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  FANDEMIC

  by

  Jennifer Estep

  Book Five in the Bigtime series

  Fandemic

  Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Estep

  Excerpt from Nightingale

  Copyright © 2012, 2013 by Jennifer Estep

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual or fictional characters or actual or fictional events, locales, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The fictional characters in this story have no relation to any other fictional characters, except those in works by this author.

  All rights reserved by the author.

  Author’s Digital Edition

  ISBN: 978-0-9861885-0-3

  Cover Art by The Killion Group, Inc.

  Digital Formatting by Author E.M.S.

  Other books by Jennifer Estep

  The Bigtime Series

  Karma Girl

  Hot Mama

  Jinx

  A Karma Girl Christmas (holiday story)

  Nightingale

  Fandemic

  ~

  The Elemental Assassin series

  Books

  Spider’s Bite

  Web of Lies

  Venom

  Tangled Threads

  Spider’s Revenge

  By a Thread

  Widow’s Web

  Deadly Sting

  Heart of Venom

  The Spider

  Poison Promise

  Black Widow

  Spider’s Trap

  Bitter Bite

  E-novellas

  Thread of Death

  Parlor Tricks (from the Carniepunk anthology)

  Kiss of Venom

  ~

  The Mythos Academy series

  Books

  Touch of Frost

  Kiss of Frost

  Dark Frost

  Crimson Frost

  Midnight Frost

  Killer Frost

  E-novellas

  First Frost

  Spartan Frost

  ~

  The Black Blade series

  Cold Burn of Magic

  Dark Heart of Magic

  Bright Blaze of Magic

  Fandemic

  Piper Perez has always wanted to be a superhero. Always wanted to wear a cool costume, have amazing abilities, and save the day. There’s just one problem—Piper doesn’t have any superpowers.

  So she focuses on other things. Facts, figures, memorabilia. Piper knows and collects it all, about both the superheroes and the ubervillains who roam the streets of Bigtime, N.Y. Piper’s friends jokingly call her a fandemic—someone who is a superfan of all things superhero. The nickname is truer than anyone knows, especially since Piper can’t stop thinking about Swifte, the speedy hero who broke her heart months ago.

  But someone has been killing off Bigtime’s heroes and villains. When one of Piper’s friends is murdered, she vows to do whatever she can to help bring the killer to justice, superpowers or not. All the clues and information she gathers lead her to believe that Swifte is the killer’s next target. Piper has always wanted to be a hero, and now she’ll have to use all of her fandemic knowledge to save the man she loves—or die trying….

  Dedication

  To all the fans of the Bigtime series who wanted more stories, this one’s for you.

  To all the fans, never stop enjoying the things that make you happy.

  To my mom, grandma, and Andre—for everything.

  PART ONE

  PIPER

  Chapter One

  I’ve always wanted to be a superhero.

  Always wanted to have amazing powers. Wear a cool costume. Be dark, brooding, and mysterious. Say wise, knowing, slightly cheesy lines. Use my powers for the greater good and kick some serious ubervillain ass. You know, the whole superhero shtick.

  Over the years, I’ve done everything in my power to make it happen. I’ve accidentally-on-purpose put my hands next to scary-looking bugs. Gotten a little too close to some of the more unusual animals at the Bigtime Zoo. Taken multiple tours of the Bigtime Nuclear Power Plant. Actually, I still do that last one at least once a year. Just on the off chance that one of the core reactors will melt down and blast me with radiation that gives me superstrength. Or supersenses. Or superanything. I’m not picky.

  “Hey, hey, hot mama! Wanna see my sword?”

  At the moment, I would have especially loved the power to make myself invisible.

  I looked up to find a guy wearing a Striker costume not-so-subtly leering at my breasts the way he had been ever since I’d come over to the bar to get a glass of Wynter punch. He’d finally decided to make his move and get up close and personal about his leering. Oh, goody.

  Black hair, brown eyes, bronze skin. The guy was cute, and he had the broad shoulders and muscled body to pull off the skintight leather he was wearing from head to toe. But instead of admiring just how well he filled out certain areas of that leather, I found myself growing annoyed instead.

  Because his costume was all wrong.

  The outline of two small swords that crisscrossed the guy’s chest was backwards and red, instead of dark gray like the ones on the real Striker’s costume. The swords were located above the F5 insignia, instead of behind it, like they should have been, and the whole suit was a smoky charcoal, instead of a true, midnight black like the one that the real superhero wore.

  Amateur.

  I might not be a superhero or have any actual superpowers, but I knew more than enough about the heroes and villains in this town to at least get my costume right. And I most definitely did not want to get hit on all night long by guys dressed in knockoff Striker suits. But that’s exactly what had been happening for the last two hours. I should have expected as much, since I was at the Valentine’s Day dance for the Slaves for Superhero Sex club.

  More than a thousand people had crowded into the Bigtime Convention Center and Orchestra Hall for the annual event, and almost everyone was wearing some sort of colorful costume, mask, cape, or T-shirt emblazoned with the photo and symbol of their favorite hero or villain.

  Striker, Fiera, Mr. Sage, Hermit, Karma Girl. All the members of the Fearless Five, the city’s preeminent and most popular superhero team, were well represented among the enthusiastic fangirls and fanboys. So were other iconic heroes like Johnny Angel, Debonair, and Talon.

  Many folks had also dressed up like their favorite ubervillains, including everyone from Malefica, Frost, and Scorpion from the Terrible Triad to deceased and comatose villains like Prism, Hangman, and Bandit. One woman had suited up like Intelligal and had even built an exact replica of the dead villain’s Intellichair, although the woman’s chair just rolled on the floor, instead of flying through the air like Intelligal’s had. Still, I had to give her props for getting all the details exactly right. It wasn’t her fault she hadn’t been able to get her hands on a jet-propulsion system to actually make the chair fly.

  Even more colorful than the costumes and capes were the decorations that adorned the convention center’s main auditorium. Ten-foot-tall cardboard cutouts of heroes and villains towered above the crowd, along with smaller, life-size versions that you could put your arm around and have your picture taken with. Hero- and villain-shaped balloons filled a white netting that swooped down from the ceiling, while still more balloons drifted freely through the air, many of which were in the form of various body parts that I didn’t look too closely at. They didn’t call the club Slaves for Superhero Sex for nothing.

  Balloons shaped like giant candy conversation hearts had been tied at either end of the bar, which was set up in the orchestra pit. Several roun
d tables clustered in front of the bar, where people could sit, drink, and talk, as well as play cards and throw dice in the latest role-playing games. Beyond the tables, dozens of couples were grooving on the dance floor, their colorful capes rippling around their spandex-clad bodies. Vendors hawking everything from imitation swords to replica gadgets to collector-edition toys stalked up and down in front of booths that ringed the dance floor, trying to entice people to ignore the pulsing music, come over, and browse through their wares.

  I signaled the bartender that I needed a refill, then dug into one of the glass dishes filled with candy conversation hearts that were spaced along the bar. I grabbed a pink heart and read the saying. I luv superheroes. Truer words, never spoken. I popped the candy heart into my mouth and crunched down on it.

  The bartender finished with my drink and slid a fresh glass of Wynter punch over to me. I reached for the ice-blue concoction, but the guy in the knockoff Striker suit propped his elbow up on the bar in front of my drink and leaned in closer. I didn’t need my best friend Abby Appleby’s supersense of smell to tell me that he’d taken a bath in his cologne. The overpowering spicy scent made my eyes water and nose twitch in an all-too-familiar way. I was going to have to get rid of him before my allergies kicked into overdrive. A red, runny nose would so not go with the flame-shaped mask that covered my face.

  “I’m talking to you, hot mama,” the guy crooned again.

  “Really?” I asked. “Hot mama? That’s your line?”

  The guy frowned. “What’s wrong with hot mama?”

  I shrugged. “For starters, it sounds like some cheesy book title.”

  His frown deepened. “But you’re wearing a Fiera costume. Everybody knows that she has fire-based powers.” His eyes dropped to my breasts again. “And that she is smokin’ hot. Like, literally. Just like you are in that costume. Well, without the actual smoke and fire, of course. But you’re still plenty hot enough for me in the figurative sense.”

  Part of me was impressed that he knew the difference between literal and figurative, but the other part of me was growing more and more annoyed by the excessive leering.

  I snapped my fingers in front of his face. “Hey, buddy. I’m up here.”

  He grinned, evidently thinking the snarky finger snap meant that I was totally into him too. “So what do you say, hot mama? Wanna ditch the party and go have a private one of our own?” He waggled his eyebrows for extra emphasis, as though I didn’t already know exactly what he meant.

  “Sorry.” I sniffed and tossed my black hair back over my shoulder in my very best Fiera impersonation. “As you pointed out, I’m dressed like Fiera, and you’re in a Striker costume. The two don’t mix.”

  He frowned again. “Why not?”

  “You seriously don’t know?”

  He shook his head.

  “Because Karma Girl and Striker are an item. I even think they’re married in real life, but that’s just a theory of mine.”

  Actually, it was much more than just a theory, since I’d attended the wedding of Carmen “Karma Girl” Cole and Sam “Striker” Sloane last year. Of course, the two of them didn’t realize that I knew who they were, alter egos and all. To them, I was just Piper Perez, a business associate and the chief financial officer of Fiona Fine Fashions. But my inner fangirl had been secretly, gushingly, absolutely thrilled to attend the wedding of two of my favorite heroes. After all they’d been through battling the Terrible Triad, Carmen and Sam deserved some happiness, and so did their alter egos.

  “Theories?” the guy said, an incredulous note creeping into his voice. “You have theories about superheroes?”

  And that was the official dagger killing any chance he’d had of picking me up. But the guy kept staring at me like he had no idea what I was talking about, so I listed some more reasons we were never going to happen.

  “Of course I have theories about superheroes. Who doesn’t? Besides, everybody knows that Fiera only goes out with Johnny Angel,” I said. “If you were a true superhero fan, you’d know that too.”

  “So what?” the guy asked, staring at my breasts again. “What does it matter who dates who? It’s not like we’re the real heroes. We’re just here to party and have a good time.”

  I snapped my fingers again. “Eyes up top, buddy. And yeah, maybe we are here to party and have a good time, but I also happen to be a superhero fan. A true fan. One who knows her heroes and villains forwards and backwards. Which means that I never, ever go home with guys who don’t know their basic facts.”

  “Are you serious?” the guy asked. “You’re turning me down just because I didn’t know that some hero chick is dating some villain dude?”

  “Two chicks and two dudes, and they’re all heroes now,” I automatically corrected him. “And that’s only one reason. Your overpowering cologne is another one, but your main offense is that sad, sad excuse for a costume. I know that Striker updated his suit a few weeks ago, but still, you had plenty of time to tweak your own suit to match his.”

  Was I being a total bitch right now? Oh, yeah. Normally, I would have let him down nice and easy, but he was the fifth guy to come up to me in the last hour, and the third one to use the cheesy hot mama line. Apparently, some guys thought that wearing an orange-red spandex Fiera costume made you ready, willing, and eager to fulfill all of their warped fantasies for the night, since they’d never get close to the real superhero herself.

  The guy sputtered like a car engine, trying to come up with some snappy retort. Evidently, he couldn’t believe that I was passing up the opportunity to go back to his place and let him paw me.

  I didn’t give him the chance to make a comeback. Since his elbow was still blocking my glass of Wynter punch, I grabbed a couple more conversation hearts out of the candy dish, popped them in my mouth, and walked away. Unlike his outfit, my costume was one-hundred-percent correct, from my flame-shaped mask to my orange-red catsuit to my chunky-heeled boots—the latter of which helped me make a quick getaway.

  I strolled past the boisterous vendors, having already examined their goods and picked up a few new collectibles, and headed for the buffet tables lining one wall. Maybe I was channeling Fiera tonight because I felt like I could eat as much as she did. Okay, okay, so I couldn’t eat a dozen of anything even at my hungriest, but I’d skipped lunch, and I was starving. Watch out, Caveman Stan mini cheeseburgers and Pimpler pepperoni pizza—

  I was so focused on the buffet and my growling stomach that I bumped into a tall woman standing off to one side of the tables. Actually, bumped wasn’t the right word. I hit her shoulder and bounced off, since I was no match for her superstrength, not even when she was standing still.

  The woman turned to stare at me. She was wearing an ice-blue suit that brought out the golden sheen of her cropped hair. Silver sequins were stitched together in the shape of a giant snowflake on the front of her costume, and the symbol flashed like a strobe light with every move she made.

  I brightened. “Oh, hi, Sabrina. How are you?”

  The woman’s ice-blue eyes narrowed behind her snowflake-shaped mask, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Too late, I realized my mistake. I’d just called Wynter, the superhero, by her real name—a name I wasn’t supposed to know.

  But I’d figured out that Sabrina St. John moonlighted as Wynter, the hero who had superstrength and ice-based powers to match her frosty name. Okay, okay, so I hadn’t actually figured it out so much as I’d seen her duck into one of the dressing rooms at Oodles o’ Stuff, the department store where she worked, and come out thirty seconds later all decked out in her Wynter costume. But I knew who she was all the same. In fact, I knew the real identities of pretty much every hero in Bigtime, and some of the villains too.

  Since, you know, most of them had either saved or threatened me at some point over the years.

  “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m Wynter—the real Wynter.” She tapped the sequined snowflake on her chest for emphasis.

  �
�My mistake. Of course you are,” I said. “But what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be out patrolling? Keeping the city safe from villains and the like?”

  Wynter huffed. “Believe me, I wish I was doing that. But it’s my turn to chaperone this year’s shindig. I can’t believe that I let Abby book me for this.”

  She muttered the last few words under her breath, but I still caught the reference to Abby, who was the city’s premiere event planner, in addition to being my best friend. I knew that Abby had planned the Valentine’s Day party, but I hadn’t realized that she’d gotten Wynter to be one of the guest superheroes. Then again, I hadn’t told Abby that I was coming here tonight. Abby loved me, but she thought that I took my hero worship just a little too seriously. Which I totally did. Not that I would ever admit that to her, though.

  “I mean, come on,” Wynter said. “I know that parts of the auditorium are dark, but they’re not that dark.”

  She gestured at a couple standing in a pool of shadows a few feet away from us who were kissing and fondling each other a little too passionately for such a public place.

  I winced and turned away from the PDA. The Slaves for Superhero Sex club had a bad reputation because some of the members took the club’s name far too literally. All right, way too literally. Some folks in the club did stupid, foolish, and life-threatening things like stepping out into traffic during rush hour, climbing out onto ledges thirty stories up, or deliberately capsizing their sailboats in the middle of Bigtime Bay. All so they could get a little face time with whichever hero rescued them. Most of the heroes like Wynter politely turned down everything but autograph requests, but there were a few like Gentleman George who enjoyed the, um, attention as much as the club members did.