This wasn't that. This? This was fire.
I screamed as I brought death down from above, aiming to smash him into the ground and the many floors below us. He dove to the side, catching his book but leaving the pen for me to crush. I assumed he had more and grabbed his desk, lifting it above my head and hurling it at him.
"You killed my boyfriend!" I shrieked.
The desk shattered against the wall. Nate and the others came after me, Nishelle torching half the room as we went. It was easier to pen him in if he didn't have so much room to work in. Nate's hands reached out for me, but I slid loose and slung myself after Scribe again.
I was lucky enough to catch him with a kick across the knee. The pop was audible, pleasant, the exact sound I needed to hear to reassure me that I'd hit exactly what I wanted to, where I wanted to. He pulled another pen from his pocket and I just couldn't get there in time.
In an instant, I found myself on the ground. A rip across my stomach opened me up, spilling loops of intestine through the hole. Agony tore through me and I sobbed, trying to keep from going into shock. Adam was as good as dead and I needed to keep my shit together to try to find some way to get him back. I had to. I just had to and there was nothing else that mattered in that second.
A bolt of Nishelle's fire tore across the front of the book and scorched the page I was on. It must have, because suddenly the rip in my abdomen was healing, faster than I'd ever healed before. It was like watching someone knit new skin across the wound, pulling that slippery rope back into me bit by bit.
When all of it was inside me, where it belonged, I sat up and ran my hand over the recently healed flesh. Then I turned my attention back to Scribe. "Everyone needs to get away from him right now!"
I didn't give them a chance to argue with me. They'd managed to angle Scribe so he was right next to a window. All the better. He clutched a pen in his fist, scribbling to beat all hell. Whatever he was doing, I was about to ruin him. I tore off across the room at the speed of light and grabbed him. The book fell from his hand and he stared down at me, opening his mouth to curse me or to beg; I didn't know which.
"Put him down, Cassie."
My head whipped back to stare at Melody as she approached me. No, Izzy. She was out of uniform, her eyes red from rubbing them. "Is what you said true?"
I didn't comprehend her at first. Nate chimed in for me. "He wrote Adam out of existence. We're trying to make him bring him back before we put an end to this."
The blow came out of nowhere, flattening me to the ground. Scribe fell from my grasp as Izzy came on, the tears falling freely down her cheeks. "You killed my brother?"
"It isn't death if he never existed. You've always been a good girl, Isabella. Don't ruin it for yourself," Scribe rasped, his hand coming in contact with his book once again.
Maybe if we could get hold of Adam's page, let Nishelle burn it, it would fix that problem, too? I didn't really understand the powers that Scribe controlled; at least, not how to undo them. He was pretty quiet about them, too. I tried to fight my way up but it was impossible. Izzy had me pinned and, upon looking around, I realized she had all of us pinned to the ground.
He was my boyfriend.
But Adam was her brother first.
"Do it, old man. Write me a story with a happy ending," Izzy growled, kicking his pen toward him.
Was she insane? I couldn't so much as speak. She wanted to have him go out thinking he'd have one over on her. It was a common thing with the cockier set of superheroes, and when I'd been younger I'd have done the same stupid thing. She could blow his brains right out of his head if she wanted to, but that wasn't what would satisfy her.
She didn't realize that there was still a chance to save Adam without Scribe writing him back into our world.
I tried to get the message to her, but the air would barely fill my lungs. I hissed at her twice, but she ignored me. Scribe snatched up his pen and scribbled, but only got a few words out. Izzy shattered both of his legs with a single whistle. He screamed, dropping both book and pen, and fell back against the window as she tilted her head at him and nudged the book closer. "What's the matter? You were busy. You were writing me a whole fucking novel."
"Isabella, please. You don't understand. It's the aliens. They're the villains, not me," he panted, the pain thick in his voice.
He deserved it. Blood needed to flow to pay for the things he'd done and it was his that would quench Izzy, would make me feel... somewhat better.
My gaze cast among the others and I saw no sign of Adam. My big, protective fly boy was gone, but he didn't have to be. He didn't. And Izzy had to know that. "Iz."
It was all I could get out. The word left me in a rush and it took every effort I had to drag in another breath. She looked toward me and I used every ounce of strength I had to point at the book. She reached for it, picked it up, and flipped through it. Something lit in her eyes and I knew she'd found the page we needed.
I was so busy paying attention to her that I'd lost track of Scribe. ...And so had she. He crept up behind her, a penknife in one hand. My eyes widened and I tried to warn her. She tore the page from the book and flung it into the flames just as he drove the knife into her thigh, straight into an artery, and tore it back out again.
The spout of blood was an impressive, horrific sight. She crumpled, the book still in her hands. Her powers released us but it took the extra few seconds to gather our wits and actually move. Nate flew to her side, ripping his belt off and trying to tourniquet the wound. Armed with a knife, moving slowly to put his back in line with the wall rather than the window, Scribe faced us down and sneered at us.
Lexi had been knocked ass over head into a wall and dazed at some point during the fight. She lifted her head to stare at the situation, at her girlfriend on the floor, at Nate trying to fix her and begging her to stay with us. At Adam, who had reappeared and lay flat on the ground next to where the desk had been before I'd pitched it.
There was a reason we'd named her Wreckless. It'd been a reminder to wreck less shit and cost the Alliance a little less cash.
That all went out the window in the space of a heartbeat.
She tore into battle and sent Scribe through a wall. He stabbed her repeatedly when she came on him again, but she didn't care. One wall, two walls, I watched as they shattered through the Alliance building and ran to catch her when I realized what was going to happen. He tried to rake words into his book with the blood on the knife, but Lexi was too much for him. They hit the outer wall and I grabbed her by the back of the shirt as he went tumbling down to the ground below.
Scribe's book landed on the floor beside us as I clung to the wall, hoping that I hadn't condemned Lexi and me to the same fate. "Don't fucking move. Don't. Don't try to pull yourself in. They'll come for us. They'll come and-"
There was a terrible sound beneath us. The wind swept his scream to our ears as a car crunched on the ground below. My fist tightened in Lexi's top as she balanced on the edge, arms tight by her sides as she tried to keep from ripping that weak cloth that kept us connected.
It was Adam that came to get us, picking me up and hauling Lexi back to the edge. She didn't waste any time. Over she went to Izzy, where Nate was still working on her. Adam followed her and I hesitated, not wanting to intrude. My head tipped back out the hole Lexi had created and I stared down at Scribe's body. He lay mashed firmly into the roof of the car we'd stolen.
When the hell had that gotten there?
I didn't know. I didn't want to know. It wasn't as if he would have survived such a fall if he'd landed on the concrete or the asphalt, anyway. But it felt as though... I don't know.
It felt justified.
It felt terrible.
Really, it just felt, and I didn't want to feel like that anymore.
I turned my back on my long-time mentor and went to find Nishelle, instead.
As it turned out, Nishelle had sustained a broken leg during the fight, though fuck if I could remember
when it'd happened. "You okay?"
"Just a little bit shattered at the moment," she said. "You figure out where Allison went?"
Ah. Fuck.
I will always be here in some form, Allison said, deep in my mind. But the ghost you saw is gone, exhausted from fighting you within the Dream.
"Yeah, I know exactly where she is," I sighed and looked up at James, who was busy trying to put my girlfriend's leg on some sort of splint. "When you have a minute or five?"
He nodded at me and I went to sit down in one of the many armchairs that hadn't torched and hadn't ended up thrown at someone during the whole fight. I wanted an entire buffet stuffed down my throat and twenty gallons of water to guzzle. Every part of me wanted to go to bed, lay there until I was unconscious, and rewind the whole set over again a couple of hundred times. When you exert yourself that much, you get hungry. You get tired. You get uncomfortable. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but I realized just how much worse it was now that I was older. And maybe that training job, teaching the next generation of Blitzers how to do what I did, didn't look so bad anymore.
...Maybe Mom was right and I needed to start sorting out my priorities for the future rather than in that moment.
A high, broken-hearted cry shattered the quiet, busy work. Nate hung his head and let Izzy slide to the ground, limp and pale. Lexi threw herself atop her, sobbing at the top of her lungs. For Adam's part, he just looked ashen. Exhausted, broken, and wanting nothing more than food and a long, hard sleep, I went over to my boyfriend and slid my arms around him.
He did the same to me. There were tears in his eyes but they didn't quite make it down to his chin. Instead, he swallowed twice, hard, and carefully moved me away from the scene. We went back to the chair where he pulled me onto his lap and held me. "Can you stand it if we just sit here for a little while?"
"I'll do whatever you need me to," I whispered, stroking his hair.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Nate drew Lexi into his arms. She buried her head against him but I didn't feel any flicker of jealousy. They'd been close for decades. Of course he would comfort her at such a time. Anyone would.
Adam tucked his head on top of mine and looked anywhere but where Nate was. It was always a possibility, especially during a fight. In some cases, it was just a matter of time.
But as far as I knew, the Reeds hadn't lost a superhero in the Alliance for a long, long time.
Neither had the Clarks.
I wasn't really the religious sort, but I heard Adam whispering a little prayer for his sister. When he finished, I kissed him on the forehead.
As far as I knew, there was no way to bring someone back from the dead.
But I wished there was.
Chapter 19
In the end, we lost everyone from Thomaston except my cousin and we’d lost Isabella from the Yarborough team. I suppose you should count Scribe, too, but I didn't know if he counted as one of us anymore.
I didn't think he did.
The total loss of life to civilians was incalculable. The superheroes that had been assigned to Yarborough were a mixed lot of dead, traumatized, and disappeared. In all honesty, we simply never found some of them. And others? ...Some we didn't look for. Those who were close to retirement or had expressed interest in changing their lives got off with it.
Usually, they'd have had to pay some little fee to get out of their contract. With everything up in the air, we let them go. And I just hoped that their bodies weren't left somewhere unpleasant; that they were actually alive and thriving somewhere else. We just didn't have the resources to hunt everyone down and try to sort them out, and it hurt to admit to that.
We planned a quiet, peaceful funeral for Isabella. Only a handful of her birds had survived what Scribe had done, but those that had were taken in by the rest of us. It was the least we could do for her. We moved into a house in the suburbs, adopted a couple of wayward cars that no longer had owners for whatever reason, and tried to settle in to a different life with too many choices.
The day of the funeral was nearly two weeks later. The funeral homes were so jam-packed with mourners that we had to wait our turn, but the morticians did excellent work with her. She was given full honors, placed in the Hall that we'd walked through when I returned from prison, and Adam was spared speaking for his dead sister. Nate and I sat on either of his sides during the dedication by Lexi, who broke down toward the end.
She came back to sit with us a little while later. We did what we could to comfort her, but there was little we could do. She thanked us for what we did, at least. Then sighed and looked up at us as the rest of the funeral went down. "I'm putting in for a transfer to Thomaston."
"You do what's right for you, Lexi," Nishelle said. "You can always come home if you want to. And we're always just one phone call away."
Lexi bowed her head at that and hid her face from the world as she cried for her dead lover, our dead friend. Because in those final moments, Izzy had given us the chance to save the one person who mattered the most to her. She'd given me back my boyfriend, and, after so many years of trying, finally saved her brother.
In the end, I didn't have anything to say to Isabella. We'd never been close, but I appreciated her. I understood her a little better, in death. And maybe I'd realized we weren't quite so different after all.
I did what I could for Adam, but he was mostly stony silence. He'd gone to pieces when he'd killed Allison, but this? He understood the death of his sister in the line of action. It hurt his heart, but it was something he could cope with.
Adam was going to be okay in the end.
The funeral buffet did nothing for any of us. We left without a single bite to eat, instead nodding to the other superheroes we recognized out of their suits and heading back to our place.
Lexi was gone the following day without saying goodbye to any of us. Edwin only mentioned that she'd been approved for transfer immediately and disappeared right after.
I sat on the window seat, a parakeet named Pip on my shoulder and watching the world go by. Absently, I stroked her tiny head with one of my fingers. She wiggled around after it, nibbling my cuticle. I let her. Of the birds, she was my favorite. She could get away with murder, as far as I was concerned.
Strangely enough, we never got an invitation to Scribe's funeral. But we did get an invitation to Emma's custody hearing. I couldn't go. The kid didn't deserve to see her father's murderers talking about how great she was. I didn't know if she knew or not and I didn't want to know. Somehow, the state had become aware that she was a Clark.
It was easy enough after that. My parents took her in, being the nearest Clarks available. If she had Psychic powers, or any other powers, I was certain I'd see her in the Alliance eventually. So, I hoped and prayed that they skipped her generation and that she would never have to deal with the decisions we'd had to make.
Adam brought the sole remaining cockatiel over to me and placed her on my shoulder. Then he sat down beside me and put his chin atop my head. "What do we do?"
"I've been thinking about that," I said quietly. "I think there's too many options. The Alliance will have us back if it's what we want; all of us. I got word from Logan about that today. Apparently he advocated for us."
"Of course he did."
I clucked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. "Yeah. That's my feeling on it, too. He's kind of a snake, but he's the type that'll bite you in the face. And that's better than what Scribe did to us."
"You have to be a little bit of an asshole to be a leader, I guess."
Edwin came in and sat down on a seat across from us, turning it so he could put his chest against the back of the chair. "Call me an asshole, then."
"What?" I asked, the cockatiel preening my hair.
"I said, call me an asshole."
Adam worked up a flicker of a smile. "You're an asshole."
"I just got off a call with Logan, too. They want someone without powers, someone who understands the way
the Alliance runs from the inside. It came down to me and Nate, but Nate's a shapeshifter and I'm-" Edwin shrugged. "-me."
The bird bit my neck. I reached out and gently pried her off, putting her in Adam's hands. "Are you going to take it? I mean, I'm sure they gave you an option to stay in your basement."
"Sort of. It was that, and never have another pay raise for the rest of my life, or take the reins here at Yarborough and see what I can do with the ruins of our superhero industry," Edwin said.
Of all the people I would have expected to be in the running, Edwin hadn't been one of them. On reflection of that, I'd actually been incredibly worried that they may come after me to lead. And though I can lead a riot on the streets or take care of what's going on in a battle, I couldn't imagine dealing with all the paperwork and the bullshit that went on behind the scenes.
Allied: A Superhero Reverse Harem Romance (The PTB Alliance Book 3) Page 17