Villains Inc. (Wearing the Cape) Read online

  “So we have a no-knock arrest warrant to serve, people. For the arrest of Dr. Charlotte Millebrand, whom Dr. Cornelius recognized from her grad-student days, and search warrants for her premises, properties, and place of business. We also have detectives ready to serve warrant for her financial, phone, and internet records. We need to nail her down for the murder of Mr. Moffat and tie her directly to the Outfit.”

  He returned the warrants to his pocket and sat back. Blackstone nodded to Lei Zi.

  “Can we expect a repeat performance of your fight tonight?” she asked Dr. Cornelius. He shook his head.

  “I doubt it. Qlippoth are not entities you want to invoke anywhere near you except under extremely controlled conditions—they’re the occult equivalent of a few tons of high-grade explosives. Want to kill everyone in the target area? Fine. Kill everyone but you in the target area? Not fine.”

  “So what can we expect?”

  Another shrug.

  “Maybe nothing. Supernaturals that can do what she did aren’t usually fireball-throwing Dungeons-and-Dragons wizards, or super-powered stage magicians like Blackstone. They’re old-school: a magic circle, lots of paraphernalia, rituals, more like setting up a computer program than pulling a trigger. She may have a few prepared charms and talismans, but if she’s waiting for us she’s more likely to have bodyguards or associates.”

  “And her associates could be the rest of Villains Inc.,” Rush said sourly.

  “Indeed,” Blackstone agreed. “This is not, however, the comic-books. I doubt that they have conveniently gathered in their secret headquarters to await our arrival. If they have, it is unlikely their headquarters is in a nice residential neighborhood.”

  “In any case,” Lei Zi said, “our task tonight is to serve the warrant at her residence. CPD street cameras have confirmed that she arrived home tonight, and don’t show any camera hits on her vehicle since seven o’clock. Patrol cars have been moved into the neighborhood, though not onto her street. Since they haven’t reported any unusual activity to Dispatch, I doubt she is forting up—she may not be aware of what happened last night.

  “However,” she looked around the table, “since we are going up against a supernatural breakthrough of unknown capabilities, we are going in hot. Riptide, The Harlequin, and Galatea are acting as field reserve, Rush, Astra, Seven, Artemis and I are taking point. Doctor Cornelius, will you accompany us?”

  He nodded.

  “Good.” Lei Zi brought up a projection of the house we were hitting, a mini-mansion in Norridge, and went over our approach. “We move out in ten minutes,” she finished. “As a last order of business, since we are engaging an unknown who seems to be dealing with the dark arts, I have taken the liberty of calling on Father Nolan. He intends to conduct a brief service in the chapel, and I recommend attendance by anyone who believes a higher power may be of help tonight.”

  * * *

  I lit three candles, for Atlas, Nimbus, and Ajax, and prayed for the peace of their souls. Mary of the Pagans stood watch over the memorial crypt in the east wall of the chapel, infant Jesus in one hand and love-struck parrot in the other. Responding to her rapt smile, I added a prayer of thanks for whatever had happened to us, and almost imagined a wink, the gentle closing of a white-jade eye, a deepening dimple. Think nothing of it, she seemed to say.

  “Shaliah,” Dr. Cornelius said behind me, making me jump. He nodded to the Lady in her shrine.

  “The aethyr of Phthenoth, the decan of cleansing, healing, and restoration of body and spirit. The personification of the second Word I spoke, tonight.” He smiled thinly. “If your theology is sufficiently liberal, you could call her one of the aspects of the Mother of God.”

  He lit a fourth candle. “Gone now, along with the first. Ten years carrying the Words around, and now only one is left. At least now I’m pretty sure the last one won’t kill me.”

  “You didn’t know what would happen?”

  “No. I’m an Agrippan magus; preparation is everything and I wasn’t prepared for that. When you’re about to die, you take chances.”

  “I felt…”

  “I know.”

  “He wouldn’t have given them to you for no reason,” I blurted. He gave me a patronizing smile, like I’d just declared my belief in Santa Clause.

  “Children.”

  I turned again and found that Father Nolan had joined us. The little round priest smiled benignly. Barely taller than I, the pastor of St. Christopher (and Team Chaplain, and hadn’t that come as a shock?) stood surrounded by the rest of the team. In the face of Father Nolan’s gentle smile, Dr. Cornelius slowly lost his.

  “Brrr,” Shelly said, popping in beside me. His being able to see her still freaked her out, but she obviously felt safe with Father Nolan present. I didn’t dare laugh—nobody would understand.

  The whole team doesn’t usually muster before going into action—normally any trouble involving everybody together starts with Dispatch calling us in from all over (Lei Zi calls them “meeting engagements” and purely hates them). Donning his stole, Father Nolan led us in a brief service, what he half-jokingly called a “hymn before action.” He kept it non-denominational, except for the ending when he led us in the Hero’s Prayer.

  “St. Michael, defender of man, stand with us in the day of battle.

  St. Jude, giver of hope, be with us in our desperate hour.

  St. Christopher, bearer of burdens, lift us when we fall!”

  I crossed myself, remembering iron claws and veils of rotting skin, and added a quick prayer of my own.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Supernatural (plural: supernaturals): literally, a phenomena departing from what is usual or normal, especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature. Modern connotation: a breakthrough patterned after elements of myth, folklore, and fantasy rather than fitting the superhero mold. Documented supernaturals include vampires, witches, fairies, ghosts, angels, devils, etc. It is often difficult to determine which supernaturals are breakthroughs and which are the projections of unknown breakthroughs.

  Barlow’s Guide to Superhumans

  * * *

  Dr. Charlotte Millebrand, antiquarian, folklorist, and wicked witch, lived in a stone tower. Surrounded by nice but single-story subdivision homes, her house was all stone-faced angles and sharp peaks, with the front door set into a tower-like entryway. I imagined Disney on a tight budget; with no outside lights on, it looked spooky enough—kids probably dared each other to ring the doorbell on Halloween—but it wasn’t exactly a master-villain’s volcano lair.

  Judges understand that approaching a hostile superhuman with unknown abilities can get interesting, and we’d been issued a no-knock warrant for Dr. Millebrand; if I’d wanted to, I could have gone in through the roof. Instead, Lei Zi decided on subtlety.

  Landing, I took the point position. Lei Zi floated down as Artemis condensed out of mist, and the others arrived in the floater Vulcan hadn’t quite finished in time for the godzilla attack. Quin, Riptide, and Galatea remained with the floater. I waited until Rush, Lei Zi, Seven, Artemis, and Dr. Cornelius were properly stacked up behind me (Artemis minding the doctor), then put my hand on the doorknob and pushed, popping the lock. The door open, Rush disappeared inside while we waited.

  “No heat-signatures,” I whispered, and then Rush was back with us.

  “Nobody home, either,” he reported. “At least not anywhere I could get into.”

  “I’m not sensing anything on the psychic plane,” Chakra reported through Dispatch.

  “Teleportation?” Lei Zi asked Dr. Cornelius. “Has she bugged out?” She hadn’t walked away; Vulcan had a drone circling and would have alerted us if someone headed out the back way. The magus shrugged and Lei Zi nodded. “In.”

  We advanced, me in the lead, across a marble floor. No alarms, though I saw a system blinking green beside the door, and the house was dark. Shelly popped into virtual existence beside me.

  “I hacked her bank accounts,
” she whispered needlessly. “She employs a daytime cleaning service and meal caterer. The place needs an Igor.” I snickered before I could stop myself. Heavy drapes, lots of dark oak furniture, Shelly was right: the place screamed the need for a sinister minion. Down the entry hall and on the right past the circling staircase, an open door led into what had to be her study.

  We advanced into the room together, Seven and Artemis reversing to cover the door. Bringing the whole team had been starting to feel like ridiculous overkill, but this was more like it.

  Candle stands stood between the bookshelves lining the walls that didn’t hold Tiffany windows, and the peaked ceiling was capped in glass so outside light could shine in on the center of the circular room. All the furniture had been pulled back to the walls, and a huge Persian carpet had been rolled up to expose an eye-wateringly intricate series of circles and symbols on the slate floor.

  “Ritual circle,” Dr. Cornelius said quietly. “Note the pentacle—the inverted star oriented south—and the isolated triangle containing its own circle. It’s designed for geotic magic, summoning. The magician stands inside the pentagram and summons whatever he is invoking to appear in the triangle, where he bargains with it or binds it.”

  “Is it… active?” Lei Zi asked. He shook his head.

  “Without Dr. Millibrand to power it with her gift, it’s just fancy chalk-art.”

  I silently agreed; I didn’t feel any of the weird distortion we’d experienced at Mr. Moffat’s place. If Lei Zi had been there, she wouldn’t be asking now. While she studied it, angling to make sure her head-cam got good pictures of the circle, I walked around the room, looking for anything that seemed out of place. With the doctor’s dramatic taste in architecture and interior design, I couldn’t put it past her to have a secret room somewhere. A safe-room or emergency exit, at the very least.

  Everything looked right, but something bothered me. “Artemis—”

  I nearly shrieked when the cat hissed at me. He’d come in one of the open windows while my back was turned, and obviously didn’t like us. A crackling whine peaked and died, telling me Lei Zi had almost turned the yellow-eyed monster into disassociating bits of scorched black fur. Artemis lowered her gun, and I started giggling.

  Lei Zi turned back to Dr. Cornelius.

  “Do you think you can do something similar to what you did at Mr. Moffat’s residence? Without the excitement?”

  He nodded. “I can tell you what she did here, and when…”

  And suddenly I knew what had been bugging me—a smell that shouldn’t have been there, under the candles and chalk and cat, something I’d smelled before in a forensics lab. C4. Lots of it.

  “Hot zone!” I yelled. “Bugout!” Artemis vanished into mist, Rush grabbed Lei Zi and Dr. Cornelius and disappeared over the wall into Hypertime, and Seven bolted from the room. I grabbed for the spitting cat.

  And my world blew up.

  The explosion blew me through the Tiffany windows in a cloud of glass, and I pushed myself along instead of fighting the burning blast-front. Tumbled so bad I didn’t know which way was up, I tucked into a ball and let gravity sort it out.

  Sitting up on the lawn as bits of house fell around me, I couldn’t see anybody else. “Astra! Report!” Lei Zi demanded. “Are you safe?”

  “Sorry! Astra secure! The cat!” I looked around frantically. I’d just touched its fur…

  “Focus! Determine the blast-zone and begin evac on your side!” A cloud of white smoke erupted from the shattered McMansion as Riptide hit it with all the water he could pull from the air.

  Right. Deep breaths. I stopped searching the lawn and lifted off.

  Two neighboring yards shared the Millibrand property’s back wall, but though bits of burning wood frame and roof tiles still fell, neither home was close enough to be compromised by the blast. One home stayed dark but lights came on in the second, so I flew over the house and dropped to the front porch. The man who opened the door on the third ring had that wild look of someone dealing with stuff with a half-asleep brain spiking on adrenaline, but at least he’d thrown on a robe.

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” I said softly. “But there’s been an incident and we need to evacuate you until the situation is secure. Family?”

  He stared, then turned as evacuate sank in. I gently grabbed his arm. “Family?”

  “Stop—! Fran, the kids.”

  “Two?” He nodded.

  “Then get Fran, grab some clothes, your wallet, cell phone, and your car keys, and I’ll meet you outside with the children.” I kept my voice soft and spoke slowly, and he calmed down a bit.

  “Down the hall,” he said. “Tom and Annie.”

  I knocked on the first door, opening it to find Tom already up, staring out the window at the bonfire over the wall. He spun around, eyes wide: ten, maybe eleven, head an untidy mop of bedtime-hair.

  “Hi Tom,” I said, using the same voice as I’d used with his dad. “Sorry we woke you up, but now you need to grab some shoes and socks and come with me.” I found a wrinkled t-shirt and pair of pants on the floor and tucked them under my arm.

  “You’re—”

  “Yes I am, and if you’re very good I’ll give you my autograph later. But now we need to get your sister.”

  A cute little moppet maybe half her brother’s age, Annie wasn’t even completely awake; her sleepy brain had probably heard the explosion and tucked it into her dreams. I grabbed a jumper off her chair, found her sock-drawer on the second try, pulled a pair of Tigger sneakers from under the bed, and draped her over my shoulder while Tom watched silently.

  “Let’s go find your parents,” I said, and we did. Crowded into the front hall, they all followed me outside. While their dad pulled the car out of the garage I listened to Dispatch; no warnings for me, but the sirens splitting the night were multiplying.

  “Is your neighbor home?” I asked Fran as I helped her dress little Annie, who offered all the resistance of a rag-doll. Tom got the idea and pulled his own clothes on. There’s something about being dressed that helps in an emergency.

  “They—they’re on vacation,” she said. We’re collecting their mail.”

  “Good.” I herded them over to the car, Fran carrying Annie. “Mr….”

  “Scott Talbot,” he said as his family piled in.

  “Mr. Talbot. Go find a hotel. What’s your phone number?” He gave it to me and I repeated it. “I’m sure everything will be fine, and I’ll call you personally when it’s okay to come back.” He nodded without protest. Not a time for questions, smart man. As the family suburban pulled away, I did a pop-up inspection of their home and then headed for the next house over. After doing a quick circuit using infravision to look for hot-spots, I dropped back down by the floater, still parked in front of the blown-up property.

  Hands in his pockets, Seven stood talking to Fisher and a police sergeant. His sport-coat had gotten scorched, but it looked like thick interior walls had channeled most of the blast out the windows and through the roof.

  “Damn, Astra!” he said, getting a look at me. “Did you roll in it?” Fisher raised an eyebrow.

  Looking down at myself, I groaned; Andrew reinforced my costumes as much as he could, but tonight I’d exceeded specs by an epic margin. Burn holes marched across the skirt and costume front. Pulling my cape around, I found it had been blown half off and dangled in tatters. I reached up for my mask, and Seven shook his head.

  “The mask is still one piece, but you look like somebody dumped live coals in your hair. You didn’t notice?”

  I was amazed Mr. Talbot had let me in. “What happened?” I asked Fisher.

  He shook his head. “We still don’t know. We’ve got an all-points bulletin out on her and are getting a court order to track her bank account and cards; if she tries to catch a plane, train, or even bus we’ve got her, but since we don’t even know how she got out of the neighborhood…”

  He shrugged. “I’m more concerned with her attempting
to rub out your entire team.”

  “What?”

  He started another cig. “Think about it.”

  I did while Seven watched.

  “Oh. Oh no.”

  “No, what?” Seven asked, obviously not getting it.

  “The timing. Oh God.” I realized I was hugging myself, and dropped my arms. “If she knew we were coming, and just wanted to get rid of the evidence, she could have blown the place when she left. Or left it on a timer.”

  “Didn’t she?”

  I gave him a twisty smile. “I assumed it was your luck—you wouldn’t have survived, so your crazy luck made me notice the C4 in time.” I looked at Fisher. “It wasn’t, was it?”