Arc Angel (7 page)

“It adds to my mystique, don’t you think? The recluse artiste?”

Before she could do more than blink, he pushed on.

“Well, it’s always fun to meet a fan, but that’s not why I asked you to come here.”

“Why
d-did
you ask me to come here?”

And wasn’t that the question of the hour? She knew he’d created the superhero that had somehow entwined itself with her, but he couldn’t know that. Though she did have that huge white streak in her hair. She sat on her hand to keep it from reaching up and touching the new white patch. That blatant sign pointed to some sort of connection with Arc Angel, but he hadn’t commented on it. Maybe he’d written it off as some fan-girl tribute.

Bryce drained the rest of his drink and discarded the bottle on one of the steel end tables. Then he leaned forward in his chair, his arms perched on his denim-clad knees, hands tented in front of him.

“I saw an interesting news story this morning. Something about how a young woman foiled a mugging on Jackson Avenue last night. But the story caught my attention because the only eyewitness swore that the young woman had electrocuted the guy, even though she hadn’t touched him.”

“News story?” she squeaked. Damn. Those lights she’d seen last night must have indeed been a camera. Fantastic. She wondered how much Mrs. Dobrusky had spilled on camera.

Bryce pointed to the laptop sitting open on the enormous desk. “It’s queued up if you want to see it. Just press play.”

Miranda stumbled over to the desk and clicked on the arrow, jerking her hand away as if the mouse had singed her. She took a step back and tucked her hands into her sweatshirt’s pocket. The tinny sound of Gavin Brooks, star reporter, poured out of the computer’s speakers. Of course it would be Brooks. She watched in silence, wincing every time someone said the word “zapped.”

The sensation of Bryce watching her watch the video made her skin itch.

When the recording finished, she turned back to Bryce, wondering what could possibly be next. She caught a glimpse of a video camera on its tripod to the side of the desk. Did he want to…

“I’m n-not going to give you an interview.”

“I don’t want an interview. But I must admit I do want some information.” Bryce shifted in his seat, propping one leg across his knee. “What did you think of the story?”

“It was… interesting.”

Bryce chuckled.

“Miranda, you have a gift for understatement. It was indeed a most interesting video. But the video is only half of the reason I wanted to talk to you.”

“What’s the other half?” she whispered.

“The other half is even more…
interesting
.” He grinned at her encouragingly, but she couldn’t even manage to get her lips to twitch.

Bryce set both feet on the floor and leaned toward her, his eyes never leaving her face.

“Miranda, I had the weirdest dream last night. I saw a brunette woman on a shadowy street. She was facing down a man with a gun. And lightning was all around her, even inside her. She reminded me of my character, Arc Angel. But the most
interesting
thing about the news story is that I realized that the woman who foiled that mugging and the woman I dreamed about were the same person. And that person was you, Miranda.”

Bryce’s words hit her like a punch in the gut, and she struggled to breathe. Could her life get any weirder? She was already possessed by a fictional superhero, which god knows was enough crazy to last several lifetimes, but now that superhero’s creator had dreamed about her at the same moment she’d become his character.

Black spots swam in her vision, and she blinked them back furiously.
She would not faint in front of Bryce Campion. She would not faint in front of Bryce Campion. She would not faint in front of Bryce Campion.
Maybe if she said it enough times, it would be true. She yanked out the desk chair and sank into it. She hunched her shoulders, pulling her head into her sweatshirt, trying to make herself as small as possible.

“Miranda, do you know why my dream and this morning’s news match so perfectly, and why they’re both centered around you? If you really have taken on Arc Angel’s powers, and I somehow sensed that… we’re connected. We can help each other, work together to figure out what’s going on. You can be honest with me.”

Oh, how she wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him everything—how she’d felt when the power first flowed through her, how this amazing calm had come over her, how glorious it had felt to stop the mugger. And she wanted to tell him how completely freaked out she was about harming the man, and how frightening it was every time the electricity surged out of nowhere, and how she was terrified that she’d never get control over the power and it would consume her, and that, to top it all off, another consciousness had invaded her head. She wanted to tell him so that she wouldn’t be alone in this anymore.

If anyone could understand, it would be Bryce, right? He’d created Arc Angel. And he’d dreamed about Miranda, well, the Arc Angel version of her. He’d even said they were connected. But fear kept her words trapped inside her. What would he say, if she told him the truth? Would he understand and be kind? Would he help her, protect her?

“Come on, Miranda,” Bryce reached a hand toward her. “You can tell me. Do you truly have those powers? Did you ‘zap’ that mugger?”

She looked up at him, saw his hand extended in supplication, his eyes filled with a sincere concern. Maybe she could tell him. Maybe he would understand. She took a deep breath, let it out on a whoosh. Then she nodded.

She stared down at a swirl of orange on the rug right next to her foot, waiting for him to respond. Even breathing seemed too daring an activity.

Bryce let out a low whistle. “Okay. Wow. This is incredible. You actually have her powers. Damn.” She could hear the leather creak as he sat back in the chair. Miranda waited, wanting sympathy so badly that her eyes filled with tears. Telling Bryce didn’t solve anything, but at least she’d finally have someone on her side.

“Alright. You have her powers. Now we need to prove it.”

Her chin popped up, and she stared at him, eyes wide.

“What?”

“We need to prove it. I want you to show me how it works, what you can do.”

She stared at him, hoping against hope that she’d misheard him, misunderstood him, that any minute he’d tell her how now that he knew, he’d take care of everything. That he’d become her hero. Instead, he bounced out of his seat and started pacing between the two leather chairs, and rambled on, seemingly unconcerned by her silence. His eyes gleamed with excitement, and he’d lost all traces of the concern she was almost sure she’d seen a moment ago.

“Okay, we need to get a better idea of what exactly is going on. I think we should start small, then work our way up to more difficult things. Maybe we could start with the desk lamp. You could try to turn it on and then back off. Yeah, that would be great.”

He pulled a bottle of pills from his front jeans pocket, shook one out into his hand and dry-swallowed it. He walked to the video camera and looked through the viewfinder.

Miranda sat, frozen, in the desk chair. Her stomach twisted and churned, and she hugged her arms around her middle, trying to keep herself from spilling out.

“I’m so glad I had Matthews set this up for me earlier, just in case. I mean, I didn’t
know
we’d need it, but I had this feeling in the back of my mind that all of this had to be more than mere coincidence.” He straightened up and ran a hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. “But I thought it would be some weird psychological thing, not that you actually have the power to conduct electricity. Wow, you have the power to conduct electricity. That’s amazing! Now, based on my dream and the weather report from last night, I’m guessing your transformation involved actual lightning. Am I right? We’ll need to take some measurements. I wonder where I can get a hold of a voltmeter. Here, why don’t you come stand right there, so I can start recording.”

Miranda didn’t move. Her stomach continued to cramp, and chills ran through her body. She hugged herself even tighter. Her breath scraped against her throat and sounded so loud to her that she was sure Bryce must be able to hear her from across the room.

Bryce didn’t seem the least bit fazed and continued to ramble.

“Or I could film you sitting there. That would work too, at least to start. Okay. I want you to tell me the whole story about what happened, especially the part about your hair. But first, can we do a little test? I totally want to see the zapping in action. Here, wait until I adjust the camera.”

The black spots swam in front of her again, the dizziness making her feel like she might faint any minute. She couldn’t take this. She couldn’t stay here.

She’d reached out and told Bryce the truth, but he didn’t want to help her, to take care of her. Sure, he believed her, but he wanted to study her like some kind of science experiment. He thought she was a freak. She was a freak.

She couldn’t handle being under the microscope like this. Drawing on every bit of strength she had left, she pulled herself upright, holding onto the desk for support.

“I’m s-s-sorry. I need to go.” She stumbled from the room and practically ran down the hallway. She thought she heard him call her name, but when she dared a glance over her shoulder, she saw only an empty house. Despite the lack of visible pursuit, she didn’t slow down until she’d slammed the door of the cab.

“My apartment,” she managed to get out between deep gasping breaths. The driver pulled away from the curb and sped off. Miranda’s breathing settled down, and her heart rate slowed to normal. As she pushed her hair off her sweaty forehead, she had a sudden thought: the electricity. She hadn’t felt that power pushing at her the entire visit, not even when she was running away. She held her hands out in front of her, inspecting them, looking for any clue as to why the electricity remained dormant. She’d practically had a complete panic attack, but the electricity hadn’t showed up. Why not?

***

Bryce punched the intercom button a little harder than necessary.

“Matthews, can you come to the library?”

Bryce retreated to his armchair to flagellate himself until his employee arrived.

That had not gone well.

Miranda James had fled the house, and he’d been unable to do more than walk semi-briskly to the door after her before his heart rate had started to rise.

He opened another bottle of cold tea from the ice tub on the end table and gulped some down, trying to regain his composure. He needed to calm down and then figure out what in the hell had gone so horribly wrong.

Matthews stepped into the doorway, impeccable as always in his crisp slacks and oxford shirt.

“Sir?”

“Come on in, Matthews,” Bryce waved him in without taking his eyes off the fireplace. “I need some advice about a girl.”

The older man strode into the room, snagged a bottle of tea from the bucket and settled his broad frame into the chair opposite Bryce, his face impassive.

“Saw Ms. James sprint out of here a few minutes ago,” he noted, smoothing his neat grey mustache pensively. “Not what I’d call optimal results. Looks you could definitely use some guidance.”

Bryce continued to stare pensively at the grate in front of him as he began to ruminate aloud.

“I’m a smart man, aren’t I? I always got good grades in school. I’ve done pretty well with the family fortune. I even managed to impress thousands of comic book fans, a notoriously nit-picky group of people. But after today’s activities, it is clear that I am a complete idiot.”

“Why don’t you tell me what happened, sir?”

Bryce turned his pensive gaze to his manservant.

“It started off so well. I was being my usual charming self…”

“And what’s that like, sir?”

“Shut up, Matthews. I used to have women hanging all over me, some of whom had never even read a comic book in their lives! Of course that was before… Anyway, I was being my usual charming self, flirting a little, but why not? Miranda James is a pretty little thing. Like a little bird, dainty and soft, but ready to fly away at any sudden movement.”

“Very poetic, sir.”

“Shut up, Matthews. And she’s a fan of mine! When I heard that, I knew everything would go smoothly.”

“She ran out of the house quite smoothly, yes.”

“Shut
up
, Matthews. So then I told her about my dream, and I swear, she seemed honestly moved. I know she’d started to trust me, because she admitted to me that she does have Arc Angel’s powers. Holy crap, she has her powers! Isn’t that something, Matthews?”

“It truly is, sir. It’s what you’d been hoping.”

“But then she bolted.”

“And you don’t know why.”

“No.”

“I’d suggest you figure it out, if you’re ever going to get her to come back.”

Bryce sat in silence, tapping his fingers against the bottle in his hand.

He’d noticed Miranda’s skittishness, but he’d gotten so wrapped up in the possibilities of what she’d admitted that he’d rushed things. If this woman had actually been struck by lightning and turned into his heroine—and the white streak in her hair made a good case for that being true—the possibilities were astounding.

He thought back to the end of their conversation. The expression on her face, right before she’d dashed for the door, had been one of complete panic, which he didn’t understand. He’d been overly excited, sure, and probably pushing her a little faster than he should have, but not enough to frighten her that much. What could he have missed?

“You’re right, Matthews, as always.”

He pushed himself out of the armchair and strode over to the laptop on the desk.

“I thought we’d learned what we needed to know about Miranda James, but clearly we need to dig deeper.”

Matthews pushed himself out of his chair.

“This wasn’t the type of figuring out I had in mind,” he muttered under his breath as he joined Bryce at the desk.

Bryce ignored him and started his search. He needed Miranda James, and he was determined not to screw up his second chance. If he got a second chance.