by Vivi Andrews
“No service?” he purred.
Thank God for the crappy reception of subway tunnels. His abilities were too far blown to handle the cavalry right now.
“I’ll fly you there if I have to,” DynaGirl declared, but the first waver of doubt edged her tone.
Supers could do superhuman things—hence the name—but there was only so far they could push themselves before they crashed with a power hangover that would bring the gods to their knees. Lucien was inches from his own breaking point and, from the tremor in her voice, it sounded like his tenacious little sex kitten of a nemesis was right there with him.
Which meant she was vulnerable. He just needed one more sprint. He could last a few more seconds before his brain exploded into white-hot agony. He had to. For Mirabelle.
He heard the distant electrical whine of a train coming down the tracks. Three minutes, give or take…
Lucien let the icy-hot pain starting to spike in his temples show on his face. “I could come quietly,” he said, making his voice tight with strain. “For a price.”
“I don’t negotiate with supervillains.”
“Not even for my surrender? My complete surrender.”
Interest lit her up-tilted emerald eyes, but her jaw remained clenched in an unyielding line. “No deals. I won’t bribe you to play nice when you’ve already lost.”
“But all I wanted was a kiss.”
She went motionless above him, as if she’d forgotten the need to breathe.
“One little kiss,” he purred. “And I’ll go meekly to my jail cell. No tricks. No trouble.”
He couldn’t read her expression. Something odd and almost hopeful colored the suspicion in her gaze. She hesitated. The train rattled closer. Her fingers eased their death grip on his hair.
“Why?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve always wanted a shot at the great Darla Powers. Who hasn’t? That Maxim spread changed my life.”
Her eyes darkened. “That damn magazine—”
“Hey, don’t damn that magazine. I could compose sonnets to that magazine. Especially your issue. I think you single-handedly launched a generation of twelve-year-old boys into puberty with that spread.” The picture had become a cultural icon. Darla Powers, the super answer to Marilyn Monroe. “Tell me you still have the bustier and I’ll die happy.”
She blushed. “That is none of your business.”
Dear God, she still has it. Unwholesome interest stirred below Lucien’s belt. He’d been joking, but now he couldn’t get the image out of his head. Her incredible figure overflowing the snug black lace with a shimmering red D curled under one breast in a parody of her suit. Maybe she still wore it. Maybe she put it on for the schmuck boyfriend who’d let her walk out on their date. Jealousy gave his gut an ugly twist, but he ignored it. She wasn’t with her schmuck boyfriend now.
“One kiss,” he said, the words coming out as more of a demand than he’d intended, his voice so dark and hungry he barely recognized it. “One kiss and I’ll do whatever you want.”
The words were supposed to be a lie, but at the moment he almost believed them himself. Darla Powers was a woman who could own a man’s soul if she put her mind to it. If she could let herself be that bad…
She leaned over him, and he sank his hand into the curls at the base of her skull. “C’mon, princess,” he coaxed, his gaze locked on her pillowy lips. “Even good girls get to be bad sometimes.”
She went rigid in his arms. “No. We don’t.”
The train was nearly there now. Ten seconds… Darla began to resist his hold, but Lucien had run out of time for persuasion. Now or never.
He sat up and twisted abruptly, using a pulse of superspeed to get her sprawled on her back before she realized negotiations were over. He caught her startled gasp on his lips.
The kiss was a sneak attack—quick and fierce and designed to startle and unsettle her. It wasn’t supposed to sear across his nerve endings with unexpected heat. He wasn’t supposed to be tempted to fall into the taste of her and abandon his will to fight. Soft, warm, luscious—the definition of a dangerous woman.
Her hands fell away from his hair, shoving at his shoulders without any real strength as she made the most deliciously wanton noise in her throat.
In a different world, he would stay here and finish what they’d started, explore this incendiary chemistry, coax that sound from her again and again. But she was still a hero and he’d long since been cast in the villain role. If he wanted any future for his sister, he couldn’t waste time playing doctor with DynaGirl.
The first train car thundered into the abandoned station.
He threw himself off her. “Sorry, princess.” The last of his reserves went into a surge of superspeed as he leapt onto the tracks and sprinted down the tunnel in front of the engine. The racing train sealed the tunnel entrance behind him before DynaGirl could gather herself to follow.
He didn’t have time to thrill at the victory of escape. He was too busy trying to maintain his speed until he reached the next platform so he didn’t end up a bloody smear on the tracks.
Lucien ran, his head slowly exploding, the stolen papers crinkling in his pocket with the sound of success, Darla’s taste still sweet on his lips.
Chapter Five
The Agony of Alliteration
Darla buried her head under her pillow, trying to escape the shrieking siren that sounded vaguely like the ringtone she’d set for her best friend. The acute pain of her initial crash had faded, leaving her feeling like the inside of her skull had been shredded with a cheese grater and then doused in lemon juice. She’d never been this burned.
The shrieking stopped, so Darla dared to poke her head out from under the pillow, squinting in the direction of her clock. Just after nine. In the morning, judging by the light. She didn’t know when she’d gotten home. Or how. She had a dim recollection of staggering up the stairs because she didn’t have the reserves left to fly up the four flights to the balcony of her walk-up. Everything else from last night was still jagged and disjointed, like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle made of broken glass.
Her cell phone began to screech again, and Darla groped for it, connecting the call in self-defense. “Nnph.”
“You’re alive! Thank God.” Tandy’s bright voice pierced her eardrums, and Darla winced. “After the headlines this morning, I didn’t know what to expect.”
Darla thought alive might be overstating a bit, but she wasn’t going to quibble. “Headlines?”
“DynaGirl Defeated. DemonSpawn Decimates Darla. It’s all over the front page.”
“They should be punished for that much alliteration.” Rough-edged memories surfaced of slamming into walls and midair grappling. Her entire body ached, confirming she’d been decimated. “Who the hell is DemonSpawn?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know you were battling Demon Wroth’s only son and heir.”
More pieces of last night’s painful puzzle fell into place. The too-familiar black eyes haunting her memories. His father’s eyes. “Shit.”
“Eloquently put. He sounds like a monster. The mayor gave a press conference to offer his condolences to the families of the guards he killed.”
“What? Tandy, no one was hurt.” She may have been out of it, but she’d checked on that personally.
“Oh, maybe the mayor was mixing up his epic battles. Anyway, why is there a picture of Kyle on page six with some blonde toothpick? The press is implying you flaked on the capture because you were heartbroken after he threw you over for some anorexic bimbo. There’s even this bullshit quote—”
“Kyle gave them a quote?” Darla shouted, the effects of her power hangover fading in the face of burning rage. She wasn’t surprised to find he’d already moved on to pluck a more delicate flower, but blabbing to the press about their split was beyond gauche. The traitor.
Tandy gasped. “Oh my God. Did you guys really break up?”
“Last night.”
“Why did
n’t you tell me?”
“Don’t you read the papers? I was busy getting my ass kicked.”
“Seriously? I can’t believe you lost,” Tandy said, with touching loyalty.
Darla had grown up with Tandy Nightwing. Their friendship had been almost inevitable, both of them daughters of the city’s elite superhero power couples, but unlike most children of supers, Tandy had never developed any super abilities.
Evidently unlike Demon Wroth’s spawn.
“DemonSpawn…” What kind of man voluntarily went by DemonSpawn? “How did they identify him?”
“One of the cameras at the North Courthouse caught him as he escaped. Are you all right? He looks vile.”
“I’d hardly call him vile,” Darla protested, wondering if the cameras had caught the right man.
The long silence that greeted her statement was her first indication that maybe she should’ve quelled the impulse to defend a known supervillain.
“Darla Athena Powers. What exactly happened last night?”
“I…” She had all the pieces of her jigsaw puzzle now, a clear sharp reflection of her humiliation, but rehashing it wasn’t high on her list of priorities.
He’d played her. He’d manipulated her.
He’d kissed her.
Darla shook away that last memory. It was an aberration. She needed to stay focused. The asshole known as DemonSpawn had bested her, and not only that, he’d done it in front of a half-dozen witnesses at the North Courthouse.
“Darla?”
“He has superstrength,” she said, knowing she had to give Tandy something. “I’ve never been hit full strength by anyone who matched me before.”
“He hit you?” Tandy gasped. “But you’re a girl.”
“I’m a super,” Darla snapped. Apparently she was too strong to be feminine, but too feminine to be taken seriously as a hero. Whose ass did a girl have to kick to get some respect in this town? Though her bad boy certainly treated her like she was a worthy adversary. She could almost respect him for not taking it easy on her because she was a girl.
“He tossed me around like I was nothing. And he was fast. Superfast. I’ve never seen anyone move like that.” She remembered the fight in the Crypt, feeling like his strong hands were everywhere, anticipating her every move. She kicked off her comforter, suddenly too warm. “I thought I had him a couple times, but he’s tricky. Just when you think he’s given up, he pulls out something unexpected—” a kiss that melts me like a marshmallow “—and breaks free again. I would’ve had him. I know I could’ve brought him in, but my powers burned out and I crashed.”
“Wow. I can’t believe he got away with… What did he do? The papers didn’t say.”
“Classified.” Tandy didn’t have clearance for details on the Crypt. “But he hasn’t gotten away with anything. I had to recharge, but this isn’t over. Not by a long shot.” Darla bounded out of bed and over to her closet, whipping out a fresh supersuit, vengeance and the familiar fierce drive for justice fueling every move. “No one makes me look like a fool and walks away scot-free.” Not to mention the little matter of stolen files. She didn’t know what he’d taken, but she would find out. She’d figure out what his endgame was and be there waiting for him before he made his next move. She was good, and good triumphed over evil, dammit. “I’ll track his ass and take him down. He does not know who he messed with.”
“Whoa. I’ve never heard you on a vendetta before. Are you sure you’re okay about Kyle?”
With everything else that had happened last night, there was no room in her thoughts for Kyle.
“This isn’t about Kyle.” Or a stolen kiss she had every intention of making a certain villain pay for. “This is about my reputation. And justice.”
“Are you sure? Because it sounds personal.”
“It is personal. My personal need for DemonSpawn Wroth to rot in a cell for the rest of his natural life.”
“If you say so,” Tandy muttered, her skepticism obvious. “But I’m here if you want to talk.”
“Thanks, Tandy. I’ll call you later.” Right now she had a bad guy to catch. He’d been on the edge of burnout last night when he escaped, but if her power hangover was wearing off, his would be too. She didn’t have a second to waste.
Justice waited for no woman. Especially not one who was having girly flutterings at the idea of confronting a certain bad boy again…
Chapter Six
The Good, the Bad & the Invisible
Lucien’s head still echoed with the aftereffects of his hangover as he held himself motionless, outside the range of Area Nine’s security sensors. Thanks to DynaGirl, getting the secret location and security specs of the prison had nearly killed him—and that had been the easy part.
Now he had to break a high-priority prisoner out of one of the most secure facilities in the world, and he didn’t have time for more than the most half-assed of plans. He’d left the Crypt in chaos, but it wouldn’t take the authorities long to determine what he’d taken. As soon as they knew he was after Area Nine, they’d be ready for him. No, he had to act now. Lucien just hoped the day didn’t end with him as a permanent resident of the cellblock next to Mirabelle’s.
He didn’t know which one was hers, only that she was in the section of the complex designed to contain the prisoners with the most advanced mind-game abilities. She would be isolated, never coming into direct contact with her guards and therefore incapable of projecting false images into their minds. Anywhere else, solitary confinement would be a punishment, but it was the only way to contain mindbenders.
All Mirabelle’s surveillance would be digital, reviewed by a remote guard off-site who could push a button to flood her section of the complex with knockout gas if he saw any anomalies. Lucien patted the pair of gasmasks in his pack. He wanted the guard to hit that button. It would keep the truly dangerous residents of Area Nine from escaping when he put a hole in their wall getting Mirabelle out.
Provided he could first get through the gauntlet of defenses to get to his sister.
Luckily, the facility was designed more around keeping supers in than keeping them out. Being a government construct, they’d cut corners to cut costs—reinforcing the separate buildings within the main complex only as necessary to contain the particular kinds of criminals they held and relying too much on the secrecy and remoteness of the location to deter jailbreaks.
Thank God for bureaucracy.
Lucien gauged the distance he’d have to cover, mentally reviewing his plan—what there was of it—and hoping he had the energy reserves to manage it.
Two miles of open land to cover to get to the perimeter wall. He could run fast enough to confuse the cameras, but motion sensors would catch him. He had to hope the radio-dissonance device he’d bought would confuse the signal from the sensors long enough for him to reach the wall without triggering the alarm. He only needed a matter of seconds.
A burst of superstrength should put a hole in the wall. The powers that be hadn’t been able to afford to coat the entire perimeter in the expensive resistance polymer. The regular steel and concrete would tear like tissue paper under his hands.
No amount of dissonance would stop the alarm from going off when the wall was breached. The sirens would be wailing when he ran the three hundred feet to the outer wall of the building that held Mirabelle. A shock wave should knock out the cameras, and the ninety seconds it took the gas to saturate the building would be more than he needed to find Mirabelle and get the mask on her.
He hoped.
Lucien shoved down the feeling of dread that rose up. Hope wasn’t something he had a lot of experience with, and he’d certainly never based a plan on it before, but Mirabelle had already spent six weeks locked away without human contact. Hope was going to have to help him get her out, because if hope failed, all he had left to fall back on was desperation and brute strength.
His gut burned. Six fucking weeks. Six weeks of Mirabelle suffering because he’d reneged on his pro
mise to always be there for her by disappearing to Singapore for a year right when she needed him. No matter how many times he told himself he had no way of suspecting she wasn’t safe in her dorm room, he couldn’t escape the feeling he should’ve known she was in trouble. He should’ve been there, standing between her and danger like he’d always been before.
She never would’ve fallen in with that low-life bastard if Lucien had been there to watch over her. No slimy wannabe villain would have been able to manipulate her into using her abilities to break into a bank vault. She had to have been manipulated. Coerced. Mirabelle may not have the most dependable moral compass, but she knew better than to take stupid risks. For people like them, even the hint of lawlessness was a life sentence.
He didn’t know the whole story. The bank robbery had been hushed up—barely a murmur in the press. Lucien had only a few cryptic emails from Mirabelle and the records he’d managed to steal to put together what must have happened.
It had all started three weeks after he left. She’d fallen, hook, line and sinker, for some guy named Kevin who’d fed her bullshit about bringing down The Man and a higher purpose.
Kevin. What kind of name was that for a mastermind?
He’d known exactly what to promise Mirabelle to get her to cooperate. Justice for their mother after all these years. Small wonder Mirabelle had bought it all. Teenagers building a revolution.
But it hadn’t been a coup. Kevin had used her for his own purposes and hung her out to dry when a stray fingerprint had identified her. A fingerprint that wouldn’t even have been in the system if not for their father’s notorious past.
It was all fun and games until someone ended up in maximum security lockdown.
His watch timer beeped softly. Fifteen minutes until shift change. The guards would be thinking about heading home, easing their diligence. Time to move.
Lucien took a slow breath, shaking away the last vestiges of his headache. Please let this work.