“I thought you were retired,” Jean-Baptiste said aloud. “Why dive into the drug trade now?” In his head, he asked, Why are you telling me this?
“I’m bored,” I said. “Retirement isn’t making me relaxed so much as restless. I’m not looking to don my old costume and take over a city, but a little side operation sounds right up my alley.” Do you think I’d sell you out to the DSA after all we’ve been through together? Wait, no, don’t answer that. Just know that I have no intention of cooperating with them completely.
“And what do you have to offer me?” This time his thoughts matched his words.
“Darling, what can’t I offer you?” I have to give the DSA something, which means you’ll need to give up some inventory and a few underlings to throw them off your trail. You hide the real route of the drugs, I get credit for the bust, and the DSA feels like they accomplished something. Everybody wins. “Are you saying you don’t have a use for someone who can control people’s minds and read their thoughts?”
The overhead lights dimmed, and on the other side of the restaurant, the wait staff started singing Happy Birthday to an embarrassed diner. Jean-Baptiste finished off his rum, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he took his last swig. I merely ran my fingers along my glass, feeling the cool condensation as I searched his face for some sign of his thoughts. A decade or so ago, I’d have been able to read his mind with no problem, but these days, he was much better at blocking me out.
“I’m not opposed to the idea of working with you again,” he said, as the upbeat but off-key song continued in the background. “Quite the contrary. But I need time to consider.”
An answer to both my fake offer and my real one.
“Fair enough,” I replied. “But don’t wait too long or—”
“Amala!” he shouted, and dove to the floor.
I didn’t pause to question. I didn’t even take time to wonder what his reason might have been. I just dove to the floor after him. An instant later, gunshots slammed into the wooden wall behind us. The Happy Birthday song broke off with screams, and one of the undercover DSA agents shouted, “Drop your weapon!” I moved to see who was responsible, but then the barrel of a gun hit my side.
“What are you trying to do?” Jean-Baptiste snarled. If he pulled the trigger now, I’d get a bullet through several important internal organs.
“You can’t think I’m behind this,” I said, though considering I’d invited him here, he really could.
“I’m not sure what disappoints me more,” he said, “That you’d try to kill me after all our history, or that you’d be so sloppy about it.”
He jerked as Amala crouched behind him and pressed a gun to the back of his head.
“That’s Amala,” I said for his benefit. “She’s really quite loyal. I’m having to make her see you as someone else in order to get her to do this.”
His low voice came out as a growl. “Then what are you waiting for?”
Crashes, pops, and screams continued. Someone was still trading bullets over there.
I sighed. “JB, if I wanted to kill you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d be getting rigor mortis, and I’d be establishing an alibi on a beach somewhere.”
Creases formed on Jean-Baptiste’s forehead, and after a long moment, he pulled the gun away from my side. After counting to three, I had Amala do the same.
Jean-Baptiste cocked his head. “What’s that buzzing?”
A second later, I heard it, too. Then an explosion rocked the room.
More people screamed, but then everything went eerily silent. I peered around the table to see smoke and debris in the air. A chunk of the bar was missing, the edges of the wood blackened and smoldering. Three bodies lay prone on the floor nearby, two DSA agents and one of Jean-Baptiste’s men.
“Everybody stay where you are!” It was a male voice, and judging by the way it nearly cracked, it belonged to someone either young, nervous, or both. “Don’t run, but you can go ahead and call the cops. And feel free to start recording this, because nobody’s ever seen anything like me before.”
The speaker stepped into my view. He was twenty-something, skinny, and wearing a black trench coat. A trench coat in Florida when it must have been eighty-five degrees outside. Honestly. His white T-shirt had an image of a mushroom cloud on the front, so three guesses who was responsible for the explosion. He had a handful of similarly young punks with guns flanking him.
“I’m the Combuster,” he announced. “Guess you didn’t see me coming, did’ya, Prophet King?”
Eh, five out of ten on the supervillain codename scale. Too bad he was just outside the range of my telepathy, or I could end this right now.
“Could you release Amala?” Jean-Baptiste asked me politely.
“Oh. Sure.”
I let go of my mind-control, giving her a telepathic summary of what she’d missed so she wouldn’t be disoriented. She shot me an enraged glare but was enough of a professional to not punch me in the face until after the immediate threat was dealt with. Her eyes closed, and her eyebrows tightened in concentration. Then a glowing substance like lava flowed out from the pores of her skin. It covered every inch of her visible flesh, then hardened into a sleek black armor. When she opened her eyes again, they glowed red-orange like embers.
She stood up, grabbed the table, and hurled it at the Combuster. The Combuster flung himself aside with a shouted curse. Amala stalked toward him. It was going to be fun to watch her bludgeon him to death with a chair. The other punks opened fire, but the bullets bounced off Amala’s armor with nothing more than light pings.
One of Jean-Baptiste’s men reached us and crouched down beside him. “Are you hurt, sir?”
“No. Let’s go.”
Ah, the perks of being the boss. You can delegate your fights to someone else. I got my feet underneath me, my leg muscles tensing as I prepared to stand and make a run for it. Then the buzzing started again.
A chair next to Amala shook as though there was a localized earthquake beneath it. Probably no coincidence that the Combuster was staring at it. Move, I told her telepathically, but it was too late. The chair exploded, and I flinched. When I opened my eyes again, an orange afterimage swam across my vision, and I couldn’t see Amala anywhere. I opened my senses, and the panic of dozens of frightened bystanders made my heartbeat stammer. I tried to home in on Amala’s thoughts, but—
“Move!” Jean-Baptiste shouted.
The table next to us started shaking, the drinks on it spilling and silverware clattering to the floor.
I bolted. Jean-Baptiste’s man pulled him in the other direction. I kept low in case of bullets, but I didn’t get far before a boom split the air.
I realized I was falling soon enough to throw out my hands and keep from hitting the floor with my face. People were shouting, but it sounded muffled, as though someone had stuffed cotton balls in my ears. I used my other senses to scan for danger. No one in sight was targeting me, and no one in range of my telepathy was thinking of shooting me, so I risked a moment to assess my injuries. The skin on my calves and the back of my arms felt singed, but my skin looked only slightly red, so it was just superficial. (Good. I didn’t need any more burn scars.) And there was a piercing pain in my back near my left hip. I reached back and felt warm, damp blood and something hard and foreign.
I yanked out a wooden splinter the size of a paperclip. Lovely.
Gunshots sounded like raindrops with my hearing how it was, but the sound still grabbed my attention. Jean-Baptiste was the target. His man pushed him behind the bar just as something else exploded. The boom rattled the restaurant but didn’t seem as loud as the earlier ones. Probably my hearing damage, though my ears were still good enough to pick up someone’s strangled cry.
It was one of the Combuster’s men. Amala was up again, and she’d grabbed him by the throat. She threw him into the wall, and the men who’d been shooting at Jean-Baptiste turned their guns on her. Were they not paying attention last
time? Guns were about as useful as a security blanket against Amala.
But then she screamed and collapsed. What had hit her? A psychic attack? No, her body was shaking violently on the floor, and the Combuster was staring at her. In a few more seconds, she’d blow, and her guts would be decorating the walls. The sheer force of all the bystanders’ fear was interfering with my telepathy. I still couldn’t reach The Combuster’s thoughts, but one of his punks was in range. I slid into his mind and aimed his gun at the Combuster’s leg. The punk’s hand was clammy as he pulled the trigger, but with me guiding him, his aim was true. The Combuster started screaming, and Amala stopped. The trench coat-wearing idiot clutched his leg and dropped to the floor, and then—only then—did more DSA agents finally burst through the kitchen door.
I gave the punk a telepathic nudge to surrender. With his boss shot and his gang outnumbered, it didn’t take much to convince him. Then I spread my senses outward. The DSA agents were high on adrenaline, their bulletproof vests heavy and oppressive in the heat. Apparently, they’d run into trouble with more of the Combuster’s men outside, hence their tardiness. Oh, and Freezefire was with them. Agent Lagarde hadn’t mentioned that Miami’s resident superhero would be joining the party. It looked as if they had the situation under control—now that I’d done all the hard work.
The floor beneath me rumbled. Shit. Was the Combuster staring at me? No, he was still clutching his leg and moaning in pain. And it wasn’t only the floor near me; the whole building was shaking now. Liquor bottles fell off the shelves behind the bar, and the tacky stuffed parrot tumbled from its perch, hitting the floor like a dead animal. The air felt suddenly dry and full of static.
“Val!” Jean-Baptiste shouted.
He dropped the walls around his mind, giving me full access to the flash of the future he’d just gotten. It was a burst of burning pain…and then nothing. The Combuster was losing control over his power. He was going to blow up the whole place with all of us in it.
I grabbed the nearest chair and heaved myself to my feet. The cut on my back flared, but I ignored it and strode across the room. No way was I letting Jean-Baptiste’s vision come true. My obituary would say I’d been killed by “the Combuster.”
One of the DSA agents pointed a gun at me. He was panicking, trying to figure out what was causing the quake, and nothing was worse than a jumpy person waving a gun around. I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender but kept walking forward, stumbling as the ground shook. Just a little further, and the Combuster’s writhing form would be in range.
“Stay where you are!” the agent shouted. “Don’t take a step closer.”
Moron. Hadn’t he read my file? My powers couldn’t make a building shake. He was in range, though, so I flipped a switch in his mind, knocking him unconscious before he could shoot me. Which just made two other agents point their guns at me instead. Wonderful.
“Stand down!” Freezefire shouted at them. Nice to know somebody working for the DSA had a brain.
I was close enough now. I could feel the gunshot wound in the Combuster’s thigh and his desperate attempt to keep control over his slipping power. Go to sleep, I ordered him, and he did.
The restaurant stopped shaking. Everyone looked around, hesitant to believe the threat was over. But it was over, and none of us were going to die in an explosion. I should hit the bar and celebrate. Maybe there was a decent bottle of champagne that hadn’t shattered. But first, I had to deal with the trigger-happy DSA agents glaring at me.
“The guy you want is right there.” I nodded at the Combuster’s prone form. “But if you want to arrest me, too, I’ll completely understand.” I held out my wrists to be cuffed and flashed them a grin. “After all, it’s not everyday you get a chance to handcuff the Black Valentine.”
Chapter 4
An hour later, the restaurant’s parking lot was full of emergency vehicles, their flashing red and blue lights ruining a perfectly good darkness. I sat in the back of an ambulance, sipping champagne as a paramedic disinfected the cuts on my back. With the back doors open, the vehicle’s air-conditioning wasn’t strong enough to banish the muggy evening heat. I wanted to go home, toss this ruined dress, and take a shower, but my work here wasn’t done yet.
I kept my telepathic senses wide open, gleaning stray thoughts from DSA agents when Agent Lagarde was distracted. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), they hadn’t learned anything useful yet. The gunmen who’d backed up the Combuster didn’t know much, either, only that their boss was taking orders from somebody. It was interesting. I’d assumed the Combuster was some stupid punk trying to make a name for himself by taking out the Prophet King. He was still a stupid punk, mind you, but if he was taking orders, that meant someone less stupid was pulling the strings.
Too bad I’d had to knock out the Combuster. I couldn’t read people’s minds when they were unconscious unless they were dreaming. Maybe the DSA would be able to get a warrant for Agent Lagarde to read his mind, but by the time the paperwork went through, the Combuster’s boss could be long gone. Of course, it wasn’t my problem. Unless it was related to psyc. Could someone be trying to muscle in on Jean-Baptiste’s business?
Freezefire’s approach broke my train of thought. I’d almost forgotten about him. He had one of the less flashy superhero costumes out there: black pants, black boots, tight black short-sleeve shirt, and a bulletproof vest. If it weren’t for the domino mask, double “F” symbol on his chest, and the coordinating trim of icy blue and fiery red throughout the costume, he’d look the same as the rest of the SWAT team.
He straightened up when he saw me looking, hesitated, but then closed the remaining few steps between him and the back of the ambulance.
He reminded me of Dave, though I had no idea why. They didn’t look alike. Freezefire wasn’t as tall as my husband, and while he wasn’t lacking for muscles, he was much leaner overall. His skin was several shades darker than Dave’s, and his longish hair had a rumpled, sexy look where Dave’s had always been short and neat. It was the posture, I realized. The way Freezefire stood up even straighter when he was nervous was pure Dave.
“Ms. Belmonte,” he greeted. “I…uh… How are you? Are your injuries serious?”
“I’m barely scratched.” Crap. What was his real name again? Dave’s mentioned him a million times before.
“Actually, I recommend we take you to the hospital for stitches,” the paramedic butted in as she secured a bandage on me. “It’s not life-threatening at all, but there could be some scarring.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Not scarring. The horror.”
The paramedic glanced at my face then looked quickly away. “What I meant was—um—”
“I’ll talk to my private doctor about the stitches. Are you finished?”
She nodded wordlessly.
I handed her my champagne glass and stood. The moment Freezefire realized I was getting out of the ambulance, he offered me his hand. Oh dear. Dave’s former sidekick had gotten his good posture and his sense of chivalry. I accepted the hand and climbed down.
“So are you here to debrief me?” I asked.
“No. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt.”
Ha. His motive wasn’t hard to guess: he wanted a look at the woman his mentor had left the DSA to be with. I cautiously opened my mind to his thoughts and found a general sense of unease. He didn’t think I should be here. Cutting a deal with the Black Valentine was a bad idea, and I was probably going to double-cross them. Then he realized the past three seconds of silence might mean I was reading his mind, and that his suspicions were probably pissing me off.
“Not at all,” I said. “If you weren’t suspicious, I’d call you naive.”
He cursed, panicked, and for a brief but vivid moment, imagined me naked.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” he choked.
I laughed. Murphy’s law of mind-reading: when someone realizes a telepath is inside their head, their first thought will always be the most mo
rtifying thing possible. Honestly, Freezefire’s was tame in comparison to others I could mention.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m the one who should apologize. I should have worked harder to block out your thoughts. I’m sorry. You know how it is with telepathy.”
Freezefire stared straight ahead with wide eyes. His face didn’t flush, but his ears—his ears had turned as red as the police lights. I grinned. Could I get them to go any redder?
“Though for the record, I’ve got a bit more meat on my bones than what you pictured.” Yep. That did it. I wouldn’t be surprised if his ears actually melted off the sides of his head.
Someone called my name. Or at least, I thought they did. My hearing still felt as if I’d been in the front row of a rock concert. Jean-Baptiste seemed to be having an argument with Agent Lagarde a few yards away. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, so I hopped into the mind of one of the agents surrounding him and used her ears.
“By all means, drag me downtown and waste your time interviewing me,” he was saying. “I know the routine. But I need to speak to Valentina first.”
“The only person I need to let you speak to is your lawyer,” Agent Lagarde replied. It should have been a threat, but she made it sound almost like a question. Give me a reason to allow it, was the challenge behind her words.
“You sent her here to get information from me, didn’t you?” Jean-Baptiste stood with his manacled hands folded around his white cane. “I have something to tell her that you’ll be interested in.”
Agent Lagarde looked at him in silence for a moment before giving the okay. Jean-Baptiste held out his arm, and Agent Lagarde guided him toward me. That would have been Amala’s job usually, but she was handcuffed in the back of one of the vans. (She hadn’t done anything wrong and would be released by morning, but the cops never passed up an opportunity to arrest a supervillain.) Two other agents followed for additional protection, and Freezefire shifted his stance as if Agent Lagarde was leading a hungry tiger our way.
Villainous Page 3
