Villainous (20 page)

No weapons. No telepathy. No nothing. Panic tightened my chest.

Sound came rushing back to my ears: the low roar of the encroaching flames and a familiar voice.

“—I swear,” Dave growled. “I’ve killed you before. I can do it again.”

“But this isn’t going to end like before,” Sweet replied. “Can’t you see? We’re all trying new things today. I’m beating someone to death like a common thug, and you’re dying.”

No. He was
not
dying. Not like this. I moved my legs experimentally. The pain sent waves of nausea through me, but they moved. They weren’t broken. That had to count for something. I reached for my belt, my fingers fumbling for the only weapon I had left.

“Still got a bit of fight left in you, Ms. Belmonte?” Dr. Sweet stood over me, and of all the things to cross my mind, it was that his pants were too long. The khaki was bunched up over his brown shoes. “I’m surprised, but then, you never did—”

I jammed a lock pick into the side of his leg, right above the ankle. He yelled and stumbled back, dropping the bat. I sat up, and God, the agony. It made me so dizzy that I feared I’d passed out. But I didn’t. I snatched up the bat and swung it at Dr. Sweet’s knees. It connected with a jolt that rattled my arm bones up to the shoulder. He hit the floor next to me—nearly right on top of me. I brought the bat down on the back of his head. Once. Twice. Three times.

I didn’t have the strength I usually did, but his skull was a different shape now, so I’d probably done an all right job. I tossed the bat aside and caught my breath, coughing as I inhaled more smoke than air. When had the fire gotten so close? It was burning the walls, the shelves, the computer screens. It was all over the ceiling. The floor above us would probably collapse any second now.

“Val, listen to me.” Dave coughed again, his voice raspy. “Go out the window. Now. Leave me.”

Oh, for God’s sake, Dave. Spare me the heroic selflessness for once.

I yanked the pick out of Dr. Sweet’s leg and ignored the blood. Judging by the shape of the lock, this one was the right size to get it open. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have risked breaking it by using it to stab someone. I had to crawl to reach the table, and I put my hands on the surface to heave myself into a standing position over Dave. More smoke. Coughs wracked my body for a moment, inflaming every single injury I had. My hand was shaking as I reached for the manacle around Dave’s left wrist, but I forced it steady and got to work. The metal might be strong enough to hold White Knight, but a lock was a lock. A few seconds later, the restraint popped open.

The wall closest to the hallway collapsed. Not good. That was probably supporting the ceiling. I leaned across Dave, crawling partially atop the table to get to his right hand. Better to free both his arms before moving to his legs. If something happened before I finished, he might be able to tear off the rest of his restraints himself. I blinked away the tears blurring my vision thanks to the smoke and tried to shut out all sensation except the feel of the lock. The manacle snapped open like the last one had, and I slid slowly off the table.

When my feet hit the floor, the weight was too much. I fell to my knees with a hiss. The bullet, the bat, the beating—they were all conspiring together to take me down. Well, screw them. I grabbed the table’s surface again and pulled myself back up.

“Val…” Dave was sitting up now. “Just go. Please.”

Screw him, too. I jammed the bloody pick into the restraint around his left ankle. The smoke made it hard to see, but I didn’t need to see; I just needed to feel. More coughs hit me, and I had to stop until they passed. My hands were sweaty. Sweat dripped down the side of my face and soaked the back of my shirt. The flames were everywhere now. The heat felt the worst against my scar, the skin there more sensitive. I really wasn’t looking forward to feeling the same agony that had given me that scar on the rest of my skin.

The manacle opened. I dragged myself to the other side of the table to unlock the final one. As I reached for it, the pick slipped from my sweaty grasp. It bounced off the table and clattered to the floor.

Son of a bitch.

I crouched down. Where was it? The smoke clouded everything. The pick was small and thin, and the flickering orange light wasn’t the most helpful. Where the hell was it? It couldn’t have gone far. This was ridiculous. My head hurt. My ribs hurt. My legs hurt. The fire was getting hotter and closer, and I was going to die because I’d dropped a stupid—

There it was. I grabbed it and stood—too quickly. Dizziness overtook me, and my head pounded. I put both hands on the table to steady myself, careful not to drop the pick
again
. When the dizziness abated, I inserted the pick into the very last lock. Come on. Come on. Bits of wood were dropping from the ceiling, and the fire was almost upon us.
Come
on
.

The manacle snapped open, and Dave exploded into motion. He leapt off the table and limped to the wall. He didn’t bother with the window, probably fearing that the broken glass would hurt me. He punched a hole straight through the wall then tore out the wood framing. Five seconds later, there was a hole big enough for a person to get through.

He limped back toward me, and this was the part where you could tell he was a hero. Because even though Dr. Sweet was a murderous psychopath who was probably already dead, Dave grabbed him by the back collar of his lab coat and threw him through the hole to safety. Or maybe he just wanted to preserve the body. The way the good doctor hit the ground and bounced certainly wasn’t going to improve the head wound I’d given him.

Dave put his arm around me, ready to shield me from any falling debris, and together we hobbled out of the house, the heat at our backs. We emerged into the storm, and even though the rain was warm, it felt wonderful. Dave and I staggered across the grass, passed Dr. Sweet’s body, and once we were far enough away from the inferno, collapsed by mutual agreement.

Thunder and sirens filled the night, and for a moment, I just enjoyed the soft, wet grass beneath me and the feeling of rain on my face.

“I love you,” Dave said, out of breath.

I just smiled.

Damn right he did.

Chapter 19

The DSA arrested me as soon as they arrived, of course. It was a matter of principle. There was a house burning down and a former supervillain lying outside it; arresting the supervillain was simply standard protocol. They cuffed Irma and Eddy, too, though Dave and Julio remained free. At the moment, it didn’t make much difference, since all of us were going to get a ride in an ambulance to the nearest hospital together. Smoke inhalation treatment for everyone, a whole lot worse stuff for me, and oh, did I mention Julio had gotten a bit shot? Apparently, sometime between setting off a bomb in the house and coming back to try and beat me to death, Dr. Sweet had attempted to make a getaway in the boat docked on the river. He and Julio had gotten into a fight that had ended with Julio getting shot in the shoulder and a big chunk of the river freezing solid. It was still like that, actually, the boat stuck in the ice.

“I’m just wondering how many fish you killed,” Dave said.

He was sitting on the edge of my cot inside the ambulance, and Julio was resting in the seat. The EMTs were talking with some agents for the moment, and Dave was holding my hand and using the same teasing tone he often did with Elisa.

“They’ll thaw,” Julio said defensively.

“Yeah, but they won’t be alive, will they?”

“They could be. Rivers freeze up north all the time, and there are still fish up there.”

“I don’t think those are the same types of fish we have in Florida.”

“They could be.” Julio crossed his arms, winced, and looked petulantly at the ceiling.

Outside, it was still raining lightly, but the water wasn’t enough to wash the smell of smoke from the air. Or maybe that smell was me. I needed to take a long, long shower.

“They were probably endangered fish,” Dave said.

“Okay, no. No. They were not endangered fish.”

“We’re five minutes away from Big Cypress National Preserve. You probably killed at least one endangered fish.”

Julio groaned and put a hand over his face.

I smiled. “Ask him about the…the…” I was too tired to be angry at my inability to communicate. Dave squeezed my hand, which considering how much he’d freaked out thirty minutes ago when he’d first learned about my speech problem, was a major improvement. “…the tiger,” I finished.

Dave straightened up. Julio took notice.

“What tiger?” Julio asked.

Dave hesitated for a moment. “I plead the fifth.”

“Well, now I
have
to know.” Julio looked past Dave to me. “What tiger? Did he punch a tiger? He punched an endangered animal, didn’t he?”

Someone outside the ambulance cleared her throat. Judging by the way the fun was instantly sucked out of the room, it was probably Agent Lagarde. I lifted up my head to look. Yep. Got it on my first guess.

“I authorized you to go with her,” she told Julio.

“Huh?” he replied.

“I authorized you to accompany Ms. Belmonte to keep an eye on her. When you encountered Dr. Sweet, the situation escalated, and you were forced to engage to prevent casualties. That’s what happened.”

“But you didn’t.” Julio tried to sit up straight but cringed. “I went against orders to—”

“That’s what happened.” Agent Lagarde’s normally calm tone had an edge to it. “That’s the only way this plays out that doesn’t involve you getting suspended.”

“But you’ll get in trouble for—”

“I’ll be fine.”

Julio’s forehead wrinkled, making him look young. But then, he
was
young, as young as Mary had been…

“Thank you, Nicole,” he said, “But no. I did what I thought was right, but it was against protocol, and I
should
get suspended for that.”

Agent Lagarde’s expression remained as unchanging as a mountainside. “Your choice.”

She turned to leave, and I called out, “S-Sweet?”

She stopped, turned back around, but didn’t immediately say anything. That meant she was debating how much to tell us, or whether to tell us anything at all.

“I called the Inferno,” she said. “The warden went to check on Dr. Sweet’s cell personally.”

I raised myself up onto my elbows to get a better look at her. And? The warden went to Dr. Sweet’s cell and what? Found a tunnel he’d dug with spoons? Found no evidence of how he’d managed to escape? Realized she was an idiot for not noticing he was missing for over a day and smacked herself on the forehead?

“He’s still in there,” Agent Lagarde finished.

“I— What?” Dave summed up my feelings exactly.

“They’re ordering the standard DNA tests to make sure he’s not a shape-shifter in disguise,” she said. “But as of now, everything down to his fingerprints points to his being Dr. Sweet.”

I looked at Dave and saw my own bewilderment mirrored on his face. If Dr. Sweet was still in his cell…

Then who the hell had I just beaten to death with a baseball bat?

• • •

The theory I eventually settled on was clones. I used to think Dr. Sweet had regenerative powers, that he’d come back from the dead so many times because his body had some kind of enhanced healing ability. Now I was thinking that he’d never come back from the dead, that each time we’d killed him, we’d killed a different clone. Maybe he had the power to spawn copies of himself, or maybe he’d perfected human cloning at some point during his career as a mad scientist. I may never know, and that was insanely frustrating. The DSA was questioning him, of course, (the one in the Inferno, not the dead one) but he’d readopted his policy of silence and hadn’t said a single word. The odds of them getting anything from him were lower than the odds of the warden buying me a friendship bracelet.

Anyway,
how
Dr. Sweet copied himself wasn’t really important. What mattered was if there were any copies of him left out there, and if so, how many.

I had a lot of time to brood about it, first in my hospital room and later in a jail cell. Oh, don’t worry, I wasn’t actually convicted of anything. They accused me of the murders of Dr. Sweet and She-Devil, but Charles got me off through a claim of self-defense. It’s just that no judge in the country will let a supervillain out on bail, so I had to do my waiting in prison. Which was fine, because better me than Dave. I’d given the DSA the two supervillains responsible for the psyc ring (granted, they’d probably have preferred their suspects to be alive, but a deal’s a deal), so Dave was clear. I’d accomplished something. You can mail my gold medal to my address on Star Island.

The whole being in jail thing meant I’d missed Mary’s funeral, which… Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little relieved. Mary wouldn’t have wanted me there. My sister Sonia swore she’d punch me in the face the next time she saw me, and she wouldn’t have let a solemn ceremony in a church stop her. Even Bianca had seemed frosty when she’d called, and we usually got along. I’d have to explain it to both of them, explain that Mary had threatened my husband and daughter and left me with no choice. That would be first item on my to-do list after I learned how to talk again.

I was going to a therapist, by the way. She thought I’d make a significant if not complete recovery, though it would take time. Surprisingly, my telepathy had recovered faster. Now, at least, if I couldn’t spit out the words, I could think them at the person instead. It would have been nice if my mind-control had come back when I’d been fighting for my life in a burning building, but hey, better late than never. (Yes, fine, my flippant attitude was a ruse to cover how relieved I was to have my powers again. You saw through that, did you?)

“Are you sure?” Dave asked me, nearly a month after I’d killed Mary.

I’m sure,
I replied.
I’ve been putting this off for too long.

It was a bright, sunny day, and we were back at South Pointe Park Pier. The air actually felt somewhat autumn-like, or at least it wasn’t so hot and muggy that I was sweating. There were boats on the water, people taking pictures of the view, and seagulls pulling scraps from the trashcans. Dave pushed me forward, wheelchair rattling over the wooden boards, because fate had dealt us a role reversal. Dave had recovered from his injuries enough to walk with the aid of a cane again, while the bullet and bat I’d taken to the legs meant the doctor wanted me to stay off my feet for a couple more weeks yet. Hilarious, right? I was laughing up a storm.