Hot Mama Page 8

  ———

  I had Johnny drop me off outside my store to keep up appearances. I waited until the limo’s taillights disappeared, hailed a cab, and went back to my apartment to get my convertible.

  Twenty minutes later, I got off the interstate and turned onto a pothole-filled dirt road that seemed to end in the middle of the woods. I kept my foot on the gas, plunging the car into a dark stand of pine trees. My tires fell into a well-worn track, and my headlights bounced off a rock wall up ahead. I flicked them on and off five times in rapid succession.

  The wall slid aside, and I drove into a lighted tunnel, which stretched out for another mile, before expanding into an underground garage.

  The garage, like the rest of the underground Fearless Five compound, was hollowed out of the extensive network of caverns beneath Sublime. Wrenches, screwdrivers, and other tools lined the garage walls, along with cans of oil, wires, and other automotive parts. Five black vans huddled together inside the open space. They were our preferred mode of transportation when we went out into the city at night to fight crime and help with natural disasters. The vans resembled the one from the old A-Team television show, only the F5 vehicles had more computer equipment and electronic gizmos stuffed inside them than collagen in Erica Songe’s pouty lips.

  Thanks to Sam’s money and Henry’s technological genius, the vans were also bullet-, bomb-, and ubervillain-proof.

  Henry’s small white scooter was also parked inside the garage, along with my father’s city-issued sedan. So was Lulu’s van. I frowned. What was the computer guru doing down here this late at night? She should be at home trying to hack into the CIA mainframe or hijack the SNN nightly newscast or something equally geeky.

  I parked my convertible and strolled over to the metal door set into the far wall. The lights flickered, reminding me that I had only thirty seconds left before the garage would be filled with a potent sleeping gas. I punched in 555, the security code, on the blinking keypad and stepped inside. The door whooshed shut and locked behind me, another layer of security. If someone ever stumbled into the garage from the outside, she wouldn’t be able to go any farther into the compound without the code. And once the gas took effect, we could transport her out of the garage without her ever being the wiser. At least, that was the theory. No one had ever breached our defenses before, except Carmen, and now Lulu.

  I strode down the halls until I reached the double doors that led into the library. The others were gathered inside, costumes on. My father wore a green and white outfit with a flowing cape that transformed him into Mr. Sage, while Henry’s black-and-white uniform and matching goggles morphed him into Hermit. Lulu wore her usual getup of designer jeans and a Bulluci fleece pullover. The cobalt streaks in her hair gleamed under the flickering screen mounted on one wall. Blueprints winked on and off like a pair of bloodshot eyes blinking at me.

  “Finally. We’ve been waiting almost an hour,” Hermit said.

  I flipped my hair over my shoulder. “I came as fast as I could. I had to get rid of my date first, you know. I couldn’t just fire up and come running.”

  “Was he a little too hot for you to handle, Fiona?” Lulu joked.

  I glared at the computer hacker. Another heat-related pun. Ha, ha, ha, ha. One of these days I was going to show her just how hot under the collar I could get. My fingers curled into loose fists. Red-hot sparks landed on the Persian rug under my feet.

  My father stomped them out and put a restraining hand on my arm. “Go get changed and meet us back in the garage. There’s no time to waste.”

  Lulu zoomed out of the room, followed by Henry and my father. I jogged down to the equipment room, punched in the code, and went inside. I grabbed one of my many superhero suits hanging behind a pair of glass doors along one side of the room, and the rest of my gear from another compartment.

  While I shimmied into the spandex, I glanced at a rack of swords sitting in the middle of the room. I thought about taking them along, but decided against it. Weapons were Sam’s—Striker’s—thing. Not mine. My flames and fists were enough.

  Fiera costume on, I retraced my route to the garage, stopping when I got to the kitchen. I glanced down the hall.

  Another minute wouldn’t hurt. Besides, I needed to keep up my strength in case I got to toast Siren and Intelligal tonight.

  It was hard to do my sacred superhero duty on an empty stomach. I grabbed three bags of chocolate chip cookies from one of the kitchen counters and continued on to the garage.

  Hermit was already in the driver’s seat in one of the vans.

  The side door was open, and the engine idled. I started to get into the van when I realized Lulu was strapped inside. In my seat.

  “She’s coming?”

  “Of course,” Hermit said, turning around. “She helped me track down Siren and Intelligal. Since Karma Girl and Striker are on hiatus, I asked her to come along and man the van and comm links, while I help you guys in the field.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  I slid into Karma Girl’s usual spot in the very back and crossed my arms over my chest. Lulu ignored my hot stare, pulled out her laptop, and started banging away. My father turned around in his seat and gave me a look, clearly wanting me to play nice. That was something else I’d never quite learned to do. At least, not very well. Being an only child, I was used to getting my way. All the time. And I liked it.

  I rolled my eyes. But parental guilt could still make me do funny things sometimes, like be polite to a criminal mastermind.

  “So where are our two ubervillains at?” I asked, attempting to be marginally friendly.

  “Right now, they’re holed up in an abandoned warehouse on the edge of town, a couple of miles away from the old Snowdom Ice Cream Factory. Or what’s left of it.”

  In other words, the ubervillains were squatting next to a big pile of rubble. The Fearless Five had spent some time at the factory last year during our run-in with the Terrible Triad. The factory had paid the price for being the site of a superhero-ubervillain battle. Not to mention the fact that Carmen had stuffed enough explodium bombs in the building to decimate the whole city.

  “How did you find them?” I asked. “I thought they were untraceable or some such nonsense.”

  Hermit glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “I created a new computer program to track the exhaust fumes from Intelligal’s chair. It’s powered with a combination of electricity, gas, and some sort of radioactive isotope I haven’t identified yet. The point is that it lets off a particular combination of fumes and radiation.”

  “Clever as always, Hermit,” Mr. Sage said.

  “I couldn’t have done it without Lulu’s help,” Hermit said.

  Lulu smiled at her honey’s praise, a goofy grin spreading across her heart-shaped face. She stared at his back, her eyes soft and dreamy. Her obvious affection for him almost made her part of the team. Almost.

  “So what do you think they’re doing at that factory? Braiding each other’s hair?”

  I snickered. More than likely, the two ubervillains were trying to pull it out. For partners in crime, they didn’t seem to get along too well.

  “I have no idea. Their crime wave doesn’t make any sense,” Hermit said. “One day, they’re stealing electronic equipment. The next, they’re loading up on computer chips. The day after that, they’re taking jewels from Bigtime’s finest. I can’t figure out what they’re up to.”

  I shrugged. “Does it really matter? They’re bad, we’re good, and we’re going to stop them.” Being a superhero had always been rather black-and-white to me. No gray allowed.

  Nobody looked good in gray, especially superheroes.

  Hermit drove through the streets of Bigtime, stopping at a red light. Suddenly, Swifte was there. The speedy, iridescentclad superhero skidded to a stop in front of the van. He waved at us and dashed away to do whatever it was he did all by himself late at night. Before the light changed, three police cars hauled ass in the same direction. A white van bearing the SNN logo zoomed by a couple of seconds after that.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Big traffic accident on the southbound side of the interstate. Looks like fifty cars involved. Injuries, gasoline fires, people trapped in their vehicles, the usual,” Lulu explained, staring at her computer screen.

  “Should we divert?” Mr. Sage asked.

  Lulu pounded a few more keys. “Nah. Swifte’s already there, along with the Invisible Ingénues. It looks like they’ve got things under control.”

  “How can you tell the Ingénues are on the scene?” I asked.

  “Because they’re not quite so invisible when they’re covered with soot and ash. Look.”

  Lulu turned the screen around. Sure enough, I spotted two shapely outlines pulling people out of burning, crumpled cars.

  “Good for them. Who knows? Maybe they’ll finally get the recognition they deserve, and not be so invisible anymore.”

  I laughed. Lulu wasn’t the only one who could do bad puns.

  The others looked at me like I’d just sprouted a third eye. Lulu shook her head and went back to her typing. Mr.

  Sage stared out the window, while Hermit concentrated on his driving.

  I ignored them. It was funny. Johnny would have laughed at my joke. Johnny. My hands crept up to my lips. I could still feel his lips on mine, still smell his rich exotic scent.

  Maybe I’d call him when I got home. Rich, spoiled playboys kept late hours. It might not be too late for a booty call—

  “We’re here,” Hermit said, stopping the van and killing the headlights.

  I peered out the front. We sat at the end of a long, deserted street. Buildings squatted all around us. Even though it was dark, I could see the graffiti on the walls and the broken doors and windows. Trash and debris cluttered the streets and alleyways, spilling out of the tops of metal cans and Dumpsters. A few streetlights flickered on and off, as though in pain.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “About two miles east of Good Intentions Lane,” Lulu said.

  That explained it. Good Intentions Lane made a mockery of its own name. It was one of the worst streets in Bigtime and the major hangout of drug-running gangs like the Westsiders. Every couple of weeks, we had to come down here and clean out the riffraff. The gangbangers were like cockroaches, though. You could never get them all, and they always scuttled back out from their hiding places when the lights were turned off—or when there were no superheroes or cops around.

  “The factory’s a block ahead on the right,” Hermit said.

  “I figured you could go through the front, Fiera, while Mr. Sage and I went in through the back.”

  “Works for me.” We always sent the muscle in first. Me.

  We piled out of the van. Hermit, Mr. Sage, and I activated the cameras in the F5 insignias on our costumes and shoved miniature two-way transmitters into our ears.

  “Check, check,” Lulu said, her voice crackling in my ear.

  We checked back to her.

  Lulu’s slender fingers danced over the keyboard, and her laptop whirred and sputtered. “All right. You guys are online. I’ve got visual and audio on all of you.”

  “Then let’s rock ’n’ roll,” I said.

  “Be careful,” Lulu said.

  Hermit squeezed her hand. “Always.”

  We locked Lulu in the van and crept down the block.

  Discarded candy wrappers and empty soda cans littered the street, crackling under our boots. Enormous rats scurried back and forth in the debris, their eyes red pinpricks of light in the semidarkness. I glared at the odious little monsters.

  Maybe if I barbecued a couple, the others would get the message and run away. Probably not. Rats were nasty, tenacious creatures. Rather like ubervillains.

  The wind shifted, whipping trash into the air and gusting down the street toward us. The smell of rotten garbage, wet fur, and fresh dirt filled the night. I also caught a whiff of something sickeningly sweet, almost like perfume. My nose twitched. For a second, I felt slow and limp and languid, like my body wasn’t my own to command. Then, the scent was gone, overpowered by the filth around us. The weak sensation faded. My eyes scanned the street, but I didn’t spot anything moving among the piles of trash, except for the foot-long rodents.

  We rounded the corner of a building. A cracked parking lot stretched out in front of us, leading to a low square building set back from the dilapidated street a couple hundred yards.

  “This is it. This is where I tracked Intelligal’s chair to. It used to be a television factory way back when.” Hermit hit a few buttons on his handheld supercomputer. “Here are the entrances and exits. You should go in through the front here, Fiera. Mr. Sage and I will come in back here, and we’ll meet in the middle there.” He pointed to various squiggles on the screen.

  “Front door. Got it.”

  We huddled together in the shadows. Our eyes went to each other’s faces. Despite our powers, we knew that one night all of us might not come back. It had happened before when we’d least expected it. And it could happen again. I put my fist over my heart. Mr. Sage and Hermit followed suit. Courage, all.

  Then, one by one, we eased toward the factory and the ubervillains inside.

  ———

  I waited for Mr. Sage and Hermit to slip into the dark alley that ran along the side of the building before I scurried across the parking lot. I made it to the entrance without incident and glanced over my shoulder. Nothing.

  A set of uneven steps led up to the front door, which was boarded over with rotten-looking two-by-fours. I paused.

  Looking. Listening. Nothing. I started up the steps, which shrieked and groaned like a woman in labor under my weight. I winced. Good grief. I bet they’d heard that in the next time zone. I might have a variety of superpowers and skills, but moving quietly wasn’t one of them. So, I did what I do best—I put a little muscle into the situation.

  I yanked the boards off the building and tossed them over my shoulder. The door followed three seconds later.

  Darkness spilled out from the interior, and I stepped inside.

  I made my way through a series of abandoned offices that lined the front of the building. Moonlight shimmered in through the broken windows, painting the square, empty rooms with an eerie gray glow. The usual assortment of crushed cigarettes, empty beer bottles, and used condoms covered the floor. How romantic.

  I found a set of metal doors that led into the factory and peered through the grimy windows on them. The doors opened up into one enormous room. Assembly lines, pipes, and more snaked through the open space. I couldn’t see the back wall for all the metal zigzagging everywhere. I couldn’t see very far into the factory at all.

  “Anything, guys?” I whispered.

  “Nothing so far, Fiera. We’re at the back door ready to come inside,” Hermit said in my ear.

  “Lulu?” I asked.

  “Everything’s fine, as far as I can tell.”

  “All right. Here I go.”

  I tried the metal knob. Locked. Not for long. I gave it a good tug, pulled the knob off, yanked the door open, and stepped through. I paused. Waiting. Watching. Listening.

  Everything was still and quiet and hushed inside. I moved slowly, staying in the shadows, and trying to keep my chunky boots from clacking too loudly on the hard floor. I went a hundred feet, then two hundred, then three. Pipes, pipes, and more pipes. The place seemed endless.

  I stumbled and almost cracked my head on a metal support beam. I muttered a curse and looked down. A power cable curled around my feet. Unlike everything else in the building, it wasn’t coated with a layer of gray dust and cobwebs.

  It looked brand-spanking-new.

  At last. A clue.

  Keeping one eye on the black cable, I moved farther into the factory. I realized it was getting brighter. There was a light up ahead.

  “I think I’ve got something,” I whispered. “Lights in the factory.”

  “Then go with your hot self,” Lulu replied.

  I rolled my eyes and kept moving. I rounded the edge of one of the assembly lines and stopped. I’d finally gotten to the belly of the beast, as it were. Halogen bulbs illuminated the scene. Computers, power cables, and more clustered together.

  Bits and pieces of metal littered the floor and a couple of steel tables. Soldering irons, wire cutters, and other tools crouched on wooden stools and plastic milk crates.

  Blueprints and schematics and weird diagrams hung on a cork board. It was your usual ubervillain–mad scientist lab.

  Intelligal was hard at work on something.

  Some sort of giant, radio-karaoke-like thing stood in the middle of the makeshift workshop. I spotted a cordless microphone, a bunch of wires, and what looked like a flatscreen plasma monitor. I squinted. Were those diamonds lining the thin screen?

  “Are you getting this, Lulu?” I whispered.

  “Every last pixel,” the computer hacker muttered. “Although I don’t have a clue as to what that thing is or does.”

  I didn’t really care what it did. When it doubt, smash.

  That was my philosophy. I raised my fist and focused, ready to punch through that metal like it was a piece of paper.

  Suddenly, I realized the hairs on the back of my neck were standing straight out. Not good.

  I hit the ground rolling. A blue lightning bolt zigzagged over my head and rattled off into the darkness. Now, I don’t have my father’s psychic abilities or even Carmen’s inner voice, but after some fifteen years as a superhero, I know when an ubervillain’s trying to get the drop on me. Siren had been quiet as death, but the electrical charge in the air from her powers had given her away.