The Trials of Renegade X
Read The Trials of Renegade X Online
Authors: Chelsea M. Campbell
The Trials of Renegade X
Chelsea M. Campbell
1
st
edition published by Golden City Publishing, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Chelsea M. Campbell
www.chelseamcampbell.com
Cover art by Raul Allen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
Table of Contents
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING CITIZENS OF GOLDEN CITY
Books by Chelsea M. Campbell
Renegade X
The Rise of Renegade X
The Trials of Renegade x
Harper Madigan: Junior High Private Eye
DEDICATION
FOR CHLOË, WHO PATIENTLY ANSWERED EACH OF MY QUESTIONS LIKE IT WAS THE FIRST INSTEAD OF THE MILLIONTH. THIS BOOK WOULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT YOU.
The Trials of Renegade X
Chapter 1
KAT PULLS BACK A little as I kiss her. We’re sitting on my bed in my room at Gordon’s house. That’s right.
My room
. It used to be my little brother Alex’s room until Gordon remodeled the attic. Now Alex lives up there, and I live down here, on the ground, like any sane person. Any sane person making out with his really hot supervillain girlfriend, that is.
Kat’s eyes dart toward the door, as if she expects it to spring open any second, even though no one’s home. “Damien ... what about your mom?”
She means Helen, Gordon’s wife, the mother of my three half siblings. I kiss Kat’s neck, making her shiver—one of my favorite perks of being her boyfriend. “She’s
not
my mom.”
“She
really
hates me.” Kat keeps her voice low, like she’s afraid to say the words out loud. This should probably be the part where I deny it and reassure her that deep down my stepmom really does like her, but we’d both know it was a lie. Kat’s deceased grandfather was Helen’s nemesis and the reason Helen lost her superspeed and why she walks with a limp. So how she feels about Kat isn’t exactly a secret—one she doesn’t mind telling me every chance she gets, as if I didn’t hear her the first million times. She’s also banned Kat from the house, and especially from my room—and, if she could, I’m pretty sure she’d ban her from my pants—but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
Kat shakes her head. “What if they come home? You know I’m not supposed to be here.”
“I also know what tomorrow is.” Tomorrow’s the day Kat moves into her dorm at Vilmore, the local villain university. Villains and heroes start college at sixteen, and not just because neither of them wants the enemy to get ahead, but because it turns out high school is boring and pretty much useless. And now Kat’s starting up at Vilmore.
Without me
.
We were supposed to go together. We were supposed to sleep in each other’s dorm rooms and partner up to ace all our classes and totally rule that place. Now she’s going to do all that stuff—excluding the sleeping in other people’s dorm rooms thing, I hope—on her own. Or, God forbid, with
other people
, even if they’re not nearly as awesome as me.
I’ve had all summer to prepare for this, ever since Kat got her acceptance packet and I got my official rejection letter, but I honestly thought she’d tell me she’d changed her mind by now. I mean, if she has to go without me, what’s the point? Just because her dad would kill her if she didn’t go, and just because he’d
especially
kill her if she wasn’t going on my account. Her parents aren’t crazy about her making life choices based on “a boy,” even if that boy is me, and even if I am not just “a boy,” but “
the
boy” in her life. Plus, they’ve known me for about two years now, so they should understand why Kat would want her life to revolve around mine.
But anyway, tomorrow my girlfriend moves to Vilmore,
our school
, without me, and even though it’s only a forty-minute train ride away, it feels like it might as well be the moon. I want to make the most of the time I have left with her, and that doesn’t involve worrying about what Helen and Gordon will think of what we’re about to do to each other. In my bed. Pants not required.
Plus, we’ve spent the summer doing it all over Golden City—we have a checklist of all the places we’ve graced with our love—and my room hasn’t been covered. We even managed to do it in Kat’s room last month, even though her mattress squeaks and her mom watches us like a hawk, but only because her parents were gone all day moving her grandparents—the ones who are still living,
not
Helen’s nemesis—into a retirement home for supervillains. The home is really nice and has special walls, so when the residents lose control of their powers, they can keep it isolated and don’t accidentally shoot anyone with laser beams or start any fires.
I
wanted to put the retirement home on our checklist and volunteer to help them move, like the wonderful, upstanding citizens that we are, but Kat said it was probably our only chance to rip each other’s clothes off under her parents’ roof, so I gave in.
“You know, I saw your mom the other day.” Something gets weird about Kat’s voice, and she doesn’t quite look at me, so I know that when she says she saw my mom, she means my
real
mom. “Damien, there’s something you should—”
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
Kat hesitates, taking a deep breath. “Yeah, okay. But ...” She shakes her head, letting it go.
Good. Because my mom is the last person I want to think about right now, and not just because it’s a total mood killer. It’s been five months since she disowned me. Five months since we’ve spoken, and she probably hasn’t thought about me once, so why should I think about her?
“I don’t want to go tomorrow,” Kat says.
I grin at her. “Liar.” I wish she meant it, but I know she’s excited about going. How can she not be? At least for now. A week or two in, when she’s missing me like crazy, she might change her mind.
She smiles, but she still looks sad. “I wish you were coming with me, that’s all. We were supposed to ...” She swallows and lets the rest of her sentence hang in the air.
We were supposed to go together. It was going to be the two of us, partners in crime. But that was before my sixteenth birthday. Before my thumbprint changed to form an
X
instead of a
V
like it was supposed to. Now she gets to go to Vilmore, and I’m starting at Heroesworth Academy on Monday.
Heroesworth. Ugh. Not exactly my dream school—the exact opposite, in fact, since it’s a university for heroes, not villains—and not where I’d ever pictured myself. And yet I volunteered to go. It wasn’t even Gordon’s idea, though his whole face lit up like it was Christmas morning and he’d just opened a new pair of tights when I told him I wanted to enroll.
Want
might be a strong word here. But I made my choice. I’m not a villain. I chose Gordon and his family—
my
family—over my mom. Over taking over Golden City and turning all the superheroes into zombie slaves. And I can fly. That’s a superhero power if there ever was one, like even my genetics are trying to tell me this is who I am. A hero.
I’ve still got an
X
—thanks to my mixed parentage and the virus some scientists released years ago that marks heroes and villains with letters on their thumbs—and depending on my actions, it could still turn into an
H
or a
V
. But I live with heroes now. I have a sidekick. If I picked up a Magic 8 Ball and asked it if I’m going to get an
H
, it would say,
Signs point to yes!
Because they do. So I figure I might as well embrace it. I might as well try for an
H
, because then maybe it’ll get here that much faster. Then I won’t feel that hot rush of shame every time one of Gordon’s or Helen’s relatives comes over and asks if “that boy” is still staying here. Even though I
live
here and they know that. Or in the case of Helen’s sister, glares at me like I’m some kind of demon spawn.
Which normally I’d take as a compliment. But not fitting in
anywhere
is getting old. And if I had my
H
, Gordon could tell people I’m his son without flinching. Without worrying about having to explain how he had a one-night stand with a supervillain. He wouldn’t have to stand there, stammering, his whole face going red enough to match his cape.
“Let’s not think about tomorrow,” I tell Kat. “Or Monday.”
“Or how we’ll be going to rival schools and never see each other?” she asks.
“Exactly.” I kiss a slow trail down her neck, making her melt against me and forget about what’s going to happen after tonight.
She kisses me back, her tongue hot on my ear, and she might not be the only one who’s melting. “I could change,” she whispers. “Just in case someone comes home.”
Kat’s a shapeshifter. So even though normally she has shoulder-length black hair, blue eyes, and a thin nose, she could look like anybody in the world. But I don’t want anybody else—only her. “Never,” I tell her. “I’ll risk it.”
She sighs and relaxes into me, and I know that she liked my answer, despite her worries about getting caught. Her hands slide under my shirt, her fingers running up and down my spine. Resting just inside the band of my jeans.
There’s a zap when I kiss her, a jolt of static electricity that sparks between us. She winces, but just for a split second, and then she’s kissing me again. Ignoring anything else.
I forget about everything except the feeling of Kat pressed against me. Right now we’re just two people making out, about to do way more and cross a significant location off our checklist, and it doesn’t matter what letters are on our thumbs or what schools we’re going to.
Her phone buzzes from inside her purse on the floor. That’ll be her mom, checking up on her. Making sure she’s not alone with me long enough to get into any “compromising” situations.
You know, like the one we’re in now.
Kat ignores the phone. The buzzing stops for a few moments, then starts up again as her mom calls back.
“You know,” Kat says, “it’s not too late to, like, go out for ice cream or something.”
Something our parents would approve of, she means. Though in Helen’s case she’s made it clear she doesn’t approve of me spending
any
time with Kat, compromising or otherwise. Not that she gets a say in it.
“Oh, isn’t it?” I ask, playfully pushing her down to the bed. It is
way
too late to go out for ice cream. In my humble, still unfortunately fully clothed opinion.
She grins. “We could go to that one place where they name the ice creams after zoo animals, the one where you kept pointing to the Bald Eagle flavor and saying you were going to report them to the endangered species people.”
I smile at the memory. “The one we got banned from, you mean?”
“The one
you
got banned from.” She pokes me in the chest. “I got a coupon for a free ice cream cone because they screwed up my order.”
“You’re going to be gone tomorrow. Do you really want to spend the rest of our time together messing with people? Because, I mean, if that’s what you want, we can go—”
“Don’t even think about it.” She pulls me down to her. I kiss her, my hand sliding under her shirt. My fingertips brush against her stomach, then up against the edge of her bra. “You’re sure you want to do this?” she asks.
“Uh, when have I ever not been sure?” For the record, I am
extremely sure
I want to do this. Like, right now.