Supervillainess (Part One) (9 page)

The other kicked her hard enough to send her
smashing into the wall.

Kimber started forward, baseball bat
raised.

Keladry rebounded easily and drove her knee
into the man’s groin then jammed the broken broomstick through his
abdomen. He fell to the ground, and she yanked the weapon free
before ramming it through his eye socket into his brain.

Kimber stared, his jaw slack and eyes wide.
He had treated people suffering from injuries caused by fights with
others, vehicular accidents, mauling by animals, and other dreadful
ways to be hurt. But he never witnessed firsthand the actual events
causing the injuries.

Keladry leaned over the first man, the one
with a screwdriver through his neck. She gripped his head and
snapped it to the right, effectively answering Kimber’s unspoken
question about who had killed the man in the hallway.

This is a
nightmare,
he thought, unable to comprehend
witnessing Keladry brutally murder two men.

“This is why you lock your door,” she said,
looking up at him.

“What the fuck is going on?” he managed.

“My brother sent his henchmen to find me and
probably kill you for hiding me,” she answered.

“No. What. The. Fuck. Just happened?” he
demanded. “Did I just become a witness in a triple homicide?”

“I could’ve used this.” She approached him
and took the bat from his wooden fingers. “Stay here. I’ll check
the hallway.”

Kimber couldn’t have moved if he wanted to.
He was staring at the second man she had killed, who was bleeding
out all over his carpet. He heard the front door open and then
close a few minutes later but was frozen in place, convinced this
was a dream and waiting for it to end.

“Found another one.” Keladry reported. She
handed him the bat, whose tip was bloodied.

“Stop murdering people!” Kimber dropped the
bat, horrified.

“It’s okay, Doc. I took care of it. Here.
There’s glass everywhere.” Keladry planted his shoes in his chest.
She had pulled on a pair of his sweats, along with what appeared to
be several layers of socks in place of shoes. She disappeared from
his stunned sight into the kitchen.

“We have to do something,” he said at
last.

“I know. We can’t leave the bodies here or
they’ll know you’re involved.”

“No, I mean, we have to
call the … involved? As in, I
helped
you do this?” he demanded,
facing her.

She left the kitchen.

“I had nothing to do with this!” he
exclaimed.

“You sheltered me against my father’s
directives.”

“We need to call the police!”

“What we need to do is leave. Quickly.” She
pushed him towards the door.

Kimber went, more because
he was too shocked to resist than because he understood why they
were leaving. “Wait. I should help them. I
need
to help them,” he mumbled, eyes
on the body in the hallway.

“They’re dead, Doc. Trust me, I know. I’m
the one who killed them,” she replied and pushed him harder. “You
will be, too, if we stay here.”

Seconds later, Kimber stood in the hallway
outside his apartment, staring at the door Keladry had closed.

“C’mon, Doc!” she said and took his arm,
tugging him away. “We have about five seconds.”

He blinked out of his stupor and shook his
head to free it from the lingering effects of sleep and surprise.
“What do you mean five –”

An explosion tore the door off his apartment
and threw it across the hallway. He ducked instinctively and looked
back. Flames darted into the hall. Understanding Keladry’s urgency,
he ceased dragging his heels and hurried after her.

The elevator wasn’t working again, so they
went to the stairwell across from it and raced to the ground floor
and outside the building. Kimber twisted to see his apartment as he
exited into the cool spring night. Flames leapt out of the windows
and had begun to crawl towards the neighboring apartments.

“No bodies, no crime,” Keladry said,
satisfied.

Dazed, Kimber couldn’t look away from the
dancing fire. “Did you pull the fire alarm on the way out?” he
heard himself asking.

“No. Why?”

“Because there are hundreds of people in the
building!”

Keladry was quiet, and he glanced at her
then back. Her brow was furrowed, as if she didn’t understand the
connection between the people and the fire. One of her hands was
pressed to her abdomen, and he saw the blood leaking between her
trembling fingers.

“You are determined to bleed to death,” he
said. With no other form of bandage available, Kimber peeled off
his t-shirt and pressed it to her stomach.

She gave a small sound of pain but didn’t
otherwise object.

He met her gaze, uncertain what to think of
her. She lived up to the brag rights posted on her father’s
website, battling four men while horribly wounded. And she had
murdered them in cold blood, without any sign of remorse.

She was, in every way, the most fucked up
individual he had ever met.

So why was he gazing steadily into her dark
eyes, unable to avoid the strange connection lingering between
them? He was trying not to allow the signs of pain on her face to
affect him and not to be concerned about the homicidal maniac she
clearly was. Every fiber of his being screamed for him to run as
far from her as possible and turn her into the police or better yet
– a psych ward.

All he could think about was how the light
of the fire brought out flecks of burnished gold in her eyes and
how soft her skin had been when he placed his shirt against her
abdomen.

Is lunacy
contagious?
He thought, appalled by his own
thoughts. Blinking out of the trance, Kimber took a step
back.

“Stay here. I’m calling the authorities.
You’re going to the hospital, where I should’ve sent you long
before this,” he added firmly. He knelt and pulled on the shoes
still clutched in one of his hands.

Without awaiting her response, Kimber ran to
the market at the bottom of the building and shouted for the
friendly cashier to call the police. He entered the building next
and pulled the fire alarm.

Retreating outside, he studied the path of
the flames inching from his apartment to the one below and above.
If the residents of both apartments were asleep, it was likely
they’d end up trapped before the fire department could set up, let
alone put out the flames.

Without hesitating, he plunged into the
stairwell and took the stairs three at a time as he ran up fifteen
flights to his floor.

Adrenaline and concern replaced his shock.
Kimber was soon consumed in saving lives except, this time, he had
the knowledge of being the one to place them in danger.

I can’t live with hurting
anyone else,
he thought.

No one died that night, aside from the men
Keladry killed, whose bodies were either never discovered or not
reported on. Keladry Savage vanished just as mysteriously.

Kimber stared at the photo on the front page
of the newspaper in his hands. Every day for the past week, since
the night of the fire, the papers had featured him and one of the
pictures snapped by bystanders with smartphones. Today’s photo left
him self-conscious and frustrated. He was photographed after his
last trip into the burning building, streaked with soot and
glistening with sweat, his sweatpants tugged too low for his
comfort and the muscles of his exposed upper body bulging from the
strain of carrying an elderly couple down the stairs.

The Hero Our City
Needs,
read the headline.

“You’re so wrong,” he retorted under his
breath to the ridiculous photo and byline.

Heroes didn’t shelter villains who set
entire buildings on fire after murdering home invaders.

The flames had spread fast and engulfed the
upper half of the building before the fire department was able to
extinguish them. Fortunately, it didn’t spread to the neighboring
building, but it did leave dozens of families homeless and
destroyed everything they owned.

Kimber balled up the paper and tossed it in
the recycle bin on the other side of the locker room. He leaned
forward, elbows on his thighs, and rubbed his face.

He hadn’t seen Keladry since ordering her
not to move. She was gone long before the police and fire
department arrived, and none of the pictures from the papers
featured her at all.

Not that he was concerned about what
happened to her.

Except he was.

Sort of.

I just want to see if she
survived,
he told himself for the tenth
time. He wanted to think it was professional courtesy to follow up
with a patient and ignored the protective instinct that flickered
to life whenever he thought of her.

Shaking his head, he stood. Keladry didn’t
deserve any such courtesy, not after how she’d murdered four men
and burnt down his apartment building without so much as a thought
about the consequences of her actions.

Such as the fact he, too, was homeless.

“Hey, hero,” called one of the ER nurses as
he entered the locker room.

Kimber forced a smile. 

“Basking in the glory of the city’s
gratitude?”

“Hardly,” Kimber replied. “Pulling double
shifts, as usual.”

“Same,” grunted the nurse as he opened his
locker. “Tish is looking for you.”

“What’s she doing here at this hour?” Kimber
glanced at his watch. The administrators were normally home by five
or six, not eleven.

“No idea. Hey, you wanna go out with a few
of us tomorrow night?”

“Probably not.” He had fielded several
requests for drinks or weekend events since appearing in the
newspaper and turned down everyone.

“Why not?” the nurse, Gary, pressed. “Don’t
tell me you have to work. We’re both scheduled to be off at six
tomorrow.”

Kimber hesitated. How did he tell anyone he
didn’t want to get too close, in case he fucked up his life again?
Or someone found out about Chicago?

“Think about it. I’ll ask you again
tomorrow,” Gary said with a smile. “It’s just three of us for
drinks.”

“I’ll let you know,” Kimber replied. On the
surface, he had no real reason to refuse. If someone asked him
about his past, he could defer or respond vaguely, like he’d
practiced in his head. Sometimes, he did miss human interaction.
“See you tomorrow.”

Kimber left the locker room and made his way
through the hospital to the administrators’ offices. The hallway
was dark, and only one office’s light was on. He tapped the door of
his supervisor.

Tish waved him in. Her nose was red, and she
clutched tissues in one hand.

“Hey, Kimber,” she said.

“You’re here late,” he replied.

“I’ve been fighting a bad cold the past
couple of days, but duty calls. Someone’s gotta approve the
timesheets.”

He sat down. “What can I do for you?”

“Melissa says you’re in need of a place to
stay?”

“Sort of. I just haven’t had the time to
find a new place yet,” he replied. “If it’s a problem I’m sleeping
in the –”

“It’s not a problem with the hospital. It’s
a problem with me, because I don’t want to see a good person living
in a miserable hospital,” Tish said. She reached into her purse and
pulled out an envelope, handing it to him.

“What’s this?” Kimber asked, accepting
it.

“Open it.”

He did so. Two house keys fell into his
hand.

“I have a friend who’s out of town for a
while. I asked if I could loan her place out, and she agreed.”

His gaze lifted, and he stared at Tish,
surprised.

“But it’ll give you a place to stay until
you’re back on your feet.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Kimber replied.
“This is incredibly generous, Tish. It’s almost too good to be
true.” He ran his thumb over one of the keys in his hand. The offer
was needed – he was tired of sleeping in a hospital bed – but also
sent an uncomfortable flicker of emotion floating through him. He
didn’t want to become attached to anyone, didn’t want to take the
chance of disappointing someone he admired in case he slipped up
here as he had in Chicago.

At his hesitation, Tish’s smile warmed. “You
deserve a place to sleep, Kimber. Directions are in the envelope.
Just give the address to a cabbie. If you need a day off to get
oriented, let me know.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Are you
sure? Is your friend sure?”

“We insist. You’re a hero, after all.” She
tapped the newspaper on her desk.

“I wish they would stop that shit,” he said
with more emotion than he intended. “I’m no hero.”

“You are to the seven people you saved.”

I’m the one who got their
homes destroyed in the first place.
Kimber
was quiet.

“Go home tonight,” Tish said. “There’s
nothing better than a nice shower and bed after a double
shift.”

It was true. He hadn’t spent much money on
his apartment – but he did buy an expensive bed. After being on his
feet all day, he needed it.

“Only until I find my own place,” he said
firmly.

“Take your time. She’s out of town until
fall.”

“Thank you, Tish. Really. This means a lot
to me.”

“You’re welcome. Go home.”

Kimber rose, clutching the keys in his hand.
Uncertain what to think about Tish’s kindness so soon after Gary
asked him to hang out, he felt both a longing to try to fit in and
the urge to flee, lest he fucked it all up again. He couldn’t bear
the kind of pain that came with not living up to the expectations
of people he respected.

“Thanks, again,” he murmured, torn.