Super Bad (a Superlovin' novella) (19 page)
Read Super Bad (a Superlovin' novella) Online
Authors: Vivi Andrews
Serengeti Shifters:
Superhero Romance:
Super Bad
Super Trouble—Coming Soon
Stand Alone Novellas:
Don’t
miss the next book of the Superlovin’ series…
Super
Hot
He’s on
fire for her… literally.
Superhero
research scientist Dr. Eric Eisenmann always secretly wanted to be super
himself, until he was abducted, experimented on, and woke up pyrokinetic— the
least stable of all the super abilities. Suddenly he’s lighting everything
around him on fire whenever his emotions get the better of him and desperate to
turn his super powers off. Unfortunately, Eisenmann’s only hope for a cure
lies with a woman who wants nothing to do with him—and fires up the very
emotions he needs to keep in check.
As
the only non-super daughter in a superhero dynasty, Tandy Nightwing has been
poked and prodded for years in an attempt to find the cause behind her defect.
Now that she’s finally found a way to be happy with her normalcy, the last
thing she wants is to subject herself to another super scientist’s tests—but
she can no more resist Eisenmann’s plea for help than she can resist the good
doctor himself.
Deep
in his underground lab, Eisenmann tries to maintain rigid control of his
feelings, but Tandy is his personal kryptonite, constantly testing his
restraint. Powerless or not, she just might be the one woman brave enough to
stand close to his fire—provided they both survive when their experiments
unleash a passion that burns hotter than sin.
*
* * * *
The
dream always started the same way. He was powerless, fighting futilely for the
right to control his own body, his own voice. The dark compulsion in his head
was sickeningly familiar, that awful, suffocating helplessness. His every
molecule screamed for release.
Then
there was a jab, a stinging pain, and the fire woke up.
It
always woke up ravenous, an animal with a thousand mouths, each one hungrier
than the last. It seemed to know its life would be short, lasting only as long
as it could greedily consume everything in its path. It wanted to devour
everything it touched as badly as a human being wanted to breathe another
breath. And it was very good at getting what it wanted.
The
fireball erupted, the sound of the flames deafening—roaring, crackling, thunder
and lightning in one. The pressure was immense, but there was no heat. Inside
the fire’s soul, he was immune to burns. Safe. It would protect him, defend
him, this wild, hungry beast. Not his pet or his friend, but a ferociously
dangerous ally—quick to anger, quick to strike, and devastating in its
destruction. His sociopathic protector, fueled by his fear.
The
rough timber beams above his head blackened and fell, but the smell was wrong.
Not wood smoke. More astringent. Chemical. Metallic—
Eric
Eisenmann flailed awake, choking and gagging on the chemical foam covering him
and every inch of his office as still more sprayed from spigots on the ceiling,
dousing the lingering flames. He cursed and wiped the white goop from his eyes
and mouth, sucking in a breath of air tainted by the lingering smells of
charred metal and fire-suppressant foam.
Calm
down, Eisenmann. Get it together
.
He forced himself to breathe, forced the dream back, the fear back, and felt the
fire retreat back into its den in the back of his brain.
Control
temporarily regained, he surveyed the wreckage.
He’d
fallen asleep in his office again. Another computer ruined. Another desk
destroyed—this one melted down to a lump of molten metal.
Perfect.
Just perfect.
The
dreams were coming every night now, along with the fire they conjured. He’d
cleared his bedroom of all flammable materials—including his bed, reduced to
sleeping on a slab made of the same heat-resistant material used to protect
space shuttles from burning up on impact. Of course, none of those
precautionary measures did any good when he fell asleep at his computer.
The
foam sputtered to a stop, leaving his office looking like it was covered in
rapidly melting snow. It dripped off him, his skin was still hot to the touch
in an after-effect of the dream.
No, not
dream. The
memory
. Because as much as he might wish it was just a
fabrication of his subconscious, the powerlessness, the pain, and the flames
were all far too real. The mindbender Demon Wroth had abducted him, used
psychic compulsion to control him, and then injected him with a designer poison
which had mutated his normal human DNA into a super genome.
Just
his rotten luck that his untapped super ability happened to be the most
volatile and dangerous one on record.
Pyrokinetics.
The supers voted most likely to accidentally kill themselves within a year of
awakening their ability.
For
now, the fire couldn’t touch him, but he could still die of smoke inhalation,
and then there was the risk of flaming out—reaching a burning point where even he
could not withstand the heat of the fire and nothing was left but ash.
Eric
shoved off from his chair, which was remarkably unsinged, considering the
recent conflagration. Apart from his glasses and his clothing, everything else
within a five yard radius looked like it had just had an unfortunate run-in
with a blow torch. Smoke clogged his throat, the air stiflingly thick and
getting thicker with each breath he took.
Automatic
security protocols shut off oxygen to this wing at the first hint of flame to
keep from feeding the fire. The threat of suffocating in his sleep had been a
necessary sacrifice to prevent the very real alternative of taking out a full
city block should he have a bad dream.
He
crossed to the far wall, grateful the foam had deployed to dampen the flames
before they could reach this far. The security panel was still intact and he
typed in a quick series of codes to activate the all clear. With a barely
audible whoosh, clean air began to fill the room, the filtration system sucking
out the smoke.
Just
another day at the office.
Eric
snorted, surveying the damage. The remains of his latest laptop were fused to
the metal blob that had once been his desk. No doubt all his papers had been
reduced to ash beneath the foam which was starting to ooze off the desk and puddle
on the black-charred tile.
Thankfully
he’d learned never to allow uncopied originals into his office and all of his
laptops were programmed to automatically back up to the Trident servers, so
there was nothing lost that couldn’t be easily replaced. All things
considered, it could have been much worse.
Nobody
was dead. He could handle a few lost files.
He
rinsed off in the chemical shower in his lab, peeled off his dripping clothes
and changed into workout pants and a Cal-Tech T-shirt, leaving his feet bare as
he grabbed towels and mops to clean up his office. The melted blob of desk and
laptop refused to budge, fused to the floor, but he cleaned off the oozing foam
and the rest of the debris until what was left looked like a weird modern art
installment in the middle of the black-singed circle at the center of the
room. So much for his hope that a metal desk wouldn’t go up in flames as
quickly as the wooden ones had—the metal just made clean-up that much more of a
bitch.
Eric
collected another—wooden—desk and a fresh laptop from storage and set them up
beside the modern art blob. The physical labor and familiarity of the actions seemed
to pacify the fire somewhat, so his erratic “gift” still felt reasonably under
control when he sat down to sync the new laptop to the Trident server.
He
didn’t often get to feel like himself these days, like a scientist rather than
a powder-keg looking for a spark. These rare moments when his mind was clear
and the fire silent could not be wasted.
His
email lit up, but he ignored it, logging on instead to the online forum he’d
tripped across two weeks ago in his newest line of research, the line he
privately called
how not to die a horrible flaming death
though the
public title to the paper he was supposedly writing was
Voluntary
Suppression of Volatile Superhero Traits
. Luckily his extensive work with
super rehabilitation prevented anyone from wondering why Dr. Eric Eisenmann was
suddenly so interested in power suppression. His past experiments had destroyed
far more than desks, so for now he was able to keep his dirty little secret.
Something
dark and hungry stirred in the back of his mind and he closed his eyes, taking
a deep breath and pushing away the memory of how violently opposed to power
suppression he’d once been, how envious he’d been of those with powers, how
badly he’d wanted to spend just one day super, just one…
Be
careful what you wish for.
