Before Mia could ponder this bizarre non sequitur, the Asian man snapped his right wrist downward, and a device of some kind emerged from his sleeve and into his waiting hand. He leveled the ... gun? ... at Reginald and squeezed the trigger; the weapon coughed, not nearly as loud as Mia would have expected, and his target seized up, every muscle clenching at once.
Mia gawked at the Asian man as he said in a normal speaking voice, “Everyone, get down.” Then, in a bellow that echoed throughout the warehouse, he turned his weapon toward the dumbfounded showman and shouted, “PCA! This is a raid!”
He was so loud. How could he raise his voice like that, when the rest of them had been shushed by the rogue woman? Was it because of the tiara thing on his forehead?
The showman and all his cohorts froze, their eyes widening in bigger shock than when the big guy threw and spat acid. And whatever they might have tried next became moot an instant later.
A large section of the just-fractured wall collapsed inward; the captives in the center group were mostly protected, especially as half of them — including Mia — had ducked as soon as the Asian man (the “lieutenant”?) raised his voice, but their captors on that side of the circle did not fair so well. Through the dust, Mia could barely make out two figures entering the warehouse — one wearing all crimson; the other dressed in black and gold, and sporting a cape and mask.
God Almighty! It’s ... them! Until joining her new church several weeks ago, Mia had rarely followed paranormal-related news, but when confronted with costumes like these, even she would be hard-pressed not to recognize some of the “superheroes” who operated out of her own city.
The man in crimson waved his hand before his face as though to ward off the dust, and it did so impossibly well; the air around his hand rippled, and the dust cleared before it as though hit with an industrial fan.
“All right, you dumbasses,” he called out, pointing at their captors who were still standing, “I’m sure y’all know the drill. On the ground, now!”
The showman stammered and sputtered, his dyed comb-over in as much disarray as his composure.
“T’ hell with this,” the amethyst rogue growled, his purple skin brightening.
“Look out!” Mia cried — as loudly as she was able — to any or all of their saviors.
The lieutenant shifted his weapon from the showman to the amethyst rogue and fired, but the rogue side-stepped it even as his skin pulsed; the resulting tendril lashed out, but it was the lieutenant’s turn to evade. The tendril swept side-to-side, trying to reacquire its mark, but the air over Mia’s head blurred and the amethyst rogue was thrown backward and out of her sight.
Then more PCA people surged through the hole in the wall, and Mia tucked into herself, covering her head with her hands and praying for the best. She heard more “coughs” of weapons like the lieutenant’s, and other bizarre sounds she could not identify but assumed to be related to the paranormals’ powers.
She had no idea how much time passed — it seemed like forever, but was probably no more than a minute — when a hand touched her shoulder. She flinched, but a deep voice soothed, “It’s okay, you’re all right, we just need to get you out of here.”
Unfurling from her defensive posture, she looked around. The fight was still going on, but most of the rogues were down, as were one or two of the PCA people. The big guy crouched next to her; he had tied someone’s coat around his waist to cover his privates.
“It’s okay,” he repeated with a dashing smile. “We’re clearing you out.”
He gestured to the side, and she saw other PCA people ushering the captives out through the hole in the wall.
The big guy offered his hand. “Come on,” he said with an assuring smile, “I’ll—”
A familiar clank sounded from behind her, and a Stygian, two-dimensional hand latched onto the big guy’s head and flung him, sending him tumbling out of sight.
“I think,” the showman called out in his biggest ringmaster’s voice, “that is enough of that.”
Staying as low as possible, Mia twisted around to see the showman back up on his crate, his two ultra-buxom arm-candies nowhere to be found. He stood on his tiptoes, getting as much of his body into the shaft of bright light as possible, and swept his arms wide.
His shadow-arms matched this movement, and more. PCA people scattered, the crimson-clad superhero cursing all the way. The hero in the black cape leaped over one arm and fired what looked like laser beams from his eyes, but the two limbs were undulating and he was knocked flat by the other one.
From behind her, she heard the lieutenant say, “Shining Star, that’s your cue, please.”
Mia didn’t know what that meant, but she felt she had to do something before this rescue effort was thwarted. And unlike earlier, this time she had a chance to make a difference.
When the PCA people had been knocked around by the shadow-arms, the lieutenant must have dropped his weapon, because the gun-like gadget lay on the ground near her. Scuttling to the side, Mia grabbed the weapon, aimed it at the showman, and squeezed the trigger.
She missed her target, but not by a wide margin. The showman hunched his shoulders as he ducked, his comb-over dangling from the side of his head by this point. He looked around for a second before spotting her, and then his face contorted in righteous fury.
“You, child,” he spat through a clenched jaw as he again spread his arms above him, his fingers clawed and trembling with rage. His shadow-arms coiled around him, and toward Mia. “I shall strike you down like—!”
A blazing light — more dazzling than even the spotlight — exploded from behind Mia; even with her back turned, her eyes squinched in response. The showman, facing toward the burst, cried out and threw his arms across his face, even as his shadow-arms burned away into nothingness.
The light shifted as the source moved to Mia’s right, and from within that brilliance, she heard a male voice with an unusual accent.
“Current shadows taken care of, Lieutenant,” the voice said, “but the convert is still active. He might be able to use the new shadows I’m casting behind him.”
Mia really wished he — whoever he was — had not said that out loud, but for the moment, the showman seemed too concerned with his blinded eyes to listen. He was whining and blubbering under his breath; she thought he might have still been going on about smiting her, but she wasn’t sure.
Then she remembered she still had the PCA weapon in hand, and as the bright glow dropped to a less dazzling level, she aimed it at him once more.
A black-and-gold figure rushed past her. “It’s okay, miss. I got him.”
The caped superhero sprinted toward the showman, and just as the bastard recovered, the superhero performed a smooth, flying kick; his boot struck the showman in the lower gut, the rogue doubling over as his breath exploded out of him. The caped hero landed with easy grace, then spun around and kicked again — in spite of the showman’s still hunching over on top of the high crate, his foot connected with the rogue’s jaw. The showman toppled around, nearly falling from the crate, then collapsed flat on his back, his arms and legs dangling over the edges. He moaned, but was otherwise incapacitated.
The caped hero turned to look at Mia, and although she could only see his bright blue eyes, she got the impression that he was smiling at her. “That way is a lot more gratifying,” he told her in a confidential voice, even as he added a sly wink.
The lieutenant appeared and slapped some sort of device against the showman’s forehead; it looked a lot like the tiara-style headband he was wearing himself, except this one caused the showman to spasm as it locked into place — Mia got the impression it served a very different purpose.
“We good?” the crimson-clad superhero asked as he, too, joined them near the defeated showman.
“I caught this one trying to sneak out ...”
Mia looked over to see the big guy approaching, the coat around his waist held secure in one hand and dragging the amethyst-skinned rogue by the
ankle with the other. With zero effort, he flung the purple rogue to the foot of the crate, where the lieutenant placed a matching device onto his forehead as well.
A few more voices called out, “All clear!” from various parts of the warehouse. One more PCA weapon coughed from somewhere out of sight, followed a second later by, “That’s it, Lieutenant! We got ‘em all!”
The lieutenant nodded, then made a waving gesture toward the ceiling, and yet another superhero — this one a slender, white-clad fellow with jet-black goggles and a gorgeous silver cape — floated down to join them, the glow around him identifying him as the one who had burned out the showman’s shadows.
Then the lieutenant approached her. “Thank you for your help, ma’am.” Mia wasn’t sure how to feel about the “ma’am,” considering he looked about her age. “That was very brave of you.”
He extended his hand; at first she thought he was offering to shake with her, but then she realized that he was making a wordless request that she hand over his weapon.
Mia looked down at the gun-like gadget and asked, “Are these for sale?”
PARANORMALS
Steve Davison kept an eye on the defeated “gods” — and keeping “an eye” carried considerable weight, coming from the superhero known as Vortex — until the Paranormal Control Agency field agents had fitted each of them with a psi-jammer. It had been a little touch-and-go for a moment when the rogue with the purple skin started stirring, and said skin proved a little slippery for the psi-jammer to stay locked in place, but the agents handled it without his help.
Once he was confident that things were under control, he headed over to join Lieutenant Michael Takayasu and Shockwave in the center of this dirty old industrial facility. He didn’t see Shining Star or Powerhouse, but he knew that his Taalu friend was probably hovering in the sky at this point, just in case any of the rogues broke free and made a run for it. And Lincoln was likely getting dressed somewhere; he had not let his nudity interfere during the fight, but once things settled, his discomfort over wearing nothing more than a trench coat around his waist had become evident.
Steve felt pretty good about today. He always did when the whole team got together — Shining Star and himself, Powerhouse, and Shockwave and Lieutenant Takayasu. With two years having passed since the tragedy that led to his assuming the role of Vortex, he had more good days than bad, and spending so much time side-by-side with Shining Star was awesome (often in the literal sense of the word), but when the ol’ gang worked in unison to take out the bad guys ... those days were the best.
He reached the PCA duo just in time to hear Shockwave comment with a smirk, “I like her.”
“Who?” Steve asked.
“Her.”
He pointed over Takayasu’s shoulder; Steve looked just in time to catch the final glimpse — through the gaping hole Shockwave and Steve had created in the south wall — before Mia Singh climbed into one of the PCA vans waiting to take the kidnapping victims home.
“She’s got spunk,” Shockwave continued. “Just came through this shitty experience, and she’s already thinking ahead, asking how to get her own V9 stun gun. Most of the girls were just cryin’—”
“Some of the guys were, too,” Takayasu pointed out, “including one of the rogues.”
“Whatever. Point is, she didn’t break like she could’ve. Even took a pot-shot at the head honcho.” The crimson-clad agent shrugged. “I like her. She’s a tough chick.”
“Dude,” Steve remarked, only half-joking. “Did you really just call that girl a ‘chick’?”
Shockwave replied, with a self-satisfied grin, “Did you just call that young woman a ‘girl’?”
Steve snorted — Mark had him there — and punched his shoulder. Shockwave just took it with a chuckle, pleased with himself.
“All in all,” Takayasu proclaimed as he looked around the warehouse, “I’d call this a successful raid. No civilians hurt—”
“Blasphemers! Faithless unbelievers!”
The three looked toward the voice, Steve fully expecting it to be one of the “god” posers they had just taken down. But it wasn’t. The long-haired young man shouting at them belonged to the group Powerhouse and Takayasu had arranged to join at the suspected Church of the Seven Stars — that is, one of the kidnapping victims.
“Your day will come!” the devotee shouted, even as a PCA field agent tried to hustle him to another one of the vans (they were keeping the “willing” victims separate from those with more common sense). “You will rue thwarting the will of the gods!”
Takayasu turned his back to the deluded young man. Steve just stared, shaking his head in disbelief; he had listened to the feed from Takayasu’s wire, knew that the shadow-controlling rogue with the bad hair had pretty much said they would be made into slaves ... and this moron was mad at them? What could Steve say in the face of such absurdity?
Shockwave, however, decided to give the shouter something to ponder. “Hey, idiot! I got a question for you.”
“Mark,” Takayasu chastised, but without much conviction.
“Your questions,” the devotee returned, “will not save you when—!”
Shockwave cut him off. “You think paranormals are gods, right? That’s what that church’s been teachin’ you?”
The devotee pulled away from the coaxing agent and held his head high. “It is the truth, and nothing you—”
“And you’re sayin’ that we are wrong for ‘thwarting’ the will of the gods, is that it?”
The devotee stared daggers as he spat, “Yes.”
Shockwave grinned at him, the two-year-old scar on his right cheek — a gift from a taloned rogue — pulling taught. “Then what about this?”
“Mark,” Takayasu warned again, this time with a little more force.
“Don’t worry,” Shockwave assured him in a lower voice, “I’m not gonna hurt him ... much.”
Raising his right hand, Shockwave pointed a single finger at the devotee, who stood a good twenty yards away. Steve knew Mark had been practicing hard at gaining more and more precision with the power of his shockwaves; he hoped the guy was ready for this “field test.”
A slender wave of kinetic energy leaped from Mark’s pointing finger, covering the distance between them in an instant and striking the devotee in his right pectoral muscle. Soft as the miniature shockwave might have been, it was still sufficient to knock him back a couple of steps into his PCA escort, his long hair flailing around his face, as he barked, “Ow!”
A moment passed as the devotee rubbed at his smarting chest, his expression a little less certain than before — which Steve guessed was exactly what Shockwave had wanted.
“I,” Mark stated with gusto, “am a paranormal. So by your beliefs, that makes me a god, too. Right?”
The devotee’s eyes widened; he clearly had not considered this when he began his little outburst.
“So maybe it’s my will that you shoulda been thinkin’ about, huh? Maybe I am the one who will do the smiting one day, you know what I’m sayin’?” He pointed at the devotee again, which caused him to flinch away, but no shockwave came forth this time. “And while you mull over that, I’m givin’ you a commandment: Shut up and get in the goddamn van!”
The devotee — his worldview given a good, hard shake — dropped his eyes to the ground and allowed himself to be guided toward the waiting vehicle.
Steve smiled. “You enjoyed that.”
Shockwave grunted. “You’re damned right I did.” He shook his head. “ ‘Gods,’ my ass. I might have an ego sometimes—”
“No, really?” Takayasu commented; his mouth wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were.
Shockwave shot him a dirty look, but otherwise ignored him and pressed on. “... but I’ve never for one second thought I was a ‘god.’ ‘All paranormals are gods,’ that’s what these dumbasses think? So ... what?” He gestured to Vortex. “That guy you got—” He stopped short, glancing at the agents still milling around them, min
dful of keeping Steve’s true identity a secret. “I mean, that guy who works over at Davison Electronics, the one who can change the color of stuff. Would they say he is a god, too? God of what, exactly?”
Steve shrugged. “ ‘God of pigmentation’?”
“Ha. Cute.”
Steve noticed that, as the little diatribe ran its course, Shockwave had been rubbing his right hand with his left, particularly the finger he had used to “poke” the devotee. “Everything all right?”
“Huh?” He glanced down. “Oh. Yeah, it’s fine. I’ve just been gettin’, I don’t know, a lot of callouses lately.” He presented his hands, and Steve saw that they were indeed looking very calloused. “Wonderin’ if it’s related to my shockwaves, I don’t know.”
Takayasu noted, “I’ve told you to get that looked at.”
“I know, I know, I’ve just been busy lately — as you well know. Been using lotion and tryin’ to massage them after a big day, to keep them supple, or whatever.”
“Tell you what,” the approaching Powerhouse said, “I’ll trade your callouses for getting the taste of this awful fluoro-whatever acid out of my mouth.”
Steve and Takayasu stepped apart to allow Lincoln to join them. Steve had been correct that the man had sneaked off to put on his uniform; of course, calling it a “uniform” was a bit of a stretch, as compared to Vortex’s, or even Shockwave’s. Over the last year, Lincoln had gotten so tired of his clothing getting shredded — especially his mask; his name was a matter of official PCA record, but he preferred to keep his face out of the public eye — that he had asked Vortex for a little help.
As a result, these days Powerhouse wore white pants with royal blue boots, gloves, and full-face ski mask (colors voted on by Lincoln’s little brother and sister), all tailored from the same micro-chainmail that Vortex and Shockwave wore on their bodies and the lieutenant had lined inside his trench coat. Lincoln had told Vortex he already felt guilty about the cost — Steve told him not to worry about that, but he had been adamant — so he chose to go shirtless, displaying his impressive physique. It wasn’t like Powerhouse needed the additional protection — far from it; the press had referred to him as “the Indestructible Man” more than once — but at least this ensemble was less likely to get torn to ribbons in a fight than the cheap jogging suits he once wore to work.
Paranormals | Book 3 | Darkness Reigns Page 10
