“As if I need a villain to take care of me? I don’t think so.” I buck and roll against him, all to no avail. This guy is strong, really strong. I’m not getting up until he decides to let me up.
Which just pisses me off more. Everyone around me is always insisting I’m helpless, telling me that being powerless makes me vulnerable. The last thing I need is a villain providing a real-life demonstration.
I think about biting him, but decide against it. He is a villain after all. And a hot-looking one at that. God only knows where he’s been.
Still, I need him off me. Now. I can’t think, can’t breathe. Long-buried memories well up inside me, making me panic. Making me want to scream.
I fight the anxiety, bury the dread. I can freak out later. Right now, I need to focus on how the hell I’m going to get out of this.
“Draven, what the hell is going on here?” A third guy comes careening around the corner and into the lab.
Great. Three vile scumbags in the lab. This night is only getting better.
Like the other two, this one is dressed all in black, but somehow he doesn’t look nearly as menacing as they do. Maybe it’s the look of abject horror on his face. Or maybe it’s the way his dark brown hair is molded into a fairly spectacular fauxhawk. It’s hard to take a guy seriously when he looks like a punk-rock rooster—even if he is a villain.
“Nitro’s lost his mind, obviously,” Draven, a.k.a. Dark-and-Scowly, answers. “He started firing energy balls at innocent people.”
Holy shit. This is Nitro? Badass supervillain and second only to his brother, Quake, in the destruction he causes? Nitro is in my mother’s lab?
What am I going to do? He’s deadly. He could level this whole building with a single blast. No wonder the lab looks like a nuclear bomb just went off. In a way, it did.
I can’t suppress a little shudder. Dark-and-Scowly, otherwise known as Draven, looks down with blue eyes that seem way too steady and way too knowledgeable, and for the first time since he tackled me, his grip loosens a little bit. He pushes up to his knees and drags his hands through his hair.
Air flows into my lungs a little more easily.
“Oi, that was just a wee blast,” Nitro answers. “It wouldn’t have killed her. Just stunned her.”
“And that makes it okay?” I snap.
Draven reaches for me like he wants to clamp his palm over my mouth, but I shoot him a glance that says I’m rethinking my decision about biting him, and he just shakes his head.
“Are you serious?” Fauxhawk demands. “You really think this is what we need to be doing right now? When my brother has been missing for three days?”
“She was going for her cell phone.” Nitro looks thoroughly disgruntled now. “Deacon obviously isn’t in this lab, and we need time to search the rest of the building. What was I supposed to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe let me take care of her?” Draven says. “I had it handled.”
Nitro’s yellow eyes narrow. “Did you? ’Cuz it looked to me like you were just making a bigger mess.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Draven reiterates. “Wasn’t that what we agreed on?” He climbs to his feet and I start to follow, but he puts his hand on the top of my head and shoves me back down. Which only makes me angrier. I’m not big on being manhandled.
In fact, I’m not big on being any kind of handled.
“Hey!” I complain, pushing against him as hard as I can. He doesn’t budge.
“If you want to get out of this without being roasted alive, you need to stay down,” he growls at me. “His control’s never the best when he’s this upset.”
Draven’s gaze is trained on Nitro, so I can’t really gauge if he’s telling the truth, but he seems to be trying to protect me. That must be another trick, though. Villains don’t help people like that.
Ignoring his dubious warning, I twist out of Draven’s grip and scramble to my knees. At least now I can see what’s going on. And maybe I can formulate a plan.
“Well, that’s a little rude,” Nitro interjects, obviously offended. “I never talk shit about your powers.”
“Because Draven never loses control of his powers,” Fauxhawk tells him, as he gestures to the burned and broken lab. “Do I need to remind you of what happened two weeks ago?”
“Wow. Set a few things on fire and suddenly everyone’s a critic.”
“Me!” Fauxhawk shouts. “You set me on fire!”
“I said I was sorry!”
“Like that makes it better? You burned off half my hair.”
“Stop being such a drama queen, Dante.” Nitro rolls his eyes. “It’s growing back, isn’t it?”
“Jesus,” Draven says, looking like he’s one step away from pulling out his own hair. “Can we focus, please? We don’t have long before someone finds out about this mess.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Nitro raises his hands and starts to build another energy ball. “I was taking care of things, until you went all hero on us.”