Catch
She felt like her chest was going to explode -- but in a good way. She'd never felt so... *super* before!
It was hard to stay still. She almost couldn't wait for Dino to show up and for whoever had left that message on his machine to try something.
Idly hanging from the side of an ancient railroad water tower, Sapphire had an up-close view of the freeway off-ramp at Bark Street. She was surprised at how many dark Town Cars there were, but from here it was easy to check out the drivers as they drove by. Almost half the cars were rented limos -- either that, or lots of bored guys liked to drive slow while wearing ill-fitting black suits.
What's taking him so long? Did he go another way? She'd just started thinking about heading up Bark Street when Dino passed her.
Here we go.
The gossamer girl let go of the water tower, settling slightly like a falling leaf waiting for its breeze before taking off on a broad upward arc.
The rushing air whipped at her costume; she kept having to kick a little faster to keep up with the black sedan.
Slow down Dino, or I'm not gonna have any clothes on by the time we get there!
Bark Street used to be a U.S. Highway, running straight as an arrow through the middle of the valley on its way to the old double drawbridges over the river at the north edge of the city. It was much more lightly traveled these days, mostly local trucks heading to or from area warehouses and old beaters shuttling manual laborers from poor old neighborhoods to poor old industries; at night, it was almost completely abandoned. Somehow it had escaped blacktopping, its original concrete sections making a soothing rhythmic thump-thump-thump under the tires, broken only occasionally by an unfilled pothole or renegade crack.
Sapphire had to make sure she kept plenty of height as she followed Dino's car, lest she run into one of the many power lines running from the old wooden power poles to buildings across the street.
The black sedan slid smoothly like a cruising shark into the left lane as it came upon and passed an obnoxiously-loud motorcycle going too slow in the right lane. Oddly, the bike seemed to speed up after it was passed, bellowing brief protest when the rider goosed the throttle.
Dino's car came up on three more bikes cruising up the street. Sapphire expected them to yield to one lane or the other, but they remained unapolagetically spread across both lanes; Dino's brake lights signaled his frustration. These bikes seemed to slow a bit.
Why does everybody on the road have to be a jerk?
Then Sapphire heard more rumbling and growling. She rose up to get a broader view, and saw a pair of bikes zipping in from side streets to run right next to the car.
Uh-oh.
Maybe Dino didn't expect her to save his ass, but it looked like she'd have to.
She looked ahead. At the next signal, there were a half-dozen bikes waiting on each side of the street. They pulled out in unison to form a blockade. Dino's car slowed and slid to the far right lane, pushing its unwanted escorts up on the sidewalk. Suddenly it lurched to the left. Dino was turning around. Fast.
Sapphire pulled herself up to a stop, twisting around, looking almost straight down.
Suddenly out of nowhere an old primer-gray-and-white delivery van pulled out into the street right in front of Dino's sedan. It looked for a moment like Dino considered ramming it, and she saw the front end wiggle a little as he started to go around, but when a half-dozen guys poured out of it, all waving guns, the black Lincoln just skidded to a stop.
It had all happened so fast.
But Sapphire could be faster.
With a bolt of blue light, the superheroine streaked downward, pulling up just short of a landing on the building to the left and just behind Dino's car. She wound up and with a great shove of her hand launched a force-wave right at the van -- and the gunmen standing in front of it. The side of the van wrinkled like aluminum foil; the gunmen were tossed like little green plastic army men in a windstorm, skidding and somersaulting on the pavement.
A couple of bikes pulled up quickly next to Dino's door; he'd already jammed the car into reverse, tires smoking. Sapphire let fly another wide blast, sending the bikers spilling to the ground and just nicking the front fender of the scrambling Lincoln.
Crunch! The big car ran right over one of the bikes coming up behind it, its rider tumbling up and off the side of the trunk. But after a short spark-filled skid, the car stopped.
Sapphire heard the motor racing, and saw the left rear wheel spinning uselessly in the air. The bike had gotten stuck underneath and had lifted the car off its wheels!
The air was filled with the roar of angry metal buffalos stampeding toward the car. The gunmen from the van had since gotten to their feet, and judging from their waving weapons and open mouths were yelling for the driver to get out.
Stay in the car, Dino. I'll handle this.
A quick leap, and Sapphire was hovering just ten feet directly above the car. She wound up her right arm and sent an oversized smackdown toward the gunmen on foot; their faces registered amazement as they connected her movement to their sudden violent rearward sliding.
The superheroine spun around to see a bellowing shifting wall of chrome and leather. Were there fifteen? thirty? fifty bikes? It wouldn't matter. Sapphire stepped to roof, trunk, pavement, never quite touching down. She juked to the right side of the car.
First thing is to knock the car loose from its perch.
She spread her hands as wide open as she could, giving a gentle broad shove to the side of the car. It crinkled, then lurched, then thumped down on its tires, which instantly threw up a cloud of gray-white smoke as they screamed for traction. Eventually they began to hook up, and the car skidded forward, gathering speed.
The van ahead lurched forward; apparently it wasn't out of commission yet. It was going to try to ram the Lincoln. Sapphire launched herself toward it, reaching back with her left hand and then thrusting hard forward, aiming right for the van's nose.
Kawhung! The van instantly yanked to its right, rolling up on its two right side wheels, where it teetered for a moment; Sapphire spun around in mid-air, extending her left leg to deliver a huge roundhouse air-kick that crushed the van like a soda can, slamming it onto its right side and spinning it like a bad breakdancer.
Dino's car juked left, tires howling, then juked right again to align itself with the street and zoom past the crippled van.
Then Sapphire felt the pinpricks.
Gunfire.
Getting progressively more intrusive as the wheeled stampede roared up on her position. Sapphire kicked once straight up, a second time straight out, and a third time down, moving like a giant dragonfly, putting herself downrange of the charging choppers. She lowered herself to the street, balling her fists in controlled fury.
"You just shot at the wrong girl," she shouted, her voice almost completely drowned out by the unmuffled exhaust.
More pinpricks made themselves felt, each marked by a tiny blue spark. The bikes fanned out across the median and all four lanes, choking the old highway.
For some reason, Sapphire thought of bowling.
The superheroine began tossing quick underhand force-blasts toward the wall of bikes, Whack! Whack! Whack! One and two at a time, choppers spun, flipped, skidded, or wobbled themselves into the ground. The bikers began to react, accelerating and swinging wide to run around her. Sapphire let them go for the moment, pausing to get an idea of how many she'd felled -- maybe a dozen -- then spinning around and rising to survey the remaining field. Maybe a dozen more, all but two or three of them blazing straight off down Bark Street after the Lincoln.
Just head for the freeway, Dino; get to where there's traffic, and they won't follow you.
But she could tell he wasn't going to make it. He was probably doing 70 or 80 miles an hour, but up ahead the bikers had placed a blockade in reserve. She saw tiny muzzle flashes of pistols and shotguns as mounted motorcyclists took potshots at the Lincoln.
Oh, God... what if one of them got a lucky shot?
Sapphire drew to a low hover, coiled herself tightly, then put her hands together in front of her. She took a deep breath, then launched herself as hard as she could.
Even with her hands using force to slice through the air, the sound was terrific, like a constant thunder rolling around her. She grunted with the effort of speed, a glowing blue bullet streaking through the air. Too low, a series of blinding blue-white explosions lit just in front of her -- she was slicing right through power lines one after another. Sapphire adjusted her trajectory a hair lower, the pavement rushing by beneath her.
It was difficult to judge time. In four adrenalized heartbeats she'd rocketed past the pursuing choppers; in two more beats she'd passed Dino, who now seemed to be driving far too slow. And in one more beat she was upon the forward shooters.
Sapphire stiffened, imagining herself coming to a sudden stop, and opening her palms and shoving with all her might to make it so. With a Thud! of air, she came to a halt, curling and uncurling her body to hover upright some twenty feet above the pavement. She quickly punched at the air ahead of each of the mounted shooters, like a boxer showboating jabs -- but there was nothing extraneous about these moves. Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Bikes and riders catapulted backwards with gut-wrenching force, one of them sparking and skidding some twenty yards down the pavement, another banking off the curb and spinning back toward the median like a billiards shot.
Sapphire instinctively rose up another thirty feet to take stock of the situation. When none of the bikers seemed anxious or able to get up, she turned her attention to the remaining pursuers. As she did so, Dino's Lincoln rushed by beneath her. He was going to make it to the freeway. Now all Sapphire had to do was make sure these stragglers gave up the chase...
And then without warning the floor fell out from under her. Sapphire kicked and clawed and screamed on her way, but it was no use -- the awful Nothing had grabbed her and snuffed her powers.
The heroine hit the pavement hard, the sapphires sparking a fierce protest but only taking enough of the shock to keep her conscious -- it still hurt like hell, knocking her breathless.
The choppers slowed, throttles falling and blipping, exhaust snapping and popping, courses wavering and curving. They circled around their felled foe, unsure of what had happened or what she might do next. One lit up and roared back down the way they had come, either to retreat or to check on his buddies; another rider held up a fist as a signal to the rest. They all came to a stop, engines burbling and growling like rabid dogs; most riders had a gun drawn.
Sapphire struggled to her feet. What the heck is wrong with me? She looked to her sapphires; they glowed brightly enough; she hadn't overextended herself. And yet, despite the stones' condition, she felt nothing from them.
She certainly felt something -- that buzzing in the limbs that followed any surprising impact. Not yet pain -- the body held that in check in case there was still immediate danger.
Oh boy, was there. One of the bikers had dismounted. Looking right down his sight, he took three steps toward her before squeezing off a shot. Smack! It hit her in the shoulder, but it was only slightly more than the usual gentle poke that handgun bullets seemed to affect. Her hand went to the impacted area anyway, noting with rising panic that the biker was still approaching.
Despite the lack of warm reassurance from her gemstones, Sapphire threw up a hand, half in defense, half as an attack. But there was nothing; the biker's only reaction was a raised eyebrow.
And then Sapphire felt something else. Instant, painful, immobilizing muscle spasms. Legs, abdomen, arms, glutes, everything tensed and twitched in turn. They'd never hit her this hard before. They'd never hurt so *much* before!
Awareness hit her like a freight train. It was the Glitter. Or more aptly, the sudden lack of it. The junkie at the hospital had said sniffing it brought on the high immediately; he hadn't mentioned the sudden and violent withdrawal.
The whole world seemed to dim just then, first color and then light draining from her vision. The biker was almost upon her, only now he was leaning and bobbing and weaving. No, he wasn't; the whole world was on a tilt-a-whirl. Dizziness hammered the heroine down toward the concrete.
No! This can't be happening! Sapphire clawed and kicked at the pavement, but her limbs were as much controlled by drug-deprived recalcitrance as any effort to move. It was like all of her joints were pulled out and rearranged at random. She couldn't make anything work.
Just then she felt the rush of her sapphires, sweet cold fiery energy pouring through her like a vindictive lover. She thought maybe she'd moved, or pushed off something, but she couldn't seem to focus.
Someone was hauling her to her feet. A thick padded arm wrapped around her waist; she kicked feebly to escape it, her sapphires firing at her again, making the ground and sky switch places several times while the stones' energy groped and poked at her until she heard a soft scraping and found her cheek nestled in crabgrass.
Smells of dirt and wet grass and gasoline assaulted her for a moment, then retreated with the cold aching sapphire energy. This time when she felt herself picked up and hefted over a broad leather shoulder, she didn't resist. Because she couldn't. Hauled up hard and dropped even harder, her body was done listening. Even panic sank quietly into the helpless murky blackness.
Sapphire faded into a kind of consciousness. There was light, but it was unfocused. She could hear something, but it was indistinct and uninteresting.
Somewhere down below, she felt a rhythmic swelling sensation, and either a weight pressing on her hips or a weightlessness in her shoulders, she wasn't sure which.
Her breathing seemed loud, with a shallow rattle. And there was something wrong with the air. She worked her stiff jaw to find something hard rubbing up against it. She was breathing through some kind of mask.
It took her a moment to realize that she was in somebody's weird dream. And that in this dream, that somebody was fucking her.
But how can I be in someone else's dream? How would I know what was happening? This must be my dream.
But I don't like this dream. I feel sick. The air tastes funny. My wrists hurt. Ow... my legs hurt. And my chest. I want to wake up. I want a different dream.
Was this the biker's dream? The one who'd picked her up off the street? She remembered being thrown over his shoulder, smelling his sweaty leather, just before muscle spasms tugged at her bones and squeezed her brain until she blacked out.
Now she was laying on a raft floating down a river somewhere, and there were people on the shore waving at her, and the other person on the raft kept wiggling around and getting her wet.
Stop. Stop it. Let me off. I want to go home. I don't like this.
Reality came and went through the fog of whatever sweet sickness she was breathing; long, slow-motion waves of gentle emptiness and fullness, occasionally punctuated by rapid strobes of sharp stinging stabs of light and sound and pain and pleasure.
"Yo, dude. Lay down and put her on top of you so I can get her from behind."
"Aw, come on, man, I'm not into that shit!"
"Too fucking bad, because I am. Move!"
Please, someone, anyone, end this nightmare...
She began to scream through the mask.
"God *damn* she's a great fuck! Yo, Kramer, get in here. See if you can find something to shut her up."
The bed jostled as someone stood on it. She felt the mask being pulled off. Free of the stifling hot plastic, she only screamed louder -- until a pair of greasy hands grabbed the back of her head and the sides of her jaw, and a hot smelly skinned plum shoved past her teeth. She moved to bite it, but felt fat fingers dig visciously into her gums. "Hey! Knock that *shit* off. You just work that tongue, baby." She had to relax to avoid gagging; even just laying there, the pistoning motion of the two other bikers shifted her whole body back and forth, moving the invading prick in and out over her tongue. "Yeah, that's it..." As he pushed deeper, her nose caught the acrid smell of his crotch, a vile concoction of sweat, grease, beer, and bourbon. It made her convulse, which only seemed to make the thing in her mouth swell even more. "Oh, fuck yeah, almost there baby..."
"Damn, Kramer, already?"
"Fuck, fuck, fuck..."
The little prick ramming her from behind stiffened up and squirted; Angela's whole body tensed in horror, which only gave the other two more encouragement. A moment later, the one in her mouth shot the first of its bitter saltiness against the back of her palate; she tried not to swallow, her cheeks tightening up as the prick oozed the rest of its slippery cargo in weak blobs along her bottom teeth, pulling out to deliver the last lazy squirt on her open lips. The man had enough consciousness to force his hand over her mouth to keep her from spitting. Faced with swallowing the nasty cum or wearing it along the side of her face and in her hair, she squinted her eyes shut and forced the stuff down, coughing up bits of milky spit on his hand, which he ran through the side of her hair.
The man who'd mounted her first was now free to change positions, and without missing a stroke he turned her around on his fat cock, cradled her in his arm, and laid her down on her side, bending her legs and slamming her pussy more and more furiously from behind.
Please don't cum, please don't cum, please don't cum, please don't...
She begged her own body as much as she begged her attacker.
The sapphires, still trapped on her feet, fed their flailing final flash of sweet weakness through her exhausted and abused body, the unwanted orgasm both blinding and binding the fallen superheroine.
And through the shuddering tightness she felt her aggressor's seed splash deep into her womb.
As trembling dirty hands try to refit the mask of noxious submission over her face, tears begin to stream across the bridge of her nose and down her cheek, further staining the sweaty sheets.
There is a commotion outside the confines of her cruel prison. Stuttering gasping breaths of fogging ether have already started to close the curtains of caring on her consciousness when the shouting gets very close -- and vaguely familiar.
"Where is she? Jesus, you're a bunch of fucking animals! You! Get the fuck off her!"
"What the fuck...?"
The bed shakes as the hot gritty man next to her leaves it -- violently. There's a crash of leather and chain against sheet rock.
"Kickstand!" the fallen felon protests.
"Shut up, Paul." The voice of the gang leader. "This *gentleman* from the *police* *department* is here to escort the lady home."
Angela looked up dully. It was Detective Miguel Rubio. But... how?
The biker crumpled on the floor spat meanly as he straightened himself back out. "What the fuck, man. Since when do we let a cop roll up in here and take our whore?"
Smack!
Click!
In a flash, Miguel had slapped the biker in the side of the head, and planted the barrel of his pistol in the biker's mouth.
"Call her that again, and I'll blow your teeth through the back of your brain."
The leader -- Kickstand -- stepped up, his chest puffed out as a warning. "Woah, Detective, you're pushing your luck. I don't have to let you take her, you know. Maybe I owe you a few favors, but you start swinging your dick in here and I'll cut it off."
Miguel waved his gun dismissively. "You stupid mother-fucker, don't you know who this is?"
"Fuck you, Miguel, I'm not stupid. It's that Sapphire chick. She butted into our business -- Bates' business. And she paid the price."
"Oh, you're not stupid? This is the same 'Sapphire chick' that saved Bates' life -- *twice*. You think he's gonna be happy when he hears you've been slipping your greasy little dicks into her?"
Kickstand failed to hide his Oh-Shit look.
Miguel grunted. "So yeah, I think I'll be taking her home now."
"Fine," Kickstand said, and stepped aside.
"Cut off those zipties," Miguel ordered. Kickstand nodded to one of the other bikers, who hustled in and snicked the plastic binding from her wrists.
Miguel kneeled down in front of her, gently brushing stray hairs out of her face.
"You were lucky I came along when I did," he said softly.
"How did you find me?"
"Tracked your phone." He patted it, still clipped to the band in her hair and the back of her choker.
He helped her up; she had trouble standing. "Jesus, you all right?"
"I'll live," she managed, wobbling up against him for support.
"You want to press charges?" he whispered in her ear.
Someone must have heard him, because suddenly Miguel wasn't next to her, and she was falling back against the bed. She did her best to prop herself up as she watched Miguel grapple with a much bigger man, until a kick to the shin knocked the biker down to size and Miguel got his gun free of the scarred hand trying to control it.
A lightning-fast strike brought the butt of the gun down on the biker's head, and he slumped to the floor.
"He said she was gonna press charges," the dizzied biker gushed.
"Shut up," Miguel spat. "I could bust a cap in your ass right now if I wanted to -- you think anyone would give a shit? Huh? You think anyone would question it? You think the uniforms responding to a 'shots fired' call at the last known of a fellow officer would hesitate one minute to nightstick every one of you motherfuckers prone? Anyone? Anyone?"
"Yo," Kickstand cooled, "relax. I'm sure if everybody just takes a deep breath and *calms* the *fuck* *down*" -- this he said while looking over his shoulder -- "I'm sure we can work out our differences."
Miguel returned to Angela's side and helped her to her feet again. "So, kiddo, you wanna press charges?"
Of course she did. They were monsters, and she wanted them to pay. But even through the fog of exhaustion and drugs, she knew that was a long and hard road. There would be interviews, exams, lineups, testimony, accusations, threats, months of waiting... and a dozen bikers all swearing that Angela Barrett was Sapphire, Superheroine.
No, there were better ways to deal with these scumbags. One day, she'd be back here. And then things would be different.
"I just wanna go home," she said quietly.
There was as much nervous shuffling in the place as there was relief. Not everyone necessarily believed that this frail thing in front of them was solely responsible for the havok that had descended upon their lot, but none were anxious to see it revisited.
"All right, let's go."
The crowd of bikers parted for them, and Miguel guided her out of the makeshift bedroom and across the dirty floor toward the front door.
"Wait! My wristbands!"
For a moment, it didn't look like Miguel cared. He probably thought they were just cheap costume jewelry. Or if they weren't, they might garner him some favor if he let the bikers keep them. But then his face changed. It almost looked like he felt sorry for her.
"Hey, Kickstand!" he said. "I believe the lady had some more jewelry on when you invited her in."
The biker's scowl grew. He was probably thinking about offing them both right here. Then she caught a wicked twinkle in his eye.
"I'll give it to Bates," he said, glee breaking through nonchalance. "She can go pick it up from him."
Miguel smiled. "Or if you'd prefer, I could just let her *take* it back."
Miguel! What was he thinking? She was still really woozy, and without her wristbands she couldn't do as much anyway... of course, he didn't know that. He didn't know she could really do anything extraordinary in the first place. But he was at least observant enough to sense their fear of her, if not understand it.
The biker didn't know what she could do either. His expression widened into fear, which he could only partially suppress. "Fine," he grunted. "Yo, Deacon! Give this broad her stones back."
The man who'd just been raping her stepped sheepishly forward. "Here," he said, eyes to the floor, hand outstretched.
Sapphire stepped forward with all the bravado she could muster, fighting her dizziness and making a show of putting her wristbands back on right in front of him. The sapphires glimmered their support, and she was able to step back against Miguel before her knees buckled. Without missing a beat, Miguel caught an arm under hers and wrapped it around her waist. Anywhere else, she would have been reviled, but considering her circumstance his strong grip was comforting.
"Come on, babe. Let's leave these boys to their bikes."
She made it to his car before she passed out.