Villainous (4 page)

“No. Let’s go.”

Ah, the perks of being the boss. You can delegate your fights to someone else. I got my feet underneath me, my leg muscles tensing as I prepared to stand and make a run for it. Then the buzzing started again.

A chair next to Amala shook as though there was a localized earthquake beneath it. Probably no coincidence that the Combuster was staring at it.
Move,
I told her telepathically, but it was too late. The chair exploded
, and I flinched. When I opened my eyes again, an orange afterimage swam across my vision, and I couldn’t see Amala anywhere. I opened my senses, and the panic of dozens of frightened bystanders made my heartbeat stammer. I tried to home in on Amala’s thoughts, but—

“Move!” Jean-Baptiste shouted.

The table next to us started shaking, the drinks on it spilling and silverware clattering to the floor.

I bolted. Jean-Baptiste’s man pulled him in the other direction. I kept low in case of bullets, but I didn’t get far before a boom split the air.

I realized I was falling soon enough to throw out my hands and keep from hitting the floor with my face. People were shouting, but it sounded muffled, as though someone had stuffed cotton balls in my ears. I used my other senses to scan for danger. No one in sight was targeting me, and no one in range of my telepathy was thinking of shooting me, so I risked a moment to assess my injuries. The skin on my calves and the back of my arms felt singed, but my skin looked only slightly red, so it was just superficial. (Good. I didn’t need any more burn scars.) And there was a piercing pain in my back near my left hip. I reached back and felt warm, damp blood and something hard and foreign.

I yanked out a wooden splinter the size of a paperclip. Lovely.

Gunshots sounded like raindrops with my hearing how it was, but the sound still grabbed my attention. Jean-Baptiste was the target. His man pushed him behind the bar just as something else exploded. The boom rattled the restaurant but didn’t seem as loud as the earlier ones. Probably my hearing damage, though my ears were still good enough to pick up someone’s strangled cry.

It was one of the Combuster’s men. Amala was up again, and she’d grabbed him by the throat. She threw him into the wall, and the men who’d been shooting at Jean-Baptiste turned their guns on her. Were they not paying attention last time? Guns were about as useful as a security blanket against Amala.

But then she screamed and collapsed. What had hit her? A psychic attack? No, her body was shaking violently on the floor, and the Combuster was staring at her. In a few more seconds, she’d blow, and her guts would be decorating the walls. The sheer force of all the bystanders’ fear was interfering with my telepathy. I still couldn’t reach The Combuster’s thoughts, but one of his punks was in range. I slid into his mind and aimed his gun at the Combuster’s leg. The punk’s hand was clammy as he pulled the trigger, but with me guiding him, his aim was true. The Combuster started screaming, and Amala stopped. The trench coat-wearing idiot clutched his leg and dropped to the floor, and then—only then—did more DSA agents finally burst through the kitchen door.

I gave the punk a telepathic nudge to surrender. With his boss shot and his gang outnumbered, it didn’t take much to convince him. Then I spread my senses outward. The DSA agents were high on adrenaline, their bulletproof vests heavy and oppressive in the heat. Apparently, they’d run into trouble with more of the Combuster’s men outside, hence their tardiness. Oh, and Freezefire was with them. Agent Lagarde hadn’t mentioned that Miami’s resident superhero would be joining the party. It looked as if they had the situation under control—now that I’d done all the hard work.

The floor beneath me rumbled. Shit. Was the Combuster staring at me? No, he was still clutching his leg and moaning in pain. And it wasn’t only the floor near me; the whole building was shaking now. Liquor bottles fell off the shelves behind the bar, and the tacky stuffed parrot tumbled from its perch, hitting the floor like a dead animal. The air felt suddenly dry and full of static.

“Val!” Jean-Baptiste shouted.

He dropped the walls around his mind, giving me full access to the flash of the future he’d just gotten. It was a burst of burning pain…and then nothing. The Combuster was losing control over his power. He was going to blow up the whole place with all of us in it.

I grabbed the nearest chair and heaved myself to my feet. The cut on my back flared, but I ignored it and strode across the room. No way was I letting Jean-Baptiste’s vision come true. My obituary would say I’d been killed by “the Combuster.”

One of the DSA agents pointed a gun at me. He was panicking, trying to figure out what was causing the quake, and nothing was worse than a jumpy person waving a gun around. I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender but kept walking forward, stumbling as the ground shook. Just a little further, and the Combuster’s writhing form would be in range.

“Stay where you are!” the agent shouted. “Don’t take a step closer.”

Moron. Hadn’t he read my file? My powers couldn’t make a building shake.
He
was in range, though, so I flipped a switch in his mind, knocking him unconscious before he could shoot me. Which just made two other agents point their guns at me instead. Wonderful.

“Stand down!” Freezefire shouted at them. Nice to know somebody working for the DSA had a brain.

I was close enough now. I could feel the gunshot wound in the Combuster’s thigh and his desperate attempt to keep control over his slipping power.
Go to sleep
, I ordered him, and he did.

The restaurant stopped shaking. Everyone looked around, hesitant to believe the threat was over. But it was over, and none of us were going to die in an explosion. I should hit the bar and celebrate. Maybe there was a decent bottle of champagne that hadn’t shattered. But first, I had to deal with the trigger-happy DSA agents glaring at me.

“The guy you want is right there.” I nodded at the Combuster’s prone form. “But if you want to arrest me, too, I’ll completely understand.” I held out my wrists to be cuffed and flashed them a grin. “After all, it’s not everyday you get a chance to handcuff the Black Valentine.”

Chapter 4

An hour later, the restaurant’s parking lot was full of emergency vehicles, their flashing red and blue lights ruining a perfectly good darkness. I sat in the back of an ambulance, sipping champagne as a paramedic disinfected the cuts on my back. With the back doors open, the vehicle’s air-conditioning wasn’t strong enough to banish the muggy evening heat. I wanted to go home, toss this ruined dress, and take a shower, but my work here wasn’t done yet.

I kept my telepathic senses wide open, gleaning stray thoughts from DSA agents when Agent Lagarde was distracted. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), they hadn’t learned anything useful yet. The gunmen who’d backed up the Combuster didn’t know much, either, only that their boss was taking orders from somebody. It was interesting. I’d assumed the Combuster was some stupid punk trying to make a name for himself by taking out the Prophet King. He was still a stupid punk, mind you, but if he was taking orders, that meant someone less stupid was pulling the strings.

Too bad I’d had to knock out the Combuster. I couldn’t read people’s minds when they were unconscious unless they were dreaming. Maybe the DSA would be able to get a warrant for Agent Lagarde to read his mind, but by the time the paperwork went through, the Combuster’s boss could be long gone. Of course, it wasn’t my problem. Unless it was related to psyc. Could someone be trying to muscle in on Jean-Baptiste’s business?

Freezefire’s approach broke my train of thought. I’d almost forgotten about him. He had one of the less flashy superhero costumes out there: black pants, black boots, tight black short-sleeve shirt, and a bulletproof vest. If it weren’t for the domino mask, double “F” symbol on his chest, and the coordinating trim of icy blue and fiery red throughout the costume, he’d look the same as the rest of the SWAT team.

He straightened up when he saw me looking, hesitated, but then closed the remaining few steps between him and the back of the ambulance.

He reminded me of Dave, though I had no idea why. They didn’t look alike. Freezefire wasn’t as tall as my husband, and while he wasn’t lacking for muscles, he was much leaner overall. His skin was several shades darker than Dave’s, and his longish hair had a rumpled, sexy look where Dave’s had always been short and neat. It was the posture, I realized. The way Freezefire stood up even straighter when he was nervous was pure Dave.

“Ms. Belmonte,” he greeted. “I…uh… How are you? Are your injuries serious?”

“I’m barely scratched.” Crap. What was his real name again? Dave’s mentioned him a million times before.

“Actually, I recommend we take you to the hospital for stitches,” the paramedic butted in as she secured a bandage on me. “It’s not life-threatening at all, but there could be some scarring.”

“Oh no,” I said. “Not scarring. The horror.”

The paramedic glanced at my face then looked quickly away. “What I meant was—um—”

“I’ll talk to my private doctor about the stitches. Are you finished?”

She nodded wordlessly.

I handed her my champagne glass and stood. The moment Freezefire realized I was getting out of the ambulance, he offered me his hand. Oh dear. Dave’s former sidekick had gotten his good posture
and
his sense of chivalry. I accepted the hand and climbed down.

“So are you here to debrief me?” I asked.

“No. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt.”

Ha. His motive wasn’t hard to guess: he wanted a look at the woman his mentor had left the DSA to be with. I cautiously opened my mind to his thoughts and found a general sense of unease. He didn’t think I should be here. Cutting a deal with the Black Valentine was a bad idea, and I was probably going to double-cross them. Then he realized the past three seconds of silence might mean I was reading his mind, and that his suspicions were probably pissing me off.

“Not at all,” I said. “
If you weren’t suspicious, I’d call you naive.”

He cursed, panicked, and for a brief but vivid moment, imagined me naked.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” he choked.

I laughed. Murphy’s law of mind-reading: when someone realizes a telepath is inside their head, their first thought will always be the most mortifying thing possible. Honestly, Freezefire’s was tame in comparison to others I could mention.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m the one who should apologize. I should have worked harder to block out your thoughts. I’m sorry. You know how it is with telepathy.”

Freezefire stared straight ahead with wide eyes. His face didn’t flush, but his ears—his ears had turned as red as the police lights. I grinned. Could I get them to go any redder?

“Though for the record, I’ve got a bit more meat on my bones than what you pictured.” Yep. That did it. I wouldn’t be surprised if his ears actually melted off the sides of his head.

Someone called my name. Or at least, I thought they did. My hearing still felt as if I’d been in the front row of a rock concert. Jean-Baptiste seemed to be having an argument with Agent Lagarde a few yards away. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, so I hopped into the mind of one of the agents surrounding him and used her ears.

“By all means, drag me downtown and waste your time interviewing me,” he was saying. “I know the routine. But I need to speak to Valentina first.”

“The only person I need to let you speak to is your lawyer,” Agent Lagarde replied. It should have been a threat, but she made it sound almost like a question.
Give me a reason to allow it
, was the challenge behind her words.

“You sent her here to get information from me, didn’t you?” Jean-Baptiste stood with his manacled hands folded around his white cane. “I have something to tell her that you’ll be interested in.”

Agent Lagarde looked at him in silence for a moment before giving the okay. Jean-Baptiste held out his arm, and Agent Lagarde guided him toward me. That would have been Amala’s job usually, but she was handcuffed in the back of one of the vans. (She hadn’t done anything wrong and would be released by morning, but the cops never passed up an opportunity to arrest a supervillain.) Two other agents followed for additional protection, and Freezefire shifted his stance as if Agent Lagarde was leading a hungry tiger our way.

“Let me guess,” I said when Jean-Baptiste reached us, “You’ve decided not to work with me.”

The corners of his lips twitched up but then fell back down.
“I hate to criticize the fine men and women of the DSA, but they made you play their little undercover game for nothing. I’m not the one importing psyc.”

Oh, hell no.

“Save it for the jury,” Freezefire growled.

“Pardon me, Freezefire,” Jean-Baptiste said. “I believe I was speaking to the lady.”

“If it’s not you, then who is it?” I asked before Freezefire could get in a comeback. Was Jean-Baptiste telling the truth? I couldn’t risk another telepathic conversation. With Agent Lagarde this close, it wouldn’t be private.

“I don’t know who’s at the top,” Jean-Baptiste said. “The ones on the bottom are idiots like the Combuster. I have nothing to do with them. They’re not giving me my cut, and they’re not following my rules.”

“Your
rules,
” Freezefire scoffed.

“My rules,” Jean-Baptiste repeated, still facing me. “They’re selling to kids. They’re taking shots at my men in public. That moron the Combuster started blowing up a crowded restaurant. It’s called organized crime for a reason. I keep things nice and neat.”

“Well, that’s all right then,” said Freezefire, his voice not dripping with sarcasm but drowning in it. “Here I thought killing people was wrong, but as long as you’re doing it
neatly
…”

Jean-Baptiste finally turned in his direction. “You should be grateful. Or did you think
you’re
the reason Miami’s violent crime rate is at an all-time low? All you do is clean up when the toilet overflows. I’ve reworked the entire damn plumbing.”