by Vivi Andrews
If she’s a kid, why did you marry her, you skeezy cradle-robber? Darla wanted to shout, but the last thing she wanted was him thinking she cared who he married. “A mistake is washing your colors in bleach. Mistakes don’t send people to Area Nine.”
“Not ordinary people, no. But the world plays by different rules when your father is a notorious villain. If our father wasn’t Demon Wroth, there’s no way Mirabelle would’ve been tossed in Area Nine on her first strike.”
Our father. She sucked in a startled breath.
Mirage was his sister. It shouldn’t change anything, but Darla felt something tight and ugly in her gut unravel and melt away at his words. She was not relieved. And he was still talking.
“Instead of going after the bastards who manipulated Mirabelle into stealing for them, heroes like you are too busy patting themselves on the back for capturing a teenager to even consider the big picture, to think for one second that she’s just a pawn, a piece in someone else’s larger agenda. What’s her crime? Is it stealing something? Is it refusing to rat out her friends? Or is it something more simple than that? Is it just that she’s Demon Wroth’s daughter that landed her in Area Nine, locked away without a trial—”
“That’s impossible! Everyone gets a trial. No matter who they’re related to.”
Lucien snorted. “What world do you live in?” Again he went on before she could reply, cynicism dripping from every word. “Oh, that’s right, the hero world, where everything is grand gestures and PR stunts to cover up the lies.”
“Lies?” she yelped. “You’re accusing me of being deceitful?” She wasn’t the one who’d used a kiss as an escape hatch.
“Every hero lies in their own way,” he snapped, still looming angrily over her, all that strength and heat so close she just wanted to sink into it. “The entire concept of pure heroism, that you could all be as good as you play at being, is a lie.”
“If your only complaint is that you don’t think it’s possible for anyone to be as good as I am, I think I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You would.”
Darla gritted her teeth. “Where’s your sister, Wroth?”
“You won’t find her here,” he taunted, his dark eyes flashing with wicked satisfaction. “I gave her a signal. She’s long gone. Running for the hills and you’ll never get her back. Lock me up if you want, but it won’t help you find her.”
“It has nothing to do with what I want.” Darla shoved him in the chest to knock him back a step. He barely swayed. “Breaking someone out of Area Nine is a crime. Breaking into the Crypt to steal files is a crime. You’re going to jail because of what you’ve done, not because I want you to be there.” Because she didn’t want that. If she was honest with herself, the thought of Lucien Wroth in a cell made her feel a little nauseated.
She struck him again, just to remind herself she should, and he captured her wrists, lightning fast.
“Stop.” He sucked all the angry energy he’d been throwing at her inside himself. Suddenly, he loomed larger and somehow more intimidating for being so contained. Darla almost took a step back, needing an extra few inches to regain some composure. Her blood was moving too fast through her veins, feeling too hot beneath her skin, especially where his thumb brushed the pulse point at her wrist.
“Isn’t there anyone you care about?” he asked, his voice soft and dark. “Anyone you would risk everything for without thinking twice?”
Yes.
She wanted to hate him. She wanted him to be villainous to his core, painted the easily identifiable black of evil. Instead all she could think was how badly she wanted to be the one he would take a risk like that for. She discarded the thought, clinging hard to her pretty black-and-white world. She didn’t have room for greys. “No one I care about would ever ask me to.”
“They shouldn’t have to,” he said quietly, but she barely heard him.
A green light flashed out of the corner of her eye. A lightning bolt shooting back up to the sky. Her signal. For the first time in her life, Darla saw that green bolt and hesitated.
Lucien’s mouth twisted mockingly. He dropped her wrists and backed away. “Your public awaits, DynaGirl.”
She could grab him. Drop him in a cell at the North Courthouse on her way to whatever the latest catastrophe was. There was no denying that was what she should do. But for once, the shoulds weren’t ruling her. Lucien Wroth rotting in a cell didn’t feel like justice.
She took a step back. Then another. When ten feet separated them and she could feel the breeze from the open balcony door stirring her hair, Darla stopped.
“This is twice now you’ve gotten away,” she said. “The next time I see you will be the last day you’re walking around free.”
He blinked, clearly surprised she wasn’t dragging him to the nearest cell. She just couldn’t. Not when, against all her better judgment, she’d begun to admire him. She knew a lot of people who were supposed to be good, but real integrity, real caring, wasn’t something she saw every day.
She studied him, memorizing the muscular strength, the day’s growth along his jaw and the dark, sinister cut of his features. Damn, the man is temptation on a stick. She’d never wanted anyone so badly, or been so certain she could never have him.
“Don’t let me catch you again, Wroth.”
Chapter Eight
Sibling Rivalry
“Dude, how long have you been schtupping DynaGirl?”
Lucien jumped, tearing his eyes away from the sight of Darla flying off to heed the city’s call and spinning toward the sound of his sister’s voice. Mirabelle leaned against the kitchen counter, rolling a peach between her palms.
“How long have you been standing there?”
She shrugged. “Not so long. Did I miss the good stuff? I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to make my presence known. I don’t particularly want to see my brother knocking boots with DynaGirl, even if that’s what you had to do to get me out. Not that I don’t appreciate it.”
He shook his head, dismissing the topic of DynaGirl entirely. “Are you ready to go?”
“Go?”
“We need to get out of town now. How do you feel about Indonesia?” Lucien strode toward the bedroom, intent on collecting the bag he’d started to fill before Darla interrupted him. A single hard word from Mirabelle stopped him in his tracks.
“No.”
“No?” He turned, frowning at his little sister. “We don’t have time for this, Belle. DynaGirl could come back any minute. Grab anything you think will be useful. Everything else we’ll buy on the road.”
“You should leave. I heard what DynaGirl said to you. You can’t hang around here, but I’m not coming with you.”
“What?” His voice was sharper than he’d ever used when speaking with Mirabelle. He usually tried to be gentle, as careful of her as spun glass, wrapped in layers of gauze and never allowed to take a blow. He’d never had a harsh word for her, but the day he had to break her out of prison was the exception to that rule. Maybe if he hadn’t been so easy on her, she wouldn’t have needed breaking out in the first place.
He wanted this day to end, but from Mirabelle’s expression, the universe wasn’t granting any wishes.
“I can’t go with you, Luc. I appreciate what you did. I do. But I only came here tonight to show you I’m okay and tell you not to interfere again.”
“Interfere?” The word choked him.
“I have to get back. Kevin will be wondering what happened to me.”
“You were in prison. He should be doing a helluva lot more than wondering.” Lucien realized he was shouting when Mirabelle flinched, but he couldn’t seem to control his volume. “How can you go back to that asshole after the way he used you?”
“Don’t talk about him like that! You don’t know him!”
“I know you dropped out of school and landed in a cell because of him. And he just left you there. That tells me everything I need to know about him.”
“It was
n’t supposed to happen like that. Kevin had it all planned out. It was my screwup.”
“You mean you weren’t supposed to get caught. I’m saying you shouldn’t have been in the goddamn bank vault in the first place. What were you thinking, Belle? What did he say to you to get you to do it?”
“He didn’t have to say anything to me. I wanted to do it. I would do it again. Some things are worth going to jail for, Lucien.”
“What was it? What did he make you steal?”
“He didn’t make me steal anything. I was happy to be able to help. This means something, Lucien.”
“So tell me what it means. Tell me what he’s doing.”
She shook her head, pacing away from the counter and back in quick, jerky steps. “You’d just try to stop us. You’ve never believed we could change things. That we could prevent—” She broke off, turning her face away sharply, but not before he saw the tears brightening her eyes.
“Tell me what it will change, Belle.” He lowered his voice, forcing himself to use the soft, patient tone she expected from him, but she just shook her head.
“You’ve never understood, Luc.”
He couldn’t argue with that. He’d never understood the way she seemed to share their father’s irrational need for someone to blame. Their mother’s death had been an accident, but Mirabelle couldn’t see it that way. She’d always wanted someone to blame, someone to punish, and Kevin was giving her that.
Lucien wondered when she would realize it wasn’t enough. That vengeance was sweeter as an idea than as a reality. In the end, the person she would wreak the most havoc on would be herself.
He should’ve shielded her from their father’s influence more. He’d been a teen himself when his father had fallen off the deep end on his own quest for revenge. Lucien had needed to get away from his father, but that had left Mirabelle growing up with a man whose hatred for the supers knew no rational bounds.
He couldn’t hang on to the should’ves though. He could only try to do right by her now. And that meant taking her with him.
“You’ve done your part, Belle. Whatever it was. Come with me now.”
“I’m not walking away from my cause. I’m sorry, Lucien.”
He heard the finality in her apology and cursed under his breath, using a bolt of superspeed to race toward her, but Mirabelle had already vanished.
“Dammit, Mirabelle. We can talk about this.” He scanned the room, knowing it was futile but unable to help himself. “I know you can hear me. Be reasonable, Belle. At least let me help you. I can be useful to your cause, can’t I? If you won’t leave with me, at least let me watch out for you. Belle? Belle!”
He waited a moment, listening for the sound of her breathing, anything. But all he heard was the sound of his own curse and his fist going through a brick wall.
Darla Powers felt like a world-class idiot. Which made sense, because all evidence of the last three days pointed to her being a world-class idiot.
She’d woken up this morning wallowing in regret that she’d let Lucien get away. Again. Replaying their interactions from the previous days, she’d vacillated between the conviction that she was right to release him and recriminations for her stupidity in letting him go. She felt like a razor-tipped pendulum in a macabre Poe story, swinging steadily between black and white and slicing bloody cuts into her own concept of morality with each pass. She’d had Wroth in her grasp, but she’d just flown away and hormones were her only excuse. He’d looked too good to be bad. If by too good she meant too mouthwateringly wicked.
The heist she’d flown off to stop had already been a dead scene by the time she got there. No villains to fight, no culprits to capture, just evidence for the police to examine, but nothing for her to do.
She’d flown back to Lucien’s lair, but of course he was long gone, her chance at redemption up in smoke.
As exhausted as she’d been last night, she hadn’t been able to sleep, kept awake by her restless thoughts. But eventually she’d drifted off. There were only so many different ways she could call herself the world’s biggest fool before even that became boring enough to put her to sleep.
Her cell phone buzzed. She considered ignoring it, until she caught a glimpse of the caller ID out of the corner of her eye. Darla cringed and connected the call. “Hi, Mom.”
Her mother’s high, girlish voice burbled through the earpiece. “Baby, what’s this we’re hearing about you being hospitalized by Demon Wroth’s son?”
Good God, the rumors had made it to China.
Dwight and Pamela Powers, AKA the Daring Dynamo and WonderGirl, were on a diplomatic tour of Asia, helping the Chinese cope with the sudden emergence of supers in their midst, but thanks to modern technology, half a world away was still close enough to worry. Darla glanced at the clock—it had to be after midnight in Beijing.
“It’s nothing, Mom. You know how reporters like to exaggerate things.”
“Honey, you know what your father always says, you handle the press or they will handle you. Now, how are you handling it?” The scold was delivered in her mother’s gentle way, but it still made Darla’s hackles rise.
“There’s nothing to handle, Mom. It’s over. How’s your trip going?”
Her mother ignored the attempt to change the subject like the mild-mannered bulldozer she was. “Don’t underestimate the value of damage control, sweetie. If we’re hearing about it in China, then obviously it’s not over yet.”
“Tell her to go on the offensive,” her father’s blustery voice called out in the background, clearly audible to Darla’s supersensitive ears. “You can’t just wait for these things to blow over.”
“I heard him,” Darla said before her mother could repeat the advice. She could picture the pair of them, her father’s big frame sprawled out on the bed of their hotel suite, searching for something in English on TV as her mother leaned against the window or stood on the balcony looking out over the city.
Darla had inherited her father’s red hair and superstrength and her mother’s ability to fly, though her figure was much less aerodynamic than WonderGirl’s sleek, girlish physique. Raised in a super family, Darla never questioned her duty to the city, never doubted the need for good to triumph over evil.
But what if evil isn’t so evil?
“Did something happen between you and that Lyle? There’s the strangest quote—”
“Kyle,” she corrected absently. “Yeah, it’s over.”
“Oh, sweetie, are you okay?”
“What did she say?” her father demanded.
“She and that Kyle broke up,” her mother explained.
“Good. He was never good enough for her anyway.”
Darla smiled, comforted by those words from the only man whose arms had always been stronger than hers. Until Lucien. Her father never thought anyone she dated was good enough for his baby. What would he think of a man who wasn’t good at all? How would the villain, with his unexpected integrity, measure up?
Not that she could ever tell her parents about the kiss. There would never be anything between her and Lucien Wroth. If he knew what was good for him, she’d never set eyes on him again.
A heavy pounding shook the front door of her apartment. Darla flinched.
“Hang on a sec, Mom.”
It was probably a reporter. Unless some supervillain had sent her a bomb by UPS again. She shuffled over to the door with her mother chattering about press conferences and being visible in a positive way. At least she wasn’t still in her pajamas. Her ratty old jeans and threadbare T-shirt weren’t exactly DynaGirl couture, but they were a step up from answering the door at noon in her pajamas.
The knock came again, hard enough to make the frame shudder, and something in Darla’s chest tightened with anticipation. It couldn’t be…
It was.
Lucien Wroth, brooding demigod of the villain persuasion, stood in the hallway outside her apartment.
“We need to talk.”
“Dar
la? Baby? Is there someone there with you?”
Darla tried to speak, but her tongue suddenly felt three sizes too big. “Mom, I’ve, uh, I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you later. My love to Daddy.” She disconnected the call and tossed the phone onto the side table in her entry. Careful to keep her focus on Lucien Wroth’s midnight eyes so she didn’t betray her intentions, she slid her hand past the deadbolt, the open door blocking the movement from his view, and palmed the modified tranq gun she kept in a holster for hostile guests. “What are you doing here? I told you—”
“That you’d lock me up if I ever came near you again. I remember. This is important.” He swallowed thickly, looking uncertain for the first time since she’d met him. His eyes flicked toward her hidden hand and she tensed, ready to take his ass down if he even sneezed at superspeed. “I need your help.”
Darla blinked. Well that was unexpected.
Chapter Nine
Bad Pennies & Superhot Criminals
Please let her refrain from tasing my ass.
Her eyes gave nothing away, but she had a weapon behind that door, Lucien was sure of it. Probably aimed, cocked and on a hair-trigger.
He knew he was taking a chance, coming to Darla. She was the poster child for everything heroic and good, while he was barely staying out of a cell, but something had moved her to let him go the last time. He had to hope whatever soft spot she had for him was still feeling warm and squishy.
She was different from the other supers. He had to believe that because he was about to lay all his cards on the table and pray for the best—and he wasn’t a praying man.
“It’s my sister.”
Darla didn’t relax, but her tension shifted, becoming less defensive, more curious. “Mirage?”
Play on that curiosity. Use every weapon you have. “She went back to the guy who got her thrown into Area Nine in the first place. They have some plan. Something big. Real villainous shit.” Come on, Darla. I know you can’t resist a chance to go on a justice rampage. “I need to figure out what’s going down, and you have access I don’t. You can tell me what he had her steal. We can stop them…” He hesitated before forcing out the next word. He’d always worked alone, but now… “Together.”
