by A. E. Clarke
Positioning my hands back over the wound, I focused all my attention on it until I could smell flesh burning. I was worried, of course, but I figured it was probably a good thing, despite the unsettling odour.
I looked up to see how the fight was progressing and gasped when a well-thrown punch connected with Holly’s mouth. She went down quickly, globs of blood flying from her mouth as she fell. The guy moved in to attack her again, and my hands flew up to my mouth. Bleeding to death or not, I’d had enough. I was riding on not only the wave of anger at this asshole disrupting our lives and then kicking the shit out of us, but also the wave of adrenaline from the pain.
I had literally been training for this day—the day when I’d need to know self-defence in order to save myself or someone else—since I was about eight years old.
And hell, I had superpowers.
Time to be a superhero.
“Hey, jackass!” I called out as I advanced on him. I threw a punch with my weaker left hand, knowing he’d block it. As soon as his hands were out of the way, I struck out quickly with my right hand, punching him hard in the chest. He arched back, and I followed up with a kick. At this point, I had him backing up into the wall, where I planned to beat the shit out of him.
Let the cops sort out “excessive force,” especially considering I had been stabbed and Holly would be sitting there bleeding from the mouth. I could only hope Brent was just tied up upstairs.
I punched and kicked the guy as if he were a punching bag at the gym. Whether they connected made absolutely no difference to me. I was barely even registering when he struck back at me, blocking his attempts without even needing to think about it. At the optimum moment, I stopped and flexed my arms to my sides, letting my torso erupt in flames. It was safe to say my pyjamas were toast.
I could replace them.
I wanted to scare this guy so we could tie him up and call the cops. Okay, I wanted to do more—hell, part of me wanted to see him dead—but I was in control, and I was better than him.
I circled him, keeping close enough that he could feel the heat of my flames but not actually touching him. I was reflected in his wide, unbelieving eyes.
“How the hell…?”
“This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to lie down on the floor, hands behind your back. I’m going to kneel on you to keep you in place, and then my sister is going to go get the duct tape. We’re going to make sure your hands are nice and secure, and then we’re going to call the police. If you don’t do as I say—” I spread my arms wide, the flames billowing towards him. “—I’ll give you a nice, big hug and we’ll call it even.”
Holly laughed, and it took all I had not to join in. It was a ridiculous thing to say, but I couldn’t think about that right now.
“So? Which is it?” I took a half-step forward, and he immediately dropped to the floor.
Yeah, I thought so.
“Good choice.” I waited while he shuffled, presumably figuring out a comfortable position, then I knelt on his back, but I couldn’t secure him, so I extinguished the flames—on my arms only—and held him down.
“Can—can you put out the flames? How the hell do you do that, anyway?” I ignored the second question, but I could see tiny tendrils of smoke lifting from his shirt. I let all my flames die down, and he immediately struggled to get up, so I turned them back on. He stopped moving, clearly terrified.
“Don’t try anything, idiot,” I snarled. I’d thought that initial sight of seeing me engulfed in flames would be enough to shut him up and do what I said with no question, but obviously, I’d been wrong.
I shifted slightly so I could see Holly. “Go grab the duct tape.”
“You think that’ll be enough?”
“The combination of me sitting on him and his arms being encased in an entire roll of duct tape will be, yeah. At least until the cops get here.” I gestured to myself. “See? Superhero. You could have—”
“Don’t, Jesse!”
Oops. Wrong thing to say. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. But I don’t need you to tell me what I should have done from the start.” Hurt and annoyed, she left the room running her hand through her hair. I’d never seen her do that before, and it reminded me that Brent was upstairs.
I craned my neck and listened for some indication of life. If this guy…
A flare of pain radiated from my calf, almost as badly as when I’d initially been stabbed. I looked down, and his hand was clenched around the bandage, viciously squeezing the frayed nerve endings.
Putting my wound so close to his hand had been a bad idea. One moment of distraction, and he was back in control. I fell onto my side, screaming in pain.
The next minute or so was a blur of pain. I was protecting my face from his blows for the most part, but he was kicking me in the stomach, in the sides, in the head. My calf was still screaming, and I couldn’t do much of anything but scream along with it until I could figure out how to clamp down on the pain again.
Then, without warning, it stopped. The flurry of kicks ended, and there was a crackling through the air, coupled with a bright flash of light. As my attacker hit the floor, I grabbed at my leg again, focusing as much of my energy as possible into the wound to stop it hurting.
It wasn’t nearly as bad as earlier, but it still took until Holly had walked over to the man and checked for a pulse before I realized what had happened.
“You shocked him.”
She was breathing fast, her eyes wide and frantic.
“You—you stopped him! What’s…” I trailed off as my mind made the connection. There was only one thing that could make her react this way.
She opened her mouth, and in a quiet voice that was entirely too calm, she confirmed my suspicions.
“He’s dead, Jess.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Holly
I whipped my head around as I heard Jesse scream, dropped the roll of duct tape that I had managed to find in our kitchen’s junk drawer, and then ran into the living room. All I could see was the man, bleeding from his nose, wailing away on my younger brother. Or at least, he was kicking what I could only assume was Jesse, since I couldn’t see him over the couch.
It didn’t even take a heartbeat for me to decide. Jesse used his superpowers for good, and I’d be damned—possibly literally—if I couldn’t do the same. I reached my hand outwards, fingers splayed, and completely skipped the step of calling my energy to the surface, just letting it shoot out in whatever way it wanted to get from me to him.
It was like a lightning bolt, except it didn’t branch out and hit anything or anyone else, and I heard the resulting thunderclap, loud and final, and then he stopped moving and fell over, his eyes rolling into his head.
I swear my heart nearly stopped as well. I hadn’t meant to kill him, and it was possible he wasn’t dead, but I stood there, frozen, while he twitched on the ground, and Jesse—who I could see now—grabbed his leg, freshly bleeding, tears streaming from his eyes.
I walked over reasonably calmly, knowing that if I ran or let my stress show, I’d lose it. I put two fingers to his throat. Nothing. I tried his wrist: again, nothing. I lifted his eyelid. Nothing.
He’s dead.
I looked at Jesse. He said something, but all I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears.
Oh my God, I can’t use my powers without killing someone, can I?
“He’s dead, Jess.” Speaking it aloud made everything spill over. I started crying and even smiled, though I couldn’t figure out why. “I killed him.”
“You know what, though?” Jesse said, and his eyes were scarily hard. He didn’t seem like my little brother. “We’re going to get rid of his body. No one will know he was here—did you smell him? He definitely hasn’t showered in a while. We just need to get him to your car without anyone seeing us, which won’t be too difficult at three in the morning, and then we can go out to the ravine by the community centre. I can…” He swallowed. “I can probably burn
most of him away.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “You…you’ve put way too much thought into this.”
“No, I…” He put his hand on his forehead, his other hand still holding his wounded calf. “We can’t call the cops anymore. We killed him. That’s definitely still excessive force.”
“He stabbed you!”
“In the leg.”
“Still, it was—”
“It was also with your superpowers,” Jesse pointed out. “That’s not going to look good.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself.
“We need to get this done now, though. Especially if you’re still going to get to work.”
I looked over my shoulder. “Fuck, it’s almost four.”
“Yeah.”
“I can make it if I drive and you can get home okay on your own? I don’t know how long it’ll take to…uh, get rid of him.”
“Me, neither, but…yeah, I’ll figure something out. Either go the long way to keep the streetlights or walk through the ravine with—” The colour drained from his face. “Brent!”
He winced as he put weight on his injured leg. I held out my hand, and he pulled on it to help himself up.
“I can go get Brent, dude,” I offered. “Sit down and do the…healing thing on your wound.”
He rolled his eyes and put weight on his leg again, turning his head away to hide how much pain he was in.
“Nice try.” I pushed him, and his knee buckled. He landed on the chair and sighed.
“Fine. I’ll sit here and wait, but you’d better get him down here soon.”
Okay, now I know that you’re in pain. You would never agree to that.
I moved swiftly up the stairs to Jesse’s room and pushed open the door, sighing in relief when I saw that not only was Brent fully clothed—well, from the waist down, but that was really all that I cared about—but he was sitting up with his arms tied behind him and a tie around his mouth. He’d also been crying, with tear streaks down both cheeks, and he started again when he saw me, though I think they were tears of relief.
I undid the tie first and helped him remove the rolled-up sock from his mouth. He coughed, and I slapped him on the back a couple times.
“Where’s—” He stopped again to cough. “Where’s Jesse?”
I got to work on untying the knots around his wrists. “He’s okay, mostly. There was a pretty big fight that you missed. Jesse…”
I hesitated. I couldn’t decide whether I should tell him Jesse had been stabbed. With the amount of time it was taking me to undo this fucking knot, Jesse might have nothing more than a bad-ass scar on his leg when we made it downstairs.
“What? What happened to Jesse?”
“He kicked ass,” I said, finally finding the little bit of rope I could tug on to loosen the knot in its entirety.
“He’s okay, though?”
“Yeah, mostly. A couple cuts and bruises.” And, y’know, massive blood loss. “I…I kind of killed the guy, though.”
“You…” He hushed his voice, despite us being the only people in the room. “You killed him?”
I nodded solemnly.
“Good.”
I blinked. “Good?”
“He threatened to kill me, Holly. He grabbed at me a couple times, too.” He looked down, and I blushed. I felt a little better for hearing that—especially when I added to the equation that he’d tried to kill both Jesse and me.
“I’m glad you’re okay. We should get downstairs to Jesse or he’ll probably kill me.”
As soon as Brent’s arms were free, he turned around and hugged me tightly. I had no idea how to react, so I stood there awkwardly for a second while he squeezed, and then patted his back.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, and then with a surprising change of pace, he all but dived off the bed and ran out the door. I could hear him stomping down the stairs.
Jocks. I shook my head and sat on the edge of Jesse’s bed for a moment to gather my thoughts.
Okay, this day could have gone a lot better… I held my hand up and let the electricity play across it again.
But it could have gone a lot worse.
Figuring I’d given them enough time to get reacquainted, I went back downstairs and into the living room, where Jesse was showing Brent the scar on his calf.
Called it.
“Guys, we’ve got to move.”
“Where are we going?” Brent looked petrified.
“We need to go—”
“We’re dealing with the body,” Jesse said. “I need you there to help me get home, okay?” He reached for Brent’s hand, and with that one gentle squeeze, Brent nodded, no longer worried.
I wished Alex and I were that sure of ourselves…and wondered why we weren’t.
I need to call him after my shift again, every day. We used to be like this, and…maybe we can go back.
I smiled, and Jesse raised his eyebrow. “What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing. We should get going.” I pulled on my fall jacket, and Jesse and Brent stood up before Jesse pulled Brent into a tight hug, complete with a passionate kiss. It was kind of amusing: they were both topless and wearing loose pyjama pants—in Jesse’s case with half a leg missing.
“Okay, you guys have all morning once I’m gone, but we really do need to deal with…that.” I pointed at the body, and the mood soured. I felt bad doing it, but someone had to get things moving.
Brent and Jesse left to put on some clothes, and I sat for a moment. I couldn’t stop staring at the guy. I’d gone from feeling like shit because I’d killed him to worrying because I didn’t feel bad about it anymore.
I sighed. “Well, I guess I’m not Batman.”
“No, you actually have superpowers,” Jesse said behind me, and I turned around. They’d both pulled on black sweaters but were still wearing the pants they had on before. “You guys are ready to go? You know you’ll be walking home, right?”
“Dude, I can light myself on fire. I think I could probably go naked skiing and be fine.”
Brent coughed, and I laughed at the combination of mental image and reaction. “Okay, just…promise me I won’t be there?” I walked over to the body, and the three of us stood around, staring at it.
“So,” Brent said, hands on hips. “How’re we doing this?”
I shrugged. “No idea.”
“Well, we can either get him out to the car as quickly as possible, with all three of us lifting him,” Jesse said, brow furrowed, “or we can make it look like he’s drunk.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?” Brent asked. “What if we just left him on the side of the street or something? It might look like he collapsed.”
I shook my head and lifted his shirt: there was an obvious burn where I’d hit him.
“Oh.”
I let the shirt drop, then straightened again. “Can one of you go out to the car, maybe…” I dug in my pocket for the keys, then held them out. “Go into the passenger side door and rummage in the glove compartment, pretend you’re looking for something?”
“I’ll do it,” Jesse said. “I left my gum last time I was in there.” He grabbed the keys and walked out the door.
“Remember to actually look for people there!” I called after him. He waved his hand behind him as he walked, brushing me off.
“Okay, so if there’s any activity on our street at all—at all—we’ll pretend he’s drunk or something.”
Brent and I tapped our feet for the minute or so until Jesse came back. “I saw one car go by, but that was it,” he said, opening the pack of gum.
“Okay. Brent, you get that side, I’ll get this side. Jesse, just go back out to the car. Sling his hand over your shoulder—yeah, like that,” I said, and the two of us supported him as if he’d just passed out.
Luckily, he wasn’t too heavy. He wasn’t particularly light, either, but between us, we managed to get him out the door and down the couple steps without too much fuss. If anyone had been scrutinizing
us, it might have been obvious that his feet were dragging on the steps, but we kept walking until we reached the car, then sat him up in the back seat and put on his seat belt.
“Okay, we’re ready, I guess.”
“I’ll drive,” Jesse said, but I shook my head.
“Nah, I need to drive to work afterwards, and I don’t wanna have to adjust everything again.”
He shrugged and walked around to the passenger seat. Brent grimaced as he opened the back door.
“Sorry, dude. We got to deal with him while he was alive,” I said. I closed my door and waited until Brent was sitting down, trying to keep distance between him and the body. “You’ve gotta deal with him now that he’s dead.”
Jesse chuckled and shook his head, and we set off. We were only about five minutes from the ravine, and as I pulled into the long, winding driveway that would take us close to the river, I chuckled softly to myself.
“What?”
I looked over—Jesse happened to be looking at me. Whoops! “Nah, nothing.”
“Bull. What?”
I raised my eyebrow, and he did the same, mocking me. I just laughed. “No, really, it’s—”
“This is where it all happened?” Brent said from the backseat. I looked in the rearview mirror: his hands were tucked behind his head, and his eyes were closed, a smug half-smile on his face.
“Yeah, actually.”
“I was thinking the same thing. We’re gonna be walking right past the place where you exploded.”
“Well, I didn’t—”
“Same thing,” he said, laughing. “Are we going to park properly or illegally?”
I pulled over to the side of the driveway, next to the river. “Here, you two—you three—get out, and help our ‘friend’ over the bridge to the other side of the river. I’ll go park and meet you there.”
“Okay, in the clearing there?” Brent paused with one foot out of the car.
I nodded and then waved as I pulled into the parking lot.
I hope to hell that this went smoothly. We’d had a hectic enough week. We really didn’t need anything else going wrong. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be anyone at the community centre at four thirty in the morning; not a single car was in the parking lot.