“What’s going on?” Anna asked.
When Sam pointed at her, a shiver of fear twisted her gut—he wouldn’t really blast her, would he? “We’re busy, you kids step back and watch the real supers work.”
Teia shook her head at that. “There’s a car full of gangbangers tearing up the neighborhood. We came this way to try to cut them off.”
Exactly the kind of thing they could do with their powers. Anna and Teddy, not so much. She was inclined to walk off, leave them to it, and find easier pickings. No matter how degrading that would be.
Teddy stepped forward angrily. “We’ll take care of it, this is our territory.”
“How are we supposed to know that? We don’t know what you do, you never make it into the news,” Teia said.
Did she have to keep rubbing their faces in it?
Lew pointed at the gun. “Paintball? That’s what you guys are reduced to?”
“Cut it out, it works,” Anna said. At least, it worked that one time.
“Tag and bag,” Teddy said, like it actually meant something, and hefted the gun like it actually meant something.
“Look,” Anna said, wanting to get away before she said something stupid, or rather more stupid. “There’s plenty of trouble for all of us. We’re wasting time standing here arguing—”
The slide and wail of a police siren echoed down the canyon of tenement buildings. They all perked up like hunting dogs.
“We didn’t call the cops,” Lew said. “What are the cops doing here, poaching our catch?”
Teia turned to Anna. “This is exactly what I was talking about. We don’t even have to call the cops to clean up our bad guys because they’re always already there!”
“Guys, incoming!” Sam yelled.
The siren was getting closer. A car’s tires squealed against the asphalt, turning a corner at high speed.
“Let’s go,” Lew said and took off running in the direction of the presumptive car chase. Teia and Sam followed right behind.
Anna and Teddy looked at each other. Teddy shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind seeing what they do next.”
“We might want to back up a little,” Anna said. They pressed back against the brick wall.
Another siren joined the first. The Trinity was strung out along the block when the squealing tires rounded even closer than before, and a battered SUV swung onto their street. The pair of men visible in the cab—the vehicle’s headlights were off—must have been trying to lose the cops in the grid of empty streets. But it wasn’t working; the sirens were getting louder. And now the SUV raced right toward them.
What happened next might have been choreographed, an elegant display of what everyone who didn’t actually have superpowers thought it must be like to have them. Teia—Lady Snow—acted first, jumping into the street. Anna almost screamed at her to get out of the way of the rocketing SUV. But Teia had a plan. Kneeling, she put her hand on the ground and a sheet of ice thick enough to skate on expanded away from her, covering the street to the next sidewalk and for a block in either direction, right before the SUV careened onto it.
Stormbringer moved in. A blast of wind came from nowhere—no, it came from straight down, sliding along the side of the building behind them, hitting the ground, slamming into the street. Anna dropped to the ground to avoid getting smashed by it; they all did.
The SUV spun out. The wind shoved it, and the frictionless ice carried it to the far side of the street, where it jumped the curb, tipped sideways, and slammed into a brick façade, with the crunching of steel and a shattering of glass.
The crash didn’t stop the two guys from climbing out of the wreckage, brandishing guns. The team backed off, letting the men—typical hoodlum types in leather jackets, worn jeans, dressed up in too much attitude—scramble out of the car and step onto the ice. They held guns at the ready, and Anna figured it was already too late to run.
Blaster’s turn to step forward, arms outstretched. Both hands emitted a series of short blasts, pops of light streaming out. Each stream hit one of the guys, who fell back, sliding on the ice, slamming against the wreckage of their car. They were down.
The Trinity really was a team. They really could do anything.
Anna felt a little more useless than usual.
The two men were alive, struggling as they tried to pick themselves up off the ice, falling again, groaning in pain. Lady Snow leaned on the ground again, and another layer of ice grew across the first, thickening until sheets of it expanded and reached up for the men, encasing limbs, locking them in place. Their guns were long gone, shot out of their hands by Blaster’s lasers.
Three police cars roared up, two patrol cars and an unmarked sedan. They screeched to a stop at the edge of the ice slick.
“Guys, cops,” Lew called unnecessarily, but it drew the attention of the others.
“They ought to thank us,” Sam muttered. “Got their guys all tied up for them.”
For once, Teia didn’t seem inclined to pose for any cameras. “I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t stick around for pictures this time.”
A pair of officers from one of the cars was circling around the ice patch to the wreckage of the SUV, shouting orders at the hoodlums to freeze, which should have been hilarious, but no one was laughing. The guys had started to break out of their ice shells, which ended up being quite thin, but they didn’t struggle when the officers picked a path to them, handcuffs in hand. They were wearing cleats on their shoes, Anna noticed. Like they’d planned for it, like they’d dealt with Lady Snow’s ice slicks before.
A spotlight from the second car switched on, blasting their side of the street with light.
“Guys, scatter,” Teia hissed, and the Trinity ran down the street, away from the cops. They’d had practiced running from cops just as much as they’d practiced everything else. Splitting up, each turned a different corner, in a different direction. To catch them, the police would need manpower and a concerted plan. What they had was two guys cautiously approaching as if hoping to catch a wild animal. Instead of giving chase, they cursed and stopped.
“Anna…” Teddy started, then vanished. Turned invisible and ran. She sensed him retreating.
“Wait a minute—” But he was long gone.
She made the mistake of turning to look straight into the light when she launched her own attempt at escape. Temporarily blinded, hands shielding her face, she ran up the block, but she was well behind the others. In lieu of other targets, the cops went after her. They were calling at her to stop, but they weren’t threatening to shoot, so she kept running.
She hadn’t noticed that the unmarked sedan had left the scene, circled the block, and now sat parked at the end of the sidewalk. She pulled up, trapped by the cops behind her, the car in front of her, and the ice on the street. She gave a wordless, frustrated scream. Teddy and the rest had all just left her here. The jerks. The assholes.
The plainclothes cop leaning against the hood of the car ahead of her was Paulson, captain of the downtown precinct. She knew it before she even saw him. Thank goodness she was wearing her mask. It had been a year or so since he’d been to the house for dinner, since he’d seen her. Probably, he wouldn’t recognize her. Except he already knew, because he was working with her mother, just like everyone else in Commerce City with any kind of authority.
She’d unconsciously raised her hands, looking back and forth between Paulson and the two uniformed officers, waiting to see who would leap at her first. Neither of them did, but she still stood there, arms up, trying to catch her breath.
“Put your hands on your head,” Paulson called, approaching her with a set of handcuffs.
He was really going to arrest her. She was dizzy, her muscles went loose, and she thought she was going to pass out. This was one of the things she’d always been afraid of, this was why they weren’t ready to go out yet. Somehow, she didn’t fall over and stayed upright while Paulson turned her so she was facing the wall and took hold of her wrists, bringing them back to clamp the steel of the cuffs over them. This was ridiculous. This was a nightmare.