King Of Bad [Super Villian Academy Book 1] (22 page)

The skin resealed, the probe turned inward
and repaired the smaller damage left by the blow to the head. A touch here and
a knit there and Jeff’s head was put back to right again. As soon as the probe
left, Jeff’s fire danced and skipped back to his hands. The ice retreated to
his lungs and Matthias slowly removed his numbness from Jeff’s head.

Matthias removed the bandages and pulled the
long, crusty scab from Jeff’s scalp.

The mind-splitting pain had disappeared. Jeff
reached up and wove his fingers through his blood-encrusted hair to his scalp.
Sure enough, it was smooth and unharmed. He swung his long legs over the edge
of the bed and sat up, smiling at Matthias.

The burly guy that came in with Mystic moved
as gracefully as a jungle cat. In a few lightning quick movements, he had Jeff
trussed with chains. Both Jeff and Matthias stood open-mouthed in awe.

“What the heck?” Jeff said.

Mystic walked over and patted his cheek.
“Can’t take our chances.”

The girls grabbed Matthias and dragged him
toward the door.

“Wait!” Matthias yelled.

Mystic nodded to the girls and they stopped,
Matthias hung between them. He looked back at Jeff with awe. “Who is he?”

Mystic smirked at Matthias. “I’d tell you,
but then I’d have to kill you.”

Mystic sauntered toward Matthias and Jeff
looked away. He knew she intended to make Matthias forget everything, except
his own name and Jeff didn’t want to accidentally get caught in the tide.

“Thanks, dude,” he mumbled to Matthias just
before Mystic’s full suave hit.

Chapter 26

After the
exciting incident with the healer, Jeff was left alone most of the time. Girls
paraded through to feed him a few times a day. To entertain himself, he created
booby traps. He set a trip wire of blue fire in front of the door. Dropped
fireballs for them to step on when they weren’t looking. He kept his abilities
in shape by levitating his bed, the only item in the room, or
gravitating
his feeder, unless he was really hungry. Mystic
refused to take the chains off for any reason, so to Jeff’s dismay, guys came
in to assist him with his personal needs. He never saw the same person twice
and if they were in there for more than about fifteen minutes, a team of people
would come in to collect them.

One time he had
just convinced a girl to help him escape when the team came in and snatched her
away. She screamed and cried as they dragged her from his room. Jeff realized
the extractions were a defense against his charming ability. And he hadn’t even
thought to use it.

Mystic was
right, he was no villain. If he thought like a real villain, he’d have busted
out already.

As if thinking
of her made her appear, Mystic sauntered through the door. Her suave pulsated
from every pore of her luscious body.

Jeff caught a
glimpse of the burly, jungle cat guy just outside the door before it slammed
shut. Jeff averted his eyes, but waves of Mystic’s suave broke against him. He
imagined her having her way with him while he was still chained and he
shuddered. He cursed how weak-minded he was. From the deep recesses of his mind
he pulled out the one image that had always effectively combated Mystic’s
suave.

The surreal image
of Oceanus filled his mind; her straight black hair, sparkling turquoise eyes,
porcelain skin and her rosy red lips, curved into a graceful smile. With the
image firmly and freshly burned onto his mind’s eye, he was able to look at
Mystic.

“What now?”

Mystic seemed
to sense the change in him. Her suave rippled unsteadily as if a rock had been
tossed into her pond. She straddled his lap and bent forward to look at the
back of his head. His face was up against her flat stomach. A whiff of lime and
musk made him bury his face further into the thin material of her shirt.

“I’m here to
wash your hair,” Mystic said. She held his head steady while she slid down to
sit on his lap.

His face rubbed
along her abdomen, between her breasts, teased along her neck, chin, and
finally ended with her lips against his. Her weight settled welcomingly on his
lap, and she wrapped a long bare leg up and around his waist. The image of
Oceanus dimmed.

Her tongue
plunged into his mouth and she shifted forward on his lap, her body pressed
tightly against his and anchored by the leg wrapped around him. Jeff tried to
wrap his arms around her, but his wrists were bound behind his back. That
brought some sense back to him and he began to hum the ABC song to distract
himself
further. The image of Oceanus sharpened and all
desire he felt toward Mystic dropped away.

Mystic roared
and pushed off him. He fell backward and cracked his head on the wall.

“How is it that
you are the only one who can refuse me?” Mystic snarled. Anger distorted her
features and for the first time since Jeff had met her he thought she looked
frightening and far from the beauty she normally appeared.

“I’m probably
just the first one who’s ever wanted to,” Jeff said.

“It’s the same
thing,” Mystic said.

“No, it’s not.”

Mystic spun on
her heel and stormed to the door, pounding on it.

“What about
washing my hair?”

Mystic glared
at him as the jungle cat opened the door. She spat out a nasty phrase as she
stomped out of the room.

Jeff smirked
and said, “You wish!”

Later, Jeff
dreamed he was slogging through his depths. His depths were murky and thick,
like a swamp. Snapping noises issued from the surrounding darkness, making Jeff
think of alligators.

Oceanus hung
from a vine. “Take my hand, Jeff!”

She stretched
as far as she could while he reached as far upward as he could, but their hands
did not meet. “You remembered my name?”

An explosion
sounded and Oceanus looked up the length of vine into the black sky. When she
looked back again her eyes were flooded with a mix of worry and determination.
“We’re coming, hang on.” She shimmied up the vine until the darkness swallowed
her.

“Wait! Where
are you going?
Oci
!”
Jeff yelled.
“
Oci
!”

Jeff sat up
with a start. His left arm was sound asleep from having to lay on it while it
was pulled behind his back. Jeff sighed and stood. With tiny little steps he
paced across his metal room.

Boom.

Jeff stopped.
The floor shuddered, leaving Jeff little doubt that somewhere near there had
been an explosion. The sound of the blast was severely deadened by the thick
metal walls.

He stood in the
middle of the room, feeling helpless and vulnerable. The facility was under
attack. If the attackers were successful and then left, no one knew he was
there. He could be left there forever. Surely they’d check all the rooms for
bad guys before they left. Wait, if they were competing bad guys they’d just
kill him anyway.
Easily done with him chained up.

He remembered
Pyro’s
invisibility. He’d never even attempted to go
invisible before, but it sure would come in handy now. What had she said about
it? That time seemed so long ago and his memory was hazy. That was it! She said
you had to believe for it to happen.

Another
explosion and this time Jeff almost lost his balance. He shuffled back to his
bed and crawled up into the corner. He sat as quietly as he could and focused
inside himself. He poked around in his mind, trying to find belief. He found
arrogance and vanity, envy and jealousy. A large banging sound rocked the wall,
momentarily pulling him out of his trance. His heart pounded fiercely.

His heart.
Belief won’t be in his mind. It will be in his
heart. Again he looked within himself to find the belief he needed to learn
invisibility. In his heart he found love and joy, grief and hatred, and he
found belief. With a deep breath, he fanned the belief until it filled his
heart. Then he believed that he was invisible. The problem was that he didn’t
know if it worked or not. He could still see himself so he didn’t think it
worked.

He had no more
time to think about it. An explosion buckled the metal door of his room. A man
with razor sharp angles for hands sliced his way through the weakened door. As
the metal fell away in strips the man was followed into the room by Sandra.

She looked
around. “I could have sworn I felt him in here. Let’s go to the next room.”

“Sandra!” Jeff
yelled.

She froze and
looked around.

He scooted
awkwardly to the side of his bed and then stood up, his chains gangling loudly.

Source stuck
his head in the room.
“Nothing, huh?”

He disappeared
again.

Sandra yelled,
“Wait, I think he’s here…somewhere.”

Jeff finally
realized that his invisibility was working. He also realized he had no idea how
to cast it off. “Sandra, Source, I’m here. Give me a second.”

Razor sharp,
guy spun in a panicked circle, trying to figure out where the voice was coming
from. His long bladed hands almost sliced Jeff in half. “Whoa! Get the knives
away from me!”

Sandra told the
guy to watch for trouble in the hall. She and Source stepped into the room and
looked around. “Where are you, bro?”

“Give me a
second. I need quiet to figure this out,” Jeff said.

“Or you can
just ask me,” Source said. He looked insulted. “To cast off invisibility, fill
your head with reality.”

Jeff filled his
mind with the pain of his recent head injury, the fear of being kidnapped. Then
he remembered Oceanus’ face framed by the books on the shelf at the library. Being
doused by her water on the first day when he’d lost control. He remembered her
salty, lavender scent.

“There you are!” Sandra said. “Oh, you’re all
chained up.”

“Thanks for
noticing,” Jeff said.

Sandra gave him
a disdainful look. She yelled over her shoulder. “Hank, we could use your help
in here if everything’s okay out there.”

Razor man came
back through the door.

Sandra eyed the
chains warily. “Hold still.”

Jeff’s eyes
grew wide as he realized what she expected Hank to do.

Source grabbed
Jeff by the shoulders and spun him so that his back was toward Hank. Source
stared intently at Jeff and said, “So, how’s Mystic?”

Jeff gawked at
his friend.
“Seriously?
You’re asking that now?”

Two fast, sharp
slices and the chains fell away from Jeff’s wrists and ankles.

Source grinned.
“Just distracting you, man. Didn’t want you to flinch and lose a hand.”

Jeff massaged
feeling back into his upper arms. He flexed both arms repetitively and shook
them, trying to circulate the blood again.

“Let’s go,”
Sandra said. “We are a long way from safe.”

Jeff followed
Source and Sandra up a long hall littered with the unconscious bodies of the
people who’d been attending him for however long he’d been captive. They came
into a foyer where fighting was still quite active.

He
automatically ignited his fire, ready to scorch the first person to cross his
path. Then he was struck dumb by the assemblage. Tubs and Sand Storm, Hush and
Pyro all threw their abilities at Mystic and her minions. A group of kids Jeff
didn’t know wielded powers he’d never seen before at Mystic’s people.

“Did you bring
white hats and S.V.’s with you?” Jeff shouted to Sandra. He ducked a laser
blast at the last second and smelled singed hair.

“No! Don’t hit
him!” a trio of voices bellowed in unison.

Mystic’s copper
tinted locks waved wildly in the air as she pulsed out fright and timidity
toward those around her. “I will not be thwarted by a pathetic mish-mash of
supers. The little prince is mine.”

“You won’t get
him again,
Mysty
.”

Across the room
the woman who’d spoken to Mystic issued white blue flame, crumpling the villain
in front of her.

“Mother?”
Jeff said.

“Hi, honey.”
Sarah smiled at him even as she shot a blast of wind into a group of villains,
throwing them hard against a wall.

“Not while
we’re here!”

Jeff spun
around.
“Dad?”

Frank Mean, or
rather, Chill
Tohler
, hovered in the air as if he
stood on an invisible surfboard. He tipped forward and “surfed” across the
room, his long shaggy hair blowing in the breeze, his tanned muscles hard and
lean. He shot villains with blasts of water as he surfed past them, knocking
them over and suctioning them to the floor with large starfish and octopi. He looked
incredibly cool and intimidating all at once.

“I
kinda
get what Mom saw in him all those years ago,” Sandra
mumbled to Jeff.

Caught off
guard, Jeff was hit with a full suave from Mystic.

“It
ain’t
over yet,” she said. Her voice caressed his senses and
the haunting image she’d implanted the very first day they’d met, of their
entwined, sweaty bodies, filled his mind. “Come to Mama, Polar bear.”

Against his own
will, he moved stiltedly toward her. An internal battle caused his body to jerk
in Mystic’s direction and then fall away. As a distraction, he whistled the ABC
song.

“No, no,”
Mystic soothed. She hummed Hush Little Baby. Her voice dripped over him like
melted caramel.

“Give me a
break!”