Death's Mistress: Origins of Supers: Book One Read online

  Death’s Mistress

  Origins of Supers: Book One

  Author: D. L. Harrison

  Copyright 2021. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter one

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Afterword:

  About the Author

  Other books by D. L. Harrison:

  Book Description

  Chapter one

  My name is Christabel Moore, and I am Death’s Mistress.

  I’m not even sure where to start in the twisted path that took me to this place. I suppose I should start with the day it happened. The day everything changed for me, but there’re some things you should know about the young lady Christa, or Bell to some of my friends, before we even get that far.

  I was always the responsible one. The quiet one. The girl that spent her college nights in the library with discipline and acted with integrity in all my dealings. I suppose you could even say I was the good girl. The designated driver on the nights I did go out, and the one that held my best friend’s and dormmate’s hair when her night out turned into a date with a toilet.

  In a lot of ways, I’m still that girl today, just not so pathetically naïve of the cold and harsh truths of our world. Supervillain, anti-hero, punisher, I’ve been called all of those things, and much less polite terms, like murderous bitch and… well, I’ll stop there. You get the point.

  I was always the good girl. At least, until he came along. The one that swept me off my feet, made me feel wild and out of control, and taught me how to live life in my senior year of college. The one I gave it all to and was not disappointed. Brad was… an amazing man, and I miss him to this day. My husband, the father of my sweet daughter Wynn, the quite natural result of my activities that senior year.

  That’s probably enough about my history, for now. You get the idea I think, and I can fill in the rest as we go.

  My story starts on a bright sunny Saturday. The three of us were in the car heading to the beach right outside Excelsior City, New York. The sun shone overhead and warmed me through the car window, offsetting the coolness of the air conditioner blasting in my face that hot summer’s day. My little girl, Wynn, was only two at the time. She was a little fussy in the heat. The AC not quite reaching her as effectively as me and her father front seat, but we’d be to the beach soon enough. She was also being good, excited to spend a day with mom and dad.

  My daughter had inherited my looks. Straight golden blonde hair that curled only slightly at the tips and that tickled her shoulder blades, and she had vivid blue eyes. Her features were similar to mine at that age, but there was some of her father in there too.

  It’d been two years since the day that Brad and I had put our college days behind us.

  Life was good. No, my life had been just about perfect then, warts and all. It was filled with challenges, hardships even, because I’d decided to put my career off until Wynn started school. That little girl was my life. My husband agreed, and we barely got by on a single salary in this day and age, but we made it happen. What was perfect was my family, even when I wanted to choke him, I was so in love with him it made everything… perfect.

  Idyllic it wasn’t, but it was my life, and I was both joyful in it and grateful for it.

  We’d been driving toward the bridge when the sonic boom washed over it. It wasn’t close enough to shatter the car's windows, but they rattled violently and made my heart jump into my throat and take off like a rabbit. My hands gripped the dashboard at the loud explosion in front of us immediately following the sonic boom. I winced as the seatbelt pulled at my shoulder and squashed my breast uncomfortably as the tires screeched. I also felt my loving husband’s arm across me, as the car started to skid.

  That’s about when I stopped breathing, because I saw that a large section of the bridge was missing, but the car slid to a stop a mere two feet from the edge of that precipice, at least thirty feet over the water. Then there was dead silence, and all I could feel was the hard pounding of my heart in my chest as I turned to look at my wide-eyed Wynn in the back seat.

  Her frightened eyes met mine and I could tell she wasn’t sure if she should be crying or not, and my heart went into my throat. The fact she was fine, it was like a blow of relief that restarted my respiration, and I gasped in a deep breath as my heart thudded in my chest.

  You’d think it might be a bomb from that description of events, but I knew the truth. I hadn’t even seen it, but I knew there was a damned super fight going on. They were all too common nowadays. Anyone born after nineteen ninety was different. We all had that potential in us, the potential to be more. But it was far from understood.

  They did know that people born after nineteen ninety, all of them all over the world, had changes in their chromosomes. The human race wasn’t quite human anymore. They were also fairly sure from testing that it was the changes in our mitochondria that allowed the transformation into supers. Usually during high stress situations, near death and destruction, but not always. There were reported cases of teens quickening for no more than the stresses of finals’ week, though that was incredibly rare.

  These high stress life or death situations made us channel that energy for the first time, and it gave people powers. Everything from psychics to strength, to flight, to invulnerability, to telekinesis, and empathy. There were telepaths, speedsters, people that could control the elements, energy wielders that could harness electricity, shoot energy bolts, and so much more.

  Let me just tell you, it wasn’t nearly as cool as it sounded in the comic books. Seven out of ten who reportedly quickened died in the first twenty-four hours. Some argued it happened to the ones that couldn’t control their powers, they lacked the DNA, brain power, or some other crucial element. The official line there, was that their powers mutated out of control and killed them. It was also why the government mandated that supers immediately turn themselves in if they quicken. That way they can be held for their and other people’s safety.

  Of course, life wasn’t that simple.

  There were also conspiracy theories. Nut cases that swore that the government had mind readers and evaluators, and seven out of ten were in truth were simply put down because they were dangerous. Simply because they were a possible threat to national security.

  Three out of ten returned to the streets. Of those, maybe ten percent were powerful enough to be superheroes. And maybe ten percent of those decided to be superheroes and not return to a quiet life, while the rest decided not use their powers at all.

  One out of ten broke the law that said they needed to immediately report themselves, and they became rogue and hidden supers that didn’t trust the government, and some few of those became the supervillains.

  I wasn’t sure what to think about the conspiracy theories back then. But I did know one thing, it seemed awfully co
nvenient that the ones who did report their transfiguration and went through government testing never went bad. That seemed statistically improbable.

  What the world didn’t know at all, was what had changed our species. What had evolved our mitochondria to wield the powers that quickened some of us. Some believed we naturally tapped into the energy of another dimension. Some called it meta-energy, some cosmic-energy, as well as other things stolen from the comic books of the eighties and nineties, but the scientists called it Homo-Potens energy. Homo-Potens being the Latin term for powerful man, the new name for our species for those born after the change.

  Homo-sapiens, the wise men, would be an extinct species in just a lifetime.

  That scientific term just never caught on in the news, the other coined terms got much better metrics and ratings.

  There were many theories. Some believed that it was the large meteor that struck in north-west Asia in eighty-nine and caused mass devastation, that somehow it brought alien organisms that changed humanity to allow the change. Some believed it was the huge explosion at Cern, when the hadron collider accident had taken place which released a powerful energy burst of exotic particles through the whole planet.

  Some believed it was natural evolution, simply because supers not only quickened, but they were able to control it. Which argued for a natural progression in evolution and not just random mutation due to radiation or some alien pathogen. Of course, the main argument against that were that seventy percent died in the first twenty-four hours, but the conspiracy theorists saw that as evidence of government sponsored murder for supers they felt they couldn’t keep under control, and not as evidence against the evolution theory.

  I got off on a bit of a tangent there, where was I? Right, the bridge, car barely stopped in time, and my heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest.

  Brad looked at me with a concern that warmed me, “Are you alright, Bell?” then he looked in the backseat.

  I started to nod, and that’s when the sound of screeching metal reached my ears. It sent a hideous shiver down my spine and tightened my gut, as my heart skipped a beat. Then my heart took off like a hummingbird’s as the bridge started to slowly collapse beneath us.

  It was such a cliché, and I hate to say it, but my life truly passed before my eyes. All the things I’d done, all the things I’d yet to do, as terror ripped down my spine, but most of all I was petrified for my little girl.

  It was also the last words that I’d ever hear my husband say, filled with concern for me, and a loving look of relief toward our daughter. It was scant comfort. There was a loud snap as the steel cable twanged. I was so afraid, as the bridge slowly fell in and the car started to slide the last two feet toward the hole, that it’d never even occurred to me to look up for the coming danger.

  A loud crash and the splintering noise of shattering glass made me scream and my whole body seized up, as a large steel beam slammed into our car just next to me where my husband sat. I doubt he even felt it. He was just gone, crushed to paste. I’d never feel his arms around me again, never feel him sheltering me in this storm of life, never feel him under me again as we shared our most intimate moments.

  I was frozen as the car bounced when the steel beam was ripped off the driver’s side of the car. I felt a split second of false hope, until I saw the supervillain use the steel girder as a baseball bat, to slam the worthless superhero into next week. The supervillain’s evil laugh echoed in my ear long after he’d flown off in pursuit, brandishing a twenty-foot-long steel beam like a cudgel.

  So much for being rescued by a hero. Worthless asshole was my last thought, as the car tilted over the hole, shook, and then absolute silence descended. Silence, except for the whistling wind as we fell for the waters below.

  Not everyone quickens when they’re about to die.

  Some have the theory only those that fight back, those that fight to live, will be quickened. My daughter saved my life that day, if there was any truth to that. Without my fear for her, without her existence, I’d have followed my Brad in despair at his shocking death not moments before.

  But my heart would fight until the bitter end to save my girl.

  I screamed as the water rushed up at me. The rage against such an end for my sweet girl, and fear for myself too, invigorated my body. My body flushed with heated rage, denial, and a desperation as the water got closer and closer. It takes an object about a second and a half to fall thirty feet, more or less based on a few considerations.

  It felt a lot longer than a second and a half to my strained perceptions.

  The car slammed into the water, and I slammed into the seatbelt. My eyes widened perhaps a second and a half later, as I realized I’d hardly felt it. I knew what that meant, but I hardly ever imagined it would be me. Of course, I had no idea what I could do, either. For all I knew at the time, I didn’t feel pain but could still be hurt, and I crapped pink glitter. There was just no way to know.

  My baby started to scream. I was pretty sure she’d only not done so before then, because she’d been in shock and terrified out of her mind.

  I braced myself against the dashboard, and reached for the seatbelt, but then the back of the car flipped farther forward so it was mostly upside down as it started to sink. The hood of the car at a slightly deeper angle, due to the weight of the engine. My hand shifted to the roof below me, and I pushed the seatbelt release button.

  It stuck, and my heart skipped. Maybe the impact had warped the mechanism.

  I reached down with both hands, and I tugged as hard as I could. I heard plastic and metal protest for a split second before the seatbelt ripped out of the bolts. I stared at it in disbelief, my heart still hammering. Super strength was a lot rarer than you’d think.

  What was even rarer was what I noticed a moment later. I know, it should’ve been obvious, but I squeaked as I looked up at the roof of the car. Mostly because there was nothing stopping me from falling on it, since it was the floor at the moment. I was very firmly secured in my seat by my flight power.

  “Mom!” my daughter screamed in panic. Most likely because the water was now rushing into the car through the vents, the windows were gone as well, and I was about to be out of air and my daughter only a second or two behind.

  It was a reflex reaction, as the car stopped sinking, and the seat I was in started to groan in protest against the bolts. No doubt I was applying more torque to the bolts than it was rated for, given the sheer of holding up a car by its car seat. Superhero comics never take physics into account, but I was painfully aware this was the real world.

  The groan of protest from those bolts made me freeze, as I tried to work out the physics of the situation in my head. If the seat broke loose, it’d most likely crush my daughter in the back seat.

  I rolled off the seat and pushed down on the floor of the car where it met the backseat, and I ignored the gear shifter which hit me in a very personal place. There was no more groaning of metal, so I took quick stock of things.

  The strangest of which was my heart had calmed. I mean, not its rest beat, but it was ticking along like a casual jog might engender. My mind was also calming. I was still in a crappy situation, but I had time to figure things out.

  Then I heard a man’s voice, deep and reassuring, which made me roll my eyes.

  “Hold it steady!”

  Before I could figure out what his plan was, he peeled open the roof of my car from below. It was the superhero, either he’d captured the supervillain, or the steel girder wielding psycho had escaped.

  He smiled… actually smiled, at me.

  My whole body trembled with rage.

  “You killed my husband,” I accused harshly in the most rage filled voice I’d ever heard leave my lips, “You don’t get to smile at me.”

  He lost his smile quickly, but said, “I’m Freefall. I’m sorry for your loss. Let me help get your daughter out.”

  I took a deep breath to try and calm myself a little, “That would hel
p.”

  I could’ve done it myself easily, but I’d quickened not two minutes ago, and I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I was afraid if I moved that something would go desperately wrong. All that was important was getting my daughter free and to safety.

  He flew inside and my daughter lost it.

  I said calmly, “Wynnie, let the man help you out, sweetie. Be brave for mommy.”

  My daughter’s trembling pout pulled at my heart, but I didn’t dare move as he un-buckled the seatbelt, threaded it through the car seat, and then flew out the hole.

  Once he was out, I spread out my hands to front and back, and flew upwards. It was really awkward, I couldn’t see a damned thing, and the car started to groan in protest. Once I was high enough, I could see the bridge about twenty feet away down from an angle through the shattered back window, and it was pretty empty. I kind of slid that way, flying seemed to be natural for me from the first moment.

  Then I sort of pushed up on one side, to flip the car over and have it land on the bridge. It was totaled probably, but at least it wouldn’t be at the bottom of the ocean. Of course, I greatly underestimated my strength. The car flipped up and away from me, my body slipping through the huge hole that used to be the roof, and the car soared out over the water at least a hundred feet before splashing and sinking into the deep.

  I just floated there, and I stared in shock. My husband’s corpse was in there, what remained of it anyway. I also felt… fantastic, and I hated that more than I can possibly express. Don’t get me wrong, my emotions were a mess, and it felt like my heart had been torn out, but I felt strong, powerful, and perfect. I wasn’t sore, I wasn’t even scratched. Hell, I didn’t even have an itchy nose.

  Freefall flew up to me with a cautious look on his face, “That happens in the beginning, at least until you get used to your new strength.”

  Yeah, I didn’t tell him I wasn’t even trying. He looked nervous enough as it was.

  I looked around, “Where’s Wynn?” and then, “Where’s my daughter,” I repeated angrily.