ANTI-HEROES
Book I
NEW GIRL
By
Louise Bohmer & K.H. Koehler
Copyright © 2012 Louise Bohmer & K.H. Koehler
Published by Anti-Hero Press
https://antiheroesbook.blogspot.ca/
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be distributed, shared, resold, posted online, or reproduced in any electronic or hard copy form.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities between actual persons or events is entirely coincidental.
Cover art design by K.H. Koehler
***
Special thanks to Jerrod Balzer for allowing us use of his character Isaac.
***
ANTIHEROES
Book I
NEW GIRL
Serena Swanson knew the first day at a new school was apt to suck on a cosmic level, but she had no idea that someone would set the lunchroom on fire.
The problem had begun in first period Algebra, which was fitting somehow, seeing how nothing good had ever come out of Algebra. Being the new girl, she had picked a seat a little behind the exact middle of the class. That was important, she reasoned, since sitting in the front told the world that you were a suck-up who would be shooting her hand up in the air every three-point-five seconds and trying to win brownie points with the teacher, and sitting too far in the back just pegged you as a troublemaker.
Since this was her first day, she was hoping for blessed anonymity.
Of course, that didn't happen.
She was down in her seat for no more than three minutes before Mr. Washington singled her out. "Miss Swanson, would you like to stand up and tell the class a bit about yourself?"
In that moment, Serena decided that Sky City High had a massive mean streak running through it. "I'd rather not," she said as politely as possible. Several of the suck-ups in the front snickered at that, the troublemakers muttered solemnly among themselves in the back, and the ones in the middle—the fans of blessed anonymity like herself—pretended to look elsewhere. She had a feeling this was the beginning of trouble.
Serena wasn't necessarily afraid of trouble. But in a place like Sky City High, trouble took on a whole new meaning. Maybe if her mom hadn't died in that car crash six months ago, maybe if she'd had even one relative that Serena knew was still alive, she might have wound up in a place like Seattle, Portland or Minneapolis. She could have even been happy in a little, anonymous backwoods town in Nebraska or Iowa.
But no. Her mom's only friend Macy lived in Sky City, home of the nation's Superheroes, and Aunt Macy had been the only one to contact her after the funeral and offer her a place to stay. So, of course, Serena wound up in the one place she hated more than any other—the one place she neither wanted nor needed to be.
She knew even without asking that there were at least three Supers in the class—most of them the suck-ups down in the front. She could feel them as they gave off their own particular psychic vibrations. The blonde girl who looked like she worked out was their leader. That Serena knew instinctively, like the way she could guess when the phone was going to ring a few seconds before it did, or what the winning lottery numbers would be that night.
The sandy-haired boy sitting to her right was her unofficial right-hand-man, and were he not biting back a snigger at Serena's expense, she might have thought he was cute. She knew a few things about the brown-haired boy with the bright blond streaks sitting on the girl's left: he was rich, too cute for his own good, and very, very closeted.
"Miss Swanson…?"
Suppressing the need to run screaming from the room, Serena got to her feet and tried to ignore the blonde girl, who was rolling her eyes.
damn, she's brave
She scanned the faces of the Supers down in the front, wondering where the ambient, semi-sarcastic thought had come from, then realized the thought had originated from behind her, from the back of the class. She glanced over one shoulder, letting her internal radar guide her, and realized it had radiated from a boy at the back who was using a pocketknife to clean his fingernails.
He was a bit too tall and a bit too rangy, and his dark hair was a bit too shaggy, and his clothes a bit too scruffy and out of date, but the moment she looked at him, he looked up as if he had sensed her. He had beautiful eyes, she noted, a honey-brown so pale they looked amber. For one half second they looked sad and a little vulnerable, then she made the mistake of trying to probe his thoughts, and they darkened and turned angry and remote.
The shaggy, out-of-date boy lashed psychically out at her, as if sensing her mental invasion, and Serena nearly lurched on her feet. He didn't look like much, but she was suddenly convinced that he was a powerful magick-wielder, whether he knew it or not. Powerful…and very, very angry. She thought how that was usually the perfect cocktail for a very good Supervillain.
She immediately turned away from him and faced Mr. Washington. She said in a rush, "I've lived in all different places, but Sky City seems nice. Thank you." She probably sounded like an idiot, but the last thing she needed, or wanted, was any attention. She sat down as gracefully as possible and lowered her head while the girl down in front sniggered and elbowed her second-in-command.
After class let out, she could feel the Supers tracking her out the door. She kept her head down and hurried out into the hallway that was filling up with students rushing to their next class.
that old bitch Mrs. Henessey gave me a D she wouldn't know a preposition if it bit her ass
where the hell's Jason probably doing that cheerleader in the girl's bathroom
shit if I don't get a fix soon I don’t know what I’ll do what time is it how long before
Serena squeezed her eyes shut and looked down at the photocopied map in her hand, trying to concentrate on where her English class was instead of letting the bombardment of hundreds of ambient high school thoughts filter into her brain. She'd been more upset than she'd thought in Algebra, and she realized that at some point she'd dropped her mental shields.
In the crush of students, a girl slammed into her shoulder. It was like hitting a brick wall. The impact knocked Serena halfway across the hall, and as she slammed into a bank of lockers, she secretly—mostly subconsciously—shifted the molecular structure of the metal just a little so it felt more like bumping a mattress. The impact bounced her back into the middle of the hallway, but she stopped herself before she could crash into the blonde Super girl from Algebra.
The girl gave her a deadly look and said, quite loudly, "Freak."
The boy with the blond streaks flanking her on her left said to the sandy-haired boy on her right, "Hey, Harrison, you wanna hold my dick?"
Harrison snickered. "I'd rather not," he said in clear imitation of her earlier. Both boys grinned at her before racing off toward the gymnasium.
The blonde girl continued to glare. christ another geek there goes the neighborhood
"Excuse me?" Serena said without thinking and stood up straighter as a wave of anger pulsed through her body.
The blonde girl looked momentarily surprised by her reaction. "What did you say, you little shrimp?"
"Nothing." Serena was about to sneak away when the boy from Algebra slipped in between them like a referee.
"Amber," said the boy in a friendly manner, "you dropped something back there."
Amber looked annoyed. "And what's that, freak?"
"Your manners."
Amber pursed her lips. "Keep walking that line, batboy, and I'm gonna lock you in your own locker." Tossing the boy a perilous look, she headed off toward the gymnasium, following the lead of her two minions.
Serena expected the boy from Algebra to turn and
say something to her, maybe share a joke at Amber's expense, but he surprised her by lowering his head as she had earlier and just hurrying on toward the computer labs, his arms full of textbooks with papers and comic books sticking untidily out of them.
Thankfully, she didn't have Amber in English, though she did have the boy from Algebra in Biology—the one Amber had called "batboy." She wondered what they meant. He didn't look like an alien bat or vampire or anything weird like that, and she'd seen those in the past. He sat at the back with the other troublemakers, which Serena had finally decided to study up on a bit, since it seemed she might be joining them soon.
"Batboy" sat in the middle of his little entourage, with an enormous quarterback-type on his right who was doodling on his notebook and saying little and a petite blonde girl sitting on his left. The blonde girl was so small and pretty and utterly different than the two boys that Serena had trouble believing they were a cohesive unit, at least until she saw the big boy pass a note familiarly to her.
Serena decided that the cliques at Sky City High were some of the oddest she'd ever seen. Thankfully, their Biology teacher, Mrs. Burks, didn't ask her to stand up and make a fool of herself.
She hoped that was a good sign that things were looking up for her, and by the time the period was over, she was even starting to feel a little less like everyone was staring at her. She'd even been good at shielding the other students' thoughts. Then lunch happened, and Serena's life went to hell and didn't come back.
The Sky City High cafeteria was long and dim, made of cinderblock walls painted a uniform prison green so Serena felt like an inmate. Kids swarmed everywhere, kicking vending machines, talking on cell phones, texting, or just looking like they were having nicotine fits. She immediately looked for the boy from Algebra and Biology but he was nowhere to be found, although she did spot Amber and her two minions.
The Supers were sitting at what she figured was the "popular" table, strategically located in the center of the lunchroom. She made a mental note to avoid that table for the remainder of the year.
There were two lines, one for students to purchase special catered lunches, and another for the free school lunch. Serena discreetly got in line for the free school lunch, got her blue ticket from the concierge lady—who, thankfully, didn't give her more than a vapid once-over—and got in line.
She shielded tight and tried to look invisible as the line moved at the speed of continental drift toward the lunch bar. She could smell something vaguely like fish sticks and mac n' cheese, and her stomach growled in response. She wished she hadn't skipped the toast and cereal that Aunt Macy had tried to feed her before she left for school this morning. If she wasn't so hungry, she could have snuck outside and found a place to hide until lunch period was over.
As she reached the food bar and was served by a series of angry looking lunch ladies outfitted in green scrubs like surgeons, she realized the food didn't look exactly palatable. The fish sticks looked dry and could probably double as weapons, and the mac n' cheese had a suspicious orange glow about it. But then, it had been the same way back in her old city. It was almost a comfort to know that a school that catered to Supers had exactly the same crummy cafeteria food as a regular high school.
Carrying her tray at arm's length, the mysterious orange mac n' cheese quivering, she tried to decide on the right seating arrangement. She knew it was vitally important she choose the right table, just as she chose the right place to sit in class. If she accidently fell in with the World of Warcraft geeks, she'd regret it for the rest of the school year.
there she is
she's kind of hawt
Serena immediately turned toward the ambient thoughts, worrying her lips. She knew she was shielding, so there was no reason she should be hearing anything, and yet, sure enough, there was the boy from Algebra, the magick-wielder. Batboy. He was sitting on a bench against the back wall with his two friends.
Batboy’s big friend was eating out of a massive lunch bag, his concentration entirely on the contents of his oversized sub, but the blonde girl was playing with a green apple, tossing it in the air and catching it, and watching her. One of the thoughts had come from her, and Serena was suddenly afraid it might have been the hawt comment.
The moment Serena looked over, batboy looked up from whatever he was scribbling in a notebook and gave her a defensive look, as if she had somehow invaded his personal space just by looking at him. Shit, she thought, he was just as aware of her magick as she was of his. That was it.
And the more she thought about it, the more "grey" his magick felt, not unlike her own. The question remained whether he was aware that she could sense his thoughts and grey magick, or if he was just some idiot savant with a lot of power and no awareness of it. Serena snorted. Well, either way, she was getting just a little tired of his attitude. It wasn't like it was her fault that his thoughts were so loud they kept penetrating her shields.
The stress of a new school, Amber, everything just amplified her already overwrought thoughts, and Serena walked up to him and said, point blank, "If you don't like me listening to your thoughts, dumbass, then don't think so loud!"
The boy looked startled by her outburst. The big kid next to him laughed through his hoagie sandwich and elbowed him. "Hey, you got an admirer, Jinx."
"Shut up!" Jinx, a.k.a., batboy, said and shoved at him, which did absolutely nothing except make Jinx lurch back on the bench a bit. It was like the big kid was made of lead.
The big boy just grinned at her a little goofily, some lettuce stuck in his front teeth. "Hi. I'm Isaac and this is my sister, Nikki," he mumbled, indicating the petite blonde beside him who was so small, blonde and cute, she looked like she needed to be put behind panes of glass.
Nikki raised a well-manicured hand, looked her over, and said, brightly, "Hello, new girl!" damn, hawt and stacked
Serena immediately blushed at the girl's thought.
Isaac elbowed his friend again, almost knocking him off the bench, and said, "And the grumpy guy here is Jinx. Ignore him. He has issues."
Nikki said, "Not issues, a whole subscription."
"Shut your hole, Nikki!" Jinx shouted back.
"Well, whatever it is, I'd appreciate it if Jinx would stop glaring at me," Serena said.
Jinx narrowed his eyes and looked like he was about to say something when a half-filled carton of orange juice flew out of nowhere and hit him in the side of the head—which did very little for his already scruffy appearance. He glared at Amber, who'd thrown the carton, but didn't immediately get to his feet.
"Oops," said Amber, standing atop the popular table. "I was aiming for your new friend, Jinx." She turned her attention on Serena and said, hands on hips, "So what is it, freak? Do you howl at the moon or turn into the Blob, or what? We need to know for future reference."
Suddenly feeling all eyes on her, Serena turned to face Amber. "Excuse me?"
"You're a freak, or you wouldn't be talking to the other freaks. But what kind of freak are you? We've had blob-kids, batboys, and this one kid who turned into a Chihuahua on the full moon. What's your shtick?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Serena said and started for the trash bin, fully prepared to dump her lunch and get the hell out of there. But before she reached the trash bin, something flew past her shoulder, just grazing her hair, and smashed into the concrete wall and stayed there, deeply embedded in the broken stone.
It was an apple. Nikki's green apple.
"Hey, freak, I'm not done talking to you!" Amber said, and Serena turned to find the girl actually standing over Nikki, who was down on her knees on the lunchroom floor while Amber pulled on her hair. Nikki screamed. Isaac had jumped to his feet to help his sister, but Amber's two toy boys had both of his arms and were pinning them against his back while he made little ow ow ow noises and jumped up and down like a sissy boy.
Amber continued by saying, "What you see there are the sons of Supernova and The Earthmover. M
y daddy’s Atlas, the Strongest Man on Earth. Who are your parents, and do we like them?"
Serena looked over at Jinx, expecting him to have come to the rescue of his two friends, but the coward had stayed down on the bench and out of the fray, looking a bit like a turtle trying to retreat into his shell. She rolled her eyes at the scene. "You must be kidding me. Are you guys like five years old? Doesn't beating up on the misfit kids get kind of old?"
"Are you a misfit?" Amber asked, smiling. She yanked on Nikki's blonde hair and the girl screamed again.
"No," Serena answered, smiling back. "But I can be a real witch sometimes."
Amber, looking a little lost as to how to reply, turned to one of her boys, the one whom Serena thought of as almost cute and her right-hand-minion, and said, "Harrison. Light her fire."
Harrison flinched. "You must be kidding me."
Amber bared her teeth. "Let go of that Frankenstein and fry that bitch!"
Shrugging, Harrison let Isaac go and turned to face Serena. He didn't look particularly happy about his marching orders, but he still raised both hands. They immediately started to glow with a warm, soft white light. But it didn't look like a happy light; it looked like the type of light one should avoid, like the brightness of an oncoming train in a tunnel. He made a pushing motion, and the softly burning white globes sprang out at Serena.
She instinctively threw her lunch tray at the light.
The tray, along with her fish sticks and mac n' cheese, were briefly illuminated and x-rayed. She decided in that moment that she was happy she hadn't eaten any of it. Then it exploded into a glowy, orangey goop that splashed the floor and walls. It also hit her. And the moment it did, it ignited her power.
She'd never had that much control over her grey magick to begin with. When her mom had been alive, she'd always told Serena to shield against it, the way she needed to shield against others' thoughts. But shielding against the Grey, as she sometimes thought of it, wasn't always that easy.
The Grey had a mind all its own. Sometimes the Grey even manipulated her into situations just so she would use it. Being attacked by a source of light didn't help. The Grey didn't like the light anymore than it liked the dark.
She stiffened as her whole body became electrified. That electricity poured down her body and legs and into the floor, then traveled in angry, crackling grey-blue waves to the walls so that every single light switch in the cafeteria, every length of wiring, and every electronic device, was immediately overwhelmed and burned out. There was a sharp stink of ozone, and then everything in the room went dark—the lights, the generators and refrigeration units, even the students' phones and laptops.
The whole room was plunged into complete darkness, with only the dimmest light from the hallway beyond pouring in. That…and her own grey, ethereal power, faintly glowing against her skin.
In that moment, Serena wondered how much of all this had been Amber's doing, and how much the Grey.
The students in the cafeteria flew into a panic. Someone crashed into her from behind, sending her sprawling to the floor on her knees as he charged past her. When she finally looked up, she was dismayed to see the guy, Harrison, glowing faintly with his own ethereal ghostlight, though his light was much brighter—whiter—than her own. The light in his body glowed right through his skin and clothes, creating a weird X-ray effect. She could see his bones, including his wingroots and the thin, bird-like bones that ran down his back under his clothes.
Wings. Harrison had wings.
"Shit," she said, "a nephilim." She hadn't anticipated that, and now she saw the inherent danger of being too near him. Nephilim—half angels—didn't like her kind very well. Well, technically speaking, they didn't like anyone too well. But it explained why he was so cute.
Cute…and very, very dangerous.
She scrambled to get to her feet, but Harrison raised his hands and aimed them at her. His light hit her full on, and she suddenly knew exactly what it felt like to be a deer caught in headlights before being hit by a truck. She was blinded for a moment, and then she felt the cool burning of that light as it collided with all the weird stuff inside of her. She cried out at the sudden, all-consuming pain, and the light vanished mysteriously.
Someone had knocked Harrison to the floor. Serena sat up and blinked until her night vision kicked in and she could see the bodies squirming and tussling on the floor a few feet from her. Harrison was down on his back, with Jinx atop him, boxing his face. She was impressed. She decided that Jinx wasn't a bad fighter, when properly motivated.
Then Amber rushed him and slung her muscular forearm under his chin. Jinx choked and came up off Harrison with a cry. Isaac and Nikki rushed in to help Jinx, but the other boy, the one with blond streaks in his hair, cut them off.
"Get out of the way, Blaine!" Isaac yelled at the boy.
"No way, freak! One more move and I'm gonna smash your face in!"
"That's tough talk coming from your closeted little ass," Isaac said, huffing and puffing like a bull ready to charge. Isaac was at least six and a half feet tall, by Serena's estimation. He must have weighed over two-hundred-and-fifty pounds, all muscle. Why he hadn't pounded those kids into jelly before all this was a mystery to Serena. Yet Blaine kept Isaac back and pacing nervously, though the boy was no taller than Serena, and probably weighed just as much.
"Shit," said Nikki, climbing unsteadily to her feet. She turned to Serena, blew her mussed blonde hair out of her face, and said, "Get out of Blaine's way, new girl. Now!"
"Why?" Serena asked, also getting to her feet.
"Don't ask!" Nikki shouted, taking a step backward while keeping her big eyes on Blaine like he was a nuclear weapon about to go off.
Blaine eyed the bigger boy savagely with his bright blue eyes and then stomped the floor, making a hairline crack grow from under his heel that quickly spread outward toward Isaac.
Isaac said, "Shit," and jumped out of the way. But the crack arrowed right for Nikki. "Get out of the way, Nikki!" he screamed to his sister.
Nikki held absolutely still as the crack split the concrete between her combat boots. She looked down at it in dismay. Then the crack widened and she disappeared down into the basement of the school with a long peal of a scream.
Isaac roared and dived at Blaine, the impact lifting the smaller boy up and hurdling him halfway across the cafeteria before he landed atop a table, skittered over it, and dropped off the other side, dragging down about a half dozen icky lunch trays with him.
Meanwhile, Amber still had Jinx in a chokehold. Serena decided that the girl had some serious muscles, because though Jinx flailed, he was unable to break her hold, and he wasn't exactly a weak-looking guy, either. Serena climbed to her feet and rushed Amber. After all, Jinx had saved her from Harrison's light. But Harrison tripped her halfway there and she flailed to the floor, rolled, and came up on her knees.
Harrison laughed, "You lose, freak," and shot another couple of bolts of light at Serena.
This time Serena was ready. She lifted her hands and deflected them, and they shot off into the back of the kitchen area, the place the lunch ladies had abandoned when all hell had broken loose. Something mechanical exploded with a choking noise, and suddenly the kitchen was full of smoke and fire.
"What did you do?" Harrison screamed.
"Bitch got mad skillz," Serena said, climbing to her feet and eyeing him. She shook herself and felt the Grey encapsulate her, giving off its own creepy, deep-sea glow. She clenched her hands and felt the Grey concentrate itself there into two balls of burning grey light. "And I'm going to burn your angelic tail feathers off if you don't get muscle girl off Jinx. Now!"
Harrison looked torn between obeying her and the fire merrily spreading across the counters, making the warm trays of slowly congealing orange goop explode and decorating the walls of the cafeteria with fish sticks and burned mac n' cheese—which, combined, smelled worse than anything Serena had ever encountered, like a combination
of sulfur and burning rubber.
All the fire bells in the school went off, and Harrison, deciding that discretion was indeed the better part of valor, took off for the door, grabbing Amber along the way. Blaine, wobbling on his feet and looking disconcerted by the hole in the floor he had made, suddenly turned tail and chased his two friends out the door, leaving Serena, along with Jinx and Isaac, sitting wounded on the floor.
All three of them jerked to their feet when they heard a hellish cry echoing up from the crack in the floor. Serena felt the little hairs on her body stand on end at the sound of the cry. She rushed as close to the edge of the crack as she dared, afraid that Nikki was in mortal anguish, but seconds after she got there, Jinx tackled her to the floor.
She fought him off and flipped around. "What are you doing?" she demanded to know.
"You’ve gotta get away from the edge!" he cried, looking terrified.
Seconds later, a darkness shot up from the hole in the floor, made an arc in mid-air, and dived at him. The darkness looked Nikki-shaped, but it was definitely not Nikki. Jinx shoved Serena down, shielding her with his body, and the creature flapped past them, razoring its blood-red claws across Jinx's back, ripping his concert T-shirt to shreds. Jinx cried out at the impact.
Then the thing that Nikki had become shot off across the cafeteria quite literally like a bat out of hell, and looking a little like one too, turned once more and eyed them. The all-black, winged version of Nikki looked like a featureless shadow with wings and fangs. Serena immediately felt the need to clench her bladder closed before she accidently embarrassed herself.
The all-black, shadowy creature with two burning red eyes hissed at them, but Isaac stepped in front of them and raised his hands. "Cool it, sis, it's over!"
Nikki didn't hear. She folded her wings and dove at them again.
Jinx jumped up and pushed Isaac out of the way. Nikki clashed with him and the two of them crashed back into the nearest cinderblock wall with a disconcerting crunch of bones, leaving an almost cartoonlike impression in the stone. Meanwhile, the flames had moved to the lunchroom proper and the room was quickly filling with smoke. Coughing, Serena got to her feet, while Isaac reached for her and said in a very gentle voice, "You okay?"
"What the hell is that?" she cried. She'd thought that Harrison was scary, but nothing could have prepared her for Nikki.
"That's Nix. A Kresnik."
"What happened to Nikki?" Serena said. "And what the hell's a Kresnik?"
"That is Nikki. And a Kresnik…ah, never mind. Take too long to explain." Isaac grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her out of the way as Nikki—or Nix, or the Kresnik, or whatever the hell the creature was—barreled down at them once more, Jinx still clinging to the creature like an unwilling passenger.
Serena knew they would never get out of the way in time, but before the Kresnik could impact them, Jinx grunted with exertion and slowed her momentum. The Kresnik roared and hissed, but Jinx had it in a headlock like a cowboy wrestling a bull to the ground, and he was indeed much stronger than he looked.
As Serena watched, Jinx twisted in mid-air and wrestled the creature to the mac n' cheese splattered floor. The two crashed down, skidding across the mess, the clouds of smoke almost obscuring their battle. The creature fought him tooth and nail, but Jinx held it down. It scratched at his face, and he screamed and his amber eyes caught a wild glow. His ravaged T-shirt stirred and then ripped apart as two great, shiny-black wings emerged as Jinx's muscles bunched and trembled in his effort to restrain the Kresnik.
The two creatures beat at each other with giant, batlike wings. At least she knew why Amber called him batboy now. "Nikki, cut it out!" he roared.
The Kresnik stiffened, made a feeble cry, and then shapeshifted from a great, black creature to a small, blonde, crying girl with mac n' cheese gooped in her hair.
Serena thought she hadn't seen right. Isaac pulled at her wrist, and she finally gave in. The two of them escaped the burning lunchroom and joined the other students on the lawn outside the school. Jinx and Nikki followed soon after, Jinx carrying the exhausted, sniffling girl, both of them covered in black soot and tattered clothing.
Mr. Snodgrass, the school principal, appeared a few moments later, glaring at the students through his big, bifocal glasses even as the distant scream of fire engines filled the air. He stopped to look at Jinx, Nikki, Isaac…and Serena. He gave Serena a nasty, suspicious one-over and said, "Miss Swanson, we need to talk. Immediately."
Serena swallowed against the dryness of her throat and heard a nervous click. So much for anonymity on her first day at school.