Page 1 of Villainous Intent

CHAPTER 1

ANNIE

Blood coated my hands and my first thought was how annoying it was going to be to clean it out from under my fingernails. I don’t know why, but blood just never seemed to want to wash off properly, so that you always had a Lady Macbeth moment when dealing with it. It took me a second to realize that the warmth seeping through the fabric of my skirt was also blood.

Ducking into the alley was supposed to be the smart move after a stray fireball had vaporized a chunk of building, sending a jagged slab of concrete hurtling toward my head.

I didn’t expect to trip over a couple of corpses and land on my ass in a growing pool of blood.

My palms left dark smears on my jacket as I tried to wipe the blood off as best I could. The corpses belonged to two young men who were piled together next to a dumpster. Shrapnel from one of the earlier blasts had shredded them. One’s chest was laid open, ribs splintered outward from whatever had hit him. The other was missing the lower half of his jaw.

A sour taste flooded my mouth and I swallowed hard, trying to force the nausea down as my stomach rolled.

Damn it. The Alliance had set up protective barricades five blocks wide for the training fight, designed to keep idiots exactly like these two from becoming pavement paste. All they had to do was stay behind the stupid glowing blue line and they’d live to see tomorrow.

I pulled my tablet from my jacket’s inner pocket. Despite the screen being cracked from my fall, it still looked functional. My fingers left bloody smudges as I tapped into the Alliance oversight channel.

Civilians breached the west barricade. Alleyway between 4th and Elm.

The response pinged back immediately.

Copy, Keeper. Is evac needed?

I looked down at the guy with the missing jaw.

No, I typed back. Send a clean-up crew.

A deafening screech echoed from the street that left my ears ringing. The ground rumbled violently enough to shake some bricks loose from the wall beside me. That was probably the result of Surge being thrown through the abandoned sedan I’d run past on the corner. Surge had already been on the losing end of this match ten minutes ago, blood gushing from his nose and telegraphing every one of his punches.

Another shockwave hit and the air pressure dropped, popping my ears.

I huffed out a breath and shoved the tablet back into my pocket before looking down at the bodies again.

Chroma Bay wasn’t actually a hellscape, provided you weren’t a complete idiot. The rules for living here were posted everywhere, repeated ad nauseam through every medium available. When the ClashAlert app chimes, you evacuate the zone. When the barricades go up, you stay behind them. You give the Supers a wide berth and let them play at being gods.

It wasn’t that fucking complicated. Even the Supers had strict rules drafted by the Alliance and the League to keep the civilian body count low and the entertainment value high. It was a symbiotic ecosystem of destruction and entertainment. Locals and tourists usually respected the boundaries, terrified of the carnage Supers were capable of.

But there was always a handful of idiots like the two at my feet who thought the glowing blue tape was merely a suggestion.

I reached up to adjust the gold emblem pinned to the lapel of my blazer that marked me as Havoc’s personal Keeper. I shouldn’t even be dealing with this low-level street clash, but I liked to lie to myself and everyone around me and say that I needed to keep my boots on the ground on occasion.

Or, in this case, my heels in the gore.

The truth was actually more pathetic. I was here because the Alliance asked, and the word no simply didn’t exist in my vocabulary when they called.

When my childhood was torn apart, the Alliance gave me sanctuary behind thick walls and sealed records. In exchange, I became their ultimate, rule-abiding people pleaser. I couldn’t tell anymore whether the gratitude was real or just the only setting I had left.

Just a quick observation shift, Annie, the dispatcher had chirped over the phone this morning. Nothing you can’t handle.

Right. I stared down at the mangled bodies, trying to fight the exhausting mix of guilt and resentment.

Stepping carefully to avoid the pool of blood, I crept towards the mouth of the alley and poked my head around the corner to check the status of the match. Surge was on his knees in the middle of the street, electricity sparking weakly from his hands, while Wildfire floated ten feet above him, a living, breathing inferno.

Wildfire hurled a massive fireball. Surge rolled to the left, and the fireball went wide, hurtling straight toward me.

I ducked back into the alley, pressing against the wall.

The fire slammed into the base of the streetlight right next to the alley’s entrance causing the metal to shriek as it melted under the heat and gravity took over.