Superhero By Night (Book 3): The Wraith [Guerrilla Warfare]

by Haskell, Jeffery H.

  CHAPTER 2

  Hector Alvarez wasn’t used to sweating. He wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of threats. As the second in command and the public face of ISO-1, he was all but untouchable. Untouchable to everyone but the true person in charge of the world’s largest criminal organization: Mr. Axiom.

  He scared him more than anyone in his whole life. And now the line on his desk phone was blinking, the line that only blinked when he called.

  “Alvarez,” he said, pressing the speakerphone button.

  Silence wafted through the phone like a palpable weight. Hector waited, resisting the urge to ask who it was.

  “Who was it?” His boss’s voice rolled through the phone like a rock slide, pressing against him, forcing honesty from him.

  “A black American woman named Madisun Dumas, sir,” he said.

  “I’ve never heard of her...”

  “Uh, well, sir, she just appeared on our radar. Our contacts in the American justice department clued us in to who she was. We managed to link her to our failures in Detroit and then New Orleans. I guess our man there gave up our location and now she’s here to finish her crusade against us for allegedly killing her family.”

  More silence. Sweat trickled down his neck while he waited. Mr. Axiom had power Alvarez could only dream of. When he showed up a few years before and offered to share that power with him, of course, he jumped at the chance... but now... now he wished to God he’d never agreed to let the man in.

  “Why have you let this threat grow? She could endanger our entire operation here. I like Central America, Alvarez, I don’t want to move again. Deal with her.”

  “Yes sir, we are. I’m mobilizing several of our assets...”

  The grumble from the other end of the line interrupted him. “I’m looking at your underlings’ actions right now. She killed the Regulators? Killed Grey right here in Belize? And your strategy is to throw more people at her to kill?”

  Alvarez coughed, the pressure on his head was immense. His sweat now dripped down his face and neck, pooling uncomfortably under the collar of his expensive suit.

  “Do you... you have a suggestion sir?” he managed to ask through clenched teeth.

  “Yes. Let someone else deal with it. Use our resources in the American media. Point at her for the deaths of anyone and everyone we can. And put a bounty on her head. Five million should do. Between law enforcement and the bounty hunters, she’ll either be too busy to meddle with us or she’ll be dead. Either way, you can refocus on your real job. Understood?”

  “Yes sir,” Alvarez said. At that moment he would have done or said anything to get off the call. The line clicked dead and he collapsed into his chair. He hadn’t even realized he was standing. The release of pressure was almost euphoric.

  After a moment he slapped the call button on his phone. A young woman sauntered in, no more than twenty-three but dressed like a professional. “Si, sir?”

  “Call the Maestro. Tell him I need to speak with him right away. Comprendí?”

  “Si!” She turned without another word, exiting as fast as she entered. Alvarez leaned back, allowing himself to relax for a moment. It was going to take some work, but he probably could redirect their political assets in DC to go after Dumas. And having her here in Belize actually made the bounty hunter aspect easier. With all the ex-pats here running from someone, there were always predators waiting to pounce. He smiled for the first time in days.

  Si, this would work out nicely. Maybe then I can get back to working on a way out from under Mr. Axiom.

  CHAPTER 3

  The mirror wasn’t kind to me that morning. It was grim to think of things this way, but I hadn’t killed enough people the night before to make up the deficit from the time it took to get from New Orleans to Belize. Especially since my little trick with the Laser Eyes didn’t give me any credit. Because of that, Spice wasn’t healing me like she normally would.

  “Ow! Watch it,” I said to Krisan as she stitched up a particularly painful gash on my arm.

  “I thought you had regeneration powers?”

  I shook my head. “It isn’t as cut and dried as all that. They have... a mind of their own sometimes. There are rules to making them work and you know me—”

  “You’re fantastic at following rules,” she said with a wry grin.

  “Says the reporter with secret superpowers,” I gave her a knowing stare.

  She shrugged it off. “I use them justly. You know what they say, ‘in the Kingdom of the sighted, the blind man is king.’”

  “What? No, that’s not how that goes. That’s the opposite of what that means,” I told her.

  She stabbed me with the needle, shrugging as if it were an accident. “You say tomato, I say car.”

  I winced. “You were picked on in high school, weren’t you?” I asked with enough humor in my voice so she knew I wasn’t serious.

  “When you can read everyone’s text messages just by touching their phone, you don’t have rivals for long,” she said with a sweet smile.

  “Remind me not to make you a foe,” I said.

  “All done,” she declared. She poured more hydrogen peroxide on the wound and slapped a bandage on it. “You should try dodging next time.”

  “It was a really big knife,” I said by way of explanation.

  Her phone buzzed at that moment and she put it to her ear, standing up and walking away while she spoke in hushed tones to whoever was on the other end.

  When I was sure she was out of earshot, I turned my head to look at Spice, who had silently witnessed the whole exchange.

  “There has to be a way for me to tell where I’m at with the whole Kill/Power ratio?”

  She shrugged. “What do you want? A HUD? All I can tell you is when you’re even. Be thankful. I never let Joseph use his powers when he was behind on the bill. Heck, I never let anyone before you.”

  That revelation surprised me. I looked at her for a second, formulating what I wanted to ask next.

  “How many?” I asked finally.

  “How many what?” she returned sweetly. For just a moment, she really was Spice. The little brat used to turn questions around on me when she knew perfectly well what I meant. It brought a grin to my face, even if it was followed by a wave of sadness.

  Miss you, little sis.

  “You know what I mean. How many ‘hosts’ before me?”

  She frowned, shaking her head. “That’s an ugly word. You’re not a host, you’re a partner. Dare I say, ‘friend.’ We have a common understanding—”

  “You’re dodging the question.”

  “See, you know me so well, it’s like it was meant to be. Here, take this...”

  A wave of euphoria rolled over me, forcing a grunt from me as my wounds mended and my body rejoiced at the flush of pleasure. When I managed to pull myself together Spice was gone.

  Clever girl.

  “Uh, Madi, we have a problem,” Krisan said from across the room. I stood up, pulling off the bandage and wiping away the stitches at the same time. I felt great; better than great. There was a spring in my step, and I could take on the world.

  “What’s up?” I asked her.

  She cocked her head at me for a second. “You look different than you did a second ago... what happened?”

  “I told you, my powers have a mind of their own. They kicked in and...” I twirled to show her all the wounds were healed. She put her fingers through the hole in my dress where I’d failed to move out of the way in time and had a series of significant wounds. Nothing but smooth black skin.

  “Wow. I’ve seen you heal from some pretty extreme harm, Madi. Has it occurred to you that you can’t die?”

  “What?” Half a dozen biology classes came to mind. Aging was just the cells dying as they replicated. If I looked eighteen it was because, biologically speaking, I was eighteen. Could Spice keep me this age forever? Killing for hundreds of years at her whim? It was certainly worth thinking about.

  B
ut not right now. I shook my head. There were at least a thousand people who needed to die before that was even an issue. Just thinking about all that killing made something inside me stir, something dark and... unpleasant. I pushed it aside when Krisan held her phone up for me to see.

  “Uh oh,” I said.

  “That’s an understatement.” She turned on the TV and cast her phone to it. The little warehouse on the docks we had purchased (with stolen money and under a nom de guerre, of course), had everything we could need: all my gear, the van and the Hellcat she bought me, along with the all the guns and ammo.

  I’d taken the time to spray paint all the windows black to keep unwanted eyes out. The only other thing I modified was the AC. Corrugated metal walls absorbed heat like an oven. Having an industrial AC kept the temp down.

  The flat screen TV against the wall sprang to life, showing us the image from her phone. It wasn’t the best picture of me ever, but it wasn’t the worst. I think I was nineteen at the time? It’s from my public portfolio, one of my first modeling gigs. I wore skin-tight jeans and a tube top. My hair was a little crazy, but that was almost ten years ago. Hairstyles change.

  “Can you turn it up?” I asked her. She complied.

  Pictured here at nineteen, twenty-seven-year-old Madisun Dumas is wanted in connection with multiple homicides in Detroit, New York, and New Orleans. She is considered armed and extremely dangerous.

  Pictures of me and that poor FBI agent who tried to help me in DC pop up next. They show us sitting together, then fast forward to me taking his gun... they cut it in such a way that even I thought I shot him. Then some sketchy footage from Detroit and home, of course.

  Her doctors have informed law enforcement that she may have suffered a break from reality.

  The news footage switched to a very official looking man in a lab coat.

  “When her family was killed, Madisun created this other persona, one who could deal with the harsh reality of her situation. When she woke up from her coma, she believed that some secret organization had taken over the government and it was her divine duty to kill them all,” he said with a shake of his head. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It’s truly sad what has happened to her, she needs help.”

  More footage of me followed. In one clip I was in a room, screaming about something, and I really did look crazy. Watching myself scream and beg to kill people was disturbing, to say the least, especially since I had no memory of ever doing or saying anything like that. Hell, I had sliced someone’s head off just the night before and that didn’t cause me a moment of lost sleep… not that I’d tried to since then.

  “That’s not you,” Spice said from beside me. “Look at her; it’s blurry, the footage is cell phone, not CCTV, and she doesn’t move like you.”

  She was right, it wasn’t me. “That’s some kind of shapeshifter. They must have brought her in to sell the story,” I said.

  “It’s worse than that. Wait for it,” Krisan said. I looked over to Spice, but she was gone again. I wished I could make her appear and answer questions.

  Madisun Dumas is now number one on the FBI Metahuman most wanted list. She is most commonly seen wearing a red scarf around her face and often dresses in leather jackets. She goes by the name Wraith. There is a reward of one million dollars for any information leading to her arrest. Call the FBI Metahuman Task Force hotline at—

  I waved at the TV, ignoring the rest.

  “Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I can only hide who I am for so long. I knew that. I think at this point, they’re still going to be afraid of me,” I said with a grin. Krisan was still looking at her phone, not paying attention to what I was saying. “Hello, Kris?”

  “Sorry, that’s not the worst of it. I have contacts all over the world—underground journalist, bloggers, people who are really good at getting information that people don’t want them to have— They put a bounty out on you Madi.”

  “Well, yeah, we just saw that—”

  She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “No, not the Metahuman Task Force; ISO-1. ISO-1 put a five-million-dollar bounty on you and they know you’re in Belize. There’s already a large population of bounty hunters in the area, but five million? That will bring in every assassin in the world. We have to leave.” She switched screens on her phone and waved it in front of me.

  I let out a whistle. “Five million? I’d almost turn myself in for that much.”

  She rushed past me, picking up things here and there and stuffing them into a bag. I don’t think anything she picked up was even hers.

  “Kris,” I said, trying to get her attention.

  “We can find a boat and sail out of here before nightfall. They’ll never even know. We can let things cool off and then come back and—”

  “Kris,” I said louder.

  She stopped and looked at me. “Why aren’t you packing your things?”

  “Because I’m not going anywhere.”

  She looked at me, then the TV, and then back to me. “But they know who you are. They know where you are. You’re about to have a hundred bounty hunters crawling in your underpants trying to kill you.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” I said with a half grin. “Listen, it’s about to get more dangerous, and you should go. But I’m not leaving until they’re all dead. If I have to kill a hundred extra people, well then, so be it.” My fists clenched on their own as I spoke. “But nothing—not a bounty, not the FBI, nothing—is going to stop me from killing every one of these bastards. Every last one, Kris. That’s the game. You can be in or out, I won’t object if you want to leave, God knows it’s only going to get more dangerous.”

  She nodded and put down the bag of random objects. “Well, if you’re staying, I’m staying. I think.”

  I smiled. I was glad. It was good to have a friend. However...

  “Good, but you should go somewhere else. They don’t know about you. If we can smuggle you into a nice hotel you can do your thing as long as our phones are connected? Right?” I punctuated it by holding up my phone.

  She nodded. “Yeah, all I need is a laptop and a cappuccino machine and I’m good to—”

  My phone exploded as a bullet tore through it, then me, knocking me back into the rack of guns I was planning on using.

  CHAPTER 4

  Idon’t know what kind of round hit me, but it knocked me back into a gun rack, which then fell on me, slamming me face first into the cold concrete floor.

  Then the gunfire started in earnest. Dark painted glass exploded inward, letting the sunlight in. Holes appeared in the aluminum walls as a number of fully automatic weapons went to town on our hideout. I groaned inwardly as dozens of rounds peppered my Hellcat before the tires exploded.

  “Kris?” I called out for her.

  “I’m here,” she yelled back.

  “Use the escape hatch. I’m right behind you.”

  Like I told that idiot in the club, luck isn’t a plan. Of course, I had a plan for if this place was compromised. The entire reason I chose it was because a drainage grate in the center of the room led to a tunnel that exited a half mile away. I had a car, money, and a few extra guns stashed there in case of an event like this. I had to admit, though, I didn’t expect to use it quite that soon.

  I heard the grate open and I caught a glimpse of Krisan’s brown hair as she leaped down. A moment later the front door burst in. Three guys, covered head to toe in black tactical gear, charged in shooting in all directions.

  “Time to power up,” I said to Spice. Despite her not manifesting, I knew she could hear me. I pulled myself out from under the rack and scrambled across the floor to the green case resting on top of the small table. Bullets flew around me as I ran for it.

  “There!” one of them shouted.

  They saw me.

  I grunted as several rounds slammed into my thighs. It didn’t hurt as much as it should have—in fact, it hardly hurt at all. I slid to a stop beside the table, kicked
the legs out and let the case fall on me. It opened and the Walther Q5 Match fell out. I thought it was a little garish, but Krisan did the research and assured me it was one of the best pistols in the world. The blue trigger was as light as a butterfly’s kiss.

  I caught the gun and the magazine, slamming it home as I rolled over. More bullets blast through the table. With all the windows broken, it was too light for me to teleport; I just had to do it the old-fashioned way. The one thing I couldn’t do was let them see which way Krisan went, or even let them know I had a partner. They might have known my identity, but I didn’t have to hand her to them

  I snapped off three quick shots at the first guy. The gun handled just as well as Krisan claimed and the bullets flew home in a tight pattern in the center of his chest, knocking him back into his friend, but not penetrating his vest.

  Automatic fire continued to pepper the building from the outside; cans flew up as bullets hit them, the TV exploded behind me, everything was getting shot up. If I had to guess, there was more than one team operating and they didn’t care if they killed each other trying to get me.

  These guys were pissing me off.

  I ran at the one I shot, firing at his friends to keep them off balance as I crossed the distance. I dropped at the last second and swept his legs out from under him. He hit the ground with a grunt, and I slammed the butt of the pistol against his throat with a satisfying crack. He wouldn’t die right away, but he didn’t have long.

  Using him as a shield, I rolled over and dragged him into a sandbag position. His body shook as his friends unloaded at me with ferocious abandon. Well… clearly, they weren’t good friends. I fired back four more shots, taking the second one’s legs out from under him. There are only so many places you can wear armor.

  I rolled to the side, put my legs under me and leaped, covering the fifteen feet in an instant and landing on the chest of the one I shot in the legs. I forced my barrel under his vest and fired twice.