Battlecry

by Emerald Dodge

  “They don’t know what they’re wishing for,” I whispered. “This is what my world’s really like underneath all the glamour and rules.”

  His face darkened. “It’s not like my world is any better.” Bitterness laced every word.

  Uh huh. “Before today, when was the last time you were thrown into a wall? Because I can name half a dozen or so times—”

  “Don’t be stupid. There are worse things than battle injuries.”

  I raised an eyebrow at his tone.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Damn, this is hard to say out loud. I can’t believe I’m even thinking it.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, so I elected to say nothing.

  He took a deep breath and spoke in a rush. “Look. My mom killed those people at the bank a few weeks ago, and it’s made me do some thinking. I…I think it might be better if I just didn’t go home. Ever.”

  Benjamin’s mother had killed the guards?

  I had trouble believing that the mother of people like Benjamin and Eleanor had decapitated three innocent people.

  However, my disbelief warred with my raging curiosity about the peculiar crime scene. How had she killed the guards? What were the Trents trying to steal? Who was targeting Bell Industries, and why? And what did he mean, “didn’t go home”?

  And though I knew Benjamin’s family were supervillains and that he himself had committed crimes, it was still difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that his family were killers.

  And why was he telling me this now?

  Benjamin must have taken my silence for surprise, because he continued. “Don’t get me wrong, I care about my family, but…they’re not…I mean, we’ve never really…” He trailed off and stared at the ground. “I just can’t deal with all the murders anymore.”

  “Are you talking about running away?” I crossed my arms, still trying to make sense of what he was saying. It was an odd idea, since he was at least my age. He didn’t have to run away, he could just leave. Or did supervillain families have different rules?

  He glanced up just then, clearing his throat and looking at someone behind me.

  I sneaked a look—it was Captain Drummond, walking our way with a distinct air of aggravation. “We’ll talk later,” I said in an undertone. “Can you heal the others?”

  “Reid and Ember now, Marco later.” He hopped off the table. We shared a parting look, then he wandered off towards Reid and Ember’s motionless figures on the ground.

  Captain Drummond walked up to me, her mouth a thin line. “You’re coming down to the station.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “No, but we’re going to talk about what happened here.”

  “Captain, I don’t—”

  “Three of my men are dead, Battlecry. I want answers, and so help me, I’m going to get them. Now are you going to do this the easy way, or the hard way?”

  I rocked back on my heels. “Hypothetically speaking, what’s the hard way?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me for a few seconds, then lightened. “That boy you were talking to…he’s cute, isn’t he? You two looked pretty cozy.”

  That threw me for a loop. What did Benjamin have to do with this? “He’s a friend,” I hedged. “He’s not important.”

  “A friend? Interesting. A few weeks ago you said he was your brother. Mason, I believe.”

  Oh, crap. “Um, well, about that. See—”

  “I watched him heal Firelight on the security tapes before I destroyed them. I have to say, that is an impressive power. Unique among Supers, even. I’ve never heard of another healer. Actually, wait, I have.” She leaned towards me so our faces were inches apart. “Did you know that Bell Enterprises has hidden cameras in all their facilities that transmit their feed off-site? There was a break-in at the Industrial Complex a little while ago. Things weren’t going well for you, were they? And then Mason very kindly removed his mask and healed you. Or should I say Benjamin Trent, known member of the Trent crime family?”

  I felt as though ice water were in my veins. She had me. “I’ll come down to the station. I’ll explain everything.”

  She glanced behind her. Reid and Ember were sitting up, rubbing their heads and blinking. Benjamin was kneeling next to them and talking, probably explaining what had happened.

  She smirked at me. “Get your team and get in a squad car.”

  25

  Nobody in the police squad room gave much notice to the five battered young people who followed Captain Drummond into the conference room, though a police officer did ask Marco, who was leaning on me, if he wanted some aspirin.

  If Benjamin was ill at ease among the police, he didn’t show it, instead strolling through the precinct’s headquarters as if he owned it. Ember and Reid, on the other hand, were tense and alert, their heads constantly swiveling.

  Captain Drummond opened the thick door to the conference room, a gray, poorly-lit space that smelled of coffee and old carpeting. “In here. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I sat down next to Marco at a metal table with four chairs. The other three stood behind me, leaning against the wall. The wall opposite me was a mirror, allowing me to see them. Reid and Ember were visibly wary, but Benjamin’s demeanor—hand on hip, blank expression—made me wonder if he’d done all this before.

  Captain Drummond shut the door behind her, leaving us in silence.

  “Why are we here?” Ember asked after a few seconds. “Jill, do you want me to listen to—”

  “Don’t say plans out loud. They can hear us.” Benjamin nodded towards the mirror. “The good Captain is in the viewing room right now, probably with a detective. When she does bother to come back in here, I suggest we let Jillian speak for the rest of us. That’ll keep things simple. We’re not under arrest, so we don’t actually have to talk to them.”

  Reid eyed Benjamin. “Who are you? How do you know so much about the criminal justice system?”

  Benjamin shrugged.

  Before Reid could pursue the topic, I interrupted them. Reid didn’t know about Benjamin’s sordid affairs, so I pulled out my trump card. “We’ll do formal introductions later. Right now all you need to know is that this is Benjamin, and he saved Ember from dying of gunshot wounds last month.”

  I didn’t care if we were being monitored. Besides, the Captain already knew.

  As I expected, Reid gaped between Ember and Benjamin. Ember turned pink and nodded. Benjamin merely smiled.

  “Since we’ve established that you can heal, could you fix my freaking leg already?” Marco said through clenched teeth. Beads of sweat dripped down his temples.

  “Oh, sorry.” Benjamin straightened. “I didn’t want to do it at the library in front of all those people. A miraculously healed broken leg is harder to explain than two people waking up.” He squeezed Marco’s hand, and then let it drop. “There.”

  Marco rested his forehead on the table and breathed in and out. “Thank you. That’s so much better.”

  The door swung open. Captain Drummond and a plain clothes officer crossed the small distance to the table and sat down, the former placing a thick file on the table in front of us. The Captain folded her hands in front of her. “This is Detective Yang. She’s here as a witness.”

  Detective Yang inclined her head at my team but said nothing.

  The Captain opened the file and flipped through the contents, pulling out three documents covered in yellow highlighting, sliding them towards me. “Read these.”

  My team, including Benjamin, huddled around me and read.

  From what I could tell, they were witness statements for three different crimes. Each one described a house robbery on Saint Catherine’s Island, the wealthiest neighborhood in the city by a wide margin. The details were fairly mundane—a break in, a masked burglar—but when I read the highlighted part of the first document, I had to reread it to make sure I’d understood it.

  “The robber flew out the window?”

  The
only Super I knew to have been capable of true flight was the first superhero, my great-great-grandmother Christina St. James. She’d died seventy years previously. All other flight was technically telekinetic levitation.

  Intrigued, I skimmed the next highlighted section: He was tall and muscular, and when I told him I was armed the gun levitated out of my hand.

  And finally: I screamed when I saw him, and I was thrown out of the room by an unseen force.

  Slow realization crept in as a memory fell on me, a memory of emptying Patrick’s bank account and wondering at the large amount of money.

  I looked up at my teammates, whose faces showed their own disbelief.

  Captain Drummond gathered the documents and placing them back in the file. “Sound familiar?”

  Reid shook his head. “That’s impossible. There’s no way Patrick is a criminal.”

  Benjamin barked a laugh.

  Reid shot him a dark look. “No, really. Patrick is a lot of things I despise, but he’s not that stupid.”

  Captain Drummond scribbled in her notes. “Patrick….so that’s his name. I’ve always wondered if you guys had real names.”

  “Why are you giving him the benefit of any doubt?” Benjamin asked Reid, glaring. “Or did you not literally stop him from strangling Jillian earlier? What will make you see him for what he is? What does he have to do?”

  For some reason, Reid looked at Ember, then back to Benjamin. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. But I’m not giving him the benefit of the doubt. I guarantee you that I know him better than you do, and I’m saying that it’s unbelievable that a psychotic control freak like Patrick would leave witnesses flapping in the wind.” Reid looked away. “He has no problem hurting innocent people.”

  During their exchange, I simmered on one simple question.

  “Why are we hearing about this just now? If you had proof that Patrick was committing crimes, we could’ve had him removed.”

  A nameless emotion stirred inside me, leeching into my veins as I weighed the implications of this knowledge. If Captain Drummond had come forward, we all could’ve been spared months of torment and “discipline.” I wouldn’t have had to flee my home and friends in disgrace. Everything could’ve…been different…

  The emotion gained a name: rage.

  “We didn’t have hard evidence. Just descriptions of a possibly telekinetic man. The only person we knew of who matched the description was the city’s superhero leader. That put us in a delicate position. Instead of passing it on to you guys and tipping our hand, we had to put together a case on our own. Today’s display at the library confirmed that Patrick is operating outside the law.”

  “And you need us to take him down for you.”

  A chorus of she knew, she knew, she knew, she knew echoed around my head.

  Ember placed a hand on my shoulder, and though she said nothing to me, I felt calmer knowing she heard my struggle.

  “If it comes to that, yes. But for now I want to hear what you have to say about him and his activities. Word is that he beats up on you guys, though I find that hard to believe, considering that I’ve seen you all in action.”

  “Anyone can be abused,” Benjamin said, his face twisted into a scowl. “And in case you didn’t notice, he can throw people into walls with his mind.”

  Captain Drummond shifted in her chair. “Well, yes. Moving on. For the record, who is the leader now?”

  Four pairs of eyes flickered towards me.

  “I am.”

  There, I’d said it. I’d formally declared myself the new leader of Saint Catherine’s superhero team, in defiance of all the rules.

  “Figured,” Captain Drummond muttered while scribbling in her pad some more. “So what happened in the library today?”

  “Do you want the whole story, or the short version?”

  “The whole story.”

  Folding my hands on the table, I pursed my lips and deliberated.

  Captain Drummond was, from our perspective, a civilian, and civilians weren’t privy to superhero business. They couldn’t understand our mentality, and what they could understand they might scorn, for we were fundamentally different than them.

  But I saw something in her face that made me wonder if I wasn’t being fair to the police officer. The shadows under her eyes were so similar to mine, souvenirs of countless sleepless nights spent protecting faceless crowds from faceless threats. Worry lines crossed her forehead, left there by hours of stress. Beneath the bloody sleeves of her evening gown were well-toned muscles, honed in a gymnasium, ready to unleash on an attacker. She sat in her chair as straight and dignified as any superhero I’d met.

  The rage subsided.

  Captain Drummond, the leader of her team, had had to make a difficult decision. She couldn’t have known the ramifications of not coming to us with the witness statements. If I were her, I would’ve naturally assumed that the whole team was corrupt.

  Ember.

  Yes?

  What does she really want to know?

  A pause. She wants to know why her friends are dead and if she can expect any more deaths. She’s really worried that this will turn into a Super versus police situation, and that we’ll side with Patrick.

  Does she think we’re on his side right now?

  No, but she doesn’t know enough about us to feel comfortable. She likes you, but she’s mad that you lied to her about Benjamin. Which is understandable.

  I sighed. “There’s a few things you need to know about how superhero teams work, Captain.”

  Captain Drummond picked up her pen.

  26

  Captain Drummond flipped her notebook shut and leaned back in her chair. “All that drama because you left the team?”

  I’d been talking for an hour.

  My team had listened in silence while I’d explained our whole story, beginning with meeting Benjamin and concluding at Patrick’s escape from the library. When I’d reached the part about beating up Patrick, all of them snickered. Captain Drummond, ever professional, kept a straight face, but Detective Yang couldn’t help a smirk.

  I sighed heavily. “Like I said, I don’t think anyone’s ever revolted against their leader before. If Patrick hadn’t committed bigger crimes and made me look better by comparison, my elder could very well haul me before a tribunal. There’s still a chance of that happening.”

  The Captain thought for a few moments, then turned to Detective Yang. “Go get the newspaper on my desk, please.”

  The other officer nodded and left the conference room. Captain Drummond sipped from the mug of coffee she’d poured for herself halfway through my story, and I realized how tired I was. It had to be nearly midnight. As if on cue, Ember yawned and leaned against the corner.

  Detective Yang returned with a copy of the Saint Catherine Times-Mirror and threw it down in front of us. The headline screamed:

  ANASTASIA IS CATEGORY 2

  Underneath was a satellite image of a large hurricane barreling down on the Atlantic coast.

  Benjamin’s eyes widened. “Category two? Wasn’t it a tropical storm just yesterday morning?”

  Everyone exchanged quizzical looks. Marco and I had been so off the grid we wouldn’t have heard about a nuclear war. I suspected that Reid and Ember had been too busy with Patrick to watch for weather updates.

  Captain Drummond nodded. “Nearly all projections have it making landfall on the Georgia coast.” She crossed her arms. “So where are we? None of you are leaving this room until we’ve decided on a course of action.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “What I mean is that there’s a hurricane coming our way and a cop-killing ex-superhero on the loose. The department will take all the help it can get with evacuations and, if need be, rescues. But I want to know what you’re going to do about Atropos. And don’t tell me that you’re going to handle him by yourselves. He killed three of my team today. We’re doing this together.”

  I didn’t argu
e. Instead, I looked sidelong at the door. “Could you give me a few minutes of privacy with my team, please? We need to have a chat before we make any decisions.”

  Captain Drummond and Detective Yang got up and went to the door. Before she left, the Captain turned around. “I’ll be in my office next door.” She shut the door with a snap.

  They’re not listening to us. Ember answered my question before I asked her.

  I stood up and stretched. “Okay, guys, talk to me.”

  Reid pinched the bridge of his nose. “We need to leave the city. Patrick is either looking for us or getting ready to. The city has enough to deal with right now, between the scene at the library and the hurricane.”

  “There’s no guarantee he’ll follow us if we leave, though,” Marco pointed out. “Leaving might very well give him free rein to loot after the storm.”

  I looked at Ember. “I’m still trying to figure out why Ember never heard what he was doing.”

  She glowered at me with bleary eyes. “If Patrick ever sensed me in his head when he didn’t want me there, he’d dream up lovely little fantasies of how he really wanted to punish me, but couldn’t. You want the details, Jill?”

  I looked down. “Never mind. Sorry for putting this on you.”

  Reid tried to pat her shoulder but she shrugged him off, instead retreating to her corner to sulk. We all needed to go to bed, but we were going to have to muddle through this conversation first.

  Marco grimaced. “Well, there goes my idea of Ember tracking Patrick down telepathically.”

  “So we can’t really leave, but we can’t exactly stay, either,” Benjamin said slowly, thinking hard.

  Reid cut him off. “No, we can’t leave.” He gestured at the rest of us. “You’re not in this.”

  This was the part of the conversation I’d been dreading. Reid and Ember hadn’t said anything earlier when I’d described my run-in with Benjamin and Beau, but I didn’t need Ember’s powers to know that they were thinking quite a bit.