Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain (61 page)

There was no missing the fight anymore. Knives surrounded Lucy, spiraling in a very dangerous-looking shield. I had to backpedal, but the knives didn’t bother Chimera. Crouching, he squeezed through the door, then pushed Lucy rudely aside to get at us. He’d shrunk just enough to fit into the hall, but didn’t look human. One sharp-toothed furry head snarled and snapped, while giant eyes rolled in the scaly head hanging below it. Bony plates jutted off an oversized arm that he walked on like a third leg, and the other two twitched, flashing claws as long as sickle blades. He had completely lost it.

I still couldn’t help looking past him at Claire. Lucy and Chimera ignored her completely as she twiddled with the vial’s cap, dainty but determined. When she got it just so, she threw it at Chimera’s back. That was too much. It looked like an attack, and one of Lucy’s knives flew up to cut the vial in half.

Which, of course, dumped the whole contents on Lucy and Chimera both, coming out in a gray powdery puff. Chimera turned gray and fell over onto his stomach. Lucy turned gray and fell on top of him.

“Is it my turn to win a fight for us?” Claire asked with bright eyes and a coy grin.

We’d done it.

Black fire flickered up off Lucy’s body. We hadn’t done it.

The fire spread, removing the gray from her body and replacing it with a gleaming, oily black surface that spread into an elegant dress, then oozed up off her back into skeletal wings tipped with knife blades. She started standing up, and I remembered my priorities. I threw the penny I’d collected at her. It smacked into her shoulder and stuck.

Lucyfar pulled herself up completely straight and plucked the penny free of her dress. A black, burning crown roared into existence above her head, and she announced in a strained but just barely calm voice, “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I am the morning star, the fallen one, the first and most damned child of creation. Magic is the power of creation, children. It cannot harm me.”

In case she hadn’t made her point, she clenched my penny in her fist. Flames leaked between her fingers, and a painful knot twitched in my belly. I heard a girl’s voice shriek in the distance. My voice.

I still was not going to take the self-proclaimed Princess of Lies at her word, and let out a snort. “If you’re immune to magic, why are you afraid of the Librarian?”

Lucyfar grinned, and it was the old, playful Lucyfar grin despite the black fire and wings and oozing gown. “Because she can hit me in the head with a fifty-pound book.”

“Like this?” Ray asked. He stepped forward, swinging the door he’d broken off to let us back into the hallway.

Lucy’s wings lashed out. It didn’t help. The hallway wasn’t big, and there wasn’t enough room around the fast swinging door. Yes, she chopped big furrows in the wood, but the door still slammed into her sideways, knocking her into the wall. Ray pulled the door back and hit her again, and she was too dazed to even try to dodge. Then he pinned the door against Lucy with his foot, clapped his hands together, and pulled out the glowing energy ball he hadn’t had time to form before. He shoved it against the door.

Crack! Bits of wood flew everywhere. The door split in half, and the wall crumpled, leaving Lucy slumped under the broken door. All I could see clearly were her limp hands and a section of her stomach where the black dress had disappeared, leaving a regular gray t-shirt.

Ray yelled. Chimera’s huge hand had locked around his ankle. The gray, animal bulk shuddered and started to push up.

I teleported two yards up onto his shoulders, stabbed my wand against his back, and turned on the knife. Blood and frothy cola bubbled out, but my swipe didn’t even reach his spine before the cola gave way to hissing air. Maybe I wouldn’t have to cut his spine. His bulk shook beneath me as he fell back against the floor, making some very ugly coughing gurgles. I must have punctured a lung.

That would kill anyone else. Chimera had already stopped bleeding. To my great relief, Vera floated up the hall to me and I realized I had backup. “Stay down, Chimera, or I’ll order Vera to melt you.”

Wait. Forget backup, Vera had been here the whole time. I’d had a trump card weapon since the beginning and forgotten to use it!

Or been unwilling to use it. As far as I knew, Vera had no “stun” setting. She only had a “melt” setting.

“I officially vote that we surrender,” Cybermancer mumbled, still stuck to the wall.

From underneath the door, Lucy agreed, “Ow, my head. Okay.”

Chimera gurgled. The vote was unanimous. We’d won!

Claire giggled. Ray grinned at me. He held out his hand, and I slapped my hand into it and squeezed.

Then I pulled my helmet off, pulled him up close, and kissed him.

A second of Ray’s wide eyes staring into mine, and his arms went around my middle, bending me back as he kissed me back harder. After the tension of the fight, suddenly all I could feel was my mouth and his, a warm pressure that made my heart thump in my chest.

I pushed my way out of his grip and caught my breath. Okay, kissing was all it was cracked up to be.

Still staring at me, Ray mumbled, “I should have trusted the card.”

Claire’s loud groan of frustration interrupted us both. “Finally! Why did it take you two this long?”

I stopped staring at Ray and stared at Claire instead. So did Ray. She gaped at us. “You didn’t know. You really never noticed how you’re always watching each other. Oh, for pity’s sake!” She slapped the heel of her palm against her forehead, and leaned back against the wall opposite Cybermancer with a thump.

Next to my shoulder, Vera’s head turned, the thing I’d taught myself to always be alert for. She didn’t just move; she dived, down and past me. I spun in place, grabbing at my empty wand, preparing to teleport.

I didn’t teleport. Instead, I watched The Apparition rise out of the floor, gray and insubstantial except where her palm met Vera’s tiny hand. She’d been reaching out to possess me, but Vera had blocked her.

“How…?” The Apparition whispered, shock enlivening her normally sad face.

I hadn’t known, but I wasn’t surprised. Conqueror tech seemed entirely compatible with magic. I didn’t get to tell her. Vera answered instead with those meaningless bell chimes she had for a voice.

Meaningless to me. The Apparition stared at her, eyes widening further. “That… that can’t be true.”

Vera rang again.

“For me?” The Apparition asked.

Vera’s bell ringing voice went on for several seconds this time, almost a song. As they played, The Apparition’s face twisted up. Phantom tears welled up in phantom eyes, and she wrapped both arms around Vera, pulling her floating body close and hugging it tight. Bending her head over Vera, she sobbed, “Yes. Yes, please. I didn’t think I’d earned one.”

What was I looking at?

I knew the answer as soon as I asked the question. A book about lonely alien beings had inspired Vera’s creation. The Apparition was the loneliest alien being I knew. Vera wasn’t a tool, or a weapon. She was a gift. This was why I’d made her.

I felt a little like crying myself. Ray slid his arm around my shoulder. As The Apparition’s hug loosened, Vera turned her head and chimed bells at me.

I didn’t understand the words. I didn’t need to. “Yes. You have my blessing. I’ll miss you.”

I’d miss her for more than just her incredibly useful powers. I’d find some other way to stop bullets. Just a little bit of grief gnawed in the middle of my happiness as I watched The Apparition fly down the corridor holding Vera’s tiny hand, ducking past the petrified Librarian, until they turned into the main hall and out of sight.

I’d see them again, right? I hoped so.

I walked around the pile and peered at the wheezing Chimera. “Are you going to live?” I asked. I was pretty sure, but… well, I’d just cut his lung open!

He nodded weakly. That was a relief.

“I’m sorry, but if I’d done anything less you’d be back up in sixty seconds, right?” I asked again.

“Yep,” he whispered.

“We’re cool, kids. Or at least, we will be as soon as I swallow a hundred aspirin,” Lucyfar groaned, pushing the door out of the way of her face. “Thanks for not spraying me with that stuff that eats hair, Bad Penny. Reviled, I think you broke a few bones.”

Ray raised an eyebrow. You could just barely tell behind the mask. “Was that a compliment?”

“You bet it was,” she chuckled.

The hallway vibrated as crashing thundered out of the main hallway.

Claire jerked upright. “Maybe we missed someone.”

“Maybe someone got back up,” Ray suggested, pulling his blasting gloves tight.

We inched around The Librarian’s statue, taking extreme care not to touch it or her books until we were clear and could run out into the hallway. We got there to find the metal gateway broken down. Rubble lay everywhere. The frozen gods were gone, but a black-furred hand sticking out from under a huge black metal plate suggested Entropy was still out for the count.

Something shrieked, over and over, down the hall past the ruined wall. It came from the jungle spilling out of the pit. We had a clear run to it.

Run we did. As we ran we heard two loud, quick thumps, then a third off-tempo, then a crash. We ran through the trees out onto the landing for the stairs that wound their way down the bowl to the bottom of this miniature jungle. That bottom had been wrecked. Rage and Ruin lay unconscious under broken tree trunks. Claudia was slumped over the pedestal that should have been supporting the Orb of the Heavens. The T-Rex lay on the other side of the bowl, but as we watched it pulled itself up, stretched out its neck, and screeched like a parrot. The rainbow colored feather crest on its head bobbed up and down furiously.

It staggered toward Claudia, mouth gaping. Ray slapped his hands together, pulling out an energy ball, but he hadn’t had much time to recharge. I had to do something, so I jumped, teleported, and landed next to Claudia to wrap my arms around her.

That had been a terrible idea. The world spun and went dark, my muscles turned into knots, and I fought for breath. I couldn’t get her out of here. Through the black spots I saw the T-Rex loom over us, and a pink and purple ball of energy smash into the side of its head, knocking it on its side.

It didn’t get up. Instead, it faded into a skeleton. An obviously fake, plastic skeleton. The library’s transformation was reversing.

I got enough breath to wheeze, “Cl—Generic Girl! Are you okay?”

Her eyelids fluttered. I’d woken her up. She groaned. “I stopped Rage and Ruin. I was fighting the T-Rex, when something cold touched me. I blacked out.”

“Where did the Orb go?” I asked.

Claudia looked up. So did I. There was a hole in the roof, just about the right size, letting in fresh sunlight now that the fake sky had gone.

Claudia pushed my arms away. I couldn’t have resisted her even if I hadn’t been achy and exhausted. Without another word, she flew up into the air and sped out through the hole in the roof, the hole Vera must have burned while The Apparition possessed Generic Girl.

The logs on top of Rage and Ruin faded into nothing. So did the grass underneath, leaving them lying awkwardly the floor. The library was reverting rapidly now.

Ray hopped over the remaining debris to me, holding out a hand and carefully pulling me up. He sounded solemn for once. “I think we’ve left enough witnesses, but if we’re here when the police and heroes come, but the Orb isn’t…”

I nodded as he trailed off. “Yeah.”

He swung me up in both arms, cradling me against his chest. It felt better than ever. “There’s a side door on the other side of the Children’s section,” he suggested.

I gave myself a double check to make sure I looked perfectly normal and civilian as I pulled my bike up in front of my house. On the off chance I’d actually gotten away with this, I crept down the length of the house and crawled back in through my bedroom window.

After all that excitement, this was where goose bumps rattled me, as I opened the door to my bedroom and stepped out into the hallway.

Mom leaned out of Dad’s office immediately. “Penny? I thought you were asleep! You’ll want to see this.”

She beckoned me into the office and waved me to one of Dad’s monitors and the TV news showing on it. Dad sat in a chair by his computer, chin on his fist as he watched. Just as I walked in the same reporter who’d tried to interview me downtown came onscreen. “Reports from hostages on the scene confirm the story we’ve put together. Today, the LA Main Branch Public Library was ground zero of the biggest supervillain gang fight in history. The winners were, incredibly, The Inscrutable Machine, a group of middle-school supervillains who’ve been crushing every adult in their way. A representative of the superhero community confirms that the prize for this fight was a unique piece of technology kept secretly in the library, although we don’t know yet what it was.”

I blinked. “No way.”

Dad waved a hand at the screen. “The real story is a bit more complicated. The Inscrutable Machine went out of their way to protect innocents caught in the fight, then defeated all the other villains in the building to steal the Orb of the Heavens themselves.”