Supervillainess (Part One) (4 page)

“Villains are nocturnal, Doc. Does hell have
books, or am I supposed to lie here and stare at the ceiling all
night?”

Keladry Savage was kind of an asshole, he
decided. Kimber ignored her and flipped off the light to her room.
Closing her door, he heard her muttering beneath her breath.

As tired as he was, Kimber found himself too
curious after the interaction to lie down quite yet. He retrieved
his laptop from the living room and returned to his room. He began
searching for information on Keladry Savage.

To his surprise, she had her own
wiki-page.

Supervillain in training, fraternal twin to
Jermaine Savage and daughter of General William Savage. The Savage
family’s territory is limited to Sand City. Keladry Savage is said
to run the eastern part of the town and her brother the western.
Little is known about her unique superpower, likely inherited from
her mother rather than her father, but Keladry is said to be among
the most tenacious villains to cross.

Superpower?

Kimber read the first paragraph again and
then rubbed his eyes. “Maybe I do need a weekend off,” he decided.
He stretched for his charging phone and gazed at the date. Tomorrow
was Saturday, his first day off in a month, and the day his
stepmother and father had chosen to visit. “Here I thought life was
already complicated.”

His headache worsened at the idea of
entertaining anyone. He hadn’t seen his friends or family since
leaving Chicago and dreaded the initial meeting with anyone from
his past life.

Closing the laptop, he left it on the pillow
beside his and lay down to sleep.

***

Despite the strange woman in his house,
Kimber slept deep and late, not waking up until his phone rang and
pulled him out of sleep.

“Hello,” he said groggily into the cell.

“Kimmy, this is Julian.”

“Oh. Hey. Are you getting ready to leave
home?” he asked.

“I’m standing outside your building waiting
to come up. Your father isn’t used to being outdoors, so can you
ring us in?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Kimber was out of bed before
his stepmother finished her sentence. “How was your trip?”

“Great until the airport. Did you forget
about picking us up?”

That explains one of the
calendar alerts I missed.
He glanced at the
time on the screen and grimaced. It was past ten in the morning. He
had either slept through his alarm or forgot to set it. “It was a
late night, Julian. I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. We had trouble finding someone
to bring us here with your father’s equipment.”

Guilt slid through him. Tugging on jeans,
Kimber exited the hallway and stopped, blinking away sleep from his
eyes as he stared at the front door. “Hey, Julian, I’m ringing you
up now but it might be a minute.”

“We have nowhere else to be.”

He rolled his eyes at her tart response.
“Let me know if the elevators are working. If not, I’ll come down
and help.”

“All right.”

“See you in a few.” He hung up, hating the
disappointment in her tone but more confused by what was in front
of him.

At some point during the night, someone – he
assumed Keladry – had moved most of the furniture he owned in front
of the door to blockade it. If that wasn’t enough, he spotted rope
stretched taut a foot above the flooring across each doorway,
including the opening to the hall.

Kimber bent and touched the rope he
recognized from his mountain climbing days. She had to have found
it in one of the boxes. He stepped over it and followed it into the
living room, where it wrapped around a precariously balanced box on
the kitchen table. He went to the box and peered into it. It was
filled with fragile glassware.

“What the hell?” he stood back to decipher
what Keladry had done. “She booby-trapped my home?” Or rather, she
had created a rustic alarm. If anyone tripped over a rope, it would
send the glassware smashing to the ground and awaken them both. He
didn’t have time to ask her what was going on, not with his family
headed up to his floor.

Kimber quickly unwound or cut all the rope
in the house and tossed it into a box. At one point, he glanced at
the hammer resting on the windowsill. Certain he hadn’t left it
there, he paused by the window.

Someone had nailed it closed.

His eyes went to the neighboring window,
which had also been nailed closed.

He stood in place for a long moment,
uncertain how he had slept through the racket. What the hell
Keladry was thinking when she decided to fuck up his apartment?
Bloodied carpets weren’t enough? She wanted to make sure he never
saw a penny of his deposit?

A knock at the front door drew his attention
back to the blockade of furniture.

“Just a minute!” he called. Kimber hurried
to the foyer and began tugging the loveseat back into the living
room.

Ten minutes later, with the house almost
back the way it was, he ducked his head into the guest bedroom.

Keladry was sound asleep. The blinds were
drawn again, and more blood was on the carpet. She’d ignored his
advice to rest, along with his suggestion not to wear the makeshift
mask. Kimber snatched towels from his bathroom and covered the
rusty maroon trail on the already stained carpet.

He answered the door at last, breathless and
sweaty from his rush to undo what Keladry had done.

“Kimmy!” his stepmother beamed and held out
her arms. Tall and slender, with gold-brown hair and heavy makeup,
the middle-aged woman smelled of lilac and wore her signature color
of blue. Mist sparkled in her coiffed hair.

“Hey, Julian,” he said and hugged her. “You
look great.”

“It’s this diet we’ve been on. I’ve dropped
ten pounds, and your father’s lost five,” she said.

His gaze slid to the unmoving man in the
wheelchair behind her. Kimber released his stepmother and went to
his father, crouching down in front of him. As always, any
excitement he experienced seeing his father was stolen by the
condition his father was in. James Wellington had been confined to
a wheelchair or bed for three years. His head drooped, and his once
muscular body had turned frail with lack of use and age. Even so,
he was dressed in trendy clothing, and his eyes moved to find
Kimber when he knelt.

From his work with the permanently disabled,
Kimber was able to recognize the amount of time and care it took to
keep his father appearing healthy. His stepmother, as much as he
didn’t like her, truly cared for her husband.

“Hey, dad,” Kimber said and took his
father’s hand. He squeezed it. “Looking good!”

His father blinked. For his sake, Kimber
smiled, troubled at his father’s appearance but genuinely pleased
by the visit.

“Kimmy, show us your new place,” Julian
said.

Kimber rose and stepped behind his father’s
wheelchair, pushing him into the apartment. “Come on in,” he
said.

Julian followed. She was unusually quiet, a
sign she was trying not to reveal her true thoughts.

“It’s, uh, well … temporary,” Kimber said,
embarrassed by the condition of his sparse apartment. Before
Keladry’s comment about it being a shit hole, he hadn’t paid much
attention to the condition of his place. He looked around anew,
imagining what his parents saw. The paint was peeling in places,
and water damage marred one corner of the living room. The windows
were small, the carpet older than he was, and cracks extended from
the ceiling towards the floor in almost every room. None of the
lights managed to illuminate the corners or ceiling completely, and
since the skies were constantly cloud covered, natural light did
nothing to help. It was dark and dingy.

“It’s nice,” Julian managed.

It wasn’t, but he didn’t object to her
attempt at being pleasant. Kimber wheeled his father in to the
living room and the window overlooking the street.

“Are you unpacking or repacking?” Julian
asked from the kitchen. She was peering into the box of glassware
on the table.

“Oh, um … reorganizing,” he said. He joined
her. “How’s Dad doing?”

“No change, really,” she replied with a
meaningful look towards her husband. “He’s having more trouble
lately and the doctors are worried. But, Kimmy,” she gave him a
warm smile, “I’ll take care of him. You’ve got a lot to deal with
on your own.”

Kimber’s cheeks felt warm. Julian turned
away and went to the living room. He put on a kettle for tea and
mentally prepared himself for the conversation certain to come. He
would never feel ready for it. Just as he left the kitchen, the
front door opened.

“Knock, knock!” someone called
cheerfully.

Kimber’s stomach twisted into knots. He
faced the pretty woman walking through the door and glanced towards
his stepmother.

“We’re not the only ones worried about you,”
Julian said with a wink. “Suzanne insisted on coming.”

Kimber said nothing in response. His eyes
went to Suzanne’s left hand. He was almost surprised she no longer
wore the diamond.

“Hey,” said the pretty woman, stopping in
front of him.

“Hey,” he replied and cleared his
throat.

“Julian said they were coming to visit, so I
decided to tag along,” Suzanne said and studied him. Her lips were
smiling – but her eyes weren’t. “Hope that’s all right?”

Not really.
Kimber wasn’t ready for everyone from his past to
confront him at once, but neither was he going to re-injure the
feelings of the woman he had already caused so much pain. “Sure.”
His response sounded forced, even to his ears.

“Of course you’re welcome, Suzanne,” Julian
said. “I’m dying to hear about this new job of yours, Kimber. It’s
a charity hospital, I read online.”

“Yeah.” Kimber glanced at his father,
wishing he could trade places with him for once.

Suzanne sat beside Julian on the couch, and
both women gazed at him expectantly.

I’d rather be covered in
blood in the ER,
Kimber thought.

Keladry “Reader” Savage was hurting more
than she ever had before. Her brother had been serious about trying
to kill her this time. It was supposed to be a game, a competition,
a way for them to push one another to grow.

Was this new, strange pain why she hadn’t
escaped when she had the chance? Because, for a captor, Kimber
Wellington didn’t know shit about how to keep someone imprisoned.
He hadn’t even locked the front door last night, and his horrible
little apartment didn’t exactly have a security system.

She could’ve walked out at any time.

She didn’t. The part of her that hurt the
most wasn’t her body for once, and she didn’t know how to handle
emotional pain. To make matters worse, she was healing slowly,
probably from the extent of the damage sustained. Normally
energized when night fell, she was sluggish instead this night, her
body barely responsive.

Lying in the dark room, Reader couldn’t
recall the last time she had wanted to hide and nurse her wounds
instead of charging straight into her brother’s house and
challenging him to another round in their ongoing battle to win
their father’s favor.

The door cracked open, and light from the
hallway spilled into the storage/guest room. She snapped her eyes
closed and listened carefully. Voices from elsewhere in the
apartment, muffled by the walls, had been talking most of the day.
Tensing, in case her brother’s men had found her, Reader
waited.

“Sorry about this. Ignore my other guest,”
Kimber whispered to someone. “This is temporary while we rearrange
the house so you can all sleep here tonight.”

He walked past her, and she peered at him
through her eyelashes. He was pushing a slumped man in a wheelchair
to the window.

Kimber opened the blinds and positioned the
man before the window. “Keladry, are you awake?” he called
quietly.

My name is Reader,
she corrected him silently.

Kimber hesitated, as if uncertain he wanted
to leave the other man in the same room as her, before he left and
closed the door.

Reader opened her eyes and turned her head
towards the window. She sat with difficulty, ignoring the pain
floating through her. Instead, she focused on the man in the
wheelchair and tilted her head, listening.

At least this one faces
the park,
the man was thinking.

She released a controlled sigh, relieved the
effects of the mind-altering meds were gone. Her superpower was
returning. Her mask started to slip, and she tightened it.

“Are you another of the doctor’s projects?”
she whispered.

No one can fix me.

“Why not?”

Silence.

“Yes, I can hear you,” she said, accustomed
to the initial incredulity experienced by someone exposed to her
power for the first time.

You’re one of
them
. Which
side?

“Does it matter, old man? You’re stuck in a
chair either way.”

It wasn’t always this way. I played the
great game once.

Reader’s eyebrows shot up. “Did you now?”
she asked. “What team?”

The good one.

“Then we are at odds, I’m afraid,” she said.
“The doctor isn’t quite as innocent as he seems, if he’s collecting
us.”

My son doesn’t know.

“Interesting.” She gripped her midsection
and rose, teetered, and then deliberately crossed to the man in the
wheelchair. Reader gazed down at his bent, hunched form. “Not so
spry anymore.”

Neither are you at the moment.

She grimaced. “Yeah. True.” She studied him.
“What happened? Were you in some great battle with your
arch-nemesis?”

Unfortunately no. It’s a long, boring
story.