Lady Superior (3 page)

After only a few minutes, the teenage boy wrapped his hands around the shining steel microphone beside his register. Despite the two of them standing less than three feet away, his croaky voice echoed throughout the warehouse. “Number two-thirty-three.”

Jane waved her receipt as Kristen grabbed her Bienenstich kuchen custard and made for the outdoor seating. Jane, with her neon Blue Moon, followed close behind. The women were united in their unspoken decision to sit in the shade, but Jane didn’t stop until they reached the waterfall. She sat on the stone ledge at its base, one long bench that walled in the narrow pond. Kristen shook her head. She had to yell to be heard over the roaring water. “I’m not getting wet.”

“Just sit. It’ll be easier that way,” Jane shouted back.

With a roll of her eyes, Kristen sat down and ate a spoonful of custard.

Jane spoke low and quiet—quiet relative to the waterfall. Though the dining area was packed with children and their guardians, Kristen doubted anyone else could hear her, which was probably the point. “How are you feeling after yesterday? Good? Shaken up?”

“Mostly confused. Still pretty sure I’m going to wake up eventually.”

“Everyone I work with says the same thing. Hell, I used to say the same thing. You get used to it. It stays weird, but it stops being incomprehensible. You think you’re up for another job?”

Kristen’s shoulders fell slack. Of course there was another job. For a moment, she had managed to forget they weren’t just two ladies out for frozen custard. She’d forgotten this woman held her world in the palm of her hand. “Do I have a choice?”

“Absolutely. You can walk away if you want.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You’d let me do that?”

“Sure. If you made a good faith effort to keep yourself a secret, we’d still help you keep your identity under wraps. Actually, if you want to stay out of the media, walking away is a good choice. If you’re not with us, we’d want you to disappear from the public eye. That doesn’t mean kill you—it means we’d make every effort to keep you invisible. You’d only see us again if you made that job difficult.”

“What about the Internet? You can’t stop people from holding their phones up.”

“Nobody believes what they see on the Internet.”

“I’m sure some do.”

“And nobody believes those people. Are you willing to help or are you going to walk away? If helping people is what you really want to do, sticking with me means you can do it more effectively. You won’t have to hope you’re in the right place at the right time. We can make sure you’re there.”

Kristen sucked custard from her spoon and stared at the ground. Walking away would be the reasonable thing to do, she supposed. But she liked being useful for a change. The Temple Financial skirmish had been terrifying, sure, but also…incredible. In the moment, she’d felt untouchable. Unstoppable. Now that she had a choice—albeit one with conditions—walking away just felt wrong.

Before Kristen could answer, Jane spoke up again. “Let me put it this way: what did you want to do with your life before you knew what you were?”

“Football.”

“And why didn’t you go for it?”

“For one, nobody wants to pay women to play sports. Two, it didn’t seem fair. I broke records in pretty much everything in high school. It felt like cheating once I figured it out. I wish I could give them back.”

“You obviously want to do this hero thing. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have put yourself out there and helped anyone in the first place. You were doing that long before I found you. Is it fair to yourself to back away from something you want to do? Twice?”

Kristen idly drew a checkerboard pattern in her frozen custard with the edge of her spoon. “You have to tell me what you need me to do before I agree to anything.”

Jane grinned. “I can do that. Think you’re ready to hear some really crazy shit?”

“It gets worse?”

“Worse? I don’t know about that. Weirder? Oh yeah.”

Chapter 2

Kristen crouched on the roof of a warehouse along Howell Avenue. A sign on the roadside advertised SPACE FOR RENT AFFORDABLE RATES. She tugged down her stretchy athletic gear, impatient as she watched the office building across the street for movement. She could recall every word of what Jane told her about what was about to happen.

The people I sent you after in Temple? There’s a reason we couldn’t let the police go in first. Those people weren’t human. Historians call them the Sea People—folk legends call them changelings. They only look human when it works for them. Historians don’t know where they came from, because the people who wrote about them didn’t know. And as far as I know, they don’t come from anywhere. They’re nomads that go wherever they want and take whatever they want. No port authority in the world has ever noticed them. Not even the TSA. We don’t know how they do it. They walk through security without question every single time.

My branch of Temple doesn’t deal in money. We deal in artifacts—the kinds of things you’d see in a museum. In fact, a lot of the artifacts in the Milwaukee Public Museum’s collection? We put them there. My branch is on the thirteenth floor. They were looking for something—one part of a set. They already have one of the items in that set. It’s here in town and we need to reclaim it. I can’t tell you what it is. I need you to trust me.

Here’s a map of the warehouse. You’re going to go in through the roof—I’ve marked the spot. I’ll have two guys in this building across the street here. You’ll watch for the signal before making your entrance. Do just what you did last time. My guys will cover you through the windows if you need it. Once the warehouse is secure, I’ll move in and reclaim the item. Whatever you do, do not touch it. And remember: these people aren’t human. Do what you need to do.

Kristen silently cursed herself.
Why am I doing this again?
This was all a far cry from punching asshole husbands or pulling people from burning vehicles. She couldn’t shake the feeling she was the bad guy this time. Then again, there were a bunch of weirdos skulking around a dark warehouse just below her. As far as she knew, good guys generally didn’t skulk. Skulking was not a good guy kind of word.

It was the waiting, she decided. She’d never had to wait before. Something happened, she jumped in. The only barrier to entry was stashing a wig and a layer of clothes. This time, she had to wait for a signal. And the signal was taking forever. Too much time to think, wonder. No rush of adrenaline. Just waiting. Would she get shot this time? What would that be like? She was pretty sure she couldn’t deflect bullets, but she wouldn’t actually know until it happened. Just thinking about it made her shiver.

Light sparkled in an upper window across the street. It stopped as soon as it began. Kristen squinted at the darkness.

A small light flashed again. Twice, this time.

That was it.

Kristen tiptoed to her mark and took a breath to steady her core. She thrust down with her fingertips. They pierced the aluminum roofing like a nail through a board. She peeled the aluminum back with the shrieking sound of twisting metal. With a final yank, she tore the metal strip away and dropped into the hole, letting herself fall thirty feet to the concrete below. Instincts registered motion ahead, and she moved automatically, sidestepping the flashing muzzle of an assault rifle just fast enough to stay ahead of the spray. Kristen looped an armored arm in hers and twisted it up and back. The shoulder snapped. Guttural shouts of unknown language echoed throughout the warehouse followed by the stomping of boots. The man she held dropped his gun, and she spun him to face her. A punch to the stomach caved in his armor, the blow lifting him from his feet and dropping him to his face. She brought a boot down on his head with a wet crack, then kicked away the now-misshapen helmet.

For the first time, she took in her claustrophobic surroundings. A single swaying light fixture cast faint, flickering light through every gap. Jane’s map proved frighteningly accurate. Kristen had fallen between two tall shelving units laden with shipping crates—not quite as large as those she’d seen on actual ships, but still large enough to contain a small car. The aisle was just barely wide enough for a forklift to turn around, she supposed. The contents of the shelves prevented her from seeing anywhere but straight ahead and straight back, hemming her in. If it turned out she couldn’t deflect bullets after all, she’d be a dead woman. The solitary lightbulb illuminated another figure ahead—with another rifle.

Kristen threw herself sideways, slamming her shoulder into a crate at ground level. It didn’t just move, it flew from the shelf and into the next aisle, a deep yelp and the plastic clatter of armor the only sign she’d hit someone. She scrambled onto the shelf and out of the line of fire, throwing herself into the crate a second time. A snapping of armor signaled the end of whomever got caught between that crate and the next. Kristen darted away from the fresh gap in the crates behind her, taking cover behind the metal while she examined her position. The units were six shelves high, their tops nearly reaching the thirty-foot ceiling. She could fall thirty feet, but could she jump it?

A good time to try.

As the echoing sound of boots moved in her direction once more, she crouched and leapt. Although she felt like a rocket as she shot into the air, it wasn’t enough. She reached out and only just managed to get a handhold on the middle shelf. She hoisted herself up onto the shelf, jumping the instant her toes touched steel. In seconds, she stood atop the highest shelf, hand braced against the corrugated ceiling for balance.

Kristen was pretty sure stacking boxes that close to the ceiling was some sort of fire hazard.

She watched the commotion below for a long moment, a smug smile cresting her lips. They didn’t have a clue where she’d gone. The changelings walked the aisles in their riot gear, rifles shouldered, scanning the floor. A pair of them crawled in the gap she’d made to crush their ally. Even in their unknown language, she could hear their hushed surprise. She took a count: six she could see, four on one side of her, two on the other. The four made the mistake of forming rank, shoulder-to-shoulder.

Kristen stepped off of the shelf. She crushed the first creature beneath her closed fists, and he simply broke beneath her, spine bent the wrong way. Another moved to seize her while the rest shuffled back to open fire. She grabbed the closest in both hands, lifted him up, and hurled him into his friends. The flying body bowled them over, knocking them to the concrete. She leapt atop the pile, picking them apart one by one, snapping armor and bone alike with bare fists. The two from the next aisle rushed back through the gap in the crates. Her hand darted out like a spear, piercing the metal of a nearby crate. She used a handful of steel as a handle and dragged the box into the aisle, placing it between her and the gunmen. She set her shoulder to the crate and pushed, driving it down the aisle like a bulldozer, shoving broken bodies along with it. As she picked up speed, she heard the boots of backpedaling gunmen trying to get clear. She released the crate just before pushing it out into the open and ducked behind it.

A moment of silence descended as the gunmen waited for her to make her appearance. A pair of thundering CRACKS sounded from outside, punctuated immediately by shattering glass. Kristen’s eyes widened, back tensing.
What was that?
She waited again, counting to three, and then peered around the crate. The gunmen lay dead on the ground, blood flowing from holes in their helmets.

She listened. Were there more of them? She tried to recall how many she’d seen: six or seven? Did Jane tell her how many to expect? Her heart thundered against her ribs, and she laid a hand on her chest to try and calm it, taking deep breaths.

Kristen glanced down the aisle at the scattered guns, chunks of armor, and streaks of slick blood. She licked suddenly dry lips. Were they inhuman? Kristen shivered. What if Jane had made it all up to make it easier? Heroes smashed aliens all the time in the comic books. Sure, she’d beat up the people in Temple Financial, but that had been completely different. Here, she’d felt bones breaking, skulls cracking under her heel. And if they were inhuman, did that really make a difference? Did that mean they deserved to die? She wasn’t like other humans herself. Did she deserve that fate?

Kristen heaved herself to her feet. With cautious steps, she walked toward a body—the only one in the aisle that hadn’t been scraped away by her makeshift bulldozer. She took it by the shoulder and flipped it onto its back with ease. A few thundering heartbeats passed as she waited for the body to move. It didn’t. She opened the clasp on its helmet and pulled it away. Beneath, the bloodied face of a Caucasian man stared at her with dead eyes. Bile rose in her throat.

The dead man’s hand grabbed her by the neck.

His arms suddenly swelled with muscle, armor snapping off from the shoulders down, the cloth beneath tearing to pieces. She tried to scream, but her throat was squeezed too tightly. The man howled, baring teeth that lengthened to sharp knives too large for the man’s mouth. He straightened his arm, lifting her high above him as he sat up, then stood. She dug her fingers into his thick wrists, trying to pry his hands loose—to no avail. The rest of his body rippled with ropey muscle, thick fur covering the skin the riot gear had protected moments earlier. He squeezed her neck, harder. Her ears rang and she felt a pressure behind her eyes; memories of flicking the tops off of dandelions as girl flooded her mind. She thrashed, kicking out with her legs. The creature’s arms had grown so long that she connected with nothing but air. Kristen tried to cough, but it caught in her closed throat. Her tongue felt thick. She tried working on the creature’s hands instead of wrists, trying to pry away individual fingers. Her arms shook with the exertion—every ounce of superhuman strength only managed to pull away one finger at a time.

Without warning—and seemingly without reason—the creature stumbled forward. Its grip on Kristen loosened for only a second, but it was enough. She tore its hands away and fell to the concrete in a heap, gasping for air. Her senses seemed to flood back in. She shook her head, gathered her wits, and threw herself out of arm’s length of the creature who’d held her. A figure silhouetted by starlight stood in a shooting stance atop the bulldozer-crate. A series of cracks and flashes issued from the silhouette, each round striking the creature with a splash of black. Blood?