Villainous (26 page)

“You,” said Daniel, wiping away tears. “You’re so deluded. Still the crying kid in the outhouse, who wants to be the hero so bad. You’re pathetic and sad, Herman. And I’d feel sorry for you if you weren’t so dangerous.”

“And you are no longer a part of this story,” said Herman. “You’re irrelevant.”

Herman pressed a button on the control panel and barked into the speaker. “Lawrence! Hector!”

The door opened and the lumbering bodyguards stepped back into the room. The two looked like they’d
been arguing, and Lawrence, red-faced, was glaring once again at Herman.

Herman either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“I want you to take Daniel to the safe house. Stay with him until dawn, then set him loose.”

“Set him loose?” said Lawrence. “You crazy?”

Hector put up a hand in warning. “Cool it, man.”

“No way,” said Lawrence. “This kid can ID us. He’s got me for kidnapping and you for arson. I didn’t put up with all this super-villain nonsense just to get thrown back in jail!”

“You won’t go to jail,” said Herman. “I will protect you.”

“Oh yeah?” said Lawrence. “If you haven’t noticed, you’re a dead man walking! You keep saying after tomorrow you’ll be able to fix all our problems, but after tomorrow all I see you being is that much closer to kicking it.”

“Hey, he’s treated us fair so far,” said Hector. “Paid us right.”

“And made us put up with all his craziness,” said Lawrence as he started pacing around the bunker. “Look at this place! What’s it for? It has something to do with that Witch Comet or whatever, but he won’t tell us!”

Herman very coolly and calmly stood up from his chair. “What happens here is my business,” he said. “And your business is to do what I pay you for. Handsomely, I might add. Now take Daniel here to the safe house and keep him there until morning.
Safe
until morning.”

“Stop telling me what to do!” shouted Lawrence as he
jabbed a thick finger in Herman’s face. Herman didn’t even blink.

“Lower your voice, you fool,” said Herman.

“Why?” said Lawrence. “We’re in a freaking concrete bunker! Who’s gonna hear us?”

Hector put a hand on his partner’s arm. “Maybe we should do like the old man says.”

“Get your hands off me!” said Lawrence, turning on Hector. “No one’s giving me any more orders!” The bodyguards’ argument was dissolving quickly into a shoving match as Lawrence continued to yell threats.

“Shut him up!” hissed Herman as he cast a fearful gaze toward the ceiling. Daniel wondered what Herman was so afraid of, but he didn’t have to wonder for very long. An alarm sounded—a chiming bell that dinged in time with a flashing light on Herman’s computer console. Lawrence and Hector gave up their struggle and looked around worriedly.

“What is that?” asked Hector.

“The proximity alarm,” said Herman as he leaned over the console. Peering at the monitors, the old man said, “Brace yourselves.”

Daniel’s first thought was that he’d been too late and the Witch Fire Comet had arrived. His second thought was he didn’t want to be there when it hit. He’d just turned to make a dash for the doorway when he felt a strong hand grab his shirt collar.

“Where you going?” snarled Lawrence.

Daniel tried to pull away from the big man’s grasp. “We have to get out of here!” Daniel shouted. “It’s coming!”

“What’s coming?” said Lawrence.

“Not
what
,” answered Herman, who had grown strangely calm as he stood up straight and adjusted his glasses. “
Who
. I told you to be quiet.”

It started with a distant rumble, like a far-off earthquake. Then the concrete ceiling began to buckle and crack.

“What the—” Lawrence’s words were lost in an explosion of dirt and stone as the bunker burst open. Large chucks of concrete began raining down all around them, and Daniel turned just in time to see a section of the wall behind him coming loose.

Daniel shouted at Lawrence to move, but the bodyguard panicked when he saw the toppling blocks of concrete. Lawrence threw himself clear of the rubble, but in doing so shoved Daniel toward the collapsing wall.

Then Daniel was lying on the ground, unable to catch his breath. Something heavy and hard was on top of him, crushing him. There was dust in his eyes, but that didn’t matter because he couldn’t see anyway. There wasn’t air enough in his lungs to call for help. He was losing consciousness. His last thought before darkness took him was that he didn’t want to do this alone.

The sunlight was filtering in through the attic window—burnt-orange, an autumn color. His gram looked thin, and she breathed too deeply, as if it was hard for her to catch a breath. It was strange to see her in the flesh, because she’d been dead for almost two years now. But there was something familiar about all of this, and she was smiling and looked happy, so Daniel didn’t want to question it
.

“By the way, I hear you met little Mollie Lee from across the street,” she was saying. “Such a sweetheart. A real cutie too. Don’t you think?”

At the mention of Mollie, the ball in Daniel’s stomach did a small, unexpected flip. Why was Gram smiling?

“She’s okay,” he said quickly. “For a girl, I mean. She’s fun to hang out with. Actually, she’s more like a boy in a lot of ways.…”

Why was it so stuffy in here?

“Well,” continued Gram, “I remember when she was just a chubby little thing in pigtails and frilly dresses. The poor girl’s mother tried for years to dress her like one of those porcelain dolls, but it never looked right on Mollie. She dirtied up more beautiful dresses.… Eventually her parents must’ve just given up.”

Daniel smiled at the thought of Mollie wearing a frilly anything. “Can’t say I blame them,” he said. “When Mollie gets her mind set on something, that’s the end of it.”

“You don’t say? And what’s she got her mind set on these days?”

Another stomach jump. Just what was Gram getting at?

“Nothing. I mean, she’s always on about something or other, but it’s never a big deal. Girl stuff, you know?”

Gram nodded and rested her chin on her hands as she twirled her cane between her fingers. Her bent shape was silhouetted against the attic window, and just over her shoulder, Daniel could see the sun drooping low through the trees. In the pink evening glow, she looked like she had before the cancer—rosy and full of health
.

“I’m glad that you’re making friends, Daniel. I know that coming here couldn’t have been easy on you—a new town, a new school. There’s a lot of grown-up stuff going on here with my being sick and all, but I don’t want you to forget to be a kid—at least for a little while longer.”

Daniel nodded
.

She reached over and pinched Daniel on the arm. Her eyes looked a little moist, but Daniel couldn’t be sure in the fading light
.

“Don’t grow up too fast, Daniel. No matter what else happens, promise me that.”

“I promise, Gram,” he said. “I promise.”

“Give him room, Mol. Let him work.”

“You’ve got to do more! You’ve got to try harder!”

“Hey, look at that! Something’s happening.”

The first thing Daniel saw when he opened his eyes was Mollie’s face. She was crying. Not some pretty, movie kind of crying—Mollie didn’t do that. This was ugly, heaving, sobbing crying with tears and snot bubbles. The real deal.

She was also squeezing Daniel’s hand so hard his fingers had gone numb.

“Mollie?”

“I got your text,” she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“Where am I?” he asked, and as he tried to sit up, he gasped in pain. Every muscle in his body ached. He was lying amid a pile of rubble and he felt terrible.

“You can thank him,” said Rohan, appearing next to him and pointing to Johnny, who was lying beside him. Johnny looked awful. Sweaty and pale, he was taking deep breaths, as if he couldn’t get quite enough air.

“You …,” said Daniel. He was still having trouble
focusing. He’d been talking to his gram, a conversation that they’d had years ago, and yet just then it had seemed like she was talking about the here and now.

The now. Daniel remembered the wall collapsing. He remembered the struggle to breathe. There shouldn’t have been a now.

“It was you?” asked Daniel, and Johnny gave a weak nod.

“Look what happens when I play hero,” said Johnny. “I almost brought the whole ceiling down. I’m sorry.”

“But you healed me,” said Daniel. “I thought you could do that only with small things.”

“Me too,” whispered Johnny. “But … I had to try.”

“It wiped him out,” said Rohan. “For a minute there, I thought we were going to lose both of you.”

Daniel pushed himself up to sitting and looked around. They were still in the bunker, although most of it was now in ruins. There was no sign of Herman, or Lawrence and Hector, but there was a hole in the ceiling big enough to drop a car through.

“We were up top trying to convince Johnny to evacuate the school when I heard shouting,” said Rohan. “It sounded like it came from below us, and then Gerald McNally—you remember that Peeping Tom kid with the X-ray vision? He started looking through the ground and said he saw people under there and that one of them looked like you.”

“Then Johnny did that,” said Mollie, pointing at the massive hole in the ceiling.

“Herman ran through there,” said Rohan, pointing to the door. “His thugs escaped through the tunnel.”

“Help me up,” said Daniel, and Mollie put her arm around him for support.

Rohan had helped Johnny to sit up, but the old hero, for once, looked his age. Daniel examined the hole Johnny had created. He’d broken through at least six feet of earth and another two of solid concrete. He’d torn this bunker open like it was a wrapped present. Now he was so weak he could barely sit up.

From somewhere up top, through the jagged hole, came the sound of fighting.

“What’s going on up there?” Daniel asked, worried.

“It’s Eric and the rest of our friends,” said Mollie. “Fighting the Nobles.”

“What?”

“When I got your message, I contacted Michael and Louisa. I figured I might need help getting everyone out of here.”

“It’s a good thing too,” said Rohan. “After Johnny crashed into Herman’s hideout, the Nobles tried to stop us from following him. I think they’re working for Herman!”

“Yeah, I kind of figured that out already,” said Daniel. “So Eric and Michael and Louisa are alone against the Nobles?”

“No,” said Mollie. “You won’t believe it but Bud and Simon are helping too.”

“Simon?” That was twice now that Simon had been there
when needed. Once a Super, always a Super. And Bud … Well, apparently people really could change.

“But you came down here to be with me, Mol,” said Daniel.

Mollie nodded.

Daniel was afraid she might start to cry again. “You feel like hitting someone?”

“It’s about time,” she sniffed.

“Can you get me up top, first? I want to see what’s going on.”

“Sure.”

“Rohan,” said Daniel, “you keep an eye on Johnny until he gets his strength back.”

“Be careful,” said Rohan.

“I will.”

Daniel looked at Johnny and found himself at a loss for words. Johnny Noble—the man who’d disappointed him, who’d frustrated and, at times, even frightened him—had just saved his life. A simple thanks wouldn’t begin to cover all of what needed to be said.

“Go,” said Johnny. “I’ll be along in a … in a minute.”

Daniel nodded, then put his arms around Mollie as she leaned into him. “Okay, let’s go.”

Mollie flew them up through the hole and into the night air. And directly into the middle of a war zone.

It was the Supers versus the Nobles all over again, only this time the odds were more even. Not only did the Supers
have a few extra fighters on their side, but they knew what the Nobles could do. There would be no surprises this time.

Nevertheless, the Nobles were putting up a brutal fight. Daniel couldn’t actually spot Drake in all the chaos, but the signs of his passing were everywhere. Large swaths of the lawn were aflame, and the immaculately trimmed hedges had gone up like kindling. Automatic building sprinklers were already spraying water and foam everywhere to combat the blaze.

Simon was locked in a duel with Mutt, and he was barely keeping the savage kid at bay with his bolts of electricity as Mutt dodged his blasts with superhuman agility. But whenever he got close enough to try and swipe at Simon, Mutt would leap back with a yowl of pain—touching Simon when he was charged up like that was a bad idea.

Daniel had been more worried about Hunter, however. The teleporter had taken Eric out of the fight last time with a touch, but this time he hadn’t been so lucky. Hunter was lying on the grass, clutching his stomach and getting violently sick all over himself. Apparently, Hunter needed to concentrate to teleport, and it was hard to concentrate when you were busy retching up everything you’d eaten in the last week. A cloud of greenish fog clung to him, and whenever he tried to crawl away, the noxious vapor followed him. Bud was standing a few feet away, the boy’s round face twisted up in concentration. Bud had learned to control his power after all, and at exactly the right time.

“We’re doing okay for once,” said Daniel, but the words had barely escaped his lips when Mollie yelled, “LOOK OUT!”

She shoved him to the ground just as a fireball went soaring past, right where Daniel’s head had been.

Skye was walking toward them. Her face was all twisted in anger as she used her telekinesis to tear up flaming bushes around her to serve as missiles. Daniel and Mollie barely had time to roll out of the way before a fiery stump slammed into the ground and tumbled past them.

Skye had lifted three more burning branches into the air, and was preparing to launch them at Mollie and Daniel. Despite her expression of absolute malice, the girl was laughing as she stalked toward them. That cruel, heartless laugh of hers.

“Get out of here!” Daniel yelled.