Revenge of the ULTRAs (The Last Hero Book 4) (4 page)

“
D
ude
, since when have you been such a daredevil?”

I smiled when I heard Damon’s voice. I’d taken him and Avi with me to an inactive volcano in Iceland. We were in our caving gear and surrounded by total darkness.

Well. We would be if it weren’t for the light beaming from my forehead.

And not a flashlight either.

“Man, wait. Seriously. Do not run away from me. Do not abandon me.”

“I wish I’d stayed at home,” Avi said, fear in his voice. “Take us home.”

I turned around and looked back at Damon and Avi.

“You’re gonna have to step inside the cave at some point,” I said.

They both stood at the mouth of the cave, barely a foot over the threshold. I couldn’t help but smile at them standing there so fearful. Even though none of us had ever exactly been daredevils, I always used to be the most cautious of all of us. So seeing them cowering right now, yeah. It was a pleasant surprise.

“Could we not just, like, do normal things like go to the cinema or something?” Damon asked.

“I hear the new Mission Impossible’s out on Netflix now,” Avi said. “We could go back and watch that.”

I turned around and looked at the darkened cave ahead. “All my powers, all the places I can take you, and you want to be at home watching Mission Impossible?”

“More than you could ever imagine, man.”

I shook my head and sighed. I walked back over to Damon and Avi. Their breath frosted in the cold, and specks of snow covered their helmets. I put my hands on both of their shoulders. “Okay,” I said. “I think I know the place.”

“You do?”

“Oh, yeah. A great place. You’ll love it. Especially if you’re a fan of thrills.”

“Space?”

I frowned. “What?”

“Space,” Damon said. “Like, Jupiter or something.”

“You don’t want to stick around an Icelandic cave, but you want to visit Jupiter?”

I saw Damon’s eyes glazing over, like the cogs in his head were spinning. “Well, maybe not. Have you ever been, though?”

“Been where?”

“To Jupiter.”

I wanted to tell Damon that of course I’d not been to Jupiter. I didn’t have a death wish. But I had to admit it wasn’t a bad idea. I’d have to at least try heading into space at some stage. “We’re not going to Jupiter,” I said. “But somewhere else hot. Somewhere to get the pulse racing.”

“Wait—”

Before Damon could finish, I teleported us over to the other side of Iceland.

“Jesus!”

We were hovering right above the mouth of an
active
volcano. Hekla. I’d quickly created an invisible barrier between us so we couldn’t fall, but Damon and Avi were already both running to the sides.

I created a couple more invisible barriers around the perimeter. “You don’t want to run,” I said.

“Of course I want to goddamned run,” Damon said. “Get me out of—”

He hit the invisible barrier and tumbled back onto the invisible floor beneath him.

I’d never heard him scream so loud, which triggered Avi to scream even louder.

Tears of laughter streamed down my cheeks.

I walked over to them and put a hopefully comforting hand on their backs. “Now this is what we’re gonna do.”

“Just get us home, Kyle,” Avi spluttered.

“We’re going to go ten feet down into this volcano.”

“No!”

“We’re going to go ten feet, and if you still want to go home then, I’ll take you home.”

Damon shook his head. Avi shook his. Both of them looked like they were going to puke.

“Five feet,” I said.

“Minus five feet, bro,” Avi said.

“Come on. Five feet’s not even your own height. You can do that, can’t you?”

“I don’t know, man,” Damon said.

“You can do it. And when you do it, you’ll feel amazing. Trust me. You’ll feel like you can take on the world.”

“Is this how you get your kicks? Dipping your toes into volcanoes?”

“Five feet,” I said. “You ready?”

Damon and Avi sighed and shook their heads. They looked totally defeated.

“Okay,” I said, easing them to the middle of the volcano. “You like roller coasters, right?”

“What—”

I banished the invisible floor from beneath us.

We fell right down. I heard Avi and Damon both squealing. I felt something warm hit my face, and I knew it had to be sick.

As we fell, the wind blowing against me, the heat of the volcano getting hotter, I felt totally at ease with what I was doing. A total thrill. I was having a laugh with my friends. That was the main thing that mattered in the world. It was a shame Ellicia was ill today. For their sakes, more than anything. I might’ve taken it easier on them if she wasn’t.

When we’d fallen quite a way, and I’d heard enough of my friends’ screams, I stuck my hands out to create a bouncy invisible barrier right beneath us.

Nothing happened.

I tried again. Threw everything I had into forming some kind of barrier.

Again, nothing happened.

I felt my stomach turn. Below, I could see the orange glow of lava getting closer, as the smoke intensified. I looked to my side and saw Damon and Avi both hurtling past me, heading towards the lava first.

Shit.

I fired again. Tried to fire again and again, but nothing was happening.

I watched my friends inch closer to that lava, and I realized right then that I’d done something wrong. Very wrong.

And then they hit a spongy blanket of thin air, myself following not long after, and we all went flying right back up towards the mouth of the volcano.

I eased our landing as we fell back out of the volcano’s mouth. Avi and Damon were on their knees coughing, puking. I brushed some of the dust from my hair and rested my hands on my legs. I couldn’t help laughing. “How was that?” I said. “How frigging awesome was—”

“That was
not
cool,” Damon said.

He stood right in front of me. He didn’t look impressed at all. He was crying, and Avi didn’t look too far off tears either.

“Hey,” I said, lifting my hands. “It was just a bit of fun.”

“For you, maybe. But we could’ve died.”

“You wouldn’t have died.”

“You were playing games with our lives, man,” Avi said. “That’s
not
on.”

“Oh, seriously,” I said. “Get a grip. I could save your lives with the click of a finger. I
did
save your lives with the click of a finger.”

“Just like you saved those lives in Kenya, hmm?” Damon said.

I looked into Damon’s eyes. I was surprised to hear him mention Kenya. It was the first time he’d ever pulled me up for anything like this before. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

I thought Damon might hold back at that point, but he clearly wasn’t happy. “You play games with people’s lives all the time. It’s just what you do now, isn’t it?”

“You have no idea what happened in Kenya.”

“I know people died!” he shouted. “And I know everyone’s saying it was you who let the entire Resistance down. So that’s enough.”

I was literally speechless.

Damon dusted himself down. “Take us away from here.”

“Damon—”

“You know, I didn’t want to tell you this because you’re my best friend. But Ellicia isn’t ill. She isn’t ill at all. She just didn’t want to come here because she’s afraid of you. Of what you’re turning into.”

That halted my words more than anything else. I felt myself choking up. Ellicia was afraid of me? Why would she be afraid of me? What did she have to fear?

“I’m doing my best,” I said. “You have to understand that. It’s not easy. I’m doing what I can.”

“I miss the old Kyle, bro,” Avi said.

“You miss the old me? That wimp who got bullied all the time? Who let people get the better of him?”

“No,” Avi said. “I miss the Kyle who really cared about other people. I miss that Kyle. Now get us home. Please.”

I stood there for a few seconds, the wind intensifying around me. The smell of sulfur was strong from the volcano. My best friends were turning against me. Even my girlfriend was afraid of me. What was my life coming to?

I sighed and walked towards Damon and Avi. “You two have nothing to worry about. I swear.”

I teleported us back down to the side of the volcano.

I was about to teleport the three of us away from here for good when I saw we weren’t alone.

There were people all around us with crowbars and hammers. Some of them looked big and tough, the kind of people I really didn’t want to have to mess with.

We were surrounded.

I
looked
at the mass of people surrounding me and I was positive they weren’t here to just talk.

Some of them were holding crowbars. Other, broken off metal pipes. It was weird seeing so many people down here by the side of an Icelandic volcano. It freaked me out in many ways. How had they found me? How had they got here? I’d made my best efforts to get here under the radar, as I always did. So how had they caught on to me?

“Kyle?”

I looked to my right and saw Damon by my side. Avi was by his. They were both shaking. They’d pretend it was because of the cold, no doubt, but I knew they were afraid.

I looked back at the surrounding crowd and lifted my hands. “There’s no need for any trouble here.”

The crowd just peered back at me, eyes narrowed. There was something strange about them. Something distinctly… other. They looked like normal people. Men with bushy beards, well built.

But the look in their eyes was so cold.

And the weapons in their hands weren’t much more reassuring.

“Is that right?”

I scanned across the crowd to see who’d spoken. It took me a second for my eyes to land on a thick-chested man with wispy blond hair. He was holding an ax. “Yes,” I said, trying to cover the concern I had for this situation. “Now if you’ll excuse us—”

“I wouldn’t try to get away if I was you.”

I narrowed my eyes. I could feel the agitation building inside me. “What did you just say?”

A smirk twitched at the sides of the man’s face. “You heard.”

I felt my fists tense. I couldn’t believe how this man was speaking to me, and how everyone was just standing by him and letting him. He was too confident. Too cocky. Too sure of himself.

I wasn’t used to people standing up to me like this.

“After all,” the man continued, “you’re ‘Glacies’. And Glacies isn’t gonna do a thing to hurt another human now, is he?”

The rest of the crowd chuckled. The main guy’s accent was strange. It was American, but with a Scandinavian twinge.

“Don’t try me,” I said.

“Oh,” the man said, his eyes widening and a grin stretching across his face. “Is that the great Glacies making a
threat?
”

“You haven’t even heard the start of it,” I said.

Damon tugged my arm. “Kyle, let’s just go—”

“See if you got that head of yours out of your ass for five damned minutes, you’d realize that there’s something coming. Something you should be very, very afraid of. You probably don’t know what it is yet. You’re probably close to figuring it out. But when it arrives, I promise you, you’ll feel it, and you’ll know.”

My skin went cold. When this guy spoke those words, I couldn’t help thinking of Daniel, and what he’d said to me as we’d sat in the middle of the Australian outback.

“Something’s coming. Something very big. And I just hope you and your little team of soldiers are ready for the storm when it finally arrives.”

I wanted to fight back against this crowd. I knew I could obliterate—or at least neutralize them—in an instant.

But then I remembered all the damage I’d caused already, all the negativity that surrounded me in the public eye, and I didn’t want to make that any worse than it already was.

I cleared my throat and smiled. “Been a pleasure speaking with you, gents. But now me and my friends are getting the hell outta—”

I felt something smack against my back, felt electricity cripple my skin, tighten around my throat.

I fell to my knees and hit my head on the rocks beneath me. I tried to fire back at these people, but the electricity crippling me was too strong. They’d shot me with some kind of electromagnetic device like the ones Saint used to use to restrain ULTRAs in his tower. I was stronger than those devices. I could battle through them.

But just as I started to compose myself, taking a few deep breaths, I felt a boot smack against my ribs.

Then another one kicked my face.

Then a metal pole hit my head.

I took more and more punches and hits, shielding myself with the slightest powers I could. I could taste blood though, and my nose was blocked, so the shield couldn’t be working completely.

I spun onto my back and tried to drag myself out from this animalistic crowd. When I looked up at them, saw the anger in their eyes, I realized they saw me as a monster. This was what they thought was right. This was what they thought I deserved.

“Kyle!”

I heard Avi’s scream and it made my skin crawl.

He was being beaten up too. So was Damon.

I tensed my jaws, ground my teeth together, the punches against my shield getting heavier.

I pressed down against my teeth so hard that a molar slipped out of place.

“Kyle, please!”

I focused on Avi and Damon’s pain—pain I couldn’t allow to continue.

Then I let out a cry.

I felt the power blast out of my body, from between my lips. It flew up to the people above me. It was a strength I’d never felt before, and the second it left my body, I was sure that I’d taken a step too far.

The people around me stopped swinging their weapons, kicking out at me.

Their eyes rolled into the backs of their skulls.

Their muscles went weak.

They dropped to the ground.

Every one of them.

I stayed on my back for a few seconds, the wind whirring around me. In the distance, I could hear chatter, and I realized a crowd of shocked looking tourists was staring up at me and the scene around me in total amazement.

I got up, ignoring them, and walked over to Damon and Avi. They had to be okay. I couldn’t face it if they weren’t. I’d never live with myself.

I stopped walking when I saw them.

They were both lying there on their sides.

Blood dripped down from Avi’s nose.

Damon was covered in bruises.

They both looked up at me in fear.

“Guys—”

“Go,” Damon said.

I frowned. Then I heard the crowd behind me stirring. When I looked, I saw them jeering and booing at me like I was the enemy all over again.

I looked at the ground, at the fallen people—still fallen—and I knew exactly why.

“We’ve got to get—”

“Just go,” Damon said. His voice was shaky. He sounded weak. But above anything, he sounded certain. Totally, terrifyingly certain.

I swallowed a lump in my throat as the tourists kept their focus on me.

I looked at my friends, beaten and wounded all because of me.

And I looked at the mass of bodies all around me.

This was who I was.

This was what I was.

This was Kyle Peters.

This was Glacies.