Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. by Marion G. Harmon Read Free Book Online

the CPD in the investigation, made somebody nervous, and became the next target. Now it was just happening later.
     
    And just how much would Shelly’s warning help him?   He already took elaborate security precautions but, truthfully, there were a lot of superhuman powers against which there was no defense other than hitting first or just not being there.
     
    Mr. Moffat had been reduced to soup, his furniture reduced to scraps, in a thirty-story condo with heavy internal and external security—there’d even been a camera on the balcony—and only a neighbor getting some air one floor down had heard anything.   The Dome’s security was an order of magnitude higher; it could even detect an unauthorized teleporter by the change in air-pressure when he popped in. But there was no guarantee that whatever got to Mr. Moffat couldn’t still get to Blackstone.   And Blackstone’s powers weren’t really combat-oriented; levitation, illusions, teleportation, not the stuff for going up against whatever had reduced Mr. Moffat.
     
    So the only way to be certain he was safe was to catch the killer before he targeted Blackstone.   But how could we find him if Blackstone, with all of his resources and mad skills, hadn’t?
     

 
Chapter Six
    “The entertainment industry gives most people a skewed idea of what superheroes really do. We’re not the police. Even in Chicago, the Metropolis of the superhero world, we have only eight CAI teams plus independents. That’s less than a hundred card-carrying capes, most of them B and C-class, covering 8 million people. Sometimes the CPD deploys us like SWAT teams, but mostly we’re emergency-response. Fires. Bad accidents. We rarely fight ‘ supervillains ,’ but we are called in whenever a disturbance involves other superhumans .”
     
    Terry Reinhold, quoting Astra in “This is a job for…”
     
    ----
     
    Thursday passed with no answer to our dilemma. I considered calling Fisher to get his promise not to consult Blackstone on the case, but with Blackstone already alerted by Shelly I didn’t think it would do any good. So I patrolled, and went to school, and worried at the problem.
     
    Friday on evening patrol, Shelly caught me taking a break on the Sears Tower.
     
    “Shots fired in Little Tuscany on 24th and Oakley!” she reported.   “Rush is on another police call, and the caller says somebody’s a superhuman.   You’re the closest high-mobility asset.”
     
    I was already diving.   “I’m on it.”
     
    Little Tuscany is a newly gentrified neighborhood centered on a cluster of Italian restaurants along West 24th and Oakley. It has a cozy feel, streets lined with wrought-iron Old World lampposts and benches and well-kept trees and planters, hardly the kind of place you expect serious action.   The fight spilled out of Puccini’s as I dropped to the street, putting the brakes on just enough not to make a crater.   My timing was perfect; as I touched down an explosion of shots shattered the eatery’s street window. Two of them hit me, one in the right temple.   They stung.   From the screams inside, they hadn’t been the first shots.
     
    Atlas Rule #1: when in doubt, pacify the situation.
     
    I went in through the window, landing in front of the shooter, a wild-eyed black kid with a pistol. Completely freaked, he still wasn’t dumb enough to try it on me—grabbing his gun I looked around for more, but then he went down in a spray of blood, a familiar eye-twisting blur behind him.
     
    Oh no no No !
     
    “Rush!” I yelled.   “Sonic, code red!” Shelly would pass it on.
     
    I broke the pistol’s barrel and tossed it, spinning around to track the blur.   Another kid crashed into the bar, more blood flying.   I couldn’t be sure, but the speedster seemed to be swinging a baseball bat.   A third kid, screaming rage and fear, waved a Glock . T his one was stupid or panicked enough to shoot at me, and I took two more to the chest before I