Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

Yes, they were going to have a very long, very uncomfortable discussion when the battle was over – if they survived – but Louise didn’t care. She was finally doing it, she was finally taking part, helping out – taking down the bad guys side by side with her friends. The people she loved. She could take a stand and not just be the back-up medical girl patching up their wounds.

The looks Andrew shot her were pained, filled with a mixture of hurt and anger and for that she was sorry. But he also had no dominion over her life choices or her body – she was her own woman and would make her own damn decisions. She’d rather ask for forgiveness than for permission, funnily enough, a trait Rick had taught her.

It hadn’t hurt at first when she’d injected the serum. It had merely tingled around the site of injection and spread from there. She knew she was messing with forces she couldn’t comprehend – and she also knew that once, long ago when they had unlocked the region of junk DNA which seemed to have been activated by the radiation she had done a hell of a load of experiments. She had mapped the entire sequence which was now proverbially glowing hot with power in each of the four.

She had then run those sequences against others and found that perhaps a fifth of the population had the same genetic match on that particular to one of the four. When she ran her own, however, she found she was in the 95%. Which is why injecting herself with the serum was an even stupider thing to do than she’d ever admit.

During the fire truck ride through the city she’d felt woozy, the area on her leg beginning to burn a little, but she refused to tell the others what was happening, lying to herself about it being motion sickness from all the turning that was making her feel funny. When it finally cleared, seconds after the crash, she suddenly felt it – the strength. It flowed through her muscles each one of them gently and acutely awoken by a tender touch. They trembled with it and then she’d thrown the boulder and it was bloody well funny.

She was clear, alert and very much aware of herself and her surroundings. She felt no pain, no confusion, not even a tingle – nothing except the flow of strength that was intoxicatingly good. She had briefly explained herself to Sandy, who despite not looking happy knew there was nothing more they could do about it, and they set off to help the others.

Still, when the battle started she was intently aware of Andrew beside her, his displeasure coming over in waves. Then she pushed it all aside and got to work.

The strength she felt was not just in her arms and fists, it was in her legs. Not wanting to test the bulletproof-ness of her skin she leapt over a volley of bullets from the stunned front row and landed hard on two of them. They’d almost been too easy. She belted the barrel of a third’s gun and was punching one clear across the square before anyone else seemed to be moving.

As much as she truly didn’t like to cause harm, somehow she was quite glad of being able to do so to these dicks.

The sounds of battle were instantaneous, deafening even as Cher warbled on over the speakers. Powers were unleashed that swirled around them. Smoke, fire, electricity, the gleam of metal and the chunks of rock. It was a clash of noise and a cacophony of powers that streaked through the night.

She went to work taking down two more grunts, both of whom looked more scared of her than anyone else. She figured she would tone it down next time – a pastel-coloured BioSuit perhaps? Something lilac. Certainly nothing Rick would pick for her.

She had started to become overconfident and when the burning sensation started in her neck she was brought to the shuddering realisation that this was not a toy battle. It spread and she realised they were fingers as she cried out.

Suddenly the fingers were gone but the burning remained. She quickly found out Andrew had tackled the man to the ground. It was the military man, that stupid Lotus, who had grabbed her by the back of the neck. The skin felt red raw and she glowered at him.

It was bad enough when she forgot to take sunscreen on holiday – her delicate skin didn’t need that crap.

Lotus and Andrew tussled, she could see the burning spread happening on pockets of Andrew’s BioSuit but didn’t know what she could do. A chunk of the broken ground the size of a pizza box lay nearby. She grabbed it, raised it in her hands and rushed over.

“Andrew, move!” she bellowed, raising it high above her head. He disappeared as she prepared to bring it down.

A burning sensation spread through her ankle and she shrieked in pain she’d never experienced before. The chunk fell off to one side as she stepped back, away from his grip. She stumbled, her foot going awkwardly over chunks on mosaic pavement and she landed hard on her backside. He leapt on her, burning hands wrapping around her throat.

“Feel the burn,” he hissed at her. A shot rang out, the only sound she heard in that second where she felt like she was dying. His face went slack, the small neat hole on one side juxtaposed with the mess on the other. He fell with the force, rolling off her his hands slimily coming away from the raw skin of her neck.

She looked, Andrew holding the smoking rifle with casual familiarity, a look of steel in his eyes. She knew he had a past, but looking at his face for those thirty seconds, the cold eyes of a man who just did that – even if to save a life, made it all true. It was like being saved by a stranger. He came over to her, tossing the rifle to one side and reached out a hand to help her up.

“I hate puns,” he told her.

She wanted to say how much she loved him, how much she was sorry – how thankful and grateful she was for him saving her life. But it wouldn’t come out. Things were hazier than they should be. They felt wrong. Suddenly the feeling of power and strength was not just there, suddenly it too began to burn.

Swooning down, she heard Andrew call her name, as she swam into the darkness.