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  Polly’s eyes widened, and half the old guard started to bitch up a storm, but I didn’t pay them one bit of attention. Looping my arm through the security guard, I tried to focus my empathic senses ahead into the manor, where much more positive things were being felt, and away from the firestorm of frustration and entitlement I was leaving behind.

  The guard led me in through the side door, just as one of his friends, dressed in an identical starkly black suit but Hispanic instead of white, took his post. “Mr. Washington is waiting for you on the ballroom floor, Ms. Klein,” my escort explained. “He apologies for any surprise this entire turn of events may be bringing. Certain events came up that delayed his invitation to the Sentinel to send their best city desk reporter to this event.”

  “Oh,” I said softly, mulling it over. The guard wasn’t lying, I could see it in his heart that he was telling what he believed to be the truth. “I’ll let Mr. Washington know that everything is fine. It was no trouble really.” Except to my bank account, I was tempted to add.

  Any other questions or bits of snark on my part were cut off as I took in the halls we were walking through. From the scattering of interviews Paragon gave that wasn’t connected to some specific event, he always talked about his love of classical art and minimalist architecture. An odd mix on the surface, but I always took it as keeping one eye on the past and the other to the future. Those loves were perfectly represented by the interior of his home.

  What had likely been elaborately papered and finished walls had been redone into a clean, eggshell color, adorned only by a tasteful collection of classical paintings. The carpeting was a surprisingly plush, multi-colored affair, a continual, repeated geometric pattern that was almost hypnotic. Between that and the hurricane of hundreds of points of human emotion coming from ahead, it was getting a little hard to concentrate.

  Fortunately, we weren’t in the hall long. My escort opened a beautiful wooden door, and the wash of hundreds of actual voices joined the emotional ones. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to master my senses. I thought of this empathic ability as an eye and imagined narrowing it. At first, I thought it was both silly and wouldn’t work, but after a few seconds, the gushing emotions turned into a trickle, a focused ‘feel’ of the security guard and maybe a few more of the closest people.

  “Are you okay, Ms. Klein?” my escort asked, concern thumping in his heart. “Should I get you a drink or a place to sit …?”

  I opened my eyes and smiled with relief. “Oh, no. I’m fine, thank you. Just a little bit of a headache, but it’s gone now.”

  He nodded slowly, taking my words at face value, and led onward into the master ballroom.

  While the interior halls showed Robert Washington’s inner self, this ballroom looked like it had been pulled straight from the early 20th Century, unchanged for a century. Richly colored curtains were pulled back to reveal numerous alcoves where people gathered around varnished tables laden with food and drink. Grecian columns flanked the alcoves, and the white walls were decorated with sculpted panels. The vaulted roof soared overhead, gold leaf accenting the white, while gilded sconces that flooded the room with clean light. Polished hardwood floors dominated and there were already scattered couples already dancing, as the New Harbor Philharmonic Orchestra serenaded them.

  And there he was. I felt him the moment I saw him. Paragon, dressed in a perfectly tailored white tuxedo, was talking with a few of the city’s luminaries. You know, the head of the city council, the district attorney, and the mayor. For all the people around him, I felt that keen loneliness was even stronger, though it was mostly held back by thoughtfulness, mild amusement, and anticipation.

  No matter how nice the suit, I think he looked better in that skintight costume of his.

  That anticipation spiked as the guard gestured across the room and Paragon looked up at that exact moment. Call me crazy if you wish, but his deep hazel eyes were staring right into mine. “I think you can make it the rest of the way, Ms. Klein. If you’ll excuse me, they need me at the press entrance.”

  I’m sure they did. Nodding slowly to the guard, I smiled. “I can, thanks.” I slipped my arm out of his and took a straight-line path across the ballroom, only taking care to skirt the dance floor proper. My gaze never left Robert’s as he nodded a few times to the city officials and slip away. He was on the same direct path to me that I was to him.

  We came face-to-face for the second time in twenty-four hours at the edge of the dance floor. Robert’s eyes swept up and down my form once as I kept my gaze locked on him.

  “Breathtaking, Ms. Klein,” he said slowly, just loud enough to be heard over the din of the crowd. His words matched his emotions as he folded his arms behind his back. “I hope my invitation to the Sentinel wasn’t —”

  “No, it wasn’t inconvenient, and no, you don’t have to apologize for the lateness of the invitation,” I said quickly, determined to stay focused and on task, even as the tingling warmth ran down my spine and into my core. God, he was handsome. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have questions, like why the escort and most importantly, why me?”

  While I had no worry about Robert figuring out who Ms. Miracle was under the mask, I was starting to get a little put off by this strange dance and whatever little game he was playing with his ‘colleague’. Even if I didn’t get a single other question answered from Paragon, I was getting this one answered.

  There was a flash of confusion under the façade of perfect control. “Perhaps I misjudged something, but aren’t you —”

  Of course, he didn’t get a chance to finish, not when the rest of his words were drowned out by shattering wood, stone, and glass. Every bit of metal on and in the front wall of the ballroom, closest to the front of the mansion and furthest from us, was drawn together in one compact ball as the air thrummed with energy. As Paragon and I both turned toward the catastrophe, I opened up my empathic eye and felt something alien, yet strangely human all at the same time. A feral hunger and a ferocious desire for revenge almost knocked me for a loop as their source became obvious as it stalked through the billowing dust from the wreckage.

  Maybe thirty feet from snout to tail, tremendous in his prehistoric majesty, the massive dinosaur roared, the sheer power of his lungs blowing away enough of the dust to give a clear look. Unnaturally red scales covered most of the monster’s body, save for a ruff of spiny feathers that turned into a ridge-like running down his spine. The craziest thing by far was the golden metal crown fused into his skull. Aside from the fact he was a living, breathing mutant Allosaurus.

  It was Magnetaur, the Jurassic Master of Electromagnetism, and he looked pissed.

  10

  “He isn’t on the invitation list, is he?” I found myself asking even as my body tensed for action. All worry about myself threw out the window as I thought about all the innocent people in danger.

  Fear and panic surged through the crowd of ball-goers in all their pretty suits and dresses. Screams and cries came just a moment later as Magnetaur’s roars were joined by the shrill, trilling cries of another dozen reptilian shapes emerging through the dust. Smaller than the mighty dinosaur, their silhouettes were more like alligators or maybe huge dogs. Whatever they were, they didn’t match up to anything natural.

  Paragon straightened up, fists clenched as he began to float off the ground.

  “No,” he answered forcefully as outrage and concern pulsed inside him. “We should go ask him to leave the party.”

  “We?” I arched an eyebrow, though my tone wasn’t one of denial. My body language said it all, as one of the few people in the room that weren’t fleeing for the exits.

  Paragon flashed me the briefest of smiles before squaring his shoulders. “Why else do you think I specifically invited you here?”

  Almost as if the mutant Allosaurus could hear our conversation, Magnetaur reared up to his full height, head crashing through what was left of the ballroom wall. “Magnetaur needs no invitation,” the surprising
ly erudite monster proclaimed, “and he cares not for your petty boasts. Though you have bested me in the past, Paragon, my associate has gifted me with the weapons needed to destroy you this time!”

  He let out another boastful roar before continuing his monologue. That was fine by me as it gave even the most frozen bystander time to get the picture and run. Already, I could see the faint blue glow around Paragon’s hands matched the light shining from the various alcoves, the walls opening up into the hallways beyond. The innocents would have an easy time escaping now.

  “See the snouts and teeth of your doom, hero! Once you are gone, New Harbor will be the foundation of my new Jurassic Kingdom!” The Allosaur raised his tiny arms, the air shimmering with his magnetic power, and the hazy figures around him emerged from the wreckage of the front wall.

  Part Velociraptor, part pit bull, part porcupine, with just enough human features to send a chill up my spine, the six-legged things surrounding Magnetaur were the same blood red color as the Allosaur himself. Past that, the resemblance was nonexistent. All thick muscle and glowing eyes, the dogasaurs stood as tall as a man, with stubby snouts full of razor sharp teeth, glittering claws, and a back loaded with foot-long quills that glistened with some kind of oily fluid. I wasn’t sure why Magnetaur thought these things would even the odds against Paragon, aside from the fact they were organic, but they would make mincemeat out of the ball-goers.

  The strange thing about them, though, was the utter lack of emotional feedback I got from them. Even animals I could feel, if not really understand, but these things were dead to me. There was no time to think about that further, as the pack of them let out another trilling roar and rushed forward with startling speed into the ballroom.

  Worries about the secret identity thing disappeared in an instant as I broke into a sprint to intercept the nearest dogasaur before it got a single bite of a socialite. I was so focused on the task at hand that I didn’t notice the blue glow that cascaded down both my and Paragon’s bodies. Using just a fraction of his molecular manipulation powers, he turned our evening wear into our proper costumes.

  Hopping up to one of the serving tables with one leap, I used that perch to launch myself clear across the dance floor, over the heads of the fleeing dancers, and right in front of the leading lizard as it crashed through an hors-d'oeuvres table. All around the room, I heard the shriek of tortured metal, no doubt being put to use by Magnetaur for some horrid purpose, the roars of the other beasts, and the low hum of Paragon’s powers. I shut it out, keeping focused on the terrible jaws that snapped at my head.

  I let instincts guide me, slipping around the bite like the thing was charging through molasses and bringing my left fist around with a hard blow, hoping I pulled enough of my punch to not outright kill the creature. Where ever these instincts came from, they weren’t from my collection of self-defense courses, that was for sure, but they were way more effective. Unerringly, my punch landed on the mark, my super strength deforming the leathery scales as I heard something crack in the side of its jaw before sending the dogasaur skidding a good yard across the ballroom.

  Emboldened by that success, I caught another one leaping at me out of the corner of my eye. Maybe Magnetaur realized that he was better served trying to take out an unknown super over having his minions feast on fat cat corpses. With cat-like reflexes, I turned to meet the mutant’s pounce, catching its outstretched paws by the wrists as I let the force carry my back into a roll. Tucking in both legs, I kicked up at the midpoint of that roll, letting go as of its paws as I did so, using all that momentum and force to throw the dogasaur clear from one side of the room to the other. There was a sickening crash as it plowed into the vintage décor and fell to the floor, right onto a table with an expensive-looking case atop it.

  Well, better the art than the people.

  The pulse of the panicked bystanders was already lessening as they moved out of the fight zone, making it easier to keep on task as I flipped back to my feet. It was almost like I had stepped into the Matrix, my body responding expertly to whatever notion got into my head. Of course, that still shackled it to my own inexperienced notions of fighting, and in the rush of action, I had lost track of Magnetaur and the bulk of his minions.

  The room-shaking roar of the Allosaurus got my attention, and as I spun to orient on it, there was already a twisted ball of rebar, plumbing, and serving plates the size of an artillery shell launching at my head. It was moving at such a speed that I already knew that I wouldn’t be able to dodge it, much like the rapist’s pistol, and I didn’t have anything in hand to deflect it. Twisting away, still trying to duck in vain, I was ready to get splattered across the ballroom.

  I shouldn’t have worried, not with Paragon on duty. Turned fully away, I only heard the tremendous crash of metal on his invulnerable chest, the quite-stoppable force meeting the immovable object. Debris and shrapnel from the magnetized junk bomb blew all around me, but I was untouched, now under the shadow of Paragon’s muscular frame.

  Glancing back up at him, his cape flowing in an unnatural breeze, I could feel protectiveness, concern, and quickly rising anger in the hero. “Are you all right, Ms. Miracle?” he rumbled, his eyes focused ahead on the Jurassic Master of E-mag.

  “Thanks for the save,” I smiled, even as I caught a dogasaur coming up the side of us, flexing its back. Those spines rippled, and either Paragon didn’t see it or discounted it as a threat to him. That glisten, though, worried me, because what other danger could these things pose to him?

  Even as more metal started to soar across the room, collecting in orbit around Magnetaur as he charged forward, Paragon moving to meet him, the dogasaur let out one last twist of muscle, its entire body curling to launch a volley of its javelin-like quills, all heading straight for the hero.

  Not on my watch. In one fluid motion, I reached down in mid-stride, picked up a piece of the table the first dogasaur had shattered, and leaped parallel to Paragon’s course. Managing to match his position perfectly, I twisted in mid-leap, getting the chunk of wood around just in time to intercept the spines and their poisonous payload. The things drove a good five inches through the board, close enough for me to see the toxin smeared up and down their length. I should have been afraid, glistening death mere inches from my face, but instead, the thrill of action and the joy at having possibly saved Paragon’s life washed that fear away. I finished the whole maneuver with another neatly done side roll, ditching the impromptu shield as I went, and winding up on one knee.

  “And right back at you, Paragon!” I called over my shoulder. “You deal with big and ugly, I’ll keep these things off you!”

  I caught the faintest hint of surprise mixed with a touch of admiration and whole heaps of determination from the world’s greatest superhero, something that made my own heart sing.

  “Understood and well done,” Paragon called back, ignoring Magnetaur’s roar of frustration. As I turned to head off another two of the strange dinos, Paragon gestured calmly as he hovered up and forward, the floor and the foundation below it, pulling up and reconfiguring itself into a wave of wood-and-stone arms. “Whatever your ‘associate’ told you, Magnetaur, it will fail as every one of your schemes has in the past.”

  “I will bring down this entire estate if I have to,” the Allosaurus roared back as he began his own charge, every remaining scrap of metal in the room forming a swirling debris field around the beast. “I’ll bury you and your wench both under a million tons of metal, and then I will let the bio-beasts plant their venom in you!”

  “Wench?” Paragon shot back as he directed a wave of animated arms to tear into the debris, looking to clear a direct path to the dinosaur. “We don’t address ladies by such crude terms in this house.”

  I smiled at that but didn’t risk a glance back. Staved off a bio-beast’s bite, I grabbed both of its jaws in mid-snap. These things were beastly strong, but I was stronger. Gritting my teeth and planting my feet, I put all the muscle I had to use swinging t
he monster around by the snout, clubbing another of its pack with it.

  The two I had dealt with earlier seemed to still be recovering, and Paragon looked to have bound up another three in stone bonds pulled up from the ground below the mansion, but that left seven, including the one still in my hands. That was when I realized another difficulty these things presented, the fact that they were living creatures.

  Any true hero would be loath to use lethal force against them, giving each beast more shots to inject their poison. While it still seemed a far-fetched plan at best, super-villains had done crazier, but that did little to help my situation. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep them all at bay, and even with all his power, Paragon’s clash with Magnetaur wouldn’t be some curb stomp battle.

  As the ballroom shuddered behind me from the clash of two epic forces, I used my makeshift dinosaur club as a barrier, trusting my instincts and speed to interpose it between me and another barrage of quills. It did the job admirably, and I trusted in whoever designed these creatures to make them immune to their own toxins.

  Oddly, my new dino-shield didn’t flinch from the quills piercing its flesh, no shriek of pain, and that made me remember how I couldn’t sense these things at all. There wasn’t any blood leaking from this things wounds either and did I hear the clang of metal muffled under the flesh?

  That’s when it all came together. I couldn’t sense these bio-beasts’ emotions, not because of any shielding or psionic protection. I couldn’t sense them because they didn’t have them. They weren’t true living creatures, basically being nothing more than bio-mechanical war machines. In the end, they might be flesh and blood, but there was something metal underneath, no more alive than your typical battle robot, well, the ones that didn’t have sentient AIs in them, like the defender of the Motor City, Detroit 3000.

  Which meant I could take off the kid gloves. Shifting my grip on the bio-beast’s snout back to its jaws, I let out a cry as I pulled with all my might, first hyper-extending the hinge of its fang-filled maw before a hideous crack echoed through the din. Its jaws broke and then with one last tearing sound, more metal than bone, I ripped its lower jaw clean off.