Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (41 page)

I love the Hollywood approach to reality. Ever heard of Jump? He and his friends gave us a hand when Villains Inc. was curb-stomping us, but they got written out of the movie. My epic win against Villain-X? Not so much. But
The Sentinels: Villains Inc
. was a blockbuster hit, and Terry got the details right in the documentary.

Astra,
The Chicago Interviews
.

Seven gave me a hand up after I finished laughing like a loon. Luckily—and we would never, ever, figure out how much of that luck was Seven’s—the entrance of our four mystery men had turned the fight; it wrapped up pretty quickly after Villain-X got up for his second act. Our battlefield looked like it had received the best care army artillery could deliver; not a single DSA car was upright and intact, power poles burned up and down the street and a blown-up transformer told me where Lei
Zi
had drawn her power. The giant robot lay in pieces across the road.

The Devourer still burned in its multi-car pyre, and I wondered if I’d set a record for the most supersized potholes in one fight. Flames leaped from the roof of the boat dealership. I was very glad that streets (layers of asphalt over sand, dirt, and tunnels) were soft targets, but I was getting hard on Chicago businesses.

Seven grinned. “Any fight you can walk away from, right?”

I giggled. “I think that’s any
landing
you can walk away from.”

“Whatever. C’mon.” He turned me around, and Fisher fell into step on my left side as we walked around the bonfire to where the lead cars had stopped. The familiar music of sirens sounded restful after all the shooting.
Quin
knelt working on a sitting Platoon. Dad moved cars out of the street while Shell worked on the giant robot’s head, and I sighed in relief. Flash Mob’s dupes had vanished, and I couldn’t see the other villains unless Swarm was the pile of black dust
Variforce
and a couple of Platoons were sweeping into a steel chest.

“So how much paperwork is this going to generate?” Seven asked Lei
Zi
. She rested with her back to an overturned DSA car.

“And can I be excused?” I added plaintively. “I’ll get a doctor’s note.”

She looked up. “Are you done?” She spoke louder than she had to, and blood trails ran from her ears and nose. “Because I can wait.”

I flushed guiltily, but Seven shrugged. “We’re all still breathing, so it’s all good.”

“Amen to that,” a new face said. One of the guys in blue fatigues. Well padded, with a comfortable face, he looked like anybody’s next-door-neighbor. “I’m Jump,” he introduced himself, extending a hand. I shook it automatically.

“Extreme Solutions,” he said.

“What?”

“That’s us. Extreme Solutions. We contracted with friends of Mr. Early to ensure that certain problems were taken care of. When we learned you were transporting Sergeant Leavitt, we figured it would be a good place for his associates to come out in the open. Glad we were right.”

“You’re
supervillains
?” I couldn’t believe it. “Do we have to fight
you
now?”

He laughed cheerfully. “Hardly, ma’am. We’re contracted security specialists. Mercenaries, if you want to be blunt. And we haven’t done anything illegal; we intervened to ameliorate a public hazard, as any good citizen should.”

I looked at Lei
Zi
. She looked like she’d swallowed a lemon, but she nodded.
And how did they know about this morning’s operation?
She wasn’t asking, and I bit my tongue. A save was a save.

“We appreciate the help,” she said, still talking loudly. “Will you be staying in Chicago now?”

He chuckled. “I don’t think so. Our sources tell us the problem has been resolved. Nice meeting you.” He gave a lazy half-salute and walked away.

I stared after him. “What? What resolution?”

Lei
Zi
watched him go. “Team Two reported success,” she said. “Blackstone confirmed Hecate’s neutralization the same moment Villain-X went down. But he reports significant property damage and some casualties. Are you up to lending a hand?”

I was in the air almost before she finished, barely missing the incoming news helicopter.

Finding Hecate’s hypothetical base had changed the plan Blackstone and Lei
Zi
worked out with the DSA. Originally, all of us were going to be on standby, ready to come down hard when Villains Inc. tried to stop Agent Robbins and his men (the ten-Platoon team). But even if they attacked the convoy, Hecate, Tin Man, and Flash Mob would just be sending their demons, metal puppets, and duplicates; we’d clean up, but wouldn’t catch the three most dangerous bad guys.

So when Artemis and I found Hecate’s hideaway, a closed office and warehouse on West 33
^rd
, Agent Robbins got a federal warrant and deputized us.

Chakra tried to talk Blackstone out of going back out into the field, but he chose to lead Team Two. With the exception of Watchman, all the more “durable” Sentinels went in Team One; after all, we’d be the center of the trap. Blackstone took Artemis, Rush, and Riptide—all the sneaky ones—with him (I didn’t consider Riptide sneaky, but he could enter a building through the
drain
). Watchman went as their muscle.

They’d launched their attack the instant Lei
Zi
reported we’d been hit, and now I set off car alarms with my overpressure wave getting across town.

I landed in the weed-grown parking lot hard enough to add more cracks. Dawn light flashed off the building’s silvered windows as I jerked the lobby doors open, breaking their bolts.

“
Astra?
” Rush queried. “
Lei
Zi
said you were on the way?
”

“Where are you?” There was nothing in the lobby but dust.

“
In the warehouse. Come on back.
”

Right. Remembering the blueprints, I danced around the reception desk and flew down the hall. The locked warehouse doors didn’t slow me down.

The place had seen better days. Something had torn the loading bay doors away, and along one wall shipping crates had been shattered, scattered, and burned. Riptide had put out the fires, but smoke filled the air.

I recognized Flash Mob. Someone had handcuffed the psycho to some pipes, and since he couldn’t generate more dupes for at least a few hours, he was harmless.
 
I didn’t see Tin Man. A fancy ritual circle like the one in Hecate’s home filled the center of the floor, but big cracks ran through it.

Hecate, in dramatic black, lay in her blood in the middle of the circle. I’d seen way too many dead bodies since last September, but I still had to force myself to look away.

So where were the… “Guys?”

“Over here,” Rush called, and I found them around the other side of a pile of crates stacked by the bay doors.

Oh my God
. I swallowed, and Rush looked up from where he worked on Artemis. He’d spread an EMT kit out, and was tightening a tourniquet bandage around the
stump of Jacky’s arm
. The wayward arm lay beside her, but she had her head turned to the sunlight pouring in the broken doors.
 
Riptide stood beside them, looking helpless.

“Watchman has already taken Blackstone to Northwestern Hospital,” Rush said, giving Jacky’s bandage a final tug.

“Jacky?” I said tentatively.

She opened her eyes. “Devourers are tough. Ready to fly? They have a team waiting for me at Northwestern.”

The Northwestern Memorial trauma team stoically ignored my babbling and whisked Jacky and her arm away. I sternly ordered the part of me screaming that we
had
to stay and watch them work to Shut Up, and flew back to the scene of our street-fight to help clean up. Riptide joined us; I found out later that when Rush had worked on Jacky, the big, tough, ex-
supervillain
had nearly
fainted
.

I couldn’t blame him; I’d felt pretty wobbly myself.

Chakra beat us back to the hospital to join Blackstone, so I had no worries about him. Once back, I found out they’d checked Watchman into their special unit, the one tooled up to setting bones and doing other things for people as tough and hard to work on as we were. Riptide told me Watchman had gotten hit by something indescribable and nasty of Hecate’s, then eaten an Israeli
Spike
missile—a nasty weapon designed to core tanks and take down superhuman targets like us—fired by Flash Mob, who loved his toys, and
still
managed to crack the warehouse’ foundation. That broke Hecate’s magic circle and allowed Artemis to put three bullets through her heart, but not before the witch summoned another Devourer—the one that carved her up and almost got Blackstone. Rush took it out with incendiary grenades from his bike’s combat-loads, and Riptide took down Flash Mob using his water-form.

Paper-scissors-rock, and Dispatch records showed that the instant Artemis killed Hecate, Villain-X’s possession broke.

Fisher found me outside the secure rooms that held Artemis, Blackstone, and Lei
Zi
, watching TV with Seven and Riptide as we waited. We weren’t going anywhere till Tin Man had been captured—he hadn’t been in the warehouse—or till we could move everyone to the Dome. The trauma-team leader had told us Jacky’s supernatural regenerative powers had kicked in almost before they’d finished reattachment. He’d shrugged; the weirdness was normal. Lei
Zi’s
hearing would recover, and Blackstone was being monitored carefully after his blood loss. He really needed to stay out of the field. I bit down on giggles. Maybe Chakra could tie him to her bed.

Great. My post-combat shakes have been replaced with inappropriate attacks of humor
.

Popping a cigarette, Fisher looked at it and sighed.

“Rough day.”

“More for some,” I said, getting
ahold
of myself. The news anchor was reporting fatalities: two DSA agents—Platoons—and three
supervillains
. Hecate of course, but Villain-X had also died of cascading organ failure. Seven had accidentally killed Swarm, when he froze his disassociated parts. I hadn’t worked up the courage to ask him how he felt about that.

“Fair enough,” Fisher agreed. “Internal Affairs has arrested Phelps and Garfield. Garfield was in the Organized Crime Division when
Kitsune’s
family was killed. He’s been in the Outfit’s pocket for years, and Phelps was his delivery boy to the Mob. Mr. Ross identified him.”

“Did you bring in
Kitsune
?”

He actually
winked
at me. “How?
Shapeshifters
are a pain in the ass.”

“But—” I closed my mouth. Fisher watched me play with my cape, and twitched a smile.

“I’m going to have a talk with a local Buddhist priest, just in case he can pass on a message. Suggest a mutual acquaintance of ours should do some traveling while we take care of Garfield and the Outfit people we’ve been able to sweep up. The Outfit will still be hunting him—especially since, with Mr. Ross’s help and all the bread crumbs we have to follow now, we’ll probably roll up half the Outfit’s senior management. How’s Watchman?”

I smiled sadly. “Atlas-types are tough and heal fast—Atlas said we make up for it by trying to get killed. They released him an hour ago; he and
Variforce
and Rush are back out helping with cleanup.”

The TV switched to an aerial view of our desperate fight with Tin Man, Villain-X, and the rest. The DSA had thoughtfully released footage from their helicopter cam, and we got to watch Seven walk through
autofire
like a kid in the rain, shooting back with his little seven-round Sig-
Sauers
.

“Dude!” Riptide slapped Seven on the back. Seven spun his fedora, showing two holes in the rim, and smiled at a passing nurse.
Oh yeah,
he’s
fine
. The “full” DSA video was already hitting the net; it barely showed a hint of Extreme Solutions, making me wonder who had an interest in making us look as good as possible.
Quin
had called to tell us not to talk to reporters until after the police had released a statement.

Fisher started to say something, but turned when we heard the clumping behind us. I forced myself not to move when Dad, still Iron Jack, came around the corner. I could feel each step through the floor, and he stopped beside us.