Villainous (17 page)

Good. If Irma thought it was a decent plan, then my brain wasn’t completely trashed.

“This isn’t too far out of the way,” she said. “I should show up maybe twenty, thirty minutes after you. If Dave isn’t in immediate danger, you’ll wait for me?”

I nodded.

“Don’t mind me,” Eddy said. “I’m just the driver. I don’t need to know your secret plans.”

Irma passed him the paper. He squinted, and while he read it, Irma fixed me with an unreadable stare. I hated not being able to read her mind like I usually could when she acted all mysterious like that.

“I can do it for you,” she said after a moment. “In the end. So you don’t have to.”

Ah. Killing Mary was what she meant. I shook my head. If it came to that, I’d do it myself. She was my sister, and I owed her enough to do it personally.

Eddy passed the paper back to Irma. “Sounds fun. Too bad you can’t ride with us, doll.”

“I’ll manage,” she said. “And if you call me that again, I’ll cut out your tongue and make you cook it for dinner. Now get—”

Irma stopped, sensing someone’s approach. Julio walked up behind us, and he’d put back on his mask. Agent Lagarde must have changed her mind. How stupid could I be? I should have gone over the plan with Irma and Eddy after we’d left the hospital far behind.

“I already went through this with Agent Lagarde.” Irma stepped protectively in front of me. “And I hate to use the same threat more than once.”

Eddy’s hand went stealthily to the gun in the glove compartment, and Irma’s fingers twitched in anticipation of grabbing one of her knives. There had to be some way I could convince Julio to let us go without mind-control. After we rescued Dave, I did
not
want to explain to him how his former sidekick had gotten shot and stabbed.

“I’m not here to stop you,” Julio said. “I’m going with you.”

It wasn’t the answer Irma had been expecting. She stepped back and looked at me questioningly.

“No,” I said.

“Why the hell not?” he growled.

I stood up. “You’re a… You’re… Dave…”

“I’m going,” Julio said. “If anyone’s staying, it’s you. Look at you. You should be in a hospital bed. You can’t even—”

“Watch your mouth, kid.” Eddy got out of the front seat. “Do I need to smack some respect into you?”

Julio’s hands clenched into fists, and I swore I could feel the two of them releasing testosterone into the air like steaming teapots. Before they could start brawling, I jabbed my finger into Julio’s chest.

“This,” I said, pointing to the double-F symbol on his chest. “You’re this. We’re… We’re not.”

“You’re a hero,” Irma translated. “Our version of rescuing someone involves a lot more execution-style shots to the head than you’d be comfortable with. You’d only slow us down.”

Irma meant well, but that wasn’t exactly what I’d meant to say. I wanted to tell him that he was a hero and should stay true to the laws and ideals he was supposed to uphold, that Dave wouldn’t want him to fall in with what we were about to do. Not that I’d mean a word of it, but it would’ve had a better chance of swaying him than Irma’s insults.

“I don’t care.” Julio’s voice was a lot lower and raspier than I was used to. “She-Devil has Dave. I won’t let her use him the way she did me. I’m going to stop her.” He’d been speaking to Irma, but now he turned to me. “Whatever it takes.”

Lord, he was just like Elisa. Except he was even less likely to listen to me than she was, and I couldn’t afford to waste time arguing with him or cause a scene that would draw the police.

“F-Fine,” I said. And that was enough talk. I walked around the car and got into the passenger seat. The others followed my lead and got moving.

It was time for round three against Mary, and this time, I couldn’t afford to lose.

Chapter 16

The house was practically on the opposite coast, and we felt every minute of the hour and a half drive. I turned on the car’s interior lights even though they would dim Eddy’s night vision, since I needed it to write by. No instructions this time, but a detailed account of everything I’d done today. If I had another instance of memory loss, I couldn’t risk missing or repeating a step in my plan. I couldn’t risk making any mistakes whatsoever.

The wind was picking up outside, and cloud cover blotted out the stars. Occasionally, lightning streaked across the sky ahead of us, briefly illuminating the miles of flat swampland to either side of the road. But other than those short instances, the view outside was darkness broken up by the occasional blinking red light of a far-off radio tower, and the lights of the few other cars on the road. The rumble of thunder was soft and distant, and it hadn’t started raining yet, but it would. It was probably just waiting until we got to where we were going.

Eventually, we did get there, passing through small towns with lit-up signs advertising cheap motels and barbeque restaurants. What few houses were out here had Halloween decorations up: jack-o-lanterns, fake headstones, and inflatable likenesses of Dr. Grim and other supervillains who were long dead and not able to firebomb companies for selling tacky decorations based on them. I pointed out to Eddy where to turn, using Mary’s memories as my guide. The house was off on its own, no neighbors nearby to notice the drug-making operation. The limbs of the trees whipped about in the wind, and our headlights briefly caught a possum as it scurried across the road. Brief, light raindrops started to tap against the windshield.

“Close,” I said. “Lights…off.”

Eddy dutifully switched off his headlights. He killed the radio, too, cutting off a Johnny Cash song as the anxiety we’d felt for the whole drive reached its climax.

“Pull over,” I said after another quarter-mile. “We’ll w-w—we’ll…”

“Walk?” Eddy supplied, and his voice was painful in its gentleness.

“Yes.”

He pulled over and cut the engine, and I put on my bulletproof vest as we all got out of the car. The air outside was humid and smelled of ozone and imminent rain. Eddy popped the trunk, and when we went around back to it, Julio swore.

“Where did you—you can’t possibly have licenses for all these.” He stared as the dim lights inside the trunk illuminated an array of tightly packed weaponry. “That one’s not even legal in the States, and—is that a rocket launcher?”

“Welcome to the dark side, kid,” Eddy said. “We’ve got all the best toys.”

Eddy passed out night-vision goggles, and he and I strapped on holsters and loaded up guns. Julio hesitated.

“You know how to use one of these?” Eddy asked. “You can admit it if you don’t. We’re all friends here.”

“I know how to use one,” Julio grumbled as he snatched up a small pistol. “I had training at the academy.”

“Ooh, training at the academy. Everybody step back. We’ve got an ace sharp-shooter here.”

“Eddy,” I chided.

Julio turned pointedly from Eddy to address me. “What’s the plan?”

“Val leads,” Eddy answered for me, all business now. “We get close as quietly as we can and assess the situation. If Dave’s in danger, we start shooting. If not, we wait for Irma.”

Julio looked at the gun in his hand. He’d probably never used one outside of a training ground. Heroes tended not to carry guns on account of that kid-friendly image they had to keep up. “Okay,” he said.

I led them on foot down the side of the road, night-vision goggles tight around my skull. Julio and Eddy knew how to move quietly, and none of us disturbed the night as we crept steadily forward. Light raindrops tickled my skin, but they grew slowly harder and more frequent until it was pouring. Of
course
it didn’t start pouring until we were outside the car. We grew utterly soaked in less than a minute, but I took advantage of it, leading us off-road and through the woods. We would have made too much noise stomping through the undergrowth under normal circumstances, but the sound of falling rain would hide that, and hopefully, we could avoid any guards or security cameras by staying behind the trees.

Mary’s memories of this place had No-Men guarding the perimeter. They were creations of Dr. Sweet’s, people he’d taken off the streets, lobotomized, and turned into violent drones. If one of them spotted us, the others would know instantly. On the bright side, they were lousy shots, but they tended to swarm people and beat them to death, and two months ago, Dr. Sweet had unveiled a batch upgraded with super-strength.

Would they still be here? Would Dr. Sweet have left them after he’d been taken to prison? Could anyone else control them besides him? He wasn’t here, but I could feel him pulling the strings all the way from the Inferno. He’d known Mary was the one behind the drug ring, and though he hadn’t admitted to inventing psyc, his smirk when he’d evaded the question had said it all. If Mary hadn’t stolen Dave’s body, I’d have gladly let her wreck this place in a doomed attempt to get more merchandise. Heck, I’d have pulled up a lawn chair and snacked on popcorn as I watched her do it. Anything Dr. Sweet had a hand in was something I wanted to see destroyed.

I pushed wet palm fronds out of my way and wiped thick trails of droplets from my goggles, which were really digging into the skin around my eyes. Eddy and Julio kept close behind me, and as I hoped, it was impossible to pick out their footsteps from the sound of water crashing through the leaves and pounding the brush. My ribs and back ached, a dull reminder of the beating Mary had given me, and every time I put weight on my left leg, the spot where the bed had clipped me flared up. But it was fine; it just encouraged me to pay back Mary in kind. Bits of green-tinged light became visible through the trees ahead, and I pressed on more cautiously. The house was coming into view.

Mary’s memories of it showed a once-grand house with peeling white paint, broken posts along the front porch’s railing, and shingles missing from the gray roof. It was impossible to see those details even with the goggles. In the rain and darkness, the house was just a large, looming shape perched on the riverside, the water behind it riled by the storm. Dim lights came from several of the windows, and a shadow passed across one of them, so evidently, someone was home. There were two cars parked in the grass near the dirt drive, and a small motorboat lurched up and down on the waves, tied to a dilapidated dock. Again, it was hard to see color and detail, but one of the cars looked like the right shape to be the one Mary had stolen after ripping the steering wheel off of her own car.

I reached out telepathically, an instinct
as natural to me as breathing, but all I got was pounding in my head and a big load of nothingness. This was where my powerlessness was going to screw me over the most. At the very least, I should be able to sense who was in the building and if Mary had put Dave’s life at risk with her stupidity. At best, I’d be able to force anyone who might be a threat into unconsciousness. But all I could do was stand here and wonder what was going on inside. Is this what it’s like for other people? How do you all survive without telepathy?

Eddy held up three fingers and pointed around the house. I peered at the spots he’d indicated and eventually saw them: No-Men, standing so still that they could’ve almost been mistaken for statues. They wore rain-drenched suits, and my goggles tinted their white masks green. But I knew what they looked like even without a good view: plastic masks molded in the shape of a human face, devoid of expression like a mannequin, and creepy as hell. At least the bodies wearing the masks looked normal from here. The ones with super-strength were bulkier and misshapen, since whatever procedure Dr. Sweet did on them warped their bodies.

The three of them were spaced along the perimeter of the house, and while they weren’t wearing night-vision goggles like we were, they couldn’t fail to spot us if we came out from behind the tree line It was just empty grass and a flat driveway between here and there. Somehow, I had to get closer; otherwise, I’d have no way of knowing if Dave was in danger. If he was the one in control of his body, I’d have more confidence, but Mary didn’t have his skill. She didn’t know how to use his strength or compensate for his weaknesses. Worst of all, she didn’t care about how much damage he would take. Why would she? She was going to dump his body when she was finished with it, like tossing away a bulletproof vest that had done its job.

Maybe we could circle around and come at the house from the riverside. It wasn’t like we could get any wetter. Though there were probably No-Men posted on that side of the house, too.

“I can give us cover,” Julio said in a low voice.

“Hold your horses, cowboy,” Eddy said. “Nobody’s firing at us yet, and we’re trying to be sneaky here.”

“Not cover fire. Just cover.” He looked back and forth between us. “It’s raining.”

He said that like it should mean something, and after a moment, I understood.

“D-Do it,” I said.

Julio extended his hand toward the house, and I felt the muggy heat on my face before anything happened visibly. The sheets of falling rain before us began to turn to steam, spreading outward like a fog. It was slow, not because Julio couldn’t do it faster, but because he didn’t want to make it obvious that the mist was unnatural. The steam grew thicker and larger until it engulfed the house and everything in sight, and the night grew quieter as rain evaporated before it could hit the ground. I listened for any sound of alarm but heard nothing. It was now or never.

I led the way softly and slowly across the grass. The illusion that this was a normal fog would only work on someone inside the house. Out here, it was obvious that this was no cool mist; it was like walking through a sauna. If the No-Men were normal humans, they would have known something was wrong. That was the disadvantage of using guards with carved-out brains: they had a set number of reactions programmed into them. They knew to kill any strangers they saw approaching; anything other than that wouldn’t even register with them.

I based my angle of approach off memory, since it was impossible to see the No-Men now. I went across the front lawn and came at the house from the side, hoping to be behind the No-Men by the time we got close enough for them to discern us. The house, at least, became visible through the steam as we got closer. I aimed for the front porch, and the shape of the closest No-Man emerged from the whiteness.