Forced Betrayal (4 page)

*****

 

Hericane and I drive to the location Dixon gives us--the downtown construction site where the new sports stadium is being built. We park a few blocks away, and then she flies us in over the high fence bordering the property.

We land around back, in the shadows away from the security lights. I check my watch and see we're twenty minutes early. The bout's due to begin at 1AM sharp.

And that is all we know--the when, the where, but not the who or how or anything else. We're coming in blind, and we've got no backup. If one of us wasn't the most powerful woman on the planet, I'd be seriously sweating right now.

Even so, I know this is risky. Last time Dixon arranged a bout on behalf of an anonymous player, the fighter-for-hire ended up neck-deep in a bullshit murder frame-up.

I keep wondering what the surprise is gonna be
this
time.

"All right." I draw my .45 and check the clip. "You ready?"

Hericane nods. She's been pretty quiet since we left Dixon's place. I'll bet the reality of Mardi's death is finally setting in...and with it, the grief she's been delaying.

Or not. "Do you think we'll find Mardi in time?" She looks vulnerable as she tucks her long, blonde hair behind her ears. "Do you think we'll be able to save her?"

What the hell do I say to that? I need the girl fired up big time, but if I manage to force her to see the truth, will it push her over the edge?

Frankly, I'm kind'a stunned that she still doesn't get it after what we've been through. How many more times does she have to hear people talk about the murder before she finally figures out it's for real?

Or is there another reason for her prolonged denial? Her father suffered from extreme dementia. For the first time, I wonder if maybe she's got a touch of it, too.

If she does, it won't do any good to try to shock her out of it just now. "We're trying our best." I reach out and give her arm a squeeze. "That's all we can do."

Hericane shakes her head and stares off into space. "I tried to get her to quit, you know. To give up crimefighting. Shepherd's Pie and Do Si Do nearly killed her last month. Did you know that?"

"Yes." The case came through the Internal Affairs Division of the Protectorate, though I wasn't the one who caught it. "I know Overtime saved her."

"I should've been there." She clenches her jaw. "I should've done something."

Does she mean she should've been there a month ago, or earlier today? "No one can be everywhere at once," I tell her. "Not even you." I give her arm another squeeze.

"I just want to see her one more time." She brushes a tear from her cheek. "I want one more chance to show her how much I love her."

The clock is ticking. I need to snap her out of it. "You want to help Mardi? You want to do right by her?" I wave the gun at the skeletal bulk of the vast stadium towering over us. "Then get out there and take down whoever shows up for this fight. Get 'em to tell us what they know about the people who got Mardi."

Hericane brushes aside another tear. "Will do."

I check my watch and give her the nod. "Time to rock 'n' roll. Time to do what you do best."

She bobs her head from side to side. "Bad guys." A flash of a smile flickers across her face. "Kicking the asses of."

"Go get 'em," I tell her, and then she leaps up into the sky and vaults over the lofty walls, heading for the heart of the stadium.

 

*****

 

With my .45 firmly in hand, and all my senses focused intently on my surroundings, I jog along the cement concourse leading under the stands. I see no one in the broad beams of the security lights arranged along the curving concourse to either side of me. It's Friday night, so work's stopped for the weekend; whatever guards are ranging around, they're nowhere nearby. That saves me some inconvenience.

I cast quick glimpses all around as I follow the concourse, aiming for the field. Three months from now, this place will be finished and thrumming with life--people moving in all directions, vendors hawking beers, lights flashing, food cooking. The blast of a rock band performing a concert, the crack of a baseball bat on the field. I can practically hear them now.

And then I
do
hear a blast from the field, a loud, echoing
crack
that rattles the bare metal beams around me.

Game on.

Tightening my grip on the gun, I break into a run. There's an access point up ahead, on my left, and I charge full-tilt toward the opening.

As I run, light flares from the opening, illuminating the concourse--then fading. Who showed up, I wonder? Who is it out there, on the field, fighting Hericane?

When I get the answer, I don't like it.

Bolting left, I dash through the access-way, emerging into the cool night air. My feet touch down in the dirt at the edge of the plain where the field will be, and I stop. I look to the sky just in time to be blinded by a burst of bright white light.

The blindness fades, and I finally see who showed up. I see the opponent we've come here to face.

Make that
opponents
, plural.

The blood runs ice cold in my veins. I knew I'd be surprised, I couldn't guess who'd show up for the bout. But this.

Holy shit.

But this throws me into a state of a shock. I literally freeze in place as the situation and implications soak through me. As I realize how much shittier my life has just gotten.

Because those people up there, swarming around Hericane? And the ones down on the field, firing their powers and weapons up at her? Those thirteen people?

They're all heroes. They're all top-percentile heroes in the Superhuman Protectorate.

Not the bad guys. The good guys. The best of the best. And it looks to me like they're trying their best to kill her.

That's Red Baron up there, strafing her with explosive projectiles as he swoops by. Sputnik whips past to follow up, zapping her with crackling beams of intense radiation. Then Concorde rams her at high speed, plowing dead on into her belly, driving her back across the sky.

I know all three of them well. Until now, I thought they were decent human beings. Same goes for all the rest of the attackers out there.

I never knew how wrong I was until now.

Concorde breaks away, leaving Hericane reeling through the air. That's when the bunch on the ground cut loose with their latest barrage. Party Rocker casts up a wall of sonic force that sends Hericane tumbling in the opposite direction. Geyser shoots up streams of high-pressure water that blast her in the face...then Homewrecker, the expanding woman, grows to a 60-foot height and catches her. She holds Hericane in her fist as the airborne heroes converge and pummel her with one mighty blow after another.

Holy shit.

Hericane might be the mightiest woman on the planet, perhaps the mightiest human being period, but she looks like she's on the ropes right now. They took her by surprise, and there are just so many of them--thirteen against one. She could wreck any one of them--hell, any three or four of them--but that's a lot of A-listers to handle at one time.

She gathers her strength and bursts free of Homewrecker's grip, then slugs her way through the flying circus...only to find herself clamped in the jaws of Sky Shark. As soon as she fights her way loose, King David nails her in the head with a blazing nuclear pellet from his holy slingshot. She flounders like a fly stung by a swatter, drifting in off-kilter loops--until Old Glory wraps her in the suffocating folds of his stretchable star-spangled banner body.

Meanwhile, down on the sidelines, I get over my shock and come back to life. I let the .45 fall at my side; it won't do me any good against this crowd. This is a job for Panic Attack.

Quickly, I assess the battlefield and devise a strategy. Should I send out a general wave of panic, or use surgical strikes to focus on key individuals? A general wave means each person gets a lower dose; but zeroing in on key targets requires more finesse.

Whatever I do, I have to do it now. The bucking and thrashing within Old Glory's wrapped flag cocoon looks like it's lessening. Hericane is mega-powerful and nearly indestructible, but she's still susceptible to lack of oxygen.

So my choice is obvious. Start there, with the American Flag Hero.

Concentrating with all my might, I reach out to Old Glory, beaming panic-inducing currents into his mind and body. When at first he fails to release her, I really pour it on. As I've learned from experience, high doses of panic can have an undesirable effect--making Old Glory suddenly contract, for instance, and lock up around his captive. Major panic can make people do the opposite of what you want them to; it's not an exact science.

But it's not like I've got a choice in the matter. Hericane's fighting less and less with each passing second.

So I intensify my effort. I give it all I've got.

Finally, Old Glory unwinds and frantically flutters off on the breeze, leaving Hericane to fall...but she doesn't hit the ground. Trampolina dives underneath her, letting her infinitely elastic body bounce Hericane back up into the sky.

Homewrecker reaches to catch her, but I snag her giant back-brain with a bolt of terror. It makes her stop and back off, looking horrified, as Hericane shoots past her.

For a few precious seconds, no one is pounding on Hericane. Shishkabob flings up a few interdimensional skewers, which bounce right off her, but my panic blasts keep everyone else away. I fire them at every A-lister who makes a move toward Hericane or even looks at her funny. I buy her a few more seconds of recovery time.

That's all Hericane needs. When she's 70 feet in the air, she stops her upward motion and hovers there, looking down at her foes. Several start to move toward her at once...but then I blanket the lot of them with a wave of general panic. So much for surgical strikes.

Only one of the Protectorate's soldiers overcomes the wave and rockets toward Hericane: Gestalt, the heroine who taps the power of humanity's group unconscious. She blasts her way toward Hericane with fists extended, ready to land her trademark power-of-the-people hammer-punch.

I quickly focus in on her, but it's too late. She's moving too fast.

At the last second, Hericane dodges left--but Gestalt still manages to connect with the side of one fist. It's enough to send Hericane spinning across the sky.

For a moment, I think it might be all over. I struggle to keep the panic flowing, but other so-called heroes shrug it off and head for Hericane. Gestalt turns around for another run at her, too.

Hericane stops spinning and slumps in midair. Maybe she was hit harder than I thought.

Meanwhile, all the other airborne heroes zoom toward her from all directions. It happens sometimes, like a chain reaction; one brave person inspires others to resist panic.

I use every last bit of willpower to try to pull those people back, but I can't. They keep up the charge, all cruising toward her at once like a flight of missiles zeroing in on her heat signature.

And she just hangs there, limp and defeated as a puppet whose strings have been cut. She's already taken so much punishment. Can she possibly withstand the incoming assault by so many powerhouses?

The panic attacks aren't working, so I stop trying--and I raise the .45. Maybe I can distract them, at least.

I aim well away from Hericane and crack off a shot...but the heroes keep flying. All I accomplish is draw the attention of the earthbound contingent.

Suddenly, the airborne attackers plunge at their target. Hericane disappears in the pile-on.

But only for a moment. Next thing I know, Sky Shark's hurtling away from the pile, screaming. Next comes Red Baron and Gestalt, followed by Concorde. Sputnik plummets down after that, crash-landing in the midst of the heroes on the ground. That just leaves Old Glory, Ball Lightning, and Air Marshall, who wrestle their prey a moment longer, straining to hold on.

Only to fly off in all directions as Hericane flexes her mighty muscles.

What an incredible woman.

While the thirteen heroes are down, Hericane flashes across the field and scoops me up in her arms. Then, she soars up out of the stadium and races into the night.

Only when we're up there do I realize how shaky she is. Only when I see her up close do I notice how bad she looks.

She's in worse shape than I knew.

"We need to go somewhere." She coughs. "We need to get off the radar."

"Okay." Her flying's wobbly, and it's making me nervous. I wish I had the power to
remove
fear, in which case I'd use it on myself right now. "I know a place."

 

*****

 

We hole up in a decrepit old house in the woods, out past the city limits. I know the place well--well enough that I have a key to the front door on my key ring. Well enough that I hesitate on the threshold before stepping inside.

Too well.

But it's secluded, and I don't think they'll look for us here. At least not for a while. I hope.

Though the truth is, I've sorely underestimated the Protectorate lately. So who the hell knows?

I guide Hericane inside and shut the door. She goes straight to the dust-infested couch and throws herself down on it without a word.

She really did take a pounding back at the stadium. Her hair's a tangled mess, her white costume is torn and smeared with dirt, and her cape is gone. Believe it or not, she even has some bruises on her face. Those A-listers really did a number on her.

I slump in the moldy matching chair across from her and rub my eyes hard. I don't turn on the lights, because there's no juice in here. Place has been shuttered and empty for seven years now.

This effing place.

"So." I blow out my breath in a big, tired gust. "Another set-up."

"No shit." Hericane's voice is hoarse, exhausted. I wonder if she's up for any of this anymore.

I should probably leave her the hell alone, but...the clock's ticking. Now more than ever. Whatever window of opportunity we have in which to act, it's closing too damn fast.

So I keep the ball rolling. "The Protectorate set us up. I'm guessing they set up Chimpanzero, too. They were behind all of this from the get-go."

Hericane's silent for a very long moment. I wonder briefly if she's dozed off...and then she speaks. "But why? Why would they want to kill Mardi Gras?"

Her words land with the impact of a bomb in the dark and dusty room. I stop rubbing my eyes and look at her, a figure in tattered white arrayed on the couch.

She knows. She knows her lover is dead.

Maybe she knew from the start. Maybe pushing it back was the only way to keep going and deliver the justice Mardi deserved. Or maybe the shock of it all threw her into genuine denial or delusion, and she only just now snapped out of it. Either way, one thing is suddenly clear.

She knows.

Not that I'm going to belabor the obvious. "Do you know what Mardi was working on most recently?"

Hericane shakes her head. "She kept me out of the loop since I started trying to get her to quit."

"Damn." I rub my eyes again. I need to get out of this shithole, we need to get moving, time's running out...but we've got nothing. This investigation is dead in the water.

We're
dead, too, if we don't find a way to bring it back to life.

We sit in silence for a while, thinking our private thoughts. I keep expecting to hear her doze off, but the snores never come. Does she even
need
to sleep?

Eventually, her hoarse voice rises from the shadows. "Did you used to live here?"

I guess it was obvious since I had the key to the front door. "Yes," I tell her. "A long time ago."

"So what happened here?" She has a quick mind. Already figured out something bad happened, otherwise why would the place be empty? And why would it have a hold on me, such that the key is still on my key ring? If I'd gotten it in a divorce or inheritance, I'd still be living here, or I'd have sold it or rented it out.

So what happened here? What happened to make my stomach ache and my eyes burn with tears just from being inside these walls?

Tell her, Bonnie. Just tell her.

"Home invasion." The words stick in my throat. "My husband and two little boys..." I wasn't here, I didn't see it happen, but I see it play out before me for the hundred millionth time, just the way I imagined it from reading the police reports. There's Jimmy now, opening the front door, getting clubbed in the head with the butt of a shotgun. There are the two maniacs, pushing their way into the house with duct tape and coils of rope. The knives, they get from the kitchen counter--ceramic blades, a wedding gift.

My two little boys run into the room crying. The butchers hogtie Jimmy and slice him up while they watch. Then they...

Oh God, why them God, why not me, God? You could have had me a thousand times over and a million times worse. I would give myself freely to those maniacs if only you'd spare my beloveds.

I feel the tears. Rolling down my cheeks.

"I'm sorry." Hericane says the words softly. "I'm so sorry."

"I was working late," I tell her. "If only I'd been here..."

Hericane clears her throat. "Were they superhumans?"

"No." Of course not, of course they weren't. I couldn't even console myself with that, with knowing that I couldn't have stopped them if I'd been here when they invaded. "Just a pair of thrill-killing lunatics passing through."

"So they were caught. By the police?"

I shake my head, wiping away tears. Right there, in the middle of the room, I see it again, just as it's happened every day and night in my imagination. Every minute, every minute of my life, it plays back on some level, in a never-ending loop. The boys, my brave little boys...

They try to fight back.

"A vigilante caught up with them," I tell Hericane. "A superhuman called Deathalyzer. He killed them on the spot. Turned them inside-out." That piece of shit, that son of a bitch. He cheated me. Not because I care that much about justice or the legal system, not in that situation.

I hated him because he robbed me of the chance to do what
I
wanted to do to those animals.

Hericane turns her head to look at me. "Did you hire him? Deathalyzer, I mean?"

I shake my head.

She looks back at the ceiling. "How long ago did this happen? How many years?"

"Seven." The word emerges through clenched teeth. A deep wellspring of emotion surges inside me, fighting to get out. I thought I could handle coming here given the circumstances, given that I'm running for my life, but surprise. I can't.

"Does it get better?" says Hericane. "After seven years, does it get any better?"

I know what she needs to hear, I know what will help her through her own private hell...but I can't say it. I won't bullshit her. I hated when other people did that to me, and I'm not going to do it to her.

"No." That's what I tell her. "It never gets better."

Hericane lies still on the dusty couch, hands folded over her belly, knees drawn up. "That's what I figured." There's a tightness in her voice that wasn't there before, like her vocal cords are tied in a knot. Like she's going down the road that I've been traveling, watching the mental movie unspool in her head. Watching Mardi Gras answer the door of her apartment and then what she imagines came next.

But this is the worst movie of all, because she doesn't know what came next, no one does except the killer. So she fills in the blanks with the worst possible details, the greatest amount of suffering, the foulest cruelty imaginable.

Somebody has to stop her before she sinks any deeper. There'll be time enough for that later, but right now the border between her and her dead lover is perilously thin.

I need to get her back on task. "Did Mardi Gras keep any kind of record of her activities?"

"Like a casebook?" Hericane shakes her head. "Not that I know of. We were both worried about leaving proof that would compromise our secret identities." The tightness is gone from her voice. I have a hunch she's glad for the change of subject.

"There must be something." I see my kids dying in the middle of the room again, and I force myself to look away. All that does is shift my attention to the front door, where Jimmy's getting clubbed with the butt of the shotgun again.

So I close my eyes. I try to block it out. Because something's nagging at me. Something to do with the case.

I put myself back at the crime scene and reach deep, straining to unearth what's bothering me. I see Mardi's shredded costume hanging from the ceiling fan, slowly turning. I see the blood stains splattering the walls, floor, ceiling, and everything in between. I see the bits of blown-apart tissue sticking everywhere, the hundreds or thousands of pieces of what had once been a vibrant human being, a genuinely good-hearted super-hero from what I'd seen and heard, a woman who was full of fun and surprises and...

Holy shit.

That's it. That's what's been nagging at me.

I get up out of the chair and stretch. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit. Total effing shit," says Hericane. "Why?"

I pull out the .45 and check the clip. A-OK. "I think we need to go back to the evidence. I think we missed something."

Slowly, Hericane rolls over and hauls herself up to a seated position. "Like what?"

"I don't know." I shove the gun back into its holster. "But there has to be something." I hesitate, reluctant to say what's next. I don't want to bring it all back to her in all its fresh agony--but I know in my heart she's already reliving it anyway. "The way we found her. Why would someone kill her like that?"

Hericane grunts and scowls as she gets to her feet. "Sending a message?" She bobs her head from one side to the other, cracking her neck. "Eliminating any margin for error?"

"I think there's a third possibility." I head for the door, ignoring my weeping little boys as they watch their father being cut to ribbons. "Let's get out of here."

"And go where?" says Hericane. "The entire Protectorate's going to be hunting us. Not to mention the citizens' auxiliary."

"We're going where the evidence is." I open the door to the sight of the two home invaders with their duct tape and rope. "The one place where a group of legally sanctioned individuals with resources and an arsenal would just love to stick it to the Protectorate."

Hericane stops in the doorway and stares at me. "The police department? We're going to the cops?"

I hear my family screaming in the living room behind me. "You bet your ass." I'm sorry, so sorry I wasn't here that night for you. Sorry I couldn't hold you in my arms and make it all better.

But maybe I can make it better for her. For Hericane.

Goodbye, my loves.
That's what I think as I walk out to the sound of their shrieks.
Goodbye for now.

And then I slam the door on them and turn my back on that place, glad to leave it. Hating myself for feeling that way for even an instant.