Superhero Me!: An Urban Fantasy Thriller (Mortality Bites Book 3) Read online

  Superhero Me!

  Ramy Vance

  Keep Evolving Studios

  Contents

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  1. A Beginning of Sorts

  2. Demons of the Desert and Superheroes of the North

  3. Superheroes Aren’t Real

  4. Drunken Underdogs, Dorm Rooms and Suspicious Characters

  5. A Quick Discussion and a Quicker Offer Denied

  6. A League of Heroes, Research and More Awkwardness

  7. Walking, Talking and Rocking

  8. Justice League vs. The League of Doom vs. One Girl in Snow Pants

  9. Superheroes Never Think About Repair Costs

  10. Prologue

  11. Run, Lola … Ahh, I Mean … Run, Kat, Run

  12. Still Underground, Still Screwed

  13. Superheroes to My Left, Superheroes to My Right

  14. Damn You! Ahh, God Damn You All to HELL!

  15. The Curse of Art

  16. Hags, Boxes and Blasts from the Past

  17. Curses—They’re Not Real … Are They?

  18. I Can’t Hear You … Let’s Go for a Walk

  19. Some Truths Give You a Stomach Ache

  20. Prologue

  21. Behold, It Is I! The Villain!

  22. Up, Up and Get Away?

  23. The Geriatric Ward of Heroes

  24. Sorrys, Sirens and Songs

  25. Presidential Fights Aren’t Very Presidential

  26. Plans, Legally Blondes, Sleep and Reversions

  27. Regression is a Bitch

  28. A Song, a Party and a Bite

  29. Prologue

  30. A Superhero Ball Whose Guest of Honor is a Villain

  31. Ninja Minions and Darting Villains

  32. Invisible Hands Are the Devil’s Playthings

  33. Lead for Your Heart, Pennies for Your Eyes

  34. Click, Clack, Bang, like It Ain’t No Thang …

  35. How Many Lives Is Your Own Worth?

  36. All’s Well That Ends Well … Well, Maybe Not

  37. Epilogue

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  About the Author

  Mortality Bites Series © Copyright <<2018>> R. E. Vance

  Example Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  For more information, email: [email protected]

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  A Beginning of Sorts

  After a millennium of stalking his prey, there is one disease he is quite immune to: eagerness.

  So he lurks in the shadows, watching her from a distance. She is with her friends, running in the snow, chasing after ghouls out of some false sense of responsibility.

  This desire to do what she perceives as right, as good, will be her undoing. Her pursuit of good will exhaust her, drain her, eventually deplete who she is until there is nothing left.

  That is when he will strike.

  Still, that might take years, and he is no longer immortal. There is a bit of eagerness in him, and he decides to dip his hand into the chaos of Katrina Darling’s life to hasten her exhaustion.

  And when he sees the anomaly flying in the sky, he knows exactly what he must do …

  Demons of the Desert and Superheroes of the North

  LATE LAST NIGHT—

  “What the—?” I growled as a giant scimitar swung over my head. Luckily for me, I’m short and I bent down just enough that the curved blade flew over me.

  My head stayed attached to my neck. Sadly, a half-inch of my hair didn’t.

  “Hey,” I shouted as strands of blonde hair cascaded around my face, “I just got a haircut!”

  The creature stared down at me with glowing red eyes. Then he kicked me in the chin—hard. I went down, my knee crunching deep into the unpacked snow. I came to my senses pretty quick, raising my dirk in a defensive position as I anticipated another swing of his scimitar.

  But no swing came. Instead the damn ghoul took off, running up the mountain and deeper into the forest.

  “Come on, girl,” a voice yelled in a Ghanaian accent. I could tell he was smiling despite the life-and-death situation because, of course, Egya always smiled. As in, never stopped. It was annoying.

  “I’m coming. I’m coming,” I shouted back—not smiling. “Be careful, these ghouls are seasoned.”

  It was a misconception that ghouls were mindless monsters. They were more like pack hunters with thousands of years of preternaturally honed instincts and experience wrapped into freakishly strong bodies.

  “So am I,” Egya said, brandishing his Ngombe—a blade that looked like a sword with a crescent moon at its top (if that crescent moon was as sharp as a scalpel and designed not only to kill your enemy, but to absolutely dispatch him).

  Egya would have been terrifying if he wasn’t dressed in a bulky, goose-down North Face jacket, a thick red toque with a maple leaf on it and matching mittens. OK, he was still terrifying with a sword like that in his hands.

  Hell, Tickle Me Elmo would be terrifying with that sword in his hands.

  I tried to get to my feet, but before I could, powerful hands lifted me up. “Are you hurt, milady?” Deirdre asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I said to my changeling roommate who stared at me with deeply concerned eyes.

  Deirdre stabbed her broadsword into the snow and left it standing as she helped me to my feet. Upright, the sword was taller than me. She wore a tank top and a pair of tights, pink running shoes and nothing else, and I marveled at this gorgeous creature who was almost totally immune to the cold.

  “Thank you. I’m fine. Really,” I said, pulling off my cherub mask. I had gotten some snow under it and my cheeks were beginning to chill.

  She nodded and picked up her broadsword. Staring up the hill where the ghoul had fled, Deirdre growled. “Good to hear, but that ghoul will still pay dearly for his transgressions against my—”

  “We’re on a capture mission—not kill,” I said. Deirdre didn’t look my way, her ire still directed up the mountain. I grabbed the changeling warrior’s face and repeated, “Capture mission. No killing … got it?”

  Telling a changeling warrior not to kill was akin to asking the Terminator to chill out and have a beer. It just wasn’t in their nature. But Deirdre had sworn her sword arm to me—an oath t
he fae take very seriously.

  She begrudgingly nodded, and the three of us made our way up the mountain.

  ↔

  The ghouls had been spotted at the Mount Royal Cemetery digging up some graves. As far as culturally appropriate behavior goes, that was a big no-no. Not that they’d gotten the memo.

  Since the gods left four years ago and expelled their denizens onto Earth, mythical creatures like ghouls, changelings, dragons, wendigos, kirins—and just about any other creature you once thought of as not real—have had to figure out how to live by human rules.

  But human rules can be confusing, and not digging up the dead and eating them wasn’t culturally inappropriate for a ghoul. Hence why this was a capture-only mission. Well, more like a humanitarian mission; we needed to explain to these creatures that what they were doing was disturbing the metaphorical villagers.

  That was the plan, at least. But the plan had one hitch: we had to get them to listen.

  It doesn’t matter … we have to try, I thought.

  “What doesn’t matter?” Deirdre asked.

  “Deirdre,” Egya cackled, “don’t mind her musings. She’s just ‘thinking on the outside’ again.”

  It was true. I did have a nasty habit of airing my thoughts. And the more inappropriate they were, the louder they aired.

  “Ahh, I see,” Deirdre said, knowing my quirk well. She bent down, gesturing for us to stop. The tracks led up the mountain, which was strange; ghouls liked graveyards and tended to live there. It was their equivalent of living in a grocery store. But these creatures were running away from the cemetery. It made sense: they didn’t know that we’d already scoped them out and knew all about their families living in the tombs of Mount Royal Cemetery. They were running away from the cemetery because they were trying to protect their families from … well … us.

  Deirdre gestured for us to come to her side. She put a finger over her lips, asking us to be silent, and pointed up. That’s when I saw what she was looking at. The tracks led farther up the hill, but the ghouls weren’t there. Either they had doubled back or burned a bit of time to create false tracks, but they weren’t there.

  They were up a tree.

  Without warning a—what do you call a group of ghouls? A gang? A gouging? Ahh, got it—a funeral of ghouls dropped from the trees, surrounding us.

  There were six of them, all brandishing scimitars typical of their Arabian heritage.

  Egya, Deirdre and I stood back-to-back, readying ourselves for battle.

  “Still a capture-only mission?” Deirdre asked.

  “Yes,” I said, holding my dirk in a defensive position. “We can do this.” Then calling out to the ghouls, I said, “We’re not here to hurt you. But you guys can’t keep doing what you’re doing. Listen, there are facilities that can help you. Places where Others like yourselves can go to learn how to be mortal. Put down your—”

  But before I could finish my sentence, we heard someone cry out, “When criminals in this world appear, and break the laws that they should fear, and frighten all who see or hear, the cry goes up both far and near …”

  “Underdog?” I said, staring up as the human-looking boy lowered from the sky in his red leotard and fluttering cape. The letter ‘U’ was monogrammed onto his chest. He also wore a black mask that was more the Dread Pirate Roberts than Underdog.

  “Actually,” the boy said, “I was going to go for Underboy or Underman, but neither quite worked. And since Underdog is already taken, I’m Underdawg, as in d-a-w-g.” He emphasized the “awg” part of his secret identity.

  “Not really much of a difference,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, it is. One is an actual dog.”

  “Cartoon dog,” I added.

  “But I’m a ‘dawg.’ As in down with the peeps, hip and human. In other words, I’m cool.” His hands folded into the hang loose gesture.

  “I’m not sure you know what cool is—”

  But before I could finish, he whooshed down faster than an archangel and … well, tried to save the day.

  ↔

  Underdawg yelled, “Speed of lightning, roar of thunder!” and showing off that “speed of lightning,” flew in a circle and tackled all six of the ghouls.

  Although he was lightning fast, I couldn’t help but note that he didn’t fly in a straight line. And I didn’t think that was on purpose: it was almost as if he couldn’t fly in a straight line.

  Straight line or not, he was fast, and the six ghouls didn’t know what hit them as he cartoonishly wrapped them in row after row of rope.

  Once he tied them up, he started pulling them up into the sky while singing, “Fighting all who rob or plunder … Underdawg. Underdawg!”

  “What the—?” I said. “You’re not going to hurt them, are you?”

  “Ma’am,” he said with a little airborne salute, “they are fiends of the night. I will dispose of them as is worthy of their ilk. By the way, totally dig the mask.”

  “Thank you, but not an answer. What are you going to do with them?”

  “I was thinking about dropping them in the St. Lawrence River.”

  “And what? Drown them?”

  He gave me a slurred, “Sure, why not?”

  Why not? I thought with indignant fury. Not. A. Good. Answer. I threw my dirk, and luckily for the ghouls, my aim was true. My blade sliced the rope and they dropped into a nearby snowbank.

  “Hey!” Underdawg cried out.

  “Hey nothing. You’re a red-underwear-wearing, poor excuse for a hero,” Egya said. Good—the Ghanaian was distracting him.

  “Deirdre!” I yelled. “Free them.”

  The changeling warrior moved forward without question, cutting their bonds.

  “Scatter,” I yelled. The ghouls didn’t need to be told twice, and as they ran away, I cried out, “And no more grave-robbing!” Then I pointed up at Underdawg. “As for you. Superheroes don’t drown anyone, let alone Others just trying to make their way on this Earth.”

  “Whatever,” Underdawg said with a shrug. “I was just going for a test flight anyway.” And before I could say anything, he flew up, up and away.

  Superheroes Aren’t Real

  “Superheroes aren’t real,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” my boyfriend Justin asked, kissing me on my forehead. He pulled me in close, our naked bodies joined in post-coital entanglement. This was my favorite part, because after three hundred years of having nasty, just-for-kicks vampire sex that usually ended with me eating the person, it felt great to cuddle.

  Amazing, actually.

  “I am sure,” I hummed. “Very sure.”

  “How?” he said, sitting up slightly so he could look at me better. “How can you be so sure?”

  “For one thing, I’ve been around a long, long time. For another, I’m not crazy. Superheroes don’t exist.”

  “Sure they don’t exist, but then again, neither did Others five years ago. And now the world is filled with all kinds of creatures I once thought were just in fairy tales. So if they’re here, why can’t superheroes be here, too?”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “But still …”

  “Also, are you sure he wasn’t just an Other burning some time to look like a super-strong boy who could fly?”

  “I suppose. But the amount of power he displayed …” I trailed off, considering the implications. Every mythical creature had magical powers, but after the gods left, those powers were directly tied to their age. In other words, cast a fireball and you’d lose an hour or two of life. Fly like that … that would cost days—if not weeks—of time. “If Underdawg is an Other, he was burning through a hell of lot of time for nothing. And for what? A few ghouls in a forest? It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe, but you’ve told me before that so many Others are lost. Maybe this particular Other is looking to go out with a bit of a bang. Save some lives, do some good, check out with his account well in the black.”

  Sitting up, I stared into Justin’s
impossibly beautiful eyes and raising a curious eyebrow at the expression, said, “Check out?”

  “Yeah, check out. It’s an expression for … you know, dying.”

  “I know. From the 1990s. I was around then, you know. I helped a lot of people ‘check out,’ and—” I stopped talking. I had meant that as fun banter, but there’s nothing fun about all the lives I ended when I was a vampire. Nothing.

  Justin must have sensed my change, because he shuffled down in the bed so we were face to face and gave me a hard kiss. “Balancing the account,” he said. “That’s what you’re doing now. You’re making up for all the wrong you’ve done.”

  “I can never make up for it all.”

  “No, you can’t,” he said. “But trying even though you know you’ll fail is the best thing you can do. Heck, it’s the best any of us can do. Which, if you carry that logic to its inevitable conclusion, means that you are the best of the best and—”

  I kissed him. Hard. “Are you sure you’re only nineteen?”

  “Twenty in two months,” he said.

  “Well, I’m way more than twenty, and sometimes I absolutely marvel at your wisdom.”