Strikeforce (Book 4): Day's End Read online

  “I know I’m first for you. Just like you’re first for me. But we have shit to do. Usually, it’s me bailing on you or falling asleep mid-sentence.”

  “Yeah, but when you do that I just sit back and enjoy the view. I ever tell you you’ve got a nice rack?”

  I laughed. “You’re delirious.”

  “Nah. I think it at least twenty times a day.”

  “Good night, Ryan,” I said, bringing his hand to my mouth and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. He kissed the back of my neck again.

  “Night, Jolene.” He held me tighter, and I fell asleep grateful that, despite everything, I’d somehow found my way to this crazy, warm, loving partnership. My forever, I thought as I drifted off.

  Chapter Three

  I was cooling down from my workout with Jenson and reading through the reports from the incident with Mayhem and the follow-up stupidity with Eve. I had a paper map (mainly so I could scribble notes on it where I needed to) and was studying the locations of every place there had been a verified sighting or incident involving Mayhem and its members. I’d added Detroit to the locations (again) and was trying and failing to figure out any pattern or method to their madness, other than the fact that they were always either going after super hero teams or actively messing with StrikeForce. I took a gulp of water and started writing. My notes and theories on where Killjoy had his team hidden were an unorganized mess, but I kept thinking that if I just kept writing shit down, if I arranged and rearranged lists of places, something would hit me. Despite having zero trust for Crystal, I’d added England and Scotland to my possible locations as well. I had a second set of notes and maps, all of those covering the missing kids. Despite hoping for some overlap, some kind of hint, there wasn’t any between the two lists, other than Detroit.

  I was still trying to make sense of any of it when my comm beeped. “All hands in uniform and report to the flight bay, immediately,” Portia’s assistant said over the comm. I jumped up, quickly grabbed my maps and notes, and hustled up to my room. I pulled my SF uniform on as quickly as possible and made my way up to the flight bay. Jenson and David were arriving around the same time.

  “What’s going on?”

  Jenson shook her head. “I don’t know. I just heard via the comm announcement.”

  We walked on to the flight deck together to see Portia, Ryan, and a few of the others gathered already. Max, Lindsey, Dani, and Vivian all walked in shortly after us.

  “Okay people. We have a goddamn mess on our hands. Someone set fire to a small private school in Grosse Pointe. Three floors, fires raging at all of the emergency exits. Kids trapped inside.”

  “Any idea who did it?”

  “We’re guessing our lady in blue or Mayhem. At this point, it could be either. There are several StrikeForce families who send their kids to that school. Kids with powers. We don’t know the status of those kids right now, other than that they’re probably trapped in the inferno with the rest of the kids and staff.”

  “Or they’ve already been taken,” I muttered. “I’ll meet you all there.” I took off into the sky, and moments later, I heard the roar of jets behind me as the others started taking off. I knew which school it was from overhearing a few of the support staffers who had family members there talking about it. It was one of those little known secrets in the city, that this one particular school had slowly but surely become a safe haven for the kids of people with powers.

  What had surprised most of us was hearing that the kids of powered people also seemed to develop powers. After the first Confluence, it had all seemed random. It didn’t seem to run in families, or anything like that. I knew now what I hadn’t known then, thanks to Daemon — parents of powered kids did their best to keep those kids’ powers a secret. Most of it was fear. Part of it was worry that organizations like StrikeForce would poke their noses in and want to monitor their kids to recruit or lock them up later.

  This school, in particular, had become a haven in the last year when its principal found herself with powers after the second Confluence, which was the same Confluence in which I’d gotten my own freakish set of abilities.

  I flew, soaring through the air at top speed. Soon, plumes of black smoke rose into the air ahead of me. Fire engines were parked all around, as well as police cars and ambulances. Media helicopters and drones circled above the site, and crowds of people stood behind the police barricades. I landed, and immediately heard the angry shouts, the jeers and boos from the crowd. I rolled my eyes behind my mask, gave them a one-finger salute, and headed toward the firemen who had gathered near one of the trucks.

  “Are there people on every floor?” I asked them.

  The shortest one, who I noticed had a captain’s emblem on his hat, nodded. He pointed toward the building. “We got kids on all three floors. We’re trying to knock down the flames in the stairwells but we can’t do it. Whatever kind of accelerant they used is kicking our asses. Besides that, whoever designed this goddamn building should be hung. Those windows are so goddamn narrow none of us can get in. We were looking at having a crane or something brought in to bash the walls in to create an escape route, but we don’t know where any of the kids are and we don’t want to risk it. We’d usually go down through the roof, but… ” he trailed off. He didn’t have to finish. They’d set the entire roof on fire too, a carpet of otherworldly-looking blue flames.

  “Okay.”

  “We got the kids out of the ground floor. Word is that one of the teachers has the, uh, special kids somewhere on the third floor. They’re the target, right?”

  “Maybe. We don’t know for sure.”

  He looked up at the building. “How the hell are we gonna get in there, Daystar?”

  I took a few steps back, my eyes on the second floor. Time to see how heat-resistant these uniforms were, I guess.

  “So?” Portia said, appearing next to me with the rest of the team.

  “I’m going in. I should be able to bust through. Cover me. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Yeah?” Portia muttered, glancing around.

  “Oh yeah. I can’t watch my back and do this.”

  “We’ve got it. Be careful,” Ryan said. I bumped fists with him, then rose into the air, backing myself up about a dozen feet back from where we were.

  “Here goes nothing,” I murmured. I flew at full-speed toward the second floor wall, an area between two narrow, metal-reinforced windows. They’d done a really good job of trying to strengthen this building, expecting that it might be a target someday. Unfortunately, they were too worried about keeping people out, never considering what would happen if the school’s charges were trapped inside.

  I spun in the air about four feet away from the building. Avoiding crashing into it face-first would probably be a good thing. The impact of my back hitting the brick wall was enough to knock the air from my lungs and shake my body so hard I was pretty sure I felt shit cracking.

  Of course, I didn’t have much time to worry about whatever was broken inside me. The hot air from the stairwell nearby hit me, and I knew that if I wasn’t wearing my armor, I would have been blistered.

  If they were on this floor at all, they’d probably tried to get to the classrooms in the middle of the area, between the two stairwell infernos. I ran there, knocking first one door in, then another, then another.

  “StrikeForce!” I shouted. “I’m here to get you out but you have to help me.”

  Even with the enhanced vision in my mask, I was having a hard time seeing.

  “Come on. Give me something,” I shouted as I bashed down another door. There was a scream when it went crashing in, and I ran into the room.

  “Thank god. Is this everyone on the floor?” I asked one of the adults in the room.

  “Yes. We got everyone here once it started getting hot. There are others on the third floor.”

  I nodded and surveyed the room. It was packed. A good sixty to seventy kids, plus a half dozen teachers.

  Right
now, I was grateful for the small class sizes in this particular school. Shit.

  “Okay. I’m gonna take you out, as many as I can carry at a time and then I’ll keep coming back for the rest. I think maybe the firefighters have something they can use, too, once I open up that wall so we can get you out. Okay?”

  Several of them nodded. The rest were watching me as if they were waiting for the moment I’d attack them or something.

  “Back away from that wall. Turn around so none of this debris hits you.”

  I was sweating my ass off in the suit. Several of the kids were crying, screaming. It was getting too hot for them, too.

  I shouted and flew at the wall, busting a Jolene-sized hole in the wall, letting in the fresh air from the outside. I flew back, making the hole bigger.

  Fuck, it hurts to use yourself like a human wrecking ball.

  I flew back in, hoisted one kid onto my back and gathered as many as I could in my arms. Six went out with me in the first group. The firefighters could get the rest out while I worked on the third floor.

  At least, that was the plan, until I noticed all of the fire engines on fire and my teammates fighting assholes in very recognizable red and black uniforms. I scanned the crowd for Killjoy, but he could have been anywhere. The asshole could have been standing right next to me, and I wouldn’t have known it, thanks to the invisibility powers he’d gotten from Dr. Death’s little experiment, via Crystal.

  One more reason to hate her. The invisibility thing and his teleporting powers made my life a lot harder than it needed to be.

  I set the kids down near a bunch of police cars. The front line of police were shooting, and a few who weren’t actively shooting came to help me with the kids.

  “There are about sixty more on the second floor,” I shouted over the chaos to one of them.

  I needed Portia. There was no way I could get them all out plus manage to get the third floor opened up before it all burned. And if our super powered kids were still in there, they needed to be protected, too.

  I flew around, sending punches of energy at Mayhem members as I passed them, trying to give my team the upper hand where I could. I found Portia facing off against a chick with a sword, and I crashed into sword chick from behind, then bashed her head into the ground to knock her out.

  “I need you. I can’t get them all out on my own.”

  Portia nodded, and I carried her into the building.

  She glanced around. “I’ll need to make two trips. Third floor?”

  “I need to get up there.”

  “Okay. I’ve got this handled.”

  “I was dropping them off near the police barricade on the west end,” I said, and she nodded. I flew out of the opening I’d made and circled around, getting enough distance to build up enough force to bash through the outer wall on the third floor.

  The smoke was black, and the building was starting to make really, really not-comforting sounds, as if things that were kind of important were starting to weaken.

  I bashed in through the third floor wall and was momentarily blinded by the cloud of black smoke that billowed out of the hole. I flew through it into the hallway. The good thing is, the flames still seemed to be mostly confined to the ends of the hallway, where each stairwell was located. But everything was full of black smoke and I was pretty sure that this was what the inner circles of hell probably felt like.

  I thanked Equipment again for the air filters in my mask and started busting doors down.

  I heard a shout, then the unmistakable sound of fist striking flesh. I followed it to see one of the classroom doors open, a bunch of terrified little kids huddled in one corner behind three adults while two others fought.

  And of course, they were fighting assholes in black and red. As I lunged at the one closest to me, I noticed another adult in the corner, an older woman with snow white hair. Three kids were behind her, and they all seemed to be focusing really hard.

  As I punched Mayhem asshole #1 in the face, I realized there was no smoke around the large group of kids, as if an invisible bubble was keeping it away from them. Another was around the three kids and the lady with the snow white hair.

  Force fields. Protective bubbles.

  I smiled and hit the Mayhem asshole again when he lunged toward me. Sometimes, we super powered freaks are pretty awesome. Undoubtedly, the kids behind the lady with the white hair were the powered kids. She was protecting them, shooting flashes of white hot light at the other Mayhem jerk, while one of the kids, maybe two of them, held the force fields.

  When I had a chance, I’d take a moment to be really, really impressed by the kids’ control and calmness.

  I punched the Mayhem guy one more time and he fell to the ground, still.

  The white haired lady hit the other guy with one more blast, and I finished him off with a hard left hook.

  I glanced at her and gave her a respectful nod.

  “Daystar,” she said in greeting.

  “Those are our people’s kids?”

  “They are.”

  Two of the three kids stared at me with huge eyes. The third was still silent, focused. Clearly, this was the one making the force fields.

  “We need to get them safe before the lady in blue comes back,” the woman said.

  “Shit. Can you protect them another few minutes while I get them out?” I asked, gesturing toward the larger group of kids. Without the force field protecting them, they’d all suffocate in no time. She nodded, and I glanced at the two guys on the floor. One was starting to move around. I knocked him out with one more quick punch, then quickly put dampeners on both of them just so they couldn’t cause any more problems for the white haired lady while I was dealing with the kids.

  I gestured toward the kids, pointing at about seven of them. If it worked the way Crystal’s force fields did, they’d be able to walk out and leave the forcefield intact, but no one could get in from the outside. They walked through, timidly approaching me. I got one on my back, managed to get the other six, and flew out of the building. I dropped them near the police barricade, took a quick peek at the fighting continuing between StrikeForce and Mayhem, then went back.

  Five more times. Five more trips, then Portia was there to help me get the last of them out. I gave her a nod of thanks, then flew back up to collect the woman and the kids with powers. They were still standing there in their protective bubble.

  “Okay,” I started to say.

  Something hit the forcefield the four of them were inside of, and two of the kids screamed. I noticed a flash of black and red.

  “Missed you, sweetheart,” a familiar, grating voice said. “Our little visit yesterday was too short.”

  I didn’t think. I just punched. I don’t think he expected it. Usually, I yap back at him. But I was tired and pissed and the building was making more weird noises. He went flying across the room.

  He picked himself up with a groan. “Not playing today, eh? That’s okay. Those are mine, though,” he said, pointing behind me to the three powered kids in the bubble.

  “Kids, Killjoy? Really?”

  “You know my name. Say it.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I’m doing somebody a favor,” he said. “It just coincided with my own goals.”

  “Which are?” I moved, staying between him and the kids in their protective forcefield. Keep him talking, make sure he doesn’t do anything annoying, like teleport.

  “Seeing you again. Reminding you that I can make all your problems go away.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “My problems? You are my problem.” God, I wanted to hit him. Hard. Kick him so hard he’d remember it every time he pissed. But he knew things, clearly. And I needed to know what he knew.

  “So you’re helping the woman who’s going after the kids?”

  He took a step toward me and I pushed him back with my power.

  “We’re wasting time here sweetheart. We both know I’m gonna win.”

  “Th
is isn’t your style. Kids? Come on,” I said.

  “It’s not. But sometimes you have to play nice to get what you want,” he said with a shrug.

  “So you’re not giving me anything here?”

  “Depends on you. Remember what I just said about playing nice? How badly do you want to know?”

  I shook my head and punched out at him with my power. He shouted at me, enraged and unintelligible. He got up, and from his posture, after seeing him do it so many times already, I could tell that he was getting ready to teleport.

  “Every damn time, Killjoy,” I said, hitting him again. He went flying again, and one of the kids in the force field cheered. “You can’t run every time I’m about to whup your ass.”

  He kind of made the same general motion again, like he was getting ready to teleport, and nothing happened.

  I laughed and walked toward him, my hands up, guard up.

  “Powers aren’t what they once were, huh? Dr. Death wasn’t as good as you thought he was, maybe.” Killjoy snarled and jumped up, lunging at me. Powers or not, he was s strong bastard. He towered a good half a foot taller than me and his thighs were each roughly as thick as my waist. I ducked away, shot out another blast of power at him, and he went flying.

  It barely phased him. He charged at me again, this time drawing his sword and slashing toward me with it.

  “We both know you’re not going to kill me, asshole,” I hissed as I hit him again. “Partly because you’re out of your damn mind. Mostly because you know you can’t.”

  He stopped then, and he laughed. I knocked him back again, hoping to knock him out so I could collar him and get him locked up before he hurt anybody else. “Really, Jolene? You think death is the worst thing I can do to you?” His voice was quiet, smooth, calm. That, all by itself, was enough to send a shiver up my spine. “You talk a big game, but you’re scared of me.” He paused, looked down at his sword, and put it back into his scabbard. Then he laughed again. “You’re scared of me. And sweetheart, you have every reason to be. Keep the brats. I don’t give a fuck.”

  I charged at him, just as he leapt for the window. He was nothing but a streak of black across the sky, and when he flew off, the other Mayhem members all rose into the air and took off as well.