Bull nodded. Jeepers, he was tall. And wide. Now that we were on the floor, he loomed. He still looked like he’d been hit by a train. At least he sounded cheerful about it all now. “Oh, yes. A lot of villains are too proud to listen, and they regret it every time. Every time.” A flat-toothed grin split his face. “Now, if this is your first time, you kids are going to love the petting zoo.”
I knew there couldn’t be a petting zoo. At least, I almost knew there couldn’t be a petting zoo. I still wanted to slap Bull when we got there, but I’d have only hurt my hand.
Where Bull actually took us was around the opposite side of the central building from where we’d seen him fighting. A man and a woman with black costumes covering every inch of skin had cages of varying sizes set out. They were selling animals. Exotic animals. Mutated, supervillainy type animals.
I had no intention of petting any of them, but Bull was right, it was great to wander between them. I didn’t even want to get too close to the cage holding two velociraptors. Their feathers were as brightly red and yellow and blue as any parrot’s, but their fangs, the massive claws on their back feet, and the intently hungry stares they gave me kept them from looking ridiculous.
Claire peered into a metal cat carrier perched on top of a giant armadillo’s cage, and let out a squeal. “Dragons! They have dragons! I want a dragon!”
“I want one of these,” Ray called back to her. He was feeding the last shred of his pork bun to a large weasel, half of whose body had been covered or replaced with shiny chrome cybernetics. It looked frighteningly intelligent when it bobbed its head in gratitude to him.
I unzipped my belt pouch, pulled out my unconscious Vera, and tossed the ball up in the air, then caught it again. As smugly as I could, I told them, “I’m happy with the pet I have. And that’s good, because we can’t afford any of these.”
“Yet,” Ray added. There he might have a point.
Staying bent to the side to peek at her dragon as long as possible, Claire wandered back over to me. When she surrendered and straightened up, she remarked, “I’m amazed they can sell these out in the open. This is exactly the kind of trade the superheroes would love to shut down.”
I’d noticed this already when we met the masterminds. Bull confirmed my thoughts. “Chinatown is off limits to heroes. They don’t come here, and the smart heroes keep the stupid heroes from butting in. If they tried to put down our weekends in Chinatown they’d start a war that would level downtown. No one wants that, and we keep things peaceful enough they’re never tempted.”
Ray abandoned his weasel to join us. Tugging on the brim of his hat, he put in his own two cents. “That’s very tidy for Spider, who lives here where no hero will ever come after her.”
That reminded me. I pulled out my smart phone. Maybe I should leave it at home in case it got damaged during supervillaining, but how else would I check the time? A press of a button, and it read nine-thirty. My heart tensed up a little, but only a little.
“It’s almost time. We’d better go looking for Spider.” I announced.
Bull shrugged. “Easy to do. She has entrances to her office all over Chinatown. I’ll take you to the one right inside.” So Lucyfar had been honest about that. She’d just deliberately taken us to the wrong entrance.
Bull crouched, and forearms like trees wrapped around me and Claire, hoisting us up onto his shoulders again. With Ray tagging along behind, he limped off around the building. Yes, the limp was back, and a puffy bruised ring matted with drying blood surrounded the eye next to me.
I would be poking a worse wound, but I had to ask. “Bull, why are you a supervillain?”
He didn’t answer for a couple of steps. When he did, he sounded more calm than I’d expected. “I could give you kids a sad song and dance about how nobody wants to hire you when you look like a monster, but the truth is I didn’t need much of an excuse to get into this life. I like to fight. I always have. A job as a supervillain let me trade punches with the toughest men and women on the planet.”
My voice cracked a little and my stomach turned over from guilt, but I kept poking. I liked him too much to let this go. “I don’t think you like it anymore.”
“Nobody likes to lose,” he answered, dismissive with a hint of sourness.
“That’s not what I mean.”
The shoulder I rode on heaved up and down as Bull sighed hugely. If he brushed this off, I wasn’t going to poke anymore. He didn’t brush it off. “You’re right, of course. Half the reason I keep losing fights these days is that I’m not into it like I used to be, not anymore. Yes, I’m sixty. I’m not as fast or as flexible anymore, but that’s not it. Used to be, when Dynamite knocked me on my backside I got right back up so he could hit me again. I don’t have that will to win now.” Sixty? There was gray in the brown fur, yes. It made sense. He’d been a big name before my parents’ time. He was old enough to have fought Evolution, even if only once.
“Have you considered retiring?” I asked quietly. Sixty. Sixty, and he wasn’t having fun anymore.
Bull slowed down, shook his head. Now he sounded sad. “Can’t afford to. The heroes would let me. I was smart enough to earn respect instead of enemies, at least. Doesn’t matter. I don’t have the money.”
That honestly surprised me. “You were on top for a long time. Even if things are bad now, I would have thought you’d made enough for a lifetime.”
He shook his head, trudging along tiredly through the crowd. That was uncomfortably symbolic right now. “For a smart girl like you, yes, it would have been enough. I always had more muscle than brains. It all ran through my fingers. Every penny I was smart enough to save went into my wife and daughter’s trust fund, and there’s nothing I’m more proud of in my life.”
Bull had a wife. I still didn’t want to fit that thought into my brain, but it was part of the conversation. Anyway, it made a sad sense. “Divorce in all but name, I guess?”
Bull surprised me. He shook his head vehemently, and a passionate growl came back to his voice. “Irene and I will love each other until the day we die. I won’t make Cat grow up with a supervillain as a father.”
My eyes started to sting. The twentieth century’s most famous bruiser wanted to fade into obscure poverty so his daughter could grow up in innocence. I hoped my career wasn’t that tragic.
Ray deliberately interrupted the moment. He grabbed Bull’s wrist and had enough strength even Bull had to notice. Looking right up into the hairy animal face, Ray told him, “I know what kind of parents a child regrets having. Your daughter would love to have you as her father.”
Bull stopped. We’d reached our destination, and he lifted me and Claire off his shoulders and set us down in front of a plain stairwell door with the usual tiny glass window. He set his hand on my head, and it covered my scalp and his fingers nearly obscured my vision. “Spider’s office is right down there. I’ll think about what you said. I’ve had this conversation a hundred times, but it’s different hearing it from a kid Cat’s age.”
Absolutely solemn, ramrod straight, and without a trace of his usually joking smile, Ray told Bull, “You would make her the happiest daughter in the world.”
Claire brushed at a lock of her bangs, sticking out from under the hood of her pajamas. In contrast to Ray’s seriousness, she gave Bull a warm, encouraging smile. “If she gets super powers of her own, she’ll need a father who can tell her what it’s like, and who will support her no matter what.”
Bull just stood there. I couldn’t read the expression on his bruised animal face. I grabbed hold of Claire and Ray’s shoulders, and gave a little tug. “Come on. We shouldn’t push. Thank you, Bull. It was an honor.”
To finish making the point, I turned away from Bull and pulled open the door to the stairwell. From inside, down the stairs and across from the door, Lucyfar tossed me my helmet. Ray caught the door, and I caught the helmet in both hands. Oh, yeah. I must have dropped it in the alley. I’d been busy.
“Can
I trade this for being friends again?” Lucyfar asked with a crooked grin.
I shook my head and couldn’t restrain a laugh. “Spider must really have some leverage on you.”
Everything rolled off Lucyfar’s back. She shrugged casually and honestly looked casual. “Well, that, and I figured you’d clean their clocks. Not sure you wouldn’t have anyway, but I didn’t think the Council would hire a homicidal freakshow like Jagged Bones.”
Behind me, Bull grunted. “Don’t worry about Bones. He’s on Mourning Dove’s list. He’s going to accidentally not survive a fight with her soon.”
And that was why nobody got personal. The thought made me shiver. Hero or villain, I wanted to stay far away from that side of the community.
Bull shut the door. I walked down the stairs. Claire and Ray skipped down the stairs, two at a time. Lucyfar slid down the railing. The stairs were tight and bent in a square, and the jolting stop-and-start ride couldn’t have been much fun. Lucyfar did it anyway.
The whole stairwell was businesslike cement, featurelessly gray, and as we reached the bottom I observed, “This looks like a parking garage staircase.”
Lucy hopped off of the railing, pulled open the door, and stood next to it like a butler. “It is. Welcome to the Spider’s parlor, kids. I’m rooting for you.”
It really was an underground parking garage. Me, Ray, and Claire shuffled out into it and looked around as the door swung slowly shut behind us. It didn’t look like an office or a home. It looked like a garage, a huge room with a high ceiling. Floor, ceiling, and lots of support columns were all made out of dull, gray cement. There weren’t any cars, but I could see a couple of sloping exits for them way down along the walls.
The very obvious difference from a regular garage was the mess. Tangled white cables stretched from support column to support column, tied into awkward knots with each other, and carpeted the ceiling. In the back they formed a crude globe. The whole mess looked exactly like a gigantic cobweb, which made the huge, shiny black shape hanging in it…
“Wow,” Ray breathed. He’d gotten there a half second before I had. Spider was a spider. A bulbous, gleaming, long-legged black widow the size of a rhinoceros hanging upside down on the near end of the web. As I watched she crept up to the edge, claws at the end of a foreleg pulling aside one of the silk cables.
Claire hadn’t gotten it until that moment. She screamed. Her shriek echoed through the garage, high-pitched and going on and on. Ray grabbed her, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing her to his chest so she couldn’t move. I wrapped my arms around both of them and hugged Claire close. The scream choked off, turning to gasping whimpers.
Its mouth didn’t move, but the pleasant businesswoman’s voice obviously came from Spider. “Miss E-Claire, I suggest you don’t look directly at me. Please provide her with the comfort she needs, Reviled and Bad Penny. This reaction is quite common, even in the most hardened criminals.”
Ray swiveled, and Claire turned her head further, until she looked straight back at the door of the stairwell. I felt her breathing get deeper, slower, more deliberate. I couldn’t blame her for the shock. We were within reach of those long, stilt-like legs, and Spider’s face was a jumble of folded fangs, fake-looking domed eyes, and twitching, miniature legs.
Ray had no trouble looking straight at her. He sounded sincerely warm as he answered Spider, “I would take my hat off for a lovely lady, but I hope you understand that my friend comes first.”
Claire’s head gave a little shake, and she whispered, “I’m fine. I’m just—I’m fine. As long as I don’t look at… her.”
Spider shrank back into her web a few feet. Perhaps she was being polite. Her forelegs folded up close to her face, such as it was. Hanging upside down, I could just barely see the blood red hourglass on the underside of her bulbous abdomen. Even watching carefully I couldn’t see anything move when she spoke. “Ah, young Ray—I’m sorry, Reviled—is an entomophile. I apologize to E-Claire. As fond as I am of surprises, I have nothing to do with my species being such a tightly kept secret. Tightly kept indeed, if it came as a surprise to a girl who has researched our community so thoroughly.” She sounded sincere, for all that counted.
It counted for nothing. I glared. Maybe I was trembling a little too, but holding Claire covered that perfectly. “You’ve made your point. You have plenty of blackmail material on us.”
“This is a very personal conversation, isn’t it?” Ray didn’t quite sound accusing, but he stressed the word “personal” enough to make his point.
Spider curled a back leg up over herself and began to nibble on the spines that lined it like a hacksaw. The process didn’t interfere with her voice at all. “I obey not only the letter, but the spirit of the rules, children. Unfortunately, those rules apply between heroes and villains. When dealing with other villains, we’re not quite as rigorous. No one is certain the rules apply to The Inscrutable Machine at all, and you’ve caused a great deal of confusion by not only daring to become supervillains, but by being good at it. Where there is confusion, I believe there is always opportunity.”
Between them, Claire’s cowering and Spider’s lecturing speech dissolved my anxiety in a warm, acid anger. “What do you want?” I snapped. Dumb, Penny, but what difference would rudeness make?
My rudeness didn’t bother Spider at all. At least, she kept nibbling on her leg and her voice remained pleasantly, jadedly urbane. “I want to end that confusion to our advantage. When The Inscrutable Machine breaks into Mech’s laboratory and destroys his armor and backup armor and steals his files, no one will doubt that you’re fully fledged supervillains.”
That was insane. I couldn’t even list the reasons that was crazy. I grabbed at the only ones I hoped Spider might care about. “Mech is at the superhero conference right now. Attacking his lab is off-limits. Even you wouldn’t break the rules like that.”
The back leg slid out of Spider’s fangs and fastened its claws around a silk line stuck to the ceiling. Spider’s mysterious voice remained implacable, crisp and gently condescending. “I never break the rules, children. Not ever. I wrote them in the first place and have gone to great lengths to enforce them. As we speak, heroes are arguing with my representative at the conference, refusing to accept that you are supervillains under my protection or that the rules apply to you. Performing this task should convince them that The Inscrutable Machine needs to be bound by all of the obligations and protections of regular supervillains.” Her middle legs, one pair at a time, unhooked from their weblines and grabbed new ones. I couldn’t read a spider’s display of emotions, but she did sound just a bit more smug as she finished, “Mech’s inconvenience will be highly useful to my plans, and a generous payment will be placed in your bank accounts.”
It sounded like a declaration that everyone wins. Except Mech, anyway. I couldn’t help but notice she’d planted another reference to knowing everything about us. It chilled me a little, but that rekindled my anger. “Protections like not being ambushed in a supposedly safe haven?” Yes, it galled me. Why were we the only ones who weren’t safe?
Spider waved a foreleg. That gesture was obvious, at least. It still looked strange upside down. “An excellent point. The Council of Seven and a Half would be well within their rights to issue such a warning, but only while you actively pursued supervillain business.”
“And if we refuse?” I demanded. Yes. Yes, I wanted to refuse. My gut burned to refuse. This was so obviously a trap. The task was beyond us, we hadn’t chosen to do it, and there were too many hidden snares even if we succeeded. We couldn’t possibly succeed.
Could we?
It didn’t matter. Spider reached a foreleg out and plucked the nearest rope of webbing to us, which successfully reminded me of how little choice we had. A stern touch crept into her voice as she warned, “I’m afraid I will have to insist. You girls may believe you can weather the storm of revelation thanks to your parents’ influence, but young Mr. Viles is not so fortunate.
”
I turned my head to look at Ray. He was trying to hide it, trying to keep his face calm, but from this close the mask-like stiffness gave him away. Spider was right. Ray never talked about his parents, ever. I knew mine would forgive me eventually, but Ray clearly didn’t have that shield.
Anger knotted my stomach. I didn’t want to give in here. I hated being railroaded, that Spider was threatening my friend to control me. I knew the job was wrapped up in a web of strings attached. How could we hope to break into Mech’s laboratory anyway? His security systems would include every brilliant, crazy device he and my father together could invent. Could we possibly get through that?
Mostly I hated having no choice. It ate at me, crawled up my spine. That didn’t matter, because we had no choice. I did the best I could and hedged. “We’ll think about it.”
Spider folded its forelegs again, her voice going back to pretending this was all completely friendly. “While you consider the pluses and minuses of my offer, I hope you’ll enjoy mixing with your fellows upstairs. It is my sincere hope and belief you’ll be joining us every weekend for a long time.”
Claire couldn’t take anymore. She broke out of my and Ray’s arms, yanked open the door to the stairwell, and ducked through and out of sight. There wasn’t anything else we could do, and the interview was over anyway. Ray and I followed.
e trudged up the cement stairs and out into the commotion of the open market, then all three of us collapsed against the wall. We took a deep breath together, and let it out. Bull and Lucyfar were nowhere in evidence, and, for that, I was grateful.
Me and Ray looked over at Claire. She noticed our stares and gave us a faint smile and a shake of her head. “I’m fine, really. I just wasn’t expecting something so ugly.” Her voice didn’t quiver anymore, so I had to believe her.
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