Super (23 page)

“Your side of the family always had a knack for stating the obvious,” said Herman, his mouth turned up in a sneer.

Theo nodded and thought for a minute. “You know what?”

“What?”

“You’re a real jackass.”

Herman Plunkett snarled at the comment but barely glanced in his grandnephew’s direction.

Daniel stood, brushing himself off. He held the backpack with the ring far out of Plunkett’s reach.

“All right, I need answers,” Daniel said. “You used something on me, some kind of mind control.”

“Some days you wouldn’t let me in,” said Herman. “You fought me, but in your dreams you were most vulnerable. Even from my prison, I could reach into your dreams. I have a lot of experience with those.” Herman smiled. “And your dreams haunt you, don’t they? Your subconscious is at war with itself because you won’t accept what you are!”

“Was it the ring?” asked Daniel. “I slept just a few feet from that ring for all those months—maybe that allowed you access to my dreams. Allowed you to get into my head!”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” said Herman.

“Hold on, hold on,” said Eric, stepping between the two of them. “So when you took our powers, Daniel, it was the ring all the time?”

Daniel nodded. “I don’t have any powers. I’m not a Super. Never was.”

“And never will be!” said Herman Plunkett. “Accept it! But you can still be special. You’ve had only a taste of that ring’s power! I spent a lifetime’s fortune scraping together enough meteorite to forge it, but it’s still just a fragment, an imperfect piece of the whole. Unlike my pendant, its power-stealing effect is only temporary, but with time and the proper training, we might be able to—”

“Can I just punch him now?” asked Mollie.

“No,” said Daniel. “Don’t bother. He’s desperate. His own meteor stone is broken, useless. If he had any power left, he’d have freed himself from those Shades. I think he used up the last of it messing with my head.”

Herman glowered at them even as he seemed to curl in
closer to himself. Herman was free, thought Daniel, but he still wasn’t in control. This had to be an intolerable situation for the almighty Shroud.

“Now what?” asked Louisa. “Do we just wait here or—”

Louisa’s words were drowned out by a new sound, the rumble of shifting earth and stone. The resulting explosion was far away, much farther away than Daniel had expected, which meant that Mollie and Eric had gotten them all well clear of the quarry. But it was close enough for Daniel to still feel it in his teeth, and his ears rang with the sound. He started to say something, to suggest that they run or hide, when Rohan motioned for him to be quiet. He was pointing up at the sky.

Even against the night sky they were visible—a swirling flock of Shades twisting and turning like a funnel reaching to heaven, blocking out the stars. As the Supers watched, they spread out overhead, flying back and forth, high above the treetops.

“The Shades!” said Louisa.

“Oh, yes,” said Plunkett. “When my pendant was damaged, they began to escape. One by one, they drifted free. Shadows given substance by the power of the Witch Fire meteorite.”

“But what
are
they?” asked Louisa. “They’re more than just shadows. In the cave they showed us their faces. Children’s faces!”

“Every child he’s stolen from,” said Daniel. “That’s what they are. You’ve stolen the memories and powers of how
many kids over the years, Herman? Hundreds? You took their powers, but what happened to all those memories?”

Herman Plunkett looked again at Daniel, and for a moment there was nothing but cold, calculating clarity in those reptilian eyes.

“Why, the memories lived on in the pendant, of course,” he said. “Kept safe for years and years inside my beautiful meteor stone. Echoes. Just Shades of who they once were, but each one as black and hard as the stone itself. As black as my broken pendant.”

“Somehow the meteor stored all those memories, and they became like ghosts or something,” said Daniel. “They were trapped for all those years, but after the pendant cracked … they got loose.”

“He’s right,” said Mollie. “I saw Michael in the cave. He was one of them.”

“Michael?” asked Eric.

“But it’s not him,” said Daniel. “Not really. Michael is alive and well. Mollie saw a part of who Michael used to be, maybe. She saw Michael’s shadow.”

“Corrupted by the power of the Shroud,” said Rohan.

“Well, they can’t find us,” Eric said, pointing to the twirling mass of shadows disappearing into the distance. “We must’ve been hidden by the trees.”

“They weren’t looking for you anymore,” said Herman.

“Well then, what are they doing?” asked Eric. “They’re your little monsters, so where are they going?”

But Daniel knew the answer before Herman even spoke.
They were headed south, to the other side of the mountain. Toward civilization.

“They’re going to Noble’s Green, aren’t they?” asked Daniel.

Herman nodded slowly. “Your visit was a reminder of the lives they once lived. And to a Shade a memory—any memory—is painful. Your powers just made the memory worse. Up to now only a few have been bold enough, angry enough, to haunt the town. But tonight you shook the hornet’s nest. They’re coming home, and they are angry.”

“They’re going to attack Noble’s Green?” asked Louisa.

“Undoubtedly,” answered Herman. “I’d hoped to prevent all this.” He turned his eyes on Daniel. “I knew Daniel wasn’t up to the task by himself. So I urged him to bring me the ring. It can stop them. Trap them again. That’s why I visited his dreams. I needed his help whether he wanted to give it to me or not.”

“You controlled me!” shouted Daniel. His anger welled up in him so quickly that he couldn’t contain it. He didn’t want to. “You manipulated my memories! You made me use that thing like a puppet! I didn’t know what I was doing!”

“You didn’t know? Or you didn’t
want
to know?” Herman sat upright now and had regained a bit of his old menace. The look he shot at Daniel was pure contempt.

“It was an easy thing,” Herman said. “Little Maggie Johns was a twelve-year-old girl with the power to enter dreams. Not a terribly threatening power at first glance, until you realize that dreams are the keys to the subconscious.
Control dreams and you can control a person’s mind. Plant suggestions, influence decisions. In her hands it was a dangerous thing. But I took her power, and it has served me well over these many years.

“We have a bond, Daniel, whether you want to admit it or not. I found that I could connect with you, reach out to you from my prison, to your sleeping self. Then it was an easy thing to plant suggestions, to set up mental blocks in your mind to make you forget what you were doing. Just carrying the ring in your pocket was enough to let you access its power, and I knew you’d bring it to me eventually. Your own pathetically guilty heart kept you from seeing it. You lied to yourself, Daniel. You hid from your true potential just like you always do.”

“You tried to make me into a monster,” said Daniel. “Just like
you
always do.”

Herman sighed and closed his eyes. “And that brings us to the here and now. We’ve both played our parts,
hero
. I’ve revealed my grand plans, my diabolical schemes, like a good little super-villain should.…” His eyes popped back open and he glared at Daniel. “Now, what are you going to do about it? Do you have the will to do what it takes to save your friends? To save Noble’s Green?”

“All right,” said Eric. “We don’t have time for this. Herman’s bad, Daniel’s good, and I think we can all agree on that. Daniel, is this old guy still in your head?”

“No. At least I don’t think so,” said Daniel. The Shroud’s whispers were silent. The itch in the back of his brain was
gone, for now. He held up the backpack. “Now that I’m on the lookout for it, I think as long as the ring’s in here and I don’t go to sleep, I’m okay.”

“Good,” said Eric. Then he turned to Herman. “And you said this ring
could
stop the Shades?”

“Yes,” answered Herman. “I believe so. My pendant is too damaged to be of much use, but the ring is an unbroken fragment of the meteor stone. It’s not nearly as powerful as mine was, but it should be able to trap them again.”

“Guys, it’s starting,” said Rohan, listening. “The Shades have reached the town.”

No sooner had Rohan spoken than they all heard the distant sound of an explosion. Something bad was happening.

Eric nodded. “Time to go. I can carry Daniel and Rohan, but that’s it.”

“I can take Rose,” said Mollie.

“What about Louisa?” asked Rose.

“I can take her,” said Theo. “Louisa
and
my dear old uncle.”

“You?” said Louisa. “How?”

Theo smiled at her as he held up a ring of shiny car keys. “What? You didn’t think I
walked
here, did you?”

I
t was obvious something was wrong as soon as they cleared the trees. Mount Noble had always been a bit fearful, a craggy spike in the middle of the gentle Pennsylvania hills. But for Daniel the mountain was always tempered by the pleasant sight of the town nestled beneath its shadow. In the evenings, the lights of Noble’s Green shone like a warm patch of stars against the black forest.

But not tonight. Except for the glow of some traffic along the main roads, the town was completely dark. It was hard to tell where the forest ended and the lightless houses began.

Worryingly, they did spy a number of glowing fires. On
the outskirts of town they flickered orange and yellow, and a parade of red flashing fire trucks was speeding toward them.

“Electrical transformers,” Rohan shouted against the wind. “The Shades must’ve blown them up to knock out the town’s power.”

As Eric flew them into town, Daniel hugged his backpack to his chest, mindful of the terrible weapon inside. He still couldn’t believe that he’d been using the ring all this time, his subconscious under the influence of the Shroud himself. The thought of the old monster creeping around inside his head made Daniel physically ill. He’d manipulated Daniel into bringing the ring right to him, hoping it would give him the power to escape the Shades. But he hadn’t counted on Daniel’s showing up with all the Supers in tow. Once again he’d tried to drive a wedge between Daniel and his friends, and this time he’d nearly succeeded. Divide and conquer was the Herman Plunkett way.

Daniel cringed to remember the night he’d visited the quarry alone. It had been dumb luck that he’d found Clay and Bud there. If they hadn’t been in the way, if he’d gone on to explore the quarry alone and actually found Herman … Perhaps the Shades would have gotten him. Perhaps Herman would’ve. He wasn’t sure which would’ve been worse.

Eric set the two of them down just outside Daniel’s neighborhood. Now that they were closer, they saw tiny lights flickering in otherwise dark windows. People were lighting candles and going about their business in the same way they would normally do in the event of a blackout.
Daniel thought about his own family and the times they’d waited for the power to come back on by sitting around telling ghost stories by flashlight. How many families were going through the same routines right now, oblivious to the very real ghosts that were coming for them?

They regrouped in the woods behind Daniel’s own backyard as Mollie and Rose joined them. There, in the pitch-black copse of trees that bordered his house, they made their plans. The fliers would take Rohan and search the town for the Shades. No one felt comfortable just waiting for the shadow creatures to come to them—this time they would be proactive. When they found the Shades, they’d return for Daniel. Everyone agreed that it was too risky flying around with Daniel and the ring any more than they had to. While they searched, he’d wait behind for Theo to arrive with Louisa and Herman. Until then, Daniel was to stay hidden and keep the ring safe.

“We should go,” said Rohan.

“Right,” said Daniel. “Good luck!”

It was a familiar sight, the Supers soaring off into the air to attend to some emergency while Daniel stayed behind. But this time it was different. This wasn’t a house fire or some kind of random accident. This time they were fighting monsters. An army of them.

And when they actually found the Shades, Daniel would … what? Brandish the ring? Speak the magic words? Their plan fell apart there. Daniel had a weapon that he had no idea how to use. He’d fought the Shades before, but that
was with Eric’s strength and Louisa’s intangibility and Rose’s invisibility. How could he actually use the ring against them? They had to trust Herman to help them with that, and trusting Herman, everybody knew, was the worst possible plan. Ever.

But even bad plans are better than no plans at all. Daniel cursed softly under his breath as he crept through the trees toward his house. The old villain might actually be willing to help them, but only if it served his purposes as well. Daniel felt confident that Herman wanted the Shades gone just as much as they did, but what then? It was the afterward that troubled Daniel. He resolved that if they all survived this, he would destroy the ring once and for all. In the meantime he’d just have to muddle through and figure it out as he went.

The neighborhood still seemed so quiet, so peaceful. Daniel remembered what Herman had said about the Shades: that they would be drawn to the reminders of their old lives. For some of them who were almost as old as Herman, those reminders might be hard to find. But more recent victims of the Shroud’s power would still have families here. Some would still have
themselves
here—the real boys and girls who’d lost their powers, lost their shadows, and had no idea what was out there hunting them. Daniel thought of the ones he’d known, of Simon and Michael. Were they being haunted tonight by their Shades? Had they been all along?

It seemed like there would be no end to the Shroud’s legacy of terror.
Daniel had just stepped onto the grass of his parents’ lawn when he heard a voice speak to him from the darkness. The wind had been blowing in the wrong direction or else he would have caught the smell of rotten fish sooner. He might have had a chance then.