Brightblade

by C. T. Phipps

  “Stop,” I said, preparing to tweak his nose with my TK. “Or I will go all bright on your ass.”

  “Doesn’t calling psychics ‘brights’ mean that powerless people are dims?” Bryce asked.

  “Can you throw things with your mind?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Then content yourself that I don’t call you dims.”

  “Is that why you—?”

  “I was young and stupid. End of story.”

  “Yes, because you’re so old now,” Jack said.

  “Young and very stupid,” I corrected him.

  No end of stupid. Oh Mac. Man did I fuck up that whole business. I’d just wanted to do something useful with my powers. All I’d done was get people I cared about killed and violate the few rules I’d set out for myself. Anna and Arthur would have been ashamed of me—wherever those two were.

  “So, you were the Red Widow!” Bryce said, cheerfully. “I knew it. Tracy told me you were an ex-spy school trainee too. So, since you’re a bounty hunting P.I that makes you a psychic superspy bounty hunter P.I. ex-superhero. It’s like you’re a ninja pirate robot zombie except hot, err, conventionally attractive! They should make a show out of you.”

  “Drop it rookie,” Jack said, simply.

  “You brought it up.” I needed to change the subject, hard. I didn’t need it brought up that I had two skills, being a bright and being a spy, that had gotten me a series of jobs I couldn’t hold down. Hell, the only reason I had my current licenses was because I lied so well. “We’re almost there. How do I look?”

  “I said conventionally attractive,” Bryce said, looking guilty.

  Someone should have told him hot wasn’t an automatic insult when you were dressing for success, even in the office.

  “I meant my fashion sense.”

  “Like one of those lawyers you only see on TV,” Bryce said.

  “He means professional yet slutty,” Jack said.

  “Well, that was the basic look I was going for,” I said. “There’s a reason the top buttons are undone.”

  “It’s the shoulder pads,” Jack said. “Nothing says professional yet slutty like shoulder pads. Look, it’s nice that you enjoy playing dress up and all, but….”

  “The look sells the con,” I said. “These people don’t hang out with lawyers; they see them on TV. And men get stupider around attractive women and stupid people are easier to arrest.”

  “You can put me in handcuffs anytime, honey.”

  “This is why you’re still single, Jack. Women really just don’t go for the creepy sexual harasser thing you have going for you.”

  “My three ex-wives disagree.”

  “Accent on ex,” I said. “Maybe you should think about that part.”

  “I do every day,” Jack said.

  Bryce smiled at that. And then we were there.

  The Brooks house was a stereotypical redneck dwelling. A car under the tree in the process of being worked on. A garage that hadn’t had its door closed in a decade, filled with all manner of junk. A lawn that had more dirt than grass and a series of cement stones acting as a walkway to the front door, which in turn looked like it had seen better days. But then the whole house was peeling from what Michigan weather did to paint jobs.

  “Ah, you can just smell the dead possum,” I said, pulling our car out in front of the gravel driveway next to an overgrown front yard in the middle of nowhere.

  “It’s my own personal vision of hell,” Bryce said.

  “Mine too, kid,” Jack said. “Afghanistan was better than the 10th Circle of Hell: Smallville, America.”

  “Stick to the script, Bryce, and you shut up, Jack,” I said as I walked up the path to the front door and rang the bell. It didn’t seem to make any noise, so I followed it with a knock.

  Our target was a man named Gilroy Brooks. He had been supposed to appear in court on a variety of assault and weapons charges, but you know the story. Now we got a paycheck if we could find him and bring him in. Smart money was that he was just hiding out at home. Though, of course, we couldn’t exactly walk in and start looking for him.

  A few moments later, a hard craggy-faced woman of about forty-five going on seventy opened the door a crack. She was wearing a house coat and had curlers in her hair like someone from local TV news interviews. Her voice was a raspy longtime smoker’s. “What do you want? If it’s bills, I’m all paid up.”

  I sincerely doubted that. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be sarcastic here. I needed to win her trust. Since I could feel the suspicion rolling off her in waves, I gave her my most disarming smile. “Are you Meredith Brooks?”

  Bryce tried not to snigger. Apparently, he thought it was funny when women shared the name of once-famous singers.

  “Gilroy Brook’s mother?” Bryce added, a little too sooner.

  “What’s it to you?” she asked, her suspicion managing to rise even higher.

  “We represent the firm of Redock and Fitzpatrick,” Bryce said. “We believe your son is one of two hundred people unlawfully cheated out of his lottery winnings by the state’s manipulation of the lottery process. We’re filing a class action suit to force the government to pay the money it owes to the people it has deprived.”

  It was, of course, complete B.S. However, we needed to know where Gilroy was in order to bring him in. He was worth approximately $200,000 in bail money and I wasn’t about to lose that if he didn’t show up for court. Mind you, I wouldn’t have lent him the money in the first place, but Jack was a great believer in risk/reward ratios. Specifically, that he was willing to risk his partners’ money for big rewards.

  The waves of suspicion hiccupped and began to be swallowed by curiosity and greed. “What’s this now?”

  “What my partner means, in English,” I said, “is that the state of Michigan has been screwing with the lottery results, so that several weeks go by without a winner, so the jackpot goes up and more and more people buy tickets. The people who should have won on the no-winner weeks have thus been cheated out of their share of the money.”

  “So, lawsuit,” Meredith said, “You want him in court?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” I assured her. “All he has to do is sign this piece of paper.”

  I’d printed out the most confusingly verbose legal document I could find online. “It’s a class action lawsuit. The more names we sign up for it, the better our case will look. We don’t need any of them to appear in court because we’re sure the government will pay us just to keep this case from going to trial. If that happens, well, they stand to lose billions of dollars if people think the lottery is fixed. Trust us, they’ll pay.”

  “How much?” she asked.

  “We estimate each signee will get a check for $200,000 in the mail in six months.”

  I’m pretty sure no real lawyer would make such specific promises, but what do I know about lawyers? Reality didn’t matter. What mattered was that I could see the naked greed in her aura. Literally. Psychic empathy was one of my powers even if I never used it to manipulate emotions anymore. Never again.

  “You just wait here a minute,” the old woman said as she shut the door. Then she opened it a moment later. “Can you just hand me that piece of paper and I’ll take it to him?”

  “Sorry, no, we have to witness the signature for it to be legal,” Bryce said.

  “Right,” Meredith said. “Notary stuff.”

  She shut the door again and we heard her call Gilroy.

  “Criminal geniuses, they aren’t,” Bryce said.

  “Stick to the script,” I quietly repeated.

  “I’m ready to pull the van forward,” Jack said through the comms. “Waiting for you to make contact.”

  Jack was an asshole, but he was good at his job. I knew he’d be in place at the right moment. Everything was going according to plan. That probably should have been my first warning.

  The chain was taken down and the door opened. Gilroy Brooks looked just like his file photo. B
asically, imagine a six-foot-tall block of cement and then give it a head, legs, and arms. “So, I’m supposed to sign something?”

  We both jumped him in an instant. Bryce shouted, “Bail enforcement agent, you’re under arrest for failure to appear.” He did so like making the announcement. As we held his weight down between us, I slipped a plastic zip tie around his wrists.

  “What the hell?” Gilroy demanded, struggling as we dragged him off the porch. “You lied! Cops ain’t allowed to lie!”

  “We aren’t cops,” I said. “We get to lie all the time.”

  I could feel Gilroy’s rage and anger mixed with his mother’s sense of betrayal as well as guilt. Being an Empath was simultaneously one of the best abilities and the worst. Telepaths like my sister could pick up specific thoughts and ideas but were blind to the intent or ferocity of the feeling behind it.

  Plenty of people thought about killing their boss but few people acted on it. I knew when someone meant it, but the cost was feeling that anger every bit as much as my own. It was intense, murderous, and remorseless—far more than I’d expected to feel. Gilroy was terrified and not just of being put away for a few months.

  “Be careful,” I said, through gritted teeth. “He’s a fighter.”

  “You have no idea!” Gilroy said, suddenly feeling both murderous as well as confidant. That wasn’t a good sign.

  His mother was screaming vulgarities at us. He was struggling but between Bryce and my telekinesis (or TK) enhanced strength, we had him. Jack rapidly pulled the van into the yard and threw a switch that slid the side door open, which was one of the tricks the van could do since we’d modified it eight ways to Sunday for holding captives. Yeah, everything was going to plan.

  Jack himself was a white-haired man in his mid-fifties with a goatee and ponytail who was trying to look like Sean Connery in the Nineties and failing badly. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and beaten-up blue jeans that I think he’d worn for a week straight. Jack was a seasoned bounty hunter and bright that often referenced adventures across the globe against forces mysterious. Since knowing him, the ones I’d most seen him struggle against were his ex-wives.

  We were shoving Gilroy through the door when he suddenly threw himself against the side of the van. He looked bulkier now, as if he’d grown about six inches and put on a hundred pounds of muscle. Gilroy also looked a lot harrier and he hadn’t exactly been clean shaven before.

  “I don’t know what the hell that was about,” Bryce said, “But if you’re trying to give yourself a bruise….”

  The handcuffs snapped.

  Crap.

  I barely had time to step back. Bryce didn’t and Gilroy backhanded him so hard he was thrown a good four feet back and sent sprawling across the dirt. Then Gilroy reached out and tore the door off the van.

  “Holy shit!” Jack shouted. “He’s a super! That wasn’t in his file!”

  No kidding!

  “I said you were gonna regret this!” Gilroy said, laughing as his face began twisting, causing him to slur his words. “Y’all put me in thissss here position. You made me show off! I’m grrrrr gonna make ya bleed for it!”

  That was when he turned into a nine-foot-tall grizzly bear.

  Double crap.

  Chapter Two

  Bad News Bear vs. Very Badass Brights

  Great, Gilroy was a werebear. One of the things that mundies never quite understood prior to the Reveal was that not only were there supernaturals living among them, but they were both numerous as well as diverse. That included guys who could turn into nine-foot-tall mountains of muscle somewhere between a bear, a tank, and a human.

  “Crap,” I said, staring at the creature that was pure rage.

  “I want a raise,” Bryce said, face to face with his first supernatural.

  “If you survive,” I said, pausing. “No.”

  Gilroy had ripped the door off our van and swung it around like it weighed no more than a baseball bat. I threw myself into the dirt to keep from having my head knocked off. He redirected his aim and brought the thing straight down at me and I barely rolled out of the way, tearing my business dress on the rocks in the yard. I’d have been more upset if I hadn’t bought it at Goodwill, but I had spent two hours making it look right. I only got to wear it once too! Still, the incredible dent the van door made in the ground made me think it was a worthy sacrifice.

  “You’re not taking me in!” Gilroy shouted, sounding oddly more articulate now that he’d completed his transformation.

  “You borrowed money from us, dumbass!” I shouted. It was times like this I wished I had a gun, but Jack was very strongly against them. Because if you killed your bounties then you weren’t going to get your commission on bringing them in alive. If that got your resident bail bondsman enforcement agent killed, well, that was tough noogies. It was mercenary logic but paid my bills. So, no disintegrations per Lord Vader’s command.

  “I didn’t intend to pay it back either!” Gilroy shouted, charging at me on all fours.

  “That’s not how bail works!” I said, dodging out of the way with a slight boost from my telekinesis. “You get your bail money back after the trial!”

  “That makes no sense!” Gilroy shouted, throwing the car door away like it was trash. He then lifted his paws, each tipped with claws that looked like miniature knives. “How do you even make money?”

  “We get a percentage of what we loan you! Did you even pay attention before you signed!”

  “No!” Gilroy snapped, missing me again.

  A normal person would already be dead, but I was moving like a gymnast on twenty cups of coffee. “I hate idiot crooks!”

  Brights were considered the poor cousins of mages in the super world. Our powers were distantly related the same way vampires and werewolves were (and had led to protests of the Underworld movies). There were probably ten brights for every honest-to-magus mage, but our powers were mundane by comparison. Spells came in all different sizes and shapes, limited only by sorcerer’s power. Brights only had one or two abilities. We were more likely to be able to see ghosts, bend spoons, and know when a car was coming in your lane ten seconds before it happened.

  In my case, I could levitate my body weight a few feet off the ground or hurl less than that much faster. That was in addition to my empathy powers. I could also sense nearby objects due to the disruptions in the kinetic energy around me. This doesn’t sound like much, but it meant I could make myself close to weightless and know exactly when blows were coming at my head. All it had taken was close to a decade of classes in a secret facility that had mysteriously burned to the ground after the Reveal.

  “Stand still!” Gilroy shouted, biting at me with way more speed than a thing his size should be able to possess. It wasn’t nearly fast enough, though, and I pushed all my telekinesis into a fist that punched the enormous bear in the nose. It was like punching a brick wall.

  “No!” I shouted, watching Gilroy’s head move slightly to one side from the blow’s force. Clearly, I’d managed to hurt him even if it hadn’t had the effect I’d wanted. A little dribble of blood came out from his snout. “Ow.”

  He turned his angry bear-face to me and growled. “Now I’m going to kill you. Then I’m going to eat you.”

  “Bears don’t eat people!” I snapped.

  Gilroy just smiled like the monster he was, and I didn’t mean because he was a shifter. Huh, I needed a nickname for his kind. Smokies? Teddies? Ruxpins? It was at this moment I realized I’d been hypocritical to Bryce as I’d told him not to get into fistfights with vampires. Werebears weren’t undead but I was pretty sure this still qualified as a dumb idea on my part. Oh well, at least he was a safe distance away.

  “I’ll save you, Ashley!” Bryce shouted, having gotten up and been frozen with fear. He pulled out a Taser from his pocket and I briefly was terrified he was going to do something stupid with it. Like, say, attempt to attack teddy here with a Taser designed for decidedly more mundie crooks. Yep, teddy was a good
name for them. Nice and nonthreatening.

  “Die!” Bryce shouted, despite the Taser being nonlethal. He charged forward and I fully expected him to get killed before I could save him. Goddamn male ego. It was the second most toxic substance in the world after cholesterol.

  Instead, Meredith Brooks jumped on Bryce’s back and started pounding him with both of her fists. “You get away from my son!”

  “That would be hilarious if I wasn’t fighting a murderous ursine,” I muttered. “No, wait, still hilarious.”

  Gilroy roared and took another futile swing at me.

  “Use your powers, Morgan!” Jack called from behind the van, holding a rifle with what I hoped were silver cartridges. “Make him calm down or I’ll have to shoot him!”

  Even had I been willing to use my empathic powers, I probably couldn’t have calmed someone this angry. His aura was red and throbbing. Besides, I’d sworn to never use the Red Widow’s powers again, and that was one promise I couldn’t let myself break. Instead, I threw myself back on my feet with a quick surge of telekinesis and crouched in a defense position, proving that all that money I’d put into martial arts training hadn’t been a complete waste.

  “No shooting the money!” I shouted, not just because I wanted to get paid. It was an odd role reversal with me and Jack.

  Gilroy picked up the van door again, then suddenly seemed to waiver and dropped it, jumping back to keep it from hitting his toes. Huh? Never one to let an opportunity pass by, I used my TK to grab a rock from the ground and threw it at him. It moved a lot faster than I did when I was lifting myself and I moved damned fast. The rock cracked Gilroy across the forehead.

  “Stupid bitch!” Gilroy said, starting to look human. “I’m going to tear you apart for that.”

  “Yes, because your prior intentions were so gentlemanly,” I muttered. “Didn’t your mother teach you manners?”

  “Stupid foreigner boy! I can smell the islands on you!” Meredith said, trying to pound on Bryce and mostly looking ridiculous.

  “Apparently not,” I muttered, stunned at how ridiculous this all was. Where were the COPS people when you needed them? I could have made a mint.