“I’ve already thought,” came the reply, somewhat exasperated, the gun not wavering. “You two,” he said to the guards. “Go away. Now.”
But good doesn’t always mean intelligent. It can mean brave and stubborn to the point of stupidity. Weren’t some of the greatest heroes in written history those who didn’t have the sense to say, What the hell was I thinking? Let’s wait until we have more men, spears, swords, and brain cells. Why are we even here? I could be home plowing the field and enjoying the nice spring day. The second guard wasn’t a plow-the-field type though. She was a hero. Only unlike other past heroes, she was going to live to tell about it.
When Zeke fell beside me, his entire body rigid, he didn’t pull the trigger. He’d told the truth. He had thought. We should’ve had more faith in him. Zeke always knew right from wrong—it was the punishment area he had difficulties in, and you didn’t punish guards chasing a thief. Instead, he took the punishment himself, although he did manage to keep an irritated expression on his face as he went down, which is an achievement when you have that many volts passing through you.
I grabbed my own gun, rolled over, sat up, and put a bullet in the ground twelve inches or so from the feet of the nearest guard. Ms. Hero. I hoped it made her think twice in the future. Do the right thing in the smart way. We needed heroes in the world, but heroes who didn’t look before leaping rarely lived long enough to pass on their heroic genes. Whether it would make her think in the future, I didn’t know, but it did make her think now. “I don’t think I can say it much better than my friend. Go away is good and now is perfect. So go.” Neither looked like a former marine, a cop moonlighting, or someone with a badge fetish but a psych profile that would keep you from serving up slushies, much less working in a field where you’re armed. They were two museum guards, plain and simple, and that let them back away from a no-win situation, because they were bright enough, the hero included, to know that a chunk of rock wasn’t worth dying for. Saving a life was, saving the world was, but a thing? An artifact? That wasn’t. Too bad I hadn’t stolen one of the dead birds instead. That would’ve made their decision go down a little easier.
As they backed up, hands in the air, Leo and Griffin came out of the car. Leo took the artifact, Griffin took Zeke, and when everyone was back in the car, I followed. We were flying down Menlo before I could get the door shut. When I did, I checked the mirror to see the guards running after us, trying to get the license plate. Unfortunately for them they’d get nothing. Amateurs, which we weren’t, would know enough to remove the license plate in the parking lot. It wasn’t our car, but if they tracked down Zeke’s neighbors through it, they had no reason to take the fall for him and every reason to gleefully see him dragged to jail. It would be excuse enough for a block party.
“Who stole the cars and drove them into the park?” I asked, using the cause of the entire uproar as a footstool as I reached back and took Zeke’s slack hand.
“I did. I keep in practice—as a certain trickster taught me.” Leo steered around one car and turned onto West Thirty-ninth, and proceeded to get us thoroughly buried in the city. “I blew them up as well. I did have to wrestle the grenades from Zeke, but it was worth it. Fireballs and stealing—it was very satisfying.”
“I’m glad you’re having a good time.” If it weren’t for Zeke getting a small taste of sticking a fork in an outlet, I would be high on the experience myself. “Griff, how is he doing?”
“He’s blinking. That’s something.” Thor remained unconscious, and Griffin had shoved him into the corner of the backseat. He also had Zeke’s gun in hand before placing it in his partner’s holster. It was Zeke’s favorite gun, a Colt Anaconda, and Griffin knew better than to leave it behind. Zeke cherished that phallic-boosting piece of metal beyond all measure. “Hey, partner, when you can move again, be glad we didn’t wait and try to break you out of jail later.” He hoisted him higher in the seat, and I felt a twitch of fingers captured by my hand. “I’d hate to see what you would’ve done if they’d tried a full-body cavity search on you. Or have to mess with Thor poofing out all the ill-tempered red-heads. With our luck you know one who would’ve been a pervert clown arrested for twisting his penis into balloon animals.”