Belle Fury: Manhatten Ten, Book 3 (2 page)

“Thanks. You doing okay?”

“It’s so much harder without Tank.” Angel sighed. “I wish he’d get back.”

“You and me both.” Maybe Angel wanted him back for less platonic reasons, but he’d abandoned us both when he decided to stay in Vegas for Jenny.

“I’ll handle things while you’re out.” Angel whirled away.

Ignoring the million other unread e-mails, I clicked on the red-flagged one from our FBI contact. The NYPD had a perimeter around the local market where Belle was hiding out. They’d attached the live surveillance feed.

In puffy boots and a tutu, she gnawed at a chicken bone while she perused the chip aisle. Everyone else had cleared out with good reason. Packages exploded as she walked past, and a faint haze of artificial cheese dust hung in the air.

It was official. She’d snapped.

“Hey, Ru.” Thunder knocked on the doorframe. “Need a wingman?”

“You want in on the ballerina pickup?” I grabbed my jacket and a set of keys. “She got powers and turned crazy on the same day.”

Thunder scrolled through his phone on the way to the elevator. “This ruins my image of the poor girl.”

“You know her?”

“
Everyone
knows her.” Thunder lifted a hand to his forehead. None of us could ever tell if he was faking the flamboyance, and that was how he wanted it. “Damn. I’m soon to be the envy of the entire gay community and I’m not even wearing a tux.”

“Dude.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re wearing so many brands they should pay you royalties.”

“They do.” Thunder grinned and straightened his blazer’s lapels.

“What’s the girl’s story?” We stepped out of the elevator and into the parking garage.

“She’s a genius, but crazy driven. Bleeds ambition. If she can’t dance anymore…”

“We’re going to have a diva with a death wish on our hands.”

“Nah.” Thunder picked a set of keys from the rack. “She’ll probably just want to kill us for bringing the bad news.”

“Even better.” Instead of sharing a ride with Thunder, I headed for the row of motorcycles. We needed to get to Belle fast and diffuse things before her powers got out of control. With Friday night traffic, it would take forever by car. “I’ll go first and check things out. Back me up?”

“Race you.” Thunder patted the hood of his Maserati.

“Good luck with that.” I went for the fastest racing bike we had, and nothing about my baby was street legal. Nobody enforced the little things for superheroes.

“But, Ruin? Don’t fry the living legend.”

“I can handle one little ballerina.” I gunned the bike out of the building.
 

Chapter Two

Belle

The responsible thing would be to surrender. I owed it to the few hundred people I’d just freaked out, and probably to the public in general, but when I peeked out of the market, a lot of guns came out of holsters.

“Please stay inside, ma’am.” A policeman’s voice crackled over his megaphone. “We’re sending someone in.”

I retreated to the bakery and licked the frosting off a few cupcakes before a wave of nausea ended my binge. Who were they going to send? A SWAT team? Or maybe a bomb robot?

I kept waiting for whatever this was to stop, but every time I twitched, something got destroyed. Whatever the power was, it had to be temporary, and if I were patient enough, it would disappear as quickly as it showed up to ruin everything.

Any minute now.
 

“Hello?”

I jumped at the voice. I’d known it was coming, but my landing shook the building.

Expecting to see a team of big, burly men in Kevlar, I peered past a bushel of baguettes. Just one guy.
 

I craned my neck and…
sweet Jesus
.
 

He wore a leather jacket that fit like sin. Tanned, but not a Guido. Dark, styled hair, but not douchey. Like an actual person instead of the cover model-stereotype he should’ve been.

Someone was obviously using pheromones to take me down easy. Good thing I was covered in chicken drippings, frosting and powdered cheese. I always did know how to impress a man.

“Belle?” He stepped into the store.

“Unfortunately.” This was so not my shining moment. I should never have run. “In the bakery section.” And it was too late to hide all of the cupcakes I’d licked.

He approached with his hands open, like I was some startled animal. He couldn’t be a cop in those civilian clothes, but he had to be someone important. He was tailored in that understated money kind of way, and I got the vague sense I’d seen him somewhere before. A billboard?

“My name’s Ryan Lamborne.” He stepped forward again, all sincerity. “Most people know me as Red Ruin. I’m with the Manhattan Ten.”

Didn’t they sell upscale real estate? Or… “Wait. That superhero group?”

“That one.” He leaned against one of the bread racks. “We’d like to help you deal with what happened earlier.”

With what happened?

“You mean the part where I destroyed a landmark and blew the performance of my life?” It was
Giselle
for Christ’s sake. And who knew how many other dancers I’d taken down? It wasn’t enough to ruin my own career. I had to shatter a few other people’s lives while I was at it.
 

No one would hire me again. Might as well become a stripper, or a call girl, or a sample pusher at the Food Lion.

“I know you’re upset,” Ryan, or Red Ruin, said. What kind of name was that? “You had no reason to think you’d develop powers, especially so la—”
 

Powers?
“Not possible.” Obviously, the market hadn’t destroyed itself, but this was a temporary thing. Maybe a curse from the dance gods.

“Why not?” He moved closer and held out his hand. Rings of red lightning jolted around his fingertips. “My power’s electrical.”

The color was the purest scarlet. “Can I touch it?”

“Go ahead.”

I brushed a fingertip against Ryan’s hand. It was warm and tingly, but more like a first kiss than an electric shock.

“On the tape it looked like you were manipulating kinetic energy while you danced. That’s why we need to—”

“But no one in my family—”
 

“Listen.” Ryan’s lightning cut and he set his hand on my shoulder. “No one in my family had powers either, so I know how you feel. You might not want to believe it, but there’s no other explanation, is there?”

I squinted up at him. Those stellar hazel eyes were the last straw. “I’m almost positive you’re a hallucination.”

Expression flat, he picked up a cupcake and mushed it into my forehead. “Would you hallucinate that?”

My jaw dropped. “You did not just…” Scraping the mess away with one hand, I grabbed for a cupcake with the other, but as soon as the cake neared him, it evaporated in a puff of red lightning.

Ryan
tsked
. “You think it would be that easy?”

I would’ve started a full-on food fight, but an expensive car rolled through the broken doors and parked next to the cash registers. “Cavalry’s here.” A blond man in a blazer hopped out. “Though you two seem to be doing fine.”

“Belle, this is Thunder. He’s another one of the M-Ten.”

Thunder?
My gaze flicked between them. “Shouldn’t your name be Lightning, then?”

Thunder chuckled and clapped Ryan’s shoulder. “How many times have I said that?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “You just want to see me in a spandex sidekick outfit.”

“Damn straight.” Thunder’s grin lit his exquisite green eyes. “Don’t you too, Ms. Fabian? Loved you in
La Sylphide
, by the way.”

My mind fixated on Ryan in spandex, until the mention of ballet clicked. “You saw it in London?”

“The costumes were breathtaking. And not to throw anyone under the bus, but you totally upstaged that clown who played James. Who even cast him?”

“Right? He was such a d—”

Ryan cleared his throat. “Should we have a tea party? We’ve got scones right here.”

“Could we get out of the bakery?” All the shattered glass reminded me how badly I’d screwed up. I strode for the car.

Bad idea.

One stride and a wave of energy surged into Ryan and Thunder, knocking them into a display of soup cans. With a flash of lightning and a matching boom, they righted themselves, but the backlash from their powers collided with mine, sparking something like an accidental nuclear bomb.

The shockwave shot me back into the bakery, and I crashed into a display of snack cakes.
Ow.

My body was already turning into a big bruise. Boxes spilled everywhere and a package of Devil Dogs tumbled off my head.
 

I grabbed it. Spoils of war.

“You okay, Belle?” Ryan ran over, Thunder close behind him.

“I don’t think they’re going to let me shop here again.” Did markets blacklist people? If they did, I was going to be number one on the list.

The guys eased me out of the rubble, and I hugged the box of cakes to my chest. I shouldn’t move again. At all. Ever.

Ryan tossed Thunder his keys. “Take the motorcycle back. I’ll drive her.”

Thunder blew a kiss on his way out. “Try not to smash my car.”

“I’ll try.” But I couldn’t exactly promise.

“Let me,” Ryan said.

“Let you wha—” He swept my feet off the ground and carried me to the car like I weighed nothing. While he shifted me to open the car door, I pressed my forehead into his chest. “There’s frosting on your shirt.”

He chuckled and maneuvered me into the seat. “I probably deserve that.”

I reached for the seatbelt, but he beat me there and snapped me into place. Wasn’t I just made out of glass?

He shut the door and moved around the car. “Ready?”

“I guess.” I popped open my box of Devil Dogs, but I didn’t have the heart to unwrap one. I wasn’t hungry anymore.

“Take this.” Ryan stripped off his jacket and offered it to me.

“Thanks, but I don’t really—”

“Duck down and put it over your head.” Ryan looked over his shoulder as he backed the car out of the market. “There are about fifty news channels out there that want a shot of you.”

“Lovely.” I put my head between my knees and ducked underneath the jacket.
 

I’d always wanted fame, but it was supposed to be on the stage. After today, I doubted that anyone was going to remember me for my dancing.

Red Ruin

I backed out into a sea of paparazzi and armed police. Thunder spoke with the officers in charge and waved as I maneuvered into the aisle they’d cleared to the street. With so many camera flashes, it was like driving in strobe light.
 

Poor girl.

The M-Ten hadn’t been involved with any new supers since Ivory popped out of the tundra, and the press was going to have another collective orgasm. Belle was already fairly famous, and she’d picked a hell of a way to announce her powers. She’d have to be on house arrest until we got her under control.
 

Thank God for the cops. They blocked the news vans from following us, giving us a few minutes before the second string picked up our tail. Or they’d all go straight to HQ and try to get their shots when we pulled into the garage. “We’re clear now.”

“Thanks.” Belle sat up, leaving my jacket draped around her shoulders. She pulled her feet onto the seat, curling her body into a ball. “I’m not usually like this.”

“It was a rough night.” I’d only seen the one video of her on stage, but it was enough to tell she oozed confidence. The Belle in front of me was battered, dirty and way too forlorn for such a beautiful woman.

“Why would I get powers?” She rested her head on her knees and squeezed her box of cakes.

“You’ve always had them. You just didn’t know.” And it was crazy rare that they took so long to develop. Most girls started showing at twelve or thirteen. Not many women got the news at twenty-five.

“I don’t know anything about this world.”

“I was fifteen when my powers acted up.” At the time I was thrilled I could blow shit up, so I’d never experienced the loss that Belle was feeling. “I grew up in Washington State, and no one within a few hundred miles ever got powers before. Do you know how it works at that age?”

“No idea,” Belle said.

“Well, they tried to have high schools for superkids, but after the third one got obliterated, it was obvious we need to be kept apart until we stabilize. I was a huge fish in a farm-town pond and I had no idea I’d mean nothing to the other supers when I got to college.”

“What do you mean?”

How to explain? I’d been the shit in Washington—the guy everyone wanted a piece of, because I was going to be rich and famous and save the world. “Families who have the super genes can be crazy snobs, but they train their kids from birth. When I started at UCLA, I was eighteen years behind everyone and the politics were insane.”