Page 81 of All Superheroes Need PR
“Who gives a shit how many of them there are ...”
“You don’t even have a gun ...”
My people all start talking over each other, all at once. If I weren’t so close to a panic attack, I might have found it endearing. Instead, I want to strangle all of them.
I try Charlie’s whistle and fail, so I do the only thing I can think of: I get up on my pink ottoman and, in my bathrobe, shove my arms up to the sky. “Everybody, enough!”
The people filling my living room turn, most staring up at me like I’ve grown a fifth limb. I point around at them all. “Fine!” I shout at the top of my lungs. “If you insist on being stubborn, then so be it! But I am the leader of this here outfit, and I say that you are all adults and that anyone who wants to go or stay can decide for themself, but we need to leave ASAP.”
“Well, I’m coming,” Dan says.
“I’ve got the gun ...” Jeremy says.
“We’re all coming,” Margerie asserts, hands on her hips.
Charlie rolls his eyes and gives us all a perfect imitation of our father’s most unimpressed stare. “Fine. Let’s go save your boy.” He lifts his phone to his ear.
Luca snorts. “I think you mean, let’s go save the world.”
And then Margerie crosses her arms over her chest and juts out her hip. She looks me up and down. “I still think you should shower first.”
Luca, Dan, and Jeremy lay the map of the airport flat on the dining room table and start shouting at each other about possible points where someone might be able to sneak in, but I’m more interested in what Charlie’s saying to the person on the other end of the phone.
“Vinny, you still in town? Yeah ... good.” He meets my eye. “Vanny and I need a ride ... Old Sundale Airport. Consider it a sightseeing mission. We’re gonna circle the perimeter, but we’re not going inside ... Just in case, yeah.” He swallows. “Bring the cavalry.”
Chapter Twenty-FiveRoland
It’s dark when I open my eyes. I don’t know where I am. Can no longer remember where I’m supposed to be.Or when.The violent collision of my past with my present makes me feel like I was hit by a dump truck filled with sand, and every move I make to claw my way up and out of the pit only spills more sand into my face, into my eyes, so I try to burn my way out, but everything just turns to glass. I shatter.
Groaning, I roll from my back onto my side. Feels funny. My stomach pitches. I taste bile and, through sheer force of will, swallow it down. My head is on the ground, being propped up by something, and I’m reminded of my new look at the sound of clattering and the realization that my forehead and cheek aren’t touching the cold concrete because there’s something else there, between the side of my face and the floor.Horns.I have horns now. No—I have hornsagain.
I remember...
When I left my home world, my horns hadn’t fully taken shape. They’d been nubs starting above my ears, sticking straight up and out. Now, if the vision I saw of myself in the mirror before I smashed it was correct, my fully developed horns still start above my ears but now curl down and forward in a backward C before moving past my temples andending in stabby twin peaks a foot above the top of my head. They’re thick, sharp, and big.
It takes a lot longer than it should for me to revolve entirely around, for my chest to hit the concrete. My chest is puffed out, twice as thick as it was, all roided out. My chin barely grazes the ground past it. I don’t feel right, and I’d be shit scared about it if I weren’t already shit scared about everything else.
Where is she?
I cough, clearing my lungs. It’s like I’m waking up for the very first time. I didn’t even feel like this when I was a child and my pod hit the ground. Disoriented, I crawled up and out of a hole in the ground half a mile long only to see beings who looked ... strange to me. That had been my first thought. But then, later, I saw my own reflection and recognized that I looked a lot like they did. Now I understand my human appearance for what it was: a clever disguise imprinted into our genetics to help us blend in until we recovered our memories, our purpose, our weapons ...
Then we’d revert to our original forms. Then we’d be ready.
I’m not fucking ready.
Slow clapping pulls my attention to the present. I reverberate a low, intimidating sound, but the clapping continues. “Sixty-Two, so glad you’ve returned,” a female voice calls. “You honor us by returning to your true form. The first Tratharine among us who has.”
I manage to get one knee underneath me, then the other, then both palms. My claws are thicker and longer than they were and clatter over the floor as I roll up to standing, feeling powerful in ways that I don’t know I should enjoy as much as I do. But I do. I love it and fear it because I know why I am built like this, why I was chosen, and what I’m supposed to do next. I remember all my training, combat and otherwise, the vow I made to the Tratharine Elders standing on the pulpit, gazing up at the planets our armies would soon conquer.
But there was one thing the Elders didn’t account for in all their planning.
They sent us as children, hiding our true purpose and our true forms until we’d successfully embedded ourselves into the societies we would later conquer. They encoded keys into our own biological strands; I remember the moment they did it. A creature built even more deadly than me told me my key. He told me I’d be awoken by a feeling of hatred so strong, I’d commit terrible acts of violence. He described it to me as a feeling, a single sensation sparked by a single act, a single moment ...
How could the Elders have been so wrong?
Because I know now as I lie on the floor, tasting grit and rage on my tongue, that it wasn’t anger that triggered me. It was her. I saw Vanessa, and for whatever reason, supernatural or of this earth, all I wanted was to protect her.
Protect and have her.
