Even Villains Fall in Love (12 page)

“Locke,” the other girls said, all posing.

“You stole our mommy. You want us dead. Now, you
face your choices.”

Terror swept the room like a living thing.
People dropped to their knees crying. Burning embers rained down at
Strike’s command, sending people shrieking as they batted at singe
marks in their polyester costumes. Doors opened, and people babbled
nonsense as Locke let loose.

The Rainbow Dane shook it off and charged.
“Abomination!”

Evan dove to intercept, but Hempman knocked him
to the ground.

“No!” Zephyr Girl rose up, punching the Dane and
sending him flying.

“Those are monsters, Zee,” the Dane growled.

“Those are my daughters. The only monster here
is you.” She wavered on her feet, not fit for a fight.

Evan pulled his arm back sharply, slamming his
elbow into Hempman’s nose. With a twist, he broke free and had his
gun pointed at the Rainbow Dane. “Don’t move.”

The room stilled.

“Or what?” the Dane mocked. “I’m a superhero,
what are you going to do? A bullet won’t hurt me.”

“This isn’t loaded with bullets. One shot, and
you’re a normal human being. No super power. No abilities. No
protection.”

Dane rushed him, and he pulled the trigger.

Sneering, Evan side-stepped the enraged
superhero. “You’ll never touch anyone again. You’re normal now.
Average. There’s nothing heroic about you.”

The Rainbow Dane floundered. He staggered
forward, and fell to the floor gasping in panic.

The Rolling Shock jumped at Evan. He pulled the
trigger again. “Join your friend. Be average. Be nobody. Be
forgettable.”

Evan risked a glance at the causeway above.
Tabitha and the girls were gone. “Super heroes and heroines of
varying sizes, it’s been a delight to thwart you this evening.
Please remember me for all your future vanquishing needs,
because—if you touch my family again— there won’t be a single
superhero left in the world.” Doctor Charm bowed. A swirling opera
cape would have added a nice touch.

Silence met his threat. Doctor Charm walked
away, confident as only a super villain holding all the cards could
be.

After closing the warehouse door, Evan sprinted
across the street to the van. Hert was helping the girls buckle.
All four were slumped in their seats, barely interested in their
bags of Halloween candy.

Tabitha leaned on the side of the van looking
lost and confused. “What happened?”

“You were given a lotus serum. It interrupted
communication between your synapses and blocked your memory.” Evan
brushed a loose hair from her face. All his fears fluttered away.
Tabitha was back.

“And the fog?” she asked, taking off her mask.
Turning it over in her hands, she dropped it to the ground.

“A clarifying agent. It’ll pull the lotus serum
out of your blood stream. You’ll probably have to pee like crazy in
an hour, and you might get sick, but your memory will come
back.”

“Everything seems like a dream. I can’t remember
what’s real and what isn’t.” Tabitha rubbed her arm, shivering.
“Are you real?”

“Always.”

Evan helped his wife into the car. She was
thinner than he liked, and purple bruises under her eyes marred her
perfect face, but she was still beautiful. If only he knew if she
was really coming back to him. He kissed her forehead.

Glancing back to make sure Hert and the minions
were loaded, he sighed. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Nineteen

What’s it like to fight a super hero?
Picture an enraged bull with the intelligence of a monkey and the
survival skills of a cockroach. Then think of a way to defeat them.
The only option is to outsmart them. That’s what I did. A room full
of super heroes and I was the only one with my brain turned
on.

There is no Peerage, so don’t go
looking for them. Super villains are self-centered as gyroscopes.
We don’t play well with others. We don’t cooperate. If we did, we’d
run the world.

There is no cure to being a super
hero. No one knows what makes one person a hero and another an
ordinary person. Obviously super strength and flight aren’t average
skills, but in the grand evolutionary scheme of things, are they
that impossible to accept?

And even if we knew what caused the
abilities, would I have any right to “cure” someone of being who
they are? That’s like saying I have the right to “cure” a person of
being Irish, or African, or religious, or gay. You don’t have to
like what a person is to accept them as they are.

I hate super heroes, and for a moment,
I even considered killing the Rainbow Dane. He stole my wife. He
tried to murder my children. But who am I to say who lives or dies?
So I left the gun with bullets in my ankle holster and shot him
with an extra strong persuasion ray. Nothing changed physically, he
was just hypnotized into believing he’s average. It’s such a simple
lie, one almost everyone believes.

Maybe someday I’ll start shooting
people with the persuasion ray and telling them they’re
heroes.

***

It should have taken fourteen hours to get from
the college campus back to the house. The real house, with a good
lab and the broken Morality Machine. Evan did it in five. Tinkering
with a minivan’s engine was not illegal, although the speeds he
reached probably were. But the police had more interesting things
to do with their time, like figure out why every car on the road
from Colorado to Texas decided to pull over for a few hours.

They stopped twice, once so Tabitha could pee,
and the second time so she could throw up. Somewhere in the middle
of Oklahoma, she woke up and stared at him.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“A little.” She rubbed a hand over her shoulder.
“What happened to the girls?”

“They grew up. Full into superpowers. Just like
their mommy.” Evan tried to smile, but there was too much tension.
He drove in silence, waiting for her to tell him what she was
thinking.

Tabitha cleared her throat. “I don’t remember
what I did.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

He let her fall back asleep. The memories would
return. It would take time, patience, but they would come back.

They rolled into the driveway as the morning sun
started to pink the sky. He carried the girls in one by one,
tucking them into their beds with a kiss on the forehead. Then he
carried Tabitha to their bed. She didn’t move as he laid her down,
and he dampened a desire to check her pulse. She was breathing. She
was home. For now, that was enough.

Evan stretched out beside her as light filtered
through their dark blue curtains, washing the room in deep jewel
tones. This might be all he had, this moment of peace with her.
When she woke up in the morning, would she love him? Old
insecurities wrapped around him tight as a boa constrictor. Could
she love him? Could anyone love him?

Tabitha sighed, rolling in her sleep so her head
rested on his shoulder, an arm casually flung across his
stomach.

It didn’t matter if she loved him. He loved her.
He always had. He always would. Content, Evan settled beside his
wife and fell asleep.

A shriek and the sound of glass breaking in the
kitchen woke him up. Tabitha sat up in bed beside him, still
wearing her Zephyr Girl costume under a faded T-shirt he’d found
wadded up in the back of the van.

“Morning, beautiful.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow at him and
scooted away.

“Tabitha!” His plea came out too desperate.

“I feel like I haven’t showered in days. It
tastes like something died in my mouth. Lemme get a shower before
we talk.”

He sighed. “I don’t want to talk,” he muttered
as she walked away, hips swinging. Grumbling, he kicked himself out
of bed, sent the girls to watch TV with a box of cereal, and
cleaned up the broken bowls.

When Tabitha came out with wet hair, dressed in
old sweats and a T-shirt he’d bought her as a joke when the girls
were born that read, “I make milk, what’s your superpower?” The
girls were asleep in front of the TV, still worn out from their
late-night adventure. It was a perfect opportunity to slip back to
the bedroom and make up for lost time. If only she were
willing.

Her face was emotionless, no repelling glare,
but no come-hither smile either.

Evan’s shoulders slumped and he turned away. At
least the minions would talk to him.

“Where are you going?” Tabitha asked.

Wondering why she would ask the obvious, he
stopped by the door. “Downstairs.”

Her hand rested light as a butterfly on his arm.
“Are you angry with me?”

“No. Why would I be?” He caught her hand,
horrified that she would even think that.

“Because I ran off with another man?”

He shook his head, emotions churning in his
stomach. “You were kidnapped. It’s not the same thing.”

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

Evan lifted her hand and gave it a gentle kiss.
“Do you want me to look at you?”

She pulled away. “I’m not sure anymore. I’m...”
She sighed. “I’m not sure who I am. I’m not sure what I did.”

Anger boiled back up from the depths of his
psyche. “Did Thane touch you? Did he force himself on you?” Making
the Rainbow Dane believe he was average would be enough to protect
Tabitha and the girls, but if the Dane had hurt her, Doctor Charm
would expand his repertoire beyond basic conniving to outright
murder.

Tabitha stared unseeing at the wall for a
moment, then shook her head. “No. He stole my memories, he confused
me, lied to me, but he didn’t...” She trailed off waving a hand.
“Thane locked a part of me away, and now I don’t know who I am.”
She sat down, watching the sleeping girls. “I think I need some
time to sort it all out.”

“I’ll go down to the lab then, give you some
space to think. We can talk later.” Evan let her hand go. If he
couldn’t make the world perfect, at least he could give her the
space she wanted.

“Do you think space is what I need? Evan, I’m
adrift.” She walked over to their daughters and tucked a blanket
lovingly around Maria’s shoulders. “What kind of parent forgets
they have children? Can a good wife really forget she’s happily
married? I’m a superhero! And...”

“And you lost. It happens. We all lose some
days.” Evan kept his voice flat. Admitting he was out of his depth
and lost wouldn’t change anything.

“I did something wrong,” Tabitha hissed.
“
Wrong.
How can I keep going from
there? How do I know I’ll make the right choice next time? I don’t
know how to live with doubt. I feel empty inside. Everything I was
is gone.” She stood in the living room looking small for the first
time. “I’m empty.”

“We’ll work it out.” He headed for the lab
again, and Tabitha followed him down.

“What do you think is down here that will make
me better?” she asked as she picked her way through the mess of
stuffed animals and destroyed cassette tapes.

He hesitated. Time for truth. “This.” Evan
pointed to the Morality Machine. “It, ah, tweaks your normal levels
of uprightness and makes you a little more, um, horny. For lack of
a better term. Sex fixes everything?”

Tabitha ran her hand over the broken machine. “I
love your lab.” She smiled shyly, and then it turned sly. “Minions,
out!”

The multicolored minions peeked out from their
various hiding places, large eyes bulging in confusion.

“You knew about the minions?” Evan demanded.
They ate grass clippings and occasionally nachos, so there wasn’t
even a food bill for them. “My mother doesn’t even know about the
minions!”

With a giggle, Tabitha rolled her eyes. “I met
Hert the same night I met you.”

“Yes, but I told you I got rid of them!” he
shouted over the sound of a hundred flapping feet.

“Lock the door on your way out!” Tabitha called
after them. She gave him a patient, one eyebrow raised look. “You
are charming and sincere, but not a very good liar, dear. Little
things are noticeable. Like the perfectly trimmed lawn when we
don’t have a lawn mower. Not to mention the actual minions all over
the building last night. They don’t blend in with the scenery as
well as you think.”

Huffing, Evan folded his arms. “I told you we
had a lawn service.”

“Yes, dear, and I’m the one that pays the bills.
I know I’m an adult who wears spandex tights in public, but that
doesn’t mean I can’t add two and two together to make four.”

There was an ominous click from upstairs as the
last minion filed out and locked the door.

Tabitha turned to him with a sultry smile. “From
the first time I saw you in here, all I could think about was
having sex on one of the machines. I thought I’d lost my mind.”

“Um...” He looked at the Morality Machine. Had
the minions fixed it overnight?

“How does this one work?” Tabitha asked as one
elegant hand caressed the machine.

He scrambled to form coherent sentences. It was
almost impossible when she smiled like that. “Ah...”

She hit him with her best come-hither look. “Is
it magnets like the rest?”

“Ah, mostly.” Evan nodded, grateful for the easy
out. The room was suddenly a lot warmer than usual.

Tabitha laughed. “You’re right. I feel
better.”

Evan blinked. “What’d I miss?”

“It’s a magnet, love.”

“Yes. An effective one at that. Remember the
second time you came to my lab?”

“Vividly.”

“I turned this on, and instead of you breaking
me into pieces we eloped. And had wild sex six times that
night.”

“Seven.”

“Which is almost the polar opposite of killing
me.”

“Evan? For a smart man you are remarkably dense
sometimes. I told you I came to have wild sex and start a scandal
that would keep the tabloids talking for decades.”