by Lexie Dunne
“Excellent. Throw her in the dungeon.” Tamara Diesel’s footsteps receded; I assumed she was headed upstairs.
Lady Danger raked one scarily long fingernail against my cheek. I kept my eyes shut, trying to hold my breakfast down at the smell of rot on her breath. “I had high hopes for her once,” she said to Raze. “It’s ever so annoying to see a waste of such potential refuse to—”
I surged up and kicked her.
As she fell backward with an oath, I leapt to my feet. The attack dogs clearly heard their mistress’s distress, for they lunged for the door. I had one awful glimpse of nasty, jagged teeth and drool swinging from their jowls—before Raze nonchalantly slammed the door closed.
She winked at me and flipped the lock.
“Traitor!” Lady Danger, pale with fury, climbed to her feet and advanced on Raze. I tried to yank my hands free from the pipe, but the acid hadn’t eaten enough of the metal. Desperate, I grabbed Lady Danger by the nearest shoulder and flung her back. She crashed into the gong.
Well, now everybody knew we were here, at least.
Lady Danger reeled, recovered, and bared giant fangs at me. “You will regret that,” she said, snapping her parasol shut.
I didn’t doubt that. Several pairs of booted feet raced for the foyer already, Tamara Diesel among them. The dogs scrabbled at the door. And I had both hands trapped by a pipe.
The hired help burst in together, six giant, hulking minions in body armor. One held a gun bigger than my head.
As he raised it, purple flashed. The goon toppled, smoke wafting from his armor.
“That had better not be a death ray!” I shouted over my shoulder as I dodged Lady Danger.
“Relax, goody two-toes, they’re only unconscious.” Raze shot two more. “And in a lot of pain.”
“Raze!”
“Like, a lot of pain.”
Lady Danger snarled and tackled me. Wood snapped behind my back as we demolished half of the staircase, and I had my second and far-too-personal look at her fangs as Lady Danger pinned me down and hissed in my face. “Have you always had those?” I asked as I struggled.
The front door exploded into splinters. A blur of red served as my only warning before Lady Danger went flying into the opposite stairwell, with Angélica standing between us. My “took you long enough” died in my throat as Tamara Diesel vaulted over the side of the stairs and right into the fray. Angélica ducked her backhand. She jumped back, hit the wall, and phased right back to sock Tamara Diesel in the jaw. The villain lurched back, nearly hitting me with a wild swing.
Even with my hands trapped, I couldn’t be a useless participant in this fight. I phased and knocked out a minion with the pipe around my wrists. Raze took a potshot at another minion, missing me by inches. Purple splattered all over the wall, and fire began to lick around its edges.
“What the hell is that thing?” I shouted at Raze as Angélica appeared between Lady Danger and Tamara Diesel, striking them both before flitting away.
Raze didn’t get a chance to answer, for the front door opened and Linda—Tamara Diesel’s normal second-in-command and the stretchiest woman on the planet—stepped through with shopping bags. Everybody froze in surprise. “Hey, boss, did I hear the gong—You!” She glared at Angélica.
Angélica merely nodded back at her. “Rubber Bandit.”
Her name had been Rubber Bandit this whole time? I’d always called her Stretchy McGee.
Rubber Bandit snarled and flung herself into the fight, kicking things off again. She raced past Raze, wrapped herself around the newel post, and hurled herself like a slingshot at Angélica, who easily got out of the way.
I saw the rubbery mass hurtling straight at my chest, but didn’t dodge fast enough. Rubber Bandit and I hit the wall hard enough to shatter drywall. At least the metal pipe finally snapped.
Angélica jumped at Rubber Bandit, only to be batted to the side by a telekinetic blast from Tamara Diesel, whose face was purple-spattered and smoking. I dropped the pipe and grabbed Rubber Bandit by the shirtfront. With a hard yank, I pulled her head straight into the wall over my shoulder. Sometimes being short had its advantages.
She collapsed on top of me. Instead of dropping her, I threw her at Tamara Diesel.
Tamara Diesel caught her with a telekinetic invisible hand, which gave Angélica the perfect opportunity to phase over and punch her again. I leapt off of the wall to follow suit, but something in the corner of my eye stopped me in my tracks.
Naomi, hood up, had sneaked through the remnants of the front door.
“Angélica told you to stay back at the base!” I shouted.
Hands wrapped around my forehead from behind. I’d forgotten about Lady Danger in my distraction over Naomi. She yanked back, hard. I flailed as my feet lost purchase on the floor. As I fell, Lady Danger loomed over me, grinning and holding her cane.
Angélica phased over my falling body, so close that her knee clipped my shoulder, and nailed Lady Danger with a closed fist.
Lady Danger’s body thumped to the ground an instant after mine. Angélica landed unsteadily on the other side of the foyer and yanked Lady Danger’s sword cane from her hip. She spat on the floor in disgust, but stumbled.
“Angélica!” I scrambled to my feet without thinking.
A blast of telekinetic force battered my side. I shouted as it sent me flying straight into the wall—and unfortunately, walls no longer stopped me. My shoulder hit carpet, a small mercy, though I coughed up drywall dust as I sprang back to my feet. Before I took even a single step, ready to leap through the hole in the wall, a sound behind me locked my knees.
The dogs. Tamara Diesel had thrown me right into their room. I didn’t bother with a slow-motion horror movie turn. I heard paws scuff into the carpet, and I ducked.
Giant paws scraped across my back as Fortescue sailed right over me. Fitzhubert hit lower, a muscular tower of dog that slammed into my side. Powerful jaws snapped around my forearm. Only Raze’s jean jacket armor stopped those massive teeth from cracking my arm in two. As it stood, I was going to have a bruise for days.
I yelped and jerked Fitzhubert’s massive block head sharply enough to make him release his grip on my arm. My jacket ripped. The fangs and drool seemed to grow ten times bigger as he snapped those jaws in my face, barely missing my nose. The scars on my lower back twinged with phantom pain. Why couldn’t Lady Danger have trained ferrets instead?
Fortescue leapt for me as I held Fitzhubert at bay. I ducked, dropping my hold on Fitzhubert so fast that the dogs collided with a yelp. Obviously unhurt, they whirled to face me.
Fitzhubert lunged first. I phased out of the way, grimacing when I felt more of my sleeve rip. Fortescue feinted and hit me with both paws in the chest, trying to knock me to the ground. I dodged again, losing more of my jacket to Fortescue this time, and desperately looked around for a solution. Fighting dogs was so unfair. It wasn’t their fault that Lady Danger had trained them to be angry mongrels, but also they would hurt others if I didn’t come up with a way to subdue them.
I spotted my salvation, finally, all the way across the room. Lady Danger must have stayed at the headquarters often. And either the dogs wrecked everything or scared the minions if she wasn’t around, for she’d set up a large kennel space for them, full of decadent cross-stitched pillows and half-masticated cow bones. I jumped in front of the cage and whirled to face the dogs.
“Come at me, assholes!”
And like two well-trained attack dogs, they did.
They were fast, possibly too fast to be regular dogs. I had no choice but to phase. And since there was no space on either side and phasing forward would mean colliding with them, I phased up.
They flew under me in that split second. Just before I hit the ceiling, I released the force I’d built up. The ceiling buckled as I phased back down and slammed into the ground. Fortescue and Fitzhubert, now in the cage, scrambled and nearly fell over as they tried to turn around.
I slammed th
e kennel door shut. “Stay,” I said unnecessarily, tripping back a little when they body-slammed the bars. They gave me twin looks of visceral doggy hatred, jowls dripping, as I ran back to join the fight in the foyer.
Naomi and Raze were nowhere to be seen, but Guy had apparently arrived. He fought Tamara Diesel in a furious melee that called to mind all the battles I’d witnessed as Hostage Girl. She telekinetically battered him into walls, and Guy threw coatracks and marble urns and anything he could rip off the walls at her. On the other side of it all, through the dust and the debris, Angélica had taken a knee, face pale as she held her hand over the wound on her leg.
It turned my spine to jelly.
Our eyes locked. Kiki and I might have had the mental connection, but I’d worked with Angélica for over a year. She reached into her pocket and threw a dark object my way. I took one running step and leaped, phasing. I caught the stun gun, twisted, and fired.
The stun bolt hit Tamara Diesel in the forehead at the same time as I landed high on the stairs.
Since it was Tamara Diesel, the bolt only made her stumble and look about in baffled confusion as to where that would have originated—which was all the distraction Guy needed to slam his elbow in her face. She collapsed onto the stairwell landing.
Rather than phasing down, I let Guy collect me. He brought me back to the floor while I surveyed the unconscious minions. Lady Danger and Rubber Bandit both looked like they would have massive headaches when they woke up. Tamara Diesel drooled into the carpet.
“I really wasn’t sure that was going to work,” I said, looking about me in amazement.
“It nearly didn’t.” Angélica didn’t get up, which made my heart constrict in my chest. All the color had leached from her face. “You assured me you would be able to get out of the restraints. If they were too much, you should have—”
“Angélica,” I said. “I screwed up. But maybe save the lecture for when you’re not hurt.”
“It’s nothing,” she said, but she also didn’t move to stand. “Blaze, you should restrain Diesel. She won’t be out long and we can’t be sure backup will get here in time.”
“And we don’t exactly have anywhere to keep her with Detmer gone.” I looked at Guy, raising my eyebrows. Angélica wasn’t the only one I had a wordless connection with, for he nodded back—and scooped up Angélica.
“What are you doing?” She batted at him.
“I’m taking you back to Kiki before we get scolded,” he said. “You’ll be okay, Gail?”
“Raze and Naomi are here somewhere. I’ll be fine.” Though I wasn’t sure that was the case. Raze’s entire play could have been a double cross, intending to hand me over solely because Hostage Girl was the number one hot commodity at the moment. But she’d also taken out those mooks for us. I’d only have to hope that she hadn’t taken Naomi hostage in another ploy to get me to fight her.
But that would be a problem for later. After Guy flew off with Angélica, I blindfolded Tamara Diesel with the remains of my jacket and wrapped her wrists in rope. Hopefully the telekinetic abilities needed sight to work. I cable-tied Rubber Bandit and Lady Danger together, flipped off the dogs, and moved farther into the supervillain lair to find my friends. “Naomi? Raze?”
“In here! Don’t trip on the corpse,” Raze said.
“The what? Oh, god, please tell me you didn’t actually kill anybody.” I maneuvered carefully, mindful of the unconscious henchmen.
“I can’t take credit! He was already dead.”
She wasn’t kidding, I found when I stepped out of the hallway and nearly stumbled over a body. I buried my nose and mouth in the crook of my elbow, fighting back a gag reflex. The corpse had been dead at least two days.
“We pulled him down. Naomi said it was more ‘humane,’” Raze said, appearing in front of me as I studied the dead man, who lay facedown. He didn’t look like any supervillain I knew, not from the back at least, and he wore regular clothing.
When Raze pointed at the wall, I blanched. They’d manacled him there, whomever he was. A sign was still tacked to the wall next to where the body had been. It read Payment in Full in thick black letters.
“It seems a little tacky,” Raze said. “Don’t they have a butler or something? This body should’ve been dealt with ages ago.”
I turned over the body. My breath caught in my throat. This solved at least one mystery of why we hadn’t been able to locate Elwin Lucas after he’d been released from prison. He’d apparently been hanging out in a supervillain lair, dead.
“He wasn’t a friend of yours, was he?” Raze asked.
“No.”
“He looks pointy.” Raze nudged the dead Elwin Lucas with the toe of her boot. “What’d he do?”
“He’s a bastard,” I said, as I really didn’t want to explain the long and varied tale of Mobium, its creators, and its victims. I took a picture of the body and then of the wall where they’d obviously chained him. It felt staged. Who had they been sending proof of his death to? The mysterious Excalibur, maybe? Or had Elwin Lucas been Excalibur all along and Tamara Diesel had taken out her displeasure over the attack on the Davenport gala going sideways? How did he fit into this puzzle?
Speaking of puzzles. I glanced about. “Where’s Naomi? We don’t have much time. If backup doesn’t get here before Tamara wakes up, we need to scoot.”
“I’m in here. I found some stuff.” Naomi emerged from another room, holding a sheaf of papers. “This looks like it’s all part of Tamara Diesel’s ploy to blackmail city council. There’s a lot here, but maybe it’ll have some way to get the nanobots out of me.”
“Got everything you need?” I asked.
“There’s probably more but—” She broke off with a choking sound and doubled over, screaming.
“Naomi!” I stepped toward her, but a noise behind me made me whirl.
Cold spread through me at the sight of Tamara Diesel in the doorway, chuckling to herself despite the bloody nose. She held a remote control. “How kind of her to let me know she came to my gala,” she said.
Naomi screamed louder. I tried to knock the remote from Tamara Diesel’s hand, only to be swatted back into the wall by an invisible fist. I made a second lunge, but purple flashed. Tamara Diesel let out a curse and dropped the remote. Naomi continued to convulse and scream, even with the remote melted to slag. Raze holstered her ray gun.
“Destroying that won’t stop me,” Tamara Diesel snarled at the both of us. She held out a palm toward Raze.
I hit my friend low, taking her feet out from under her. Tamara Diesel missed. Instead of panic, instinct took over. Tamara Diesel consistently overpowered me. I’d never get close enough to remove her from the equation, not without a distraction. And Naomi could only last so long with the nanobots attacking her system like this, so I would need to strike quickly.
Hold up.
Nanobots. An idea formed and took off before I even had time to question it.
“Call me later,” I said to Raze, who gave me a baffled look that morphed into shock when I scooped her up under my arm. Dodging another blast from Tamara Diesel, I phased the both of us across the room, stuffed Naomi’s papers into my shirt, and snatched up the convulsing Naomi. To Tamara Diesel, I said, “See you in hell.”
And then I jumped out the window with both of my friends.
Chapter 19
I dropped Raze almost immediately. Her rocket boots roared to life, but it didn’t stop her from skewering me with an accusing look. I’d apologize later. The second I knew she was safe, I banked my falling momentum and turned midair, shooting for a high-rise across the street. For my idea to work, I needed to get across town, all the way to the Nest. And I had to do it before the nanobots killed Naomi.
Keeping a tight grip on her, I landed and executed a hairpin turn midphase. Energy built up from the second turn. I used it to push myself faster, my body buzzing. A third turn shot me ever farther.
I jumped the Hudson in a single phase.
> Kiki, I thought, trying to reach out to her mentally. I’m coming in and I’ve got—
I stumbled and tripped right out of the phase, sending all the gathered momentum straight through my palm and into concrete.
A sinkhole, six feet across, ripped its way through the sidewalk. Only lightning reflexes spared me from falling in right away. I danced back with Naomi over my shoulder as people around me screamed and ran for it. Spiderweb cracks raced up the side of a bodega storefront to my left.
For a brief instant, all I could do was stare. How had I grown so powerful? Mercifully, nobody had fallen in, but—
“Tell the city to bill me!” I shouted to a passerby, and phased over the sinkhole my powers had caused. So no trying to use telepathy as I phased, got it. With no way to warn Kiki we were incoming, I simply chose to phase as hard as I could.
Naomi’s screams died to grunts and whimpers, but it was obvious that the nanobots still besieged her central nervous system. She convulsed and twitched as I pushed myself even faster. I covered hundreds of feet in less than a blink. My vision began to telescope, black collapsing in at the edges. Because of that, I nearly phased right past the old camera store outside the Nest’s secret entrance.
I skidded to a halt, one arm raised for balance. The built-up momentum rocketed out of my arm, vibrating my bones so hard that for one agonizing moment, I feared my wrist would snap. The wave of pure force shot out and ripped through a reasonably priced car on the other side of the street, blasting chunks of rubber and metal straight up into the air.
I managed to say “What the f—” before Naomi gasped with pain and I came back to myself. Ignoring the car alarms, I ducked into the alley and through the Nest’s secret entrance. A Davenport stooge waited at the door, but I barreled past him, and through the main hub.
“Miss Godwin, you will explain yourself right this—” Eddie’s voice cut off as I sped by.
Naomi’s breathing had grown ragged and shallow as I pushed open the door to the obstacle course with my bad wrist. “Jeremy! You’d better be in here, so help me god. I need you.”
