Read Online Even Villains Go To The Movies by Liana Brooks - Free Book Online

wouldn’t bring the block down and wished for approaching police sirens. This end of town was a victim of the last depression, home to nouveaux rich who had fled during the housing crisis, leaving empty buildings that had slowly filled again with vagrants. Though at least the street people were smart enough to run and hide when a flame-covered maniac attacked.
    Another fireball blossomed in Arktos’s face. He shot spines of ice at the pyro. The idiot capered backward, letting his heat melt the ice so he was merely splashed instead of skewered. Arktos tried throwing a cage of ice around him. It began steaming immediately.
    Gravel crunched behind him.
    Arktos pivoted and only instinct kept him from catching a baseball bat with his nose. It grazed his head, leaving his ears ringing. The blonde. Of course, he thought as he jumped to the side. He thought he’d been lucky finding the pyro alone.
    Fire roared like a living beast, filling the alley behind him. He fought the fire with ice, but that only produced steam. He turned, trying to focus on putting up a thick glacier wall to cut the pyro out of the fight, and took a bat to the ribs for his inattention. They gave way under the force of the blow and he dropped to his knees.
    The blonde swung again, slamming into the side of his knee.
    Arktos swallowed a cry of pain and rolled to his back as he entombed himself in ice. He was a triple threat; able to fly, manipulate cold and ice, and heal rapidly, but he still needed time to heal in. If the blonde knocked him out, the pyro would turn him to a charred corpse before he could recover.
    The fire outside his blue ice tomb dimmed. Two shadowy figures leaned over him and he felt heat on his back. Wiggling so he had some elbow room, he hit his knee, forcing the joint painfully back into place. He tried breathing and choked on blood. Broken rib. Wonderful. At least he’d be able to run in a few minutes.
    His head spun as terror gripped him. This was it. He was going to die. Some dim corner of his mind shouted at him that this feeling wasn’t his, that the terror was alien, but the fear flared higher, consuming the voice, consuming everything. He clawed at the ice, desperate to escape. He couldn’t die like this. Wouldn’t. Aaron needed him to come home.
    A third person walked into sight. The ice distorted his view, warping the image so he saw only rippling lines, but even through the ice, the black and red costume—and the sudden drop in his terror levels—had to mean Rage.
    Arktos slammed his fist into the ice, punching his way free. She wasn’t a triple threat and there was no way he was going to let some unprotected empath try to take down the pyro alone. He fought the pain and fear and ice until a swell of peace blanketed him.
    Exhausted, he let his head drop back to the ground and saw the fleeing pyro burning bright as his ice cage melted away. “This was not the plan.” His ribs scorched. He turned to his good side and saw blood.
    “Tell me about it. I hate having my beauty sleep interrupted.” Rage bent over and picked up something silver that glittered in the pre-dawn light. “Cinderella left us a present.”
    She walked the battle lines looking for more loot before coming over to him and dropping to her haunches, dangling the silver earring above him. “Beautiful little trinket, isn’t it? Silver or platinum, custom-made, expensive... I think I’ll keep it.”
    Arktos winced as he tried to sit. “Give me the earring.”
    “I have contacts who can find out who made this and who bought it. I doubt you do. But, if you’re very nice to me and keep talking, I might be persuaded to share my information.”
    He grinned through the stabbing pain in his side, panting only a little as bones shifted. “Are you going to scribble your phone number on my hand?”
    She tossed the earring up, caught it in her gloved hand, and tucked it away in her pocket. “Do you know that little ice cream shop up on the Pacific Highway?