“Good for you.”
“You still teaching?”
“When I can. Substitute work always makes me feel like I'm a vulture waiting for one of the teachers to get sick.”
“Guess I never thought of it that way.” He chuckled and held open the door for her. As they entered, a wave of chatter and country music forced Tony to raise his voice. “You want a drink? I think I still owe you one for that calculus final you helped me pass.”
“No thanks. We're square, Tony.” she shouted with a smile. “I'm only here to pick up a friend who got stranded. Just make sure you get your uncle home safe.”
“Will do.”
She parted from him and began to scan the crowd. Heather was taller than Molly, but then so was nearly everyone in the bar, making Molly's search more difficult. Additionally, the blaring country music meant there was no way she'd hear Heather's voice in this crowd.
Think logically, she told herself. Heather owns a dress shop which sells some of the classiest garments you've ever seen. Obviously, a woman with that level of taste and sophistication…
She spotted Heather.
…would be dressed in a French maid's outfit which is primarily made from polyvinyl.
She shook her head in disbelief as she approached Heather on the dance floor.
“It's thirty-four degrees outside!” she shouted at her friend.
Heather noticed her and ditched her partner to hug Molly. “'It's warmer in here.”
“Tell me you have a coat.”
Heather shook her head with a smile.
Molly rolled her eyes. “Aren't you just a little old for this?”
“I'll be too old when I wear this outfit and still have to buy my own drinks.” For emphasis, she shook the small amount of liquid remaining in her bottle.
“How much have you had?”
“Second beer, and I had a shot when I first came in. I'm buzzed, but not blitzed, so you can stop worrying, Mom.”
Molly shook her head. “Not judging. Just trying to figure out which Heather I'm talking to. Drunk Heather is easier to distract with shiny objects.”
Heather swatted Molly on the arm. “I've seen you drunk too, Miss Molly.”
It was true, though, of the two of them, Molly was far less entertaining. Molly was more of a “two drinks and now it's time for sleep” kind of drunk.
“You about ready to head out?”
Heather looked at the clock suspended high in the rafters. The Cat had a nearly thirty foot ceiling in the main bar room.
“They're going to announce the costume contest winners in about five minutes. I might get second in the sexiest costume award.”
“Why second? You look hot.” Not especially tasteful, but hot.
“I do, yes. But Earl is judging this year.”
Molly gave Heather a blank stare.
“You don't follow gossip at all, do you?” Her friend tsked, nudging them toward a high table on the side wall. “Earl would very much like to date Sarah…” She pointed to the girl in the rhinestone cow-girl costume with the bare midriff and barely legal Daisy Dukes. “…who is conspicuously single and possibly amenable.” She pointed back to herself. “Whereas I have poured a pitcher of ice-water on Earl's pants earlier this year.”
Molly thought she remembered something about that. Heather had pulled the same move with a few other men in the town, and it was hard to keep the names straight.
“I wonder if the bar scene might not be working out for you.”
Heather sighed. “You might be right, but here in Capetown, it’s the only game in town.” Her eyes lit up. “And speaking of games, which of your fellows is ahead on points?”
Molly scowled. “I am not keeping score.”
Heather grinned mercilessly. “Sounds like there's not much scoring going on of any kind.”
“That…” Molly started to say 'is none of your business', but Heather was the only person in her life with whom she could dish about her two boyfriends, one Molly problem. She had spilled about the two men way too much to claim privileged information now. So instead she finished by saying “… wouldn't be fair to either of them.”
Heather bobbed her head in agreement. “No, I get that. You should definitely break it off with one of them before things get too serious with the other. But it's been a couple of months now. You need to pick which horse you're going to ride.”
Molly ignored the double entendre. “I don't know how to choose.” She really didn't. It was horribly unfair to Sean and Frank, but she had no way to pick between them. Sean was big and warm and lovable, and Frank was lithe and clever and charming. Each of them was all she could hope for, and neither of them was perfect.
“Flip a coin. Draw names out of a hat. Tell them to play Gin-Rummy for your hand. Sweetie, I think they'd both prefer that to sitting around until you…” Heather frowned. She regarded Molly with amazement as she said, “You're waiting them out, aren't you?”
“What?”
Heather's eyes opened wider. “And you don't even know you're doing it. You don't want to choose between them, so you're waiting around until one of them decides he's had enough and leaves you with the other one.”
“I'm not.” The denial was reflexive, but Molly wasn't sure she had a leg to stand on.
“Oh, sweetie.” Heather put a hand over Molly's. “You kind of are, and if you think about that, you've already made your choice, because we both know which of them—”
Heather didn't get to finish her thought. Suddenly, a shout pierced through the blare of the Alan Jackson song. “Get off her!” They turned in time to see a tall man in black boots – Heather might have known his name, but Molly certainly didn't – crash to the floor as another man, this one a redhead, ran forward and aimed a kick at the man on the ground.
Two men ran forward to stop the redhead. Three more were trying to stop those two men from interfering. A couple of punches went wild, and the next thing anyone knew, everyone on the dance floor was either throwing a punch or dodging one.
“Get down!” Molly shouted to Heather. They ducked under the limited cover the table offered just as a plastic pitcher of beer shattered against the wall behind them.
This was bad.
In another life, Molly had been a superhero. Her instincts were to take action. However, this was not something well suited to her talents. She could, she knew, ghost and walk safely through the bar and feel none the worse for it, but that wouldn't keep Heather safe. To save her friend, Molly had to stop the brawl, and there lay the problem. Stopping this fight would take a huge spectacle, something her powers weren't suited for in the least, even if using them in public wouldn't reveal her identity to the entire town.
Instead, she grabbed a chair and slid it in front of the two of them. It wasn't a perfect wall against the swinging fists and flying bottles, but it was all she had on hand. They might have remained in their incomplete cage hunkering against the storm of violence if not for one unfortunate truth:
Polyvinyl is not a fabric made to squat in.
Heather's dress, if it even qualified for the title, had a small inner pocket, but the strain on the fabric caused it to rupture, and Heather's phone slid off her leg and skittered a few feet across the floor. In a display of her utter lack of self-preservation, Heather dove for her phone.
Molly gasped, trying to assess which of the several threats heading Heather's way took precedence. It turned out to be Derron Adamson, all three hundred pounds of him. He was heading right toward Heather and looked like he'd stomp her flat without even noticing she was there.
Molly stood, thinking that throwing the chair at Derron's feet might slow him down, when she felt sudden change in air pressure. Above the din of the fray, she just barely registered a swooping sound. Suddenly, arms were around Heather's waist, and Molly's best friend was lifted up.
And up.
And up.
Heather screamed as she suddenly found herself twelve feet off the ground with no visible
means of support. That sound, perhaps because it came from above them, caught the crowd’s attention, and the violence ceased as all eyes looked up into the rafters.
The mask over the man's head was a simple ski mask of muted red. He wore a nylon jacket and pants of dark blue, like a jogger might wear while running in the rain. As he hovered over them, the cuffs of the pants fluttered in an unseen breeze.
Making a costume was not a talent everyone with super powers had. For a costume bought off the rack, Molly had seen worse.
“Everyone should…” he began in a confident baritone. It was obvious that he was trying to make his voice sound deeper. The effect was lost when he stumbled over what to say next. “Uh… Everybody calm down.” He cleared his throat. “Please,” he added as an afterthought.
Heather craned her neck up to get a look at him. Everyone in the bar heard her say, “Who are you?”
Molly couldn't help herself. A plea came unbidden to her mind for the new hero's sake. Don't be a lame codename. Don't be a lame codename. Don't be a lame codename.
“I am The Aerialist.”
Crap.
Slowly, he began to lower his altitude. He was still a good four feet off the ground, but he gently settled Heather onto her feet.
“Stay safe, miss,” he said. Heather blushed positively crimson. Without another word, he swooped over the heads of the crowd, touched the ground again to dash out the door, and took off again as soon as he hit the exit.
Molly put a hand on Heather's shoulder. “You all right?”
Heather turned to her, eyes wide enough to qualify as dinner plates. “That was amazing.”
Molly patted her friend congenially on the arm. She then turned around, snagging her phone from out of a pocket. She dialed the number and waited one half of one ring before he picked up.
“Frank, it's Molly. Get over to Capetown as soon as you can.” She exhaled in consternation. “We've got a flier.”
Chapter Two
Stomper had never heard the word subtle, and if he had, he probably couldn’t have spelled it. Driving away people you don’t like by punting a Pontiac Vibe at them is just not the kind of thing subtle people do.
“You all right?” Etherya said.
Hustle returned to her side. He had avoided the vehicular missile by dashing away at inhuman speeds. Etherya had simply let the car pass through her.
“All good,” he responded with a smile.
“Get out of my way!” roared Stomper.
“Does that strike you as the logical conclusion to this encounter?” Hustle said.
Etherya gave Hustle a side-eye. Her partner liked to irritate Stomper by using words with multiple syllables, but three in one sentence seemed excessive.
Stomper shook his head, not caring that he hadn’t understood them. “Shut up!” he retorted wittily. Then he bought his foot down with a thunderous crash.
While his hyperkinetic leg muscles were impressive, this was Stomper’s real power. Stomping on the ground set up a shockwave in the earth itself. What’s more, he could direct that shockwave in a line of force along the ground instead of the concentric circles dictated by physics.
As though someone was driving an invisible plow through the macadam at forty miles an hour, the ground tore itself apart in a line headed right for Hustle. The speedster expected the attack and was fifty feet away from the line in an eye blink. Etherya, however, had only managed to get a few steps away, and the bucking earth beneath her threw her to the ground. Ghosting wasn’t an option in a fall unless she wanted a sightseer’s tour of the center of the earth, so Etherya did her best to roll with it. She was on her feet a second later, but she had torn her costume and scraped both knees bloody.
“Ethee?” Hustle was checking if she was all right.
“Are we done with the antagonizing, yet?” she replied sourly.
Stomper thundered through the space between them, paying no mind to the now uneven ground. “You can’t stop me. Leave me alone.” Etherya could swear he was pouting.
In response, Hustle picked up a piece of loose asphalt a little bigger than his fist. He ran forward a few paces and let it fly. While Hustle had a decent throwing arm – he had been the starting pitcher on his high school team – it was the run which really added velocity to the gravel. It was like throwing a stone off of a train already moving at full speed.
The asphalt hit the side of Stomper’s head and shattered. Stomper bellowed in pain and anger, but his skin was tougher than a rhino’s hide, and it was unlikely that Hustle had really hurt him.
“KILL YOU!” Stomper dropped the pillowcase he held in his hand. It was the money he had just robbed from the bank. Instead, he held up his arms in a classic “throttle the life out of you” pose and pounded across the pavement toward Hustle.
Stomper had about as much chance of catching Hustle as he had of beating him in a chess match, but his train of thought, such as it was, was interrupted by a loud crack.
“Not another step, you oaf!”
Etherya blinked. There was another player on the board, and she had never seen him before.
The man was short for a superhero – not as short as she was, but they never were. He had obviously given considerable thought to his costume, and he cut a dashing figure. Brown was not a common color for a superhero’s uniform, but he had pulled it off rather charmingly. His boots and pants were deep chocolate-colored leather and tight like a toreador’s uniform. His blousy shirt was a slightly darker brown, but speckled with spots of a parchment color. A cape of the same fabric was attached at the back of his shirt and under each wrist, giving the impression that the man had wings. His look was completed by a brown mask tied behind his head which gave off a piratical vibe.
Most of all, however, the man stood out because he was hovering fifteen feet in the air and holding a bullwhip in each hand.
“Stand down, Stomper. This doesn’t have to get violent.”
Hustle and Stomper both stared at the newcomer, wondering what he thought had been going on the past few minutes. Etherya furrowed her brow. There was something about the speckles on the man’s costume that was familiar.
“Who the hell are you?” said Stomper, obviously not impressed.
Etherya stared just a little harder. It was something from her days at Girl Scout camp. Maybe identifying certain kinds of birds?
“I am Whipper Will!” To prove his point, he flourished the whips in a series of cracks that echoed off the sides of the skyscrapers.
To her credit, Etherya didn’t wince. Between that codename, the whips, and the tight leather pants, the man had just doomed himself to an eternal presence on fetish websites. He was, however, making an excellent distraction of himself. She took a few steps closer to Stomper, careful not to get in his line of sight.
Stomper’s reaction was less dignified. He brayed like a donkey with a mocking laugh.
Hustle held up a hand to Whipper Will. “Appreciate the assist, pal, but we got this.” Etherya had heard lines like this before. Established capes were never sure of the level of competence of a newcomer and didn’t want to risk anyone getting hurt. However, since the newcomers were eager to prove themselves, the warnings never really worked.
They especially never worked if the villain was openly mocking the new hero’s codename.
Whipper Will dove toward Stomper. He struck out with one of the whips and managed to catch Stomper on the nose. Short of a hit to the eye, it was about as good a shot as he could have made. Whips are not weapons to use in serious melee, particularly against someone whose skin could stop most bullet rounds. The new hero wasn’t finished, though. As Stomper was distracted by the whiplash, Whipper Will pulled out of the dive in a brilliant U. He used the momentum of the change in direction to bring his legs around, and the tips of two steel toed boots caught Stomper in the cheekbones. Stomper staggered back a step.
Etherya was mildly impressed. The move was far more potent than she’d expected. His error, however, was that he
did not continue to rise after delivering the blow. Stomper, eyes closed, after two hits in the face, reached out blindly and managed to wrap one meaty hand around Whipper Will’s ankle.
With a yank, the big man brought Whipper Will down to earth with a sickening thud. The smaller man screamed, and Etherya thought his hip must now be dislocated. Stomper looked menacingly down at his fallen foe and ominously raised his foot up.
Hustle tore into Stomper with everything he had. He punched and kicked Stomper from every conceivable angle, landing well over a dozen blows in less than a second. The brute was thrown off balance, and so Whipper Will was spared from a killing blow.
Despite the torrent of super speed attacks, Stomper was far from down. Hustle’s body was tougher than the average man’s. It had to be to withstand the stress of running at hundreds of miles an hour. But trying to punch a target as hard as he could and as fast as he could would simply leave Hustle with fractured arm bones. Stomper had felt the blows, but no more than if Hustle had been wearing giant pillows on his fists.
Which, of course, was why Etherya had been sprinting up behind Stomper. He never noticed her until she had leapt into the air and landed on his back. He bucked like a bronco, but she managed to hold on.
The advantage was hers. Stomper’s heavily muscled arms made it exceedingly difficult for him to reach behind himself. He struggled to do so anyhow, but Hustle took advantage of the moment to deliver twenty or so attacks to Stomper’s unprotected stomach. The gut was a softer target, and Hustle managed to knock the wind out of the ogre.
It was more of an opening than she expected and twice what she needed. Etherya tightened her legs around Stomper, reached up with both hands, and boxed his ears.
Punching someone in both ears at once could stun them and momentarily disrupt their sense of balance. Etherya, however, went a step further. She allowed herself to ghost through an inch or two of Stomper’s head. Effectively, she punched him in both of his inner ears at once. It was not a move she would ever use on anyone other than a resilient troll like Stomper. It stood a reasonable chance of being too close to the brain and could kill a man if she wasn’t precise and careful.
Ex-Cape | Book 2 | Ex-Cape From A Small Town Page 2