19.
Kat
Los Angeles, California
This was the part of California weather that Kat liked best. It was winter but hell if it felt like winter. The day had been in the eighties, and now the temps had fallen with the sun to somewhere in the low seventies. Cool enough she could feel the prickle of it on her skin, but not so cold she’d need to flee the hammock in the backyard of her rented house.
She lay there, under the dark sky, the moon the only visible light, a few clouds passing overhead, and took a slow breath. Her mission was complete, successfully. Her team had done well—sure, Veronika helped keep them on course, but it was Kat’s team, really. Reed had made that clear to her. She was pretty content to let Veronika think she was in charge, but Kat knew who the real star was.
She yawned, checked the time on her cell phone. The backyard wasn’t exactly expansive, but it was a pretty good size. Palm trees lined it, swaying in the light wind. A few other types of trees were present, too, giving it the feel of a garden oasis. They’d survived the drought, which was nice. Lots of trees, lots of other greenery hadn’t. It made Kat so super-sad to think about it.
One of her legs hung over the side of the hammock, brushing the grass beneath with her bare feet. It tickled at her toes, swaying to touch her. It was a neat thing, the way greenery bent for her, bowed to her, wanted to touch her. Like she was a queen, and every seed was one of her subjects.
So here she sat, at four in the morning, ruling over her subjects, her kingdom. Tomorrow they were going to do some filming for her TV show, Beyond Human, and … and … and …
Kat let out a lazy sigh. Could life be any better? She did her service with the agency, was making millions with her TV show and associated merch; ratings were way up now that she was back on the job, seemed like people really responded to the metahuman policing procedural format that they’d switched to in the second season.
Yeah. Life was good, and only getting better.
The only downside, she frowned—between the glory of the weather and all the success …
It was such a little thing, but …
She couldn’t see the stars here. The only ones she saw were the ones at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant or the Four Seasons. Alas.
That was life, though, wasn’t it? Tradeoffs. It was all right, though; she had a vacation planned for Anguilla, because she still had to squeeze a little bit of the lux and glamor into her show to provide her fans with that amazing escapist feel, so she’d see the stars again soon enough. She had a private villa booked, and it’d be glory itself, staring up at the stars from the beach, no light pollution to blot them out. She could see Cassiopeia … Orion …
Kat blinked; there was a star, albeit … one she didn’t know. It was glowing, right there, faintly in—
Oh. It was moving. Probably just a plane.
No. It was arcing down, toward her.
A nervous tingle ran through Kat’s scalp. That … wasn’t a good thing, was it?
She started to get up. The faint glow reminded her of a star—maybe even two, it was hard to say, just that distant glow, like a plane coming in for a landing.
That wasn’t a plane, though. It couldn’t be. They didn’t look like …
That nervous tingle became a full blown warning, something telling her to move, to seek cover, and she followed that instinct without hesitation, that gut reaction that carried her to the edge of her yard. There was a Moreton Bay fig tree here, and she knew it well, could commune easily with the roots. She sent it a simple request: “Protect me.”
It swept down with its branches and scooped her up, bringing her into its enveloping canopy, shrouding with leaves and branches. She lay there in its embrace, held in the sway of the wind, and looked out through the smallest of gaps that it provided.
Something floated down into her field of view, into the back yard, seconds later. She blinked.
It was a man on fire.
He hovered inches off the ground, looking at the back of her rental house. “Katrina!” he called, toward the house …
He hadn’t seen her. Kat didn’t dare breathe.
“Katrina!” he called again, at the back of the house, as though speaking to someone within. He waited, long seconds, and then cast a ball of fire at the far end of the structure, landing it on the roof above the garage. It blazed wildly, spreading within seconds to cover the entire thing.
Kat did not dare move, nor speak. She only watched as the roof blazed bright, and the man called, “Katrina!” louder and with increasing fury, adding the occasional, “Come out!” every now and again.
The house burned, sirens wailed. The roof started to collapse, and Kat remained in her hide-out. The heat of the flames wilted the leaves around her, their intensity growing by the minute.
Finally, the man could stand it no longer. He sank to the ground, just for a moment, and turned away from the blaze.
Backlit by the flames, she stared at him. He was but a silhouette against the glowing ochre; frightening, he loomed, a figure in the dark with nothing but malice for her.
Still, she said nothing. Breathed only the shallowest of breaths, wrapped tightly in the embrace of the tree.
She watched him as he turned, his profile exposed. There was no satisfaction there, as he watched the fire blaze. “You are weak,” he said, almost so low she couldn’t hear it, and then floated off the ground.
With one hand, he reached out to the swimming pool at the back of the house. A motion was all it took; with one hand he snuffed the flames and with the other he commanded the pool water to drown the ashes of the burning house. The hiss of heat exchange overrode the sound of sirens growing closer and closer.
His task done, the man flew into the sky, disappearing out of her view within seconds. She waited a minute, then two.
The fire trucks arrived. She could hear the fireman on the lawn, doing … whatever it was they would do when they arrived at a house already burned and put out.
Another minute passed, and she could wait no longer. She bade the fig tree to release her, and then she was on the ground, reaching for her cell phone, dialing the number by memory.
What time was it on the east coast?
It didn’t matter. He answered, a moment later.
“Reed,” Kat said, not waiting for an exchange of pleasantries, and ignoring the thick sound of cottony sleep in his voice, “your guy—the one from the bridge—he just showed up at my rental house and burned it to the ground after trying to call me out. Like, Old West style.”
The voice at the other end of the line snapped to instant wakefulness. “What?”
“Yeah,” she said, staring at the pillar of black smoke, the glow of the blaze now gone from the LA skyline. “Reed … I think we’ve got a problem …”