I picked one up, not fully understanding the information on the fragment. Red ink was bad, though. I knew that much.
Against my will, a swell of pity washed over me as a tentative theory formed: we were dealing with a desperate man whose world was collapsing. It didn’t make me like him, but I wasn’t comfortable anymore with my hand slipping.
The ceiling creaked and we froze. A male voice drifted down from an upper floor, the cadence of the speech making me think he was talking on a telephone. I sighed in relief; now we knew we were alone downstairs.
Marco and I tiptoed to the bottom of the stairs, which was the place where we would be at the biggest disadvantage. I decided to avoid the stairwell altogether because I didn’t know which steps creaked, instead perching on the handrail and near-crawling up that instead. While it was considerably more awkward, it was silent.
Rolling his eyes, Marco did the same, though more slowly than me.
When I reached the top of the railing I lowered myself onto the landing and listened again. I could hear snuffling and whimpers from a room on my right that had been padlocked. The door had butterfly stickers on it, so I assumed the children were in there. The man’s voice was coming from a closed room on the left.
I listened and discerned a few words about “payment” and “confirmation.” He’d finally decided to talk to a negotiator.
I had to make a decision. As much as I enjoyed thrilling displays of heroics, the police had accomplished their purpose and talked down Mr. Greene. I bowed my head, ashamed that I’d so callously disregarded Saint Catherine’s police force. Maybe they weren’t superheroes, but they fought and died for the citizens, just like us. How easily I’d forgotten that while in the Hulls’ kitchen.
I signed to Marco our new plan: We need to go. Hide in attic until night. Family will be at police station for a long time. He nodded and we tiptoed to the attic opening at the end of the hallway.
“No! I want confirmation that the money’s been sent before I give you anything! I’m not a damned idiot!”
We whirled around. Mr. Greene’s enraged words barely sounded human. What had happened in a few short seconds?
A woman’s frightened wail cut to my core. “H-honey, p-please!”
The horribly familiar sound of a slap made me flinch. It was like listening to my childhood.
Marco’s eyes displayed little emotion, just a hardness that aged him. He met my gaze and raised an eyebrow as if to say, so what are you going to do?
I took a deep breath and held up my hand, prepared to sign a reminder that if we broke down the door, we might accidentally kill Mrs. Greene. Before I could, my sensitive ears heard a small gasp.
“Davey, please don’t do this,” Mrs. Greene whispered.
“You made me do this, Irene. A man can’t just stand by while his wife leaves him. I’m sorry I couldn’t provide for you and the kids.” His voice broke.
A small clink of bullets in a chamber.
A frantic plea to God.
I kicked open the door at the same moment Marco unleashed the payload of the sunlight he’d stolen from the backyard. Blinding whiteness filled the small room for a second, but I wasn’t deterred. I’d already memorized where Mr. Greene was standing: in the center of the room, over his bound wife, holding a pistol to her head.
I threw myself at Mr. Greene, pulling his weapon out of his hands and slamming him into the wall in one motion. “Clear!” I yelled the usual signal to my team out of habit, remembering with a pang that my entire team was with me already.
Marco ripped off Mrs. Greene’s bonds, helping her to her feet while murmuring comforting words. He led her out of the room.
Mr. Greene pushed against me and yelled a few insults about my parentage and sexual history.
I just rolled my eyes. It was always the same accusations. My former sympathy for Mr. Greene was nowhere to be found.
When he paused for breath, I grabbed a fistful of his hair and made him look at me. “If the negotiator promised you anything besides three hots and a cot in state prison for the rest of your life, I’m sorry to say that he lied,” I said cheerfully.
“All you freaks need to be taught a lesson. Learn your place.”
I laughed and threw him to the ground.
“I suppose you’ll be the one to do that?” I cooed, taking my butterfly knife out of my pocket and twiddling it around my fingers like a child’s play thing. In fact, I had played with butterfly knives when I was a child. “Please, tell me what you have in mind. I would love to see ‘threatening a registered superhero’ added to your rap sheet, which I should remind you is already about as long as my arm.”
The sound of a window breaking downstairs alerted me that the police were in the house.
“Helios, we’ve got company!” I yelled to the next room.
“Okay!” he called back.
Tense male voices floated up the stairwell, followed by the footfalls of boots. Within seconds the SWAT team appeared in the doorway.
The point leader of the SWAT team shouted at us from behind his helmet. “Drop your weapons! Get on the ground!”
I let Mr. Greene go and pocketed my knife, not taking my eye off the six firearms pointed at me. A man shouted an identical order in the other room. Marco would know what to do.
I sank to one knee with measured slowness, my hands up. “I’m Battlecry, a registered superhero with the city of Saint Catherine. I have the right to kneel and remain in possession of my weapons.”
The SWAT team would’ve learned superhero laws in their training, but it was always good to remind them. There was a long pause, and then the leader nodded once and signaled to the others to subdue Mr. Greene.
While the SWAT members handcuffed Mr. Greene and led him away, the team leader motioned for me to sit down next to him on the bed. After taking off his helmet, he pulled out a pad of paper and uncapped a pen. He didn’t look happy.
I bit my lip. Now I had to explain why, exactly, two maverick superheroes were at the scene, and I had to explain it in such a way that Patrick wouldn’t be alerted. Think, think…
“Okay, you’re Battlecry, right? I’m Captain Harkins.” He scratched his chin. “I normally only work with Atropos. Where is he?”
I had my reply ready. “The main team decided to split up into smaller tactical groups for certain types of missions, for the conservation of manpower. I’m sure you would know all about that.”
Sometimes I thought my real power was inventing bullcrap like that on the fly.
“I see.” Captain Harkins made a note. “Tell me exactly what happened before you came here. I didn’t send up a call for Super assistance, so there was a crossed wire somewhere. Did the department’s superhero liaison, what’s her name, Captain Drummond, call you guys in?”
I blinked, stunned. I’d expected a rant about interference, but Captain Harkins was ready and willing to believe that it was all an innocent misunderstanding.
I plunged ahead with that in mind. “I don’t handle the requests from police. That’s Atropos’ job. But you know what, let me talk to Atropos first about the miscommunication, and then I’ll get in touch with Captain Drummond and smooth this whole thing over. I’m terribly sorry about the confusion, and I don’t want to cause anymore headache.”
Captain Harkins held up a hand. “No, no, it’s fine. We always appreciate you guys helping out with this kind of stuff. I just would’ve hated it if one of my men shot you. Can you tell me what happened after you entered the house?”
I filled him in on the brief showdown with Mr. Greene, glossing over how we entered the house, because the police generally frowned on us using our powers to deliberately hinder their missions. “Then you guys came in, and now here we are.”
Captain Harkins flipped his notepad shut and tucked it into his pocket. “Got it. Thanks, Battlecry. I’ll be in touch with Captain Drummond.”
“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “Like I said, I’ll call Captain Drummond. You don’t have to do
anything.”
Captain Harkins gave me a quizzical look but nodded. “Okay, you can call Captain Drummond.”
I shook his hand and walked out of the room onto the landing. Police officers were interviewing Mrs. Greene at the bottom of the stairs. Giggles floated from the other bedroom, where the kids had been imprisoned, and I poked my head inside.
Marco sat on the bed, with Joshua and Victoria on either side of him. In his palm was a small glowing ball of light, dim enough to look at directly, like an old lightbulb. He was moving it around in the air in front of the kids. Whenever one of them would reach for it, Marco made it dart in a different direction. The children were enchanted.
Victoria saw me in the doorway and squealed. “Firelight!”
She leaped off the bed and threw herself around my middle. I didn’t have the heart to correct her, though I had a wild thought about buying a page in the newspaper, and putting my face there with the caption MY NAME IS BATTLECRY.
I knelt down to her level and peered into her shining brown eyes. “Are you okay, Victoria? Today must have been a scary day for you.”
She gasped. “How do you know my name?”
I winked. “That’s my superhero power. I can peek into a little girl’s heart and find out all her secrets. For example,” I said, looking over her shoulder at the room’s décor, “I know that you like princesses, horses, and dolls.”
Victoria broke into peals of laughter. “Yes! Wow, can you tell what I had for dinner last night?”
“I could,” I said with exaggerated thoughtfulness, “But I’m so hungry myself I think I’m going to…eat a little girl!” I started tickling her and making chomping noises.
She shrieked and ran back to Marco, who was shaking with laughter himself. Joshua hugged him and said nothing.
Marco patted Joshua’s head. “I gotta go now, kiddo. You remember what I told you about nightmares, okay?”
“Everyone has them,” Joshua mumbled, his lip quivering.
Marco carefully pulled Joshua’s arms off of him and gave him a brief hug. “You’re going to be fine.” He brushed away Joshua’s tears with his thumb. “And if monsters ever do attack the city, my friends and I will stand between you and them. That’s our promise.”
It was easy to forget that Marco was only seventeen.
Victoria threw her arms around my neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She showered my face and mask with sticky kisses. “Firelight, can I see your face?” She put her hands on my mask and tried to pull it off.
I covered her hands with my own and gently pulled them away.
“I can’t show you my face. It’s against superhero rules.” I pouted.
She gasped. “Superheroes have rules?”
“Superheroes have a buttload of rules,” Marco grumbled.
I shot him a glare. “Yes, we have rules. They keep us and other people safe. Now, let’s go find your mommy.”
We took the children by the hand and led them downstairs to their mother, who paused while talking to the police and embraced her children.
They didn’t notice when we slipped out the backdoor into the backyard, where we jumped back over the fence into the yard of the man with the bat. We crouched behind the woodpile.
“How long are we going to stay here?” Marco asked. “I’ll bet my front teeth that my flash was caught on camera and aired. We should assume Patrick knows our general location now.”
“I know, I know.” I rubbed my forehead.
Think, Jill. What would Patrick expect you to do, and what is the opposite of that?
I had no idea what Patrick expected of me, as I’d never been able to put my finger on the pulse of his mental processes. His fits of temper and black moods came on at random. I concentrated harder.
The better question was, what would an unhinged, paranoid person think of my actions?
That was easy: he’d see me as the “leader” of a new superhero team. I snorted to myself—Patrick always did have a vivid imagination when it came to my motivations and schemes. He probably thought I was going to announce myself to the media as the new leader of Saint Catherine’s superheroes, like I was an elder’s son or something.
I started laughing, and Marco raised an eyebrow. “What’s so funny?”
“Patrick probably thinks I’m a leader now.” I pictured myself as a trainee back home, wearing the red sash that future leaders wore instead of the usual black. It made me laugh harder. Yes, Patrick was definitely going to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Marco didn’t laugh. “Well, you kind of are.”
I stopped laughing. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Jill, you came up with a plan to storm the house and rescue the hostages, led me here, and we carried out the plan. You worked with the cops and now you’re the one thinking about how to get away. The only thing you haven’t done that Patrick normally does is slap you around, be an ass to Ember, and make fun of me and Reid.”
I sighed. Though he was technically correct, Marco’s youthful naiveté was getting the better of him. “I’m not eligible to be the leader. Tou know that. You’re actually in an elder line, so you should be the leader. I can help you.”
“I don’t want to lead,” he said flatly.
That gave me pause. I’d never considered that a superhero wouldn’t want to be a leader, at least on some level. “You don’t really have a choice.”
For the first time, a flash of anger crossed Marco’s face. “You didn’t have a choice about putting up with Patrick. You didn’t have a choice about meeting with Benjamin. You didn’t a choice about stuffing Patrick’s head in a toilet—you know what I mean, don’t give me that look—but you made a choice anyway. Maybe, just maybe, you can make a choice about leadership.”
I hesitated. “How long have you been thinking this?”
“Since I left Patrick’s team and decided you’d be a better leader.”
“Marco.”
“Yes, leader?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “This conversation is going in circles. We’ll talk about it later, but until then, do not call me ‘leader.’”
He saluted me. “Whatever you say, not-the-leader. Now, I believe you were in the middle of making a not-leader decision about what to do next?”
Oh, right.
The sound of cars and trucks on Oak Terrace warned me that our way home was densely populated and we would not be able to slip away unnoticed.
A shadow moving in one of the second-floor windows of the bat-man’s house caught my eye, and I considered an option I hadn’t before: hiding inside the house. One of our “buttload” of rules was that we couldn’t ask for sanctuary from civilians. Hiding among unpowered people was dishonorable and weak.
Right now, it was also eminently sensible.
“Follow me.” I got up and walked towards the back door of the house.
Marco smirked. “Interesting choice of words.”
“No, that’s not…oh, shut up.”
I knocked on the glass door and within a few seconds the man from before answered, though without the bat, and gawked at the two superheroes at his threshold. “Can I, uh, help you guys?”
“Can we stay here until sundown?” I jabbed my thumb behind me towards the Greene house. “There’s too much activity to make a quiet getaway, and right now we need to lie low.”
He stared at us with his mouth open for another few seconds, but then gave himself a little shake and stood aside. “Yeah, um, come right in and make yourselves at home.” After he closed the door behind us, he called out, “Penny! Kids! We’ve got company!”
A woman’s voice replied from the upper floor. “Who is it?”
“Just come down and see,” he called back. He looked at us. “Can I get you guys a, uh, drink? Or food? By the way, I’m Lawrence.” He held out his hand.
I returned the handshake. “Hi, Lawrence. I’m Battlecry.”
“I’m Helios.” Marco shook his hand. “And if you don’t mind, I’
d love something to drink.”
While Lawrence went to get glasses of ice water, Marco and I sat on the soft leather couch in the living room. Two sets of stomping feet came down the stairs.
“Dad, Mom says she’ll come down when she’s done folding laundry. And who’s visiting, again?” A young teenage girl asked while she walked into the kitchen with her similarly-aged brother following close behind.
He looked around and jumped when he saw us on the couch. “Tatiana, look!” He pointed at us.
Tatiana shrieked. “Oh my gosh, Dad! Did you invite them? What are they doing here?”
Marco grinned and leaned back into the couch, but I sat straight up, still uncomfortable with such attention. I had a sudden craving for a café mocha.
Lawrence poured a box of crackers onto a plate and started slicing cheese. “It’s rude to talk about people like they aren’t there. Go introduce yourselves.”
The two kids shuffled towards us, blushing furiously. The girl stopped in front of me and held out a trembling hand, her bangle bracelets clinking from how hard she was shaking. “I…I’m Tatiana Gonzales,” she squeaked. “I’m your biggest fan, Battlecry.”
“Miss Battlecry,” her father corrected from the kitchen.
“Miss Battlecry,” Tatiana said, blushing even harder.
I took her hand in my own. “Thank you, Tatiana.” I injected as much warmth as I could into my words. “I’ve always wanted to meet my biggest fan. Your bracelets are very pretty, by the way.”
She broke into hysterical giggles and hid behind her brother.
The boy stepped forward and offered his hand. “I’m, uh, Sebastian. I’m a huge fan, too.”
Marco scooted closer to the edge of the couch. “Wanna sit down and talk? Battlecry and I are going to be here for a while.”
They hesitated, but then sat down next to us.
Lawrence walked over with the cheese and cracker plate balanced on his head and two glasses in his hand. “Hey, y’all, check out my super balancing powers. I bet I could join your team.”
Battlecry Page 15
