Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (27 page)

“To be truthful,” he admitted wryly, “I’m older than I look. Now I’ve admitted a truth, tell me one of your own. What is a beautiful word?”

Okay
…
 
“Daffodil.”

“Why?”

“Just saying it makes me want to laugh. It’s happy. And daffodils are beautiful—like tears of golden sunlight.”

“Yes. Tears of
Amaterasu
. ” He sipped his drink, looking at me like I was the most fascinating thing in the world.

“A thing of beauty,” he said softly, “is a joy forever. I
ts loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness, but still will keep a bower quiet for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”

“What?” The flush had gone so deep my hair should have lit on fire.

“Keats.” He looked away.

And where did
that
come from?
Quick, new subject
.

He provided one. “Can you tell me what is going on tonight?”

I looked at the dance-floor, unutterably thankful for the out. “It’s Girl’s Costume Night, so most of the superheroes here tonight aren’t real capes. You’d call it
cosplay
?”

“I don’t see any impersonators.”

“Some fans do like to dress up as their favorite superhero,” I said, wondering if I’d been complimented or hit on. Either way, it had been the most poetic pickup line I’d ever heard. “But only original costumes can enter the contest.”

He frowned. “It is different in Japan. Most
otaku
purchase pre-made costumes and play their favorite
kensei
or
mech
-warrior or magical girl. There the prize would go to the closest match.”

I decided to take it as a compliment. “You should be grateful; you’re going to see some pretty scary stuff tonight.”

“And the woman who brought you to your table? She directs the event?”

“Safire hosts a couple of nights a month—she’s very popular.”

“She is…colorful.”

“She makes your eyes hurt.” I said, rolling mine. “But don’t let her fool you, Mr. Miyamoto. Sure, sometimes her events have all the class of a wet t-shirt contest, but she’s a B Class Atlas-type, a West Side Guardian, and a crackerjack EMT—if you need someone to peel you out of a car and get you to the hospital alive, she’s your girl. Her save-stats are amazing, and believe me her fans keep track. And…” I sipped my drink. “She has a big heart.”

And like Chakra, she’d broadened my horizons considerably. Often in ways that left me vaguely horrified.

My defense of Safire earned me another careful look and I turned to watch the dance-floor, wondering if my encounter with Charming had left me more
aware
of men. I hadn’t been, since John, but
Yoshi’s
eyes raised goose-bumps on my skin.

I heard him sigh, and we talked about the Japanese hero-idol scene until the rest of the girls returned.
Quin
brought Andrew with her. Artemis didn’t bring her snack, but I spotted Hector across the room chatting up a…pink ferret?…as if nothing had happened. I introduced
Yoshi
around; again, he failed to hand out his business card. Hmm.

Sakura Wind ended its final number with a thundering riff and bowed to generous applause and whistles. A
fangirl
in the audience threw a bright bit of wadded cloth at the stage and the lead singer caught it with a laugh (it
couldn’t
be what I thought it was). Then Safire took the stage, to more whistles and applause, and began explaining the rules. But I wasn’t listening. The mystery that was
Yoshi
made my mind wander, and now a guy in the audience caught my attention. He wore a fancy trench-coat that must have been hot, and a spandex skull-mask that stretched right down to his collar. He wasn’t watching Safire either, and as I watched, his
infared
signature brightened visibly. He was scared, or excited, and working himself up to something.

“Guys…” I said. And that was as far as I got before he spun around, reached into his coat to cross-draw two
autopistols
, and started shooting.

Hollywood makes it look like every week’s a new
supervillain
battle, every day you step out for a Starbuck’s
something will happen.
So not true; most superhero work is patrol and rescue, and nothing you don’t expect ever happens on your days off. But when you spend most of your time out in the thunderstorms, lightning
is
more likely to find you.

The Astra Interviews

I swept
Yoshi
behind me as the gunman hosed our table. Bullets
chunked
into bodies around us, and Chakra and Artemis went down. The screams spread outward, but I was over the table as spent cartridges chimed on the dance floor. The world shrank to the skull-masked gunman, time dilating and not in a good way; there were at least a good dozen real capes in the club tonight, and I
had
to get to him first.

I caught a hand and
squeezed
the fingers around the grip and trigger as he shrieked, but he kept shooting past me as I flailed for the other. Then the back of his head exploded, screams climbing the scale as his blood and bits spattered club-goers behind him. Dropping the body, I scanned the mob. Safire yelled directions and the servers scrambled to push people towards the exits, but the only people moving against the tide were capes I recognized. Including K-Strike, standing with another steel marble in his hand. No more shooters.

Dropping to my knees, I rolled the corpse for a quick search, averting my eyes from the ruin above his collar. Under the shooter’s coat and the pistol-harnesses I found only clothes. Homicidal yes, suicidal definitely, but not wearing a bomb, thank God. The Fortress’ staff could handle him now—I abandoned him for our table and his victims.

Quin
was yelling for first-aid kits. Any bullets that hit her had simply bounced, and Artemis had misted to leave the ones that got her behind, but she held an arm close to her side as she and
Quin
knelt over Chakra.

Oh God
. I stopped breathing and started praying.

Quin
yelled into her
earbug
as she made a pressure-bandage out of Chakra’s hood, and I forced myself to turn away to look for more victims. And there were more.
Yoshi
might have been momentarily stunned (I’d bounced him off the wall), but he knelt beside another Fortress patron. She cried breathlessly, a high-pitched whine he ignored as he gently checked her over, and I followed his example, triaging victims and not even bothering with Dispatch; they’d just distract and help was already on the way.

Rush arrived only heartbeats later, his arms full of field-kits he laid out in a blur, one for each of us and even for Andrew and Safire. I focused on my work; there was enough for everybody.

We’d all cross-trained in field trauma—enough to know when bullet-wounds, broken bones, and other kinds of injuries were life-threatening and what to do till help arrived. One victim I checked was already gone; she’d taken a bullet through the neck, bled out arterially in seconds. Next to her a guy, probably her date, held in an abdominal wound that pumped dark blood. I applied a pressure-bandage and wrapped it tight while telling him to lie still and count by tens, and was working on another—a contestant with a bullet hole in her arm and a bleeding graze on her temple—when the paramedics arrived to take our place. Then it became a race as we strapped the worst wounded onto rescue boards and it was my turn, mine and Safire’s.

Now
I paid attention to Dispatch as they called instructions in my ear.
 
Northwestern Memorial’s trauma center stood ready to receive us as we came in, Chakra and the gut-shot victim first, to drop our cargoes on waiting gurneys. They disappeared through the doors, whisked inside by flapping white coats, and we returned to fly every shooting victim that couldn’t walk themselves into the back of an ambulance. The
shooter’d
had less than three
seconds
, and he’d managed to hit more than half a dozen people. I tried not to think of my last sight of Chakra; bone-white but repeating some kind of chant to herself between painful breaths. She hadn’t felt me squeeze her hand.

The police arrived behind the paramedics, cordoning off Rush Street while we worked to stabilize and transport everyone. Then we were done.

“Astra?”

I looked up at Fisher and realized that I’d wandered back to our table by instinct. Blood spotted it, and I wasn’t touching the cold tapas.

“Astra?” he repeated. Around the room, cops I recognized were taking statements or safeguarding the room till the crime-scene examiners arrived. Phelps was talking to
Yoshi
and writing as he listened.

“Jeez, kid.”

“What?”

He pointed at my face. Reaching up, I felt a bump on my mask over my forehead, and picked out a bit of red bone. Back-spatter. I set it on the table.

“He was standing kind of close.” I said carefully. “I’ll have the screaming willies later, but right now I’m in my happy place. There are bunnies.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

I nodded and straightened up, and he set his phone on record while I talked. “Do you know who he was yet?” I asked finally.

Fisher nodded. “Got a hit off his record. He called himself Nemesis—he’s a wannabe vigilante. I’m headed to his place next. Want to tag along? We could use you.”

Standing, I shook my head. “Now you’ve got my statement, I’m going to the hospital. Keep me in the loop?”

“Garfield won’t like it, but, sure kid. You did good.” He looked back at Nemesis’ covered remains, at the two draped bodies by the wall.

“Jesus. Sorry, kid.”

I sighed. “
S’okay
.”

Once upon a time just stepping into a hospital freaked me out; the unique smells, the beeping machines, brought back Bad Stuff. Now I didn’t even think about it. The nurse behind the desk told me Chakra was stable and directed me to the intensive care unit,
after
handing me a bunch of wipes and sending me into the staff restroom to clean my face and mask.

Looking less like a horror movie extra, I found the ICU. Chakra lay sleeping behind glass, attached to wires and tubes and surrounded by blinking and beeping equipment. Blackstone turned away from the observation window when I pushed through the doors.

I was glad to see Seven behind him, even though Blackstone wasn’t a specific target anymore. Probably.

“How did she
know
?” I blurted.

“Pardon?” Blackstone leaned on his cane, normally a costume-prop.

“Hecate. How did she know we’d be at The Fortress tonight?”

He actually smiled. A sad smile, but still.

“Astra,” he said. “Stop for a moment, and assume that Hecate doesn’t wear her panties on her head and talk to her flying monkeys. Given what little we know of her goals, is there any reason you can think of for her to be behind tonight?”

“But—”

“Artemis is back at the Dome coordinating with the police, but I doubt we’ll learn he’s one of Hecate’s minions.”