by Liana Brooks
Fire roared like a living beast, filling the alley behind him. He fought the fire with ice, but that only produced steam. He turned, trying to focus on putting up a thick glacier wall to cut the pyro out of the fight, and took a bat to the ribs for his inattention. They gave way under the force of the blow and he dropped to his knees.
The blonde swung again, slamming into the side of his knee.
Arktos swallowed a cry of pain and rolled to his back as he entombed himself in ice. He was a triple threat; able to fly, manipulate cold and ice, and heal rapidly, but he still needed time to heal in. If the blonde knocked him out, the pyro would turn him to a charred corpse before he could recover.
The fire outside his blue ice tomb dimmed. Two shadowy figures leaned over him and he felt heat on his back. Wiggling so he had some elbow room, he hit his knee, forcing the joint painfully back into place. He tried breathing and choked on blood. Broken rib. Wonderful. At least he’d be able to run in a few minutes.
His head spun as terror gripped him. This was it. He was going to die. Some dim corner of his mind shouted at him that this feeling wasn’t his, that the terror was alien, but the fear flared higher, consuming the voice, consuming everything. He clawed at the ice, desperate to escape. He couldn’t die like this. Wouldn’t. Aaron needed him to come home.
A third person walked into sight. The ice distorted his view, warping the image so he saw only rippling lines, but even through the ice, the black and red costume—and the sudden drop in his terror levels—had to mean Rage.
Arktos slammed his fist into the ice, punching his way free. She wasn’t a triple threat and there was no way he was going to let some unprotected empath try to take down the pyro alone. He fought the pain and fear and ice until a swell of peace blanketed him.
Exhausted, he let his head drop back to the ground and saw the fleeing pyro burning bright as his ice cage melted away. “This was not the plan.” His ribs scorched. He turned to his good side and saw blood.
“Tell me about it. I hate having my beauty sleep interrupted.” Rage bent over and picked up something silver that glittered in the pre-dawn light. “Cinderella left us a present.”
She walked the battle lines looking for more loot before coming over to him and dropping to her haunches, dangling the silver earring above him. “Beautiful little trinket, isn’t it? Silver or platinum, custom-made, expensive... I think I’ll keep it.”
Arktos winced as he tried to sit. “Give me the earring.”
“I have contacts who can find out who made this and who bought it. I doubt you do. But, if you’re very nice to me and keep talking, I might be persuaded to share my information.”
He grinned through the stabbing pain in his side, panting only a little as bones shifted. “Are you going to scribble your phone number on my hand?”
She tossed the earring up, caught it in her gloved hand, and tucked it away in her pocket. “Do you know that little ice cream shop up on the Pacific Highway? The one near the overlook?”
Taking a shallow breath, he nodded.
“I like to drive up there at nights, watch the waves without the city all around me. I’ll be there Friday. Maybe we can bump into each other, if you’re out of the hospital.”
“De nada. It’s all good. I’m healing. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll only be sore.” He reached out a hand. “Give me the earring.”
“Not happening.”
He coughed and winced again.
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s a convincing impression of a pierced lung you’re doing.”
He smiled up at her. “For someone who missed her beauty sleep, you look great.”
“And a concussion? Are there any other injuries I should tell the EMTs about when I call the ambulance?”
“Give me fifteen minutes.” Arktos forced himself to sit upright, his muscles burning. “It’ll hurt like hell, but I’ve had worse.”
“When?”
“I was twelve...” He gasped and pressed his side. “I was twelve and my mom decided that taking a baseball bat to my head was a good way of reminding me how much she hated parenting me.” Any other time he might have shrugged it off, but right now he couldn’t work up the energy to move. “After lying on the floor overnight I woke up with a headache and the munchies. I blamed it on a bad dream until I saw the blood. This is better. I’ll be hungry and sore, but that’s it.”
“Well, if I’d known this was just a midnight munchie run I would have brought cupcakes.”
“I hate cupcakes. Your choices are either vanilla or chocolate and I hate both.”
Rage leaned over him, crimson lips drawing his attention. “Blackberry-lime cupcakes.”
Arktos chuckled, and regretted it instantly as bone fragments sawed at the muscles on his side. Definitely broken. “Why does ‘blackberry-lime’ sound like a pick-up line?”
“Because you’re a male under age eighty. I could probably say ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ and make you think about sex.” She took his hand. “How about I stay here for a bit, just to make sure you recover enough to get yourself home.”
“This isn’t a death watch,” he said through gritted teeth. Super healing. What a bad idea! Instead of letting a doctor pick out the organic shrapnel while he slept, his body pushed it out like an infection as new bone grew on the rib. His world narrowed to a point of shining light on the roofline where the first rays of dawn hit the metal trim. Pain swallowed him down into the darkness.
And then he felt suddenly light, like floating on a warm, lazy river, drifting away from the world.
“I’d worry less if you were talking,” Rage prompted.
Arktos focused on the woman beside him. She was lovely, in a violent kind of way. The black leather trench coat had to be hot in sweltering L.A., but the humidity made her red silk cami cling in all the right places. Deep summer-sky eyes studied him intently. His hand shook. She’d come out here, alone, to save him. The pyro could have killed her—she had to have known it was a risk—but she’d still come to his rescue. The irony was enough to kill him.
He laced his fingers with hers. “What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?”
“You first.”
Her smile turned seductive. “Statement. One-love.”
He blinked.
“It’s from Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead. The Question Game?” She waved her free hand airily. “At the university we made a game of reciting it to see who knew it best, but don’t worry, most people don’t know it.”
“I know the play,” he said. “I just don’t expect beautiful women to start quoting Tom Stoppard at me instead of giving me their names.”
“Ah. Well then.” Her smile was wry, flirting but mischievous at the same time. He could get used to a smile like that.
“And I don’t know the next line.”
Rage grimaced. “I’m not sure I remember it either. Let me think.” She muttered a few lines under breath, casually rubbing at her ribcage.
He tried to disentangle his hand when he realized what was happening. Rage could make people feel things, and she could feel other people’s emotions, and now it seemed she could take some of it away. The same pathways in the brain that registered emotion would respond to pain, wouldn’t they? “Let go,” he whispered, not wanting to see her hurt.
Arktos tried to pull his hand away. “Stop it. I know what you’re doing.” Rage lifted a delicately arched eyebrow over her domino mask. “You’re taking—” The need to breathe cut him off.
“That’s right.”
The pain ebbed away into nothingness. “I just took one year of your life away.”
“Don’t play the coy ingénue and quote The Princess Bride at me. You’re going to kill yourself doing that.”
“Kill myself by exciting your serotonin receptors? Somehow I doubt that.”
“Empaths are like fire bugs, they can overload. Go insane. Burn out.” He stared at the city lights reflecting off the smog overhead. “That’s wh
at’s wrong with the pyro. He’s about to burn out. If I can’t get him in an isolation ward soon he will do his best impression of a firework and leave chunks of burned pyro all over the city.”
“Graphic and unpleasant details that you should have mentioned sooner.”
“Uh huh.” He closed his eyes.
“Hey now! Stay with me here.”
“Why?” He meant to ask why she was helping him but it was too hard to form the words. So easy to fall asleep. Everything would be better tomorrow.
Her thumb caressed the sensitive skin on the palm of his hand. “Don’t leave me. You’re the only man who’s made me laugh in years. You’re kind.”
“Says the woman who’s known me for how long?”
“I can read emotions. It’s there, all of it. Your worry for people, all the drives and concerns, all your insecurities. Simmering away just beneath the pain.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he asked, voice rasping.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Not me or my bare-naked emotions!”
“Do you want to talk about you being bare-naked?”
He opened one eye and saw Rage smirk. Her eyebrows waggled in a suggestive way made famous by silent film. “No.”
She sighed dramatically. “As you wish. Would you like to play at questions?” She held on tighter. “The next line is, ‘What’s your name when you’re at home?’”
Arktos quit fighting. “What’s yours?” Another cough shook him, but the pain was minimal.
“When I’m at home?”
“Is it different at home?”
“What home?” Rage shot him a triumphant smile that dared him to keep the game up as his muscles spasmed around the break.
Pushing himself into a sitting position, he asked, “Haven’t you got one?”
“Why do you ask?” Rage stood and brushed dirt from her black jeans.
He stood too, wincing as he tested his knee. “What are you driving at?”
“What’s your name?”
He smirked at her. “Repetition. Two-love. Match point.”
Rage stepped closer. “Who do you think you are?”
“Rhetoric. Game and match.” He took her hand back. “A kiss for the winner?”
“I don’t remember that part of the play.”
“I’m improvising.” Arktos brushed a stray hair back from her eyes. It felt like a wig, and the too-blue-to-be-true eyes were probably contacts. He couldn’t bring himself to care. She’d been there to defend him. He traced her jaw line. “A kiss for the winner.”
“Who won?”
“Does it matter?” he whispered, leaning forward.
She met him halfway.
Arktos slid his free hand behind Rage’s neck as she pressed against him. He ran his tongue across her lips and they parted, inviting him in.
Her hands rested on his shoulder, fingers kneading the muscle as she pulled him deeper into the kiss.
Arktos slid his hand under her jacket, feeling the sweat of the hot night and the thin layer of silk between him and her skin. He slanted his mouth, taking more. Demanding more.
She tasted of lime and vanilla, an exotic confection meant for him alone.
With a little gasp she pushed away. Her eyes were wide, her breath coming rapidly, cheeks flushed as if they’d done more than kiss. She shook her head to clear it, then came back to him.
Her kiss was desperate and raw, as though she could steal his soul and all the secrets of the universe with a touch of her lips.
Arktos leaned against the hot bricks behind him and lifted her, needing to feel the weight of her. Their tongues met again and this time he felt her control slip. It started as a strange warmth on his arms where skin touched skin, gliding over him until he was caught in a torrent of emotions. He felt her hunger for more, loneliness mixed with lust, desire warring with fear.
He pulled her tight against his chest in an attempt to comfort her. The need to protect her and drive away those fears was almost stronger than the need to know every inch of her. Almost.
But not here. They had to go somewhere quiet. Somewhere private. Not home, he thought as she bit his lip and slipped out of his hands.
Cold surrounded him as she withdrew. “Rage?” He held out a hand, inviting her back.
She stepped back, shaking her head. “No. No. It ends here.”
“Ends?” He pushed away from the wall and pursued her. “What do you mean it ends here? We’ve only just started.”
“This... Us? We are a bad idea. This can’t happen.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “We can’t be together.”
“I don’t understand. Why not?”
She licked her lips, eyes drowning him with regret. “You can’t give me what I want.”
All the air left his lungs. You aren’t what I want. His mother had used those words again, and again, and again. Go away. I don’t want you. A rhythm as familiar as his own heartbeat. “What do you want?”
“A family. A husband, some kids, maybe not the white picket fence or a farm, but I want a family and you work for The Company. I can’t be with you for the same reason I can’t sign with them. I’d have to give up all I ever wanted, and I won’t.” She tugged at the edges of her trench coat, wrapping it around herself. “I’m sorry.”
Arktos stared, trying to bring his defenses back up. “Kids? Isn’t...” He took a deep breath, feeling his muscles mend and his heart break. “You know you can’t, don’t you? That’s why it’s part of The Company contracts. All superheroes are sterile. The same mutation that allows me to fly makes it so I can’t father children.”
She rolled her eyes. “What utter bunk.”
“Bunk?”
“Southern Ladies don’t swear.” She took a tentative step toward him, hand reaching out to caress his arm. “Superheroes can have babies.”
He caught her hand and brought it to his mouth for a kiss. “I wish we could, but every one who’s tried has died or been unable to conceive.”
“That’s not true.”
“Do you have proof?” Every nerve was alive with the need to remove the space between them and kiss her again.
“I have proof.”
Rage kissed him, and he tasted the salt of her tears. He let her go.
“My name is Angela. I’m the oldest of five children, and my daddy is a super villain.”
Chapter Ten
Dear Mom,
What did Maria do? I’ve read your email twice and I think you let Gideon encrypt it because there’s no way Maria has given up being the evil overlord of South America to work for the U.S. Forestry Service. Things like that don’t happen in the rational world. Granted, my world has been less than rational lately, but that’s because I gave up all pretense of having a brain and moved to California to work in Hollywood!
That came out wrong.
I’m happy here, really. Everyone is very friendly and the job isn’t bad. There are worse jobs. I miss teaching. I miss feeling like I contributed something good to society. But I pay my rent and, for some reason, I have fans. I hope they’re normal people and not...well...never mind. Least said soonest mended.
Your daughter who would prefer not to be a sex object,
Angela
Some flight of insanity had suggested that a run after Angela woke up would make everything better. Never mind the heat index of 105, or the ninety percent humidity, or the fact that she was supposed to be shooting night scenes for Fractured all week and should sleep until five.
No, she’d woken up at eleven and gone for a run.
At least the cop car that had been trailing her had finally turned off. The poor officer was probably worried that she was going to get heatstroke, which wasn’t actually that farfetched an assumption, Angela thought as sweat dripped down her face. But half a mile ahead she could see the twinkling gem that was her destination: Cupcakes, a teeny tiny little building with a vacant lot next door that had been turned into an urban gar
den. It was the home of blackberry-lime cupcakes and worth the five mile run each way.
Angela put on one last burst of speed as the song “I Am Not That Girl” by the Brutal Cheerleaders started. I am not that girl. I can’t be the one you want. I’ll never fall that far. I am not that girl.
Reaching Cupcakes, Angela paused to wipe the worst of the sweat off her face with her shirt, then opened the door and walked into the arctic chill of the bakery. The sharp contrast from the heat rose goosebumps on her skin, and tempting vanilla scented the air. It was a little piece of heaven, and for the moment it was all hers; the two small tables near the front window didn’t exactly invite customers to linger. Angela pulled out her earbuds as the bell over the door jangled again. “A blackberry-lime and some water from the tap, please,” Angela told the girl at the counter.
“Blackberry-lime and ice water,” said a deep voice from behind her.
“Right.” The girl stared, fingers hovering over the register.
Angela turned and looked up at Tyler Running Fox. He glanced at her and dismissed her without recognition. Angela suppressed an eye roll and turned back to the shop girl, still frozen in place. “Cupcakes?” Angela prompted.
“Uh-huh.” The girl blinked rapidly. “Is that Tyler Running Fox?”
“No, it’s Harry Dresden,” Angela snapped. “Can I have my cupcake, please?” She rubbed at the goosebumps that still prickled her arms.
“Sure.” Abruptly, the girl remembered how to use the cash register and rang them up as the same order.
Angela tried to catch her eye to say something, but the girl was staring open-mouthed at Ty again. Grudgingly, Angela slapped a twenty down. “Keep the change.” Not that there was much. They were not cheap cupcakes. She could probably make a batch for the price of one if she wanted to, but that would require complicated equipment like muffin tins and a citrus zester. Cookies were easier.
Tyler stood by the door, staring out the window but not seeming to look at anything in particular. The area was full of tiny bookstores, art galleries, and eateries started by people with a bit of seed money and whole lot of dreams. It was hard to picture Tyler in that crowd. If he had dreams, they were the kind where he debated what country he wanted to buy when he filmed his next movie.
