I needed to kill Ian Nyx.
“Tess,” Reed hissed. “Are you okay?
“No, I’m not okay.” Flipping over onto my back so I could reach my feet, I gritted my teeth and pulled off my shoes, including the bloodied one. It hurt like hell, but Angie’s screams from the other room demolished my own need to cry out.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to get out of this damn cage,” I hissed back. “What are you doing?”
“Same. They seem pretty solid, but I think I can pick this lock with enough time.”
Time was something we didn’t have, not with Angie out there, alone with Ian Nyx. I heard the sound of metal clinking on metal coming from Reed’s cage, but tuned it out and concentrated on getting my socks off. Once my feet were free, I planted them on the crisscrossing bars that made up the back of my cage, gripped the grids at my sides, and sucked with all four of my limbs.
I pulled hard, focusing on dragging the cold metal bone-deep in my injured foot. I let my skin harden all the way up my thighs and from my fingertips to my shoulder blades. It was more than I’d ever attempted before, and it was agony.
As I’d feared, the blood in my left foot solidified. I couldn’t feel any sensation there at all. But the feeling, or lack thereof, didn’t spread any further than that. I tried not to wonder if it was doing something horrible and I just couldn’t feel it, and focused instead on hardening the skin across my body. Almost every inch, from my fingertips all the way up to my earlobes, turned to steel. I even let it creep across my forehead and my cheekbones like war paint, but left my eyes, mouth, and broken nose alone.
I was like a metal statue. My body exactly matched the cage that surrounded me. I attempted to flex, to bend my elbows, but I’d been immobilized by my new armor.
Time to take it down a notch.
First, I let my feet return to normal. My left foot felt like it’d fallen asleep, but it no longer hurt. I’d take the oncoming pins and needles over the pain of torn muscle tissue and tiny broken bones.
Next, I closed my eyes and pictured the little anatomy doll on my drafting table at home. While most of the miniature human figure was made of rough, wooden geometrical shapes, its joints were made of smooth, polished half-moons connected by metal pins. I imagined my own body was like that anatomy doll, except most of me was made of metal and my joints were made of regular, human flesh. I felt a slight warming sensation in my elbows, knees, and other bendy places. When I opened my eyes again, I could move. Not quickly, and not easily. I was too heavy, and I’d never realized how much my torso normally turned and shifted when I so much as crouched down or lifted my arms. But I was mobile. And I was protected.
I’d turned myself into a walking suit of armor.
From beyond the door, Angie’s screams grew louder. It had only taken me a few seconds to transform my body, but it already felt like way too long. Without even pausing for breath, I pulled back my arms and punched at the bars around me with all my might.
The cage exploded with a clang and a clatter. As I stood up and walked out onto the floor, testing my ability to walk without falling over in this heavier state, Ian burst back into the room. When he saw me, he clenched his jaw and his eyes flashed.
“Oh, you little bitch.” He drew his gun from the back of his pants. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but the game’s over now.”
He leveled his weapon at me, aiming straight for my chest. Only a few yards separated us, and I knew he wouldn’t miss.
Bang!
The shot rang out. But… I felt no pain. The bullet ricocheted off my chest, going wild and lodging in the wall behind Ian. He stared at me, his mouth hanging open in shock.
As for me? I grinned.
And then I charged.
I had no plan. None of Reed’s fancy fighting skills. I was just an angry, five-foot-five-inch, adrenaline-fueled tank barreling across the room at the scum-sucking lowlife who’d managed to hurt every single person I cared about in this world.
Ian Nyx didn’t stand a chance.
My metal fist connected with his face a millisecond before the rest of me slammed into him, knocking him backward. His gun went flying, and he landed in a heap a few feet in front of me. I leapt on top of him, straddled his prone body, and lost myself in the rhythm of my punches. I saw nothing. I heard nothing.
I was nothing.
At least, I wasn’t me. There was no Tess McBray. There was only Vengeance, pummeling Evil’s face into the cold stone floor.
I didn’t know if I would stop.
And it scared me that I didn’t know if I cared.
“Tess!”
A pair of strong hands gripped my shoulders from behind and yanked me off Ian. I blinked, and the room slowly came back into focus. To my left stood the row of cages, full of wide-eyed women who regarded me with as much fear as they’d shown the Nyx brothers. In front of me lay Ian, surrounded by blood and broken bits of concrete. His chest was moving. He was alive.
I stared at his face, surprised he had one to stare at after what I’d done to him. Shaking, I raised my hands. They weren’t metal anymore. None of me was. At some point, I’d lost the cold thread that kept my skin transformed.
I was me again.
The shaking spread from my hands to the rest of my body, and I stood there trembling and staring at Ian’s unconscious form on the ground. I could’ve killed him.
“Ian!” Jared’s voice echoed across the room.
My head jerked up, and I spotted him standing atop the catwalk. Our eyes met.
“I’ll kill you!” he screamed.
And then a black blur flew in front of me, darting up the stairs just as Jared drew his gun. Before the older man could get off a shot, Reed was on him. Jared’s ability to smell other powered people was nothing compared to the increased agility The Fox boasted; their scuffle lasted less than three seconds before Jared lay unconscious at the top of the stairs.
“Tess.” Reed jumped back down to me and pulled me into a tight hug. “Are you all right?”
Am I?
I didn’t know. I didn’t care about me. I only cared about…
“Bethany!” I pulled out of Reed’s arms and sprinted for her cage.
She still lay on the floor of the shallow space, her fine blonde hair matted to her forehead with sweat. I knelt down beside her and reached my fingers through the bars, barely managing to touch her forehead. She was still going—still fighting—but she looked so frail, so weak. It chilled me to my core. Were we too late?
“We need to call an ambulance.”
“On it,” Angie said from behind me. She’d come back into the room and was rifling through Ian’s pockets. She pulled out a cell phone and a set of keys, tossing the latter to Reed.
Reed unlocked the top door of Bethany’s cage and lifted it off. The front and back panels fell open, creating a little tunnel. I climbed half inside, cradled Bethany’s head in my lap, and cried until I heard the sirens in the distance.
Sunlight spilled through the wide windows of Bethany’s hospital room, covering her in warm light. She looked like she was posing for a recreation of one of those Renaissance paintings of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus, with a shining, golden halo surrounding her and a look of motherly bliss on her narrow face.
She smiled down at her newborn daughter, just back from getting all of the not-so-picture-perfect afterbirth muck washed off her tiny body, then grinned up at me with tired eyes.
“Isn’t she amazing?” she whispered.
I reached down and squeezed Bethany’s ankle, since her hands were otherwise engaged.
“She’s perfect.”
Bethany went back to staring at her baby in wonder, which is exactly what I imagined every other mother in the maternity ward was doing just then, and I decided to take advantage of the good lighting. I sat down in a surprisingly comfortable chair beside the window, pulled out my sketchpad, and started roughing out a portrait of my sister and my tiny niece,
Hope.
Prior to this, I’d always found it strange when people named their children after feelings. I thought it put an awful lot of pressure on the kid to turn out bright, happy, and bubbly. That, or to change their name to Raven when they hit their goth phase. But now… I got it.
It’d been eight months since the events at the warehouse. While I’d been sitting on the floor of Bethany’s cage, waiting for the ambulance to arrive, I wasn’t sure if she’d ever open her eyes again. Or if she’d ever get to meet her baby.
But despite her tiny frame, Bethany fought through. She spent a couple of weeks in the hospital regaining her strength, then moved in with me. I had a feeling that even if Bruce wasn’t currently in Weyland Penitentiary awaiting sentencing for his involvement in the Nightshade Brothers’ human trafficking operation, she still would’ve kicked him to the curb. Her baby gave her the courage to look out for herself and gave her hope that everything might work out okay in the end.
“Knock, knock,” came a singsong voice from the door.
It swung open, and Angie and Helena stepped into the room. Bethany’s eyes lit up when she saw them, and she held out a hand to Helena. After Bethany had moved into my apartment, Helena made it her personal mission to make sure Bethany got enough to eat and even threw her an enormous baby shower right in the restaurant.
Angie said Helena did it to thank me for helping rescue her, but from the way Helena took care of everyone in the Trident, I’m pretty sure she would’ve done all that anyway. But she did give me extra hash browns every time I came in and never charged me a dime for any of the meals I had in her place.
The three women now in this room were the only people who knew about my involvement in the rescue. As soon as Reed had finished cleaning up anywhere his or my blood had landed, we fled the scene. Angie and the rest of the women identified us to the authorities only as The Fox and The Butterfly.
Helena brought the tips of her fingers up to her mouth. “Ohh, Mama. She is a vision.”
“Would you like to hold her?” Bethany asked.
In answer, Helena leaned over the bed and picked up little Hope. I jumped out of my chair and offered it to her.
“Thank you, dear,” she said.
I picked up the new Nikon camera I’d given Bethany at the baby shower and took a few pictures of Helena holding Hope and of Angie perched on the windowsill. Bethany had started Hope’s first scrapbook the day she got the first ultrasound photos, and I knew she’d want to include pictures of her new “extended family.” After my stint as official photographer, I sat down on the bed next to Bethany. Helena cooed at Hope while Angie asked Bethany for all the gory details of the birth. A few minutes into a fiery recount of Bethany’s pre-epidural experience, my phone buzzed with a message from Reed.
“Gotta go.” I leaned over and kissed Bethany’s forehead.
“Be careful,” she called.
“Always.”
Leaving behind four of the most important girls in my life, I left to meet the two men who dominated my life these days. I took the Fishbone to Blackfin Street, where Reed’s truck was parked in its usual place overlooking the docks. I pulled open the heavy sliding door and found him sitting inside, scratching Bear behind the ears and looking at something on a tablet that Anatolya was holding.
“There she is.” Reed shifted over, making room for me to sit between the two men.
“Are we all set?” I asked.
Anatolya nodded. “Plane’s chartered. We have to be to the hanger in a little over an hour. We’re just killing time.”
On the tablet, they were watching a live stream of the nightly news. Jim Jenkins sat behind the news desk, his eyebrows high on his forehead.
“Hometown heroes or ticking time-bombs?” the aging newsman said. “We talk to local citizens about their thoughts on the vigilante presence in Weyland and the hundreds of powered individuals who are popping up across the globe.”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “Do we have to watch this?”
Anatolya laughed. “Nobody listens to this guy. The Fox Coalition is literally a hundred times bigger than it was in February, and money is pouring into our crowdfunding campaign. Trust me, Jim Jenkins is in the minority.”
I thought back to the crowd of people at the “Support The Fox” rally Angie and I had gone to. If Anatolya’s group had grown a hundredfold, the group of anti-Fox protesters had probably grown, too.
It worried me that Maggie Long and a handful of other Solstice Syndrome survivors were operating in the open. If someone really wanted to, they could find out where Maggie lived. Where her family lived.
So far, the only people targeted for having superpowers had been Reed and me. But the Nightshades hadn’t been after us because they hated us. How long before the old human habit of attacking someone just for being different kicked in, and super-powered people became the “other?”
Reed didn’t seem worried. He just switched off the tablet and shot me a smile. “Yep. So no sense watching him. You all packed?”
In answer, I started to lift up my shirt.
“Hey, whoa!” Anatolya covered his eyes. “Not in front of me, you guys.”
“Very funny,” I said. I wasn’t showing any skin. When I peeled off my t-shirt, the gray fabric of my costume shimmered in the light. Reed had custom-ordered it for me after the warehouse, and it covered me from head to toe in a tough but stretchy material. In keeping with my new moniker, I’d drawn stylized butterflies on the pants and sleeves. Around my waist, he’d created a belt that had dozens of different types of material embedded into it. Now I had whatever I needed, whenever I needed it. Stone. Steel. Even diamond.
One of these days, I hoped to have an excuse to use that last one.
“That’s it?” Reed teased. “Not going to show me the bottom half?”
I grinned at him, playing along. “You sure Anatolya won’t mind?”
“We can kick him out of the truck for a while.”
“That is it.” Anatolya threw up his hands in mock defeat. “I quit. You two lovebirds can run your own fan site and keep track of the money. I’ll go back to working security.”
“You’d miss us too much,” Reed told him.
“No way—you guys are the worst.” Anatolya cocked his head to one side. “I would miss Bear, though. I’ll admit it.”
“Oh, crap. We have to get him back to my place.”
Anatolya drove us through the city to my apartment, where we dropped off Bear. He couldn’t come where we were going. Then we headed to the airport, where a private plane was waiting to take us to Chicago. Maggie Long, the fireproof Solstice Syndrome survivor who was brave enough to let the world know her real identity, had called a meeting. It was going to be the first real-life assembly of people with superpowers, another thing I’d always thought was only possible in comic books.
I grinned as I stepped onto the tarmac. The world had changed. But I didn’t mind.
I’d gotten to change right along with it.
Acknowledgments
To all the superheroes in my life:
My husband Kelly, who has an inhumanly high tolerance for my nonsense and a telepathic ability to know exactly when I’m most in need of a hug and a peanut butter cup;
My brother Robert, who protected me when I was just a tiny nerd and continues to come to my rescue on a regular basis;
My parents, who made me everything that I am today and—despite facing incredible challenges of their own—never fail to make me feel loved;
My editor Kelley, who used her laser vision to see through the issues in my first draft and, as always, helped me make better choices;
My beta readers Brandy, Rachel, Sarah, and Shannon, all of whom deserve capes and wonderful toys;
And all my friends, family, and readers who supported me so much during and after the release of my last book that they emboldened me to do it all over again…
THANK YOU. I love you all.
About the Author
Caryn Larr
inaga is a Basque-American mystery, horror, and fantasy writer living in Utah with her husband and cats. Despite obtaining a degree in Anthropology (which is much cooler than you might think), she explored several career paths before deciding she had to follow her passion. Suddenly, writing fiction was the only thing that made sense.
Watching scary movies through split fingers terrified Caryn as a child and inspires her to write now. She lives in a 90-year-old house with a colorful history, and the creaking walls and narrow hallways send her running (never walking) up the stairs from her basement whenever she has no other choice but to go down there. Exploring her fears through writing makes Caryn feel a little bit less foolish for wanting a buddy to accompany her into the tool shed.
When her fingers aren't glued to her laptop keyboard, Caryn also enjoys binge-watching superhero television shows, reading, playing video games, and filling up her phone's flash memory with pictures of her cats. She loves music and plays the bass guitar.
Also by Caryn Larrinaga
Solstice Survivors (Book 1): Superhero Syndrome Page 21