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

closed the gap to grab the barrel and wrench it up and away.   Making a fist with my other hand, I punched him carefully in the solar plexus.   He fell gasping to the floor, his diaphragm shocked into spasms.
     
    Where’s Rush?
     
    Puccini’s is a small place, a family-owned restaurant packed with checker-cloth covered tables lit by candles in jars, and you have to go around the bar to get to the dining area from the street. When the eye-twisting blur appeared again I snatched for it as it went by less than a step away. I missed, saw a second blur, red and white, at the now-open door.   The two blurs collided, and then Rush stood in the doorway gripping a black kid in cornrows and wearing a bloodied biker’s jacket in a come-along hold.
     
    “ HeyAstra , what’sthefuss ?”   He cuffed the protesting kid with plastic ties, then dragged him over and anchored him to the bar’s foot-rail almost faster than my eyes could follow.
     
    “Do you need to get back to your own situation?” I asked over my shoulder as I checked out the scene, hiding my relief.   All but one of the injured were obvious gang-bangers.   The exception, a middle-aged woman, sat on the floor, her face white with shock.   Her dinner partner pressed a folded linen napkin to her ribs.   I knelt beside her.
     
    “Nah,” Rush said, grinning under his visored helmet.   “Violent home invasion, all done.”   Sirens wailed, far away, and the kid started to cry.   Rush nudged him with his foot and decided he’d keep.
     
    I gently checked the woman’s improvised pressure-bandage, whispering reassurances. She’d taken a stray bullet, but would be alright until the paramedics arrived. I kept moving. Five gang-bangers were down, and the sixth, the owner of the Glock , let Rush cuff him without trouble. We checked everyone over as the sirens got louder.   Broken knees, cracked skulls, and, amazingly, nobody dead—just injured gang-bangers and shocked diners. The scene didn’t go with the soft music and the fragrant smells of gorgonzala and risotto, but the Reaper had passed by tonight.
     
    The cleanup always lasts longer than the action. By the time four squad cars pulled up in quick succession, Rush and I had patted down the gang kids and restrained the ones not too injured to make trouble. Rush got with a patrolman and administered a sandman pack—a drug injection that would knock an elephant out—to our new speedster friend so they could safely transport him after the patrolman read him his rights.   One of the patrolmen pulled a collapsible stretcher from his trunk, and I helped secure the injured woman.   She told me she was Donna Burcelli , thanked me graciously, and made no fuss as I flew her over to Westlake Hospital. Her husband followed in his car.
     
    I just managed to miss the swarm of reporters and paparazzi who descended on Puccini’s, and saw Rush hop his motorcycle and disappear over the Wall into hypertime .   Leaving Westlake, the flight back to the Dome gave me time to dictate a full after-action report. Back in my quarters, I surveyed the damage.
     
    “You look like the victim of a squirrel attack,” Shelly laughed, sitting on my bed, her feet tucked up and arms around her legs.
     
    “Get your imaginary feet off my bed,” I shot back, and she stuck out her imaginary tongue.
     
    “That was more like it,” she said.   “Not a proper supervillain fight, but…”
     
    I fingered the bullet hole in the leather face of my mask, right at the edge of the wig. My hands were trembling.
     
    Nobody died. I took a deep breath.
     
    “He was a mad and scared breakthrough, Shell.”
     
    From the statements of badly shaken diners, the kid had run into Puccini’s, chased by the six gang-bangers. They’d proceeded to corner and beat on him, and he learned just how fast he could be.   They escalated to guns when he started speeding, and he got the trophy bat off the wall and went to town. I really couldn’t blame