Where There's Fire (Panopolis Book 2) (13 page)

“Yeah.”

“Excuse me?” Vibro demanded. “You killed him with Chap stick?”

“No, I killed him with a highly flammable compound that Raul made for me in case I needed to burn through something,” I replied. “And it happens to be stored in a Chap stick container. It’s less likely to attract attention that way.”

“Of course.” Vibro surveyed all the bodies, then sighed and shook her head. “Well. I guess we’d better get this place cleaned up, get you two a doctor, and then figure out the best place for you to move into.”

“I beg your pardon?” What the hell was she talking about? “We’re not staying here.”

“The hell you’re not.” Vibro was adamant. “The two of you put together might be enough to keep this place from devolving back into complete anarchy, especially with so many of the strongest Villains out of the way. Maggot was a visionary, even if some of his visions came with a high price. He wanted to fight against the system that keeps us beaten down, and you could do the same. You could be the ones to do something for your people.”

I . . . No. No, I wasn’t built for that sort of thing. “I don’t have a people, I have one person, and that’s Raul.”

“But you could do so much for us! And without having to resort to the lengths that Maggot went to.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because,” she said, leaning over and hovering her fingers above my hand. “You can make people feel the rightness of our cause. Show them that we hurt and we love just like they do.”

I shook my head, and— Ow. “The effects don’t last.” Stars had started to appear at the edges of my vision, and nausea was building in my stomach. “And they don’t come cheap,” I added through gritted teeth. “Raul, we have to get away from here.” But it was already too late.

“Edward.” He placed his hand on my shoulder, but I jerked back, then overbalanced and fell on my side. The stars were swirling now, a dark center in their midst, and I cried out. The darkness covered the skyscape beneath my eyelids, and I lost consciousness.

When I woke up next, I was in bed. Not our bed—I could tell from the stiffness of the mattress and the memory of our home, you know, burning—but a fairly comfortable bed nonetheless. I opened my eyes and stared around the room for a moment, then took in the sordid smells and the lack of any furnishings but a nightstand and a glass of water, and swore quietly. I was still in the red zone.

More importantly, though, my headache was gone. Most importantly, Raul wasn’t here. I wasn’t alone, though.

Prasun glanced up from where he was playing with his phone and blinked at me in surprise as our eyes met.

“Daya!” he called, pushing out of the chair he’d been sitting in with all four hands. “Raul! He’s awake!” He fled before I could say anything. I tried to get up myself and groaned instead. Every muscle in my body ached, familiar overexertion symptoms that I used to get when I was still overwhelming myself with my power on a regular basis.

“Edward.” Raul entered the room, and I let myself relax back against the pillow and gaze at him for a moment. He seemed okay, moving smoothly despite the swollen nose and bruises still visible on his face. Then there was the matter of the eye patch.

“You look like the Dread Pirate Roberts,” I croaked, then coughed. Raul sat on the bed next to me and brought the glass of water to my lips, tilting it carefully so I wouldn’t choke.

“We’ve got to stop doing this,” he told me, the humor in his voice almost convincing over the absolute honesty.

“I agree,” I said once I was done drinking. “No more getting arrested or kidnapped. Bad things happen when one of us gets hauled away from the other.”

“Mostly to other people, in this case,” Raul all but purred. “Oh, what a marvel you’ve wrought, Edward.”

“I burned someone to death.” I held my hand up for an assist. Raul levered me to a sitting position, petting the back of my neck with one gloved hand. Gloves, smart. I hadn’t even attempted to reconstruct the wall between Inside Me and Outside Me yet. “That’s not exactly marvelous. Maybe horrific.” More memories swamped my mind, ones that I didn’t want to think about but couldn’t prevent from surfacing. Definitely horrific. “Oh my God, I killed people,” I whispered as it all came back to me. “Raul, I killed so many people.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yes, I did!” If my throat weren’t still so hoarse, I would have been shouting. “I killed—what did she say—oh my god, thirty people? Nearly thirty people? Holy shit.” It was a good thing I didn’t have anything but water in my stomach, because I started retching and couldn’t stop until my stomach was empty again. Fortunately the trash can had been close.

“Maggot killed them,” Raul said, cupping my neck more firmly as he gave me a little more water. “His setup is what orchestrated their deaths. You were merely the conductor.”

I squeezed my eyes shut against the tears that threatened to fall. “That . . . doesn’t make me feel any better.” My hands trembled in my lap. “I didn’t want to kill anyone, not really. And just because Maggot ended up dead too doesn’t make that right either. His life sucked even worse than mine; it’s no wonder the guy went crazy! I’m not sorry he’s gone, but I . . .” I clutched the front of Raul’s shirt, not able to stop the tears anymore. “He broke Kami’s hand. He broke her because I led him right to them, her and Lettie.”

“Kami’s recovering well,” Raul soothed. “I went and saw them yesterday. I won’t lie and say that Leticia is happy, but I think she’s willing to let bygones be bygones as long as we send someone else to deal with her for your pills.”

Oh, well . . . My throat tightened up for a moment, but I forced myself to speak anyway. “Why would she be willing to deal with us at all?”

Raul sighed. “Because she’s seen me. It’s an eye for an eye, almost literally, as far as she’s concerned.”

Suffering . . . That was enough to redirect my attention. “Oh my god, your eye. Oh no. How bad is it?” I reached for his face and stopped barely a centimeter away from his swollen skin. “Does it feel awful?”

“Well, it doesn’t feel good,” Raul allowed, “but it isn’t awful either.”

“That means you’re practically on death’s door, Mr. Tough Guy. Be honest with me.”

“The concussion was minor. The nose will heal. The eye . . .” He grimaced and shook his head, tracing the edge of his bandage with his fingertips. “I’ll have to get used to it. I can still see, and soon it will become my new normal.” He winced. “Probably when the pain goes away.”

I could tell a tough front when I saw one. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

Raul smiled gently. “You’re ridiculous. You have nothing to apologize to me for. Now.” He straightened his back. “You’ve been asleep for nearly two days, sweetheart. A lot has happened since then. You should catch up on it all.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“I downloaded the best of the programs talking about it to a tablet. Let me go and get it.”

“I’ll come with you.” I didn’t feel like being parted from Raul again so soon, and if the way he kissed my hair was any indication, he felt the same. And if I was with him, maybe I wouldn’t think the dark, sharp-edged thoughts that threatened to overwhelm my tenuous self-control.

“Slowly, though,” he told me as he helped me to my feet. “And if you feel faint, you’re going right back to bed.”

“I’m not going to faint,” I informed him, right before I tripped over my own feet and pitched forward toward the door. Raul caught me and hauled me in close, concern furrowing his brow.

“That wasn’t fainting; it was me being clumsy,” I said. “We’re going, c’mon.”

“I could carry you.”

“You lost an eye two days ago, I’m betting you’re not supposed to be lifting heavy things. I’m fine, let’s go.”

He led us out the door and down a hallway to a surprisingly well-lit living room. Vibro was sitting on a couch, staring at a television, but she looked up and grinned when we entered the room.

“Awake after all!” She got up and motioned us toward the couch. “It’s big enough for both of you, go ahead. Are you hungry? Thirsty? Do you have a headache?” Those ten feet had been enough to leave me a little lightheaded, but I wasn’t about to tell Raul that.

“A drink would be good . . .”

“I’ll grab something out of the kitchen, give me a minute.” She vanished, and Raul reached for a tablet on the rough wooden table in front of us.

“The decorations aren’t much,” he said as he pulled up a file, “but this is one of the only apartments in the building with reliable electricity. This is our new place, one level above Daya and Prasun.”

“Why does this have to be our new place?” I demanded sotto voce.

“Where else could we go right now?” Raul replied. “Our home is gone, and if you thought you were well-known before, that’s nothing to the publicity you’ve received since the break-in at GenCorp.”

“Oh, shit.” I could imagine the media frenzy.

“The response has been . . .” Raul pursed his lips for a moment. “Interesting. Surprisingly positive. GenCorp has been in the news for all the wrong reasons after the deaths last week, and now they can’t protect themselves from a Villain who didn’t even bother to kill anyone when he broke in? There are still some who decry you as just another criminal, of course, but many people are firmly on your side, including your parents.”

“Really?” My parents didn’t really have any reason to defend me.

“Your friend Freight Train has been helpful as well.”

“What, Craig?” I couldn’t quite believe my ears. “Really?”

Raul turned the tablet to me and pressed play. “This is from yesterday.”

“Breaking news,” Jean Parks said excitedly into the camera as a video of GenCorp’s headquarters unfolded behind her. “We have confirmed reports that the Villain responsible for audacious break-ins both at GenCorp and First National Bank is none other than Edward Dinges, the subject of my recent interview. Many viewers were surprised by his parents’ insistence that their son wouldn’t take such drastic actions without a good reason, but it seems that maybe the Dingeses know something that the rest of us don’t. What would normally be seen as villainy of the first order has been thrown into doubt as eye-witness accounts of his actions present a curious picture.” The scene shifted to Larry Bries, who was glaring at the microphone under his nose like it had personally offended him.

“He might be a Villain, but at least Edward didn’t jump to conclusions and almost get me killed!” Larry snapped. “Don’t Heroes have to undergo some sort of training before you throw them into situations where someone might get hurt? Firebolt would have roasted me alive if not for Edward’s precautions. Honestly, I’m more inclined to thank him than any of this city’s Heroes at the moment. Now if you’ll excuse me, the bank opens in ten minutes and I have construction workers to organize, tellers to put to work, and security guards to put the fear of God into.”

The scene shifted again, this time to Freight Train. “I don’t know what Eddie was looking for in GenCorp,” he lied with perfect earnestness, all wide puppy-dog eyes, “but he said something about needing to clean up Z Street. That might be why we’ve been finding so many dead Villains at the edge of the red zones lately.”

Jean’s face filled the screen again. “At this time we’re uncertain about the connection between Edward Dinges’s robbery of First National and the assault on GenCorp later that day. The company has refused to hand over any video of the altercation inside their headquarters, but Freight Train has confirmed that he was unable to stop Mr. Dinges from getting away. No one was killed, though two people were injured in the attack, which seems a startling level of restraint for a Villain of Mr. Dinges’s caliber. Sources are still unclear on the nature of his power and no Villain-on-Villain violence has been confirmed in the red zones, although the bodies of many of the Abattoir’s escapees have indeed been found over the past few days. It seems clear to me that the word I used before to describe Panopolis’s newest Villain is an apt one: Edward Dinges is a true mastermind.”

The clip ended, and I stared dumbfounded at Raul, who took one look at me and laughed so hard his shoulders began to shake.

“The name has stuck,” he gasped once he had control of himself, one hand gingerly pressed to his forehead just above his eye patch. “You’re Mastermind now.”

“For the love of . . . I’m not the mastermind of anything!” I insisted before falling back against the couch. “This is so fucking ridiculous.”

“It is, I know, but it could have been worse.”

I slumped next to Raul and shut my eyes. “How could it be worse?”

His hand found my head again, pulling me down to his shoulder. “So many ways,” Raul murmured. “So many, Edward. We’re alive. Maggot and the worst of his ilk are dead. You’re the most intriguing public figure since Freight Train first came on the scene.” He stroked my arm. “How did you escape him anyway?”

“By being nice.”

“Really?”

“Pretty much. I also . . . sort of figured out a way to touch him? And then I did? Only with my hand,” I assured Raul. “I touched his chest with my hand. It threw him for a loop.”

Raul rolled his eye, then winced. “I’m sure it did. You’re too kind, Edward. I would have taken the opportunity to punch him.”