Blog of a Teenage Superhero

Chapter Thirty-One: One Last Question

The cottage made sense in a strange sort of way. Only Max's dad, me, and whatever other shadowy sorts he consorts with would know where to look. Any other criminal would've fled halfway across the country by now, but Max isn't just any other criminal. He's a scared kid.

Holding my best friend hostage after trying to kill the others.

I did the logical thing, anyway. I stole a van, drove it through the forest, and rammed it into the cottage's front door. Kai clung to my arm and Percy gripped my knee so hard her fingers turned white and his carved nail marks in my skin. The impact sent us flying toward the dash, seat belts tearing open gashes, heroes hissing in the back. 

"You know," said Red Comet with a shake of her head I caught in the rear-view, "you could've just parked...in the driveway..."

Kai pressed against me until all I could feel was the pressure of his slim, coiled muscles against mine. Pressure released, and Kai kicked the door open, screaming: "Finn! Finn!" His clicking footsteps shot a pulsing ache between my eyes as he launched across the freshly painted—now crumbling—stairs. "Finn!" he left me only an arm full of bruises, and I bolted, beating him into the kitchen where Max shouted and growled less like a kid and more like a creature.

"Masquerade!" So that brings us here. I've stopped calling him Max. It's a crap-attempt to soothe the ache that opens up inside me when I think of him, his charming smile, his hands on my hips. I remember this place I've destroyed, with its cinnamon-beige carpet and boring beige sectionals. The only thing that's different is me. I saw myself in the reflection of the T.V screen, the faint etches of my bushy hair, my torn cape puddling behind me in a pool of obsidian satin. And I stood there, if only for the breadth of a second, appreciating this heartbeat of silence between Onyx and me.

"Masquerade!" I blink back into the galley kitchen, staring at the villain's snarling face. Finn lies limp and close-eyed at my feet. Blood clumps his hair, blots his shirt, races down his throat. His breathing is hitched and shallow.

"In here..." he slurs, his voice becoming a gurgle. "In here..."

"Finn!" I cry. Can't help it. The broken boy smiles sleepily and Kai barrels into me, shoving me away hard. He drops to his knees with a thump and cradles the pale body against him. Despite the desperate nature of the situation, the fangirl inside me is shipping them hard. Finn's chest slows.

"He's still breathing." I'm afraid to phrase it like a question, but Kai nods, nods, nods away like a bobblehead anyhow. He's still clutching the boy against his chest, draping a single limp arm over his shoulders.

"Stay back," Masquerade says. My gaze whips to the villain, whose delicate face is flushed pink and his eyes wide when he looks up at me. He's crouched in a quivering hunch on the floor and rises slowly, brown eyes flashing. His voice is low and insistent. "I can kill—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." I don't have to look down to know my hands are shaking. I can feel the anger, white hot, surging through me like a slash of electric current. "But you love me too much, don't you? To crush my skull in, I mean. Poor, poor, superpowered baby. I guess you want to dance with me first, right? Another kiss?"

Finn twitches in Kai's lap, groaning through lips caked in a brown a film of blood. Funnily enough, it's that sound that saves my life. Because when I duck down to help Kai move him. Masquerade flings all his weight into a single punch that tears through the kitchen like a scream, his fist smashing a chestnut cupboard into a thousand pin-tip splinters. Silence falls heavily. 

I rise to my feet. He's floating, heaving and trembling, his arm outstretched. The heroes are outside, probably, scouring the warehouse and woods for other prisoners. I know Comet remembers this place. It was where her powers were torn from her. But all this information slides through my mind in seconds, like grains of sand through a steel strainer.