Battlecry

by Emerald Dodge

  I crossed my arms across the back of the chair and chewed on my lip while I thought about what to do with Benjamin Trent. He’d jeopardized everything by coming here, and he hadn’t even had the decency to tell us he was doing it.

  However…what harm had actually been done except to my ego? He hadn’t been seen. His family wasn’t here. He was sitting in front of me, shame-faced and contrite.

  I could meet him in the middle.

  I stood. “Okay.”

  He drew his eyebrows together. “That’s it?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I just want to know what I’m dealing with and I what I can expect. You and your family have racked up some enemies and there’s a lot of bad blood.” The corners of my lips curled upwards. “And now you have to choose between college grads who will probably kill you and dumbass heroes who will protect you. This must be hard.”

  “You’re not dumbasses,” he said quietly. “I just told you about my past and you’ll still take me in. That’s…I’ve been a jerk. I’m sorry. I have no excuse.”

  The contrition on his face tugged at my heartstrings.

  “How about we go home and get some sleep. Bring your pillow, if you want. We can start again tomorrow morning.” I got up and joined him on the bed. “I’m sorry for, er, twisting your arm behind your back a few minutes ago. I get a little reactionary sometimes.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and wheezed a laugh. “Maybe you can teach me how to do that? In fact, would you like to trade? You teach me, I teach you all? Nothing serious,” he added upon seeing my affronted expression. “Just some facts and figures that’ll make it easier to live in the civilian world.”

  Instinctual revulsion at the thought of civilian education clashed with a wild desire to be the best leader of the best team in the history of superheroes.

  Images of my teammates thoroughly destroying opponents through scholarly cleverness and craft flipped through my mind, but beneath it all lurked the truth: they’d never get on board with it. Not right now, at least. Our lives were already so uncomfortably different than the norm. Exposing them to more would just be cruel.

  “O...okay. But just me. I think our team has had enough fundamental shifts in the last few days. School might just send Reid over the edge. Marco doesn’t like change either, and Ember doesn’t really trust you yet.”

  “If you say so. It’ll just be us, then. I like that. I think I know what we can start with, too.”

  He eased himself to his feet and walked over to the bookshelf, which was stuffed floor-to-ceiling with at least a hundred books. He pulled off a fat volume and held it up to me.

  Upon seeing the cover, I went over to him, taking the glossy book and staring down at the picture on the front.

  The cover displayed a battlefield strewn with bodies and carnage. The living and dead wore either blue or gray uniforms, and one of the battle flags was a red rectangle with blue crossed bars, the bars dotted with white stars. I’d seen the flag countless times since moving to Saint Catherine, but I’d never bothered to consider what it symbolized.

  “A Nation Divided,” I read aloud, running my finger along the title. “An Introduction to the American Civil War. Why do you have this?”

  “When I found out we were moving to Georgia, I thought I should read up on the history of the state.” He gestured to the bookshelf. “Take anything that looks interesting. We can go to the library sometime, too. We can study anything you want.”

  His hesitant smile pricked at the remaining aggravation, puncturing it like a balloon. This was the Benjamin I knew and liked so much, who was concerned about others and wanted to right the wrongs he saw in their lives. Fighting the urge to smile back at him, I turned to the shelf and studied the spines.

  I grabbed a slim volume with an intriguing cover of constellations at the same time that he reached for one of the Danger novels. Our hands bumped, and he shot me a grin.

  The sound of a car door shutting made me pause.

  Benjamin looked at his bedroom door, then back at me. “Oh, no. Oh, God, no.”

  He blurred to the balcony door, his books hitting the floor after he was already there.

  I set down my books on the shelf. “Is it your parents?” I’d fight them.

  Instead of answering, he shut the balcony door and yanked the curtain across it, then ran to the bedroom door, which he unlocked. “Get in the closet. Don’t even breathe.”

  Something told me to not argue with him about this. I stepped into the spacious closet while he turned off his bedside light and grabbed his backpack. He joined me in the closet, gently pulling me into the back corner with him, then arranging clothes around us.

  The front door opened.

  Benjamin hugged me to him, his hot breath in my ear. “It’s Beau. I disabled the alarm when I came in,” he whispered. “You didn’t trip it when you came through the balcony, so I don’t know why he’s here. I thought they’d go straight to Maryland.”

  “Maybe he wanted personal effects,” I whispered back.

  He snorted.

  Heavy footsteps on the stairwell made us freeze. A large man with a heavy gait was coming our way. He reached the top of the stairs, then walked past Benjamin’s room and down the hall. Benjamin held me tight, his heart hammering through his chest in time with mine.

  “He’s going to his room,” Benjamin whispered in my ear. “If he’s staying the night, we can wait an hour and go out the balcony and be gone before he knows we were here.”

  But Beau’s business in his room was brief, because the footsteps returned, this time coming back our way.

  They stopped at Benjamin’s door.

  I closed my eyes and reached down for my knife, slowly pulling it out of its sheath on my thigh. Benjamin’s hand found mine and he squeezed it. I had no idea what Beau was capable of. I needed to expect anything.

  Benjamin’s bedroom door opened.

  32

  Beau walked a few steps into the room, stopping where I thought the bookshelf was. He picked up one of the books that Benjamin had dropped, and slid it back into place.

  A second later, he began to move around the room, though I couldn’t guess what his purpose was. Could he smell individuals like I could? Was he looking for something? Mourning his “dead” brother by going to Benjamin’s inner sanctum?

  His footsteps stopped right outside the closet door. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible sound of metal clicking against metal as he grasped the doorknob. A knife? A gun? I angled my body so I could spring at him as soon as the door opened.

  Benjamin’s breath stopped.

  “Beau! Come on!” A woman’s voice called from downstairs, making us jump.

  “Yeah, I’m coming.” Beau’s deep voice was so similar to Benjamin’s.

  His hurried footsteps disappeared out the door and down the stairs, which he took two at a time.

  “Did you get the sample?” the woman asked when he was at the bottom.

  “Here. Sorry about that.”

  The woman sniffled. “What were you doing in Benny’s room?”

  Beau sighed. “Just…I don’t know. Looking at it, I guess. It looks like he never left. His stuff’s everywhere. Eleanor’s room, too.” There was a pause. “Mom, please don’t cry. I’ll make it right. You still have me.” He sounded more exasperated than comforting.

  “My eldest and my baby,” Mrs. Trent moaned. “Those monsters. They weren’t even committing crimes. They were just at the library…studying like…like good people…” She dissolved into sobs.

  Beau must’ve ushered her out, because her cries faded and the door shut. A few seconds later, a car engine roared to life.

  When the car was no longer audible, I pushed away from Benjamin. “They’re gone. Could you hear what they were saying?”

  I still hadn’t totally figured out what constituted “normal” when it came to senses. I was positive Benjamin couldn’t see me in the dark closet, but I could see him. It was a delicious feeling.

&nbs
p; “No. I didn’t even know they said anything.”

  “Beau came to get a sample of something, and then your mom called us monsters for supposedly killing you and Eleanor.”

  “Eleanor’s not dead, though.” He rubbed his temples. “Great. They’re mad at you for something you had nothing to do with. That’s going to make it so much easier when we finally fight them. Get ready for mom to disintigrate someone. She’s not going to be satisfied until she’s killed a superhero, I promise you.”

  “Disintegrate?” I reached over and flicked on the light. “What do you mean, disintegrate?”

  Benjamin blinked against the brightness, then sat on a steamer trunk in the corner and patted the empty spot.

  I sat, and he let out a long breath. “Now’s as good of a time as any to tell you what you’re going to be up against. Mom can dissolve small areas of solid objects. Dad can manufacture an assload of electricity. Beau is a technopath. He even cut off his hands and replaced them with cybernetic ones that he built himself. Like I told you at the library, Eleanor manipulates probability. She doesn’t lose—ever.”

  A shiver crawled down my spine. Each one of the Trents had a power that I didn’t care to face in battle, and now I absolutely believed that he’d fought New York City and D.C. My mind was swift to connect their powers to the crimes in which I knew they’d participated.

  Mr. Trent’s electricity had likely caused the “zapping” noise the guards heard at the bank, and obviously Mrs. Trent had disintegrated the wall, the vault door, and the guards’ heads.

  The massive system override at both the bank and the guard shack at the Bell Enterprises Industrial Complex pointed to Beau’s interfacing with the computers.

  These were highly capable and lethal career criminals—so much so that Benjamin regarded playing dead as preferable to crossing them.

  Now we had Patrick on one side and a supervillain family on the other.

  “Well, that’s just excellent,” I grumbled as I pushed myself up. “Let’s go home now and get some sleep. It sounds like we’re going to really need to train you as hard as you can handle.”

  “You got it.” He fished a small brass key out of the pocket of a bathrobe and kneeled in front of the steamer trunk. “One thing, though. I want my textbooks.”

  He opened the trunk, then popped out a false bottom. Underneath it lay several medical textbooks, a battered poster that I thought might show a superhero, and a copy of Codename: Danger, which bore a sticker advertising that it had been signed by the author. He lovingly touched the novel before moving it aside to grab a small book about first aid.

  I kneeled beside him and took Codename: Danger out of the trunk. “I think I’ll read this. It might be useful to see superheroes through a civilian’s eyes.” Goodness knew I needed a laugh.

  “You can skip turning three hundred pages and check out the babe in the mirror. You guys have cultivated one hell of an image. I can criticize it all I want, but it worked. I’ll give you that.”

  I put my hand on his and he looked up from the pile he was making. “With me, what you see is what you get. I’m not an image or fantasy. I’m just Jillian.”

  He gently removed his hand from mine. “Remember what you said at the table, that you’re all human and flawed?” He looked away. “I guess you’ve seen my flaw, too. I really am a snob, aren’t I?”

  “A little bit, yeah.”

  He blew out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair. “I, uh, understand if you don’t want to date me after what happened tonight. I won’t take it personally, and I promise to always be professional. I really do want to be your friend, though.”

  His plaintive gaze flickered up at me, making my heart swell. He’d admitted his snobbishness and had fully disclosed the hard truth of his past, which couldn’t have been easy.

  I didn’t want perfection, I wanted honesty. I wanted realness and the intimacy it produced. Most of all, I wanted it with him.

  My fingers brushed his cheek, a warm smile stretching across my face. “We’re good, Benjamin.”

  We leaned towards each other at the same time. Our lips met, and this time it wasn’t a frenzied kiss of passion. His soft lips moved against mine lovingly, tenderly, and I sighed with contentment. His rich scent filled the closet, kindling all sorts of interesting feelings in me.

  I pulled away, pecked his cheek, and then stood. “Shall we?”

  “We could wait a little longer.” There was a note of longing in his voice. “There’s a pretty girl in my room and my parents aren’t home.” But he was piling books into his arms, too.

  My hand was one the doorknob when I stopped and turned around, something he said just registering with me. “Beau cut off his hands?” That dude was crazy.

  Benjamin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, when he was our age. Apparently it helps him talk to computers even more. I think there’s some kind of implant in his head, too. He’s basically a cyborg at this point.” He opened the door. “Let’s go via the window.”

  I eyed his sling. “Why can’t we just go out the door?” Even if he could traverse walls and rooftops like I could, he was injured.

  “Because,” Benjamin said, checking if the coast was clear, “I jammed the wi-fi signal that the cameras use earlier, but Beau returned. He apparently didn’t notice what I’d done, but I’m not risking it twice.”

  “How’d you jam the signal?” I opened the curtain of the balcony door. I wasn’t entirely sure what “jam the signal” meant, but it sounded complex.

  Benjamin pointed awkwardly at his hoodie pocket with the hand on his bum arm. “I keep a jammer.” He shrugged. “Sometimes I gotta get away from Beau.”

  When we were on the balcony, he peered over the rail and frowned. “Three stories…it’s too far of a fall, and I can’t climb down when I’m injured. We’ll have to go on the roof. If I turn over the planter and climb we can—”

  I cleared my throat, already kneeling and holding out my hands so he could step on them. He placed his books by me and took a wobbly step on my hands, allowing me to lift him past the roofline and haphazardly push him over the edge.

  After tossing the books up, I merely climbed up the drainpipe. When I was at the top, I swung myself over with feline grace—perhaps slightly fancier than I might’ve been otherwise—and scooped up the books.

  He gawked at me.

  I peered around for cameras. “Aren’t you worried about being seen?”

  He snapped back from whatever fantasy he was in. “Um, no. I used to sneak out the balcony a lot. I arranged the cameras so this route is a blind spot.” He pointed across the rooftop roadway I’d used to come.

  I tilted my head, a real smile spreading across my face. “Camera jamming, blind spots, sneaking across roofs…you’re resourceful, Mr. Trent. I like that.”

  I thought he’d turn pink and look down, but instead he stared into the distance. “Like I said…sometimes I have to get away from Beau.”

  Instead of explaining that enigmatic comment, he rearranged his books in his good arm and stepped over the gap between houses and we began the journey home.

  I hugged my books to my chest, a thrill of victory coursing through my veins.

  When we were on the doorstep of the dark convent, I kissed him on the cheek and unlocked the door, then pushed it open.

  “Let’s go straight to bed,” I whispered. “We can study at night, after they’ve gone to sleep. They’ll never know anything.”

  “If you asked me,” Marco said loudly, “I’d say us not knowing anything is the crux of a lot of problems. Wouldn’t you agree, Benjamin?”

  Benjamin and I froze in the doorway.

  Reid, Marco, and Ember were leaning casually against the wall across from us, their faces a mix of hard disapproval, amusement, and sadness.

  “We…were were…um…” My mind reeled as I tried to find a plausible alibi for why we were returning from a nighttime outing with forbidden books in our arms.

  Ember pushed away from the
wall. “For the last freaking time, Jill: do not lie to me.” She jerked her head towards Benjamin. “Go to bed if you’re going to start that up, Merc. I’ll stay well out of your head from now on if you promise to not sneak out again.”

  “Fine by me.” He zipped up the stairs and out of sight.

  Ember held out her hand. “The books, please.”

  I surrendered them without protest, since I was almost certainly about to be kicked off the team. My last act as leader was not going to be a tussle over Codename: Danger.

  Reid took a book and flipped through it, then looked at the other ones, the lines in his forehead deepening. “You sneaked out for a novel, a book about the solar system, and the Civil War. Why?”

  “I was following Benjamin,” I muttered. “He left to get some personal effects. We talked and decided it was best if I did some light reading to brush up on my civilian knowledge.”

  “Yes, I gathered that much when you were both on the sidewalk,” Ember said. “And I also gathered that what you really meant to say just now was that you can’t wait to share your books with us, and that you wouldn’t dream of hiding something of this magnitude. You know, like our last leader did.”

  She and I stared at each other. Her judgmental brown eyes bored holes into my own, and I dropped my gaze, too ashamed to look at any of them.

  “So, school,” Marco said. “This’ll be different. I wonder if the priest next door will let us borrow textbooks.” He put his hands on his hips. “I’m already the best fighter on this team, and soon I’m going to be the smartest. Get over it now, guys.” He waved us off and went upstairs.

  Just like that, the atmosphere lightened. Reid handed me back my books with a significant warning look, and I accepted them meekly.

  Yes, our lives were about to become very different. I’d been caught red-handed in a scheme that involved lying to my teammates, and I hadn’t given the lie more than ten seconds of thought. I really was an idiot.

  But I didn’t have to be. Education would fill most of my head, and hopefully, common sense would fill the rest. Experience was the best teacher, and I had had no experience as a leader, just as a follower of a terrible man whose actions often forced me to live in secrets and lies. It was reflexive. It was time to shed everything I thought of as “normal.”