Supervillainess (Part Two) Read online

  Kimber forced a smile and did his best not to run out the door like he felt like doing. When he stepped outside, he breathed in deeply, relieved to be away from the swarm of excited fans.

  “Thanks for that,” he said to the pretty blonde. “This superhero kind of needed rescuing.”

  “Oh you aren’t getting off that easy.” She flashed a smile. “I really do want to see you lift a car. Mine is the first one in that row.” She pointed. “The entire school will be watching.”

  Kimber smiled, a little nervously. “I’m not used to all the attention yet.”

  “You will be. General Savage is a monthly visitor, so I imagine you’ll be visiting regularly, too.”

  You let that psycho around kids? Kimber almost asked the question but changed his mind. This was all new to him – but to the city, it was business as usual.

  He walked away, towards the car she indicated.

  Teachers lined the sidewalk to keep the kids from racing after him.

  As he neared the vehicle, the raucous behind him fell completely silent. Students and teachers alike were watching in anticipation.

  Kimber bent and lifted the medium-sized car easily. He held it over his head and then dropped one arm. Planting his free hand on his hip, he did his cheesiest superhero pose and smiled.

  Half the school had the cameras of their smartphones pointed at him to take pictures or video the feat.

  “Bus!” one of the kids shouted.

  He was soon jointed by others in a loud chant.

  Kimber carefully replaced the car in its parking space and went to the bus parked at the end of the sidewalk. He lifted it with ease, amused by the astonished exclamations from his audience.

  Three more demonstrations, an autograph session and another taxi ride later, he returned to the townhome. The excursion had managed to waste some time between working out and seeing Reader. He tugged off his mask and joined Igor on the couch. His nanny was watching one of the early Batman movies.

  “Did I miss anything?” Kimber asked.

  Igor glanced up from his notes. “Superman can fly and Batman has a plane. We might need a helicopter, so you can make it to where you need to go in better time.”

  “I’d settle for a car.”

  “I was thinking motorcycle. Batman has one of those, too.”

  “I can work with that.”

  “Or a bicycle, since that’s probably all we can afford.” Igor returned to his notes. His attention alternated between the television screen and his notebook.

  “I’ll get a job, Igor. I’ve been enough of a burden.”

  “You’re not a burden.” Igor glanced at him. “We have a good life here, and you’re saving people like you wanted.”

  Kimber smiled, touched by his friend’s complete faith in him.

  “All superheroes have a love interest, too,” Igor added.

  “I take it none of them fall for the villains,” Kimber murmured, thoughts on Keladry.

  “Not that I’ve seen. They like reporters.”

  “I guess I’ll keep my eye out then.” Kimber settled back to watch, suspecting no other distractions would help him today. Soon absorbed in Batman movies, he forgot to watch the time.

  ***

  The day felt like ten days at once, but finally, hours later, he was finally on his way to the pier.

  Keladry was waiting where he had met her the night before. Kimber’s pulse and pace quickened at the sight of her in tight black clothing. Even her mask was becoming sexier each time he saw her in it.

  But tonight, he wasn’t interested in sex or the beautiful woman before him.

  “What are we doing tonight?” he asked before she could speak.

  “Same thing as last night.”

  “We have to stop your father.”

  “Yeah. I know.” Keladry pulled boxing gloves out of a bag.

  “I didn’t wait all day to see you to get my ass kicked,” Kimber said, frustrated. “How are we going to stop him?”

  “What’s he planning?”

  “How the fuck would I know?”

  “Then how the fuck are we going to stop him?” she retorted. Keladry pulled on her gloves. “My operation is damaged, but it’s functional. Unless you have some spies living in your attic who can infiltrate my father’s operation and find out what his plans are, then we have to wait until we know.”

  “That’s your solution? We wait?”

  “This might be your first real day on the job, Doc, but it’s not mine,” she replied.

  Kimber was tense enough to snap. He had expected to find answers tonight after a torturous day waiting and couldn’t help being disappointed. Keladry didn’t seem at all concerned about the crater in the middle of the city, or about her father’s next move. It was one of the major differences between them: he cared, and she didn’t.

  Feeling the rigidness of his frame, he breathed in deeply and rolled his shoulders back. “All those people died on my watch,” he said more calmly. “It’s very difficult for me to stand here and spar with you when more people’s lives are in danger.”

  “You need to learn to control your strength. You’re all but useless, if you destroy half the city to get to my father, because you can’t control what you are.”

  Everything she said made sense. It was on occasions like this when he resented her the most.

  “Last night was a large operation that took two weeks or more to plan,” she added. “I’ve done enough damage to his network to know he can’t pull off something else like that for another few weeks. We have time to figure out what he’s doing, create our own plan and then act.”

  Kimber studied her. As upset as he was, he understood she’d been fighting this battle much longer than he had. If they were going to work together, he’d have to trust she knew what she was doing.

  “We’re partners in bringing him down,” he said.

  “Finally. For a man with a doctorate degree, you can be slow, Doc,” she replied. “Wasn’t this my idea when you got to town?”

  “It was also you who taught me never to trust a villain.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why should I trust you?” he challenged.

  “Because we want the same thing.”

  “Your father gone.”

  “And the city to be ours.”

  “And once it is …”

  “Our relationship will return to normal. I’ll betray you,” she replied with a small smile. “Promise.”

  Why do I trust her? Whenever he found himself doubting Keladry, he remembered why he had returned to the city, and it all became clear. And what the hell does she consider to be normal? His view of normal had nothing to do with super people or wearing a mask. Every day, he was venturing further and further into new territory and leaving his past and everything familiar to him behind.

  “Okay. We’ll do it your way,” he said and felt himself relax, despite the issue of her father weighing him down.

  She lifted her gloved hands and lowered her stance. “Prepare to be beaten, mortal enemy.”

  “Back at ya, arch nemesis,” he replied.

  And so another round of having his ass kicked began. This time, when Kimber had had enough and decided to strike back, he managed to box with her for a full five minutes. As if sensing his triumph at making it that far, Keladry smashed him in the side of his head with a roundhouse kick hard enough to cause lights to burst into his mind.

  Kimber reacted instinctively. He punched her. She went flying from the back of the pier to the front.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. How did her kick hurt almost as much as a bullet to the chest? He straightened and touched the side of his head, which was bleeding from where her bootlace cut him. Kimber trotted down the pier to ensure the supervillainess wasn’t dead.

  Sprawled out, she pushed herself off her belly and knelt. She was grinning.

  “I know. Reader four, Doctor one,” he said, relieved to see she appeared all right. He held out his hand.

  Sh
e accepted it, and he pulled her up. Kimber found himself holding on when she was on her feet and breathing in deeper to catch her faint scent.

  Keladry made no move to pull her hand from his. They stood, holding hands and gazing at one another. It seemed impossible to Kimber for there ever to be anything real between them. But he found himself hoping, in a city where superpowers existed, so could love between a supervillainess and her superhero.

  “Do you still admire me?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you like me?” The question felt juvenile, but he realized he was dealing with someone who didn’t always understand what positive emotions were.

  “I do,” she confirmed.

  “Okay. Do you love me, Keladry?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know if I understand what love is,” the supervillainess replied, without so much as batting her eyelashes.

  “I think training your mortal enemy to defeat you in battle qualifies.”

  “Oh, you’ll never defeat me,” she assured him, lifting her chin. “Even if I give you a head start and tell you my plans a month in advance.”

  “Every. Time,” he hissed with a grimace. “You drive this knife straight into my heart and then you twist it just enough to torture me.”

  She smiled faintly, and he sensed she was messing with him, at least a little. “You are the one person in this city I will never kill, even if you betrayed me to my father,” Keladry said. “I’m glad you finally see what’s in front of you, Doc. Took you long enough.”

  Kimber gazed at her, taken aback by the honest answer. Then again, she had never been anything but honest with him, never hid who or what she was, never tried to change herself so he’d think better of her. She had always been true to herself.

  For the first time since they’d met, he understood the truth in all its facets about the woman before him. She did love him, even if she weren’t capable of fully knowing or acknowledging what an emotion as foreign to her as love was. As crazy as he knew it to be, he was pretty certain he loved her, too.

  Keladry blinked first this night. She pulled her hand from his and started away.

  Kimber watched her, the swelling of warm emotion within him lifting the deep confusion he’d experienced since learning his family’s superhero legacy. Not everything in his world made sense – but she did, and that was enough.

  “Are you coming?” she called over her shoulder. “We have to kidnap my father’s second in command and torture him for information.”

  Kimber shook his head. “You mean talk to him,” he said and began to follow. “Superheroes don’t torture.”

  “Supervillainesses do.”

  “Not when I’m around.”

  “Whatever, Doc.”

  Kimber stopped walking. Love didn’t mean she got a blank check when it came to the moral line they straddled. “I’m serious. If you want me to work with you, that’s my condition. No torturing and no killing.”

  She turned to face him again and tilted her head. “That’s harsh, Doc.”

  “We’re very different in some ways.”

  “I know. I won’t try to change you.”

  “I’m not asking you to change. I’m asking you to adjust your normal methods for a brief period of time, so we can work together,” he replied.

  “Does this include not killing my father?”

  “Yes. He belongs in prison.”

  She considered.

  “Think of it this way. A life in prison is worse than anything you can do to him.”

  Keladry drew a deep breath. “We’ll try it your way.”

  Maybe I’m getting the hang of this superhero shit after all, Kimber thought. Her agreement was more than he expected. He had been preparing for her to resist longer and harder.

  “Someone else will kill him anyway. He has too many enemies to make it to prison.” Keladry spun and began walking. “I’m not worried about him winding up dead.”

  Kimber didn’t quite know how to respond. He didn’t look forward to protecting a supervillain he personally despised, if it came to it. He gave himself this win in silence with the caveat he’d have to figure out who else was gunning for General Savage before they caught him.

  Her Maybach was waiting. They both slid into the backseat, and Kimber found himself wondering again how he was going to fund his superhero activities. Keladry had an edge on him in this regard, too.

  The driver took them to a park not too far from the docks and dropped them off at a baseball field. Keladry was quiet, and Kimber followed her lead.

  Igor was already present, along with Officer Ford, whose gaze cooled when he saw Kimber’s company. Four ninjas in black kept their distance from Kimber’s sidekicks.

  Kimber went to his friends while Keladry crossed to her henchmen.

  “Why is she here?” Officer Ford asked.

  “We’re working together to take down her father,” Kimber answered.

  The lawman’s face was inscrutable.

  “It’s temporary,” Kimber added.

  Officer Ford said nothing.

  Igor was smiling. “I brought your uniform.” He held out the folded leotard, boots and mask.

  “Thanks.” Kimber glanced towards Keladry, who was deep in discussion with her ninjas. He took his clothing and trotted to the public restroom nearby. Lit by a sole light bulb dangling from the ceiling, the ripe bathroom smelled as if it hadn’t been cleaned in years.

  Kimber picked a spot as clean as he could find on a sink edge and placed his clothing on it. He stripped down and was dressed and putting on his boots when Officer Ford stepped into the restroom.

  “You think this is a good idea?” he asked.

  Kimber looked up then back at his shoes. “I think she has the resources we need to defeat him.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I want to stop General Savage. Every member of the police force does. But Reader … I’m not under the impression she’s much better.”

  “I think she’s the lesser evil.”

  “Then what? We free the city of the clutches of one madman and turn it over to his daughter?” Officer Ford asked tersely.

  Kimber stood, hearing the entrenched resistance in his friend’s voice. “I’ll be here,” he said. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t become like her father.”

  “No offense, Doc, but you care too much. Not just for her but for anyone and everyone.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “I think some scum deserve to die.”

  Kimber folded his arms across his chest. Officer Ford was unusually agitated. Nothing in their short acquaintance shed insight into why. “What’s going on, Ford? Really. I thought someone in your position would be happy someone is standing up to the supervillain. Don’t cops want to stop bad people?”

  Officer Ford paced and sighed. “They do.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “There’s a steep price for failing. Do you know what General Savage does to the cops who stand up to him?”

  Kimber shook his head.

  “He kills their families. And not in a nice way. He runs this town, because we personally know the lengths he’ll go to in order to keep us suppressed.”

  “You lost someone,” Kimber breathed, always surprised when he learned how deep General Savage’s evil streak ran.

  “Fiancée, five years ago. A few of us decided to take down one of his operations. We did it, and I’m the only one left standing to tell the tale.”

  Kimber’s heart sank at the news.

  “I know how dangerous this is, and I know what Reader’s done. She has a jacket four inches thick,” Officer Ford continued. “I’ve moved on and am supposed to be married next summer. I can’t handle losing anyone else, Doc.”

  “You won’t. I won’t let that happen to anyone. Ever,” Kimber said. “You have my word, Ford. Sand City deserves better.”

  “Even if you have to stand up to her?”

  Kimber hesitated and then nodded. He’d been wrest
ling with this aspect of his relationship with Keladry since arriving to town. Being the city’s savior meant stopping the woman he cared about from hurting others – at all costs. How he walked that tightrope, he didn’t yet know, but he had to figure it out. “Yeah. Even then. My job has always been to save lives. I’ve been slow to learn how to stop villains, but I take my duty very seriously.”

  “I’ve always believed if anyone could, it’s you, Doc. I knew you were different when we first met in that alley.”

  A whisper of panic reminded Kimber of how he managed to let everyone in Chicago down. For once, he pushed back at his self-doubt.

  This was Sand City. This was his city, and he was charged with protecting it and all its residents. For the first time in his life, he experienced a sense of belonging – and a recurrence of fear. The people around him believed in him, despite knowing his history; he wasn’t going to fail this time, no matter how much it scared him to risk failure.

  “With your help,” Kimber said, “I know I can do what it takes to help this city.”

  Officer Ford appeared torn. He nodded after a pensive moment.

  “Let’s go take down General Savage,” Kimber said with more confidence than he felt. “Reader has a lead on the whereabouts of the General’s second-in-command and hopefully, through him, his plans. We have a window of opportunity.”

  “If you’re okay with it, I’d like to call in a couple of friends. There’s not a cop I know who hasn’t been hurt by General Savage.”

  Kimber nodded, pitying the lawman and his fellow officers, now that he understood the depraved lengths General Savage had gone to in order to secure his grip on the city. When he first arrived, Kimber had wondered why the police didn’t track General Savage through his social media. He saw the pain in Officer Ford’s features and heard it in his voice.

  No one deserved to have a loved one punished for his or her actions. He was going to stop General Savage, no matter what it took, and then he was going to ensure Keladry never turned into her father. She was different – she could learn right from wrong. Even if she chose wrong at the end of the day, she’d understand two things. The first, that there were consequences for her actions and choices. The second – Kimber would come for her.