Hero (34 page)

"Cut it out," Golden Boy said under his breath, and backed away.

"Easy," Ruth said. "We got an audience."

The Spectrum's daughter was understandably offended. She yanked the tray of lemon bars away from Ruth, tossed her cash back at her, and started to move away.

"You can keep your money."

"Wait!" I stopped her. She wheeled around and dropped the tray of lemon bars, the metal tray making a tremendous clatter as it hit the ground. The crowd looked over, and I saw the security guard making his way toward us.

"Please." Tears pooled in her eyes. "I don't want my kids to see me like this."

"I don't want to upset you," I said. "We're on your side."

I put my hands gently on her arms and felt the pain of a little girl who'd lost her father. As she looked back at me I think she knew that I recognized what she had lost. Maybe it was the power in my hands, maybe it was the feeling in my heart; but she opened her mouth to talk. I had the feeling she was about to tell me everything.

She didn't get a chance to say a word.

"Go away!"

Scarlett was screaming at Golden Boy. Our probationary team already stood out in the crowd. The shouting wasn't helping us blend any better.

"Talk to me," Golden Boy said to Scarlett. "That's all I want. Just talk to me about it."

"GO AWAY!" Scarlett pushed him away and tried to blow past him, but he moved at superspeed to block her path. We were gaining a real audience at the fair.

"Talk to me," he said again, and she pushed him away again, and he appeared in front of her again.

"Talk to me."

"I can't." Scarlett finally gave in and stopped pushing him. She sounded so tired.

"Why can't you?" Golden Boy said, trying to make eye contact with her. He reached out and held her hand.

"Don't you get it?" Scarlett said. She wouldn't look at him.

"Tell me," Golden Boy said.

Scarlett eyed Golden Boy's hand on hers, then she looked at her stomach.

"It hurts to be around you." Scarlett pushed his hand away.

They stared at each other for a while. None of us knew what to do; this was between them. I glanced at Ruth, hoping she'd have a bright idea, but she was massaging her temples like she had a major migraine. At first I thought she was faking it: some kind of distraction to get us out of there. But she didn't wink or anything. Something was wrong with her.

Larry and I both noticed the security guards calling us in on their walkie-talkies. He whispered to me, "This is not good. What do we do?"

Then Golden Boy took an awfully big chance.

He stepped forward, put his hands around Scarlett, and kissed her gently on the lips. She closed her eyes and melted into the kiss.

She opened her eyes and blinked after Golden Boy was finished with the kiss. He smiled at her, his arms around her shoulders.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Scarlett heated up her arm for extra strength and pushed him away. The force of the blow knocked him into the crowd; he could have been seriously hurt if the Spectrum's daughter hadn't been there to cushion his fall.

He landed on her head.

Larry and I helped the Spectrum's daughter to her feet. She'd been knocked to the ground like a bowling pin when Golden Boy landed on her. Her upper right cheek was cut and bleeding.

She touched her fingers to her cheek and saw the blood. "Oh my God!"

"Kevin!" I was desperate for help. I saw the cops getting out of their car in the parking lot.

I hate to admit it, but there were times that Golden Boy was an invaluable asset to our team. He had the most experience of all of us, and that counted for a lot under this kind of pressure. Before the police car doors had even slammed shut, he'd scooped each of us up and had us waiting on the far side of the school, where no one could see us by the edge of the woods.

Ruth was getting her bearings and starting to stand up, so Larry came over to see about the Spectrum's daughter. Scarlett was crying softly into her hands, and Golden Boy stood behind her, patiently waiting for a chance to comfort her. I was trying to figure out who to tend to first.

"Can you help me? God, look what you've done! Can you fix this?" The Spectrum's daughter held her hand up and looked at Larry.

"Actually, I make people sick," Larry said.

I pulled her aside, took her by the hands, and went to work on calming her. Her posture relaxed, and the panic evaporated. The wound began to heal, and she could feel the smooth skin seal over her cheek.

"Believe me, I've seen much wdrse," I said. "There, good as new."

Her eyes were now grateful and calm. She cleared her throat and rubbed the smooth skin of her cheek.

"He called me that night from his lab and said he couldn't tell me too much. He said if anything happened to me, he wouldn't be able to bear it," she said. "I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me he couldn't tell me who did it, warned me that the person he thought had been killing the heroes could read minds. He said we were all in danger, and he told me to take the kids to the mountains until things settled down." She took a deep breath. "He said I couldn't even think about what he told me."

That last sentence echoed in my mind. You can't even think about it, my mother had made me promise.

I went to Ruth's side. She grimaced like her head hurt—or like she was seeing something else. Then she looked at me like she wasn't sure who I was. I thought maybe she was having a senior moment.

"Thom!" Ruth called out. "I can almost see it!" She furrowed her brow and squinted. "I think I know who it is."

"Guys," Larry said, "something isn't right. Look at the sky."

"C'mon, Ruth, you can do it," I said. "You're almost there."

We could hear the loud rustle of the wind as it whipped through the trees.

Golden Boy raised his head from Scarlett and looked to the clouds that had suddenly begun to cover the sky. Even Scarlett took her face out of her hands and looked up. Now the trees were bending in the force of the wind.

"Oh!" Ruth cried out and dropped to one knee. I rushed to hold on to her. Her red dress flew behind her in the wind like a cape.

"Guys, something is really wrong!" Larry shouted over the wind.

A panic seized Ruth; I could feel her whole body go rigid. She grabbed my collar and looked at me.

"It's coming."

Larry pointed at the sky, the dark clouds parting. We stared up, Scarlett lit up with flames in a defensive pose, and Golden Boy clenched his fists and readied for the strike. I squinted and stared into the clouds to see what was coming.

"Something's wrong with my head," Golden Boy shouted.

Scarlett raised her hands to her temples in pain. Larry and the Spectrum's daughter quickly followed.

All of a sudden, thoughts were screaming through my mind: You're going to die. All of you are going to die. And it's all your fault.

I raised my hands to cover my ears. Agony seized my brain, but my powers quickly took over and my hands began to sizzle on my head. Then my stomach dropped at a sudden realization.

Those weren't my thoughts. Someone was putting them in my head.

The heavy clouds finally cleared in a burst, and then I could only see a dark blur. A blur that whizzed past Larry and a forearm that sliced toward him. Larry flew back, his hands around his neck as he choked and gasped for air, his windpipe suddenly broken.

In the second it took for me to turn to grab the Spectrum's daughter, I saw Golden Boy pick her up and speed her away to safety. This time he'd remembered the innocent bystander first.

Scarlett's body lit up in flames, a natural defense mechanism. The dark blur circled her but was careful to avoid the fire. Instead I saw it cover and wrap her in a giant, clear plastic tarp, like she was being spooled into a huge roll of Saran wrap at ultrafast speed. I'd barely even taken a step toward her when the dark blur snatched her up and hung her high in a tree, impossible for me to reach. Her flames were quickly being extinguished by the lack of oxygen. She gasped for air and began to suffocate as she desperately tried to rip open the plastic.

I didn't even have time to panic. I started for Scarlett, and I spotted Ruth making a break to help Larry.

The dark blur disappeared, and Ruth and I made sudden eye contact before we could make it to our friends. One of us would be next. Then Ruth's fear melted away, her face muscles relaxed, and I saw a peace overcome her. She looked at me and smiled. It was the most serene expression I'd ever seen on her face, and it made me realize how beautiful she must have been when she was young, why that man had risked his life to be with her.

In a flash she was gone. Just like that. One minute she was standing there, and the next she was hurtling through space directly toward a giant oak tree, carried by a dark, inexorable force. I saw her brittle body smack against the wide trunk of the tree at full force and then collapse, utterly limp, onto her face in a mat of pine needles. Chills shot their way through my body. My teammates were getting picked off one by one, and I couldn't act fast enough to save them.

Then I felt the searing pain of two hands beginning to crush my head. They lifted me from the ground by my face, and I wondered if my head was going to pop off my neck. Suddenly I was airborne, being propelled through the air at an impossible speed. I managed a glance behind me and saw another massive oak fast approaching. In a moment my body would be crushed against it like Ruth's. In front of me was nothing but a dark blur.

I struggled as much as I could, kicked my legs. In a few seconds I would be pulp. It couldn't end like this. My teeth managed to grab hold of a finger, and the hand pulled away from my head. Then I felt a different pain. The hands gripped my neck and squeezed. The pressure of those hands was incredible; they pushed so hard that I could feel them drive the ring on my necklace clear into the skin, right into my throat.

And suddenly, just short of impact with the tree, the hands pulled away, the dark blur whizzed back up into the sky, and the clouds disappeared. The ring fell back down and hung on my chest.

I tumbled to the ground, somersault over somersault. I finally stopped rolling and looked up, dizzy, and saw the sky spinning bright blue. The dark blur was no where in sight.

I tried to see straight. I saw a shining golden arc shoot toward the tree where Scarlett hung. Golden Boy tore open her tarp and sped her safely to the ground, where she gasped for breath.

I heard the chokes and wheezes of a dying man and saw that I'd landed close to Larry, who was straining for every last breath he could manage through his windpipe. I was on top of him in a second, my hands gently around his neck, and I felt his trachea spring back to its proper shape in the heat of my grip. He began to breath evenly again, though clearly it was still painful to take in air.

We saw Ruth crumpled by the oak tree she'd been smashed against. She lay in a limp, fetal position.

I raced over to her. Larry tried to keep up. Golden Boy scooped up Scarlett, and we were all beside Ruth within seconds.

We stood around her, sure of the worst. Her frail body didn't move.

Scarlett buried her head in Golden Boy's chest. He wrapped his arms around her, and she let him. Larry choked back a tear. I crouched down and put my ear over Ruth's mouth and prayed that I'd hear some breathing.

She suddenly sat up like she'd found a good yard sale.

"What's everybody looking at? I ain't dead yet!" She struggled to catch her breath and wiped a clump of oak leaves off the side of her face. "Knocked the wind out of me, that's all."

Scarlett laughed through her tears. Larry and Golden Boy and I all shared smiles of joy and relief. Ruth began to push herself off the ground to get to her feet.

"Help a tired old lady get up, will you, kid?" She reached out a hand in my direction.

Our expressions suddenly changed. Scarlett's jaw dropped, Golden Boy turned white, and Larry actually gasped out loud. I grabbed Ruth's hand, but I didn't help her up. She looked at me curiously as I began to lay her carefully on her back on the soft mat of pine needles.

"What?" She didn't like what she saw in our expressions. "What is it, what's wrong?"

Then she saw that my hand was covered with blood. Her blood. Her eyes moved in a trail as she followed the blood from my hand to hers, from her hand up her arm, and from her arm to her chest.

We hadn't seen the blood at first because it matched the red of her dress.

There was a hole in her chest the size of my fist, and just inside it we could see the broken-off end of a sturdy oak branch. It had impaled her and broken off when she slammed into the tree. Scarlett covered her mouth, trying her best not to let the horror show on her face.

I reached into the wound and yanked the chunk of wood out of Ruth. I covered her chest cavity with blazing hands. Golden Boy disappeared in a flash to get an ambulance, and Scarlett cradled Ruth's head. Ruth gripped my wrists with viselike desperation.

"Don't let me die," she whispered. "I thought I was ready for this"—she gulped in as much air as she could hold in her leaking lungs—"but frankly I'm a little scared." Then she began to choke on her own blood as the life ebbed out of her.

I focused all my energy into the healing power of my hands. I tried to deny the thought going through my head, that this had been what Ruth had seen this morning when I found her crying. That there was no use in trying to save her, that she'd seen this clearly, the moment of her death.

Through bubbles of blood, she spoke. "Don't worry, I'm a tough old broad."

But her eyes betrayed her fear, and she began to whimper in pain. The more blood she lost, the more her grip relaxed on my wrist.

Her breathing soon went from shallow to nothing.

"She's not breathing!" Scarlett screamed.

I strained with all my might to make my hands as hot as a white star. The damage was so massive inside; I'd never been able to heal anything that bad. I couldn't even keep up with all the bleeding, much less try to heal the severed organs.

Larry rose to his knees and began administering CPR on her rib cage above my hands. Scarlett laid Ruth's head back, pinched her nose, and put her mouth over Ruth's crimson lips to give her mouth-to-mouth.