“Too close?”
“While you care for the girl, you can’t—”
“I don’t care for her,” I state. “You know what she is.”
“It’s normal to feel confused, Master Parish. She has no idea who you are, yet she’s an integral part of your life.”
“Get to the point.”
“After all this time, surely her feelings mean something to you.”
“They don’t. She’s a duty, an obligation. Another citizen, except that I owe her my protection. Just like New Rhone needs to be looked after, she does as well.”
“That’s not to say you can’t care for her too. Don’t you care at all for this city though you consider it an obligation as well?”
“No. My purpose is simply to keep watch over New Rhone to the best of my ability. Frankly, having Cataline Ford under this roof is a relief. For once, I don’t have to concern myself with her childish affairs.”
He shakes his head at the ground and sighs. “Then let her be. You have no shortage of women to meet your needs. If you’re bored, I’ll find you something new.”
“It’s not that,” I say to myself. When Cataline was a small girl, she was quiet. As a teenager—observant and somewhat skittish. Her fight, this inexorable disobedience, is unexpected. It gets under my skin in a way things just don’t.
“Master,” Norman interrupts my thoughts, “I must insist you leave her alone. Or at least permit me to answer some of her questions. She’s still quite confused.”
Norman knows arguing with me will get him nowhere. And as it is, time itself is never time enough. I cannot even justify his request with a response. Instead I turn my back and go to change, his dismissal made clear by my silence.
It’s only hours before sunrise, but tonight, release is essential. The aggression Cataline has stirred in me can lead to mistakes, and mistakes can change everything.
My bulletproof rubber one-piece is thin but dense, specially developed by engineers, scientists, and ballistics specialists with speed, accuracy, and resilience in mind. It’s one step ahead of the armed forces and costs me a fortune. Especially considering I don’t actually need it.
The people of this city—they call me Hero. Their nocturnal vigilante needed a label, and that’s what they gave me years ago. The suit of armor is extra padding, but more than that, it’s for the public. They believe that underneath it, I’m a man like any of them. It’s a lie, but it’s the only truth they can ever know.
Because I’m not like them at all.
I am stronger, faster, and more powerful. K-36, a formula developed for over a decade and a half, fortifies my skin, hones my intuition, and sharpens my senses like the most predatory of Mother Nature’s night prowlers. When injected into my bloodstream, it makes me superhuman. I have the instincts of a killer, but the intentions of a hero. And a hero’s what I’d be if not for my human impulses and urges—like the ones that threw Cataline onto that mattress.
I pull on my gloves. My metal-grey eye mask latches behind my head, secure but conforming instantly to my face. My blacked-out Lamborghini is the car of choice for patrolling, and my agitation settles once the engine revs to life. I enter the limits of New Rhone with my mind buzzing and my muscles warming. This is what I do. This is what feeds me. I hunt.
New Rhone’s silver skyscrapers are even colder against a black sky—soothingly monochrome like it’s always been. My parents would bring me to the city as a boy, and the weekend would go by too fast. Until it was childish, my parents would hold each of my hands, and we’d get lost between the buildings. They’d tell me about growing up two blocks apart but never meeting until their twenties. I’ve long forgotten the names of the plays we attended or the high-end restaurants where we dined, but whatever’s mixed into the concrete of this city is inescapable.
It’s not long before I hone in on an escalating argument. The hour after the bars close is always busiest; fortunately, distinguishing between harmless drunk blathering and slurring that drips with bad intention comes naturally to me now. The car screeches when I yank the steering wheel, and my foot weighs on the pedal when a woman screams. Every muscle in my body strains as if to split my skin. My unsatisfied arousal sits too close to the surface. I almost welcome the stench of the East Side’s garbage—garbage that exists for me to clean up.
I throw the car in park and exit swiftly. An easy jump has me hanging from the fire escape. I haul myself up and take the stairs two at a time until I’m outside an apartment window. I put my fist through the glass, and instantly the woman’s piercing screams become surround sound. A man’s alcohol-laden curses hurl at me as I barge in. In my youth, the barrage of noise, thick with fear, despair, and desperation, would’ve been too much for me. Now I compartmentalize and manage it without even realizing.
I stride across their kitchen’s yellowed tiles. “What seems to be the problem?”
“Who the hell are you?” the man asks. His arm draws back dramatically, but I catch his fist when it flies toward my face.
“I suggest you answer my question,” I say, squeezing his knuckles until his knees give out. I glance at the woman cowering in the corner and then down at the man whose bones begin to crush under my strength. “But since you’re indisposed, I’ll take a guess as to why her face is swelling up, and you can tell me if I’m right.” With lightning speed, I release his fist and capture his neck. “You had a little too much to drink, took it out on her.”
“She’s my wife,” he wheezes. “It’s the first time, I swear.”
I compress his throat. “That true?” I ask the woman without looking at her.
“Yes,” she sobs.
I cock my head to the side, watching him as he gasps for breath. “Want me to kill him?”
“No,” she says. “He’s my husband . . .”
“Are there children here?”
“They’re grown up,” she rushes the words out, “moved away years ago.”
His eyes blink lazily as his life circles the drain. This is the time to let go and leave him with his warning. But I’m assaulted by the disturbing image of Cataline crouched in that corner. I block it and force myself to refocus.
I drop him on the floor before he loses consciousness. I catch his arm on its way to his throat and swiftly wrench it at an unnatural angle. More screaming when it cracks, but this time it’s his.
“That’s nothing compared to what I’ll do if I have to come back here.” I dig a card out from a hidden pocket and set it on the table. “This is a battered women’s shelter nearby,” I tell her. “They’ll take you in, no questions asked.”
“Hero?” she calls as I turn away.
I don’t wait to hear what she’s going to say next. I’m out the window and downstairs in seconds. I don’t believe she’ll take my advice; many of them don’t. But that just gives me the excuse to come back and finish what I started. My body thrills at the thought, my heart pounding even harder than it just was.
I don’t normally let myself go so far. My code of ethics was developed by my parents and Norman to ensure justice is served only to those I’m certain deserve it. I need the boundaries because years spent cleaning up this kind of mess has made me a fiend for justice—and if I’m not clear-headed about every kill I make, my system will fail. But I have a special void to fill tonight, something I’m afraid is Cataline’s doing.
13
Cataline
Norman sets a tray table next to me, but my eyes remain focused out the window.
“You should eat your breakfast,” he says.
“I will.”