Superlovin' (11 page)

Massacre.

—
a little self-sacrifice when you looked at the big picture? Didn’t he owe it to her? He’d left her to their father’s neglect, left her to be poisoned by his venomous worldview, but now,
this
would make it up to her. This would even the scales, release him finally of his guilt. He’d be at peace—

Dead.

—and so would Mirabelle.

Owe her an apology, so damn hard to fight this, to fight him—

She’d be free—

Trapped with Kevin—

Justice would be done, and she could go on with her life, live it as she was meant to live. Happy. She’d be so happy. All he had to do was activate the rock. Harmless little rock—

Doomsday. Apocalypse.

Darla wouldn’t understand—

Thank God she wasn’t there. Thank God Kevin hadn’t been able to use her strength to trigger the bomb. Better it was him. Better she got to go on being a blindly faithful do-gooder and making the world a better place. Better just for having her still in it…

—but some things were bigger than self-interest. This was his purpose. His entire life had been leading up to this moment.

Lucien shuddered, the slight tremor the only physical symptom of the war being waged inside his head. From all outward appearances, he was just another man with a laptop case slung over his shoulder, a weary working stiff waiting for a commuter train on the 39th Street platform. The six-oh-five train to the burbs.

The train that ran directly beneath Victory Hall.

A countdown clock ticked down in his brain, tightening the coils of compulsion around his thoughts. Soon. Soon he would board the train. Take his seat. Wait until the right moment to open the laptop, activate the Apocalyptum core—

An old paper whipped up in the wind from the train tunnel and smacked into his leg. Lucien reached to remove it, his movements sluggish, his hands feeling foreign, oddly distant. He held the paper, marveling for a moment at how the texture felt wrong, almost
foggy
against his fingertips, before he noticed the picture dominating the front page. His picture. A grainy action shot from a surveillance camera, blurred by the speed he’d been moving. Taken almost a week ago, on the night he’d met Darla.

Darla.

His knee twitched, a minor rebellion against the puppeteer in his brain, but Lucien could manage no more than that. Sweat broke out on his brow.

The platform was nearly abandoned. Not that it mattered. What was a little collateral damage in a war?

His stomach turned.
Fight it, Lucien. This isn’t you.

The layers of gauze parted, his mind coming closer to his own control, but his body remained detached, hidden behind the veil of numbness. Lucien focused on the picture.

Why hadn’t someone stopped him? How could America’s most wanted just wander onto a train platform in the middle of the city and sit down?

He heard the familiar sounds of a scuffle from one of the hallways leading to the platform—muted exclamations, thuds, a sizzling charge like the sound of a taser—but he couldn’t turn his head to look. Apparently, his programming didn’t include curiosity.

The six-oh-five train rattled into the station, right on time. Lucien rose.
Complete your purpose
. He crushed the thought, but his legs carried him through the open doors onto the train. Lucien fought for control, a silent, invisible battle, but the countdown clock continued its relentless ticking.

Seventeen minutes. Then Mirabelle will be free.

Darla Powers had beaten a SWAT team unconscious. She really ought to feel guilty about that.

When she’d heard the call go out over the police scanner that Lucien had been spotted and the order
shoot to kill
, she’d hauled ass to get to the 39th Street Station before the specially armed anti-super SWAT team could move on his position. Before that moment in the crowded station corridor, she’d still been on the side of the angels. Pummeling a battalion of cops was a pretty solid indicator of her fall from grace. But she couldn’t let them kill Lucien. Not if she could stop him.

You better be worth it, Wroth.

Darla rushed onto the platform in time to see the six-oh-five train pull out of the station—and Lucien Wroth’s profile through the window of the second-to-last car as he stared straight ahead, unblinking. Darla cursed and launched herself off the platform, taking off into the tunnel after the train. She flew up to the last car, catching hold of the handles beside the door and resting for a moment, hanging on to the back of the train, before wrenching open the door and tumbling inside.

The car was crowded, and several faces looked up from their cell phones and newspapers to gape at her less-than-heroic entrance. She couldn’t worry about her image right now though, she had to stop Lucien. Calling out to the passengers to remain calm and remain seated, she threaded her way quickly up the aisle to the next car. It was even more packed than the previous one and for a moment she didn’t see Lucien.

Had he moved?

No. There he was. His back to her, staring straight ahead like a statue.

This time her entrance had been less dramatic, so no one had even looked at her, the commuters exhausted after a long day, their thoughts already on the weekend ahead. Darla tapped those closest to her on the shoulders and waved them toward the next car when their eyes widened at the D emblazoned on her chest. She worked her way down the car, urging as many people as possible out of the line of fire before Lucien noticed her.

How much time did she have before he set off the bomb? There were no landmarks in the dark tunnels that ran beneath the city before spitting out onto the suburbs, nothing to tell her how far they were from Victory Hall.

Passengers at the other end of the car had started noticing her and the exodus at the back. They quickly gathered up their things and moved to the next car up, leaving only Wroth, frozen with his eyes faced front, and a young woman in a pencil skirt, nibbling on her lower lip as she focused raptly on the e-reader in her hands. Darla found herself wishing whatever the woman was reading was a bit less engrossing, but it couldn’t be helped. She’d gotten as many civilians clear as she could, and she couldn’t wait any longer. They were too close to Victory Hall.

Darla struck her familiar pose and called out, “Wroth.”

The woman in the pencil skirt
eeped
and rushed toward the far door, but Darla hardly registered the movement because Lucien was already slamming into her
super
fast. They hit the wall, and the entire train car rocked, staying on the rails by a hair’s margin.

Jesus. He wasn’t holding back.

His hands closed over her throat and he squeezed, his teeth bared in a snarl even as his eyes remained blank, devoid of that familiar fierce black spark. There was no playful banter, none of the mischievous gleam that had marked their previous encounters, only deadly intent.

“Lucien,” she choked out, gripping his wrists tight and trying to jerk his hands away from her airway, “you don’t…want to…do this.”

Did he?
From what she’d learned about mind control, the commands were always most potent when they were similar to the subject’s true desires. She’d convinced herself there was a core of goodness in Lucien, an honor and integrity Kevin wouldn’t be able to violate, but what if she’d been wrong? He was a villain, wasn’t he? His father’s son? What if he didn’t
want
to stop?

She didn’t want to hurt him, wasn’t even sure she was physically capable of disabling him with his strength more than a match for her own. The superstrength taser she’d pulled off one of the SWAT guys was heavy against her hip.
Shoot to kill.
Would anything else stop him?

“I don’t…want to…hurt you…Luc…”

But she would. If that’s what it took to avert disaster. If it was him or millions, he had to be the one to die. Darla’s heart lurched, already pounding like a jackhammer as she fought for air. His fingers twitched at her throat, easing a fraction, but not enough for her to get a breath. She searched his black gaze from a distance of inches, looking for any trace of recognition, any spark of Lucien in his eyes, but there was nothing. No one was home. And she was starting to see stars as her brain begged for oxygen. She couldn’t wait any longer for him to come to his senses.

“S…sorry…Luc…”

Lucien watched his hands squeezing the breath from Darla. He could almost feel her skin beneath his fingers. Almost. But he couldn’t stop. Something violent had triggered in his body when she’d called his name, a powerful compulsion to take her out, finish her off so he could get back to his task, his purpose.

He saw her lips moving but couldn’t hear the words. He raged and clawed against the restrictions in his mind, but a tiny twitch of his fingers was his only reward.

No…not Darla.

Her lips moved again. He was still deaf to the sound of her voice, but he thought he saw the word
Sorry
on her mouth. Why would she apologize? What had
she
done? He was the one who couldn’t seem to stop trying to kill her.

He didn’t see her move, but he felt the blow land. He actually
felt
it. The sudden, nausea-inducing tide of pain. He might have rejoiced in the returned sensation from his body—if she hadn’t just pulverized his family jewels.

Lucien doubled over, wheezing hard and struggling to stay on his feet. Another wave of pain hit and he gave up, crumpling to the floor. “
Jesus
,” he moaned, cupping himself.

“Lucien?”

He looked up to see Darla standing over him, eyes wary, a taser held at the ready.

“Yeah.”

A look of intense relief washed over her face, and she sank to her knees beside him. “Oh thank God. You’re you again.”

He grunted the affirmative. “Next time, can we try a different way of snapping me out of it?” he pleaded, carefully arranging the remains of his once-proud manhood. “Cut off a finger or something.”

She gave a little shadow of a laugh. “I thought I was going to have to…” She trailed off, waving the taser. He’d seen the devices before. They were modified to provide a single blast of electricity, designed to stop a super’s heart.

“Good girl,” he whispered, dragging himself to a sitting position.

“I knew you wouldn’t do it,” she swore, but there was doubt in the way her eyes flicked away from his. Her voice was scratchy, rough from the abuse he’d laid on her vocal cords. “I knew you would stop.”

He grunted. “That’s more than I knew.” He raked a hand through his hair, just being able to feel his own hair against his skin confirming he was himself again. “My father can coerce people to do his will, but you always know it’s his command, even if you can’t resist. This was different.”
And a thousand times more horrifying.
“It felt like it was coming from inside me. Like it
was
me. The thoughts were all mine. The rationalizations were the way I would rationalize things, but the conclusions were all wrong. And I couldn’t stop.”

“You did,” she assured him. “You were stronger than it was.”

He snorted. “Your knee was stronger than it was.”

She made a sympathetic face, her gaze landing on his lap. “Are you okay?”

A low buzzing caught his attention, tangling around his senses, filling his head with wet gauze.

“Lucien?” Darla’s voice was distant, echoing through a tunnel.

It’s time. Time to save Mirabelle. Sacrifice yourself. Activate the rock.

“
No.
” It was back. The compulsion surged through him, clogging his thoughts, twisting them. The bomb was going to go off. He was going to set it. And Darla was too close to the blast.

“Darla…run…”

His hands were moving toward the laptop case, which emitted a low, constant buzz, the timer going off.

“Lucien?” She caught his hands, but he wrenched them away from her, roughly throwing her off.

“Save yourself…” he growled, dragging the laptop case onto his lap. “For once don’t be so damn heroic. Let someone else save the world for a change.”

The laptop was wrenched from his hands and flung across the train car. His body lunged after it without his consent, but Darla was there, tackling him to the ground, pressing his shoulders down as she straddled his chest.

“You really are an idiot, aren’t you? I’m not here to save the world. I’m here to save
you
.”

Her mouth landed on his. The clamoring war inside his head went silent. The fog in his senses cleared instantly under the blinding sunshine of her kiss.

He was achingly aware of her lush body above him, her sweet mouth. He sank a hand into the thick red curls at the nape of her neck and angled her head for a deeper exploration. Their tongues tangled and the need to breathe became secondary to his need to taste her, possess her,
own
her. They fit together as they always did, the explosive chemistry of opposites clashing somehow blended with the perfect fit of yin and yang sliding into harmony against one another.

Darla lifted her head after several minutes, her eyes dazed, pillowy lips glistening. “Did it work?” she asked, breathless with a vulnerable hope.

“Best to be sure,” he rumbled, dragging her mouth back to his with his grip at her nape.

Darla didn’t offer even a token resistance, throwing herself back into the kiss with an eagerness that turned it into a celebration as well as an inferno of lust. Lucien rolled her beneath him without ever easing the pressure and pull of the kiss. For someone so strong, she was exquisitely soft, her body melting against his.
Perfect.

The train burst out of the city tunnels and into the suburban sprawl beyond, the evening’s golden sunshine pouring through the windows to warm them both. Lucien raised his head, fighting only his own reluctance. He felt drugged on the taste of Darla, but wholly, precisely himself, completely in control of his own skin again. Victory Hall was miles behind them. The laptop case was no longer buzzing, the Apocalyptum harmless within.