Heroine Complex

by Sarah Kuhn

  I charged forward, free of the pain at last, and slammed myself against Nate.

  His eyes went wide with shock as my shoulder connected with his ribs. He was so much bigger than me, but I had the element of surprise—and the fact that my shoulder was really pointy—on my side.

  He stumbled away from Shasta. I locked my hands around her arms.

  “What . . . ?” She tried to wriggle out of my gasp, but I held on tight.

  “You can’t have any of them!” I roared.

  She bared her teeth at me. “Wanna bet?”

  She snapped her fingers and another force field rose around Bea and Lucy. Lucy stopped moving immediately, but Bea fought, arms and legs thrashing, her face a mask of fury. I saw pain register in her eyes. And then she went limp.

  “No!” I screamed.

  “I can do that to all of them,” Shasta hissed. “To everyone you love. To every single person in this stupid city. I will rule.”

  “When there’s no one left to rule over?” I growled, tightening my grip on her arms. “Seriously: you come up with the worst fucking plans ever.”

  And then I sent my fire blazing directly into her.

  Unlike her hybrids, she didn’t disintegrate. Her hair was a flare of orange, her dress a field of red. She threw her head back and screamed: a horrible, inhuman sound. I tried to push her away from me, but she held on tight, determined to take me with her.

  “The portal!” Maisy screamed. “Push her into the gosh-dang portal, Rude Girl!”

  I moved myself forward, propelling Shasta toward the portal. She was still clinging to me like a leech, so I held on equally hard, hoping I could gain leverage. We hovered near that slash of black. I closed my eyes and summoned every scrap of strength I had left, every memory of the people I loved, every bit of determination to keep my city safe.

  And I shoved. I shoved hard.

  Shasta’s fingertips scrabbled against my arm, trying to find purchase. And then she tripped over her too-high heel and fell backward into the black hole, screaming and horrible and on fire.

  I tried to jump back. But as Shasta fell, a bolt of light shot out of the portal and hit me in the chest.

  I screamed as fire licked at my skin, but I couldn’t tell if it was my fire or demon fire. I felt myself being swept to the side by a powerful force and my feet slipped from under me and I knew I was going to hit the ground hard and I was pretty sure I was about to be dead.

  When I finally smacked into something, it wasn’t ground. It was human muscle and black cotton and a clean, comforting scent I inhaled greedily, wondering if these were my final breaths.

  It was Nate, cradling me in his arms.

  I tried to sit up, but it felt like there was a weight pressing down on my chest. Had Shasta conjured up one final force field? My vision blurred in and out. I felt searing pain and a strange, wet warmth. I coughed and tasted blood.

  “Bea . . . ?” I gasped. “Aveda? Lucy and Scott?”

  “They’re okay,” Nate said. His voice was choked with panic. “Everyone’s okay. Evie—”

  “Do not get emotional, doctor,” I heard Aveda say, her voice shaky. “Just fix her.”

  “She’s losing blood,” he said. “Evie, don’t try to move, okay? We’re going to get you back to the house and we’re going to . . . to . . .”

  I blinked, trying with all my might to get my surroundings to come into focus. I saw a blurry Aveda shaking Scott awake. He looked freaked out, but alive. I saw a blurry Lucy dragging a near-unconscious Bea toward me. Bea’s head lolled onto Lucy’s shoulder, her eyes fluttering open and closed.

  I was overtaken by a bone-deep sense of warmth.

  My family, I thought. This is my family.

  And suddenly I knew they were going to be okay. I knew Bea, especially, was going to be okay. She was surrounded by this weird little unit of people who loved her, who would take care of her forever, who would band together to defeat any evil. I knew that in my heart and soul. And as I glowed with that knowledge, I felt strong—strong in that Oprah-level, superhero-worthy way—for the first time in my life.

  Too bad I was having this stunning revelation just as I was about to die.

  I turned back to Nate and reached a shaky hand up to touch his face.

  He’d never left me. He’d fought for me. He’d fought with me.

  “Hey,” I croaked. “I love you.”

  “Gross,” I heard half-conscious Bea murmur.

  When darkness finally washed over me, I was smiling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  MY EYES SNAPPED OPEN and I was instantly aware of three things: 1) I wasn’t dead. 2) There were mysterious weights pressing down on my limbs. 3) I had to pee like a motherfucker.

  I lifted my head and looked around blearily, trying to get a grip on my surroundings. I was in my bed, wearing what appeared to be one of Nate’s T-shirts. My right arm was pinned to the mattress by Nate, his arms locked around my waist, soft snores escaping his lips. Lucy was on top of my left shoulder, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks as she breathed in and out. And Bea was sleeping curled around my feet, as if protecting them from nefarious toe fetish demons.

  “They wouldn’t leave you.”

  I turned and found Aveda sitting in a rocking chair next to the bed. She gave me a gentle half-smile. With her face scrubbed of makeup, she looked heartbreakingly young. I was hit by a wave of nostalgia, an image of two preteen girls giggling over french fries and wondering what life might have in store for them. I opened my mouth to say something about that. Instead I said, “I have to pee like a motherfucker.”

  Without waiting for her response, I wriggled free from my sleeping captors, bolted to the bathroom, and experienced sweet relief.

  When I returned to the bedroom, Aveda pulled another chair next to hers and gestured for me to sit. The Great Snoring Trio continued to snore.

  “How long was I out for?” I said. “A few days? A week?”

  Aveda gave me an amused look. “Just overnight. You were about two seconds from death, but we got you back here in time and your injury ended up being fixable. The energy bolt that smacked you in the chest was some kind of supernatural feedback from shoving all that fire into the portal. It gave you a sizable gash, but Nate was able to stop the bleeding and Scott used a healing spell. They worked very well together, actually. Look down your shirt.”

  I pulled the cotton away from my body and glanced downward. A long scar extended from the center of my chest to the area just above my left breast. It appeared to be fading already. Now that I knew it was there, it seemed to pulse with dull, muted pain.

  “Speaking of Nate: interesting backstory he’s got there,” Aveda said. “But given that he’s obviously on the side of good, none of us really care.”

  I smiled and let the shirt fall back against my skin. “What happened to Maisy and Stu?”

  “They’re alive,” she said. “They still appear to be hybridized, but they’re alive. And Maisy . . . well, see for yourself.”

  She pulled out her phone, tapped something on the screen, and passed it to me. The screen displayed Maisy’s blog, now fully restored to its former glory, but with a new title.

  “Diary of a Reformed Half-Demon Princess?” I said. Maisy’s disintegrating gray face grinned at me from the top of the screen.

  “She’s making it her mission to show the world that not all demons are evil. And to show the demons themselves that they don’t have to be evil.”

  “And conveniently this will get her way more attention than her gossip-mongering ever could?”

  “Naturally,” Aveda said. “It’s blown up overnight and already has three times the traffic of her old blog.”

  I laughed. “You’ve gotta admire her ingenuity. And I owe her one for telling me to shove Shasta into the portal.”

  “Indeed,” sai
d Aveda. “Look at the first post.”

  I turned back to the screen and skimmed through. The post was a breathless account of how Maisy had flirted with evil, but eventually saw the error of her ways and “assisted the city’s two most glamorous superheroines in taking down a wannabe demon queen.”

  “Now that I’ve experienced firsthand what it’s like to be a superheroine, I fully understand the multitude of challenges involved!” the post concluded. “In retrospect, all the snarky digs I’ve made in the past about my best friend Aveda’s appearance seem small, irrelevant, and horribly sexist. My second best friend Evie Tanaka—San Francisco’s thrilling new heroine!—helped me see the narrow focus of my male gaze-centric lens. Rest assured, you won’t find any more of those types of posts on this blog. And any comments in that vein will be summarily deleted.”

  “Using her power for good, sort of,” I murmured.

  Aveda grinned. “Sort of. I think it’s more like ‘using her power for whatever will make her the most popular gosh-dang celeb she can be.’ Not that I can really throw stones on that front.”

  At the bottom of the post, there was a photo. This one depicted me shoving Shasta into the portal. Fire was everywhere: shooting out of my hands, engulfing Shasta in a mighty blaze. I looked determined, powerful. And really, really angry.

  Aveda was sitting on the floor in the background of the photo, her face dazed. I noticed her hand was raised. And I remembered that just as the energy bolt hit me in the chest, I’d felt as if I was being swept to the side.

  “You telekinesised me! You . . .” I looked up from the phone screen, goggling at her. “The bolt could’ve hit me a lot harder, but it didn’t. Because you moved me. You saved my life.”

  “I did,” she said. “And Maisy somehow got a picture of it. But I want you to look at a different aspect of this shot.” She tapped the phone screen. “Look how cool we look together, Evie.”

  I turned back to the screen. We did look incredibly cool. And as I studied the picture, I realized something else: I had totally mastered The Tanaka Glare.

  “I want you to do this with me,” Aveda said.

  My head jerked up. Her face was earnest. No trace of snark or manipulation or deception.

  “We don’t know what the consequences of Shasta’s actions will be,” she continued. “That portal in the lingerie shop hasn’t closed yet. Nothing’s come through and it appears to be essentially dead as far as supernatural goings-on, so we don’t think it’s an active conduit to the Otherworld. That said, it’s completely different from any other portal we’ve seen. Its appearance, its placement on the ground instead of the ceiling, the way it smacked you in the chest. Nate and Bea have taken some debris to analyze, and Rose’s team is monitoring it around the clock. But it seems more than likely that this city will still need superheroes. I think we would make an excellent team. We have awesome powers and a long, storied past and a bond like no other. You and I could be like . . .”

  “Like The Heroic Trio?”

  She grinned and finished the thought: “Except there’s only two of us.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at her. “I’m surprised you’d want there to be two of us.”

  “Point taken.” She paused for a long moment, conflicting emotions playing over her face. “Look. I know I got so caught up in the fan worship and the whole ‘being the most perfect Aveda Jupiter ever’ thing that I forgot why I wanted to do this in the first place. I forgot that being heroic isn’t about obsessing over your adoring public and what they’re saying about you and what you think they want you to be. I forgot that sometimes it’s just about—”

  “Being crazy and unguarded and brave enough to stuff your face with spam musubi?” I said, teasing.

  “Yes.” She gave me a small smile. “I forgot about that moment when we first saw The Heroic Trio. And when everybody started paying attention to you-as-me, well . . .” She looked down and toyed with the frizzy ends of her hair. “I felt irrelevant. Like I’d been stripped of any power I’d ever had, any sense of identity I’d ever worked for. Because if I’m not Aveda Jupiter, who am I? No one. Not really.”

  “You’ve always been someone to me,” I said softly.

  Her smile turned wry. “You know how I say I’ve always been there for you? How I repeat that like some kind of deranged parrot?” She sounded out each word carefully, as if she couldn’t quite believe they were coming out of her mouth. “You’ve always been there for me, too. You rubbed my back when I puked up all that freaking spam musubi. You went along with my ridiculous ‘pose as me’ plan, even though the very idea of using your fire terrified you. And now you’re still here. Despite everything I’ve done to push you away.” She reached over, took my hand, and squeezed it. “You were right. At the intervention. I’ve been a terrible friend. Not just recently, but for a good, long while now. I’m sorry.”

  I looked down at our clasped hands. I squeezed back. Then I took a deep breath and said a single word: “Okay.”

  She looked confused. “Okay?”

  “Okay, I’ll do this with you,” I said. I smiled at her and we exchanged one of those looks from long ago. A look that somehow conveyed our entire existence together, stretching back to the spam musubi and rocketing forward to our helpless giggle fit that day we’d finally had it out at the bar. We’d come apart and come back to each other. We could finally use our shared history to grow stronger together instead of allowing it to keep us frozen in the past.

  Aveda’s grin overtook her entire face. “And by the way, Maisy already gave you your own superhero moniker.” She tapped the phone screen.

  “‘Rude Fire Girl’?” I yelped. “Am I stuck with that?”

  “Afraid so. So you’re sure about this? I don’t have to talk you into it, coax you out of your natural state of wallflowerism?”

  I scrolled back to the picture of us on the phone screen. “That moment when I thought I was dying, I should’ve felt awful,” I said. “I mean, with the dying and all. But I didn’t. I felt peaceful. Free. Like I was dying doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, being exactly who I’m supposed to be.” I met her eyes. “I’ve never felt like I had a real purpose. I mean, for years, I’ve definitely tried to give myself one. But it was always something small and containable and easy to fixate on. Like, ‘don’t cry’ and ‘get Bea fed’ and ‘don’t get mad and destroy any more buildings’ and ‘fulfill all of Aveda’s needs so she doesn’t throw a temper tantrum and destroy several thousand dollars’ worth of designer clothes and boxing bags.’”

  I ignored the look she gave me.

  “But this . . .” I harnessed my peaceful feelings and channeled them into my palm, then opened my hand to reveal a perfect fireball. “This is a purpose—my purpose. Using this powerful thing that’s inside of me to protect our city. To make things as right as I can make them. And to save the people I love.” I snapped my hand closed, extinguishing the fire.

  “Show off,” Aveda said.

  I smiled at her. “I’m finally accepting that I’m not normal—and I don’t want to be.” I paused, studying the picture. “But I’m doing this my way. No spandex. No pageantry. No dumb catchphrases. And I’m wearing this.” I pointed to my T-shirt-jeans-Chucks combo in the picture.

  “So boring,” Aveda said. “At least let me do something with your hair.”

  “Nope.” I pulled at a particularly unruly curl and watched her grimace. “You said it yourself: there’s more than one way to be a hero. And no fighting over who’s the Michelle Yeoh in our little duo. ’Cause it’s definitely me.”

  Aveda studied me, her gaze turning serious. “You’re more than that,” she said. “You’re you.”

  Something welled up in my chest, a messy knot of emotions that felt as if it had been lodged there for years. I swallowed hard. Aveda squeezed my hand again, then made her tone light: “Michelle better recognize.”

 
I couldn’t help but laugh, the knot of emotions dissipating. Then she laughed. And then we were on our way back to giggle fit territory.

  We were still giggling when Scott walked in toting a pair of coffees. “Ladies,” he said, giving us his easy grin. He handed one of the coffees to Aveda then gently squeezed my shoulder. “Please don’t ever scare me like that again.”

  I put my hand on top of his and squeezed back.

  “I’m sorry I was passed out for what sounds like a truly incredible battle,” he continued. “Though Annie’s been reenacting the best parts for me while the rest of you were sleeping.” He grinned at Aveda. I expected her to roll her eyes at him, but she smiled back.

  Well. That was interesting.

  “By ‘reenacting,’ he means I’ve mostly been reading Maisy’s blog post out loud,” Aveda said.

  “What about Maisy?” Bea sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Do I need to update Twitter?” She blinked a few times, her eyes finally landing on me.

  “Evie!” she shrieked, cannonballing herself over Nate and Lucy and landing in front of me. She wrapped her arms around my legs, holding on tight. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled against my knees. “I’m so, so sorry.” She lifted her head to look at me. “You made me really mad and I acted like an idiot. But you have to know . . .” Her eyes filled with tears. “I love you the most,” she said, hugging my legs tighter. “The very, very most.”

  “I know.” I stroked her hair off her face, marveling once again at how much she looked like Mom. “I love you the most, too. That’s probably why we make each other the most mad.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled ruefully. “Oh, and I emailed Dad to tell him you were hurt and he was just, like, ‘Namaste.’ What does that even mean?” Her eyes went dark and I felt a little wave of anger roll off her.

  I remembered the reverse empath power I’d realized she possessed. I was apparently the only one who knew how key she’d been in yesterday’s battle. I replayed the scene in my head. The force field had shattered when she screamed. Maybe that’s how her post-earthquake level up worked: once she vocalized her feelings, she could break supernaturally-based stuff.