by Dunne, Lexie
Jessica Davenport’s eyes were the same as Eddie’s. The same as Rita’s.
“You know,” I said as I realized why the fight had felt so weird, “you fight just like your mom.”
Raptor’s eyes widened for a split second. I ducked, and she pulled the trigger.
I heard the kick of the gun going off, and my left shoulder felt like a steel trap had sprung around it, ripping into the muscle and bone. It knocked me back and to the side, so that her next blast missed. I leapt into another room, kicking the door shut behind me. Raptor kept shooting.
The room wasn’t large, and thanks to the boarded-up windows, it was dark. A perfect trap, I realized instantly. All she had to do was throw in some knockout gas, and I was down for the count. I spotted a gaping, eaten-away hole in the ceiling and ran hard at the corner of the room, kicking off one wall and then the next to give me the height I needed. Grabbing the edge of the hole with both hands was sheer agony, tearing a scream from my throat as I hauled myself up and free. Outside! At last!
Now I just had to scale the side of the building with one good arm while being pursued by a psychotic superhero with more gizmos than a toy store. Right. Easy. At least in my inevitable death, I’d see Angélica again. She’d wallop me upside the head for going into the death trap of a building in the first place.
When I ran to the edge of the building, though, I got my first break: it was over the water. I could leap off and survive. Probably. I climbed onto the lip of the roof, took a deep breath, and jumped.
Something caught the back of my shirt.
I was yanked backward, flying through the air once again. Raptor, weirdly enough, hadn’t put any superstrength into it, so I landed four feet away and bounced. Every movement drove a new spike of pain into my shoulder. She swooped in on me. I saw her fist coming and rolled, rolling again and again. I blocked kick after kick as best as I could, grunting whenever one landed and spread a starburst of white-hot pain.
And then she kicked my shoulder.
I felt the agony all the way to my toes. My body arched up. It felt like my entire existence was sucked right into one point in my shoulder. And when I opened my eyes, I saw Raptor’s fist hurtling straight at my face.
I blinked and, just like that, I was two feet away. Her fist plowed into the rooftop.
I gawked at her.
She gawked back at me.
My brain helpfully pointed out that now would be a good time to run even though my entire body felt paralyzed from the pain throbbing in a spiral from my shoulder. I scrambled to my feet, made it two steps—and was hit by the worst headache I’d ever experienced. Every blast of pain juice from Raze, every concussion from any supervillain I’d ever faced, none of those had anything on the pressure suddenly building behind my forehead.
I dropped to my knees, clawing at my temples. I had to relieve the pressure building up behind my eyes before my head exploded. I had to do something.
A rope wrapped around my middle. It trapped my arms, jerking them down and pinning them to my sides so that I was completely immobile. When Raptor hauled me to my feet, I swayed. My head felt like it weighed three hundred pounds. I whimpered as she stepped close, one gloved hand pulling something blue and spidery from my shoulder. Instantly, the pain where my neck and shoulder met vanished. It still felt like somebody was trying to poke an ice pick through my eye socket, but I could at least focus again.
“Huh,” the Raptor said, looking at the filament wires dangling in her hand. Her voice modulator made her sound like a man who’d been chain-smoking since infancy. “You’ve got quite a high pain tolerance.”
“I don’t see why we had to find that out the hard way.” I kept swaying. Every hit she’d landed was not-so-politely making itself known, and my shoulder throbbed particularly hard in rhythm with my head. “I’m not your enemy. I didn’t do what everybody thinks I did. You have to believe me.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m taking you back.”
“I don’t know Chelsea. You have to give me a fair trial, or hear my side of the story, or—”
Raptor slapped something over my mouth. It felt rubbery and sticky, and it made the bottom half of my face freeze up altogether. Another gag. Great. This was just like dealing with the villains all over again. Hell, from where I stood, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, there wasn’t a difference.
“I hate the talkers,” she said, looking down to fiddle with her belt. She paused, hand automatically going to her ear. She’d evidently received some kind of radio message, but with my ears still ringing, I couldn’t hear it. Whatever they were telling her, though, made her frown. “Looks like you’ll have to wait.”
I made a questioning noise through the gag.
“School bus of orphans dangling from a bridge,” she said, looking annoyed. If I hadn’t known she was Jessica, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that the Raptor was, in fact, a woman. No wonder nobody outside the superhero community knew. “It shouldn’t take long. You stay here.”
And just where did she expect me to go with my arms tied up like this? It wasn’t like I could actually jump into the water without drowning.
She fiddled with her belt again, and my body locked up. I stood there like a shell-shocked statue, unable to move. “That should keep you from ’porting again.”
I would have asked her what she’d been smoking if I could. She thought I’d teleported? I’d just been running up stairs. The Mobium made me fast, but not ’porting fast. And ’porting, that was done by professionals, not Class C chumps who couldn’t stay out of trouble. But it wasn’t like I could say that, between the paralysis and the gag. All I could do was watch her run to the side of the wall and throw herself over, her cape extended.
So now I was stuck in a bad part of the city, completely unable to move or talk, and waiting for the world’s most sadistic superhero to come take me back to prison.
This had been a fun adventure. I was ready for it to be over now.
Despite the ringing, my ears picked up the sound of something landing on the rooftop behind me. Oh, that was really, really not good. I had a lot of enemies and even fewer friends, and none of them knew I would be escaping. Even I didn’t know. The hero that stepped into view, though, was mostly an ally. I recognized the battered bronze breastplate over the purple-and-gold mail. The black mask under the pointed helmet, the sturdy boots that were decorated at the ankles with silly little bronze wings.
Not that I would ever tell Sam Bookman that I’d always found his War Hammer costume silly. He’d saved my life a few times. Of course, it had probably just been to help his brother out. Very few of us knew Blaze and War Hammer were related.
He stepped in front of me. Thanks to our height difference, I had no choice but to stare forward straight into the breastplate.
Sam did the unexpected. He leaned forward so his face was even with mine, pulled off the helmet, and then the mask while I stood there in frozen silence.
The hair that spilled out of the mask was not blond, but a dark, very familiar red. And his eyes weren’t blue. My heart knocked against my sternum, hard.
Guy Bookman looked into my eyes, and said, “I swear, I leave you alone for one minute.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I didn’t answer. I probably couldn’t have even if I’d been physically capable. Seeing him there, his face in front of me, suddenly made everything feel tremendously real in a way it hadn’t seemed all week. It was like there had been a plastic film holding everything back, a necessary one, but now it had dissolved completely. Every emotion I’d been suppressing returned at once. Guy was here. Something was finally right.
A lump formed in my throat. I felt a tear slip down my cheek.
“Oh.” Guy’s face switched from worry to outright alarm. He rubbed the tear away with his thumb and jerked his hand back, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch me. “That was
a joke, I swear! This is why I should leave the humor to you, obviously, but—um. I’ll have you out of there as soon as I can. I swear. Are you hurt?”
I kind of wanted to glare at him for that.
“Right, can’t move. Sorry.” After he pulled the gag off me, wrinkling his nose as he tossed it away, he bent to get a look at the rope wrapped around me. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but thankfully, he kept talking. “This is her newest model. Electric shocks, shouldn’t be damaging, but it will temporarily paralyze you. It’s going to take her a few minutes to find out there are no schoolchildren on that bridge, but we need to move fast. Uh . . . oh, here’s the triggering mechanism. It should—”
The rope begin to constrict. A second later, he cursed. When he fiddled with something else, the rope constricted faster. Mildly uncomfortable became outright painful.
“There goes that plan,” he said, and I felt his fingers wedge between my midsection and the rope. He grunted, jaw clenched, and jerked his hand as hard as he could. With the sound of a metal cable snapping, I was suddenly free. I fell forward before I could stop myself.
“Whoa!” Guy caught me, holding me up by my upper arms. “Sorry, I should have warned you that—”
I jumped at him, holding on as tight as I could. Guy was here. He had found me. Everything was going to be okay. I scrunched my eyes closed and breathed in. The edges of his armor, so unfamiliar, dug against my forehead, but I didn’t care. I had to fight against breaking down in tears right on the spot.
He hugged me in return, rubbing my back. “It’s okay,” he said. “Are you okay? You’re not hurt?”
“She got a couple hits in. I’ll be okay.” Though I really wanted to hold on forever, I sniffled and took a step back. “How are you here? Not complaining, mind you. But . . .”
“I got wind that there was trouble at the prison, and I knew you had to be involved.”
“In my defense, I actually didn’t have anything to do with any of that. I really was minding my own business.”
“And that’s how I really knew it had to be you. Raptor always goes after the fugitives, so I just knew I had to track her, and I’d find you. Let’s go. I’ve got a place we can hide while we figure out what to do.”
“Guy?”
“Yeah?” He’d stepped back to pull on the mask and the helmet, but he paused to look at me.
“Thank you,” was all I could say. “For coming to save me.”
“Always.” His mask hid his smile when he pulled it over his face. “Piggyback, or do you want me to carry you?”
With the way my shoulder throbbed, there was no chance I would be able to hold on. “I’m okay with being carried.”
“Just like old times.” Helmet secured, Guy picked me up as though I weighed nothing (which I knew was definitely not the case), holding me cradled against him. Before he took off, he looked down at me and said the three most beautiful words I’d ever heard.
“I brought food.”
“My hero,” I said, absolutely meaning it, and he took off from the roof.
By the time he landed, my heart had begun to calm. Adrenaline from the escape, from the run, from the carnival-house-of-horrors fight with Raptor—all of that drained away, leaving me sluggish and leaden. The sweat had cooled thanks to the brisk flight, and the sun was beginning to peel the edges of the night sky back, revealing pearly pinks and yellows. I rested my head against Guy’s shoulder and barely kept my eyes open during the flight.
Guy landed on the rooftop of a building in West Lawn.
“One of Sam’s safe houses. We kept it off Davenport’s radar.” He leaned forward a little, and I couldn’t read his expression behind the mask, but he seemed to be squinting. “And you don’t really care, do you? You just want food.”
“I am really happy to see you,” I said, my voice only partly rueful. I didn’t want him to put me down though he did. Instantly, I started to sway.
He laughed, holding my elbow to keep me upright. “I’m happy to see you, too.”
There were many reasons to like Guy Bookman. He was charming in an unexpected way (mostly out of social awkwardness), he was kind, and he’d pulled me out of more than one burning building. But the number one contender at the moment was that the minute we walked into Sam’s safe house—it figured Sam would keep an entire penthouse as a place to hide—I could smell the aroma of glorious food. There was a veritable feast laid out on the table. And it wasn’t fussy, fancy food like Detmer had insisted on serving. These were hearty dishes full of carbs and protein.
I nearly had to wipe up the drool.
“I’m starving, too,” Guy said, already peeling out of the various pieces of Sam’s armor. “Don’t wait for me, help yourself.”
“Did you have this all just waiting?” I asked, as it was a crazy amount of food, even for me. The lasagna I forked onto my plate was cold, but I didn’t care.
“I figured you’d be hungry. Sorry it’s not warm.”
“Sorry it’s not warm? Guy, this is amazing. Do you see all of this food? I could cry.” I could still barely keep my eyes open, but I dug in with gusto, cradling my bad arm and shoulder in front of me. I could feel Guy’s concern as he dished out a plate for himself, but I kept eating until the edge of hunger had been dulled. After that, I looked at Guy, really looked at him. Like Jeremy, he had dark circles under his eyes. They stood out more prominently, thanks to his redhead complexion. His hair was stuck down at weird angles from the helmet. I had only just grown used to seeing him partially unmasked as Blaze, so it was a bit of a readjustment to see him sitting there in the chain mail.
“So,” I said as I reached for a glass of water, “prison really changes a woman.”
He looked up in alarm.
“Or maybe it’s you that’s changed. I can’t tell. Because when I went to prison, I could have sworn you were Blaze, not War Hammer.”
“Oh.” Guy’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “Blaze and Plain Jane can’t be anywhere near where you’re escaping, but they’ll be a little more lenient toward War Hammer. And Sam owed me one, so . . .”
“Sam’s wearing the green?” I asked. “Isn’t he, um . . .”
“A lot bigger than me?” Guy shook his head, clearly amused. “You can say it. I know I’m a beanpole. He’s not wearing my uniform. Last I heard, he was whiling his time away at a dive bar in Queens.”
“Blaze has the night off?”
“Blaze is probably busy saving somebody in Miami as we speak.” Guy drained his water glass and pushed his empty plate away. “It’s probably a good thing Vicki’s so tall. Not that it matters. All most people will see is a green streak flying by.”
I choked a little. “V—Vicki is out there being Blaze right now?”
“My reputation will be in tatters when I get back to it.”
He probably had a point. Victoria Burroughs, supermodel by day, superhero by night, wasn’t exactly known for her reverence, foresight, or ability to avoid massive amounts of property damage in her fights. She paid for some of it—now that I knew Plain Jane was actually one of the highest-grossing supermodels in the world, everything made a lot more sense—and was apparently insured by Davenport Industries, but that didn’t change the fact that Plain Jane liked her rubble.
Blaze was usually a little more circumspect.
“Wait, then who’s being Plain Jane?”
“Plain Jane is apparently taking the night off, and Victoria Burroughs is at home watching one of those fashion reality shows. Jeremy’s probably tearing his hair out by now running her social media. It’s not perfect, but honestly, at this point, it’s the best we can do on such short notice.”
I thought about that. My boyfriend had taken his brother’s costume, let my mentor take his, and now my ex was pretending to be a supermodel on Twitter. And that wasn’t even the strangest thing I’d witnessed that day, let alone i
n life.
“I’m so sorry,” Guy said, the words seeming to burst out of him. I lifted my head in alarm. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come see you—we were so close to tracking Chelsea down and getting the truth out of her. And I know you don’t really like Jeremy—”
“No,” I said. “No, it was good to see a familiar face. And it helped to hear that you didn’t think I did it.”
“Of course not.” Guy gave me a puzzled look. “None of us believed that for a second. We’re trying to get to the bottom of who sent those text messages—”
I couldn’t help it: I yawned. I tried to stifle it behind my hand, but the combination of the food hitting my belly and the fear and terror from the fight bleeding away proved a little too much. I was safe, my body recognized that, and now I needed to crash. I winced. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re tired,” Guy said, pushing himself to his feet. “Of course you are, you escaped prison today.”
“With the help of my best enemy forever,” I said.
“Come again?”
“I’ll have to explain it later, you wouldn’t believe me if I tried right now.” I yawned again. “Sorry. Sorry—I just—”
“I’ll let you get some sleep. We can talk about everything in the morning.” Guy looked over his shoulder, where early sunlight was starting to creep across the floorboards through the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Or afternoon, technically. There’s only one bed, but it has to be more comfortable than what you had in prison.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said, following him out of the dining room and down the hall. We passed a library and a den before Guy pushed open the door to the master suite. I ignored most of the furniture though it looked expensive. I had eyes only for the king-sized bed.
“I’ll stay up and keep watch,” Guy said. “Just, you know, to make sure there’s no trouble.”
“Really? Because you look like you haven’t slept in a few days.” I yawned and winced. “Wow, that was more blunt than I meant it to be. I’m sorry. I mean—”
