Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) Read online

  “Always.” If it wasn’t so serious I’d be laughing at the freaky role-reversal. Shelly was always the one pushing, daring me. “C’mon.” She took my hand, let me pull her out of the car, and didn’t let go till we were through the front door. At least she had the presence of mind to set her strength parameters to “teenage normal” before Mrs. B pulled her into her arms. Otherwise, her return hug would have crushed her mom’s spine.

  More hysteria, but of a nicer kind. “Mom” and “I’m sorry” were the only words in her vocabulary for a while.

  Dinner was late, with an extra setting, but Mom always planned for surprises. The Bees arrived after the drama, and though only Julie had known Mrs. B at all — our families had all shared the same parish — they didn’t miss a beat.

  With only eyes for Shelly, Mrs. B didn’t blink at the gorgeousness that was Seven, and he seemed to know exactly what I wanted to know — drawing her out in the smoothest friendly interrogation I’d ever seen. Shelly sat by her mom and kept touching her, and Mrs. B’s eyes got bright a lot, but the dinner conversation stayed inside social protocol; I found out that Mom had tried to talk Mrs. B into staying in Oak Park after Shelly died, found her the job she took with a lobbying firm in Springfield, even saw her a couple of times a year when she went to the capitol to do her own lobbying for state funds (and now I knew, to my shame, why Mom had never taken me with her on those lobbying trips).

  One call to Mom after she’d seen the news, and Mrs. B had driven straight up Highway 55, nonstop, to get here.

  The one thing nobody asked was What now? Mrs. B would want Shelly back, and worrying that I might lose her to Springfield made me feel small — I was happy for her, really, and I was an awful, awful person. We left with more hugs, tears, and promises to see Mrs. B at the Dome tomorrow (Mrs. H now — she’d finally remarried), and I hid behind the thought that Blackstone might be able to figure it all out.

  I hugged the Bees at the curb — they’d been great and Megan had even laid off the snark — but then darted over before Seven could climb in his car. Door open, he turned with a smile. Even with all the drama, I hadn’t forgotten my original plan for tonight.

  He looked down at me, hand on his door. “Yes?”

  “Thank you,” I said. “But that’s not what this is about.” Ignoring the audience, I put my hands on his shoulders, floated up a few inches, leaned in, and kissed him. Not a peck, either; full, soft lip contact, held long enough to settle in and with a little hum on the end. Surprised, he still dropped his hands lightly to my waist, reciprocated nicely, and didn’t protest when I drew back and then leaned in closer, lips to his ear, to whisper.

  “Your turn.”

  Then I was back down on my feet and into my car, face burning as the Bees clapped and whistled. Shelly scrambled in beside me, laughing uncontrollably, and I managed to start the engine and drive away without hitting anything as I watched Seven in the mirror.

  He didn’t follow.

  Chapter Thirteen: Megaton

  Perhaps the most disturbing conclusion by researchers into breakthrough phenomena is that reality appears to be multiple-choice. Pre-Event, we could say with confidence that God exists or he doesn’t. The same could be said about mind-waves, phlogiston, the luminiferous aether, and the Laws of Magic. Magical lands only existed in the imagination, but the Event has done more than merely make the laws of nature open to exceptions. Today, we live in a world where Alice can fall down the rabbit hole and come back with the Jabberwocky’s head, and sooner or later someone is going to raise Atlantis from its watery grave. Superheroes are the modern world’s least odd oddity.

  Dr. Jonathan Beth, addressing the Eleventh Annual Conference on Breakthrough Science.

  * * *

  Standing in front of Chakra’s door, I almost turned around. If I were back at school, Tony would be fist-bumping me and trying to get my promise to feed him all the hot details later. Chakra! Score!

  Last fall, after I’d spent the year seriously muscling up and losing most of my extra weight, Ms. Truman across the street had invited me inside after a job for lemonade. A seriously hot mom, she was divorced and had been paying me to do her yard since middle school, and she made it real clear once she had me inside that Billy had gone next door to play and she had something very recreational in mind for me. I never told any of my “friends” — they’d have laughed themselves sick at how fast I got out of there. “A hot cougar mom offered me some afternoon delight and I ran like hell” doesn’t make a good story.

  This felt way too close to then, and I was remembering the queasy excitement and full-on mind-blowing panic I’d felt when Ms. Truman, who I’d had more than a few fantasies about, had dropped her robe. I wasn’t stupid — Chakra couldn’t be planning on jumping me — but what could she possibly want?

  I finally touched the door screen, expecting an answering “Who is it?” Instead it opened before the chime faded. I hesitated in the doorway, heard her laugh.

  “Come in!”

  I had no idea what I’d expected, maybe a tacky fake-eastern Bollywood love nest, but this wasn’t it. The air smelled of frankincense and sandalwood. I knew the scent from my mom’s New Agey decorating, but here it was a hint and not an eye-stinging cloud. Candles floating in glass bowls added to the indirect ceiling lighting, and curtains hid the corners of the room. The dominant colors were yellow, white, and gold, and backless couches framed an open space wide enough for two people to sit on the floor with plenty of room. I knew it was wide enough because Chakra already occupied half of it.

  She wore flowing white harem pants and a sleeveless midriff-baring white and gold stitched vest that showed off the henna patterns decorating her arms and stomach. Her dark hair framed warm brown eyes and a warmer smile as she looked up from where she sat, and I almost chickened out.

  Her smile widened, but she didn’t laugh again. “Sit.”

  There was a space by the door for shoes; I hesitated before toeing mine off, and the door closed behind me. Feeling big and clumsy, I lowered myself to the floor to sit cross-legged facing her. Our knees almost touched. No way could I put my feet on top of my thighs the way she did. What did Mom call that? Lotus position?

  “Was that so hard, Mal? I won’t eat you. Or — ” she actually winked “ — compromise you in any way. Disappointed?”

  I couldn’t tell if the rising heat was my power or just a full-body flush. She sighed and shook her head sadly without losing the smile.

  “My reputation. Well. I’m not all about sex. I’d better explain at least a little — it’s important to your decision and we can’t have you jumping out of your skin. Is that all right?”

  Her lips twitched when I nodded spastically, but she didn’t continue. Instead, she rested her hands on her legs, palms up, and watched me. The silence stretched.

  “What — ”

  “Shhh.”

  It was getting too weird, and I started counting just for something to do. Thirty beats later, I realized our breathing had matched. Another thirty, and we’d synced pulses too.

  And how do I know that?

  She opened her mouth, and this time there were deep, deep undertones beneath her words.

  “Tantrism starts with the belief that the world we experience is reality, not an illusion, which makes it different from other Eastern and esoteric belief systems.” She laid out her words with almost no emphasis, in time with my breathing. “It also rejects dualism, the division between physical and spiritual, and understands that everything is sacred. ‘Nothing exists which is not divine.’ So the tantric practitioner doesn’t seek a mystery behind the world, outside of it; she seeks the transcendent and immanent in the truth of the world of her senses. She seeks the power inside herself, himself, through disciplines that include tantric meditation, yoga, and sex, which won’t happen here.”

  I’ve been hypnotized. The thought wound its way through my head as she talked. Did I care? Not really. I felt the opposite of drugged, hyper-aware of e
verything but not reacting to any of it, not even the last bit that confirmed every hormonally charged fantasy.

  “Getting down to mechanics,” she continued in the same even pace, “the Tantric practitioner seeks to awaken her Kundalini power, drawing it from its base in the Root Chakra, the Muladhara, at the base of the spine. The Muladhara is the lowest of the seven major chakras; you may think of them as nodes in your auric body. By raising Kundalini power from the Root Chakra upward through the Swadhisthana, the Manipura, the Anahata, the Vishuddha, the Ajna, and finally the Sahasrara, the Crown Chakra, the Tantric can regulate her body and mind, see the world for what it is, even work her will externally in it. My breakthrough allows me to see, understand, and act to a degree unachievable even by Tantric masters, but the principles are the same. So, I can see you.”

  She said “you” with a beat, and I felt my heart jump, once, then settle again. I had to be hallucinating, because everything was glowing, Chakra brightest of all. Leaning forward over her knees, she reached out and lightly touched me, beneath my heart, right below my sternum.

  “You are blocked, and by your own will. Here.” Under her fingers, my chest glowed and pulsed a deep golden yellow and I still didn’t freak. “You feel your power rise, but you trap it here. It gathers in your Manipura, the seat of both action and fear. You will not release it, because if you cannot use it then you cannot hurt anyone again.”

  Sitting back, she deliberately broke her breathing and I blinked. The snap as everything returned to normal was almost audible, and I realized I was practically burning up — she’d called it up, but it wasn’t going anywhere. She raised an eyebrow.

  “I can release it,” she said in a completely normal voice.

  I almost bolted. Except for the brief touch, she hadn’t changed her position since she started talking, but she’d let me go as easily as she’d pulled me in. She kept her eyes on me as I sorted through a dozen flashing thoughts — from Run, run now, to How the hell did she do that? Her next words didn’t help.

  “I can cage it, too. Tighter than it already is, if you want. Everyone will be safe.”

  I was on my feet without even thinking about moving, at the door. “Stop.” The depth was back in her voice, and I stopped. I couldn’t move, couldn’t touch the door screen, could barely hear over the roar in my head.

  “What I can’t let you do is leave without choosing,” she said behind me.

  I made myself turn around. She’d risen to her feet, and stood as gracefully and naturally as she’d sat.

  Why? I didn’t have to ask. I knew; I couldn’t go home as an unexploded bomb. She could see I understood, and her lip-twitch was back.

  “This is a traumatic day for everybody, it seems.”

  Huh? I shook it away, swallowed, finally found the words. “If all you’re going to do is fix me, then why am I so scared?”

  She closed the distance and reached out again, this time spreading her hand over my heart.

  “Because you have to make a decision here. I can make you safe, but that will take away your power to help. You should feel lucky. Most breakthroughs don’t get a chance to refuse their gift — all they can do is deal with it, find a blessing in it.” Her eyebrow went up, daring me. “I,” she laughed softly, “am merely a facilitator.”

  I could barely breathe. “Why do you want someone as dangerous as me around?”

  “Remember Nimbus? Able to fly at the speed of light? Burn through ten-inch hardened steel? Think about the trees. We could barely slow them down, but you could level a forest if you had to. Blackstone says that sometimes saving people requires a really big gun. Sadly, he is right.”

  “Can you turn me off again if it doesn’t work out?”

  “No. I can tip the balance inside you right now only because you’ve already done half the job, but your decision will be final. Do you need time to think about it?”

  The red and black costume Andrew and The Harlequin had shown me earlier leaped into my mind. And the City Room screens where I saw Astra and the rest throw themselves into a fight they didn’t know anything about, because there were people in there. They called them civilians, bystanders, but they meant innocent victims.

  You owe a life, so save a life.

  “No, I don’t. Not really.”

  She nodded, and I knew she was still seeing me with the same vision she’d shown me. She didn’t ask if I was sure — just reached out again to touch me there, where she had before. I didn’t explode but the world did, like the worst hit to the solar plexus I’d ever taken. I didn’t feel my knees hit the floor, couldn’t feel anything beyond the bursting star that linked my head and my core. I was pretty sure I shouted, and I didn’t lose it completely; when everything came back, I was crouched on knees and elbows, head down, feeling channels inside me flood with slow heat radiating out from the spot where she’d laid her hand. The heat faded, steadied.

  “Here,” she said. While I’d been doing whatever, she’d retrieved a teacup from a sideboard I hadn’t noticed. She put the small china cup on the floor in front of me. “Push it.” I stared up at her. I felt like I’d run a mile — and could run a hundred more.

  “Just push it.”

  Okay ... I touched it with my index finger, felt the heat waiting inside, pushed, as soft as a breath.

  A dim flash, like a match-flare, and the tiny cup skidded across the floor to fetch up against the leg of the farthest couch. Upright and whole, unharmed.

  “Yes!” I couldn’t stop looking at it. She smiled enigmatically and slid down the wall to sit beside me. When I sat back, she patted my knee.

  “Welcome to the game, hero.”

  Grendel

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this for a doll,” Latisha groused.

  I managed to keep the laugh in. Nix had solemnly informed me that her fairy garden, in the best tradition of fairy gardens, was secret — which meant that it was utterly hidden to mortals. This being Hillwood, “hidden” was a stretch; she’d located it in the shadow of one of the old main hall’s chimneys where a joint in the roof created a deep nook, far back enough nobody could see even the climbing vines from the ground.

  Flyers passed over it all the time, but Ozma had contributed a nothing-to-see-here charm; if Nix or someone else in on the secret didn’t tell you where it was, you just didn’t find it. Of course Latisha wasn’t a flyer; she’d wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and held on as I scaled the building wall to pull us up on the roof.

  The roof-garden was completely against school rules, of course.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Nix called from the shadows. I carefully leaned out and began pulling up the load from the ground. Getting everything over the edge of the roof without scraping the wall and gutter was the trickiest part — I had to throw the rope up over the peak of the roof where Latisha could anchor it; sure I could lift lots heavier stuff easy, but leverage was a problem if I didn’t want to tip back over the edge. Finally, slinging it over my shoulder like a huge Santa-sack, I climbed over the peak to join them.

  The night-poppies were open in the moonlight, drinking in starlight and moonbeams with their white petals. Half of the plants in Nix’s garden were different. Environmentalists who got nervous over genetically modified organisms like transgenic corn or cotton would shit bricks if they ever found out where Ozma got a lot of her magical ingredients.

  “Come on! Come on!” Nix flew around my head, and even Latisha smiled. Sliding down to the “valley” made by the U of joined roofs, I unpacked the box frames. Half the plant boxes went in easy, and Latisha went to work on the trellis-linked ones.

  She touched a tea vine out on its reaching tip, and it began to unwind, curling around her finger like a friendly snake. Vine by vine, she coaxed them off the trellises, then the lower creepers wound in with them.

  She really was going to make a fortune someday; her power was over hair, but by some weird quirk, she could extend it to anything from clinging plants to shoela
ces and she could braid anything into her styles. The trellises cleared, I pulled them out and replaced them with separate climbing frames for her to wind the vines up in while Nix fussed over each box.

  “Thanks,” I whispered as she tied up the last climbing vine. She rolled her eyes.

  “I’m not doing it for you. I’ll miss Nix.”

  “Everybody will.” I hefted the first boxes and walked them back over the roof. Down in the shadows, half of Gilmore Hall’s residents were risking curfew to take them away and finish the packing job.

  It was probably the biggest secret rebellion the Headmaster would never know about. We hoped. A perilous night for the temporarily expanded Army of Oz.

  Chapter Fourteen: Astra

  These children are dangerous! They are weapons pointed at your children! We do not allow children to own guns or to carry them to school; who knows how many “normal” students carry dangerous powers to school every day? And when they see superheroes, glorified vigilantes, acting outside the law, how many are inspired to take “justice” into their own hands?

  Hiding the possession of superhuman powers should be a crime, must be made a crime, for their protection and ours!

  Representative Mal Shankman

  * * *

  Shelly and I ended the night with a sleepover in my rooms. Robots don’t snore, but they do like to cuddle. They also rise early and leave strange Post-It notes on your forehead. The one that stuck to my hand when I stretched and rubbed my eyes said Soylent Green is people! If I asked, she’d probably reference some obscure dystopian or post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

  The morning meeting started with a group review on yesterday’s fight. Blackstone and Lei Zi had spent the night breaking down our mask-cam recordings and witness accounts, and we got to watch a real time replay of the encounter. Which didn’t tell us much, since even Watchman and Safire arrived late to the scene. Blackstone froze the action at the moment when the villains disappeared under cover of the last wave of flash-bangs.