3

Tim looks about ready to make a run for it and take his chances we won’t follow, which I would actively encourage at this point although I can’t promise the latter if the mood strikes us to give chase. Or he’s possibly considering moving to back to America. I would not encourage that one. It’s scary over there. During my time as an international superhero, I’ve been shot six times. Four of those were in America. Four. And I’ve been to several different countries overrun by insanely violent, gun-toting rogue militias.

But before Tim can leg it, he’s saved from us and plunged into far greater physical danger by the arrival of The Maker, a supervillain who until two seconds ago I thought was still locked up in one of England’s most secure prisons.

In typical supervillain dramatics, The Maker blows out the far wall of the bed shop with a blast of his weird, blue magic. Bricks and mortar explode into the shop, spraying molten debris at all the nearby civilians. Some of them are thrown backwards by the sudden pressure, their vulnerable bodies scattering across various beds and the hard marble floor.

Screams and shouts of panic crescendo through the shop as civilians scramble to escape a danger that they don’t fully understand the scope of.

Caleb and I are far enough away from the explosion that we’re able to stay on our feet and avoid taking any injury from the debris. Tim, less sturdy than us with our enhanced strength and endurance, is thrown to the ground by the initial blast that shakes the building to its foundations.

The Maker steps into the gaping hole he’s left behind in the wall, his trademark silver staff held aloft in one hand. His usual robes and cape are absent, which, when paired with his long grey hair and scraggly beard, always make him look like a bad Lord of the Rings cosplayer. Today he’s dressed in a grey prison uniform instead, so at least his breakout was presumably recent and he hasn’t been traipsing around the city being a nightmare for too long.

I drop down next to Tim on the ground, yanking Caleb with me so we’re partially hidden by one of the beds.

“You alright, mate?” I ask Tim, helping him up from his sprawl so that he’s kneeling beside me.

Tim nods jerkily. “Yeah, I’m okay.” He looks at me with wide, terrified eyes, which I can’t blame him for.

“It’s going to be fine,” I tell him confidently. “We’ll get you out of here, I promise.”

“Got yours?” Caleb asks, nudging me as he takes a silver domino mask out of his jeans pocket.

I stuff my hand into my own pocket and produce a similarly shaped black mask with a dark-orange stripe through the middle.

Tim stares at us in absolute shock, a mix of incredulity and hope, when Caleb and I don our vigilante masks.

It isn’t practical for us to wear our suits everywhere, but we make it a habit to take our masks out with us at all times, just in case of situations like this one.

“You’re Barricade and Crescent!” Tim hisses at us, with an almost accusatory tone.

“Not a fan?” I ask, amused at his outrage despite everything.

Tim snorts. “I might be if you stop me from getting murdered by the blue wizard.”

Speaking of, a quick glance back over at The Maker shows him prowling through the shop, stepping over bricks still flaming blue from his magic. Once he’s standing in the middle of the room, he takes his staff into both hands and raises it above his head. Inwardly, I groan, knowing what’s about to happen and not looking forward to it one bit.

“Oh, fuck,” Caleb mutters, also recognising the theatrical gesture from our past altercations with The Maker.

He’s too far away to stop it, so all we can do is watch as The Maker brings his staff down hard, cracking it against the floor like he’s spearing a sword into stone.

A rush of pale-blue magic erupts in a torrent of expelled power from where he struck the floor. The magic shoots upwards like a wave until it hits the ceiling with an almighty crash and collapses back down. It spreads through the room in a swirling flood of blue energy.

Every mattress and pillow it touches hums with magic. The blue power pulses and whirrs, glowing ominously around them as they shudder to life like still hearts shot up with electricity.

“What. The. Actual. Fuck , though?” Tim exclaims, incredulous, from where he’s just barely peeking out from over the top of the bed we’re crouching behind.

Yeah, there’s not enough therapy or suspension of disbelief in the world to help with this gold-standard level of fucking weird. Better to not even try to understand, just accept it and do your best to suppress the knowledge that we live in a world where shit like this happens on the regular.

Before anyone can react in any other way to the madness going on around us, The Maker raises both his hands again and calls out in a brash, commanding voice, “Today you are alive, and I am your maker!”

Jesus Christ, this man needs to get a grip; it is just not cute.

There are still far too many civilians in here who stopped trying to escape when all the magic crap started happening. If curiosity killed the cat, then supervillain-related FOMO snuffs out more civilians every year than smoking.

I turn to Caleb, his profile partially blocked by the hood he’s thrown up to further obscure his identity. “I’ll go after the wizard wanker,” I say, “you get all the civilians out.”

Caleb dips his head in a quick nod and holds up a fist for me to knock mine against. “Don’t get dead, babe,” he says.

I flash him a quick grin in response before lifting my own hood and standing up to vault over the bed and commit to a mad dash in The Maker’s direction.

There are flying, pissed-off pillows with teeth—why do they have teeth, why ?— zooming around the room that are apparently compelled via zombie logic to attack any nearby civilians and try to eat them. I’m more worried about the mattresses, which also seem to have developed mouths, round and packed with sharp little teeth on their undersides like sting rays. They float through the room, collapsing down on top of stray civilians.

I snatch one pillow out of the air before it can chomp down on a screaming civilian who is scrambling along the shop floor to escape ,and lob it at the wall as hard as I can. The living pillow growls when I throw it because of course it does, what the fuck, but it bounces off the wall only to drop to the ground. Unconscious? Dead? Don’t care as long as it stays down.

Another mattress is about to settle on two more civilians to my left, so I create a bright-orange shield between them to block the attack. I hold the shield steady until Caleb charges in to grab the civilians and practically carry them off to safety.

Trusting Caleb to corral everyone he can towards the nearest exit, I focus all my attention on taking out The Maker, who is still having a good old time shouting at his pillow army between bouts of maniacal laughter.

In the past, The Maker’s been subdued by separating him from his staff, which is the source of all his power. As soon as he has that silver stick taken from him, he’ll be easy enough to bag up. It’s just getting it from the idiot in the first place that’ll prove a challenge.

For the second time today, I wish we’d thought to bring Mei with us on this shopping trip. With her ice powers, kicking The Maker’s arse would be far easier. She could just freeze him to the bloody wall and snatch that staff right out of his hands.

Thankfully, The Maker is one of those supervillains who gets too wrapped up in their own evil joy to pay much attention to their surroundings, allowing me to get close before he notices me coming for him.

He must recognise my mask because he moves into an immediate defensive stance on sight, gripping his staff tightly and bellowing at me with the enthusiasm and stage presence of a town crier, “Barricade, my dastardly foe! Halt or die !”

Don’t ask me why he talks like that. The man’s a schoolteacher from Devon who walked into a cave on a school trip and accidentally got possessed by some sort of cave demon … thingy. We aren’t completely sure about that. I’ve got even less clue why the demon makes him speak like a medieval villain. Maybe because it’s super old, maybe because it’s taking the piss, who’s to know, who’s to say? Arguably, that’s above my pay grade.

The Maker spins his staff in an arc and brings the top end of it down, pointing it at me. Blue energy balloons out of it like blown glass, shining with pale light. I draw up a shield just in time to avoid getting a blast of magic to the face. His magic explodes against the shield, crackles of blue spreading across the orange surface, fracturing it like the rapidly splintering glass of a windowpane after a badly aimed kick of a lead ball.

Still, my shield holds, and eventually the magic dissipates, allowing me to drop it and move forward again.

The Maker growls out a string of obscenities and spins his staff around twice, building up more energy this time and blasting a comet of blue at me. I have to really brace myself against this one, setting my feet apart and throwing up a shield to catch the full brunt of all that power. The blue energy explodes over my orange shield, the impact strong enough to push me backwards a few steps, and I have to grit my teeth to stave off the wave of rippling pain that travels through my body.

It takes longer for the blue to fade away, which gives The Maker enough time to build up a third blast of energy and fire it at me as I’m still recovering from the second one. His third blast throws me off my feet, sending me sprawling backwards and sliding across the marble floor, crashing into an upturned bedframe.

“Is that all you’ve got, Barricade?” The Maker laughs uproariously at me, still spinning his staff in elaborate arcs. “Pathetic!”