The rope cut into my wrists, rubbing my skin raw. I’d managed to stop crying for the most part, and my jaw wasn’t nearly as sore as it had been when I’d had that damned sock in my mouth.
I struggled again, crying out with pain. I could hear the scuffling behind me. Then the situation properly clicked, and if I’d had my hands free, I’d have smacked myself for not thinking of it sooner.
I mean, sure, I was in a kind of weird situation. I was stressed, I was in pain, and I hadn’t had these powers for very long, but…still. He’d tied me up with rope, and rope can burn!
I stopped struggling and even let my arms go completely limp. “Okay, let’s see what I can do,” I muttered. I was pissed, but my anger was struggling to go beyond the barrier I had put up around it without even thinking.
This was a situation where it was right to be angry, though, and it didn’t matter if I overreacted or took it too far. Hell, I wasn’t even sure that anything could really be called “overreacting” in this situation. A guy had broken into my house, tied me up, and was kicking the shit out of my sister. Pretty much anything we dealt out would be within the realm of “acceptable” reactions.
I consciously let myself get angry at him and quickly caught the smell of something on fire, though I made sure to keep it to the elbows down—for now.
It would be fun—and intimidating—if I could run at him, completely engulfed in flame, but I wasn’t sure I could do that without burning down the house. What I was doing was risky enough, but I could smell the burning rope, so I pulled my hands apart and was rewarded with a loud snap, and suddenly my arms were free.
I reached down to untie my legs but instead just grabbed the ropes and burned through them—and my pyjamas.
Well, at least that confirmed I can’t burn myself!
I kicked the chair back as I stood and was surprised and relieved when it landed on the guy, not Holly, who was kicking him in the face. Repeatedly. Extinguishing the flame, I reached over and grabbed her arm.
“Holly, you can stop! He’s not going anywhere anymore.”
Holly’s foot made contact with his forehead one more time before she stopped, her shoulders tense. I heard her breathe in deeply and then exhale to try to banish the tension.
“Listen,” I said, “we don’t need to hurt him, okay? We really don’t need to do anything aside from calling the police.”
Of course, as I said it, the guy on the floor proved me wrong. It turned out he still had the knife in his hand, and at the mention of the police, he drove it into my calf. I saw white for a second as it broke the skin, then I yelled, stumbling backwards, each step making me yell again—and fell onto the couch, bleeding all over the place.
“Fuck!” I reached down and tugged on the knife, but it stayed in my leg. Gritting my teeth so I didn’t wake up anyone else—like the neighbours the next street over, who might not have heard me yet—I pulled on the handle as hard as I could, and the knife came out, but not without a lot of both blood and pain.
I looked up, tears blurring my vision. Through them, I could see Holly and the intruder still exchanging blows. They looked like they were having a bar fight, and Holly was not holding out well—she’d never been a fist-fighter.
This was bullshit, and I was going to stop it.
“Use your fucking powers, Holly!” Dragging myself up off the couch, I stepped cautiously forward and winced, almost biting through my lip. Martial arts prowess or no, I wasn’t going to be much help.
I sat back down and tried to block out the distraction of them fighting. Whether it was through luck, skill I didn’t know she had, or just because the guy had been kicked in the face a dozen times, Holly seemed to have the upper hand. Placing my hands over the gaping hole in my leg, I held them there, directing my energy at the wound, hoping I could cauterize it without it actually catching on fire. The blood oozed through my pyjama pants and sweat was pouring off me. I stopped to wipe my hands on the couch—it was going to need to be cleaned anyway—tore off my pants leg at the knee and wrapped it tightly around my leg to staunch the flow of blood.
Positioning my hands back over the wound, I focused all my attention on it until I could smell flesh burning. I was worried, of course, but I figured it was probably a good thing, despite the unsettling odour.
I looked up to see how the fight was progressing and gasped when a well-thrown punch connected with Holly’s mouth. She went down quickly, globs of blood flying from her mouth as she fell. The guy moved in to attack her again, and my hands flew up to my mouth. Bleeding to death or not, I’d had enough. I was riding on not only the wave of anger at this asshole disrupting our lives and then kicking the shit out of us, but also the wave of adrenaline from the pain.
I had literally been training for this day—the day when I’d need to know self-defence in order to save myself or someone else—since I was about eight years old.
And hell, I had superpowers.
Time to be a superhero.
“Hey, jackass!” I called out as I advanced on him. I threw a punch with my weaker left hand, knowing he’d block it. As soon as his hands were out of the way, I struck out quickly with my right hand, punching him hard in the chest. He arched back, and I followed up with a kick. At this point, I had him backing up into the wall, where I planned to beat the shit out of him.
Let the cops sort out “excessive force,” especially considering I had been stabbed and Holly would be sitting there bleeding from the mouth. I could only hope Brent was just tied up upstairs.
I punched and kicked the guy as if he were a punching bag at the gym. Whether they connected made absolutely no difference to me. I was barely even registering when he struck back at me, blocking his attempts without even needing to think about it. At the optimum moment, I stopped and flexed my arms to my sides, letting my torso erupt in flames. It was safe to say my pyjamas were toast.
I could replace them.
I wanted to scare this guy so we could tie him up and call the cops. Okay, I wanted to do more—hell, part of me wanted to see him dead—but I was in control, and I was better than him.
I circled him, keeping close enough that he could feel the heat of my flames but not actually touching him. I was reflected in his wide, unbelieving eyes.
“How the hell…?”
“This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to lie down on the floor, hands behind your back. I’m going to kneel on you to keep you in place, and then my sister is going to go get the duct tape. We’re going to make sure your hands are nice and secure, and then we’re going to call the police. If you don’t do as I say—” I spread my arms wide, the flames billowing towards him. “—I’ll give you a nice, big hug and we’ll call it even.”
Holly laughed, and it took all I had not to join in. It was a ridiculous thing to say, but I couldn’t think about that right now.
“So? Which is it?” I took a half-step forward, and he immediately dropped to the floor.
Yeah, I thought so.
“Good choice.” I waited while he shuffled, presumably figuring out a comfortable position, then I knelt on his back, but I couldn’t secure him, so I extinguished the flames—on my arms only—and held him down.
“Can—can you put out the flames? How the hell do you do that, anyway?” I ignored the second question, but I could see tiny tendrils of smoke lifting from his shirt. I let all my flames die down, and he immediately struggled to get up, so I turned them back on. He stopped moving, clearly terrified.
“Don’t try anything, idiot,” I snarled. I’d thought that initial sight of seeing me engulfed in flames would be enough to shut him up and do what I said with no question, but obviously, I’d been wrong.
I shifted slightly so I could see Holly. “Go grab the duct tape.”
“You think that’ll be enough?”
“The combination of me sitting on him and his arms being encased in an entire roll of duct tape will be, yeah. At least until the cops get here.” I gestured to myself. “See? Superhero. You could have—”
“Don’t, Jesse!”
Oops. Wrong thing to say. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. But I don’t need you to tell me what I should have done from the start.” Hurt and annoyed, she left the room running her hand through her hair. I’d never seen her do that before, and it reminded me that Brent was upstairs.
I craned my neck and listened for some indication of life. If this guy…
A flare of pain radiated from my calf, almost as badly as when I’d initially been stabbed. I looked down, and his hand was clenched around the bandage, viciously squeezing the frayed nerve endings.
Putting my wound so close to his hand had been a bad idea. One moment of distraction, and he was back in control. I fell onto my side, screaming in pain.
The next minute or so was a blur of pain. I was protecting my face from his blows for the most part, but he was kicking me in the stomach, in the sides, in the head. My calf was still screaming, and I couldn’t do much of anything but scream along with it until I could figure out how to clamp down on the pain again.
Then, without warning, it stopped. The flurry of kicks ended, and there was a crackling through the air, coupled with a bright flash of light. As my attacker hit the floor, I grabbed at my leg again, focusing as much of my energy as possible into the wound to stop it hurting.
It wasn’t nearly as bad as earlier, but it still took until Holly had walked over to the man and checked for a pulse before I realized what had happened.
“You shocked him.”
She was breathing fast, her eyes wide and frantic.
“You—you stopped him! What’s…” I trailed off as my mind made the connection. There was only one thing that could make her react this way.
She opened her mouth, and in a quiet voice that was entirely too calm, she confirmed my suspicions.
“He’s dead, Jess.”