Vaughn never got hit by the lightning.
When the strikes stopped, he stood there unharmed, smiling nervously, glass shards and glass craters surrounding him.
“He’s cheating! You can’t do that.” The King of Storms shouted at Lee.
“He’s controlling weather.” Lee said. “Get on with it or yield.”
Continue reading King of Storms: Part 12
“Let’s get on with it then,” Lee said.
Both Vaughn and the King of Storms turned to look at him.
“Neither of you is going to change their name so now it’s time to come up with another way to handle it. You’ll want to choose seconds and Vaughn, you get to choose the weapon if it’s a duel.”
“Duel?” Vaughn sounded incredulous.
Continue reading King of Storms: Part 11
The thing faded into the storm and disappeared. Between the darkness and the possibility that its body might have been nothing more than falling rain, I didn’t know whether it had teleported away or simply ceased to be.
Either way, the rain changed from a downpour to nothing in the space of ten seconds.
As the rain ended, the clouds thinned, letting the sun illuminate the puddles in the road and the mud across the street in the parking lot.
Continue reading King of Storms: Part 9
Inside the police department looked like most institutional buildings — beige walls, tile floor, cubicles — but with the obvious addition of men and women in blue carrying guns.
We ended up standing inside a conference room. “We” in this case meant new and old Heroes League members, the Midwest Defenders, the FBI representatives, PsyKick, Larry, and a few police.
It was a big conference room — two, actually. They’d taken out the divider between two rooms as we came in.
The tables had been pushed to the wall and the sleeping bodies placed in the middle of the room. All the rest of us stood around the edges while Daniel, his dad, the Fed with the psychic helmet, and PsyKick deep probed their minds.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 59
“No. There’s no way I’m doing that,” I said.
“That was a joke. I wasn’t suggesting you let Mindstryke take over, but you need to listen to the guy. No one thinks about it when they start, but managing your image is a major piece of the job.”
Guardian pulled a couple pieces of pepperoni pizza onto a plate.
Flick leaned in toward the table and smiled briefly. “He’s right. Some of you have heard about what happened when I joined the Defenders. I think the most important thing I’ve learned in the past two years is how to handle myself in public.”
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 58
The house only blew up a little bit — at least by comparison to an atomic bomb, for example. It didn’t have a mushroom cloud, just gouts of flame pouring out the kitchen windows and doors. To judge from what it looked like afterwards, it must have blasted out a couple pieces of wall too, but I was too distracted by the flames and smoke to notice.
We had already gotten out when it happened. The explosion destroyed the kitchen, part of the dining room, and started most of the back of the house burning. Even through my armor I could feel the heat a little.
I hit the ground when it blew like everyone else, realizing belatedly that I probably didn’t have to.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 56
According to “Double V,” the Hangmen were dead people given the chance to live a second time. I didn’t remember the article being clear on why.
I understood how the writer might have missed that detail. The Hangmen didn’t seem particularly talkative. In fact, they didn’t say anything at all as they got off the remains of the table and onto the (now heavily scratched) wooden floor.
Vengeance stood in front of them, knife hanging from his belt, rifle on his back.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 54
This looks interesting, Daniel thought, but we don’t have time to follow it all the way through. I’m going to have him free associate.
Scattered memories of passing years — Martin Magnus conducting a ceremony in a dark room, and handing Bouman a cup. Letters and couriers appearing in the dead of night carrying secret messages… Using an expanding telepathic awareness to enter the mind of one official after another… The mayor’s inspection of a gun wielding assassin’s now irreparably damaged mind…
A recent memory — A red-haired man in a black suit and sunglasses sat in the mayor’s study upstairs. I could feel a mixture of anticipation and fear as the mayor looked across the desk.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 53
The beam struck the floor in front of us and the carpet caught fire. Water slid forward and became a puddle, smothering it. Then he reverted into human-shaped water.
“Come any closer to me or my family and I’ll blast you,” Bouman said.
“Oh come on,” Daniel said. “This has nothing to do with your family. That has got to be one of the stupidest rationalizations I have ever heard. You’ve been manipulating people for ages and now you’re afraid to face the music. That’s the only reason you’re holding the gun.”
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 52
Walking through the house seemed to take forever. We had to go down three stories before we reached the first floor.
We couldn’t see out of the windows because the smoke reached higher than our heads. Wisps of it came through the edges of the windowsill and the bottom of the front door.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 51