Villainous

by Brand, Kristen

  “Too quick,” she moaned into the carpet, head still down. “I won’t kill you that quick.”

  “And what’s killing me going to change?” I asked. “Will it get back the drugs you lost? Will it make Dad respect you?”

  “It’ll make me feel better.”

  She grabbed a chunk of demolished bed and swung it at me like a club. I dove aside with a curse, but it clipped my left leg and knocked me down. My leg screamed at me, but I ignored it and scrambled back across the floor. How had she moved so fast? I’d thought she’d been down for the count. Stupid and careless. I scolded myself and groped for Mary’s mind. I couldn’t fight back physically. My only chance was to break through her mental defenses. She limped toward me, and all I could get from her mind was anger. I had to work with that somehow. I had to—

  Elisa ran at her, but Mary saw her coming. She sidestepped Elisa’s tackle and clotheslined her, taking her to the floor with a thump so loud it rattled the window.

  You don’t want to hurt her. I tried to twist Mary’s anger into something else, but it was like trying to bend a crowbar with my bare hands.

  I really do, she replied, and I sensed what she was about to do a moment before she did it.

  “No!”

  She picked up Elisa’s limp body, lurching for a second when Dave’s knee nearly gave out. But she caught herself, heaved Elisa, and threw her at the window. Elisa shattered it with a crash barely audible over someone’s screams. My screams. I was screaming as I dashed past Mary toward the empty air where Elisa’s body had fallen out of sight. We were on the sixth floor.

  My momentum nearly launched me out the window after her. My knees banged into the wall as I leaned over the shattered glass and looked down. So far down. People were running and shouting, and Elisa was just lying there. The sidewalk had cracked beneath her, and she was just lying there.

  A sob tore from my throat, and I nearly choked. I turned from the window and ran. I had to get to the stairs. I had to get down there.

  For a split second, when I saw Dave standing in the room, I almost felt relief. But Dave’s mouth had never twisted so cruelly. His eyes had never shone with pleasure at someone else’s pain. I stopped and braced for an attack.

  “You can try to stop me, or you can try to help her,” Mary said. “The keyword in both cases being ‘try.’”

  Then she turned and limped from the room. She’d probably meant to stride.

  I hesitated for a brief moment and then ran after Elisa.

  Chapter 14

  Later, the hospital was crawling with police and DSA agents. Even with my telepathy weakened, I could feel the confusion and anxiety of everyone around. Or maybe those were my own feelings. By the time I’d reached the ground and found Elisa dazed and groaning but alive, Mary had vanished and taken Dave with her. She would hurt him. She would hurt him for no other reason than that it would hurt me, and right now, I didn’t know how I could possibly stop her. I had no idea where she’d gone.

  I sat at Elisa’s bedside, though I was the one in a hospital gown and she was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. She’d sprained her wrist, banged up her elbows pretty good, and had plenty of scrapes and bruises, but that seemed to be it. After falling six stories onto concrete. Despite all the stress that learning to control her super-strength had caused her, I was indescribably glad that she’d inherited Dave’s powers.

  Irma slipped quietly into the room, looked at me, and shook her head. She’d just finished searching the building and surrounding area for any sign of Mary and had turned up nothing. Not that I’d truly expected her to find anything, but hope was a seductive bitch sometimes. I kept my mind open to the thoughts of the DSA agents, but none of them knew anything useful. Agent Lagarde might. She was around here somewhere, but if my telepathy was so weak that I couldn’t overpower Mary, how could I hope to sneak into Lagarde’s mind? I might be able to convince Julio to tell me something, but—

  The scent of burning flesh filled my nose. Horror carved a hole in my stomach, and I tasted bile. Julio’s mind wasn’t a pleasant place right now. Sighing, I placed a hand on Elisa’s arm and stood. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  “Okay.” She smiled weakly.

  I left her with Irma, followed the sense of shock and nausea down the crowded hall, and walked into the men’s bathroom as if I owned the place. Someone was in the stall furthest from the door, kneeling in front of a toilet they’d emptied the contents of their stomach into. I crossed the floor quietly, nothing but thin socks between my feet and the cool tile, and knocked softly on the stall door.

  Panic hit my senses. Superheroes weren’t supposed to have mental breakdowns in public restrooms. They were supposed to be symbols of courage and strength. He couldn’t let people see him like this.

  “It’s me,” I said. “And I’ve seen worse, believe me.”

  There was a brief pause, then the sound of a toilet flushing, and Julio opened the stall door. His hair was damp and stringy with sweat, and his brown skin had a sickly tint to it. “I’m sorry,” he rasped.

  “For what?”

  “Almost killing you.”

  “Don’t be. I’m fine.”

  He walked past me to the sink, tossed something black and crumpled onto the counter, and splashed water onto his face. It took me a moment to realize the black thing was his mask. He stared, hunched over, at his face in the mirror. “The other three people I killed aren’t.”

  Screams filled his mind. A man and woman in uniform writhing on the ground as they burned. Then another, curled up into a ball and shivering, his lips blue. The authorities would have given She-Devil psyc to nullify her telepathy, not knowing about her second ability to possess people. Once she got Julio, they hadn’t stood a chance.

  “You didn’t kill them,” I said. “Mary did. You were just the weapon she used.”

  “Should’ve stopped her,” he muttered. “Should’ve been stronger.”

  “I don’t care if you think you’re weak.” I walked up to the counter next to him and gave his reflection a hard stare. “But Dave couldn’t stop her, either, so that means you’re insinuating he’s weak, and that I take issue with.” I softened my voice. “Possession is different from mind-control. I don’t know if it’s even possible to fight it. I didn’t even know Mary could do it. I—” I trailed off.

  He turned from the mirror and looked at me directly. “Do you know where she’ll take him?”

  “No. I was hoping… Did you sense any of her thoughts when she was possessing you? Did she think about her next move at all?”

  He shook his head.

  “Right,” I said. “Well, I’ll think of something.”

  I should have left then, since I’d asked the question I’d come to ask, but thoughts of Dave held me back. I liked Julio well enough for a kid I’d known for a grand total of three days, but he meant something more to Dave. Something much more.

  “If he were here,” I said, “he’d say not to blame yourself. That you did all you could and no one can win every battle. Only he’d say it much better than that. You know how he is.” A sad smile tugged at my lips. “But I know for a fact that if he were in your position, he’d be a mess of guilt and self-blame, too. So it’s probably a case of ‘do as I say, not as I do.’”

  Julio nodded, but it seemed more like he was acknowledging that he’d heard me, not that he agreed with what I was trying to convey. So I left, because even if I was good at giving pep talks (which I wasn’t), it was going to take more than one conversation to help him get over this.

  Back in Elisa’s room (well, the room that we’d commandeered for her and no one had successfully kicked us out of yet), I rifled through my purse for my phone. Lee had emailed me a digital file of all the information she’d collected on Mary. I had the contents memorized, but maybe if I read through it again, I might spot some clue about where she would take Dave.

  My hand brushed a smooth, thin tube, and I froze. I’d forgotten what was in my purse. The thin
gs I’d picked up in that dealer’s apartment—the gun Elisa had crushed and a syringe of psyc—I’d never taken them out. They were still here.

  Psyc. My hand tightened around the syringe. This was the answer. This was the way I could find Dave. When Mary had injected me with psyc yesterday, I’d been able to sense the thoughts of the whole city. It had overwhelmed me, nearly destroyed me, but I’d found Dave, Irma, and Elisa’s thoughts when they were in the house miles away from me. If I injected myself now, it wouldn’t matter where Mary had gone; I’d find her. Then I could read her mind, learn her plan, and arrive in time to stop it. I could save my husband.

  Yet I didn’t pull the syringe from my purse. If Irma saw it, she’d stop me—and for good reason. The psyc had nearly killed me last time. I’d managed to find my way back to myself with Elisa’s help, but what if I couldn’t do it a second time? And even if I did, what kind of damage would it do to me? I still hadn’t spoken to the doctor about my scan results. There could be worse after-effects than a single case of memory loss. Taking psyc a second time would exacerbate whatever it had done to me. What good would learning Mary’s location be if I couldn’t remember it? Or if I lost my ability to think, to problem-solve, to plan a way to rescue him? There were so many things that could go wrong, so many ways I could end up disabled or comatose or dead.

  But if I did nothing, Dave would die for sure.

  I didn’t think about it any further. If I did, I’d talk myself out of it because it was a stupid, risky plan. So I just pulled out the syringe and stabbed my inner elbow.

  “Irma,” I said calmly. “Could you call the doctor, please? I’m about to have a seizure or a stroke or something.”

  Irma saw the syringe in my hand and leapt up from her chair. “What did you—”

  • • •

  I removed the velcro strap from the patient’s arm. Of course her blood pressure was up. The police were everywhere, and nobody would tell us what was going on. Oh, they said we weren’t in any danger, but anybody would be—

  —gripped the walker, and the rubbery handles were warm and sweaty from contact with my hands. My breaths were shallow, even though all I’d done was walk a couple yards to—

  —bit into the chocolate and chewy caramel, and—

  “—sign a petition or something,” he went on. “If we’re dealing with supervillains, we should get a pay raise.” He was worried for nothing. There’d been no activity since we’d been called to the scene. Whatever fight had happened here, it was—

  —the high-pitched hum of the blender stopped, and I poured the mocha into—

  —do something so stupid? I caught her as she slid from the chair, her head lolling. If she survived this, I was going to murder her. Elisa’s shouting had stopped, and—

  Mom? Mom!

  Mom. That was me. Everything important came rushing back, and I tightened my hold on it, separating what was me from what was everyone else. It was easier the second time around.

  I’m here, I told Elisa. I’m fine. Then to Irma: Please don’t murder me.

  I make no promises, she thought with a wave of anger that nearly knocked over my consciousness.

  Hold on, I said once I steadied myself. I’m going to find Mary.

  Familiar. I searched through the tempest of noise and emotion for something familiar. Mary’s smugness at beating me should call out like a lighthouse beacon. I just had to find it. I sorted through hopes and fears, joy and despair. So much life. So many lives. You could look at it as miraculous or insignificant, depending on your point of view. Everyone was dealing with problems or having celebrations, and the intensity of some of them threatened to suck me in and make me lose myself. But I was, at my core, an unrepentantly selfish person. I didn’t care about what other people were dealing with. I cared about me and mine. I cared about Dave and about finding Mary.

  In the end, it was Dave who drew me in, even if Mary had subsumed his consciousness. His body was stiff and aching. His knee throbbed. His hands had ripped the steering wheel off her car before she’d gotten the hang of using them, and she was pissed. She’d had to steal a car, one without her cherry-shaped air freshener and preset radio stations. And she was driving very carefully so his stupid brutish hands didn’t wreck this one, too.

  She was driving west on the Tamiami Trail, the same road she’d been on when I’d escaped from her trunk. I peered into her mind and found her destination: a derelict house on the river, surrounded by tall cypress trees draped with Spanish moss. I knew where it was now, the zip code and address and what back roads to take to get there. But why? Why was she taking Dave there of all places?

  I scoured her thoughts associated with the house: heat from an enormous oven, the smell of chemicals, stacked baggies of silver powder. And Dr. Sweet. Dr. Sweet with his white lab coat over a grubby Hawaiian shirt, his plump fingers holding a vial. She had memories of meeting him in the house, and I tried to find something more recent, something that would show who’d taken over now that Sweet was in prison, but nothing turned up. Maybe Mary herself didn’t know. But it didn’t matter. This was where the psyc was made, and Mary was going there with the intention of bashing heads together—literally.

  She’d lost the shipment she’d gone to get when the DSA busted her, and the Prophet King’s men had burned down her warehouse. She had no psyc left, no funds to buy more, and she refused to ask Dad for a loan. That would be admitting I’d beaten her. So she’d do the only thing she could: go to the house and use Dave’s strength to crush skulls and destroy property until they agreed to give her more.

  Oh, Mary. I took one more piece of information from her mind: the leverage that I’d need to beat her. Then I pulled out of her head before my pity gave away my presence. Even if her plan worked, it was a temporary solution, not a way to build a long-term relationship with a supplier. But it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t have taken my advice even if I’d offered it to her. All that mattered was that I knew she was going there with Dave, and if I left immediately, I might be able to get there before she hurt him.

  • • •

  Mary used to listen to my advice. She used to actually like me. Not sure how it had gone wrong, but it was probably my father’s fault. Nearly a decade ago, when I’d first heard she was going to join the family business, I’d made a rare trip home to the family manor to talk to her. I’d found her in her bedroom, scrutinizing her reflection in a full-length mirror.

  “I like it,” I’d said, referring to the costume. There was a lot of our influence—mine and Sonia’s and Bianca’s. I’d worn fishnet stockings as part of several of my costumes, and the artfully torn skirt was a look Lady Nightmare had used in her early days.

  “Hey, Val!” She turned from the mirror with a smile. “You don’t think the horns are too much?”

  She pointed to two short, slightly curling red horns extruding from her head, whatever headband she’d used to attach them artfully concealed beneath her hair.

  “Nah,” I said. “They’re on theme.”

  “You think?” She frowned at the mirror again. “I’m worried I might be overdoing it.”

  “Not if you’re going to be a supervillain. Remember, you can read minds, but instead of using that to become a psychologist or diplomat, you’re giving yourself a codename and a costume and committing crimes. Don’t run from the ridiculousness; embrace it.”

  “If you say so.” She turned her body, trying to see how the outfit looked from behind.

  I watched her for a few moments in silence, then said, “I thought you were going to do the whole accounting thing.”

  “Huh?”

  “Accounting. You were majoring in it. You were going to keep Dad’s books and do embezzling stuff. What happened?”

  She shrugged. “I guess I changed my mind.”

  “But you loved accounting. You said it was like using math to lie to people.”

  She turned away from me. “Dad said… Dad said we pay people to do that kind of work. I need to do
something bigger, to make a name for myself.”

  “You don’t have to do what he says, you know. The rest of us don’t.”

  “I can be just as good at this as you guys. Just because I’m younger doesn’t mean—”

  “I know.” I held up my hand in a placating gesture. “That’s not what I’m saying. You’ll probably be better than us because you’ve seen all the stupid things we did and won’t make the same mistakes. I just… I just want to make sure you’re doing something that makes you happy.”

  “I am,” she said quickly. “I’m a Belmonte, right? Shooting people and stealing stuff is what makes me happy.”

  “Right,” I said after a slightly too-long pause. “So, what’s Dad got you doing for your first night in costume? Shaking people down for protection money?”

  She launched into an explanation of a dangerous job, and I gave her what pointers and encouragement I could. I should have stopped her. I should have stopped Dad from pressuring her. I should have let White Knight take her to Child Services on the night I found her instead of bringing her home to a family of thieves and killers.

  Hindsight is twenty-twenty, I suppose.

  Chapter 15

  I came back to myself.

  I was sitting in the same chair in Elisa’s hospital room, Irma’s hand clenched around my upper arms as she leaned over me. Aching emanated from somewhere behind my eyeballs, and everything was silent and empty. No nauseous anxiety that didn’t belong to me. No ghostly pain from someone else’s body. No voices in my head other than my own. I couldn’t sense anything. I reached out with my telepathy, but it was as if nothing was there. Not even the pain I’d had the first time.