffs on him.

Wild Dog, meanwhile, had managed to scrabble over to one of the workbenches, where he grabbed his messenger bag and dragged it down onto the floor. Gasping for breath, he rummaged inside, produced an EpiPen, and jabbed it into his thigh. A moment later, he inhaled a huge gulp of air, then shot Joe a thumbs-up.

“Man, we can’t leave you guys alone for five minutes, can we?” Dig asked.

Joe rose from the floor, dusting himself off, then helped Dinah to her feet. “Thanks for the concern, Dig. How do you feel?” he asked Dinah.

She shrugged and pointed to her throat. She could still breathe, but talking was going to be difficult for a while.

Just then, Joe noticed another presence in the room. Handcuffed to Oliver’s salmon ladder was a woman who looked suspiciously like Dinah, with meta-dampening manacles clamped on her wrists.

He sighed. “Care to introduce us to your friend?”

Dig gestured vaguely at the woman. “Meet the so-called Dark Canary. Claims to be the Seamstress of—”

“The Screamstress!” Dark Canary interjected with truly aggrieved pique.

“Right. That. Of the Royal Northwest Collective,” Dig finished wearily. “It’s an Earth 32 thing, apparently.”

“This is not good,” Joe said. He gestured to the main monitor. On the screen, the swarm was bigger than ever. Time was running out.