Superluminary (Powered Destinies Book 1)

by Olivia Rising

  I’m sure Crybaby Sarina will be sorry you got your feelings hurt.

  Dancer clenched her teeth, sliding across her seat to find a halfway comfortable position. Both of her knees throbbed with every heartbeat, and her hip screamed in protest whenever it bumped against the seat cushion. Her body was in so much pain that the ache in her ankle dulled in comparison.

  Tess started the car, pulling out of the parking lot and onto the road. The movement eased the pain somewhat, or maybe it was the prospect of getting away that lessened her pain.

  “I can’t believe Queenie’s dead,” Ace said in a flat voice from the front passenger seat.

  “Allegedly dead,” Tess amended.

  If Raven’s crew ends up recruiting whoever gets Queenie’s powers, I might actually kill someone, Dancer thought. Those assholes don’t deserve powers. She hadn’t forgotten the way Raven had eyeballed her after her dance at the Sun King’s court. They don’t deserve dicks, either.

  Jasper uncomfortably shifted in his seat, leaning against the window beside him, farther away from her.

  What’s your problem with me?

  “You gonna come back to us, Wondergirl?” Ace asked into the silence.

  It took her a moment to understand what he was asking her. “Not yet,” she said. “When we get someplace safe. I’m sure you can figure out why.”

  He met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Need a doctor?”

  “Rest, I think. A few days for sure.”

  No one said anything else as they made their way out of Liverpool, successfully evading two police road blocks. No one as much as batted an eye at them as they drove around the obstacle. While Dancer appreciated the collective idiocy of the police and the heroes, she couldn’t hold back from commenting. “Someday, they’ll figure the camera thing out and we’ll be in deep shit.”

  “Probably,” Ace replied.

  When they were beyond the city limits, he turned the car radio on to a news channel. The announcer’s words rendered them all speechless. Even Dancer.

  New York’s gone to hell, and I wasn’t even there to see it.

  5.8 Interlude (Samael)

  East Cape, South Africa

  Saturday, the 8th of January, 2000

  7:15 p.m.

  Ten years, one month, and sixteen days before the Pulse

  Such a beauty. Maybe I’ll name you.

  Jordan Steyn carefully lifted the Musgrave hunting rifle off its hooks above his bedroom door. He enjoyed the feel of the metal and the smoothly polished wooden grip beneath his fingers. They assured him that he wasn’t a helpless farm kid anymore. Unlike most boys his age, Jordan was ready to assume the responsibilities of life.

  Ensuring that his fingers were nowhere near the trigger, he walked across the room, pushed his school books aside, and set the rifle down on his desk. Old man Steyn had made it clear that he didn’t want his sixteen-year-old son to keep his Christmas present loaded, but Jordan figured his dad would never know. Dad isn’t going to check, he reassured himself. As long as his best friend and confidante Steven kept his mouth shut, everything would be fine.

  He leaned over the desk to pull the bedroom window open and let the warm, earthy evening air flood his room. It was too dark outside to see the rows of corn in the fields, but he could still make out the stable’s silhouette in the moonlight. If he got his hands on a scope, the thieving bastards who had tried to steal their horses a few months back would be in for a nasty surprise.

  Getting the bullets had been easy. Lots of people, including the arms dealers, were willing to bend the rules to keep blue-blooded families safe on their own properties. Everyone knew that being a white farmer in South Africa was lately becoming increasingly dangerous. The fact that Jordan’s mother was black didn’t make it any easier on the Steyns. The local blacks, including her own folks, had disowned her seventeen years ago.

  Jordan picked up the rifle to carry it downstairs. His mum was about to put dinner on the table. She hated it when he let his food get cold, and he didn’t want to risk pissing her off even more tonight. She made a cryptic face when Steven had asked to see Jordan’s new rifle. Not angry, but definitely stormy. And while his mother would never be so rude as to chastise her son’s best friend for asking, Jordan knew that she wasn’t pleased to share the dinner table with firearms.

  Jordan couldn’t resist stopping as he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over his desk. He knew he looked badass with the rifle. The camo print cargo pants and red tank top only added to his don’t-mess-with-my-farm image.

  “Are you going to join the Commando, Jordan?” he asked his mirror image, smoothing his short, wavy black hair away from his forehead.

  The toned youth in the mirror didn’t have the look of a farmer. Most landowners were white—or, increasingly, black—but Jordan’s skin had the café latte hue often associated with athletes and movie stars. The best of both worlds. According to his female classmates, he wasn’t bad looking, either.

  “I think you should join up. Show them how it’s done,” he told his reflection, narrowing his eyes pensively. He had his mum’s eyes, people often said. Hers were dark, with a savage intensity that had led his father to nickname her his ‘lioness.’ When Jordan stepped back from the desk to aim the rifle’s long barrel at the mirror, he could almost sense the extra weight of the five bullets in the chamber.

  “Those patrollers aren’t doing shit to protect our community,” he muttered. “They’re almost as useless as the police. You could make such a difference, man.”

  Maybe he would bring it up with his parents at dinner tonight. He knew what they would say, but still. He was tired of idly sitting by, doing nothing while his neighbors were getting robbed left and right. Easing the rifle down, he turned away from the mirror and stepped into the hallway to descend the stairs to the dining room. When he reached the top step, he was stopped in his tracks by a single high-pitched cry.

  Mum?

  He stood motionless, frozen on the stairs while a lump of unease filled his gut. A male voice barked angry words that were muffled by the door at the bottom of the stairs. That’s not Dad, Jordan realized. Or Steven, either. Someone else is in the house.

  As he cautiously took the next few steps, his fingers tightened around the rifle’s grip. When he reached the ground floor, he paused. Something told him to wait rather than to barge into the dining area. He leaned and pressed his ear against the door at the bottom of the steps.

  “…know you got gold somewhere,” growled a man’s voice, barely audible above Jordan’s thundering heartbeat. “All you rich folks have gold, but you always deny it.”

  “We’ve invested everything we have in the horses,” came his father’s voice, eerily calm. “Go take a look. They’re good breeds. Take them.”

  “What did I say? You always deny it,” the stranger’s voice spat. “Think y’all will talk truth if I cut up your boy here?”

  Jordan’s hand instinctively tightened around the rifle. Try to cut me, you asshole, he wanted to shout, but he lacked the courage. There was a scuffle, the sound of chairs scraping against the tiled kitchen floor. Jordan wanted to move, but couldn’t. His feet were frozen to the floor.

  “No, please,” came his mother’s whimper. “Leave the boy alone. Let him go.”

  Steven. The realization flashed through Jordan’s mind like a bolt of lightning. They think he’s me. He looked down at the rifle he carried, loaded and ready. He wasn’t a bad shot, but he didn’t know how many intruders there were or if any of them had weapons pointed at his folks.

  “Get off him!” his father yelled with furious desperation. “We don’t have anything you want!”

  Jordan pressed his shoulder to the door. If he was going to do this, he’d have to act fast.

  “Whaddaya say, boy?” an unfamiliar voice sneered. It sounded like a different person. A second attacker. “Do your folks have anything we might want?”

  Jordan sucked in a breath and held it. His feet still refus
ed to move, waiting for his paralyzed mind to identify the right moment to act.

  “N-n-no,” Steven stammered. “We don’t, I promise.”

  Jordan let out his breath before shifting his gun to his right hand.

  Someone cried out with a high-pitched shriek that didn’t sound human.

  My lion mother. The thought came out of nowhere. A dull thudding sound came through the door followed by a louder one punctuated with a howl of pain. Jordan knew he wouldn’t have much time after they caught sight of him. He would have to aim and fire within a second, tops. He would have to shoot to kill on his first shot. These aren’t people, he told himself. They’re animals.

  “God, give me strength,” he whispered, releasing the door handle and pushing the door open a few inches. Its hinges let out a squeak that sounded awfully loud in his ears.

  Through the hand’s breadth of open space he saw the broad back of a white man in a stained laborer’s uniform. The man stood about five feet from the door, pointing a handgun at the tangle of two people caught up in a desperate scuffle on the far side of the room right in front of the fireplace. One was his mother, and she was wrestled to the ground by a black man twice her size.

  Shaking with anger and fear, Jordan brought the rifle up to his right shoulder in the way his father had taught him. Through the gap in the doorway, he aimed at the back of the white man’s head. Animals, he reminded himself.

  His mother’s attacker used his size advantage to push her against the fireplace and slam a knee into her gut. She released a sharp cry of pain that turned Jordan’s blood to ice in his veins before she slumped over onto the ground.

  Jordan watched, paralyzed with horror, as a third man came into his field of vision in front the fireplace. Black-skinned, wearing a sleeveless white wife-beater, he was even bigger than the man who had laid his mother out flat.

  Shoot already, he willed himself while aiming at the back of the white man’s head. But his finger was frozen on the trigger, incapable of applying pressure. When the third man swung his arm down, hard, Jordan noticed the long metallic object he carried right before it connected with something with a loud crunch.

  “Mum!” Jordan yelled.

  His voice was drowned out by the bang of his rifle, and he never felt the recoil. He didn’t feel anything at all, even as he stared at the hole he had made in the back of the white man’s head. All he could think about was his mother and the feeble shriek of pain that came from her lips.

  Someone shouted Jordan’s name. It might have been his dad or not. The next thing he knew the door was open all the way. Had he pushed it? Or had someone else?

  Another bang from his rifle. One of the men by the fireplace went down, falling on top of his mother’s lifeless outstretched legs. The third man bolted, his stained wife-beater disappearing into the darkness outside.

  An intangible amount of time passed, filled with screams and choked sobs, before Jordan found himself on his hands and knees while retching in the doorway.

  “Jordan!”

  The familiar voice persistently called his name enough that it finally drew his attention. When he raised his head, a bloodied and swollen face emerged beside him.

  “Jordan! Your mum! Come help me!”

  Steven?

  “Where’s … where’s my dad?” Jordan finally managed to croak, his voice hollow in his throat.

  “Over there.” Steven pointed to the other corner of the room, where Jordan’s dad had been secured to one of the dining chairs with layers upon layers of sturdy brown duct tape. His neck was limp, and his head was slumped to his chest.

  He’s still breathing, a part of Jordan realized. His chest is rising and falling.

  “Jordan,” Steven called to him again. “Call ten-one-seven-seven, okay? Your mum … call, all right?”

  “Is… is she…” Jordan couldn’t finish. He thought he might retch again.

  “She’s okay,” Steven said. “I heard her breathing.”

  Jordan crawled on his hands and knees over to the fireplace, and knelt beside his mother’s head. Her strong-featured face had been softened by strain, and her neck was twisted at an odd angle as she stared at the ceiling. A puddle of blood was beneath her head, growing larger by the second.

  “Mum?” he whispered. “Mum, can you hear me?”

  But his mother didn’t turn her head at his voice. Her dark eyes, usually so full of vibrancy and spark, were glassy and out of focus.

  I was too late, he thought, his fingers clenching into fists at the sight of blood pooling beneath his mum’s head. If I hadn’t hesitated, he wouldn’t have had a chance to hit her.

  He snapped his head up, looking for someone—anyone—to lash out at. Someone else to blame. But there was no one. Only Steven, bruised and beaten, dialing for help into the wall phone hanging next to the refrigerator.

  They mistook him for me. I should have been here.

  The faint sound of panting drew Jordan’s attention to the attacker lying next to his mother’s lifeless legs. The man struggled to breathe, his chest heaving with effort as a red stain spread across the front of his laborer’s shirt.

  Jordan got to his feet as if in a trance, barely aware of his movements. He felt the way his fingers closed around the rifle butt as he picked it up and noticed the weight of the weapon in his hands.

  If I let him go, he’ll hurt someone else.

  For once, the gun’s brutal kickback felt good against his shoulder.

  East Cape, South Africa

  Friday, the 10th of March 2000

  6:40 p.m.

  Two months later

  “She’s awake! Go right in,” the nurse told Jordan, pointing at the open door to room 203 with the same fake painted-on smile that all hospital staff members wore by default.

  He hated their play acting. It was like some kind of grand conspiracy where everyone was supposed to pretend that everything was going to be all right. He had endured it for two months, and he was sick of it.

  He stepped through the door and entered the small white-washed room that had become his mother’s prison. No, that wasn’t true. Her own body had become her prison.

  She lay in the narrow bed the same way she always did, with the head end raised enough to let her see the small television mounted in the far corner. Her right hand had been positioned over a small remote device that used computer software to translate her miniscule finger movements into speech.

  “Hi, Mum,” Jordan said, feigning cheerfulness.

  Her eyes met his without any response in her features. He sometimes liked to imagine that she was smiling at him, warm and gentle. He held up the small bouquet of pink and purple cosmos he had cut from their front field. They were her favorites. Or at least they used to be.

  Her eyes flicked to the delicate blossoms, but any reaction was lost within the frozen emotionless mask of her face.

  “They’re already blooming,” he told her. “March tenth. I’ll write it on the calendar for you.”

  He took the few steps to the window where an empty flower vase had been since the pride de kaap flowers he brought her last week had faded. Most everything in this room was empty. His mum never kept any personal belongings there because she couldn’t touch anything, let alone use it. Since nobody ever visited her, there weren’t any stuffed animals or fruit baskets on the shelves, either.

  Jordan knew she didn’t want people to see her like this, skinny and utterly helpless. She had communicated as much, time and time again, during the first weeks of her confinement at the hospital. Besides Jordan and his father, the nurses were his mother’s only visitors. They read to her from a Bible once a day. It was a minor service, considering the price of the private room.

  It was devastatingly expensive, Jordan knew. Though his father wouldn’t tell him exactly how much, most of the horses had already been sold to pay for it, and she’d only been in hospital for nine weeks.

  He put the flowers in the vase before filling it from the faucet in the sma
ll adjoining bathroom. When he set it on the windowsill, it added a pale touch of pink to the otherwise sterile white room. Not enough to pretend that everything was going to be all right, but it was a start.

  “We’re doing okay,” Jordan said, pulling a chair to his mum’s bed.

  It would inevitably be the first question his mother would ask, and he wanted to save her the effort of typing it out. Besides, he hated how the computer sounded when it spoke those words. It sounded like a ghost, as if she was already dead.

  “Dad’s probably going to sell the farm. He thinks he has a pretty good chance of getting a job in Durban.”

  He looked down at her hand as she tapped out a response with the two fingers she could still move. “You can’t give up on your grandfather’s farm,” the computer buzzed from the loudspeaker above the bed.

  God, how he hated that computerized voice.

  “We have to, Mum,” he insisted, blinking back the sting in his eyes. “It’ll be safer in Durban, and Dad doesn’t want to risk another attack. The police aren’t doing anything to help us farmers, and the authorities are so corrupt they’re part of the problem.” He knew he was reiterating something his grandfather had often said, but it was something Jordan wholeheartedly agreed with.

  The surviving attacker had been caught, but the bastard probably wouldn’t be in jail for long. He and another one of the attackers had already been caught for similar crimes twice before, but always released on the grounds of insufficient evidence because no judge wanted to look like he sided with the white farmers. But if they did it once, they would do it again. People never change. How many times had his mother told him that in the past?

  Jordan swallowed the next words that burned in his throat. If we don’t deliver justice for ourselves, no one’s going to do it for us.

  He finally sat down on the hard plastic chair beside his mother’s bedside and reached for her other hand, the one that didn’t have any movement left. The doctors claimed that she might regain limited use of both hands someday, but it was doubtful because the brain trauma was too severe.