Villainous

by Brand, Kristen

  Shit, I hoped that was temporary.

  “Val?” Irma was saying, and it was strange. Strange for me to be unable to feel her concern even though she was standing right in front of me. “Val, are you all right?”

  “I’m…” Fine, I was fine. “Yes.”

  Someone’s hand was on my wrist, taking my pulse. A nurse edged Irma aside and looked at my eyes, studying my pupils. “Are you in any pain?” she asked.

  “Just a…” The word. What was it? Pain in my head. I knew the word but couldn’t get my mouth to say it. “I have a…”

  “Stay calm and tell me what happened,” said the nurse. She didn’t need to sound so patronizing about it.

  “I…” I took psyc and overloaded my telepathy again, and you’re not qualified enough to deal with it, so please leave and get Dr. Klein, I wanted to say. But the words wouldn’t come.

  “You’re having trouble speaking,” the nurse said. Yeah, no shit.

  “She took psyc and lost conscious for… It couldn’t have been longer than two minutes,” Irma said.

  “Stay there.” The nurse moved quickly toward the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  My heart jumped into my throat and tried to crawl out my mouth. This couldn’t be happening. Fuck.

  “I don’t hear your thoughts at all.” Elisa had left her bed and was hovering nervously behind Irma. “Are you blocking them?”

  I shook my head and looked at Irma. “I f-found her. She’s… She’s….” Why wouldn’t my mouth work? This was hopeless. I was never going to be able to give directions like this. “Give me a—a—” I snapped my fingers impatiently, but Irma was at an utter loss. She always knew what I needed. I’d tell her telepathically or verbally or she just knew.

  I mimed writing, and Irma practically dove on her purse, tearing through it until she produced a pad and pen. I held the point of the pen over the paper shakily. If I couldn’t write….

  It was okay. My hand wrote the words as easily as ever. The area of the brain that handled writing was different from the part that controlled speech, right? It must not have been affected. I scribbled the address Mary was heading to as quickly as I could, afraid the information would leak out of my brain before I finished. Then I wrote, “Mary’s taking Dave here. Where psyc is produced. She’s going to use Dave’s powers to threaten the person making it into giving her more. I need to—” I stopped. No, that wouldn’t work. “You need to tell Agent Lagarde. Don’t let her know my telepathy isn’t working.”

  Irma scanned the note, nodded curtly, and left the room. I relaxed slightly in the chair. That was the important part. Even if I was a powerless wreck, at least we knew where Dave was.

  Elisa was still standing. She looked from the door back to me, her eyes wide and shimmering.

  “I’m okay,” I said. Look at that. A full sentence.

  Her head bobbed in a quick nod. She wanted to believe me. I was her mother, and she thought of me as practically invincible. Seeing me stuttering and brain-addled couldn’t be easy for her.

  The nurse returned with Dr. Klein, and the questions and exams began. But then Irma came back, and I waved them impatiently aside.

  “We need to talk in private,” Irma said. “Out.”

  “We’re in the middle of—”

  “Out.”

  They put up a fuss, and I’d have traded just about anything to have my mind-control back, but Irma eventually bullied them from the room. (And without waving a knife in their faces. I was impressed.) When she slammed the door behind them and turned to me, her face didn’t foreshadow good news.

  “They’re going to look into it,” she said. “But I don’t think they’ll move fast enough.”

  Damn it all. Weren’t the DSA good for anything?

  “Freezefire got possessed when they went after Mary on your info,” she elaborated. “Agent Largarde says her superiors think you may have double-crossed them. They need to do reconnaissance and get approval before they raid a house on your word. If it was Agent Lagarde’s call, I think we’d be okay, but apparently, the director has come down from Washington. I wouldn’t hold your breath while waiting for their help.”

  I closed my eyes and repressed the urge to throw furniture around the room. They wouldn’t help? Fine. I’d go on my own.

  “Did you…” I tugged on my hospital gown and hoped she’d get the hint. She did. She picked up two duffel bags from our pile of stuff in the corner.

  “I didn’t know if you’d want to wear the costume or not,” she explained.

  My immediate urge was to say no, but I considered it for a moment. Costumes were a message. They said, “I have superpowers, I’m crazy enough to wear this, and I will fuck you up.” If I wanted to show Mary that I hadn’t gone soft, that would be a good place to start. But it wasn’t me anymore—the leather and the corset and the mask. I’d outgrown them. I was older and subtler and scarred now. Plus, I wasn’t sure if I could still fit into the pants.

  “No,” I said.

  Irma tossed me the bag on the left, and I went into the small bathroom to change. Jeans, boots, a tight black T-shirt. I’d wait until I got to the car to put on the bulletproof vest, since it was conspicuous and I wouldn’t be able to mind-control the cops here into ignoring me. I pulled my hair back with a tie, glanced at myself briefly in the mirror, and walked back out to find Elisa arguing with Irma.

  “But I could help—”

  “No,” I answered before Irma could say anything. “It’s too…too…”

  “Too dangerous,” Irma finished. “You’re injured and you don’t have the experience. You’d be a liability.”

  Elisa moped, and I put a hand on her shoulder. “Can I…” Oh, come on. What was the word? This was important. “Can I…t-t-trust…you?”

  Elisa cocked her head as she tried to figure out what I meant.

  “To go to…” I tried.

  “To go home?” she asked.

  “No. To go to…s-safe…”

  “To go to the safe house.”

  I nodded. “There. And not…like before.”

  “You want me to go to the safe house and not do something stupid and try to help like I did before.” Elisa’s posture drooped as she realized what I meant.

  I put my free hand on her other shoulder, looking her square in the face. “Can I…trust you?”

  She looked at me, sighed as only a teenager could, and said, “Yeah.”

  Good.

  Irma got off the phone with someone. “That was Eddy. He’s out front with the car.” She looked at Elisa. “Take a cab downtown, then take a different cab to the safe house. Can you take all this with you?” She gestured at our remaining bags.

  “Yeah, got it,” Elisa said.

  Irma reached for the doorknob but then paused. “Any chance I can convince you to go with her and leave this to Eddy and me?” she asked me.

  I gave her a flat look and didn’t bother trying to reply.

  “Of course,” she said. “Forget I said anything.”

  I gave Elisa one last encouraging smile, then Irma and I walked purposefully down the hall toward the elevator. Luck wasn’t with us. Agent Lagarde was standing not far away, talking to another woman in a suit, and when she saw me, she immediately came after us.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she called.

  Irma pressed the down button on the elevator, but it wasn’t on this floor. The wait gave Agent Lagarde time to catch up.

  “I can’t let you leave,” she said.

  The doors opened with a ding, and Irma stepped smoothly past the agent and inside. When I tried to follow, Agent Lagarde held out her arm, blocking me.

  “You can’t… You…” Ugh, this was the worst. I had a really snappy threat in my head, but it just wouldn’t come out.

  Irma, pressing the button to keep the doors from closing, picked up my slack. “What Ms. Belmonte is trying to say is that she’s cooperated with you so far because it was in her husband’s best interest. But his li
fe is in danger now, so she’s done playing along with your DSA bullshit. Try to stop her, and you won’t wake up from your coma until Christmas. Now are you really going to start this?”

  Irma Grimaldi, ladies and gentlemen. The woman who raised me.

  Agent Lagarde stared down Irma then turned back to me. I met her gaze levelly, backing up Irma’s threat like I had use of my powers and could force every other agent to jump out the window Elisa had broken, like I wanted nothing more than to match my telepathy against Agent Lagarde’s and see which of us survived. Like I wasn’t powerless and desperate and completely unable to take on a hospital full of armed law enforcement.

  Agent Lagarde lowered her arm and let me pass.

  • • •

  Irma handed me sunglasses, and I put them on to help hide my scars as we passed two police officers standing guard at the hospital’s main entrance. A casual walk and easy manner let us exit into the humid evening without getting a second glance from them. The yellowish streetlights around the parking lot had come on, though the sky was still deep blue rather than pitch black. The hum of passing engines and distant honking horns mixed with the chirps of insects and the wind rustling the trees. I kept walking down the sidewalk though I didn’t know where Eddy was parked, trusting him to see us and bring the car.

  “I wouldn’t put it past Agent Lagarde to have the highway patrol keep watch for us,” Irma said. “I know Mary has a head start, but we shouldn’t speed.”

  “You’re not…” I started. “I n-need you to…”

  My mouth might not be able to form the right words, but it couldn’t stop me from groaning in disgust with myself. Maybe I should have stayed with Elisa. I wouldn’t be able to communicate with Irma and Eddy when the fight with Mary broke out. A split-second’s delay could get us all killed, never mind the agonizingly long moments it was taking me to form words now.

  Irma handed me a pad and pen. A second later, a car pulled up to the curb beside us. “Evening, ladies,” Eddy greeted. “Need a lift?”

  I opened the back door, sat in the seat, but didn’t pull in my legs or close the door behind me. I just used the light inside the car to write down long, detailed instructions. When I finished, I tore off the page and handed it to Irma. She leaned closer to the car’s light to read it, and her eyebrows rose.

  “Oh,” she said. “That may just work.”

  Good. If Irma thought it was a decent plan, then my brain wasn’t completely trashed.

  “This isn’t too far out of the way,” she said. “I should show up maybe twenty, thirty minutes after you. If Dave isn’t in immediate danger, you’ll wait for me?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t mind me,” Eddy said. “I’m just the driver. I don’t need to know your secret plans.”

  Irma passed him the paper. He squinted, and while he read it, Irma fixed me with an unreadable stare. I hated not being able to read her mind like I usually could when she acted all mysterious like that.

  “I can do it for you,” she said after a moment. “In the end. So you don’t have to.”

  Ah. Killing Mary was what she meant. I shook my head. If it came to that, I’d do it myself. She was my sister, and I owed her enough to do it personally.

  Eddy passed the paper back to Irma. “Sounds fun. Too bad you can’t ride with us, doll.”

  “I’ll manage,” she said. “And if you call me that again, I’ll cut out your tongue and make you cook it for dinner. Now get—”

  Irma stopped, sensing someone’s approach. Julio walked up behind us, and he’d put back on his mask. Agent Lagarde must have changed her mind. How stupid could I be? I should have gone over the plan with Irma and Eddy after we’d left the hospital far behind.

  “I already went through this with Agent Lagarde.” Irma stepped protectively in front of me. “And I hate to use the same threat more than once.”

  Eddy’s hand went stealthily to the gun in the glove compartment, and Irma’s fingers twitched in anticipation of grabbing one of her knives. There had to be some way I could convince Julio to let us go without mind-control. After we rescued Dave, I did not want to explain to him how his former sidekick had gotten shot and stabbed.

  “I’m not here to stop you,” Julio said. “I’m going with you.”

  It wasn’t the answer Irma had been expecting. She stepped back and looked at me questioningly.

  “No,” I said.

  “Why the hell not?” he growled.

  I stood up. “You’re a… You’re… Dave…”

  “I’m going,” Julio said. “If anyone’s staying, it’s you. Look at you. You should be in a hospital bed. You can’t even—”

  “Watch your mouth, kid.” Eddy got out of the front seat. “Do I need to smack some respect into you?”

  Julio’s hands clenched into fists, and I swore I could feel the two of them releasing testosterone into the air like steaming teapots. Before they could start brawling, I jabbed my finger into Julio’s chest.

  “This,” I said, pointing to the double-F symbol on his chest. “You’re this. We’re… We’re not.”

  “You’re a hero,” Irma translated. “Our version of rescuing someone involves a lot more execution-style shots to the head than you’d be comfortable with. You’d only slow us down.”

  Irma meant well, but that wasn’t exactly what I’d meant to say. I wanted to tell him that he was a hero and should stay true to the laws and ideals he was supposed to uphold, that Dave wouldn’t want him to fall in with what we were about to do. Not that I’d mean a word of it, but it would’ve had a better chance of swaying him than Irma’s insults.

  “I don’t care.” Julio’s voice was a lot lower and raspier than I was used to. “She-Devil has Dave. I won’t let her use him the way she did me. I’m going to stop her.” He’d been speaking to Irma, but now he turned to me. “Whatever it takes.”

  Lord, he was just like Elisa. Except he was even less likely to listen to me than she was, and I couldn’t afford to waste time arguing with him or cause a scene that would draw the police.

  “F-Fine,” I said. And that was enough talk. I walked around the car and got into the passenger seat. The others followed my lead and got moving.

  It was time for round three against Mary, and this time, I couldn’t afford to lose.

  Chapter 16

  The house was practically on the opposite coast, and we felt every minute of the hour and a half drive. I turned on the car’s interior lights even though they would dim Eddy’s night vision, since I needed it to write by. No instructions this time, but a detailed account of everything I’d done today. If I had another instance of memory loss, I couldn’t risk missing or repeating a step in my plan. I couldn’t risk making any mistakes whatsoever.

  The wind was picking up outside, and cloud cover blotted out the stars. Occasionally, lightning streaked across the sky ahead of us, briefly illuminating the miles of flat swampland to either side of the road. But other than those short instances, the view outside was darkness broken up by the occasional blinking red light of a far-off radio tower, and the lights of the few other cars on the road. The rumble of thunder was soft and distant, and it hadn’t started raining yet, but it would. It was probably just waiting until we got to where we were going.

  Eventually, we did get there, passing through small towns with lit-up signs advertising cheap motels and barbeque restaurants. What few houses were out here had Halloween decorations up: jack-o-lanterns, fake headstones, and inflatable likenesses of Dr. Grim and other supervillains who were long dead and not able to firebomb companies for selling tacky decorations based on them. I pointed out to Eddy where to turn, using Mary’s memories as my guide. The house was off on its own, no neighbors nearby to notice the drug-making operation. The limbs of the trees whipped about in the wind, and our headlights briefly caught a possum as it scurried across the road. Brief, light raindrops started to tap against the windshield.

  “Close,” I said. “Lights…off.”

&nb
sp; Eddy dutifully switched off his headlights. He killed the radio, too, cutting off a Johnny Cash song as the anxiety we’d felt for the whole drive reached its climax.

  “Pull over,” I said after another quarter-mile. “We’ll w-w—we’ll…”

  “Walk?” Eddy supplied, and his voice was painful in its gentleness.

  “Yes.”

  He pulled over and cut the engine, and I put on my bulletproof vest as we all got out of the car. The air outside was humid and smelled of ozone and imminent rain. Eddy popped the trunk, and when we went around back to it, Julio swore.

  “Where did you—you can’t possibly have licenses for all these.” He stared as the dim lights inside the trunk illuminated an array of tightly packed weaponry. “That one’s not even legal in the States, and—is that a rocket launcher?”

  “Welcome to the dark side, kid,” Eddy said. “We’ve got all the best toys.”

  Eddy passed out night-vision goggles, and he and I strapped on holsters and loaded up guns. Julio hesitated.

  “You know how to use one of these?” Eddy asked. “You can admit it if you don’t. We’re all friends here.”

  “I know how to use one,” Julio grumbled as he snatched up a small pistol. “I had training at the academy.”

  “Ooh, training at the academy. Everybody step back. We’ve got an ace sharp-shooter here.”

  “Eddy,” I chided.

  Julio turned pointedly from Eddy to address me. “What’s the plan?”

  “Val leads,” Eddy answered for me, all business now. “We get close as quietly as we can and assess the situation. If Dave’s in danger, we start shooting. If not, we wait for Irma.”

  Julio looked at the gun in his hand. He’d probably never used one outside of a training ground. Heroes tended not to carry guns on account of that kid-friendly image they had to keep up. “Okay,” he said.

  I led them on foot down the side of the road, night-vision goggles tight around my skull. Julio and Eddy knew how to move quietly, and none of us disturbed the night as we crept steadily forward. Light raindrops tickled my skin, but they grew slowly harder and more frequent until it was pouring. Of course it didn’t start pouring until we were outside the car. We grew utterly soaked in less than a minute, but I took advantage of it, leading us off-road and through the woods. We would have made too much noise stomping through the undergrowth under normal circumstances, but the sound of falling rain would hide that, and hopefully, we could avoid any guards or security cameras by staying behind the trees.