Page 85 of All Superheroes Need PR
A huge piece of metal flies out of the building. I can’t see what it is, only that it’s sharp and headed straight toward me. I yank hard on my left handhold, and my parachute drops down. I avoid getting impaled, but my parachute does not. I open my mouth to scream, but wind rushes into my mouth as the ground plummets up to meet me.
I hit the asphalt hard, and I swear I break all my fucking teeth. My forearms hit the ground before I crash onto my side. I hear someone shouting my name, and I know it’s Roland, even through the haze of voices clamoring for my attention.
I open my eyes.
I’m lying on my side coughing into my fists when my torso jerks over the hard ground as my parachute catches wind. I clutch desperately at the buckle between my breasts and slap it open. My shoulders release, and I can breathe again as my parachute takes off without me. I cough, choke, gag on smoke fumes wafting from the building, but as if commanded by the weight of my gaze, they clear.
“Nessa, get out of here!” Roland’s voice sounds so far away—too far. Which doesn’t at all make sense when Roland suddenly runs fromthe building, his beautiful brown skin glowing with sweat. His dark hair rippling in the breeze. His eyes the brightest, prettiest pink.
“Vanessa,” his voice calls much louder this time. “I’m here. Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. I love you, sweetheart.” He’s almost on me, and I register three wrong things at once.
He called meVanessa, he called mesweetheart, and he’ssweating. He fucked me for hours last night, and he didn’t so much as glisten; meanwhile, I was drenched in every possible sense. I was so shocked that, somewhere in the melee, I had enough presence of mind to ask him about it. He told me he never sweats, something about his body burning it off. So unless he was lying and my eyes deceived me last night, my eyes are deceiving me now.
I haul my ass up off the ground, kicking with my feet, getting tangled up in the cords of my parachute and going back down again. “Vanessa—Vanessa, are you there?” Without my headset on, I can hear Margerie’s shouted voice close by, but I can’t see her. I can only see this fake Roland apparition stomping toward me, looking all wrong ... and I can’t even see the building past him. It’s just a hazy blur. Occasionally a tuft of smoke wafts from it, but I can’t grab ahold. I feel like I’m goingcrazy.
“I’m here, Margerie! Can you see?” I don’t even bother asking if she can seemebecause that’s already one step too far removed.
“I can’t see you! I can see the building on fucking fire, but I can’t find you! Are you in the fire?!”
“No, she’s not there,” I hear a more distant voice say. It sounds like Charlie. “But what the ... holy fuck is that!” His voice devolves into Spanish slurs and curses. “We need to get clear ... There’s a ... There’s something coming. It looks like a goddamn sandstorm!”
“I’m not leaving without Vanessa!”
“I’m here,” I shout, but the creature ... person ... mirage ... is almost on me. I kick at it, but the fake Roland lunges at me, drops down onto my body, and wraps his fingers around my throat.
“Holy fuck, I can see Roland, and what is he—Roland’s attacking Vanessa!”
“Don’t worry,” Margerie shouts back to Vinny. “I got it.”
“Margerie, no!” A multitude of my brothers’ overlapping voices call out, Charlie’s loudest of all. “You can’t shoot Roland!” But Margerie’s smarter than that.
“That isn’t Roland! He would never touch Nessa like that!” she says, and I adore her for it. A high-pitchedpopgoes off in the next second, and fake Roland’s mouth opens on a scream—a female’s scream.
Her fingers loosen from around my throat, and when I tilt my hips to the left, she falls off me and slumps onto the ground, fully disrobed of her terrifying Roland suit and back to being a brunette wearing jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. She looks like anybody as she lies beside me, her face scrunching in pain.
I reach out hesitantly but quickly snatch my hand away from her face when I realize I’d been about to touch her. “I’m so sorry. You’re gonna be okay.”
“You fucking bitch! That idiot shot me!”
I’d say that I don’t know which one of my idiots she’s talking about, but the first thing I see when I look up is Margerie pointing her gun in my direction. “Did I get him? Her? Whatever the shit it is?” she shouts.
“You got her!” I give her a thumbs-up and a smile, ambling back onto my feet. “Thanks, Margerie!”
“Anytime, boss!” She gives me a salute.
“You stupid bitch, you’re ruining everything.” Stupid, stupid ... I grin. The voice in my head is mine. The voice out of my head is hers. And thanks to my peaking adrenaline, I may be losing my mind, but I know I’m not stupid.
“No, I’m not,” I tell her pointedly, brushing off my jeans. “But you aren’t a very nice person.”
She rolls onto her back, her gray sweatshirt charred around the collar and the left sleeve. She barely looks older than me, and when her face twists in pain, she looks almost fragile. Like somebody I could havebeen friends with. And then the expression ebbs from pain to rage, and she screams, “I’m not a person, and what—what is wrong with you?”
What is wrong with you?I laugh, remembering that Roland once asked me the very same thing. “Nothing is wrong with me,” I say, nearly giddy. “I’m a nice person! And you are very rude!”
“You tell her, Vanny!” Luca shouts, laughing.
“Yeah, after we get the fuck out of here!” David adds.
“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers!” The voice is Arnold’s, and it successfully snaps my focus back to what’s happening across the rest of the tarmac. Because the front doors to the hangar have been thrown open, and a wall of sand barrels out of it.
