His eyes are so dark and tormented that my insides twist with fear for him.
“Rebel, you know I can’t tell them!” Riley says, eyes closed tight.
“Dad isn’t the paragon you think he is, Riley,” says Rebel.
“How would you know? You’re too busy playing the wannabe villain to know anything about this family anymore.”
She shakes her head disgustedly. “For a guy who spends all his free time pretending to be Superman, you sure need to work on your X-ray vision. You can’t see shit.”
Rebel glances over to the display cabinet in the corner of Riley’s room, and a heartbeat later, a very expensive and authentic-looking statue of Superman flies off the shelf.
“Rebel, no!”
It hangs in midair for a moment, then falls to the hardwood floor, shattering into a billion pieces.
Riley gasps. “That was an original piece of artwork from DC Comics!” he screeches, crawling over to the mess and scooping some of the bigger pieces into his hands. “I paid a fortune for it. Why would you do that?”
“Because people’s lives are at stake. Lives that are worth a whole hell of a lot more than this ridiculous junk.” A collector’s plate that has Batman and Robin on it floats off another shelf and wobbles in the air. “You better start talking, Riley.”
“Don’t you dare, Rebel!” He lunges at her, but Dante holds him back.
“You better make a decision,” she taunts. “My power is feeling a little unsteady, and I just don’t know how long I can hold it…”
“Darn it, Rebel!”
“Where’s the bunker, Riley?”
“There’s no way I’m telling a bunch of villains—”
“Whoops!”
The plate crashes to the floor and Riley whimpers. He actually whimpers.
Rebel doesn’t give him a chance to say anything else before a three-foot-tall statue of Aquaman and a miniature Iron Man suit go crashing to the ground.
Riley watches in shock, but it’s not until she actually grabs his pièce de résistance—original cells from one of the first Superman comic books—that he starts talking.
“Stop! Stop! Just stop. Please, Reb. Just stop.”
She narrows her eyes at him, poised to tear the page in half. “Where’s the bunker?” she asks again.
“In the mountains.” Riley sinks against the wall. He looks sad, defeated. Maybe I should feel sorry for him—he did just rat out his father and everything he believes in. But it’s hard for me to be sympathetic when Riley cares more for a bunch of collectibles than he does for the suffering of real, live people.
“Where in the mountains?” Draven demands. “The Rockies are pretty damn big.”
“I’ve got it!” Jeremy crows from the doorway, Riley’s laptop in hand. “My rootkit found the coordinates for the bunker.”
“Thank God!” Nitro says, and before anyone can say or do anything else, he lets loose a fireball straight at what’s left of Riley’s extensive—and expensive—collection of comic book memorabilia. It whizzes past me, burns my arm, and then crashes straight into the display case.
Nitro laughs at the horrified look on Riley’s face as the whole thing goes up in flames.
Chapter 23
For long seconds, we all stare at the burning display case in shock. Then several things happen at once. Riley starts screaming, Rebel dives for the bathroom and comes back with a fire extinguisher, and my shirtsleeve catches fire.
Draven runs for me. He knocks me to the floor and smothers me with blankets.
By the time he lets me up—after patting at every inch of me to make sure there’s no latent spark anywhere—Rebel and Dante have the fire under control. Nitro surveys his work, seemingly pleased by the whole proceedings.
Jeremy ducks back into the other room just as Draven finally starts to breathe again.
“Are you all right?” he demands. He drags me into the bathroom and probes at the second-degree burn decorating the bottom of my bicep.
“I’m okay,” I tell him. “I mean, it hurts, but I’m a lot better than Riley’s comic collection.”
Draven’s eyes darken at my words. He presses a palm over my burned skin. “This is going to sting.”
He’s right. My arm erupts in pinpricks, like I can feel the burn on every nerve ending. It takes a little while, but eventually the pain fades. What was a bubbling, red second-degree burn moments ago is now nothing more than a patch of red and a couple of blisters.
Draven releases my arm, his head hung low. “I can’t heal it all the way,” he says quietly, “or they’ll know.”
I don’t have to ask what he means. He already told me that his second power and his mixed parentage are a secret from everyone except Dante. “It’s fine,” I say, yanking down the remains of my sleeve. “It feels a lot better.”
“Why was it so bad this time?” he asks. “When he hit you before, it wasn’t like this.”
I shrug. “The serum must be almost out of my system by now.”