Powerless Against You Read online

  Felix laughed, then looked surprised. “You made a joke.”

  “I do that occasionally.”

  “No, you really don’t.” Felix climbed into the shuttle, settling Tom gently face down on a row of seats. “Good luck, buddy,” he said, patting him on one of the few places on his shoulder that didn’t have embedded metal. Then he walked out and yelled, “Need a pilot here.”

  Nobody came fast enough, so he said, “To hell with it,” and settled into the cockpit. “Take a seat, Marta.”

  She sat on the floor beside Tom and said softly, “You were lucky. These are all small pieces, and they didn’t go very deep. If something bigger… ”

  “Don’t borrow trouble, Mar.”

  She smiled at the name. No one called her that anymore.

  Tom reached around, and she realized he wanted to hold her hand. Really? There was a limit. Then he found her hand, and squeezed quite hard, and she felt bad, realizing he was in pain.

  “Distract me,” he said. “Tell me about Prague. Am I going to like it?”

  “Well, you seem to like me so I guess so.”

  “If it only seems I like you, then I’m doing something wrong.” He tightened his grip on her, a pressure that he eased off of immediately. “I really, really like you.”

  She squeezed back, then tousled his hair very gently and could see his surprise by the way his smile changed. “I figured that out all on my own, flyboy.”

  About the Author

  Kim Strattford lives in Northern Virginia and originally hails from Seattle. She’s written romantic fanfiction for years, but “Flying Fast, Falling Hard” is her first original romance sale, and she’s very happy it involves superheroes. When not writing romance, Kim can be found reading, writing darker fic under another name, watching television, or volunteering at her favorite animal rescue organization, Friends of Homeless Animals (www.foha.org). To see what else she is up to, check out her website: www.kimstrattford.com.

  Skulls

  Jade Black

  The day I met Bot, I’d been having a mostly nice night out on the town.

  I’d gone for a few drinks with friends that turned into hitting more than one of the LGBT bars and nightclubs lining the street. They’d wanted to keep dancing, and I finally begged off after a few hours since tomorrow was my only day off, and I wanted to make the most of it.

  It was about midnight when I left Lantern, a sleek little dyke bar in the heart of Styton. I’d parked a few blocks away since the strip of bars and clubs on Mills Drive came interspersed with apartment buildings that had managers who would have a tow truck on the spot in five minutes if you didn’t live there or know someone who did. More people than just me usually parked in the little warehouse district, but tonight the little lots in front of the industrial shops and used tire places were pretty empty. I heard shouting and laughter ahead, and hoped I’d see a group of other people leaving the Drive, but instead was greeted by a group of teenage boys.

  Overly friendly teenage boys. One made a kissy face at me as I tried to slide past them, and I felt a large hand grope my ass.

  I turned, incensed. “Idiots, do you have any idea where you are?” I pointed in the general direction of the Drive. “I’m beyond not interested.”

  “Oooooh, look at the angry dyke,” one said, smirking at me. He reached for my ass again, and I realized that I’d made a mistake. Most of the time, when you act confident and confront people either harassing you or with unknown intentions, they back down.

  But this was a group of young, probably hormone-driven teenage boys who had everything to prove to each other, and by the looks of things, they wouldn’t be driven off by a confident attitude. Like an idiot, I’d left my taser at home.

  So I did the next best thing. When the next hand drifted along the curve of my ass, I drove my boot heel into the offender’s instep—men expect the groin, not the foot, ladies—and booked it back the way I’d come. With any luck, I’d return to the friendlier faces of clubs on the drive and be able to call a cop to escort me back on my car.

  The kids were faster than I’d given them credit for. Probing hands snatched at my jacket, and I felt someone’s fingertips rake through my hair, finding little purchase. I didn’t keep my hair short for any reason other than I liked it short, but it was definitely on my side now. A stitch was burning hot in my side, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to make it back to the Drive. I started considering my options. I wouldn’t be able to lose them if I ducked into an alley—chances were they lived nearby and knew the area better than I did—so my best bet was to get to the main street faster instead of taking the side street I had taken to the relatively “safe” space of the local gay area.

  I burst onto the sidewalk that ran alongside Card Street and screamed as loud as I could. No one would probably hear me, but it might scare the boys off. And if I was lucky—really, really lucky—I might attract the attention of someone with a little bit more firepower than a boot and an idea of where to shove it.

  I heard shouting behind me—nope.

  A sleek, hot blue motorcycle with chrome accents popped a U-turn down the street and came racing back towards us. The rider—I wanted to say it was a her though I couldn’t see anything under the heavy jacket and full face helmet—gestured me onto the bitch seat, and I fumbled my way on, trying not to clutch my savior too hard on the shoulders.

  The group of boys receded into the distance, and their crude shouts were gone over the growl of the engine and the sound of the wind in my ears.

  A sonic boom sounded overhead, and the bike jerked like the rider was surprised. Before I could say or do anything, I was falling forward, hands caught on firm, almost sticky rubber. My savior was gone, and I was alone on a bike I had no idea how to ride.

  I clutched hard at the handles, and that was when I realized they had twisted up to catch my hands and were nowhere near where they should have been. They slowly lowered, and as we popped a left onto Dixon, heading towards the bay, I found I had no control over the bike.

  We kept going, slowing as we reached the relative quiet of a park that overlooked the bay. This late at night, it was quiet. No joggers, no urban explorers. Just me and the ghost bike.

  A woman’s voice came out of the speakers, low and raspy like someone who’d smoked forty years’ worth of cigarettes. “You can get off now,” she said.

  I scrambled onto the pavement, legs shaking not only from the situation I’d found myself in just a few minutes ago but the situation I’d found myself in now.

  What was the bike? Were they with the Heroes Guild, a freelancer, or a Rogue? Or something else? Something that hadn’t come out of the closet yet, like the superpowered humans had a few years ago, before they’d devolved into factions of heroes and villains?

  “Relax,” she said. “I’m with them.” The bike headlight flickered upwards, and I realized that the boom I’d heard earlier was probably one of the heroes on late night patrol. Maybe they’d even heard my scream. Had I ever been in any real danger?

  If she’d indicated out over the bay, I’d have been in trouble. Somewhere over the water was a shiny, electronically outfitted hovercraft that surfed the waves and acted as a no-man’s land for heroes, where villains could come to show off their wares and try to team up to defeat heroes—where the villain Glass held court.

  Glass was one of the reasons the busy supervillain market didn’t spill out into destroying the city of Styton. She knew that if it did, the Guild would drop down on her like a hammer from the gods, so anything within a fifteen mile radius of her floating warehouse was off-limits to villains, and she enforced the rule with a diamond-hard fist. Everyone in the city knew it, and we were all a weird mixture of grateful and nervous. Grateful because it meant we didn’t have huge rebuilding bills like most of the metropolises, and nervous because no one knew when it would all collapse and the city would turn into a free-for-all. At least in the other cities, citizens were starting to develop a sixth sense for falling ma
sonry and when to leave the bank now because that wasn’t a normal gun that the man with blue skin was holding.

  A whirring sound filled the air, and the bike started shifting and pulling into itself. I watched as plates slid apart or behind each other, and the wheels sort of segmented into themselves until they turned into plated metal boots. I followed them up, past black metallic pants, and over a skintight, hard shirt the same color that the bike had been. Small breasts bent the shirt out just a little, and I found myself looking at a very mechanical woman where the blue motorcycle had been. Chrome skin gleamed in the light from the streetlamps, though when she blinked, it seemed as mobile as human flesh.

  “You’re one of the Guild?”

  She nodded her rubber haired head and looked at me with eyes that glowed like the gauges on the motorcycle had, and I realized I couldn’t mentally place her in the roster of heroes I knew of.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bot.” She answered almost mechanically, but I could still detect a tone of hesitation in the voice that came out of her mouth as naturally as it hadn’t out of the motorcycle speakers.

  “Bot, thank you for saving me.”

  Her head didn’t quite cock, but I got the sense that she was looking at me differently than before.

  “Most people leave before thanking me,” she said.

  I frowned. “I don’t know why. It would explain why I haven’t met you before, but it’s kind of a dick move.”

  “I am… less human than many of the other heroes in the Guild,” she said.

  She seemed almost shy for a hero. Most of them were brash and braggarts. They seemed nice enough, but when enough people thank you and tell you what a good example of a human being you are, it can really go to your head. If reality matched egos, most heroes would probably have heads too big to be able to help anyone. It was nice to see a hero who had a sense of modesty, and who actually seemed shy.

  I leaned in and placed a kiss on her smooth chrome cheek. It was warm and hard beneath my lips and felt like a mask, but a sudden blast of heat through it made me think she was blushing. “You feel human enough to me.”

  Bot smiled and opened her mouth. “Would you like to go out sometime?”

  “I’d like that,” I said before I could think about it. I didn’t know this woman very well, but I’d like to, especially if dating were involved. She interested me, and though I didn’t know much about her other than that she was a hero, it seemed like we’d be building on a mutual attraction, which was better than my usual one-sided interests in girls in coffee shops. Sometimes it is just coffee. It wouldn’t be with Bot, though. I could already tell.

  And I couldn’t exactly call her Bot for forever. “Bot, do you have a civilian—”

  A harsh voice croaked out of the shadows near the bay. “It is Olivia, you little shrew. Go back to your little clubs and your car and leave her to me.”

  My head snapped up, and in a flash, Bot was between me and whatever it was.

  “Demise, leave,” she said.

  “Hardly,” the voice chuckled.

  A slender woman slid out of the shadows, dark eyes fixed on Bot like she was food, and the woman was starving. The new arrival was certainly thin enough to be. Her arms were like sticks with thin flesh stretched over them, though her face was pretty enough.

  The glow from Bot’s optics brightened just a little, like her eyes had widened. “We are done,” Bot said. “It’s over.”

  The woman chuckled. “Maybe for now, but you’ll always come back to me. I’m your villain, darling.”

  “I’m not your hero,” Bot told her.

  “But you are,” the woman crooned. “You are my hero, and I am your villain, and we will fuck and fight until the end of time or until one of us is dead.”

  “No,” Bot said. “I said we’re done, and I mean it.”

  The rasp in her voice was heavier, and I knew there was some emotional past here that I wasn’t getting.

  “Look, lady,” I said. “It’s been a long night. Why don’t we—”

  “Hush, hussy,” the woman said, pointing at me.

  “Leave her out of this!” Bot said.

  “Leave her out? I will not,” the woman said. “You were mine, and you will be again. Unsoiled.”

  “Who’s soiled?” There was a taunting note in Bot’s voice. “You said I was free of you. To me it means I can date who I want.”

  “I do not care, Olivia,” she said. “I will not see you with another.”

  Shadows filled the air, and the parking lot around us dropped away, replaced with a sense of vast emptiness and complete darkness. I strained, but I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, let alone track the whirring noise of the superhero standing next to me.

  A very little bit of light shone out of Bot’s optics, enough to illuminate the ground around us when she looked down, and I bit back a shriek. Skulls littered the bare earth around us, but there was a sense of wrongness about them.

  Without flinching, Bot leaned down and picked one up. I was too freaked out to make a Horatio joke, though I could see exactly what was odd about the skulls when her bright gaze flashed over the eye sockets.

  Trying not to grimace, I reached out and took the skull from her. The dry, pitted bone rasped over my hands, making me long for a moisturizer.

  “Bot, when was the last time you saw the hero that can shoot laser beams out of his eyes?” I said, gesturing at the eye sockets of the skull I held. The sockets around them were burned to a char but still held their shape.

  “LazerGaze? He vanished last year,” she said. “We thought he’d gone into… retirement.” She made the connection. “Shit.” It was the first frustrated human noise I’d heard her make, and it almost made me laugh.

  She looked down at the other skulls. One was coated in frost and was smaller than the one I held. I wasn’t exactly up-to-date on who was a superhero these days, but I figured that had to be Ice Queen.

  Another, black this time with white-inked feathers was named “Raven” by Bot, and though she seemed relatively unperturbed, I knew the sight of the heads of heroes she’d known and fought beside had to be shattering.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said, lowering LazerGaze’s skull. I put an arm around her shoulder. “We’ll get out of here and tell someone, and she’ll be taken care of.”

  “I didn’t know she was capable of this,” Bot said. Her voice was very quiet, like someone had dialed the volume back on a radio.

  “Sometimes people can be very cruel in their love,” I said, remembering a distant ex who had gone from being in love with me to completely and utterly hating me. We’d broken up for several reasons, but at the end of things, she’d slashed my tires and spread nasty rumors that had cost me my job. Only true love can sour into hate.

  She nodded, reaching a hard, warm hand to squeeze mine.

  A screech tore through the darkness, and Demise reappeared.

  The skull that I held ignited in my hands, and a laser shot out of the eyes. Luckily I’d had it pointing away from either of us, but it missed Demise by a few yards.

  I quickly corrected the angle of the eyes, scything the beam across the field of skulls, chasing Demise back into the shadows, which—of course—were everywhere.

  “Bitch!” she shouted. My fingers tingled, and I could tell Bot was staring at me. Hell, I’d be staring at me if I’d known I’d be able to reactivate a superhero skull to use the same powers it had had in life.

  “I didn’t know that would happen,” I hissed at her. “You think if I’d known I could do this I would have been running from a group of teenage idiots?”

  Bot turned her gaze back to where Demise had been, though of course she was no longer there. Bot quickly passed me another skull. I had no idea whose it had been, though the third eye socket in the forehead was a clue.

  My fingertips and palms burned where they pressed against the skull, and I had an awareness that I could see outside myself. Demise was nearby,
though not immediately planning an attack.

  This skull’s owner had to have been some kind of seer or clairvoyant.

  Bot swapped out another skull in my hands, this time giving me one with a mouth that hinged open far too much for my comfort, and I felt a scream build in my throat, though I hadn’t bidden it. It let loose with a deafening noise, and in a fading wash from the previous skull, I could feel Demise fall to the ground, clutching her ears.

  In the distance, I could also sense something else perk up and take notice. Demise was still holding her ears like it would be able to fix the ringing, but I was more concerned with the looming sensation that too much attention was suddenly turned our way.

  Glittering sparks cast rainbows through the air, and Bot’s eyes went wide. We both knew what they meant. The biggest, baddest wolf in town was on her way. Before they could solidify, we dropped into kneeling positions, staring directly at the ground, which quickly lightened back into the asphalt of the parking lot we’d just left.

  Bare, see-through toes slid into my vision, and I fought to keep breathing. Whatever Glass wanted, she got, and I hoped like hell we could give it to her.

  “So this is the newest power in the city,” a voice that chimed like a bell said, far above our heads.

  I nodded, too afraid to speak.

  “I felt you like a little firecracker from far over the bay,” she said. “Why haven’t you made yourself known before now?”

  “I didn’t know I had the power, ma’am,” I said, desperate to keep her from getting upset. “I’ve never held a skull before, let alone a super one.”

  “You may look up,” she said in that ringing voice.

  I dared to glance at her, curious despite myself, and was met with the smooth, crystalline form of a drop-dead gorgeous woman. As far as I could tell, she was naked, but it didn’t seem to bother her, and I couldn’t make out as many details as I’d have wanted if she’d been absolutely anyone else. I just didn’t want to piss off the biggest supervillain in the area who had teleportation, telekinesis, matter transmutation, and a host of other powers that I (and the Guild) probably didn’t know about. And which I didn’t want to know about, if I wanted to stay alive.