Superhero Me!: An Urban Fantasy Thriller (Mortality Bites Book 3) Page 5

The two boys crashed into Charlize Theron, knocking the poor woman over, and before they realized what was going on, they slid helplessly on the perfume pool and into the very real and solid concrete pillar behind the poster. The two kids knocked themselves out just as I had anticipated.

  What I hadn’t counted on was them being so fast that the friction from their steps would ignite the perfume. The floor went up in flames, causing the sprinkler I was holding to erupt in water.

  And for the second time that day, I was wet and cold.

  Still Underground, Still Screwed

  I needed to find a way to change—and if not change, then at the very least ditch my cherub mask away from the prying eyes of security cameras. I had to find a place to hide, and I thought I knew just the place.

  Heading through the Eaton Center, I found the underground passage that led under McGill Street and into the Cineplex Odeon complex. There was an Indigo bookstore next to the cinema, and I figured I could probably steal a tote bag to hide my mask, and then use some of the back Staff Only passageways to break into the cinema. I could duck into a movie and wait for all of this to cool off, walk out with my mask hidden and make my way back to campus (before I froze my butt off) to get my coat and snow pants.

  I figured I didn’t have to worry about police. After all, they had a bunch of superheroes to worry about before they’d chase after some girl that scared a couple counter attendants and mall security by waving a knife.

  Then again, maybe they would come after me, thinking I was a superhero myself. I could be pretty menacing, after all. Either way, I had two choices: go back and hope that Cheetah Girl was still running around blind (well, nose-blind, at least) and that the two fast kids were still unconscious, or go forward. I wasn’t about to risk dealing with them again, so this was my only option.

  Not the best plan, but I didn’t have any money or a phone, so it was probably the only option I had. That, or send telepathic signals to Egya or Deirdre to come pick me up. But since my human brain could no longer do that, I was fresh out of options.

  Getting into the store was easy enough, as was stealing the bag. And as for the Staff Only passageways, humans should really start tightening their security. It was amazing the kind of access you had when you weren’t worrying about No Entry signs, or whether you were on salary.

  I found a back tunnel that led to a room that connected to the fire exit for one of the Odeon Multiplex screens. Sneaking in, I found myself watching some Hollywood, special effects monstrosity. And since it was the smack dab middle of the afternoon, there was hardly anyone there. Just a few kids who, judging by how zealously they ate their popcorn, were probably stoned.

  Phew, I thought as I plopped myself in a seat in the front row. I made it.

  Not bad for a human girl. Hell, not bad for a vampire. Not bad at all. Took on the Justice League and League of Doom at the same time … and I lived to fight another day. Not bad at all.

  Ahh, hubris, thy ways are cruel. Just before I could remove my mask and settle into my seat to get lost in whatever movie was playing, I heard a swoosh, followed by what can only be described as extremely sticky Silly Putty latching onto my bag and pulling it straight up.

  ↔

  I looked up and saw a guy hanging upside down from the ceiling. He was pulling up my stolen tote bag using string attached to his wrist. When he saw nothing in the tote, he let it drop.

  “Let me guess. Spider—”

  “Guy. Spider Guy—that’s me,” he said.

  What is it with these guys personalizing their superhero identities? I thought … sadly out loud.

  Spider Guy, who wore a red bandana over his head and a second one over his face, narrowed his eyes as if he didn’t understand the question. Then he shrugged. “Copyright issues? Or maybe I’ve just gotta be me.” He pointed a finger at me and I expected more sticky silly string to shoot out, but instead he just waggled it. “Say, you’re the girl from the party.”

  “What party?” I asked, moving my hand down to my dirk.

  “The one where that psycho tried to sacrifice a bunch of us. As in, ritually. You saved us.”

  I nodded, which isn’t the easiest thing to do when you’re looking straight up.

  “I always wondered about you. You kind of just disappeared after that. I mean, there were rumors of sightings, but nothing concrete. Still, you saved us. You’re a hero.” He was fumbling for something at his waist. “I thought you were on our side, but I’m not so sure. After all, if you really are a hero, why did you do what you did?”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Damage the campus,” he said. He lifted what he had been reaching for and put it to his mouth. When it produced an audible click, I realized it was a walkie-talkie. “I got her. She’s in screen 3.”

  Oh, crap! He was calling in reinforcements.

  ↔

  “Can’t we just call it even?” I said. “I saved you, remember? What’s a little damage given all that?”

  Spider Guy didn’t respond, the walkie-talkie still in his hand.

  “Come on,” I cried out. “We don’t have to do this. Like you said, I’m on your side.”

  Nothing.

  “At least answer me. You owe me that much.”

  Still nothing.

  I looked toward the upper rows where the stoned kids were sitting. Either they hadn’t noticed our little chat, hadn’t cared, or thought it was part of the show. Whatever it was, they didn’t react. As in not at all, and it was then that I understood what was going on. The stoned kids weren’t just not reacting—their hands were frozen mid-popcorn grab.

  And as for Spider Guy, he wasn’t answering me because he couldn’t. He was frozen, which meant one of two things: either something had paralyzed him and the stoner kids … or time was frozen.

  I’d never seen this kind of magic before, but I’d heard of it. It was referred to as the Hunter’s Mark, a spell so powerful that legend speaks of only the Earl King (master hunter and all around bad, bad dude!) having the power to use it.

  According to legend, the Hunter’s Mark was deployed to create the perfect hunting conditions. The Earl King would stop time for everyone save himself and his prey. Then the true hunt would begin between just the two of them.

  There was more to the legend, but I didn’t have time to try and recall it all now. Now, I needed to run.

  Except in my confusion and desire to barter with Spider Guy, I had wasted too much time. (Look at me, wasting too much time with time frozen? Oh, the irony. I just hoped I would live long enough to tell someone about it.)

  I turned to run out through the exit I had entered by, only to be met by a guy wearing a child’s wizardry robe. I mean, the thing was covered in stars, shooting comets and crescent moons.

  “You’re not the Earl King,” I said.

  “I am not!” the kid bellowed. “I am the great Grimoire Keeper, and in my possession are ancient tomes that hold the secrets of the universe.”

  The kid pulled out a large leather book that was almost too cumbersome for him to manage and flipped through the pages. I had just enough time to read the cover: München Handbuch der Dämonischen Magie … also known as the Necromancer’s Manual.

  Holy guacamole, I thought. That’s no copy. If this kid has the original manual and can use its magic, he could become the most powerful being on this planet.

  “Why, thank you,” the kid said as he flipped through the pages.

  I knew I should be running, but I couldn’t help myself. That manual wasn’t just dangerous … it was like giving the kid access to the nuclear codes and putting an I dare you sign over the button.

  “Kid, where did you get that?”

  Kid Wizard—I couldn’t think of what else to call him—smiled. “I’ve always been into this kind of stuff. You know, myths and magic, and I’ve always wanted to be a sorcerer, but when the gods left and took their magic with them, I figured that dream was gone. Then poof,”—he smiled, still scanning his pages—�
�I woke up yesterday morning and this grimoire was on my bedside. And I could read it.”

  He flipped through four more pages before saying, “Ahh yes, here we go.”

  He started moving his hands around, chanting in Latin mixed with Draugr and Gnomish …

  “Kid,” I said, “you don’t want to do that.”

  Kid Wizard ignored me, his incantation growing louder before he threw an open palm in my direction and screamed, “Fuego!”

  Nothing happened.

  He looked at me, puzzled. “Hold on, I should have shot a fireball at you.”

  “I know, kid,” I said taking three steps forward. “You should have, but the thing about the Hunter’s Mark is, it was about leveling the battleground between the Earl King and the thing—or person—he was hunting. That means no other hunters, no hounds to help him and no magic.”

  I pulled back my fist and punched Kid Wizard square in the nose. He fell like a poorly stacked Jenga tower. Grabbing the grimoire and throwing it in my tote bag, I ran for the exit.

  “Hold on!” Spider Guy cried out as the stoner kids started laughing.

  Evidently if you break a wizard’s nose, you break their spell, too.

  Superheroes to My Left, Superheroes to My Right

  Running back down the maintenance hallway, I tried to formulate a plan. They’d be on me in a few seconds and I honestly had no idea what I could do. What’s more, I didn’t know what they’d do to me when they caught me. Beat me up? Take me to the authorities? Kill me?

  When I spoke to them they seemed pretty rational, but that kid wizard literally tried to throw a fireball at me. Either he didn’t know how deadly such magic was or didn’t care. Or maybe he just wanted to throw a fireball and see what it did.

  Whatever his thoughts on the matter, he could have killed me. There was something strange going on, too: they were too rational to be homicidal when they spoke, and too homicidal to be rational when they acted.

  I ran to the end of the hall and had almost gotten to the exit when I felt something strike my ankle and pull at me. I was yanked back to the middle of the hall, where Spider Guy and three other heroes jumped over me to block the exit to my right. I considered running to my left and back to the cinema when four more superheroes poured out of the doorway.

  “Ahh guys, are you sure you want to do this?”

  Several of them shrugged before charging me. I didn’t have time to think, so I just reacted by pulling out my dirk. I was ready to fight for keeps this time.

  I was just about to stick the pointy end of my blade into Spider Guy’s throat when a large, heavy blanket was thrown over me.

  A guy dressed in all black was under there with me. Well, more like on top of me. I could feel the kicks and punches of the superheroes wailing on the blanket before the boy on top of me said, “Hold onto me.”

  “Wha—?” I started, but before I could say or do anything, he grabbed me with his right arm and held me to one side. Throwing his left arm up and away from us, I felt a wave of energy burst out of him in all directions.

  The heavy blanket tore into a million little fragments as the wall in front of and behind us crumbled, holes bursting open to expose the wiring and piping behind them.

  And as for the superheroes to our right and left, they went flying in both directions down the hall.

  “Phew,” the boy said, “I wasn’t sure that would work.”

  I got a look at the guy for the first time and my jaw nearly crashed down to my Dubarry Galway knee-high boots. “Justin,” I finally managed.

  “In the flesh,” my boyfriend said with a not entirely ungraceful curtsy.

  ↔

  “Kinetic blast?”

  “Just like Black Panther,” he said.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head, “just like what we were discussing last night. Your superhero powers, the ones you said you wanted—they’ve manifested themselves.”

  Justin nodded.

  “And you’re not worried that you suddenly have powers when just yesterday you didn’t?”

  He shook his head. “No, not really.”

  “And you don’t find that odd?”

  He shrugged. And that reaction was enough for me to know something was truly off. Justin was many things—calm, collected, the ideal guy to have around in a fire—but never unquestioning. No, that wasn’t him.

  I didn’t have time to consider any of that, though. We had to get away. Looking up and down the hall, I saw that not everyone had been knocked out. Some of them were coming around. “Justin, did the other power you wanted also manifest?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, grabbing my hand, “it did in all kinds of ways.”

  ↔

  He grabbed my hand and in an instant, we were both invisible. It’s an odd sensation, not being able to see yourself. It made me realize how much we take our bodies for granted.

  At any given moment, our peripheral vision clocks our hands or arms, sometimes even our feet. We see our eyelids with every blink, we get a sense of where our limbs go when we move about. We even see our own noses, although most of us have tuned that jutting piece of flesh completely out.

  But when you’re invisible, all that goes away. No arms or legs or fingers or anything else waving about.

  No eyelids to block our vision, if only for a fraction of fraction of a second. And no nose to get our bearings with.

  Walking would be a challenge, so Justin and I, hand in hand, took it real slow as we made our way past the knocked-over heroes. As we closed in on three of them, I realized I recognized Spider Guy after all. He was the kid who had yelled “Hear, hear” when I was chewing out Harold Cheer.

  What the hell was going on?

  But that wasn’t the only thing that was interesting. Looking over the three fallen heroes, I saw that none of them had aged. Not at all, which meant that somehow they were tapping into all this magic and not sacrificing a second of time.

  This was impossible. Ever since the gods left, there had been a steep penalty for using magic: time. Every fireball, every moment spent hanging from a ceiling or shooting out webbing from your wrists—all of it cost time. And not just a bit of it. Lots.

  They all should have aged, but Spider Guy was as youthful as he had been this morning, before he went on his magical rampage.

  It just didn’t make any sense.

  We stepped over them and out the door. Once we were back in the bookstore, we made our way outside and back onto campus.

  By the time we got there, the campus had been closed. Given how much snow we’d had over the last couple weeks, you’d think we were having a snow day instead of a superhero day (I know, I know, not very funny—but I’m hilarious in Elvish. Really, I am.)

  The police had run yellow tape across the entrance while two guards stood nervously at the threshold. I could see from their eyes that if a superhero showed up, they’d bolt. As we passed by, I heard one of the policemen mutter, “Damn Others.”

  “Amen,” said the other.

  Jerks! They had no idea what was going on and they were already blaming Others. I was about to let go of Justin’s hand and fly into a rage in front of their ignorant asses. That sure would’ve scared the bejesus out of them.

  But I didn’t. As it turns out, three hundred years of life gives you a lot of opportunities to practice keeping your cool. Sometimes I even succeeded. Instead of blowing up, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that humans saw magic as something only Others could do. As far as those two cops were concerned, superpowers were akin to magic—hence, Others.

  Those cops had been scared. And given their limited knowledge, of course they’d blame Others. Who else was around to point a judging finger at? My only fear now was that the super brats would do something monumentally stupid and Others would get rounded up as a result. Not that I could worry about that now.

  Invisible, we passed them and headed to the arts building so I could retrieve my jacket and snow pants.

  Justin un-invisiblatize
d us and as soon as he was in sight, he winked at me. “See, told you I could be useful.”

  “Stand still,” I said, grabbing his head.

  Expecting a kiss, he puckered up. But I didn’t kiss him. Instead, I carefully examined every millimeter of his face. I looked for signs of crows’ feet around his eyes, blotches on his cheeks, skin tags on his neck. Anything that indicated aging.

  But like Spider Boy, he was fine. Being a superhero didn’t seem to age him one bit.

  “You’re fine,” I said with a bit of disappointment.

  “Excuse me?” He narrowed his eyes.

  “Sorry. You’re fine!” I repeated with more enthusiasm this time. “It’s just that you shouldn’t be. You should be older. You know, given the whole time-for-magic thing.”

  “Yeah, sure, but whatever is happening to me … maybe it’s an exception to the rule.”

  I looked up at my perfect, impossibly handsome but very human boyfriend. In my experience, human beings just didn’t get how magic works. I sighed. “This isn’t a case of A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y. There are rules to magic that can never, ever be broken. That’s just the way it works, and it’s part of the reason why Others struggle to live in the GoneGod World.”

  Justin gave me a go on gesture.

  “Humans grow up learning that there are always exceptions to the rule. In grammar, in spelling, even in mathematics. Of course, they extrapolate that to day-to-day life, too. The rules say the term paper’s deadline is Friday, but given the right circumstances, you can get an extension. No one is allowed to cut in line, but if you’re disabled or have a young child, then by all means cut to the front. Exceptions.

  “But Others have grown up in a world where there are no exceptions. There might be new rules set, like when the gods left and added restrictions to how magic works. But those are new rules, not exceptions. You guys shouldn’t be able to do all you did without aging. It simply isn’t possible.”