Hero Stalker

Part Thirty-One

I'd never considered myself much of an athlete. When Grandma Draper died from complications with her diabetes, Mom had made us all join a gym. Vicky had discovered gymnastics and Will had started playing basketball down there on weekends, but I'd fallen off a treadmill twice and called it quits.

Now, as I rocketed up an unused bike lane, I realized what I'd been missing. West Street opened up into a stream of purple and white light as it entered Governors. My lungs burned as I pushed myself faster. Cars moving at top speed fell behind me. Wind whistled as I cut through the air at top speed.

But my power could only go so far. Ten blocks after I leapt over The Wall, the fire in my lungs caught up to me. I skidded to a stop on the sidewalk and sucked down air.

Where the hell is Slasher? I'd lost sight of him in the harbor. By now, I could tell he'd decided to test me. Could Shadowcat figure out how to get from Point A to Point B, or does she not deserve to call herself an adult, let alone a Centurion?

"Hey, sexy!"

I looked back over my shoulder. Just behind me, a neon sign with a pole dancer blazed yellow in the night. 'Teasers' read the marquee, and 'Come Inside for Southern Hospitality!' sat beneath it. The line to enter stretched around the building. Every man in it stared at me, sizing me up. Hooray for my skintight costume.

"You the real deal?" another man hooted, chomping on a cigarette.

"Dunno." I blurred into the alley behind the club. Catcalls echoed behind my back, including 'Supertits'. You think they'd show some respect for the uniform. I noticed a used condom stuck to my boot and frantically kicked it off.

How could I find the bar Slasher had told me about? I had my phone tucked into my utility belt, along with some scrunchies and a spare tampon. But it didn't have a GPS, and I sure wasn't radioing Slasher. Everyone I could ask for directions out here was either drunk or high or horny. The way those men had looked at me . . . maybe Femme could take advantage of a situation like that. It just made me want to run.

A switch flipped in the back of my mind. So what? You're Shadowcat. You can cut metal with your hands. You can run on water. They can't do anything to hurt you.

The line of men hadn't moved by the time I walked back out. The man who'd asked me if I was the real deal leered at me. "You come back for more, sugar?" One of his friends elbowed him in the side, grinning. Both reeked of alcohol.

Blades shot out of my fingers and toes. The whole line jumped backwards. A man dropped the phone he'd been filming me with. It shattered. Another looked like he was about to have a heart attack. None of them could take their eyes off my blades.

Awesome.

"I'm looking for a bar called Harrison's," I said, slow and deliberate. "Anyone know where I can find it?"

"You could kill someone with those!" said a man in a Bayton Heroes jersey, shaking.

The thought of sticking my blades in a person made my stomach churn, but I sure couldn't let these guys see that. "Harrison's, boys, anyone heard of it? I'm in a hurry."

"Three blocks north," the man who'd been filming me said as he stuffed his broken phone into the back pocket of his shorts. "Big neon sign. Can't miss it."

"Thanks you very much." Then my legs took over. Buildings blurred past my eyes so fast I could barely count the streets. Glee flooded my veins. I'd scared them.

Harrison's took up nearly a quarter of the block. Cars had parked all around the building: old battered cars, new fancy cars, even a police cruiser. Rock music from the sixties poured from the speakers onto the street. One neon sign showed a woman dancing, another a flashing Corona bottle. The biggest one had the bar's name written in green block letters.

I walked around to the back of the building. Tiny cuts in the brick above the dumpster told me Slasher'd climbed up here more than once. I took a deep breath, extended my own blades, and followed him up.

Slasher stood on the edge of the roof, just above the doors. "Beautiful, ain't it?" he said as I walked up behind him. "You wouldn't have lasted five seconds out her in the old days. I remember how bad it got. The Centurion Council assigned me here specifically to handle the crime wave."

"Dark Justice did the work for you."

"Thanks for reminding me."

I shrugged. "Best damn Centurion this city's ever had. He saved me, once, when I was a kid." And he'd saved the whole world by defeating Renegade, which technically meant he'd saved me.

"He was a good man." Slasher stared down at the street, where a woman in a bursting sequined top and bright orange eyeshadow walked out holding the arm of an old white man in an expensive suit. "At least the whores don't get stabbed and left in the gutter anymore. Not like Peregrine's mother."

"What?" I said.

He grinned. "Your new best buddy didn't tell you that story? Thought not. She likes to pretend she's always been better than the rest of us. Yeah, her mom was a whore. She never met her dad. Probably Fire Falcon. He liked redheads and he could fly. Her aunt was a meth addict who tried to pimp her sister for drugs and got her killed. The aunt raised Peregrine until she herself was killed by an unknown supervillain."

Poor Amanda. My respect for her shot up. She'd come up from nothing to study cancer. My greatest accomplishment was surviving two years working at Sushi Queen. "How'd you know it was a supervillain who did it?"

He reached into his utility belt and pulled a psi-meter. Dots of different colors swam across the screen. "You can usually pick up psi-radiation a few hours to a few days after a crime takes place, depending on who's using psi-energy and how much they use. If that psi-positive's radiation signature is entered in the Centurion databases, the meter will identify them."

"Why don't the cops have them?" I said, thinking of what Dan had told Cypher.

"Because they're full of illegal plutonium, sweetheart. The Centurion Council only lets us have one per team. Cypher's got a black market one he's tinkering with. Femme mostly uses it to search out potential recruits."

"How accurate are they?" I asked. "Because Harpy told me he was psi-positive, and the machine wouldn't affect him because of that. But we haven't picked up his signature anywhere."

"Kid, I know exactly enough about technology to work my microwave and use my phone. For all I know, Harpy's got a magic radiation-proof blanket. If he's found a way to cloak himself, he's dangerous. If he's psi-negative and still this crazy, he's even more dangerous." He tucked the meter back into a bulky pouch on his belt. It looked like it was lined with lead. "Head in the front door. I'll meet you inside."

Suddenly, I knew why all those little dots had popped up on the psi-meter. "This is a psi-bar."

He grinned at me. The crooked teeth on the left side of his face flashed in the glare of the neon lights. "This is my bar. See you on the inside."