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?”
“Nope. One of our electronics boys recorded a wireless signal from the house, but didn’t break the encryption in time. She’d
wired the place for sound, and tripped the C4 the moment she realized you’d noticed it. My guess? She’d been waiting for the
entire team to go in, not just your lead element.”
* * *
Riptide got the fire out before the first fire-truck arrived, but five neighboring homes got singed a bit by flaming debris and
the police units waiting in the wings evacuated the rest of the close neighbors, just in case. Once the danger was past and the
street clear again, I called the Talbots and let them know their home was fine and it was safe to return. Scott thanked me, and
let me know they’d gone to Scott’s sister’s house to stay the night.
The police cordon kept the media out till after we left, which wasn’t going to help but at least meant we didn’t have to talk to
them before getting cleaned up. Two costumes ruined in two nights; Andrew was going to kill me. Lei Zi announced a morning
debriefing for 8:00 am, and sent everyone to bed for what few hours we had left. I tumbled into mine and was out in seconds.