Allied: A Superhero Reverse Harem Romance (The PTB Alliance Book 3)

by Katelyn Beckett

  Truth be told, it was even possible that it had affected my ability to Awaken earlier on. Everyone had assumed that I was nothing more than a Blitzer, so that was all that I had tried to be.

  I knew there would be time, if we survived, for that later on. It was something to discuss with my parents, with James, and maybe even Allison if she turned out to be on our side. Stranger things had certainly happened, especially recently.

  As Nate slipped through my fingers, I gave up trying to be a Psychic and simply decided I was one.

  Unfamiliar power flooded me, sinking into my consciousness. I wasn't entirely certain what to do with it, so I decided to work with what I had. I -wanted- to reach my lovers and our new associates. I needed to pull us out of the Dream.

  So that's what I did.

  The first step was dragging us together. Allison's control seemed much less certain when she had too many in the Dream in close quarters. Why? I had no idea. There was no training for what I was doing, as far as I knew, but I was doing it and that was what mattered the most to me.

  Bit by bit, I pulled the senses I had of the others in toward me. Adam appeared by my side, then Nishelle. Nate and Edwin came as a pair, tired and ruffled. I got all of the Thomaston crew at once and was tempted to leave Lexi and Izzy floating in the nothingness. They had been so much more trouble than they were worth this entire time, but it was only fair to help them, too.

  Izzy was easier than Lexi. I hadn't had much contact with Wreckless, but I knew Melody well. The image of her, blood pouring down her face as she screamed and blasted us to the ground? I twisted my memories of that agony, the confusion, the certainty of death together with who I knew her to be and yanked with all my ability.

  And Izzy showed up, confused and visibly upset. She looked up at me. "Lexi?"

  "I'm working on it, but she keeps slipping through my grasp," I said, panting.

  Sheer exhaustion threatened to win out. James reached out toward me and took my hand. "I can help with that, if you'll let me."

  "I don't know how to let you," I told him.

  He shook his head. "Just don't fight me when I touch your mind. We'll get through it together, fix it, get her here. Then we'll get out and Allison won't know what hit her."

  I liked the sound of that. Even so, my first reaction was to strike back when I felt a thrill of some icy touch in my mind. My fist tightened but I fought down the reaction to the bizarre invasion in my head. James nodded at me, something I felt more than I saw, and we both dragged Lexi into our little circle kicking and screaming.

  Of course, Izzy threw herself at Lexi and kissed her all over. I tried not to growl at them over it and mostly managed to succeed.

  The next part was a hell of a lot harder. We had to actually get out of the Dream and we hadn't managed it last time. Instead, my parents had come in and helped us through it. We were far beyond their help now.

  "Any ideas, James?" I asked.

  He looked around the interior of the void we inhabited and let go of me, folding his arms around himself. His shoe scuffed the floor we stood on, then he jabbed a nearby wall. All of it seemed relatively liquid to me, but the sound his shoe made implied otherwise. I frowned and tried to scuff mine.

  Nothing happened.

  Weird.

  "I think it's best if we try to shatter it like a mirror. There's so much with regard to Psychic powers that involve figuring out what to do rather than regarding what you can and can't do."

  "Isn't that one of Dad's rules?"

  He shrugged. "It's either your dad or mine. I don't know. But human minds are ill-equipped for it in any case. We're hard-bound to the ideas and relativities in pure physics. We don't really expand our minds beyond the ideas of the concrete which we can see and measure, not what we can come up with."

  "So if I just want this place to break and I decide it can-"

  James nodded and came back to clasp hands with me. "It can. Or it should. You may encounter some resistance, but just remember that you're stronger than her. And you can have it your way."

  "Like the old McDonald's commercials?" I cringed.

  His eyes rolled. "Burger King. And you say old like they weren't on your Saturday cartoons. Concentrate. I'll help you."

  Though he didn't say it, I assumed the implication that it was going to take us both. But if I assumed that, wouldn't it confirm it? God, Psychic bullshit made my head hurt. Give me a brick wall to smash down any day. Sure, it was neat to turn things into nothing because I decided that was how it was going to happen. But come on.

  Trying to think your way through something is a great deal harder than anyone realizes. Your first few seconds of concentration make or break it, and I was definitely making it. The Dream was a ball of energy, an illusion surrounding our minds and keeping us there. It wasn't actually a real place like I had assumed it was in the past.

  With James, I poked a hole in the fabric of the reality around us. I didn't have to take hands with everyone this time to keep control because I knew I could do it. In retrospect, that doesn't make a lick of sense. But when you're dealing with Psychic superpowers, little does.

  The Dream melted around us for the last time. There was some sensation that told me it was dead, gone, done. Even if Allison had wanted to rip us back into it in that moment, she couldn't have done so. I wrinkled my nose as I took over my own body once again and scrubbed at the back of my head. A faint headache kicked to life back there, but if that was the only real consequence of popping apart the Dream, I wasn't going to complain about it.

  "Everyone all right?" I asked.

  A murmured chorus of assent reached me. I helped those nearest me to their feet, working to get them started up again. Even if we'd beaten the Dream, Allison was still a problem.

  And so was Scribe.

  I stared up at the Alliance building and sighed. I'd already been in it once, and I shouldn't have done that. All I'd done was stir up more trouble for the rest of us and make it all the more difficult to deal with what lay within. I'd known it would be hard to get in and take Scribe down, but I had assumed it would be because of emotional reasons.

  Not because of the death traps he most certainly had laid for us now. Maybe he'd gone easy on me, but I somehow doubted it. It was more likely that I'd just caught him unaware and he hadn't had time to catch me on those lower flights of stairs.

  "We're really doing this?" Adam whispered to me as he drew even.

  The stiffness went out of my shoulders and they dropped. I shook my head. "It looks like it. What a fucked-up world."

  "Then let's get a move on before he gets a chance to send anything else at us. Allison must have been his thing. Maybe we all are."

  I shuddered at that. "We really have to talk about this whole we-were-all-dead-but-the-Kipas thing, Creed."

  "I don't think it's worth worrying about. Maybe we weren't really dead. You never know for certain unless a doctor calls it or you hear a person's heart stop beating. And plenty of stuff has zapped us from one awareness to another over the years."

  Sighing, I led the pack toward the parking garage right along with Adam. What a wonderful thought, getting zapped by aliens that our boss had made because he'd been some dumb, lonely kid. Another little shudder ran through me and I hoped we weren't infected with some kind of weird stuff that Scribe could manipulate.

  It was bad enough to face down a guy who could write you out of existence. It was worse if he could make you turn on your friends while he did it. Though, really, I guess he could do that with the stroke of a pen, too.

  With no pretense to sneak and skulk, I kicked down the fucking door and stomped up the first flight of stairs on my own. Nishelle and Adam caught up to me on the second. By the third, the group of us were at a run. I swung out over the railing when the electric crackled in front of me. Starseer caught Kharmia by her wrist and lifted the two of them up several floors.

  I'd wondered if there was something between them and that certainly seemed to cement it. Mor
e time to worry about that later, I told myself. Besides, it wasn't like I was some bleeding heart romantic. Was I?

  Throwing yourself into the midst of a fight that you can't win to try to spare your loved ones that same fight is kind of romantic, I guess. It’s also kind of stupid, if I'm honest about it.

  Thankfully, I'm not that honest with myself most of the time. Those of us who couldn't fly, or shouldn't, given their current condition, Adam, climbed the rails for a few stories. It was worrying work, though none of us were afraid of heights after years in the Alliance. Still, few people enjoy them and hanging off the edge of a handhold that can send you plummeting to your death isn't exactly comforting for anyone involved.

  We made our way to the safe landing and paused. There was a soft hissing sound just outside the door I'd smashed off its hinges.

  Kipas.

  One long, plated snout searched the interior of the door and it was too late to worry about whether we were prepared or not. It shrieked the alarm to its friends, recognizing our scent or simply knowing that we weren't Scribe. We thundered through the door frame as quickly as we could and found ourselves surrounded by hundreds of the damn things.

  Edwin cleared his throat. "I have no idea why I'm up here with any of you and it seems I've made a mistake."

  "Izzy, take Edwin back down to the support room and stand guard at the door," I ordered.

  She frowned at me. "I'm more use up here."

  "Don't make me repeat myself. You're more use where you can take care of the guy taking care of us," I snapped at her and gave the pair of them a shove. "Don't bother with the stairs. Just take the fall slowly with him. He breaks pretty easily."

  Isabella looked like she wanted to argue again, but she finally gave in and grabbed Edwin. Arms around him, they jumped over the side of the stairs and disappeared. Without our communication nodes, we wouldn't be able to hear them. But I hoped that, maybe, somehow, Izzy would be able to fix that. The woman controlled vibration. Surely there was a way to make the walls echo their voices or something and get important messages to us?

  I had to hope that it was enough.

  As it was, my little team spread out and waited for the Kipas to move first. They stared at us, all their weird little eyes blinking curiously. They weren't armed or armored, but they didn't need to be. They were tough enough for us as it was.

  "So, are you gonna stand there all day lookin' ugly? Or are you gonna do somethin?" Lexi snarled.

  That was enough. Like the street back in Thomaston, they came all at once in a swarm. I fought to keep my head above the flow of bodies long enough to feel my adrenaline kick up again as one ripped a hole in my leg. Another slashed through my t-shirt, cutting to the bone.

  Power rolled through me, screamed through my veins, and I was home.

  I sliced through the thick of them like a hot knife through butter, sending blue blood across every wall in the area and several of my team members. They weren't lovers or friends or relatives in the heat of battle, only those I needed to protect. A Kipa came for my throat and I snapped my hands together on either side of its head, smashing it inward. It went down in a pile, blood and brain seeping onto the floor from the hole that served it as an ear.

  Two more came at me as I spun, absolutely raging and on a bender I hadn't had access to in so long. I flew at them, launched myself into the air and came down on them with an overhead swing that decapitated one and crushed the other through a wall and into the abyss of the stairs below.

  Edwin and Izzy in my mind, I peeked over to make sure I hadn't thrown a Kipa on top of them but I saw no sign of the duo. Good.

  I went back to work on the endless horde of miserable not-alien alienoids and soon found myself back to back with Nishelle, who sent a wave of fire at a trio of Kipas that burnt them to a crisp and caught most of the building down that end of the hallway.

  "Really don't need the fire department here right now, Nishelle," I told her.

  She ignored me but clenched a fist, stopping the flames from spreading. In a moment, they died. Then we turned as a pair and unleashed hell on the rest of the Kipas in our way.

  It only ended when we reached those tall doors. We had to walk over the bodies and we were covered in filth. My heart fluttered in my chest but I ignored it. There was time to be dead when we'd taken down Scribe and, hopefully, sent him home to his daughter.

  I put my hand on one of the doors and pushed it open, my partners behind me.

  Chapter 18

  He sat at his desk, a book filled with nothing before him and a pen in his hand. It wasn't the special sort that Edwin had made for him for all those years, but I had no doubt it would do the job as intended.

  As we filed in, he didn't bother to look at us. That's something they don't show you in the movies; the heroes can never really burst through a doorway all at once. We're just too big to fit. Instead, you get something like filing into the cafeteria during your school lunch and it never looks as cool.

  "I don't want to do this to any of you. If you'd only fall in line, this wouldn't be an issue," he said, finally lifting his head to acknowledge us. "You don't stand a chance. You know that you don't. And I want all of you to survive this."

  The disappointment in his voice, the utter chagrin, was almost too much to bear. How many times had I heard it when I hadn't run far enough, jumped high enough, or fixed whatever issue he'd sent me out to work on? And how often had I heard it in my professional career? Only when I'd accidentally killed Nishelle, only during his testimony against me.

  Tears bit into the corners of my eyes and it sucked. I hated it so much that there weren't words for it. Scribe was our teacher, our boss, our friend.

  But we had to do what was right. Adam was the one with the voice. I let him take care of the talking, and he did. "With all due respect, boss, we want the same thing. But we're pretty certain that you don't. You've ruined the city and God only knows what you've done with our contemporaries. We can't let this continue."

  "You have new friends with you. Starseer, I thought you had more sense than to get tangled up in something like this," Scribe said, ignoring Adam.

  Chris rubbed the back of his head. "Worse things than bringing justice to get tangled up in, I suppose, Scribe. Hate to see you go down like this, but if it's got to be this way? Then it's got to be this way. They're trying to give you a chance to pull your head out of your ass, sir. If you won't do it, that's up to you."

  "You're all devoted to this cause, then? To bringing me down, killing me in my own office just because I enforced rule on the city? Because I brought order to it?"

  I swallowed. A tear rolled down my cheek but I managed to ignore it. "It only comes to death if you make it, sir. Please. Step down. Submit yourself to Logan's care and get whatever's gone wrong with you fixed up. There are places that could help you, ways to assist you. You know that."

  "Ah, my little murderer," he said, rising from his seat. "You come here and you speak to me about ethics, about things going wrong with me. You have no idea what games you're playing or what is at stake. You're nothing, Cassandra. None of you are; not without me. Maybe it's time I remind you of that."

  It is hard to imagine the sound of a pen clicking being so passionately terrifying. The little constant-flow ball tip shot out of the pen and I took off at a run, but he was already writing. A split second, just a hair too late, and everything was already lost. We were dead, we just didn't know it yet.

  I caught up against the desk just as he placed the period at the end of the sentence. Adam slammed next to me, lifted his head to stare at Scribe, drew back his fist, and vanished into thin air.

  "Adam?"

  I reached out and pawed the air he'd just inhabited. My brows came together and confusion swamped me. Where was he? Seconds ago, he'd been standing there. His fist had been in the air. He'd been ready to rock and roll all over Scribe's face and-

  My head swiveled back to Scribe, my heart sinking. Scribe smiled at me, pen touching the p
aper. "They'll say it was self-defense. A rogue superhero coming for the head of the office? Who would ever think of that? It's common enough. It will pass. And if you don't want to be next, Strikeout, you'll fall back in line."

  "Where is he?" My voice quivered. Had he sent him somewhere else? He had to have. He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't. Not when he'd invested so much time raising us.

  His eyes narrowed. "Gone."

  Something inside me snapped. And I think he saw it, too. What I'd experienced for most of my superhero life was a white-hot shot of adrenaline that cranked me up like a hit from any number of hard drugs; take your pick. I'd compared it to a truckload of coke when I was younger, but then I'd actually had coke and realized that was dreadfully wrong.

  It was more like getting hit with lightning.