Supervillainess (Part Two) Read online

  Supervillainess

  Part Two

  “It’s Not Easy Being Good”

  This ebook includes an extensive excerpt from, “Aveline,” (#1, Lost Vegas) by Lizzy Ford, a young adult post apocalyptic set to release September 19!

  By Lizzy Ford

  www.LizzyFord.com

  Smashwords Edition

  Published by Kettlecorn Press

  Supervillainess copyright ©2016 by Lizzy Ford

  www.LizzyFord.com

  Cover Design ©2016 by Lizzy Ford

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to Emmanuelle Pensa for naming our heroine, Keladry

  and

  Miranda Evan for naming our hero, Kimber!

  One: Every superhero has an origin story

  Kimber Wellington awoke with a hangover headache and the blurry memory of playing poker the night before with a group of his former frat buddies. He rolled onto his back, grimacing, and gazed up at the poster on the ceiling depicting a throwback image of his favorite band, Metallica. His room had a distinctly juvenile feel to it. His stepmother, Julian, hadn’t changed a thing since he left for college. From the twin bed that his feet hung off of, to the desk in the corner, to the bookshelf filled with electronics and Lego sculptures, everything was as he left it.

  It was fitting, really, considering he’d spent ten years on his own only to return – broke, depressed and desperate – to the only place he knew to go.

  Wiping his face, he sat up and rested his feet on the carpet. The house was quiet; Julian had probably left for the day, leaving Kimber alone with his wheelchair-bound father and Igor, who he hadn’t had the heart to leave behind after they were both expelled from Sand City.

  Kimber tugged on a t-shirt and left his room, padding through the second floor of his father’s home to the stairs. He smelled food and peeked into the study, where his father spent most of his day seated in a bay window overlooking the rose garden in the backyard. The cat was in his lap, its eyes closed in the morning sun as it dozed.

  “Morning, Dad,” Kimber called after a pause. “Need anything?” His eyes skimmed instinctively over the medical supplies on the desk, consisting of pain meds, muscle relaxers, various seizure and anti-nausea drugs to counter the side effects of chemotherapy, an IV bag and stand, oxygen tank, portable defibrillator and everything else needed to treat any kind of emergency his father could have. It was habit that made him check the pillbox for the day to ensure his father had taken his morning pills.

  “No, son,” came the low, gravelly reply.

  Kimber continued to the kitchen. A basil and cheese egg white omelet awaited him, and Igor was washing the dishes. Since they had shown up penniless at the local bus stop, Igor had taken on the role of nanny-ing everyone in the family. He cooked full meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, dusted and cleaned the house, weeded the garden and accompanied Julian to the grocery store.

  “You don’t have to do all this,” Kimber reminded him and sat at the table in the breakfast nook adjacent to the kitchen.

  “It’s how I pay my rent,” Igor replied.

  At least you have something to offer. Kimber had nothing to contribute to the family, aside from sitting with his father for a few hours a day and setting out the meds and supplies needed for the following day, which he did in the evenings. He ate his breakfast slowly, not yet recovered from his night of drinking.

  “I found something for you,” Igor said and placed a notebook on the table. On the page showing, he had written a phone number.

  “What is it?” Kimber asked.

  “A local drug addiction counseling center.”

  “I’m clean.”

  “No, for you to help other people,” Igor said, amused. “You should practice.”

  “Practice what? Helping people?”

  “Yes.” Igor returned to the kitchen. “So when the Sand City Council calls, you’re ready.”

  If Igor weren’t present, Kimber would’ve attributed his bizarre experience in Sand City to a delusion fueled by morphine withdrawal. He had left hopeful about becoming a superhero. But the farther away he got, and the bleaker his future appeared, the more he began to think it was absurd to aspire to become a superhero when he had to borrow money from his parents to buy underwear. This was real life. Whatever had happened in Sand City had been a dream of some sort, one he couldn’t yet explain away.

  It was even more difficult to dismiss the reality of Sand City when Igor was a constant reminder of how real Kimber’s experiences had been.

  “Igor, I’m not very good at helping people. Even if Sand City was desperate, and superheroes existed, they’d never call me,” he replied.

  “You underestimate yourself,” Igor said with conviction Kimber didn’t share. “You’ve been in this funk for weeks now. You need to get out of the house and find yourself again.”

  “Let me guess. You’re a therapist in addition to a nanny.”

  “I am whatever my children need me to be. You need to leave the house for a reason other than to drink with your friends.”

  Kimber ate in silence. Something about being back in his father’s house left him feeling like he was an insecure fourteen year old again. He was barred from practicing medicine in Illinois, and he had no other skills. He could learn to bartend or wait tables or work at the local department store. Whenever he thought of these options, he grew frustrated, more so when he realized the truth.

  For a few months, he’d felt good in Sand City, like he mattered and made a difference. He had lost count of how many lives he helped save. He wished more than once since leaving he’d taken a copy of his performance appraisal to remind him he wasn’t a complete failure. His job in Sand City had become his anchor. Without the stabilizing routine that kept him focused on others and left him too tired to question his life decisions, he was completely at a loss as to what he should or could or wanted to do. For ten years, he’d focused on his sole purpose of becoming a physician to help people. Shortly after succeeding, he’d fucked up his life and career in Chicago and ended up in Sand City, only to become involved with the wrong crowd.

  Expelled from the city by a beautiful, insane woman claiming to be a villain, he’d lost his identity, his anchor, and his center. He was little better off than he had been when he accepted the position in Sand City.

  “You’re right,” he said quietly. “I do need to get out and do something positive.”

  “I already called them for you. They said you can come in on volunteer status at noon.”

  Kimber glanced up at Igor, uncertain whether he should thank his helpful nanny or establish some boundaries. “What about you?” he asked instead. “You have plans for today?”

  “I’m the new crosswalk monitor for the elementary school,” Igor said proudly. “I have to stand on my corner at seven thirty, eight thirty, noon, two thirty and three thirty. I help the kids cross, and if anyone messes with them, I bash his head in.”

  “That’s great,” Kimber said. “Maybe instead of murdering someone, though, you could take them to the pol
ice and let them handle it. You don’t want to traumatize those kids.”

  “You see? You’re definitely meant to be a superhero,” Igor replied.

  Kimber almost revealed the shocking truth – that calling the police was expected in any city outside of Sand City – but Igor seemed too pleased for him to disappoint. “I’m glad you’re a crosswalk monitor,” he said. “I’ll call the counseling center and ask for directions.” He motioned to the notebook. “I think this morning, I want to go for a run.”

  “I’ll leave you some strawberry infused water in the fridge. I’m taking your father out to the garden.”

  “Thank you, Igor,” Kimber said, unable to be irritated by the overbearing nanny when he took such good care of Kimber’s family. He finished eating and sat back, content to sip the freshly ground and brewed coffee.

  “Reader called.”

  Kimber’s hands clenched reflexively, and the coffee mug exploded in his fist. Sharp pain radiated up his arm from the combination of hot water and shattered glass. Startled, he jumped to his feet and stared at the mess of blood and coffee.

  He always wanted to snap when Igor mentioned Reader. Normally, he did his best not to react, for Igor’s sake. The tree of a man still mourned the dysfunctional, murderous family he’d left behind. He’d raised Keladry Savage, the alleged supervillainess-in-training. He loved her to the extent he was capable, and Kimber didn’t want to cause him any more suffering by pointing out to Igor he’d been working for a lunatic.

  It’s not that easy for me to dismiss her, either. Kimber didn’t know what to feel about the woman who submitted a Superhero Application to keep him in the city and then executed her own brother in cold blood in front of him. Keladry was complicated, and so was what Kimber felt towards her.

  “I’m not sure what happened,” Kimber mumbled. He snatched a cloth napkin and wrapped it around his hand tightly before lifting his fist above his head. He began to clumsily attempt to clean up the mess with his non-dominant hand.

  “I got it,” Igor said and crossed the kitchen swiftly, towels in hand. “Take care of your hand. I can clean up.”

  Kimber shifted out of the way when Igor reached the table. It was adding insult to injury to be taken care of like a toddler by the professional nanny, but Igor was right – Kimber needed to stop the bleeding and bandage his palm.

  “I can help when I get back,” he said and stepped away. He made it to the doorway before pausing. “Hey, Igor, what did you tell Reader? That I was too busy to talk?”

  “Oh, she didn’t want to talk to you. She called to talk to me and your father.”

  That she called his father once a week somehow made her continued presence in his life even worse. Brooding, Kimber left the kitchen and went to the study, where all of the medical supplies in the house were stored. He glanced at his father. The frail man’s head nodded forward as he dozed with the cat.

  Kimber moved quietly to the desk and rifled through the stacks of supplies before seating himself to open a drawer, where even more supplies were kept. He found the bandages and tugged one from its place in a baggy.

  Irritated with himself for not controlling his reaction better, he lowered his hand in the bloodied napkin and reached back into the drawer for alcohol wipes. He hadn’t taken pain medicine since his stint in rehab, afraid of tempting his addiction. His hand didn’t hurt as much now, for which he was grateful.

  Gathering his supplies, he left the study and went to the half bath in the hallway to scrub his wound.

  Kimber set his supplies on the counter and unrolled the napkin. He ran his palm under the faucet, bracing himself for the sting of water. None came, and he watched the blood swirl down the drain, leaving his uninjured hand clean.

  His heart began to race. He turned off the water and lifted his palm towards his face. No trace of the wound remained, not even scars. It wasn’t the first time he’d healed so miraculously. In Sand City, when being pursued by Jermaine’s henchmen, he’d cut his hand on glass in the street. Then, after the explosion that destroyed the ER, he’d been hit in the back of the head by shrapnel and required eight stitches.

  Both wounds healed almost instantly.

  Keladry had shared this ability. Kimber had a feeling what Igor would say if asked.

  “I’m no hero,” Kimber muttered.

  He turned off the water and tested his hand. As frustrated by the strange ability as by Igor’s mention of the supervillainess, Kimber threw the napkin away, gathered the unused supplies and returned to the study.

  He replaced them and leaned against the desk, checking his hand again, before looking at his father. Keladry had claimed his father was a superhero. While true Kimber had been raised by his mother and only returned to his father’s home his senior year of high school, he was certain he would’ve noticed if his father wore a cape around the house. James Wellington had been a professional linebacker in the NFL before retiring the same year Kimber moved in. He started his own consulting business advising other professional athletes how to invest their money … and that was all Kimber ever really felt he needed to know. His own path had led him in a different direction.

  Not for the first time since returning from Sand City, Kimber had the urge to ask his father why Keladry Savage claimed he had been a superhero. But to do so would cement the reality of what he’d experienced and further confuse him about his own life. It seemed … dangerous to acknowledge what would be considered insanity by the rest of the world, let alone seek out more information.

  In the end, Kimber left the study without waking his father and went upstairs to change before taking off for a much-needed run to clear his head. He’d left his iPod in Sand City and hadn’t had the heart to ask his parents for yet more money, so he ran without music for the first time since he could recall.

  The cool morning in the suburbs of Chicago was filled with movement, from neighbors rolling out trashcans to the curb before leaving for work, to the school buses ambling through the neighborhood collecting children. Dogs barked, cars rumbled, and the scent of freshly mowed grass wafted by him more than once as he ran.

  He followed a path through the neighborhoods he’d last run ten years before. A park was at the center of the subdivision, and he followed the path that cut through it towards the other side of the housing development and into the streets leading to a small business district. Accompanied by his thoughts, he reacted instinctively to the world around him, pausing at busy intersections and winding through gaggles of children headed towards the local school.

  Kimber reached the outdoor track – open to the public – at the local high school and began running laps with several other early risers. He glanced at the sky several times, almost surprised there were no clouds or rain, and the sun was so bright. It was a rare day in Sand City when he saw the sun for any extent of time, and even rarer to have an entire day without mist or rain.

  He ran another two miles at the track and then headed home.

  Cutting down an alley, he emerged into the business district on the other side. The gathering of a crowd drew his gaze, and he looked once, then again. Several dozen people circled an overturned car in the middle of the intersection. He had altered his course before he was aware of what he did, quickening his pace as he raced towards the accident. Two cars had collided – a small one and a large SUV – ending in the SUV on its side and the crumpled car on its roof. Two people were helping the SUV passengers while three stood around the driver’s side door of the small car, as if debating what to do. In the distance, police sirens wailed.

  “Excuse me,” Kimber said and began maneuvering through the crowd. “Make way, please. I’m a doctor!” People parted at this somewhat true claim, and he hurried to the group gathered around the car.

  The driver’s side door was crushed inward, and blood splattered the ground outside the broken window.

  “Is the driver okay?” Kimber asked and squatted to see into the car. He saw blood – lots of it. The teenaged driver was unc
onscious, strapped in upside down by her seatbelt, with a nasty gash in her head and one arm bent at an unnatural angle.

  “Her legs are pinned,” one of the men standing beside the car replied. “We told the police they’d need the Jaws of Life to get her out.”

  She won’t last that long, Kimber assessed, alarmed by the amount of blood soaking the girl’s clothing and pooled in the car. He shifted forward to see her legs, which appeared to be trapped beneath the dashboard and her seat. He rested his hands on the driver’s side door and tried to maneuver it. To his surprise, it moved easily, as if it weren’t crushed into place like it appeared to be.

  “I knew these things were cheaply made but come on,” he complained quietly, disturbed to discover the flimsy vehicle was a time bomb waiting to take out its driver if the stiffest wind hit it.

  Kimber balanced his stance. He peeled off his t-shirt and wrapped his hand in it before gripping the inside of one jagged window in the driver’s side door. Yanking at it, he shifted back as it released and stood to slide one hand into the space between the door and the car.

  Another hefty pull, and he wrenched the door off the side of the car. Metal screeched in complaint, but he ignored it and tossed the door beside him.

  “I need your belts,” he said to the two men in business casual standing by.

  “How did –” one started.

  “Hurry!” Kimber urged, crouching down once more. He leaned into the opening he’d created, peered at the head wound grimly and wrapped his t-shirt around her head to prevent as much blood loss as possible.

  Someone handed him a belt, and he wrapped it above her kneecap, cinching it tightly in a tourniquet, before doing the same with the second belt.

  This is much harder with her upside down, he thought, unable to squeeze through the available space to reach her far arm to bandage it. He rested both hands on the frame of the car and nudged it.

  It gave as easily as the door, and he silently cursed the carmaker for creating a vehicle that seemed to consist of plastic and air. No car should be so flimsy! Cursing under his breath, he hesitated only a moment. In situations like this, an ER physician was faced with an almost lose-lose choice. If he didn’t set the car upright and get her out of it, she was likely to bleed out before help came. But moving her was also dangerous, especially when he didn’t have any way to check the condition of her spine or stabilize her back and neck.