Blood Legion: Adamantine Chronicles Book Two Read online

  I said out loud, “You should be able to fly with your telekinesis, but I figured better to be trained first. You don’t want a random thought to have you slamming into the golden arches.”

  Mara snickered, “Dairy queen is better.”

  I said in mock sadness, “That poor DQ sign.”

  She snickered, and even Tina laughed.

  We spent most of the rest of the afternoon with her, got her in a bracelet and in a program where she could be trained. A program supported by supers for supers, as heroes we made buckets full of cash, and it was a good way to give back for the next generation.

  The bracelets at the center were like the police suppression cuffs, only voluntary and easily removed even by the wearer. It would ensure she didn’t hurt anyone on accident during the day, and only used her power during supervised training. Honestly, I doubted it would take more than a day or two for Mara to have complete control. Powers weren’t hard to control as supers, and as people we quickened into powers that fit the people we were, which made it easier too.

  In time, she’d even be able to control it in a panic.

  When we got back to the building later that night, and quick changed into normal clothes, Tina grabbed my hand before I could go inside the building. She let it go, as soon as I stopped and turned to her.

  I looked at her in shock, that she’d actually touched me. More than that, the piercing cold look in her eyes was gone, and for a moment I was stunned by her beauty. I hadn’t realized how much that look she gave me all the time had detracted from her beauty. Her soft rueful smile was stunning, and while her green eyes were still sharply intelligent, they also looked vulnerable, admiring even.

  Her voice was mesmerizing, “You were perfect today. The way you dealt with Mara? I wish the ones that had found me were even a tenth as kind and compassionate. I may have been hasty in my judgement of you.”

  Her tone was always compelling, but it still took me a moment to shake off the softer dulcet tones, and the shock of the soft delicate girl next door beauty of her face, when she wasn’t all tensed up.

  “What does that mean, I mean…” I trailed off.

  She smirked, “I don’t know yet. I have trust issues with men, and that isn’t telling you anything you don’t already know. All I can say for sure is I’ll try harder not to jump to the worst conclusion every time you open your mouth.”

  “So… best friends will have to wait a bit then?”

  She snorted, “Wise ass.”

  I nodded, “Probably my flawed self-deprecating and silly sense of humor and personality.”

  She rolled her eyes, “It’s not all bad, it takes the edge of arrogance off of your brash confidence.”

  Brash confidence? I’d take that.

  “Was that a compliment?”

  She smirked, and left me hanging for a moment, before she said offhand, “It wasn’t an insult.”

  I laughed, and she retreated into the building. I let her, not wanting to screw up the small progress we’d just made. It also made me wonder and want to know about her past. Is that why she’d been so quiet earlier that day? Did Mara remind her of herself ten years ago? Red Siren was the oldest of us, at twenty-six she was two years older than me. Not that anyone could tell, she looked twenty-one or twenty-two, tops. I bet if she put her hair in pigtails and didn’t wear makeup, she could pull off looking like a late teen. Supers tended to age a bit slower, and far more gracefully, thanks to the meta-energy no doubt.

  And probably our vain sub-conscious, directing that energy.

  I headed inside.

  Chapter Five

  Alyssa was in the building, and I headed up to her apartment and knocked on her door. I was excited to see her, I’d missed her today, and even hoped she’d had fun with Carol.

  She opened the door, and she looked breathtakingly gorgeous. She had on a dark blue tight dress, with a sweetheart neckline, that hugged all the sweet curves of her sexy petite body, and even down her legs down to below her knees. There was a slit into the sides, up to her lower thighs, that no doubt would show tantalizing glimpses of her fair, creamy, and toned legs as she walked or danced.

  On her feet, she wore black shoes with three-inch heels. Her dirty blonde hair was up in a bun, and she truly looked mouthwateringly and stunning beautiful.

  “You look stunning my love, truly magnificent,” and then I paused. My heart felt like it got stuck in a vise, as I saw the guilty pleading look in her eyes, “But… it’s not for me, is it?” I asked already knowing the answer.

  She bit her lip, “I’m going out with Carol and Tina again tonight. I missed you a lot, I really did, and I’ll make it up to you tonight when I get back, but I promised.”

  She stepped forward, and then went up on her toes as her soft nubile body conformed to mine, and she looked up at me with her warm brown eyes and angelically beautiful face.

  So beautiful, call me a sucker, but I kissed her. It was a soft kiss full of passion, gentle, lingering, and a little bit teasing toward the end. It sucked, two nights in a row I’d be without her, but what was I supposed to do? Put my foot down and order her to stay home? That would destroy us, and I could see the deep love in her eyes, she just wanted to explore her new budding friendship, and knew I’d be here for her when she got back.

  It was even healthy, and right. Still, that didn’t stop me from hating it, just a little, for a moment. I wanted her for me that night, there was a pettiness there, that told me they’d had her last night, and it should’ve been my turn. But it was easy to push down, it was just selfish, and a little ridiculous, and I wasn’t a petty person.

  Jealousy was a fucked-up emotion, and ridiculous besides. I knew she loved me, and that she wouldn’t cheat on me. Besides, I didn’t have a choice, I’d lose her if I tried to control her, and I didn’t want to control her. She was breathtaking the way she was, I’d destroy both of us and our relationship if I tried.

  She asked, “Are we okay?”

  I replied wistfully as I looked her up and down, “If you let me peel that dress off of you later.”

  Her eyes sparkled with anticipation and lust, and with a joyful thankfulness and boundless love for my understanding, how could I possibly be mad at that?

  She smiled, “Okay, but what can I do for you?”

  I laughed, and I kissed her again.

  “Anything you want to do for me, have a good time tonight. I’m okay with this, truly. Not that you need my permission, I only say it so you know that there’s no need for that guilt in your eyes.”

  She bit her lip sexily, and nodded, “I’ll miss you,” she leaned up and whispered in my ear, “And I’m already wet for you, thinking about later, your hands on me, and your body against mine.”

  Oh hell, she was going to kill me.

  I spanked her lightly, and she gave me mock angry look that was totally ruined by the flush of lust and pleasure on her face.

  She said, “Next time I’ll tell you sooner, so you can make plans? I don’t know, it’s just the four of us here, the normal humans keep us at arm’s length. That’s why I feel guilty, not for exploring my new friendships, as we talked about, but for leaving you hanging and not letting you know sooner. I will miss you, but I won’t feel guilty for that other part of it. I thought about calling, but I just didn’t want to talk over the comms, where we could be overheard, you know?”

  I smiled, “That makes more sense, and I’m glad to hear it. You know the power thing we’ve talked about a few times? About how we suspect part of the reason A-class and S-class powers are all at similar meta-energy levels, because of our limited human understanding even in the subconscious, and those power limits are more a function of our subconscious belief because of the supers that came before us setting expectations, more than any reality. How that explains how you can be a walking reactor.”

  I was talking about the amount of meta-energy a human could absorb, harness, and channel into their powers, rather than the actual powers or abilities thems
elves, which for everyone except me was a subconscious thing. Supers with strength, speed, flight, and partial invulnerability didn’t channel their power at all, or think about that, they just used it naturally.

  She nodded curiously.

  I said, “That’s what I’ll do tonight. See if I can break through that block and try to make an enchantment that isn’t weak without needing my personal power to bolster it. It’s difficult though, my conscious mind can’t be positive, so I’m not sure how to even start in bolstering that belief in my subconscious. We’ll see. Either way, that’s between us only.”

  She smiled, “I’m going dancing.”

  “My night sounds much more fun. Being all sciency.”

  She giggled, “That’s not a word.”

  “Technical jargon,” I lied, baldly.

  She snorted, and fought a grin, then she kissed me, “I love you. Thank you, Daniel.”

  “For what?”

  She blushed, “For being who you are, and not a possessive jerk. I can even see your happy for me, that I’m grabbing for more and wanting a richer and fuller life, but I also see in your eyes that you want me to stay. So, just for being you, thank you, my love.”

  “Why are you blushing,” I teased.

  She went up on her toes, and whispered wickedly, “Because I was having a very naughty thought about my mouth and a certain very large body part of yours, too bad it’ll have to wait. See you tonight, they’re waiting for me.”

  Then the little teasing minx kissed my neck softly, a sweet promise of untold pleasures for later that night, and then left me there as hard as a rock, as she walked out the door.

  She was mesmerizing, enthralling, and wickedly delightful.

  I gave some thought to what I wanted to do. The last thing I wanted was to make a suit that would work at full power for anyone. That narrowed my choice quickly on what kind of enchantment I should make, or to attempt to make for the experiment. Granted, it was busy work to keep my mind off missing my sexy as hell goddess of magic, she’d looked amazing in that dress, but it was also very serious work. Not just an empty distraction to stop myself from staring at the laid-back beige walls.

  I decided to make an enchantment of power. That’s it. A storage device, or battery perhaps, that did nothing but absorb and hold a massive amount of meta-energy.

  The enchantment would also need hooks to make use of it, so I could channel it into the suit. I figured if I could make an enchantment as powerful as I was, or perhaps more, then I could use the enchantment’s energy before I used my own. If I created it with wider channels than I myself had, that meant I’d also be able to increase my energy throughput, which meant stronger weapon enchantments, stronger everything really.

  For the moment, I had to balance energy use, with speed and power. For instance, it took a second to power up my plasma enchantment and fire. I might have to hit a supervillain anywhere between one to twenty times for me to wear down their power, so I could get them with the cuff spell. If I could increase that power by two or three times, then I’d have to hit them a lot less. That concept would go across all my weapons.

  If I had enough of a standby source, I could even not worry so much about energy. I wouldn’t ever throw it away, but me being kicked a hundred feet into a building wasn’t fun, and I could just absorb all that kinetic energy and momentum instead. Or, Rose could, since she was my power management and suit control A.I.

  The best part was that it was my power to harness and manipulate meta-energy, which allowed me to make my enchantments and feed them extra power to make them stronger. Point being, if anyone else took my suit, or even the power source, they’d never be able to tap that power, not without my ability, and if I wasn’t one of a kind, I doubted there were more than one or two others worldwide that could do what I could.

  There were none that I actually knew of, so perhaps there weren’t any at all. I could be unique, but there was no way to know for sure.

  I wasn’t sure what approach to take. I was pretty sure it was a size issue. The human mind knows that a quart of water won’t fit in an eight-ounce sized cup. We’d theorized that energy was the same, and enchantments being weaker on smaller items seemed to bear that out.

  Except, my petite Alyssa walking around with a reactor sized meta-energy put the lie to that thought. Apparently, size only mattered in our minds, and that false perception became reality. The question was how to make my subconscious believe it.

  I grabbed a charm, it looked like a shark’s tooth and was made from silver. Pretty small, plus I didn’t want to mess with my suit in case it didn’t work. It was also very sturdy, a small piece of silver, I had a feeling if a meta-energy enchantment failed because of the object being damaged, all that energy would be released.

  Which would be bad. Blow up Silver City bad.

  I set up the enchantment in my mind, which was the concept to absorb, hold, and channel power at my will, not directly to the suit. That latter one could be done, but then anyone could use it with the suit. Secondly, I envisioned the silver object as having a universe of room inside of it, like a pocket dimension of power storage, that was vast.

  I thought maybe that visualization would get past the limitation, imaging it to be bigger on the inside. Kind of like the Tardis on Doctor Who. Anyway, once I had those concepts straight in my mind, I focused on them to the exclusion of all else. I had a very disciplined mind that way, so I didn’t lose concentration once, but Alyssa had been the last thought I’d thrown out when clearing my mind, and a need for her was my first thought when I’d finished.

  Yeah, that was a total failure, it was very weak. I guessed my subconscious didn’t believe in dimensional engineering.

  The second time, after removing the enchantment, I tried again. That time I envisioned the silver shark tooth as bigger than it really was. Maybe my mind didn’t believe in dimensional engineering, but I knew it would believe it could make a powerful enchantment on a shack sized piece of metal. The only question was would my subconscious take that cue and run with it.

  I also imagined it was brimming and glowing with power, huge amounts of energy, in addition to the exaggerated size and the actual enchantment itself.

  It was close to nine at night, when I ended that test, and I just stared at the silver tooth in disbelief. That little tooth would hold twice the amount of energy I was capable of holding in my own body, and it’d be full in three hours. Which meant it would absorb and use energy twice the amount of mine as well.

  I wondered if that breakthrough would allow me to push it even farther. Nothing succeeds like success after all, I’d done it once, and now that I knew it would work for sure, I thought I could do better. I imagined the second silver tooth I grabbed was the size of a tower.

  It was a little after ten when that was done. It was better, three times my body’s ability to hold energy, but it wouldn’t be full for almost four hours. So, I’d quintupled my energy holding ability with the two enchantments, and quintupled my bandwidth as well, assuming I could feed my energy, and both enchantments at the same time.

  In essence, I was five times more powerful. If I ever fought Bash again, it would only take me five hits to take him down, instead of over twenty. That was huge, and I regretted the fact I hadn’t looked into it sooner. Alyssa and I had first discussed it a month ago.

  Then I immediately rejected that thought, no regret, every second spent with my Alyssa the last month had been worth it.

  I undid my amulet chain, and slid the tooth charms on, one on either side. I took a few moments to practice, Rose would handle powering all the separate enchantments and handling the suit, so I could concentrate on the fight. But the one thing I had to do was feed my energy to her, and feeding energy just got more complicated.

  Still, it wasn’t exactly hard, a super’s powers were pretty much intuitive and easy for them. Routing power into the suit had never been my problem, or a huge distraction, it was trying to micro-manage all the disparate enchantmen
ts that had gotten me in trouble.

  Rose asked, “So, is that really two bombs on us?”

  I replied, “I know I thought that earlier, but I don’t think so. A super doesn’t blow up when they’re killed, or if they die of old age. The energy might just dissipate. We can experiment if you want, to be sure. They’ll be almost impossible to damage though, not while being protected from the suit, and if the suit fails that’s because those teeth will be empty.”

  Rose sighed, “I guess you’re right. We should test it though, they aren’t a person. Maybe a tiny power enchantment, and we’ll take it out to the desert, and blow it up.”

  I nodded, “Not tonight, but I’ll put it on the list. We’ll enchant a handkerchief, and then hit it with a very small plasma ball to burn it up, so we don’t get my weapon explosion confused with the targets. From very far away, even a small amount of the energy is destructive, but then the energy stored in the enchantments have no form or intent. Not like a weapon, or even a shield. So, I really think it’ll be fine. I’m almost positive I was just being paranoid earlier.”

  Rose said, “It’s the almost part that makes me itch.”

  I laughed, “Sorry, I’d scratch your back, but… you know.”

  She didn’t have one.

  She snorted, “Fine, what do you want me to do with all that power?”

  I sighed, “I don’t know, I don’t want to start throwing power away. Let’s start with leaving the defenses alone, conserve power there. The weapons however are a different story, I won’t be wasting energy there or endangering us, because we’d have to hit them five times less. In the end, same energy consumption per supervillain, just faster. We can also use it to go faster if we need to, it’ll be nice to be able to go Mach five and arrive with my energy full up, and only have one of the power sources half empty.”

  Rose replied, “Good enough.”

  I said, “I want to build you an escape hatch, just in case.”

  Rose asked perkily, “Escape hatch?” obviously very interested.