Fear Her Wrath

Chapter 1

My name is Margaret Hunt, and I'm a superhero.

Well, technically I'm a "costumed vigilante." I can get away with thrashing mafia thugs to within an inch of their life, but call myself a superhero on Twitter and the lawyers from the big comic book companies will hunt me down. They've told me as much. Repeatedly. So, costumed vigilante it is.

I'd rather not have my identity exposed over a trademark dispute.

Like any good vigilante, I've got an origin story. And like any good origin story, mine begins with a tragedy. After all, it takes a lot to make someone jump across rooftops in a cape. Normal people don't do that. You've gotta be at least a little messed up.

It happened in the winter of my freshman year. I'm on the basketball team. Or, more accurately, I was on the basketball team. And I was pretty good. I had been the top point-scorer at my old middle school before I got into Sefton Polytechnic. Not a great school, but better than what I was zoned for. I grew up in the North Wards—that's the part of town the city council calls "economically disadvantaged," which in ordinary English means we're poor and they don't give a crap.

Back when Mom and Dad were still together, we lived in Fredericks Park, one of the nicer neighborhoods on the other side of the river. Not exactly Hayes Avenue, but comfortable enough for our part of town. But then Mom left, and Dad relocated to Joplin Heights to be closer to the community hospital where he works. That put us on Fenley Island—"The Fen," as the locals call it—and would have put me in Chilltern Banks High School. But I had decent grades in math and science—plus my basketball record—and I got accepted into a magnet school. Still in the Fen, but not the sort of place where they search your locker on a weekly basis.

Winter in Marbrose City usually starts to bite in early November, just when the basketball season gets started. Central heating—by decree of the district school board—doesn't get turned on until December 1st. That's bad enough when there isn't a blizzard. But on that Tuesday in late November, there was a blizzard, and practice had been called early because classes had just been canceled for the next day. I was excited. We were basically getting an extended Thanksgiving break, and missing a nasty Bio test was a nice bonus. The snow was piling up outside, but no one was in a hurry to get home. The subway would keep running even if the elevated lines shut down, and besides, we were having fun—playing chicken about getting undressed and going to the showers, which were cold and nasty even when there wasn't snow beating against the cracked windows.

"Ugh, my legs are dead," I groaned.

"Who told you not to skip stretches?"

Anaya Strawter popped me with her towel. I hadn't skipped stretches, and I pointed that out to Anaya as I tried to retaliate with my basketball jersey.

"You stretched for thirty seconds," she said. "At most. Doesn't count. You get what you deserve."

The other girls on the team laughed. I pretended to be offended, but Anaya was right. As usual. I shoved my jersey in my gym bag.

"So fricking cold," I said. "How are we supposed to shower like this?"

"With lots of shivering," said Anaya. "Or you can just go home smelling like a boy."

I decided I preferred shivering to smelling like a boy. Also, I felt like showing off—and putting Anaya in her place. I borrowed a slightly-damp towel from another teammate—earning another condescending lecture from Anaya about being prepared—and set out for my cold, wet doom. I felt slightly heroic. To my teammates, I probably looked like the queen of idiots.

Better me than them, I guess.

I was taking off the rest of my clothes and waiting for the water to get warm when Eric Colborne kicked open the door to the girls locker room, and my life changed forever.