‘Uh, I guess,’ Penny replied. ‘You and he…?’
‘He taught me a few wrestling moves, yes.’
‘Dom’s staying over tonight,’ June stated, rather enthusiastically. ‘She wants to discuss my modelling career… uh, and stuff.’
Penny raised an eyebrow as Red handed her a glass of wine. The Huntress was smirking. ‘And stuff,’ Penny said. ‘Right.’ The blonde ex-Russian did have a modelling career of her own. She had a hero career as well, though she mainly operated on a call-out basis. The emergency services knew that if they needed a super-strong Ultra, she was available, and a lot of her reputation came from rescue work. That and appearing on the cover of a number of popular men’s lifestyle magazines.
‘Yes,’ Red said, grinning, ‘stuff. Dom and I are all about the stuff. You’re welcome to stay as well. We won’t be using the spare room.’
~~~
Penny sat in front of a laptop Red had put in the spare room without comment before heading off to where June and Svetilo were still sitting in the lounge. Penny had not been sure why until the noises had started and she had realised that she was not going to be getting to sleep too soon.
She had not had a chance to do much more than glance at UltraNet since the business with Tonaldo. There had been no messages from Twilight, but now that she checked her inbox she saw that she did have messages. The system filtered external mail, mail sent by people who were not members, into a ‘Fan Mail’ folder which seemed a little broad. Penny made a note to see whether she could change the filtering rules and opened the folder.
It was something of a mixed bag. There were several messages which basically seemed to be asking whether she was single. A larger proportion were more basic fan messages, congratulating her on the apprehension of the bank robbers and usually stating that she was their new favourite hero. There were also a couple of messages which went into some length about how the author would like to entertain her. She stopped reading the second of those halfway through because between that and the noises from the lounge she was starting to wonder whether she should have taken Svetilo up on the obvious offer.
She flicked over to the alert channels. Some news would take her mind off the wriggling sensation between her legs. It worked when she got to a report from Oklahoma City about a bank robbery in which three people had been burned alive and seventeen more injured. Police had identified the perpetrator as Thermite.
12th October.
‘What happened?’ June said as she walked into the apartment and slumped onto the sofa beside Penny. ‘We missed you when we got up.’
‘And when was that? You look like you got about three hours’ sleep.’
‘Uh… two.’
‘Hey! Are those burn marks on your chest?!’ There was panic in Penny’s voice as she pushed her glasses up her nose to examine the blotches and trails of red skin, and June failed to notice only because she was blushing.
‘No! It’s… Well, not exactly burns. Red has these candles…’
‘Hot wax? You let her drop hot wax on your chest?’
‘I was tied to the bed at the time. Look, what I choose to do in bed with two dominant women is none of your concern, okay?’
Penny looked down. ‘Sorry… But is that lack of sleep talking or did you not really enjoy it and you’re covering?’
This time it was June who looked down. ‘We… went a little past my comfort zone. But Red saw it and slowed it down.’ The last was added a little too quickly.
‘Good. I mean, me and Bobby play with handcuffs sometimes, but…’
‘Well I don’t think that’ll happen again soon. Dom prefers blondes.’
‘Swell,’ Penny grumbled. ‘That makes me feel so much better.’
June looked at her and frowned. ‘Is it my lack of sleep, or did you not get much rest last night either?’
‘Thermite’s out,’ Penny replied flatly.
‘What?! He was in the Fortress. How…?’
‘Doesn’t really matter how. He killed nine people getting out of New Mexico, three more hitting a bank in Oklahoma City.’
‘Shit,’ June breathed. ‘You’re not thinking of going after him?’
‘Yeah, I thought about it, but I don’t know where he is and the UID is better equipped to try to track him.’ She turned to look into June’s eyes. ‘But if that bastard comes here, I’m going to take his head off.’
~~~
‘Thermite? I’ve heard of him, of course, but I never crossed paths with him.’ Bobby tightened his arm around Penny’s shoulders. She had been a little wilder than usual when she had turned up that afternoon, and now she was more subdued, snuggling against him like a lost child looking for warmth.
‘He’s a monster. Sadistic, likes pushing people around and hurting them. What he most likes is setting fire to things. He sets mundane fires. He was convicted of arson first. They didn’t even realise he was an Ultra until he broke out of the local prison. Killed twenty-five people that time. He can generate huge amounts of heat over a large area when he wants. He basically incinerated them.’
‘This does not explain your… rather personal interest in him.’
Penny was silent for a few seconds. Bobby knew enough not to push it. If she wanted to tell him, and he was sure she did, she would do so in her own time.
‘September sixteenth, twenty-oh-nine. I got a phone call from the Monmouth County Sheriff’s office. Thermite had tried to rob a bank the day before, in Red Bank. I was born there. Lived there until I was eighteen, and then I got a job here. I hadn’t seen my parents in two months and this guy was calling me to tell me that I was never going to see them again.’
Her voice broke up on the last word. Bobby pulled her tighter against him and she clung to him for a few seconds before relaxing. ‘I haven’t exactly got over it, y’know? But the pain’s duller now, when it comes. A hero caught him about two weeks after… Anyway, they put him in the Fortress, but he got out and he’s starting up where he left off.’
‘He may not come to this city,’ Bobby said. ‘Has he ever been here before?’
‘Not that I know of. He was caught in Newark. It’s just… If he comes here I’m going to find him. I have to.’
Bobby nodded. ‘Tomorrow we will practise your evasion techniques. Tonight we will take a light meal, because I think you are not especially hungry, and then we will test the limits of your tolerance for pleasure.’ She opened her mouth to say something and he placed a finger over her lips. ‘Tonight we will take your mind off this subject and you will sleep, safe, in my arms. Tomorrow we will worry about this incendiário bastardo.’
Penny looked up at him. ‘Okay,’ she mumbled around his finger.
15th October.
There had been no more news of Thermite on UltraNet or in the press, but there was another doodle in the corner of one of Mister Thorpe’s notes.
It took Penny a while to make any sense of it. Thorpe was not exactly an accomplished artist and his drawing style was cartoonish. He likely drew the little pictures in bits and pieces while making other notes; they had something of a stop-start feel about them.
She thought he had been drawing a ghost. The bed sheet sort rather than something like Casper. She finally decided that it was raising ghostly arms toward the viewer in what was meant to be a scary fashion, but just confused the image. But then, for some reason, he had added flames, or a flame-like, leafy motif, over the thing’s head. A burning ghost? It sounded kind of teenage, punk, rock ’n’ roll; flaming zombies with machine guns sprang to mind. Burning ghost, fire spirit, salamander…
Her head darted around at the first whisper and she quickly put the page down and pushed away from her desk. She was not having a repeat of the last note-scattering incident. But it was almost as if the voices knew she was ready for them and decided not to pester her if they could not scare her half to death. There were another few half-heard sounds and then nothing.
Frowning, Penny went back to work transcribing Thorpe’s n
otes. Another meeting in North Beach, another weird drawing. You had to wonder what was up with that.
~~~
‘You wanted to meet?’ Twilight asked as she stepped out from behind an air-conditioning duct. ‘You have something on Tonaldo?’
Penny shook her head, frowning a little. Twilight was sneaky, but Penny could see in the dark and the black-clad girl had still managed to sneak up on her. ‘I wanted to ask a favour. Sort of a favour.’
Twilight raised an eyebrow. ‘Go on.’
‘I don’t suppose you saw something on UltraNet about that bank robbery in Oklahoma City?’
‘Three dead. A recent escapee from the Fortress named Thermite was responsible.’
‘Yeah. I think he’s coming here and I want him.’
Brown eyes regarded her for a second. ‘You have reason to think he’s coming to New Millennium? I mean, he’s heading the right way, but he could go anywhere from Oklahoma. He’s into fire, maybe he’d like Florida.’
‘It’s a hunch. I’m not asking that you help me nail him, just keep your eyes and ears open. If you find anything, let me know.’
‘You really want this guy,’ Twilight said, more a statement than a question.
‘He…’ Penny stopped. Did she trust this girl with personal information? She knew next to nothing about her. Then again, trust had to start somewhere. ‘He killed my parents. I didn’t have powers when that happened. Now I do.’
‘All right.’ The reply came quickly, without a second’s thought. ‘If I hear anything, I’ll contact you, and I’ll help take him down if I can.’
‘You don’t need…’
‘I’ll help. You’re my partner and this is personal. Besides, the freak’s dangerous as Hell and if he comes here he could burn the city down. If you find him first, drop me a message.’ She gave Penny an appraising look and then said, ‘There’s a drug shipment coming in tomorrow night. Fancy taking out some frustration on some of Tonaldo’s people?’
Penny grinned. ‘Sounds like just the party I’d love to crash. Where and when?’
16th October.
The docks were pretty quiet. Nothing had come in or out for over an hour and the area around Pier Six was more or less deserted. Penny had seen a homeless person wandering past the perimeter fence. Pier Six was large, handling containers, and the staff had left hours ago.
‘Are you sure about this?’ she whispered to the woman lying beside her on the, rather cold, rooftop of the container building at the end of the pier.
‘My information’s good,’ Twilight replied. ‘They’ll be here.’
Almost on cue, there was the sound of engines and a large, black SUV pulled through the gates followed by a van. Both came to a stop near the water and a squad of six swarmed out of the car, all of them armed with sub-machine guns.
‘Okay, so that looks hopeful,’ Penny admitted. ‘Still no boat.’
Twilight lifted her binoculars from scanning the men on the ground and looked out into the bay. ‘There,’ she said. ‘It’s got a black hull. Some sort of powerboat.’
Penny looked out, her night vision easily picking up the slight wake from the slowly moving vessel and then the craft itself. ‘Got it. Do we have a plan?’
‘Normally I wait for them to load the van, knock the men out, and call the cops. But I’ve got you here so maybe we should just pick the van up and take it to the local station.’
‘I’m not that strong,’ Penny replied, and then noticed Twilight was grinning. ‘Okay, so same as usual, but you don’t have to do it alone?’
‘Pretty much. You go in and draw their fire, like before. I’ll hit them from behind. Pull them away from the van, and I’ll make sure it’s not going anywhere.’
‘And the boat?’
‘Not our main concern once the drugs are on land.’
Penny nodded. ‘I’ll need a minute to circle around. Say when.’
It took the men twenty minutes to lug the contents of the speedboat to the van and they looked nervous the whole time, as though they were expecting to be jumped by someone. Penny took off and looped back along the long building they were on as what looked like the last load was being carried up.
She swung around toward the rear of the van and came in at top speed, spreading her arms wide as she streaked in, low to the ground, and clotheslined two men carrying boxes before pulling upward into the sky. The gunmen were not even vaguely prepared for that and by the time they began firing she was a hundred yards away and their shots were wildly off target.
‘You guys really need a new line of work,’ she yelled as she looped up, let herself stall, and fell back into a power dive. The motion gave her a chance to look at the van. No one was paying attention to it or the dark figure at the rear punching out its tyres with her sword.
There was a roar of powerful engines from the water. Someone had got the bright idea that leaving the scene would be good for their health. Penny ignored it; Twilight was right, the drugs were the important thing. She swooped down, ignoring the sting of a bullet against her right shoulder, and slammed into one of the gunmen, carrying him half a dozen yards across the yard before dropping him against a container.
She pulled a tight turn in mid-air, just like on the obstacle course in Bobby’s house, and started back. She saw Twilight then, twin batons in hand, striking down one of the gunmen. One of the others heard his fellow’s gun hit the ground and started to turn, but the girl was like a predator on speed; one baton pushed the sub-gun aside while the second slammed into her victim’s solar plexus.
Penny swept through grabbing a man in each arm and flying them out and up over the water before dropping them. She knew that left one and hoped Twilight could take him without her help, because at the speed she was going it would take her a couple of valuable seconds to get back. She turned…
There was a cloud of smoke where she had last seen Twilight. The man was unloading his sub-machine gun into it in what Penny would classify as panicked fire. It was also useless since Twilight was standing behind him, her pose relaxed as she waited for him to empty his weapon. As the smoke cleared and he realised he was shooting at nothing, she stepped forward and smacked him across the back of the head with one of her batons. His gun clattered to the floor, followed by his body. Twilight turned him over as Penny flew down, and began going through his pockets.
‘What? We robbing them now?’ Penny asked.
‘I want a cell phone to call the cops,’ Twilight replied.
Penny’s eyebrows went up. ‘All those pouches on your belt and no cell phone?’
‘Yeah, but…’ She found what she was looking for and dialled 911. ‘Poetic justice. Yes, this is Twilight, registration MD-triple-zero-five-two. I’ve got a drug shipment and some thugs on the waterfront at Pier Six. The container yard… That’s right. Thanks.’ She dropped the phone onto the thug’s chest. ‘Happier with your share of the goons?’
‘Three each. I should check on the ones I dumped in the harbour, but how did you get behind that guy? I mean, the smoke I get, but you had to move like lightning to get behind him that fast.’
Twilight glanced at her. ‘Trade secret. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.’
‘Right.’ Turning, Penny flew off to pull the two men out of the water. Twilight had given no indication she had any actual powers, just skills. The smoke bomb made sense, but there was something more about her than a well-trained, sneaky gadget-user. The trust, it seemed, was not running quite that deep yet.
17th October.
Penny’s smartphone buzzed at her twenty minutes before home time. A message had come in for Cygnus. There was no content, but she knew it meant that UltraNet had flagged something for her attention. She had found the alert feature and used it to tag reports matching several different criteria. Knowing she had to wait until she got home to check was, however, annoying.
June picked up on it on the O. ‘What’s got you so impatient to be home?’ she asked. ‘You’re looking far more w
ired than usual.’
‘I got an alert through about something,’ Penny replied. ‘I won’t know what until we get there.’
‘You think it’s him?’
‘Maybe.’
It seemed to take far longer than usual to get home. Then Penny’s computer seemed to be taking its own sweet time booting up. By the time it had and she had loaded the UltraNet software, there were two items for her attention. She hit the news button first.
The report which her search had flagged was a hotel fire in Morgantown, West Virginia. Two people dead, one fireman injured trying to put the flames out. There was also one resident missing and his description matched that of Thermite.
‘Morgantown,’ June said, watching over her shoulder. ‘That’s definitely closer.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Penny replied. She clicked through to the private message box. There was something there from Twilight.
I assume you’ve seen the report from Morgantown. Looks like you were right about him heading for the big city lights. I’ll keep a lookout. T.
‘And it looks like your mysterious friend is going to help,’ June added.
‘She’s an odd one, but… It was kind of like she understood where I was coming from.’
‘Losing someone isn’t an uncommon reason for becoming a hero.’
‘That’s not really why I did.’
‘No, not exactly, but it has to be part of it.’
Penny closed down the program. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s part of it.’
18th October.
Andrea unclasped the scarf she was using as a skirt and let it drop to the floor. Her corset still did a reasonable job of covering her, but Lena’s eyes roved appreciatively up her long legs, past the narrowed waist to the up-thrust breasts.
‘That’s quite the outfit,’ Lena said, her voice throaty.
In truth, a lot of the money Andrea earned from these visits went on buying clothes to visit Lena in. The corset had cost a fair amount, but it did fit well and the effect it was having seemed to be worth it.
‘You said you wanted something… assertive,’ Andrea said. Bending down she pulled a riding crop from her bag and slapped it against her thigh. ‘So I’m being assertive. On your knees, bitch.’
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