I have to hand it to Ms. Bostic. She really dislikes supers. I’d say that she has an ax to grind, but she’s ground it for so long that all she has left is a wooden handle.
Wendy cuts off the video. “There’s more, of course. Not only is he filing for custody of Gabby in absentia and has made an official request asking the FBI to bring federal kidnapping charges against me, but he’s also filed a civil case against my mom for aiding after the fact, because she met us in Cuba.”
“Well, that is a little more serious than being an asshole on TV. It’s definitely not something I intend to let slide. Do you want to go with the reveal angle? I liked it better when people thought I was dead, but now that I’m technically alive again, it’s a new story. The only problem that I can see is that we’d have to find a new base. Even with the bit of misdirection in my book about the location of this place, our enemies would definitely figure out a way to find us here. We’d need time to find a new place and more time to move everything there. I could see us operating off a container ship in international waters.”
Wendy exhales, blowing her bangs away from her eyes. “I don’t think we can afford to be down anytime soon while Devious is out there plotting. At this point I would be willing to just turn a blind eye and let you do as you please to the fucking poser. Go make yourself dead again if you want.”
“I can’t believe that I’m the voice of reason here. You can’t; he dies now at my hands, and they try to frame it so you ordered his death.”
I leave out the fact that she essentially just gave me the green light. That would make an already awkward conversation worse.
“Pretty much. Holy shit, this is frustrating! I am used to just having Mom send out the lawyers to deal with this kind of crap.”
“You know she can still do that.”
“True, but it’s not going to be nearly as effective with me in hiding. You specialize in out-of-the-box thinking. What have you got for this?”
Wendy can’t confront the fake me. I can’t do it in Mega, either. What about VZ? I could maybe use that. No. We might need special agent Matt Harrell again, and that fake ID is already associated with us. What about borrowing one of José’s Manglers, since he knows the truth? Oh, I think I’m missing the obvious here.
“Bobby is still technically a criminal. Plus, I wasn’t very generous to him in my book, now was I? He reminds me of it all the time. I could see him going out west to rough my imposter up a little—or a lot—and just call it a personal grudge.”
My leader scowls, and I’m not sure whether it’s because we’re talking about killing someone or because she would have to trust Bobby to do the deed.
“If it was just the clone or shapeshifter or whatever the hell he is, I think Bobby would be a good option. However, your counterpart has been citing death threats against him as a reason to acquire those two bodyguards we saw. He’s negotiating for a third, if what SNN is reporting is true.”
“I’m a little wary of fighting a decent magic user. I need to avoid FGM like the plague. I’m magiphobic, not homophobic. Bobby handled the girl well enough when the two of them tussled up by DC.”
“But I don’t like Bobby’s odds against the two of them, or more if your imposter is really a shape changer.”
“What if we had him spend some cash and put a Revenge Crew together to go after me?”
“No. No. Fuck, no! I can’t believe we’re even considering it!”
“Why not? I think it is a good idea. It’ll work, too.”
“I’m not going to hire a bunch of Supervillains to kill someone. That’s just . . . that’s just . . . that’s just all kinds of … No! Forget I even told you about this!”
I drag my claws along the rail of my hospital bed. “He’s not exactly just your problem,” I say. “I called dibs on him from the get-go. You told me to wait until we rescue José before going after the fake. José is back—a little worse for wear, but we have him. Right now, legal shit can take a back seat to finding Devious and those Mangler bombs. Hey! You said you grabbed that one canister of Mangler’s improved formula I was carrying. We’ve seen it can work on some super humans, maybe we should introduce the imposter to it and see how long before he cracks.”
Wendy is speechless, and I’ve rarely seen her in that state. “I can’t say I like that idea any better than killing him, but I’m not entirely against it. The hero community in general would cheer if you somehow got Bostic as well.”
“I always thought she was cool, but I can see why others don’t have my enlightened—ahhhh shit!”
My cry of pain interrupts my witty reply. It feels like someone has taken a blowtorch to the nerves surrounding my injuries.
“Cal, are you OK?”
Even Wendy can unleash a stupid question every now and then. The only answer I can give her is another painful scream. With blurry vision, I stare at my arm in the cast. The claws are shrinking and starting to change color. As long as I have a reason for it, I can deal—at least for the most part. I grit my teeth, even as the fangs round off and I hear a nasty pop from my jaw that would make any dental hygienist cringe.
The cast splits open as my arm elongates and straightens. The light green gives way to my normal pinkish hue. It’s just as painful as breaking it the first time.
When’s this shit going to end? Seriously!
I feel my body seize up like an engine with no oil and I fall out of the hospital bed. I hit the floor, leading with my chin, performing an Olympic-level face plant. After five seconds there’s a release, like a rubber band snapping.
“Ugh!” I note there is no hiss or lisp to my voice. My body feels as if I spent too long in a sauna, but otherwise I’m not in the same level of pain. I am exhausted, but no longer cold. The oversized shorts, with the big slit in the back for my tail, are now pooled around my ankles.
The arm feels much better. The transformation must’ve healed it. I send a quick glance in the direction of my bruised leg. All the bruises are gone, too!
“Guess that’s why I didn’t turn back. My body needed to heal first,” I say, trying to get used to what I sound like again. “How do I look?”
“As ugly as ever and you’re naked,” Wendy answers. “Mind covering up? It’s not supposed to be a full moon tonight.”
“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” I reply and make sure “Little Winky” is now “Regular Winky.” I push up and climb to my feet, swaying uncertainly. Deciding to play it safe, I fall back onto the hospital bed and crawl in as best as I can.
“Magical healing,” I say pulling a sheet back over my naked form. “That’s a new and rather painful option.”
She walks closer and picks up the things I knocked over during my transformation. “You probably slowed things down by draining your magic.”
“Nice to know your hindsight is a perfect twenty-twenty, Ms. LaGuardia.”
“Hold still, you big baby. Let me reattach your blood pressure cuff. We probably need to run some tests on how fast you can heal before I think about sending you out again.”
I put my figurative foot down. It happens to be human again. “Who says I’m ever going back out again? I’m gonna have to say no.”
Wendy shakes her head at me. “You don’t always get what you want, Cal. Trust me on that one.”
Knowing she’s right, but still wanting to stand my ground, I roll my eyes like a teenager and say, “Whatever.”
“Well, now that you’re back to normal and haven’t turned into a Mangler, I think I’ll go get your daughter. Well, after one more Flora and James scrub down. Oh, Andy! Send in the nurses.”
Great! Animatronic Silkwood. Well, at least my skin will be nice and soft when Gabby gets here. The shit I put up with!
Chapter Fourteen
The Last Moment Just Before the Fall
“So does this magical healing thing mean you want to get a little freakier?”
I laugh at Stacy as she gathers me into a crushing hug. Bobby always gives me shit that wit
h her strength, the Olympian has to be gentle with me.
“Funny. Say what you want, but I’m the one that’s sleeping with you. You’re stuck slumming with me. But, the magic only seems to work going from lizard to human. So, unless you’re talking about a whole new level of freaky, I think you need to dial it back some. It’s good to see you, even if you didn’t bring your suit with you this time.”
“No, I want you all to myself,” she says. “We can play ‘what gadget Cal wants to put into my armor’ next time.”
Giving her the pouty face, I say, “Next time, I guess. Do you want to go down and see everyone first or take a walk with me?”
“Let’s walk.”
I fall in beside her and ask a question, “Did the telepaths get in to Praetorius’s mind? The UN must be scared since they voted in favor of it as soon as they found out Devious has more Mangler bombs.”
“They were making some progress, but Praetorius killed himself. He snapped his own neck. That hasn’t been released to the public yet.”
“Who am I going to tell?” I say after a dry chuckle. “Do you think he did it himself, or did Devious set some kind of mental trigger?”
“No one is certain. He bit his tongue intentionally to draw blood. Before he died, he wrote ‘My Life Ends and Her Reign Begins’ in his blood on the wall.”
“Cryptic and concerning at the same time.”
“Yeah, I wanted to get away before she makes her move, because I’m not certain how much time we have. Do you mind if we change the subject?”
“Anything you want,” I say and raise my eyebrows in a suggestive manner.
“Is that an offer or a challenge?” Stacy answers. Her smile appears a little forced and she looks weary, like she’s seen too much lately.
I know what I have to do—distract her and take her mind off things. Wendy tells me my superpower is being able to distract people. Technically, she said it was being a world class pain in the ass, but I like to think she means that in a good way.
“Well, anything except swimming. It’s a little too cold to take a dip in the pond, at least for me.”
Late fall and early winter in Alabama isn’t so bad. What can I say? I like to be warm. The love goddess isn’t bothered by heat or cold. She regularly goes skiing in a bikini, and I’ve seen her walk across a bed of hot coals and treat it like it was just warm beach sand.
We kiss out by the pond and I breathe in her smell. “I’ve missed you. It’s been too damn long. You live for several millennia. I still say that you should get them to advance you a few years of vacation time and we forget about all this stupidity and go hang out in the tropics.”
How does her retirement plan work? Does she have to work until she’s three thousand and they pay her for the next thousand years? I’ll save that for when I need an odd question to keep her on her toes.
“I wish it was that simple,” she says, with a hint of sadness in her voice. “There’s too much going on in the world right now. Robin told me that the Esper team that advises the president lost one of their members to a mental breakdown, and the other two are predicting doom and gloom. The last time they got this worked up was right before the whole thing with the bugs.”
“I don’t put much stock in soothsayers,” I answer and squeeze her hand. “They’re worse than those people who try to tell you what the weather will be tomorrow. What is the damn difference between partly cloudy and mostly sunny anyway? Maybe I’ll try my hands at old Viking runic magic and ‘throw the bones around’.”
Her smile fades and I see her frown. “Seriously though, Cal, I’m worried. You told me that you had trouble turning back.”
“My guess is that my body needed to be strong enough to heal.”
“That’s just your best guess, Cal. You don’t really know for certain.”
“Well, yeah. But it’s the best working theory I have right now, and Wendy agrees.”
She shakes her head a couple of times and I can see the worry. “Theories can be wrong. You’re in untested waters here. You’re not playing with regular human magic. That alone would be bad enough, and I can’t tell you the number of times heroes have had to deal with people who’ve had a taste and wanted much, much more. But you’re dealing with magic created by non-humans—something that predates the Olympians and maybe even the Titans. You could do some serious harm to yourself.”
“I’ll be careful,” I say. “But I need every advantage I can get.”
“You don’t,” Stacy replies. “You’ve got Megasuit and the magic to fall back on. How much more do you really need? I get it. You’re always tinkering and trying to improve. It’s one of your best traits and it can be one of your worst at the same time.”
For the first time since she came back into my life, I’m starting to feel a little irritated with my girlfriend. Of course, being an empath, she’s probably caught wind of it already.
“Sorry,” she says, raising the hand that I’m not holding in a gesture of peace. “I’m not back in your arms for five minutes and I’m lecturing you. You’re important to me, Cal. And I know you pretty well now. You won’t be more careful, but I am asking you to be less reckless.”
“It’s annoying how you can just turn an argument around before it gets any traction.”
She laughs and shakes her shoulder-length hair. “Make love, not war is my motto. Plus, I didn’t come here to fight with you. Why don’t we borrow one of the beds in the bed and breakfast for a couple of hours before I go have my first sit-down with Larry and see if I can help him out of this funk? I think I need someone to get me out of my funk first. Are you up for it?”
“Ready, willing, and able. What will I do while my beautiful girlfriend is counselling my friend?”
“Well, I might have a crate of drone components in the back of the van. You can play with those while I work with Larry.”
“You brought me a gift? What? Did you just waltz up to the Department of Defense and tell them that you need a drone and if you could get it for me this weekend that’d be great?”
She ignores my movie pun. “Actually, I went to Bo and told him that I was looking to make my own version of your floater. He didn’t even blink before giving me a base unit.”
I nod. Bo and I joked about my becoming The Drone Master when I couldn’t put a working suit together during my Gulf Coast days. Though he’ll never quite shed the Biloxi Bugler name, Mr. Carr seems to be settling into the role quite well.
“What do you want in it?”
“Surprise me,” she answers, and adds a flirtatious smile as we reach the door to the fake bed and breakfast. “I want to see what you can come up with, but I’m guessing you probably need some encouragement.”
“I believe I would like to be encouraged. It helps me work.”
As we enter the atrium, she uses her strength and hoists me over her shoulder like I’m a sack of potatoes. Surprisingly, I’m OK as a conquest, as long as she doesn’t do some kind of “caveman drag me by my hair” thing, I’m good with it.
Well, let’s be honest. Even if she did want to do that, I’d probably still be good with it. Don’t judge me!
• • •
As my girlfriend tries to get to the bottom of Larry’s issues, I’m working on the four-rotor hover drone she’s provided.
So many choices!
I need to do something impressive. We came close to what was going to be a huge argument. She does have a point—when will it be enough for me?
I’m pretty sure the answer is never, but a little megalomania never hurts, right?
“Hmmn,” I say out loud. “I can fit about twenty-five pounds of payload on here, and since I can run the power through a small crystal shard, I can get more bang for the buck. If I just wire the drone with shield emitters and have the shield generator here in the base, I could still have the space for . . . ”
I drift off for a second as several variations of this new drone flash in my mind. It quickly escalates to where I imagine it as a float
ing railgun platform.
The drone to end all drones! Because that would be totally insane! I should totally do that!
Sadly, I don’t have room down here for a second magnetic cannon and the power it would require; the struggles of a former D-List Supervillain are all too real. Plus, I’m not about to give up mine. Stacy will just have to settle for a plasma cannon, unless . . .
Hey, what about . . .
Oh yeah. That could . . .
No one would see that coming!
Unfortunately, I’m dragged out of my moment of inspiration by the sound of my voice on the television that I’d been running for background noise. Hearing the imposter moves it up into the foreground and pushes aside my plans for Stacy’s Totally Awesome Drone (or STAD) for the moment while I see what anti-super-powered rant my doppelganger is preparing to use.
He’s on a show called Firing Line on the Superhero News Network. I rewind to the beginning of the segment and prepare myself for what is coming next.
The female moderator, Kristi Haase, does the introduction. “Joining us now is Cal Stringel, bestselling author, former member of the Gulf Coast Guardians, and the self-proclaimed D-List Supervillain. Thank you for joining us today.”
“It’s good to be here.”
Steve Caldwell, the more confrontational of the two, gives the imposter roughly two seconds before he starts in on him. “Let’s talk about what happened in Mexico. Heroes, Villains, Manglers, and a good deal of death. Give us your thoughts, Cal.”
“The first word I’d use begins with cluster, but I won’t finish the rest, Steve. It’s obvious that Devious’s people had advance warning—corrupt government officials or corrupt heroes. Take your pick.”
“Surely, you’re not implying that one of the members of the teams . . .”
“I don’t know, Steve. Thing is, you don’t know either. Nobody knows.”
Kristi tries to be the voice of reason. “But it’s also possible that the General had the warning of a psychic. She’s been known to consult them in the past.”
Rise of a D-List Supervillain Page 18
