King of superheroes, p.9
King of Superheroes, page 9
“Just an older brother,” Hannah said, and her expression became a little mischievous as she smiled around her straw. “Very protective of me. He will beat you up with one word from me.”
“Am I meant to be afraid?” I joked.
“Nah, he’s a big softie really.” Hannah giggled. “But he is super protective of me. My dad died when I was just a baby, and my mom had to work two jobs, so he basically raised me.”
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry.” I gnawed at my bottom lip and instinctively extended my hand to grab hers. “That’s awful.”
“It’s okay.” Hannah shook her head and smiled sadly. “I had a great childhood, you know? My mom is a damn hero. Not actually, but you know…”
“She sounds it.” I nodded and took another sip of my cocktail. “So, do they have Dreamer powers?”
“Nah,” Hannah said and let out a long sigh. “I am a dirty common born. Neither one of my parents had powers, I think the last person in my family to activate was my great-great-grandmother or something.”
“Don’t call yourself common born,” I laughed.
“You have to admit, there’s a certain level of blood hierarchy in the superhero world,” Hannah said, though her blue eyes had started to glimmer again with her playfulness.
“Maybe,” I said. “Blood hierarchy is exactly what the Antis were all about… But those assholes were brought to their knees by us, by people who have powers and use them for good, regardless of where they came from. So, if you have powers, then you have powers. It’s how you use them that counts.”
“Exactly.” Hannah nodded and then shot me a long, lingering look as she fell silent. “You’re pretty cool, you know that?”
“I didn’t even need to read your mind for that,” I teased.
Hannah just stuck her tongue out at me before she took another long sip of her strawberry mojito and then fixed me with an inquisitive look.
“Do you think that’s a Dreamer ability you have an affinity for?” she suddenly asked. “Mind reading, like me?”
“I…” I faltered for a moment and then shrugged. “Yeah, honestly, I think it is. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard people’s thoughts before, but when I tried to do it on purpose in the Dreamer circle yesterday, I couldn’t get it to work.”
“D’you want me to try and teach you?” the blonde asked with a growing smile.
Before I could answer, she hopped off her side of the picnic bench and came to sit beside me so she was closer.
I could smell her perfume, and the strawberries on her lips, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep my thoughts PG.
“Uhh…” I held my hands up in defense. “I have no idea where to even begin.”
“Well, you said you think you’ve heard someone before?” Hannah asked and was suddenly businesslike. “Like a voice inside your head, or more just an instinctual feeling?”
“I’ve heard, like… Scraps of sentences. Nothing really consistent, but there’s definitely been voices.”
“That’s very interesting,” Hannah said with a nod of understanding, and then she suddenly grabbed my face with both hands. “Okay, come here.”
I quickly swallowed every filthy thought that sprang to the forefront of my mind as soon as she touched me, and I forced myself to stare into her eyes instead of paying attention to the way her breasts were pushed together right in front of me.
Her eyes were admittedly gorgeous, though. They shimmered like ice, with shards of pale gray piercing the sea of cool blue, and her smudged black eye makeup only accentuated how beautiful they were. She had a tiny smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and her lips were a perfect pale pink covered in a thin layer of gloss that made them gleam in the low light of all the trucks that surrounded us.
“Focus,” she said to pull me out of my thoughts.
“Sorry…” I muttered and fought at the grin on my face. “Your eyes are very distracting.”
“I’m glad you think so,” she said as her fingers softly caressed the sides of my face. “But so are yours.”
“Really?” I asked, and now I couldn’t hold back my smile. “And I thought I was the one who needed to focus.”
I laughed when she stuck her tongue out at me again, and then we both semi-reluctantly fell silent as we focused on each other.
“Just listen for me, but use your mind and not your ears,” she said in the same soft, low voice. “You know that I’m here, and you know I’m projecting, so you should be able to sense me.”
“Hmm…” I murmured as I stared deep into the icy wells of her eyes.
I waited a moment, lost in the ocean of color, and then I eventually heard something.
Mark…
Hannah’s smile widened a little as I inhaled sharply, and I noticed how she had half a dimple in her left cheek.
Mark… I heard her voice inside my head again, but so faint it was like an echo.
“Keep going,” I muttered.
Mark… I’m here, Mark…
“Hello,” I said in the same low voice.
Hannah bit back on a laugh and kept eye contact.
Kiss me…
“Oh…” I faltered for a moment, and her hands pressed a little tighter against the side of my face.
I said kiss me, you big idiot.
I didn’t need telling twice.
There were barely a few inches of air between our faces anyway, so I turned a little to the left, got the angle right, and pressed my lips against hers.
Hannah immediately sighed into me, and her hands went from my face across my back until she’d wrapped her arms around my neck. Then I instinctively pulled her a little closer to me as her pillowy lips parted slowly for me.
She tasted like white rum and strawberries, and her body was warm and soft against my chest. She let out the tiniest of moans as she pushed herself even closer to me, and it was maybe the most insane first kiss I’d ever experienced in my life.
I want you… I heard Hannah’s voice in my head as she continued to kiss me. Do you want me?
Yes, I answered her quickly in my head, and I felt her lips turn up in a smirk as we carried on making out in the middle of the square, surrounded by Cuban music and food trucks and cocktails in takeout cups.
Hannah eventually pulled herself away from me with a breathless sigh, and she ran a thumb over her swollen bottom lip as she shimmied back a little on the bench.
“You’ll have to buy me dinner at least once first,” she joked.
The two of us burst into a fit of giggles, and we spent the rest of the evening talking about everything and nothing, in our heads and out loud, while she continued to teach me how to reach out with my mind.
We also kept making out like a pair of teenagers, and I was about as giddy as a high schooler by the time we eventually made it back to the fledgling Academy.
I watched her head toward the Dreamer dorms, and I spun on my heel with a huge grin plastered on my face as I finally headed to the Conduit rooms.
“So?” Frank immediately popped his head out of his bedroom door when he heard me, and he shot me a pointed look. “How’d it go?”
“So good,” I said with another almost giddy laugh. “She’s awesome. Great kisser.”
“You kissed her?” Frank slapped me in the shoulder as he followed me into my room, and then he let out one of his signature loud laughs. “You sly dog.”
“Shut up!” I hissed, though with the high of making out with Hannah mixed with the white rum of the mojitos, I couldn’t find it in me to scold him properly. “I’m going to bed. Do not ask me another thing.”
“Sure, sure.” Frank just waggled his eyebrows at me. “I’ll get all the details out of you eventually. I’m like a Jersey mom at the hair salon, I love the gossip.”
“I can tell.” I laughed. “Now leave me alone, I’m going to bed.”
My red-haired Conduit friend jokingly waved as he swiftly exited my dorm room, and I could finally crawl into bed with the most ear-splitting grin on my face.
That night, I dreamed of messy blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, and I was almost sad to wake up the next day.
But I was due to go out with the Corps pillar, which for some reason involved going to a television studio, and I couldn’t quite work out why.
That is, until I saw who was actually doing the Corps presentation.
“Holy shit, it’s Dart and Double!” one of the Corps fledglings hissed excitedly as the group weaved through the mess of camera cables and lighting fixtures and finally saw the names plastered across the stage in golden glitter.
Dart and Double were twin brothers and huge in the entertainment industry. They’d had residencies on Broadway, the Las Vegas strip, and their show had been broadcast all over the world for years. Dart lived up to his name and possessed super speed, while Double was able to produce exact duplicates of himself, and both were admittedly hilarious to watch.
“Welcome, fledglings!” a jovial voice sounded from somewhere up in the rafters, and we all looked up expectantly.
“Welcome!”
“Hello!”
“Glad to have you here!”
“Fresh fledgling meat!”
The same voice echoed around the studio over and over, and there were suddenly a good five or six iterations of Double skipping around us and over the stage. Then we felt a whoosh of air as someone whipped past us at an incredible speed, and the sound of Dart’s footsteps were surprisingly loud against the polished black floor of the television studio. He ducked and weaved and sprinted around until the air in the room didn’t know which way it was blowing.
The twins eventually ended up center stage, and the Corps fledglings burst into a round of applause while Dart and Double both took long, back-breaking bows.
They were both short in stature and had a complete and total mess of dirty-blond hair on their heads. I didn’t envy the poor hairstylist in their crew, because it looked unruly enough as it was without the added chaos of Dart running at super speed all the time.
The brothers also both had impossibly green eyes and deep dimples in their cheeks, and they looked like a kid’s painting of an imp, almost a caricature of themselves. I’d half-expected them to be assholes like Pyro had been, but they seemed to genuinely revel in the spotlight and were impossible to dislike.
“Welcome!” the one singular version of Double finally said.
“We’re so excited you’re here!” Dart hopped from one foot to the other in excitement and then clapped his hands together. “The Academy told us we’ve got some really interesting powers among you guys, and I can’t wait to see what tricks you’ve got up your sleeve!”
We spent the next few hours flipping the roles, and the Corps fledglings entertained Double and Dart, who both grew more and more excited with each new power they witnessed. They were entirely enamored with a ghostly pale girl who could turn invisible at will, and they both let out identical squeals of excitement when a brutishly large fledgling shrunk down to the size of a toy.
There was another fledgling who could transform into any object that has self-awareness, and he spent a ridiculous amount of time switching into a camera that started to whizz around the floor of its own free will, or a table full of food that upended itself and created a mess that I sort of felt bad about.
There was another girl who could transform into a ginormous cobra, and I noticed how her eyes were slitted and her tongue was freakishly long and thin even when she was back in her human form. She was another Corps mutant, but instead of being grossed out by it, I was intrigued.
I wanted to hold her face and stare into her eyes so I could see how they were slitted, and I wanted to make her stick her tongue out so I could see how long and forked it was.
“Bravo, bravo! You all have great potential as heroes in training.” Dart suddenly clapped his hands together with ever-growing glee. “But there’s someone here we’re really interested in. Mark? Is there a Mark here?”
“That’s me,” I said with a grimace and reluctantly raised my hand.
“Yes!” Dart whooped and pumped a fist into the air.
“Oh, I cannot wait to see what you can do!” Double grinned.
“Come, come, don’t be shy,” Dart insisted and quickly waved me up on stage.
The lights were crazy hot and ridiculously bright as I squinted against them, and the sensation of being the center of attention was once again something I decided that I hated.
“So, Somnia told us you were a Conduit?” Dart asked as his eyes studied me eagerly.
“But you displayed an affinity for all four pillars?” Double added to his twin’s question.
“That’s right,” I said with a stiff nod.
“Have you displayed a Corps power at all?” Dart had his mouth hanging open with childlike excitement.
“I, uhh… Well, I don’t know for sure,” I explained in the same awkward voice. “Strength, maybe. Though I’m almost sure it was just adrenaline, I nearly set my boss’ bookstore on fire and then hauled this vintage bookshelf pretty much off the floor, but--”
“Oh, you must show us!” Double giggled and hopped up and down as though he were standing on hot coals. “Here, use this.”
Double pointed to an old fifties depiction of a circus strongman, complete with thick black mustache, oiled hair, and a heavy wooden mallet leaned up against the display.
“Also, don’t be afraid to mix in something else.” Dart chuckled. “A little fire maybe? Who cares, the production studio will think it’s gold regardless!”
“Yeah, give them a show!” Double insisted. “Have at it!”
“This is it?” I asked with a chuckle. “I could’ve probably done well on this before I even activated.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Double said with a meaningful look at his twin brother.
“Those arms look plenty strong, to be sure.” Dart giggled. “But we didn’t mean just smash the hammer on it. Tear it apart, lift it up and throw it through the stage, do your worst!”
“You really want me to wreck the thing?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You can do it, Maddock!” a guy in the fledgling group called out, but I couldn’t see who’d piped up in my support.
I was grateful for it, though.
Every single ride-along I’d been part of, the other fledglings had mostly ignored me. I couldn’t call just one pillar my home, and I therefore didn’t belong in any. I tried not to let it get to me, but it still stung a little.
I stood behind the thick wood of the display, where the fifties strongman was flexing his muscles, and I grabbed him by either elbow from behind. I steadied my feet and pressed them into the slick floor of the stage so I could lower my center of gravity, and then I dug my fingers into the treated wood.
It was smooth and varnished, and the old paint made it a little hard to fully grip onto, until finally I felt a sudden shift in how my hands and my arms reacted to what I was trying to do.
The wood suddenly felt soft, and with a low grunt that rumbled in my chest, I managed to pull the entire thing apart as easy as ripping up a sheet of paper. There was a sudden crack as loud as lightning, splinters exploded from the weighted display, and I let out the breath I’d been holding.
“Oh, quite something!” Double cheered gleefully.
“Let’s see a Conduit power!” Dart suggested. “A bonfire!”
That was nothing to me.
All I needed to do was flick my wrist and curl my fingers in the air, and a shot of fire burst from my fingertips in a concentrated ball. Then the ripped-up wooden strongman pallet was suddenly engulfed in a cheery fire in the middle of the stage.
I sidestepped the fire, took an awkward bow, and then let out a chuckle as the Corps fledglings eventually burst into a round of applause like they’d done for every single one of the other performances.
“Diana!” Dart suddenly yelled. “Be a doll and fetch the fire extinguisher!”
A frazzled-looking personal assistant eventually came barreling out of the green room with the extinguisher held aloft, and she managed to put out my bonfire by emptying the entire contents onto herself as well as the stage.
“Mark, that was fantastic.” Double wrapped an arm around my waist because he couldn’t reach my shoulders and then patted me on the chest. “I implore you, do not go down the boring military route, you’d do so much better in the entertainment industry.”
“With a face like that?” Dart jokingly clutched at his chest. “You’d have the world in love with you within one episode.”
The Corps fledglings spent the rest of the day with Dart and Double, and we listened to the twins regale crazy stories of their youth, how they broke into show business, and how lucrative being a super could be.
Sure, there was the saving the world element, but there was also the fame and fortune element, and I’d be lying if I tried to say it didn’t sound mighty tempting.
“That was really something,” a familiar voice suddenly said from behind me when the twins were done with their spiel, and I whirled around to find myself face to face with the Corps fledgling who’d cheered me on.
“Oh, hey, thank you.” I nodded to him with a wide grin.
He was tall and slim, with mousy-brown hair that looked as wispy as cotton candy and watery gray eyes that looked almost void of any color at all. But his disarmingly wide smile showed off his perfectly white teeth, and he spoke in a calm, almost monotone voice.
“I’m Danny,” he said and surprisingly extended a hand to me.
Aside from Frank and Hannah, no one had really approached me. It was all side glances and whispered conversations about whether I was an Omega or not, and whether I was going to go off the deep end and join the Antis. But Danny seemed unafraid and genuine, so I took his hand and shook it.
“Mark,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”
“You really are impressive, though,” Danny insisted. “I didn’t know you could do all that, and then some.”
“Yeah, who knows what else.” I laughed bashfully and ran a hand through my hair.
“Have you heard about the team thing?” Danny asked in his same serene voice.
