by Dunne, Lexie
“You don’t know who Chelsea—or I should say Brook—is, do you?” Jeremy asked, breathing hard as he kept me from plummeting headfirst down a flight of concrete steps. “Guy knows her.”
“Honestly, Jeremy, I think you know more about him than I do,” I said.
“You’re the one dating him!”
“Yeah, and we were just starting to figure things out before I went to prison.”
“Well, she’s got to be somebody from his past, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“I bet you anything she’s an ex-girlfriend. Nobody else could be that pissed.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Present company excluded,” he said, and I rolled my eyes at him.
Maybe he had a point, though. Chelsea had been furious. But an ex? She’d barely paid much attention to Guy at the mall, so Brook or Chelsea or whoever the hell she was, she must be Sam’s ex. But why hadn’t they known who she was right away? It seemed like a superpowered ex-girlfriend should be at the top of your list of possible suspects. Maybe we were wrong.
Jeremy and I hit the bottom level and ran through the crowds on the first floor. We made for a bedraggled and dirty sight, covered in the debris from the fight. Outside, the three fighters hadn’t flown away. They were all suspended in the air above the building, Guy and Vicki working together to try and draw Chelsea’s fire. I could see tactics Angélica had described, ones commonly used to try and pull the villain away from the civilians on the ground pointing their phone cameras at the sky. Chelsea, though, was having none of that. She flew at Guy repeatedly, trying to take him out with her rays. Occasionally, she batted at Vicki the way one might an irritating fly.
“Why is nobody running?” Jeremy asked. To prove his point, a bolt of Vicki’s fire splashed hot flame on the statue of the globe on the corner. People shrieked and dodged out of the way, but nobody left. “Don’t they realize they’re in the blast radius?”
“They won’t run unless Chelsea starts attacking them outright.” A lot of them looked like they were sending updates to the Domino, the website that served as an unofficial authority on all superhero gossip. “It’s a little depressing, actually.”
Jeremy shielded his eyes to look up. I did the same, even though it made me stumble backward. “I don’t know how you guys do it,” he said. “I don’t—Vi—”
I elbowed him before he could accidentally reveal Plain Jane’s alter ego in public. Both of us watched in horror as Chelsea hit Vicki with yet another blast, and our friend flew backward. She crashed into an upper level of the parking garage across the street.
She didn’t emerge.
“Shit, she’s not getting up.” Jeremy raced for the entrance to the garage, dodging back with a yelp when Chelsea’s sting ray cut across his path.
I didn’t move. Guy was fighting Chelsea on his own. He’d fought worse and more powerful enemies, but none of them had killed Angélica. My heart stayed in my throat. She swooped closer, and I frowned, squinting harder. What was that device in her hand? She wasn’t the type to fight with a weapon, but it looked like some kind of taser.
Guy flew at Chelsea again since she was only firing with one hand. He ducked under the beam she shot at him, darting in close, fist raised to deliver what I hoped was a knockout punch.
Chelsea stabbed him with the device in her hand, right in the shoulder. Guy burst into flames.
“No!”
The crowd let out shrieks of terror and awe as green flames engulfed the man they thought was War Hammer. The fire formed a perfectly round fireball so bright that it burned into my retinas. I couldn’t look away. My eyes watered, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. In the center of the fireball, Guy’s entire body went stiff, his head snapping back. I didn’t hear him scream, but I saw his mouth open as though he were in an unbearable amount of agony.
Chelsea raised her hand, open-palmed, in horrifying slow motion. She stuck it right into the fireball, planted it on Guy’s chest, and let loose the full force of her stinging rays.
“No!”
Guy’s scream didn’t even sound human. It was wrenched from him, like Angélica’s had been. He writhed, limbs convulsing. Chelsea jerked her hand back. The fireball abruptly blinked out of existence so that it was just Guy suspended in midair, shaking.
His head abruptly tipped forward, his body went still.
And he began to fall.
Just like that, I was running harder than I ever had before. I couldn’t get there in time. I knew that. But I had to. Guy was hurt. If he hit the concrete . . .
That was not going to happen.
I shoved a man out of the way and hurdled over a stroller. My legs pistoned. My breath scraped the insides of my throat raw. I pushed myself harder. I pushed off against the pavement, leaping as high as I could—
And somehow I was right there, colliding with him in midair. My momentum sent us both hurtling to the side rather than down. We seemed to fall forever, but I grabbed Guy, rolling to take the force of the landing as we hit the ground. We bounced a few times and finally stopped, rocks from the pavement digging into my back. I groaned, clutching hard to Guy. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.
This wasn’t happening. Not again.
“Gail!” Jeremy raced up and pulled Guy’s limp form off of me. I immediately scrambled to my knees.
The headache hit like a semi-truck.
One second, I’d been upright, and the next, I lay on the ground, and it felt like somebody had slammed my face into the concrete. Sharp spikes dug through my eye sockets. I gasped. From far away, like I was underwater, I heard Jeremy’s “Gail? Gail!”
I opened my eyes. The light only dug the spikes in harder, but Jeremy was right there next to me, crouched over Guy’s prone form. He wasn’t looking at Guy, though. He had his eyes on me and his lips were moving, but I could barely hear anything.
“Gail!” Suddenly his voice was crystal clear. “Gail, you’re bleeding—what the hell—”
Dazed, I wiped at my nose. My hand came away red, but I didn’t care. I reached for Guy’s mask, to pull it off and check to see if he was breathing. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be—
“Gail, no, don’t.”
“He’s hurt.” All of my strength had vanished. I tried to fight Jeremy anyway. “He’s hurt, can’t you see that, dammit—”
“You can’t unmask him in public! Gail, we have to run, she’s coming back—”
A scream cut through my determination. I looked up even though it felt like a hammer pounding directly into my skull. Chelsea hovered about twenty feet away, chin pointed down so she could look directly at me.
Every rational thought disappeared. I broke free of Jeremy, head throbbing, and ran at her. “You!”
She shot a blast of green and yellow at me. I batted it away as I sprinted. Chelsea had killed my friend and now she’d hurt Guy and it was enough. For an instant, I saw the whites of Chelsea’s eyes. I tackled her.
“What did you do?” I didn’t know what I was shouting, but words were coming out of my mouth. I punctuated them with my fists, hitting her over and over again as she writhed and tried to dodge on the ground underneath me. “What did you do to him? You sadistic bitch, he wasn’t even the one you wanted—”
Chelsea tried to hit me in the face with another blast. I knocked her hand away and headbutted her—big mistake. Pain rang like a klaxon through my head. For a second, there were two Chelseas in front of me. The left one grabbed me by the throat as I reeled.
She launched us both off the ground and hovered, dangling me by my throat. My vision started to darken, so I grabbed onto her wrist. Her face pushed in close to mine, her free hand held up just over my forehead so I saw the swirling green and yellow in the vortex in her palm again. I couldn’t speak, so I tried to struggle away. My f
eet kicked uselessly two feet above the pavement.
She moved her hand closer to my forehead.
“Kill me or drop me,” I managed to wheeze. “But quit playing games already.”
“You’re not scared of me,” Chelsea said.
The green-and-yellow sparks were starting to blind me a little, so I reached out irritably to bat her hand away. It tickled against my skin yet again. “Gee, what gave it away?”
“How is that not hurting you?” Chelsea asked, tilting her head. “How are you . . . you’re like me, aren’t you?”
“Wh—what are you talking about?” It was harder to breathe, but I kept kicking.
She only shook me. “Well?”
I wheezed something that wasn’t very complimentary to her ancestors. Looking annoyed rather than furious now, she shook me a little. When I dug my nails in harder, she didn’t even flinch—until a bolt of fire hit her in the face. It came so close to my face, I felt my skin go temporarily crispy.
Chelsea cursed and dropped me. I hit the pavement hard, skinning my elbow, and coughed. A second later, a black streak flew overhead, chasing after Chelsea’s retreating figure. Vicki, it appeared, had recovered enough to rejoin the fight.
I was going to have to talk to her about her aim later on.
“Gail!” Jeremy was suddenly standing over me. He had Guy draped over his shoulder. “We need to get out of here, like, right now. Can you walk?”
I coughed.
“Taking that as a maybe,” Jeremy said. He pulled me upright even though every little movement made me want to throw up. “Move.”
“I’ve got a car,” I managed to stay.
Jeremy grabbed my arm and started running. Every step jarred my entire system, and I felt something wet drip down my face. I put one foot in front of the other, focusing on that and not on the fact that Guy flopped limply over Jeremy’s shoulder, or that he had been on fire, or that Chelsea was getting away again. Every part of me was wrapped in trying to fight off the agony coating the inside of my skull with fire ants. When Jeremy asked a question, I answered, but as to what I said, I had no idea.
“Gail? What happened?” Naomi appeared as if by magic. The car, I realized. We’d reached Sam’s car.
Jeremy shoved me her way. “Hold this. Who are you?”
“Naomi Gunn. I work for the Domino, and Gail told me to wait here. Her friend took off and—” She gawked. “Is that War Hammer?”
“Later,” Jeremy said, opening the back door of the car. He shoved Guy inside.
“Who did that to him? Was it Chelsea?”
“Later.”
I ignored them and scrambled into the backseat, reaching for Guy’s mask. His eyes were shut, deep lines dug in around them under the mask, but he moaned. It hurt my heart to hear that much pain, but it also meant he was alive. I pulled off the helmet he wore over the mask.
“Sure you want to do that?” Jeremy asked as he climbed into the driver’s seat. He jerked his head at Naomi.
When it came to finding out if Guy was injured versus one reporter knowing his identity, I didn’t give a damn. “She owes me,” I said, and I peeled off Guy’s mask as Jeremy pulled into traffic.
What I found underneath made me gasp. I’d never seen Blaze bleed, ever, in all of the time we’d had together, but Guy’s face was covered in burns, irritated and raw. A cut on his temple bled sluggishly so that blood dripped into his hair. He groaned and shifted away from me, but he never opened his eyes.
I sucked air through my teeth and held his mask against the wound. It wasn’t the best solution, but it was the only thing I had. “He’s bleeding!” I told Jeremy, risking a dizzy spell to look over at him. “We need a doctor or a hospital right now.”
“I can take him back to Davenport, but I need to get you somewhere safe.” Jeremy looked panicked as he twisted to glance at both of us. “And he’s not the only one bleeding.”
I hardly cared about some damn nosebleed, not when Guy was hurt so badly. He moaned again. “I don’t care,” I said. “He needs help.”
“Holy shit,” Naomi breathed.
“Davenport!” I said suddenly as an idea struck through the panic. “That’s it. We don’t need Davenport, we need a Davenport. Can you call Kiki?”
“Y-yeah, I have her number.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, his hand shaking. I shook Guy, trying to wake him up. His head lolled. I knew nothing about superhero physiology and even less about his, given that I didn’t know anything about his past. He had accelerated healing, but how fast did it work? And would it be enough? I’d never even seen him really get injured.
“Kiki?” Jeremy asked into the phone. “Oh, thank god you picked up. We’re in trouble. Are you hearing about Chicago? Chelsea’s back. Gail?” Jeremy asked, and I looked up. But he hadn’t been trying to get my attention, he’d been answering Kiki. He looked into the rearview mirror so that our eyes met, and evidently he came to a decision. “Yeah, she’s here with me. She’s almost as bad as he is.”
“I’m fine,” I said through gritted teeth, even though even I knew I wasn’t.
Naomi gave me a wary look.
“N-no, it’s a nosebleed,” Jeremy said. “She’s not bleeding out of her ears or any—what do you mean yet?”
“What?” I asked, looking away from Guy.
“You want me to go where?” Jeremy asked into the phone. “And no, I’m not getting rid of this, I just got it, and it’s a bitch to transfer everything over and—okay, fine, don’t yell at me. We’ll be there soon.”
And as I watched, one hand holding down the slowly reddening mask over Guy’s forehead, Jeremy hung up, opened the window, and tossed his phone out.
“God, she’s bossy. Everybody hold on.” He made an illegal U-turn into oncoming traffic and stomped the gas, throwing me back against the door. We missed hitting a Hummer by a very thin coat of paint. “Kiki gave me an address. She said not to go inside but that you would know what to do from there.”
“What are you talking about? What address?”
Jeremy listed it off.
“I have never been there in my life. What kind of game is she playing? We don’t have time for this. Guy is hurt!”
“I know, and I told her that.” He pressed harder on the gas. “I’m not seeing any other options, not unless we want to explain to all of Davenport why Guy’s in his brother’s outfit. Then you both end up in prison.”
“I really have missed a lot,” Naomi said to nobody in particular.
Guy’s bleeding had slowed to a trickle, but he didn’t open his eyes. Panic built up in my chest. Guy had never been injured. I was the one who’d always gotten hurt during our Blaze and Hostage Girl days. He’d always faced my injuries calmly.
I, on the other hand, wanted to jerk the steering wheel out of Jeremy’s hands and drive to the nearest hospital, prison be damned. Why couldn’t Kiki just tell us to show up somewhere so she could fix it? Why did we she have to be so cryptic?
“We’re here,” Jeremy said an eternity later. He’d pulled over to the curb in a fairly nice subdivision. Somewhere in the North Shore, I thought, but I couldn’t have said more than that. He looked at the expensive-looking split-level he’d parked in front of. “Should I go up and knock?”
A chill crawled down my spine. “Wait,” I said, looking around. Why did I feel strange? What was going on?
Jeremy twisted in the driver’s seat. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.” I climbed over Guy and stepped out of the car, shoving the sick feeling at the back of my throat down. I’d never had any reason to come to this neighborhood before, but everything felt familiar. I stepped off the curb and into the road and the flashback hit me.
Headlights, coming right at me.
A minivan.
“Holy shit,” I said. “I’ve been here before.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Naomi climbed out of the car as I looked around. Awareness prickled under my skin. I’d stood in this very spot once. I’d faced down headlights.
I’d woken up in an ambulance. Maybe. That part was unclear.
“What is going on?” Naomi said.
“Shh,” I said, craning my neck to look around. How did Kiki know about this place? Was this some kind of game? Instinct told me to head west, so I started walking. “This way.”
Jeremy and Naomi exchanged a look. “You stay with her. Make sure she doesn’t pass out, I’ll follow in the car,” he said.
Naomi fell into step next to me. “Any idea where we’re going?”
“Not sure yet.”
“You realize this is crazy, right? War Hammer is unconscious and bleeding in the back of the car, and we’re going for a walk?”
“I know.” Guy was hurt, and I was wasting time, but the farther I walked, the more sure I was that I was going in the right direction, that I’d walked this path before. Jeremy followed in the car as I pushed on, turning two corners and doubling back when a cul-de-sac confused me.
And finally, I knew it.
I’d found Mobius’s hideout. Kiki had somehow led me there.
I stood on the perfectly manicured lawn under the sweltering August sun and looked up at a cheery little bungalow house. There were cranberry-colored shutters on the window. The front door was painted royal blue. My memories of the escape were patchy. I remembered bursting through the garage doors in his car and—this was new, I hadn’t remembered this before—dark-clad figures with guns on the lawn. Shattering glass and Mobius’s prissy, cultured voice telling me to run. One last look at his hideous Halloween mask of a face as he’d shoved me out of the car.
Jeremy pulled over to the curb and climbed out of the car. “What is this place?”