flares, a hunting knife, and those awful throwing stars Nightmare had always been so fond of. But for some reason, she had left off the metal mask, and though Adrian knew he shouldn’t assign this any significance, he couldn’t help it.
Without the mask, he still didn’t see her as Nightmare. He could only see Nova.
Nova, who had betrayed him a hundred different ways. But still Nova.
He had tried to ask her where Oscar and Danna had been taken, if they were okay, but she seemed determined to stay silent. He wasn’t sure if she was there to keep him from trying to escape, or just to make sure he wasn’t being mistreated.
Perhaps the worst part was that Phobia came and went, too. It had taken Adrian a while to notice him at first, watching silently from a corner. The room was so dark, and he held so still, that at times the villain seemed more like a figment of Adrian’s imagination.
He was real, though. He was very real, and every time Adrian noticed him, a chill swept down his spine. Phobia’s cruel words, spoken as he stood over Callum’s body, echoed back to Adrian again and again.
One cannot be awed who has no soul, just as one cannot be brave who has no fear …
It was him. Adrian knew it now, had known it the moment Phobia said those hateful words. The note left on her body. The unbridled terror on her face.
Phobia had killed Adrian’s mother.
Adrian sneered, baring his teeth at the villain, whose only response was to spin the scythe in a steady circle over his head.
The news reports had said that Lady Indomitable had plummeted to her death from a seven-story building. There were no other wounds, no injuries that weren’t direct results of the fall. Whatever Phobia had done to her, whatever he had shown her, it had frightened her enough that, for a moment, she’d forgotten she could fly. She had been petrified. Scared, literally, to death.
What didn’t make sense was how Nova could possibly be on the side of that thing.
But he knew he shouldn’t be surprised. His mother had been a Renegade. Nova was an Anarchist. What did Nova care that Lady Indomitable had been murdered more than ten years ago? One less superhero to deal with.
He was grateful when Phobia finally left, vanishing from the room as silently as he’d come.
Cyanide, too, disappeared some time ago, muttering about an experiment, and Adrian hadn’t seen the mirror walker since they’d arrived. A handful of others had come and gone. A few of them he recognized from past Renegade trials—prodigies who, like the Crane, had not been accepted into the Renegades. A few of them he was sure had been wanted for various crimes around the city, frequently hunted by patrol units. It made him wish he’d done more as the Sentinel to track down known criminals and see them apprehended.
“Have I missed any?” asked Queen Bee, shining a flashlight over Adrian’s arms, twisting his wrists against the bindings. “Let’s see … that’s the fire, the castle wall thing, the jumping, the suit, the … what is this?” She dug a fingernail into his right forearm. “Oh, right, the laser thing.” Her expression switched from jovial to vicious. “I recall that one intimately.”
Adrian glowered back. “You were trying to kill my father,” he said, breaking his own vow of silence.
She clucked at him. “Your father shouldn’t have stabbed my Acey.”
“Ace was going to kill us all!” He shot a look at Nova, half expecting her to offer an opinion, maybe even an argument in his defense, but she stayed silent. Her back was to them, standing just inside the chapel’s arched doorway, staring out into a corridor lined with statues.
Queen Bee blew a raspberry with her ultra-glossy lips. “He was not going to kill us all,” she said. “Just you. And everyone you care about.” She winked, as if this were all a joke. A hornet was crawling up her earlobe, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Now then, Nightmare, dear, which one do you think we should start with?”
Nova moved almost imperceptibly toward her. “Which what?”
“The tattoos. We can’t let him keep them, after the trouble they’ve caused.”
Nova shifted again, studying Honey more intently, though her gaze never strayed toward Adrian. “What are you talking about?”
Honey sighed dramatically. “We have to cut them out.” She parted the thigh-high slit in her sequined dress and pulled a stiletto knife from her stocking.