by R. T. Kaelin
The photographer looked offended. He slicked back his sweaty black hair and focused on her with narrowed eyes. “You don’t recognize me? Pablo Razzi, photographer to the stars and capes.” His eyes shone bright. “I even have a superpower myself. Wanna see it?”
“Ugh.” Vivienne threw up a little in her mouth. “Wait, I know that name. Aren’t you the d-bag photographer who took all those pictures of The Raven that one time, and ended up with a razor feather in the leg?” She waved for another snot. Meh. She held up two fingers.
Pablo’s face went red. “My leg still hurts when it’s foggy.”
“Heh. Good times.”
“And how would you know about that? The story in the press said I got the limp on assignment in Kuwait. Unless you were there when I snuck into The Raven’s little love nest.”
“Oops,” she said. “I guess you outwitted me. Good for you.” Her shots arrived and she downed the first. Johnnie Walker. Mmm. “Let me tell you what happens now.”
“Huh?” Pablo looked confused by her sudden reversal. “So you’re saying—?”
She stretched out, gathering the emotional energy around her, and took her black leather jacket off the chair. As she put it on, she shaped the fear energy around herself. “This Lady Vengeance,” she said idly. “What did you say she could do?”
“Fear powers.”
“Really?”
She glared at him as blackness like crude oil leaked from her pupils. It spread across first her irises, then the whites, then started leaking over her cheeks like bloody tears. Her smile spread wider than it should have, turning to a forest of sharp teeth.
“It’s more complicated than that, actually,” she said. “You see, I’m an empath. I feed on the fear of those around me and shape it into weapons, or I can godsmack them unconscious. Best of all, I can turn myself into what one person particularly fears, if it’s a specific thing. And you—you’re pretty freaked out about strong women. I call it the virago complex.”
As she stood, her black dress extended to her ankles, turning to ragged scraps at the edges that seemed to dance with a will of their own. Her nails lengthened into actual claws and her black hair lengthened to coil like snakes around her shoulders. Slowly, as his eyes widened, she drew a silver knuckle duster—one studded with sharp claws—from her purse.
“What’s the matter, Pablo?” Vivienne pulled the claw on, finger by finger. “No strong female role-models growing up? Macho father taught you women were the weaker sex, so you’re deathly terrified of one threatening the delicate balance of your little misogynist world?” She flexed her fingers in front of his face, and the silver claws clicked. “Devil got your tongue?”
The photographer trembled, staring at her as though at a raging lion—or a semi-truck barreling his way. A dark stain bloomed over the front of his pants and down one leg.
“Figures.” Vivienne drank her last shot, and then waved to the terrified bartender. “This guy’s got it.” She adjusted her leather jacket and took a few weaving steps toward the door. “Whoa.” Apparently, turning into a dark queen of darkness didn’t make walking after a dozen shots any easier. She really needed to plan her dramatic exits better.
She staggered out the door and into the night, letting her dark glamour fade. Maintaining the transfiguration drained her quickly and it was probably best to look like a normal person when she tried to call a taxi. She took out her phone—based on frequency of use, she kept two cab companies in her favorites’ list—and picked the least blurry one to dial when a bright light flashed in her eyes. She recoiled.
“What the hell?”
“Hey!” a man said behind her.
Stars dancing in her vision, Vivienne turned incredulously to where Pablo was making his way out of the bar, looking angry and a little turned on. Really not her intention. The stained pants made him look just comical enough that she had to laugh in her alcohol induced daze.
“Dude, you don’t even know how stupid you look.” She might have said more—a deprecating comment about his mother, maybe—but he snapped his fingers, and another burst of light dazzled her. She winced. “Son of a bitch!”
“You just keeping laughing.” Pablo came on, unhindered. He grasped Vivienne’s wrist. “C’mon, baby—you know you want it. C’mon!”
Great. A psycho with a God’s gift complex.
“You back right off.” She called on her fear energy to stun him, but she’d used up most of it showing off in the bar. She managed to send him staggering back only a step or two before he shook off the fear. “Damn.”
“I told you,” he said. “I’m a super too. I have a power.”
“Little bursts of light?” Vivienne asked. “That’s gotta be the lamest superpower ever.”
“Like camera flashes,” he said. “They call me The Paparazzi.”
“Wow, that’s creative. Is that ‘The’ with a capital ‘T’? Cute.”
“All the good names were taken. Also, I can do this.” He stepped toward Vivienne, and vanished in a blur. Something struck her in the head, and she fell to one knee. Pablo stood over her, having elbowed her from behind. “Speed of light. I can go anywhere. Do anything. Wanna see how much?”
Pablo started glowing, as though the moonlight was radiating from inside him.
Vivienne really didn’t want to see anything he had to show her. She took the last flickers of fear she had in reserve and started forming a fearsword in her hand. Darkness swirled around her fingers and became…a knife. A damn butter knife. This was just embarrassing. Not to mention extremely unfortunate.
The alley darkened and the building lights around them flickered as Pablo sucked all the energy into his hands, which started glowing as painfully bright as 200 watt bulbs. He moved, shooting around faster than her eye could follow. Vivienne had a bad feeling that her fear-butter-knife could match up.
“I am warning you.” She stood and edged away from him, hoping he wouldn’t sense her extreme disadvantage. “Back off, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
“I don’t think so.” He moved, and spoke from behind her. “You laughed at me.” He was to her left. “You embarrassed me.” Her right. “You think I’m just gonna let that go?”
Vivienne needed a plan. The trouble was her head was all fuzzy from the liquor and the elbow, her limbs didn’t want to move, and the most obvious plan involved getting blasted with a sunray. Not much of a plan.
Pink light streaked through the sky.
Vivienne recoiled as Pablo raised his hands and blasted her with light. Feeling nothing, she looked up and was confused to see a person standing between them, a black silhouette against Pablo’s light. The shape, petite and with long hair, indicated it was a woman . The light danced around her, seeping into her as though it were water and she were a sponge. Finally, the blast ended, and Pablo fell back, jaw agape.
The woman looked over her shoulder. “Vivienne.”
Vivienne cleared her throat. “Angel.”
“Oh my God.” Pablo went from harassing jerk to fanboy in seconds. “You’re A-Girl! Can I just get a photo real fast? I can do fast.” He brought out his camera in a blur of motion.
Angel looked away from him. “God, Aunt V, are you ever sober?”
“Not if I can avoid it.” Vivienne straightened and crossed her arms. “What brings you this way?”
Angel smiled. “Oh you know, see an opera, fight a dirtbag, same old, same old.”
“Hey! A-Girl!” Pablo seemed to have completely forgotten about attacking Vivienne and was now frantically taking pictures. He danced around her at impossible speed, checking dozens of angles. “Look this way! Just for a second!”
Angel looked at her fingers, which were glowing with the energy she had absorbed. “Pretty cool.” Then frowned at her smoldering coat, through which Pablo’s light ray had burned holes. “Total suck. This was Armani.”
She pulled off her coat to reveal a fashionable pink dress.
Noting the cut of the dress, Vivienne
said, “Red carpet? With a slit that far?”
“Shut up.”
The camera clicked half a dozen times. “Stop ignoring me, sexy!” Pablo shouted. “Look this way! C’mon, baby—you’re turning me on!”
Angel made a disgusted face and nodded at Pablo. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I know, right?” Vivienne narrowed her eyes. She noticed a faint buzzing in her ears. Maybe it was Pablo’s light burst—her vision still wasn’t up to snuff. “Kind of a tool.”
“Don’t listen to her, look at me!” Pablo said. “That’s right. Give me a little pouty face. That’s it! You’re a sexy little thing, aren’t you? That’s—”
Angel reached out, seized Pablo’s camera, and crushed it to little pieces in her hand. “There, that’s better.”
“Hey!” Pablo stood gaping in disbelief. “Hey!”
“That’s what, a $200 camera?” Vivienne asked. “Count your blessings. If she’d punched you, you’d spend that much on your first day in traction.”
His confusion turned to fury. “The Paparazzi makes you, you dumb bitch. I own you. Both of you!”
“As if,” Angel said. “Run off. You look like a dork.”
Pablo’s face was red with outrage, and his hands burned with solar energy. “You’re going to pay for that,” he said. “Both of you. I’ll make you pay!”
“Whatever, dude,” Angel said. A flash of light flared in her face, and Angel fell back with a cry.
Vivienne lurched forward and caught Pablo’s wrists as he reached for Angel’s throat. His arms were hot enough to burn her fingers, so she only held on long enough to sweep his legs and put him on his back. The Raven had taught her that move, and even after ten years, drunk or sober, she could take down a mook like a pro. Vivienne jerked back as a column of searing light shot past her head, narrowly missing her ear. The stench of burning hair filled her nostrils. Pablo tried to run, but Vivienne held him tight. and head-butted him in the face hard enough that he stopped spewing invectives. He collapsed to the ground like a sack of wet laundry.
“Finally,” Angel said.
Vivienne noticed the buzzing again, louder this time. She looked upward and caught her breath. “A?”
“Thanks,” Angel said, “that was close…” She trailed off. She heard the buzzing too, and followed Vivienne’s gaze upward. “Oh my God.”
Pablo’s spear of light arced up into the sky, like lightning in reverse. It didn’t travel at the speed of light or even particularly fast, but bounced around off the moisture in the air. It danced like a miniature storm in the night sky.
And passing a few thousand feet overhead—the source of the buzzing in Vivienne’s ears—was a jetliner.
* *** *
“Oh my God,” Angel said under her breath.
Miss it, she thought. Miss it, miss it, miss it….
The light cut through the hazy sky and struck the port wing two feet from the leading edge, then cut through the rest to the trailing edge. The air pressure bent the mostly cut wing into the fuselage, and with a groan of tortured metal, the wing twisted and tore off. The plane tilted to the left and fell on its side, screaming toward the earth.
There was no conversation—no questions. Vivienne wrapped her arms around Angel, and together they hurtled upward leaving a jet-trail of pink light. Adrenaline pumping, Angel hardly felt the weight as she angled her flight to intercept the crashing plane and pushed herself to go as fast as she could.
Vivienne said something, but the wind tore it away.
“What?!” cried Angel.
“You can do this,” her aunt shouted. “You can!”
Angel didn’t quite believe her, but it helped quiet her nerves. That and Vivienne’s empath powers draining the numbing chill of fear out of her, leaving only fuzzy emptiness. Her heart thudded and cold sweat ran down her dress, but she didn’t feel afraid. Right now, she was fearless. The contradiction was seriously unsettling, but it helped.
Darkness took shape around Vivienne, fueled by the absorbed fear energy, folding around her limbs to become armor. Vivienne tapped her arm and they turned over, so that Angel was pushing her up instead of pulling her. They hurtled up toward the plane, its engines roaring in an impossible attempt to fly. The plane trailed smoke and fire, roaring and guttering down.
“Now,” Vivienne said, her voice darkened with borrowed fear.
Angel shoved and detached, sending Vivienne soaring on alone, and then looped under the plane, hands raised.
She had never caught a plane before.
* *** *
The moment Angel let go of her, Vivienne braced herself, hurtled weightless through the air, and slammed into the falling plane. The armor helped, but the impact sent cracks racing through the purple-black plates encasing her. The alcohol helped too, but it impaired her so that she could only bat at the fuselage. Fortunately, her silver claw caught and held, and she shaped fear into a hooked talon for her other hand. With both hands, she caught herself before she could slip off.
The pain ripped through her, but with the wind howling, Vivienne couldn’t catch her breath to vocalize how much that hurt. She would feel that tomorrow. If there was a tomorrow.
A second later, the plane hit something and trembled, but it didn’t stop. Vivienne had hoped Angel would be more than a speed bump. “Hang in there, A.”
Hand-over-hand, she clawed her way past terrified faces in the windows. The whisky had left her somewhat impaired, but she did the best she could. This wasn’t the most dignified of approaches, but no time to worry about that now. At least she wasn’t wearing her old mini-skirt. That would have been just embarrassing.
* *** *
The plane hit Angel exactly the way seventy tons of crashing airplane would.
It blew right through her raised hands and struck her in the face.
The impact ground together every bone in Angel’s body and sent her into a crazy, uncontrolled spin with waves of pink jet-trail flailing out behind her. The world blacked out for a second under the crushing weight, but she clung to consciousness by a hair. Blood streaked from her nose.
Lifting the plane seemed impossible, but she had to try.
Her aunt was clinging to the plane, trying to climb along the bottom—which was really the side—and having a tough time of it. Probably she’d do better sober, but it wasn’t Angel’s place to judge right now. Angel needed to turn the plane, if she could.
Her hands scrabbled along the slick fuselage. Her fingers bent the metal, carving out handholds. She tried to right the plane, but the remaining wing acted like a rudder, resisting Angel’s attempts to make any change.
If she blew this, a lot of people were going to die—and not just the passengers, but whatever they crashed into. This whole thing was just so messed up and—
Don’t think, just do it.
Slowly, agonizingly, she rolled the plane level. The winds kept trying to push it onto its side again, but Angel held it stubbornly upright. A second later, she saw an access hatch tear free and hurtle off into the night. At least Aunt V made it inside. She hoped.
Straining just to keep the plane up, Angel hoped her aunt had a plan that didn’t involve her stopping the crash.
* *** *
As Vivienne climbed, the plane rotated right-side up, and she found herself clinging to the side, rather than the bottom. They were still going down, but at least Angel had managed to right the plane. Much better.
Vivienne made it to the boarding door, which she clawed open, tore off its hinges, and let it fly into the night sky. She slipped inside, wind howling around her.
The cabin was a mess of gale-force winds, flailing oxygen masks, and panicked faces. At least most of the passengers were strapped in The nearest flight attendant—a guy with glasses and frizzy hair who’d have been cute but for the abject terror on his face—looked at her in panic. “Who are you? What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry—” Vivienne checked his gold-plated nametag “—Ben. I got this.�
��
She turned to the cabin full of terrified passengers. They stared at her with impossible hope as she announced, “Attention, this isn’t your captain speaking. If you’re not buckled in, you’d better do that. And brace your head between your knees. Like the safety briefing you all ignored.”
“Are…are we going to make it?” Ben asked.
Vivienne shrugged. “No. You’re all going to die. Horribly, in fact.”
Eyes widened, mouths formed terrified “O” shapes, and the passengers’ hope morphed into sudden terror, surely amplified by her pronouncement.
Vivienne absorbed it all, a crushing wave of fear energy that made Pablo Razzi’s and Angel’s emotions feel like a ripple on a still pond. She could count on one hand the number of times she had absorbed this much fear from this many people.
It felt good. The rush threatened to bear her away into an endless world of pure bliss. It took Vivienne a second to remember where she was, what she was supposed to be doing, and how a lot of people would die if she didn’t do it. “Ben,” she said. “Tell the captain to put the landing gear down.”
The attendant nodded and picked up the phone. “Will that help?”
“Probably not.” Vivienne’s eyes surged with liquid blackness. “But it’s worth a shot.”
She took the energy and shaped it into armor, but not for herself. She staggered down the aisle, shaping black barriers around the passengers. Half-cocoon, half-airbag, the black-purple shells sealed them in. She hoped they’d be strong enough to cushion everyone from the impact.
As she went, she stumbled and bumped into every row on the way, which she gladly blamed on the catastrophic airplane failure, not the whisky shots.
Unfortunately, as big as the fear rush had been, it started to run out around row 26. Stupid jumbo-jets, always cramming on as many passengers as they could. Toward the back of the plane, she had to start shaping weaker shields, and hope the impact would be less. She’d always heard flying in the back of the plane was safer. Time to test that theory.
