Accelerant

by Katelyn Beckett

  No, if they didn't want me to exert myself by kicking a little ass in the streets, I wasn't about to get scolded for a walk that would take a while. Instead, I found a bench and sat down to watch a pair of squirrels fight over the remains of a lollipop that some kid had dropped.

  I was entirely engrossed in Holloway and Frankfurt's struggles, having named my new little furry friends, when a sleek new sedan pulled up to the curb. "Hey gorgeous, you need a ride?"

  Adam grinned at me from inside, the window down on the passenger door. I looked up at him, then made a show of looking over one shoulder and then the other. He scoffed. "You. Come on. I've got dinner waiting."

  "Where'd you get the car?" I asked, opening the back door and tossing my stuff in. I plopped down in the passenger's seat a second later and buckled myself in. Who knew what kind of a driver Adam was these days.

  He pulled out of the drive as smoothly as he could, which I appreciated. "Got my license renewed and bought it. 0% financing and all that stuff. Flying's great but we need something more dependable when you resume work-"

  "Scribe already ratted me out?"

  "Scribe didn't rat you out. Scribe gave you an order, and he gave it to me first, Cassie. You're not going to go tear yourself up in the city just to satisfy whatever's going on in your head."

  I glared at him. "I don't need you to tell me what I can and can't do. My girlfriend's out there and-"

  "Your boyfriend is right here," Adam said, stopping at a stop sign. He looked over at me, worry in his eyes. "I'm not trying to tell you what to do. I'm just telling you what our orders are. If you want to ignore them, I'll be right there by your side. But I wish you'd stop and think about it for a little bit. Your powers will come back. You'll be just as amazing as you always are. But getting hurt could put you back months, maybe even years."

  He reached out and put his hand on my thigh. I grumbled, hunkering down in the seat. "I'll go nuts stuck in the Alliance building while you go run around and do all the heroing."

  "That's why I talked to Edwin. While he's stuck in the hospital, we need someone to work support for us."

  "You're trying to keep me busy?" I asked, pulling myself up a bit to look at him. "It's pity work."

  "It's real work," he said, pulling away from the stop sign. He kept his hand on my thigh as a blush worked its way up my neck. That hand was warm, just rough enough to catch on your shirt when those fingers went exploring and-

  I missed the rest of what he said. "What was that?"

  "We need someone to watch out for us when we're in the field. You know that. It's dangerous out there, and we're always at risk. You'd call in ambulances, fire trucks, maybe even get in contact with other Alliance members if we need backup. And it gives you time to be in the mainframe. You can find out everything you can about Nishelle. And maybe about what we know about Izzy."

  There was a hint of hope in his voice that I didn't miss. I sighed. Beyond anything else, I wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, Isabella hadn't flipped villain on us. That maybe she really was just being controlled by some outside force and hey, maybe it linked up to whatever the hell was going on with Nishelle. Maybe it didn't.

  But he was right; it gave me a chance to go ahead and look into the situation. Edwin would have the same ability once he was released, but who said that was going to be any time soon? They'd said a week, maybe two at the worst. But hadn't they said the same about me an entire month ago? And look at where I was.

  "I'll see what I can do, but I can't promise anything," I said. "I know you hope Izzy's just-"

  "You have no idea what I hope Iz is 'just', Cassie."

  I scowled out the window. He wasn't wrong, exactly, but she'd been my friend for years, too. Or sort of friend; I didn't know how to describe it. Izzy was a very driven person. She viewed people like me as some sort of competitor no matter what our status had been.

  Maybe there was a point to it, though, that I was just a friend. Not her brother.

  "I know I'm not as close as you are. But I still care about her. And I'll do what I can."

  He was silent for the rest of the car ride. I tried to imagine what he was going through. I tried to imagine having a sibling who had gone off the deep end. When that didn't work, I imagined Creed or Savage coming after me, trying to kill me, and not knowing who else around me might be next.

  Uncertainty is the greatest divider in the world. It changes who you are, where you go, and what you do. Afraid you're going to get mugged if you go out for dinner? You'll probably stay in and eat that three-day-old spaghetti. Worried about your mom's health? You're sneaking into the bathroom at work to call her every day. The bold, the brave, and the stupid rule the world because they either don't care about the uncertain matters in their lives or they learn to deal with them.

  And I didn't know a single person who didn't worry about some uncertain measure in their lives.

  We arrived home, to the Alliance building, and he parked around back. My old car had long since been towed off to go die at a junkyard but I dreamed of sneaking her back home. She'd been a piece of garbage, but she'd always taken care of me to and from work. Riding around in the sedan wasn't quite the same.

  I took his hand as we walked back around. "I wish I could do more to help you feel better about Isabella and the rest."

  "You're trying. I'm trying. All we can do now is hope she turns up so we can pin her down somewhere and figure out what's wrong." He paused, then said, "I called your parents."

  Remember what I said about uncertainty?

  My parents had retired shortly after I was born. I was too much of a handful, they'd said, to continue hero work. They had lied through their teeth. My dad stayed home with me more often than not, but Mom got the wild idea to go continue heroing on her own. She'd done well, bagged plenty of crooks and scraped a little extra off the top for us. With what she'd grabbed and my scholarship to college, I hadn't ended up in debt trying to go to school.

  Not that it had mattered. I'd taken up the family mantle, headed into the Alliance and never looked back. It was still a good idea to have a degree but I didn't think that, even if my powers never came back, I'd dig deep into being a dental assistant. I preferred knocking teeth out, not scraping the gunk off of them.

  It was hard to compute. My parents didn't necessarily dislike me, but they'd never been the biggest fans of me. Trying to explain it to people was rough. Most parents are either one polarity or the other; the sweetest, most wholesome family on the planet, or the ones who put on that show for those around them and covered up the bruises when others were around. That wasn't who my parents were. They were just always... disappointed.

  "What did they say?" I asked, trying to remain calm.

  "That if we manage to grab any of them, we should bring them up to their place. Just bypass the Alliance staff and let them get to work. They said they hadn't spoken to Allison in months."

  Damn. That really pointed toward some unfortunate things for the Clark family name. I glanced up at Adam as I entered the building. "Let me get a phone. Give them a call. See if I can get anything else out of them, okay?"

  Silently, he offered me his own. And for the first time in forever, he pulled me against him and kissed me. It was a soft, timid, and tired thing that blossomed into something more passionate after a second. I ran my fingers through his hair, tucking his phone away, then drew back.

  "I'll be in the room when you're done."

  I nodded and headed up to the roof.

  Of all the places in the Alliance building, the roof was probably the only one that wasn't under some sort of surveillance; be it internal or external. I'd let Adam take my bag and trotted up those many flights of stairs to come out on the rooftop. Covered in gravel and lined with high sides, it had been a frequent perch when I was younger. A few times, I'd even jumped between the roofs on either side. You know, just to get a little adrenaline high and vibrate in my own skin for a while.

  It's the kind of thing you do when
you're young and still testing out your powers. I looked between the buildings nearest the Alliance and sighed. If I failed that jump, I'd be a street pancake in a second. Better not to test it. Instead, I dialed my mom's number and sat down on one of the railings, throwing my legs over the edge.

  "Heights don't bother you, still?"

  Nate grabbed me to keep me on my seat. I swiveled to blink at him. The call went to voicemail. I hung up the phone and tucked it to the other side of the railing. The last thing I wanted was to break Adam's stuff.

  "I don't see any reason to be afraid of being up high," I said. "You fall and it's all over anyway. Doesn't matter how scared you are or aren't."

  "Incredibly rational," he said, sitting down beside me. "The bird agrees. The bear, too. The wolf? Not so much."

  "Wolves tend to prefer all four paws on the ground, I'd guess. They don't exactly climb trees. What about the cat?"

  His chuckle made me feel warm all over, a pretty impressive feat considering the wind kept whipping my hair around. "The cat doesn't know what it wants. Sometimes he sees heights as nothing at all. Other times? Terrified. I think it's because I wrap so many species together for that transformation."

  I scooted closer to him. Instinctively, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders to steady me. "How do you do that? When I left, you were having problems controlling one animal. The wolf got out all the time. Now you're mixing stuff together and tearing down all the bad guys."

  "Because it took years to perfect it," he said. "And lots of work. If I was going to be useful, I had to correct it. Scribe put me on tofu to try to fix it, thinking it was the protein. It wasn't that. It was confidence, practice. Just learning to be who I really was. Then one day, poof. It just made sense."

  Our eyes met as I listened to him. There was something feral in his gaze, angry. Lost. Hurt. Sad. Worst of all, alone. He was an animal with no pack, crying into the wilderness and getting nothing in return. There was a realization in his expression after a moment or two.

  "That's really incredible," I said, lamely.

  Was he getting closer to me? His lips tipped up just a little bit. "I guess so."

  "Did you get them?"

  Adam walked onto the roof, sitting himself firmly between Nate and I. He picked up his phone to check it and sighed. "That sucks."

  "You could have asked me to move over," Nate said, his voice taking on a cool tone.

  "Yeah?" Adam asked, then looked up at Nate. The air hummed for a second, then Adam shook his head. "Sorry. ...It's just been a lot lately. I know you get it."

  Feeling like a third wheel, which was absolutely ridiculous, I watched them. Had Nate been about to do... something? A kiss? Did he know how I felt about him? How I'd always felt about him? No, he couldn't. Besides, I'd promised myself I wouldn't do anything with or about Nate unless he made the first move. And even then, I wasn't certain that's what I wanted. The whole breakup thing with him and Lexi mattered a lot more than I'd considered.

  I wasn't up for being anyone's rebound, I reminded myself again. Even so, I watched Nate and Adam as they chatted. The way Nate's jaw moved, his dark eyes, the smile that flashed now and again; he was an impressive person and he deserved better than whatever screwed up person I was right now.

  Just as I decided that, a sound emanated from below us. It was one that I had missed in the couple of months in the hospital, the noise that fueled my every desire. I leaped up from the railing and raced toward the door. Adam caught me with an arm around my waist as Nate got to his feet. Why? The sirens were roaring, the alert was going out. It sounded like an all hands on-deck, too!

  "Support," Adam reminded me.

  Fuck.

  Chapter 7

  As Cassie and Adam tore off, I stood on the roof for a moment longer. The smashing clang-bang-whirr of the alarms assaulted my ears, the internal presence of my bestial forms collectively pawing at their ears. I bathed in the darkness of it all, the sorrow in my heart, the pain in my head, and locked it away for future use.

  Darkness has plenty of uses in the superhero business.

  Most just aren't willing to concentrate on it. I can hardly blame them. Few of us don't come from a broken home or a broken past in some way. It's always a sad story when someone new comes in; a single, struggling parent or perhaps someone abusive in their school life. We usually got children pretty young. It gets hard to watch those fresh, young faces turn up with tears in their eyes.

  Thankfully, that was more Scribe's job than it was mine; or one of the other teachers. I didn't think Cassie was particularly fit for that duty. Tough as she was, she was tender-hearted about kids.

  I followed the two of them at an easy, long-legged trot that caught them in seconds. Gently, I took Cassie by the shoulder and spun her around to face me. I saw the flush that colored her cheeks, could smell the confused arousal in the air. I put that away, too, for later use. We'd always been friends. I didn't see any point in making it more than that when there were alarms going off all around us.

  "Edwin's login code is 1476309," I told her.

  Adam slapped his forehead. "I knew I forgot something."

  Cassie glared between the two of us, about-faced, then stomped off down the stairwell. I watched her go for a moment before turning to Adam. "Meet you in the lobby?"

  He frowned at me. "No one said you get to come."

  "If you really want to go face down something like that all by yourself, you're welcome to. But your chart's been getting worse and-"

  "You sneaked a look at my records?" he asked, standing a bit straighter and moving toward me.

  Ladies (and lady-aligned people), there's something you have to understand about men. When two men decide to square up at one another, our testosterone takes over. It is especially significant with me given that half of my mind is devoted to fetch, bite things, and claw the bad thing apart. The feral side saw a threat to my person and my territory, such as it was. The coldly rational side of my mind knew better.

  I'll let you guess which one won.

  His fist collided with my chest, smacking me back against the wall. I had to cling to the rail to not go tumbling down the stairs. Then I ripped the fucker off its moorings and clocked him across the face with it, trying not to snarl as I did so.

  Adam didn't have the same sense to grab the damned rail. He went rolling and the feral side of my brain shut up. Medic mode, activated. I ran down after him, hoping Cassie was too far along to hear our little squabble take place. She didn't need to deal with it on top of everything else.

  "You jerk," he growled, curling his left arm into his stomach.

  "Looks like a dislocated shoulder. And you punched first. Get up and give me your hand. Then hold on tight to something," I ordered.

  The look he gave me was one of knowing misery, but he offered the hand out anyway. When I took it, he grabbed the nearby handrail; this time, and turned his head away. I braced my right foot's heel against the wall and shoved with all my might.

  I have to admit, there's nothing beautiful or wonderful about popping someone's shoulder back in. It's less painful than aligning a hip or forcing a bone back into place, but I've had people vomit on me over it. To his credit, Adam let out a low, agonized moan, then yanked his hand away from me and rolled his shoulder.

  Overhead, the alarm still blared. I sighed. "Maybe you should sit this one out, too. It takes a while for that to feel better."

  "To hell with that."

  "Your funeral," I shrugged.

  The two of us continued down the stairs, mute and filled with tension. He ran to grab his suit and came back an instant later to me flexing my fingers, shifting between different sets of claws. He eyed me for a moment in that ridiculous color scheme of his, then jerked his head. I followed him, letting him get that one-up on me. Maybe it'd make him feel better.

  It certainly didn't matter to me.

  We hit the lobby at a comfortable trot. Somewhere, the alarms were turned off. Cassie's voice came across the loudsp
eaker. "You boys have fun."

  Her voice was touched by jealousy, but what could I do about it? Orders were orders. We hurried out of the Alliance building, piled into Creed's car, and set off into Yarborough's evening traffic.

  "Flying would probably be faster," I said.

  He didn't look at me. "I don't have it in me tonight, doc."

  "Not a doctor."

  "May as well be, you're the one with the medical training and all that smart stuff. You said you were looking at my records. You know why I bought this stupid thing."

  I rolled my next sentence over in my mind for a moment. I needed to be careful, not upset the big gorilla. "Think the cops would be pissed if we got one of those little sirens for the top of it? Clear out the traffic when we need to get somewhere?"