Hero

by Robert J. Crane

“Not knowing us … a convenient theme,” Vlad said. “For really, after Scotland, after Rose … what she did to you, what she took from you …” He leaned forward. “Do you even know who you are anymore?”

  To thine own self be true. Harry’s words bounced back to me again; I’d thought they were a reminder for while I was in prison, but they were starting to sound more multipurpose, and I clung to them like a life preserver, as though I were in the middle of an empty ocean all by myself. “I know who I am. Doubt many others do these days, though.”

  “Now we come back to reputation,” Vlad said. “You refer to how you are seen by others, the world over, yes?”

  “Yeah, it was an offhand reference to being thought of as a villain,” I said. “Don’t make too much of it, though, because I know you’re the actual villain of this piece.”

  “How easily you judge me,” he said. “But you don’t know me. You have admitted as much.”

  “Dude, you’re the man behind the legend of Dracula,” I said. “Unless you were impaling people with kindness, I don’t think your rep is so very far off the truth as to put you in the ‘hero’ category.”

  “But you said it yourself,” Vlad said. “You are perhaps a hero in your own eyes? But a villain to the rest of the world? How do you explain that contradiction in terms?”

  I looked sideways out a window. We were rolling through Bredoccia’s downtown. “It’s subjective, obviously. There’s room for interpretation. And the people telling my story hate me, so—”

  “Well, I would argue I received the same treatment,” Vlad said. “I am sympathetic to your troubles on that count alone.”

  “Heh,” I said. “Did you just say ‘count’?”

  It took Vlad a second. “Ah. Count Dracula. Very good. Never a title I held, ‘Count.’ But funny.” He grew serious once more. “We have both been ill-defined by others who hate us, fear us. You are, after all, a succubus. Despised among the metahuman kind for thousands of years. You did not live through the worst of it, when your kind were hunted, run out of cities and countries. Killed, burned, stabbed, torn apart … Were all those incubi and succubi evil? Villains?”

  I shrugged. “The ones I’ve met? Sovereign? James Fries? My aunt Charlie? Rose. Yeah, kinda. They were all villains.”

  “What about your mother?” Sophie asked, staring at me with a strange intensity. “Was she a villain?”

  My lips tightened as I tried to keep a swarm of feelings down. Like Sophie maybe was at all times. “Well, she locked me in the house until I was almost eighteen and imprisoned me in a metal box to keep me in line, so … yeah, I think a lot of people would class her as a villain.”

  “Do you?” Sophie asked. She didn’t look away.

  But I did. “Depends on the day,” I said, staring at that skyscraper that stretched up so high above us I could see it through the moonroof. It came to a sharp point, a massive antenna up top stretching like it was trying to compete with the big leaguers in New York or Tokyo.

  “As you said, everything is subjective,” Vlad said. “To some, I am perhaps a villain. To the press of Dracula’s day, my story is a tale of villainy and woe. But that is not my story, nor my telling of it. I have been wronged many times in my life, and many times it was … extremely personal.” He brushed his hand against his flawless white shirt, almost self-consciously. “But I doubt that I have ever been wronged as thoroughly as when my likeness was bent to the perversion that is Dracula.”

  “Plus, I haven’t even seen any fellow vampires here, yet,” I said. Back to snarky, because they’d gotten me way too close to uncomfortable sentiment, and I hated doing that with strangers. Especially lying strangers. Maudlin was not the feel I wanted right now. “Hell, I think I’m paler than you.”

  Vlad looked at his hand, which was somewhat tan. “It was not always so, but I venture out of doors a decent amount these days.” He held up his hand and smiled. “Still … if I had been locked away for a time, our skin tones might be very much the same, I think.” The limo pulled to a stop. “Ah. It is time.”

  I looked out the window as Yvonne threw the door open and got out. We’d pulled up to the curb and were parked there, limo’s engine still idling. “This is where I’m doing my talkabout?” I asked, peering out. It looked like a business district, office buildings all around, a steady flow of people ebbing on the sidewalks.

  “If you wish,” Vlad said. “At the very least, it is a nice place to start.”

  “Fine,” I said and stepped out. I leaned back down. “But don’t think this is going to convince me you’re not a villain, no matter what some man on the street says.”

  Vlad’s eyes almost twinkled in the shade of the limo interior. “I wouldn’t think that the well-trained suspicion of Sienna Nealon would be dissolved in the course of minutes. We have had years of antipathy and misunderstandings from afar. This is but a first step in what I hope will build trust. Perhaps.”

  “You got a lot of steps ahead of you, then, bub,” I said, and he chuckled, nodding. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “We’ll be waiting,” Vlad said as I stood, losing sight of him.

  I started to shut the door but someone caught it. Sophie squeezed out of the limo to stand next to me, then closed the door, carefully, herself. “I didn’t ask for company,” I said.

  “You get it anyway,” she said. So cool. So calm. Those eyes like icebergs coming to capsize me.

  “Don’t cramp my style, Sigourney.” I turned to walk into the crowd. “Keep your distance, because I don’t need something slimy busting out of your chest and getting my prison jumpsuit all grimy.”

  I heard her sigh as I walked away, but I also heard her steps, following after me a few seconds later.

  This was going to be fun.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Hi, what’s your name?” I accosted a man in a suit not five steps away from Sophie. He looked to be middle-aged, and the suit wasn’t exactly high end. Middle management, at best, I figured. Maybe lower.

  He blinked at me in surprise. “Milosz. Say, aren’t you—” His English was accented heavily.

  “What gave it away? The prison jumpsuit?” I flaunted my outerwear. It was not a great look for a random street in Eastern Europe. Or anywhere, really. “Yeah, it’s me. I have questions for you.”

  “I would be happy to answer any questions of the great hero Sienna Nealon,” he said. There was a tone of awe in his voice.

  Wait … what?

  “What’d you call me?” I asked. Sophie eased up behind me, and I looked to make sure she wasn’t about to bushwhack me. She was just standing there, scanning the crowd flowing around us, returning steely looks when someone would shoot ones of curiosity at me. No threat there—for now.

  “You are a hero,” Milosz said, and now his dark eyes were lit. “We see your exploits on the news. You get, uh … what do Americans call it? A bad rap. Like us.” He nodded, smiling. “Glad to see you escape.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a joy dodging that trouble. Listen, uhm … that hero thing you said—you’re a … weird person here, right? Like a true contrarian? Bucking the tide?”

  His smile faded to blankness. “How do you mean?”

  “You’re the only one who thinks I’m a hero, right?” I asked, forcing a smile of my own to put him at ease.

  “Hey … this is Sienna Nealon, yes?” Another man came up to me, smiling pointing, speaking loud enough to be heard over the buzz of the crowd. A lot of heads turned. “Heyyyy!” He said, pointing at me. “Look! Look! Is Sienna Nealon!”

  Sophie sighed. “Now things are about to get interesting.”

  “I—what?” The crowd milled around me, coalescing. They weren’t flowing as a crowd normally does on a sidewalk, numerous people heading to their own destination.

  They were coagulating, like white blood cells around an infection. Which was me.

  “Sienna Nealon!” Someone shouted, pointing over the crowd. “Can I get autograph? Or selfie?”

  More sho
uts for autographs and selfies came.

  “Wow,” I said as Sophie was bumped gently against me by motion of the crowd. “I was in another crowd not too long ago, outside a courthouse in Minneapolis. They were not nearly so complimentary as this bunch.” Someone thrust a piece of paper and a pen at me, and I squiggled something approximating a signature and handed it back. Five more got pushed my way.

  “Please, please, my daughter is huuuuge fan—”

  “Love what you did in London that one time. I read the untold, secret story—”

  “Thank you for not letting Chicago be destroyed by asteroid. Have always wanted to see Sue the dinosaur.”

  “That … is an interesting reason to not want Chicago destroyed,” I said under my breath.

  “Get off me,” Sophie said behind me, pushing at someone who was all up in her business, “or you’ll regret it.”

  “You want to wait in the car?” I asked.

  “No,” Sophie said, elbowing someone else—more gently—out of the way. “Because if they get too close to you—”

  “Relax, I’m not draining any souls today,” I said, then looked back at the limo with a little significance. She caught it. “Maybe. The day is still young.”

  “Your threats would be funnier if I didn’t know you were so quick to commit violence,” she muttered. I barely heard over the crowd and didn’t have time to address it before I had to sign five more papers.

  “Seriously, this is the best reception I’ve gotten anywhere since the Gail Roth interview bullshit,” I said, handing back another piece of paper. “What’s up with this?”

  “The press here doesn’t paint you as an enemy,” Sophie said, shoving someone else back that was edging too close to either me or her. Couldn’t tell which. “And the people of Revelen have tasted enough neglect and spite from western news pointed in their direction that they don’t trust it anyway.”

  “Are you sure we’re not in the American heartland?” I asked, getting a blank stare in return. “Kidding. I guess almost everyone hates the American press.”

  “Probably because they’re self-important douchebags who spend more time whining about their status and giving each other awards to show how very, very vital they are than they do actually tracking down the truth and reporting on it.”

  “Plus, clickbait,” I said. “Nobody likes clickbait. You just feel dirty after clicking it, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know,” Sophie said, shoving someone else back. They didn’t seem to take umbrage, hooking around her and thrusting a pen and paper in my face.

  “I bet Vlad knows,” I said. “He seems pretty up on the world. You know, for an old, old—several more times old—guy.”

  “He likes the internet,” Sophie said, turning her back to wall me off from an aggressive woman and her young children. She snapped something in the native tongue, and the woman halted, keeping her distance as though Sophie had spit fire at her.

  “Here,” I said, and took the papers in the woman’s hands. They were napkins. I signed every one of them, and made sure there were enough for each kid, plus her. I handed them out individually, tried to make eye contact. Basically bucked my nature every step of the way. “Here you go,” I said gently. “Do you like it here in Revelen?” I asked her.

  “Is even better now that you are here,” she said, gazing starry-eyed at the napkin with my autograph. “Will you be staying long?”

  “Will you stay forever?” said a little dark-haired girl with a scarf over her head, a little mop of hair sticking out the front. “Please?” That accent—so cute.

  “Forever’s a long time,” I said, realizing I was interacting with a child, not something that was uber comfortable for me. But my exposure to Eddie Vansen had made it … easier. A little. “But we’ll see.”

  A rough cheer rose up from the crowd.

  Sophie seized my hand and started to drag me away, but not too roughly. I could have broken away if I wanted to. “That’s all for today,” she announced, and the crowd mellowed a little as she pulled me to the limo and threw open the door.

  “Uh, thanks, guys,” I said, waving at them as we came to a stop at the door. They were all holding position, either too cowed or too polite to follow us right to the edge of the car. “I haven’t been welcomed like that in … a long time.”

  They burst into spontaneous applause, and it was kinda cool. I waved and got back in the limo, still waving as Sophie squeezed in behind me and shut the door. She wore a hell of an expression, and I couldn’t tell if it was because she was pissed at having to be my bodyguard, or if she was just irritable in general.

  Throwing herself back into her seat, folding her arms across her chest, she looked straight ahead at Yvonne, who mouthed, “What?” to her.

  “Nothing,” Sophie said, then turned to Vlad. “Can we go?”

  Vlad, for his part, was just sitting there with a cell phone in his hand, browsing the ’net. He looked up at me with those glossy blue eyes. “If she says it is okay …?”

  “Yeah, let’s roll on,” I said. My words were promptly followed by a faint rumble from my stomach. I hadn’t eaten in … days? Vlad rapped the divider, and off we went. I watched the crowd as we cruised to the next corner and turned. They stood there, just watching us go, as though someone important were in my car.

  Someone worthy of respect.

  Someone … worthy, period.

  It was a weird feeling, and though it could easily have been directed, unbeknownst to me, at Vlad …

  I thought … maybe … just maybe, against all odds, in defiant opposition to how the rest of the world saw me …

  … Here in tiny Revelen, thousands of miles from home …

  I actually was a hero.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Reed

  “My sister is a damned hero,” I said, stalking back and forth in front of June Randall. She was bound to a chair—at her request, cuffed tightly to it, and she’d just finished telling me a hell of a story.

  Light was streaming heavily through the windows, the full light of day flooding in from a high-risen sun, and I could see motes of dust floating in the sun rays. There was a tightness in my chest that hadn’t been there before I’d heard what Sienna had been through since I’d left her with cops in that quarry in Maple Grove.

  I never should have done what she wanted and given her over to the police.

  “Guilt is not going to do you any good right now,” Isabella said, sotto voce. Everyone heard her, anyhow. We were all metas.

  “It’s not your fault, Reed,” Scott Byerly said, easing up to me. “She chose—”

  “What?” I asked, wheeling on him. Scott didn’t flinch; he knew he wasn’t the real target of my rage. “She chose a show trial that lasted minutes? She chose to be accused of crap she didn’t actually do? She chose to start a prison riot—”

  “She actually did choose to do that,” June said. “That was totally her choice.”

  I froze mid-rant. “Okay. She didn’t choose the other stuff, though.”

  “Reed, we’re with you, okay?” Scott said. “No one is here who’s not on the Sienna train.”

  I looked around for opposition, then frowned. “Where’s Gravity?”

  “She left,” Friday said. “She wasn’t so much on the Sienna train. Said something about not wanting to be away from her kid anymore, or her friends, or her business. I think the Scotland thing kinda did her in.”

  I stood still, thinking. “I guess this whole thing … it’s asking a lot.”

  “Yeah, but those of us who are here,” Scott said, “we’re in. Don’t even worry about it.”

  “So who’s this doctor?” I asked, looking at Jamal. “And this prison guard, Owens? Do we have a line on either of them? Where are they taking her?”

  Jamal shrugged. “I was, uh … caught up in the story.”

  “Hey, Reed,” J.J. piped up from the corner. “I’ve done a little digging in the government files … personnel files for both look like f
akes, inserted into the system by someone with a little skill.”

  Jamal lifted his phone, and his eyes flitted back and forth, like he was reading blank air. “Whoa.”

  “Good whoa?” Augustus asked. “Or bad, like ‘woe is us’?”

  “How much longer is this meeting going to last?” Chase asked. “Ballpark? Because you guys woke us up, and I haven’t had a chance to pee yet.”

  I blinked. “Uh, just go.” Thought about it a sec. “To the bathroom, in case that wasn’t clear. Not … here.”

  She stared back at me. “I’m not Friday. The second part was just implied.”

  “You could be Friday, though,” Friday said. “Friday is just a mask. A symbol—”

  “Yes, a stupid, phallic symbol,” Veronika said. “Witness the rise of Dickheadman.”

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Friday said. “Phallic symbols are strong. That’s why we say, of people with courage, ‘they have balls.’”

  “Mmm, that’s not what I think of testicles,” Veronika said, almost giggling. “I think … ‘those look like a weak target’—”

  “Can we get back to ‘whoa’ or ‘woe’?” I asked, focusing in on Jamal. “You have something J.J. didn’t get?”

  “Just recognizing the signature on this personnel file hack,” Jamal said, coming out of his cybercoma and looking me in the eye. “An old friend did this—ArcheGrey1819.”

  “The same lady that landed you in jail in DC?” Angel asked, frowning. “Hell of a friend.”

  “She didn’t land us in jail,” Jamal said. “Just set us on the path to the clash. She actually helped us out of it.” He looked at me. “And she was trying to help us get to the Custis family. Tipped us to their existence.” He shot a look past me to Andy, who was just standing there by Eilish’s side, utterly sedate. “Which worked. We wouldn’t have the video if not for her.”

  “And now she’s helped orchestrate my sister’s escape,” I said. “Why?”

  “No idea,” Jamal said.

  “What do we know about her?” Veronika asked. “What’s her deal? Where’s she live? What’s her real name? Cuz ArcheGrey1819 sounds like teenage boy gaming in his parents’ basement.”