Of course, she had also seen her mother. She was pretty sure her mother had seen her as well. She tried not to let that break her heart.
By the time the debate began, she decided she might simply be out of luck.
Nathan Stanton was the news anchor at the local television station. He stood on the lowest stage in the center and smiled blandly at the residents of Capetown. Molly could tell he was wishing for a hat in the cold weather. He was probably cursing the man who’d decided on an outdoor event in early November.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome you all tonight. This is going to be a town meeting style debate. That means the questions are going to come from your neighbors. We’ve already selected five people from the audience and helped them edit their questions for time.”
He gestured to the podiums on either side. “We’re giving each candidate ninety seconds for an opening statement, and then up to three minutes to respond to each question followed by one minute of rebuttal each.”
Molly doubted things would be so civil. She had seen debates before.
“Now, we’re going to ask everyone to keep things like applause or cat calls down to a minimum. You can applaud when each candidate comes out and then again when we’re done with the debate. We’re here to find out what your next senator has to say, and we want to give everyone a chance to make up their own minds based on those responses. Anything else, well, I’ve already talked to the cameramen, and we won’t be showing anything purposefully disruptive no matter how outlandish.”
Molly raised her eyebrow at Wulfric. He frowned and shook his head, indicating he too thought it was probably a lie to discourage publicity hounds.
“There’ll be a couple of breaks for commercials, of course, and…” Nathan looked up as though consulting a memorized checklist. “And, I believe that’s all I have to cover with you before we start. Thanks to all of you for your attention to this very important election.”
Molly’s gut twisted. Maybe it was standing next to The Hospitaller and watching over a potentially charged situation, but she could feel a tension building like it had in her days as a superhero. She knew better than to ignore her instincts. Something was coming.
The lights came on full force, and Nathan took the lower stage. The monitors behind him showed his familiar and confident face as he explained to those watching at home all the rules of the debate. She listened but focused her gaze on the surroundings. For the first time, she saw Sean as well. He was directly beside one of the monitors, and he was doing exactly what she was, scanning the crowd for threats.
When Nathan had finished, both candidates stepped out from behind monitors on either side of the stage. Tom Garman passed by Sean, while Matt Nelson passed by Beth’s brother, Hunter, who had taken up a position to mirror Sean’s.
Molly found herself zoning out from the actual debate during the candidate’s opening speeches. It wasn’t as if there was any doubt in her mind about who she’d be voting for. She couldn’t help but look, though, when the man with the first question for the candidates stepped up to the microphone.
He was built like a scarecrow. Even in his winter clothing, it was easy to see that the man was painfully thin. His arms were too long for the coat he was wearing, and a full two inches of skin showed from where his sleeves ended and his gloves began.
As the monitors zoomed in on him, he didn’t become any more appealing. The man’s face had character, and it was easy to see why such a distinctive looking man would have been chosen for the camera. There was a big difference, however, between distinctive and handsome. His features were too sharp, ears too big, and his eyebrows had the appearance of a bird’s nest. When he began to read his question, it was obvious that he was not a trained speaker. Molly had heard fourth graders with better reading skills.
“My name is Charlie Church. My brother is currently in the state penitentiary. He is one of many young men in those places who have no future. Everyone says the goal of prison is rehabilitation, but with overcrowding, prison fights, and drugs everywhere, that doesn’t happen. What will you do to help these forgotten citizens?”
Nathan Stanton looked up at Nelson. “District Attorney Nelson, you may answer first.”
“Thank you, Nathan. Now I was only appointed district attorney a few months ago, but I’ve been in criminal law for the last ten years. In my experience, almost everyone who is in prison is there for the right reasons. Now, I’m sorry for your brother, Mr. Church, but we need to remember while prisons offer opportunities for rehabilitation, we build them to serve as punishment and as deterrents. We can’t forget about victims’ rights in all of this.”
Matt Nelson continued in that vein, evidently hoping to be known as the candidate who was tough on crime. He seemed to be doing a decent job at it, as Molly watched the faces of the crowd. Some were skeptical. More than a few heads were nodding.
None of them looked like Charlie Church.
When the man’s face flashed briefly on the monitors, Molly gasped, as did most of the audience. He looked murderous. Both Sean and Hunter had taken a step closer to the candidates, and Molly could see why. The rage on his face was unmistakable. It had twisted his face into something uglier, something powerful, something…
… familiar.
“He’s changing.” Molly hadn’t spoken consciously, but both Wulfric and Fathi had followed her gaze the moment the words left her lips. Their eyes widened.
Charlie’s torso bloated. In a matter of seconds, he went from scarecrow to overstuffed sausage. His coat tore at the back, and he gained at least a foot and a half in height. Mass came from nowhere, filling out his arms, his thick waist, and most especially his legs. Though Charlie’s microphone had been cut, Molly clearly heard the leonine roar as Charlie bellowed, “YOU SHUT UP ABOUT MY BROTHER!!!”
Charlie Church was Stomper.
The Hospitaller turned to Fathi. “You’re faster than me. Go!”
Fathi nodded and took off at a sprint. The Hospitaller turned to Molly. “Etherya, I’ll need you to—”
“I can’t!”
There was an instant of incomprehension on his face. Molly closed her eyes against the shame. Her explanation came out as a series of sobs. “The VAA. I’m not allowed to—”
He cut her off gently. “Get the civilians to safety.” He grabbed a duffel bag from under one of the tables and pulled a chainmail hauberk from inside it. Years of practice let him don it in only a few seconds, and, after grabbing a mace and shield as well, he began wading through the crowd of panicking spectators. They parted in front of him like snow before a plow, and Molly noted the look of relief some of the men and women wore. There was a hero here. He would save them. That’s what heroes did.
Unless that hero is such a coward that she’d hide behind a contract she signed when people were in danger, that is.
Molly ignored her inner recriminations and assessed the scene. Stomper was climbing from the lower stage to the upper stage where Nelson had been standing. Hunter hadn’t hesitated and had put himself between the candidate and the super villain. Nelson was moving in the opposite direction as quickly as possible.
On the other side of the stage, Tom Garman had likewise made himself scarce. Sean was out on the stage, his weapon drawn, and he shouted something Molly couldn’t hear. Unfortunately, a pistol was no more threat to Stomper than it would be to a rhinoceros. Fathi was already out of sight, and The Hospitaller was still yards away from the action.
The crowd hadn’t exactly panicked. They were, however, making no delay about exiting the bleachers. In typical small-town aplomb, several people were helping elderly spectators or small children to the bottoms of the bleachers. Molly felt her mouth tighten in pride at her hometown, but it didn’t quite make it to a smile.
Because just at that moment, she remembered that her mother was in that crowd.
Molly grabbed the blanket she’d brought from her car. She tossed it over her head like a hood to shield her face, and ghosted. Betw
een her winter coat and the blanket, it was harder than she was used to. She started to sweat almost immediately with the strain of ghosting so much excess cloth, but she took no notice. She made a bee-line for the tent for Matt Nelson’s supporters, passing through bleachers, tents, and people alike. Secret identities and the VAA be damned. Her mother might be in danger.
She made it to the tent and threw her blanket to the ground, trusting in the chaos to keep her identity safe, but not really caring one way or another.
“Mom!” she shouted. There was a lot of screaming going on, and Molly didn’t have a terribly powerful voice. On the other hand, she had training in quieting a mob and a sheer motivation going for her. A dozen heads swung in her direction. A lot of women were used to answering to that title, but her heart leapt when she spotted her own mother.
She pushed her way toward Lydia and took her firmly by the arm. “We need to get out of here. Come on.”
She pulled her mother out of the tent. Sadly, Molly’s car was on the opposite side of the town square. A loud boom reached her ears, and Molly and her mother both looked to the stage. There was a huge dent in the upper stage on Nelson’s side. Molly did the reasoning and figured that Stomper had slammed his fist down on the stage. Both Hunter and Matt Nelson were on the ground, having lost their footing from the shock wave. Sean opened fire from the other side of the stage, but to no effect.
There was a rustle above her, and she looked up on instinct.
The Aerialist had arrived on the scene. A small stream of smoke followed the man as he sped past her. He tossed a small, smoking package onto the stage just as Stomper hefted his bulk onto the upper level. A sharp crack and even more smoke appeared at the brute’s feet. Suddenly it dawned on her. He had thrown a bag of firecrackers.
Of course it caused no damage, but the noise startled Stomper, and he lost his footing. He crashed back down onto the lower platform and let out another bellow of rage.
“I’m gonna ask you to stand down!”
The Aerialist had pulled out a small megaphone. Molly was impressed with that level of forethought. Perhaps he’d expected to have to argue with one or both of the candidates if he was called out in the debate.
“You’re not helping anybody, big guy, much less your brother. Just calm down, please.”
It was like trying to reason with a mid-tantrum toddler. Stomper rolled over and began to heft his bulk up.
“No, stay down!” The Aerialist gave up. “Damn it!”
He dropped the megaphone which hung from a cord at his side. What he pulled out caused Molly to once again pull her mother toward the far side of the square. He had unstrapped a hunting rifle from his shoulder and pointed it at Stomper.
The standoff lasted for just a moment, and then Molly’s world took another dive toward catastrophe. At the side of the collapsed stage, there was a figure struggling to move. Heather’s leg had been trapped when the stage gave way.
Molly dug her hand into her pocket and pulled out her keys. She jammed them into her mother’s hands roughly. “Get to my car. I parked it near where I dropped you off earlier. Go as fast as you can, and don’t stop.”
“Molly!” It was one part confusion, two parts rebuke.
“My friend is there.” Molly pointed. “I’m sorry, I have to help her.”
By the time she turned to the stage, two more players made their way to the field. At almost the same moment, The Hospitaller and Damselfly were in the fight. He had slogged his way through the crowds while she had appeared at her brother’s side and helped him to his feet. Realizing she could help him escape best if she kept Stomper away, she shrank to the size of a small cat and flew toward the brute.
Stomper took a sloppy swing at The Hospitaller. Nine hundred years of combat experience meant he wouldn’t go down from such a clumsy attack. The knight caught the blow on his shield and followed up with a shoulder check which knocked the troglodyte back two steps. Stomper, unaccustomed to being pushed around, looked surprised. He reached out and grabbed one of the microphone stands, no doubt he intended to use it as a weapon, but at that moment, a cat-sized missile struck him in the face. Damselfly turned in mid-air and flew in for another attack, distracting and frustrating Stomper more than she was actually hurting him.
The crowd immediately around the stage was mostly non-existent at this point. Molly had little difficulty making her way to Heather. She wasn’t alone, either. Sean had evidently spotted the woman and had made his way around to the other side of the stage.
“Molly, get out of here!”
She didn’t pay enough attention to him to even shoot him a scowl. She reached Heather in a mad dash and put her arms around her protectively.
“I’m okay.” Heather panted. “My leg doesn’t feel broken; I just can’t get it out.”
Sean took a look at the piece of scaffolding that had fallen over Heather’s leg. He grunted and met Molly’s eyes. “You pull, I’ll lift, and then both of you run.”
A small vindictive part of her realized that if she had run when he first told her, it wasn’t certain Heather could have gotten free. She silenced it. Sean was a cop, and his instinct was to get all non-cops away from dangerous situations. He had sworn to protect and to serve, and if he didn’t understand that she had more or less done the same thing, that really wasn’t his fault.
Sometimes Molly forgot the kind of raw physical strength Sean was capable of. His size notwithstanding, he had demonstrated a few feats of power just a bit beyond what he should have been capable of. This was not one of those times. She knew he did a lot of heavy lifting at his home gym, and thus he knew about leverage. He didn’t have to lift the whole stage, simply shift the weight off of the bar pinning down Heather. He exhaled steadily like a trained lifter would, and Molly found it easy to extricate Heather as the weight ceased to hold her friend down.
Before she could get Heather to her feet, three hundred pounds of crusader and chainmail went flying a full thirty yards out and collided with the now evacuated bleachers. The Hospitaller had apparently not been ready for one of Stomper’s directed kicks. The knight was amazingly resilient, so Molly didn’t think him in danger of death, but it wasn’t a blow he could simply shrug off.
Two things happened in the next instant. The first was that Heather screamed as The Hospitaller flew past them. The second was that a lone figure leapt down from one of the lighting towers a full thirty feet above the stage. Fathi’s double handed hammer fist might have stunned even Stomper. Unfortunately, the brute had taken a menacing step towards Heather’s scream, and Fathi struck only a glancing blow. Stomper struck out blindly at the new attacker and connected with a vicious backhand which caught the unbalanced Fathi right across the jaw.
Stomper was hardly distracted and took another step toward Heather, now screaming in raw terror. Molly pulled uselessly, trying to get her friend to her feet. Sean stood his ground, shielding them from the only foe Molly could think of who would dwarf him in sheer bulk.
Sean was not alone, though. Damselfly flashed in and out of Stomper’s path, darting and twisting and all around making a spectacle of herself. The Aerialist was suddenly there as well, hovering about eight feet in the air. His large bore rifle, which might possibly hurt the villain, was cocked and sighted right at Stomper’s face.
There was an instant of silence as most of the participants sucked in air. In that instant, a lone, angry voice seemed unnaturally amplified, mostly because no one had bothered to turn off his microphone.
“Can’t anyone stop that freak?!”
Molly glared in disbelief. In the first place, Matt Nelson should have hightailed it as far away as possible from the scene of destruction. In the second, he had just reminded Stomper who had made him so angry in the first place.
The huge man roared in challenge and took off after Matt Nelson. Hunter Baxter grabbed the district attorney by the back of the neck and hauled him backwards. Stomper ignored the stage, going more through it than over it.
&n
bsp; Damselfly, The Aerialist, and Fathi – holding his swollen jaw as he went – followed after him, trying to distract or stop the ogre. Molly watched Hunter drag Nelson into a trailer, probably the candidate’s dressing room. It was a tactical error and didn’t say much for Hunter’s strategic thinking.
“Molly,” Sean said, part warning, part pleading. She looked at him sadly for just a moment, then ghosted, following the capes as they trailed Stomper. As the giant man ripped the door fully off its hinges, he slowed for just a moment, pushing into the door-frame which barely allowed him passage.
Molly was twenty feet behind the three capes as they entered at his heels. In the time it took her to cover that distance, she heard several telling sounds.
A roar of pain.
Two thuds of impact.
Three gunshots.
She dashed into the room and froze, trying to absorb the scene.
Stomper was facedown on the floor as though he had simply toppled over. Blood ran out from his left ear, and more blood was flowing from his right shoulder, though she could tell at a glance that the latter was only a surface wound.
Fathi was pressed against the far wall, which had slightly buckled around him as though he’d been thrown into it at high speed. He was simultaneously cradling his jaw and the back of his head.
Damselfly was tending to her brother. Hunter, too, was unconscious, and blood dribbled from his mouth.
The Aerialist stood more or less in the center of the room. His eyes were wide, and he was shaking. A fine trail of smoke came out of the barrel of his rifle.
But the star of the show was certainly Matt Nelson. He lay on his back with two neat bullet holes in his forehead.
Chapter Eight
While Molly knew Sean had the capacity to move quietly, he also could move quickly, and the two were apparently mutually exclusive. She had plenty of time to step out of his way as he came barreling into the trailer, pistol still out and drawn.
Ex-Cape | Book 2 | Ex-Cape From A Small Town Page 10