Heroine Overdose Ch. 02

I staggered away from Rachel. "I'm sorry. We- I'll go there."

Rachel sighed. "No, don't be any more of an idiot. I'll drive you. You look like you're about to pass out. And here - I'll see what I can do."

She stepped forward and hunched over Pixie, still cradled in my aching arms. Rachel made a sound like she was clearing her throat, then spat a ball of goo on top of the wound on Pixie's forehead. It hardened into webbing, stemming the bleeding. She did the same for my worst wound, a gash on my thigh that had left a trail of blood all the way up to their headquarters. "You're cleaning that, by the way," she said. It was gross, but also weirdly tender, especially coming from someone who now looked like a normal young woman.

--

Rachel's car was a strangely sensible mid-sized sedan. As she drove us to the hospital, I passed out for a little bit. She woke me again when we arrived, and helped us into the emergency room.

The nursing staff got us on stretchers right away. They didn't bat an eye at our colourful costumes or our wounds that were apparently caused by wild animals. I suppose that, in a town like San Alvaro, wannabe superheroes turming up injured wasn't that uncommon.

The rest of the night was a delirious blur. I was in and out of consciousness, dosed on painkillers and anaesthetic. All I really remember is that funny, sterile hospital smell, bright lights, and a host of doctors' faces looking concerned way too close to me.

When I woke up, it was bright out again. A silent TV up above us was showing baseball highlights. (It was another losing season for the San Alvaro Destroyers.) My body felt like shit, and my brain wasn't doing much better. After a few minutes of effort, I was able to turn my head to see that Pixie was lying in the bed next to me.

She turned over and gave me a weak smile. "Hey."

"Hey."

"I guess I lost."

"We both got our asses kicked."

Pixie chuckled, then winced and grabbed at her ribs. "I just realized you could see my real face."

"It's okay," I said. "It's a pretty face."

"Creepy," said Pixie, although her voice was light.

After ten minutes of quietly watching the TV, a statuesque doctor walked into the room. "Oh, you're awake," she said. "My name is Dr. Ono. I'm sort of the specialist in superhuman medicie around here. It's my first time seeing you two here, though."

"We've been lucky until now," I said.

"I bet," Dr. Ono said. She flipped through the papers on her clipboard. "Now that you're both awake, I'm going to need your names and Registered Hero numbers. If you're registered, then all medical fees will be covered."

I gave my name and number, but Pixie hesitated. "I.. I'm not registered," she finally said.

Dr. Ono frowned. "Oh. Well, can we have a name anyways? Just something to put on the sheet."

Pixie pursed her lips for a moment before finally coming out with it. "Carmen... can you just put Carmen down?"

"Of course," said Dr. Ono. "Now, Mr. Williams, you sustained several shallow cuts and what looked like bite marks. We've given you a number of stitches, but we'd still like to administer a few shots. As for you... Carmen... by the time you came in here, most of your wounds seemed to have healed on your own. Do you have a superhuman healing factor?" Carmen shook her head. "Well, that may be related to the wound that's left. You have a set of teethmarks around your left bicep which appear to be of magical origin. And I'm afraid that once you enter the world of magic, you're outside of my expertise, or that of anyone at this hospital."

It was as I feared. The rumours online had always been that the Black Wolf attracted his underlings through his cursed bite, turning them into werewolves as well. Judging from the horrified expression on Carmen's face, I supposed that she had heard the rumours too.

Rachel came in, drinking a soda. "Oh, you two are up? Um, don't worry. We can cover any fees if you aren't registered."

Dr. Ono's manner immediately changed from authoritative to deferential. "Ms. Ortiz! It's a pleasure to see you again."

Rachel gave her a curt nod. "You too, Haru. I'd, er, like to talk to these two in private. If you don't mind."

"Of course." The doctor quickly retreated.

Rachel perched on the side of Carmen's hospital bed, and suddenly it was easy to see the spidery Arachne in her. "Let me see it," she said, insistent.

Carmen tugged the shoulder of her hospital gown, despite her evident difficulty in moving. The skin beneath had black bite marks big enough for me to see them from several feet away. If you looked closely enough, you could also see a faint red glow around the edges. The skin around the marks was pale and unblemished.

"Yeah," said Rachel. "You're cursed. Come the full moon, you're going to be that guy's puppy."

"Is there anything you can do?" I said. "Can Artemis heal her?"

"Maybe," said Rachel. "But she's off in another dimension right now."

Carmen looked to be near tears, and I couldn't blame her. "So... that's it? There's no hope?"

"Well, the Black Wolf could choose to remove his curse," said Rachel. "But you'd have a hell of a time convincing him to do that."

"We'll find a way," I said. But I didn't believe it.

--

We got out of the hospital the next day. Carmen had healed very quickly, perhaps the first sign of her lycanthropy. As for me, Rachel had brought in some green goo that she said came straight from the desk of super-inventor The Genius. It smelled nasty, but when applied to my skin it made my wounds heal overnight. There was just one injury we couldn't treat.

I had expected Pixie - Carmen, I reminded myself - to immediately take off into whatever anonymous void she usually did. But she took the cab ride home with me, not saying much. When the taxi pulled away from the curb, she leaned into me, resting her head on my shoulder.

"Are you okay," I said.

"Do you know who I am?" she said, sounding a little forlorn.

"You're my sidekick."

Carmen winced. "No, I mean my real identity. My full name is Carmen Lafferty."

It meant nothing to me.

"My dad is William Lafferty."

I was still drawing a blank.

"Of Lafferty Property Development?"

It was starting to ring a bell. "I think I've seen the name on some apartment buildings."

"Yeah, well, he owns half the city," Carmen said. "And he thinks he owns me as well. He never let me play sports, never let me travel, wouldn't let me go out of the city for college. If he found out what I was doing now, he would sue everyone involved into oblivion, then throw me into a windowless room until I was thirty."

"Wow." I guess that explained how reticent she had been about her identity. "So where does he think you are now?"

Carmen sighed. "I don't know. I was fine sneaking out in the dead of night, but I wasn't counting on getting hurt. Dad's probably got the cops out looking for me. When I go back there, I'm probably not coming back."

"You can stay on my couch if you need to," I said.

Carmen didn't respond much to that. "The worst part is, he was right. I went out looking for excitement, and I got hurt. And now I'm never going to be the same again."

I turned to Carmen. I wanted to say that it was going to be okay, that we would find a solution. But I couldn't make myself believe it, so I said nothing. And, just like that, we were staring at each other, faces inches away, our noses touching. And I couldn't help it. I kissed her.

She didn't seem surprised by the kiss, just closed her eyes and melted into it. I noticed for the first time just how beautiful she was - her elfin face, her gymnast's body, the cute little ponytail her sandy hair was tied in. I broke off the kiss for a moment, afraid that I was crossing a line. She stared into my eyes for just a moment before she kissed me back and crawled into my lap.

The cab driver knocked on the glass separating him from us. "Hey, take it easy you two. You just got outta the hospital, right?"

We giggled and managed to refrain from making out the rest of the way home. I was wondering how I had kept my hands off her all this time. Such a beautiful creature - and not an unapproachable goddess like the Furies, but an ordinary person like me. Someone who looked up to me, even. The amorous wave of a first crush fell over me again.

The rest of the cab ride was full off kisses and gropes and the occasional lick, much to our driver's costernation. Carmen and I didn't stop touching each other once we arrived at our apartments, holding hands as we rushed through the lobby and making out against the wall of the elevator. I was barely able to open the front door for all Carmen was grabbing at my crotch.

Had I been in a mood for introspection, I might have felt that there was something amiss with the two of us suddenly acting like horny teenagers so soon after a near-death experience. I may have even decided that such an encounter was a bad idea. But, as you've probably noticed, I have a habit of thinking with my dick first in situations like this.

Lacking the patience to get to the bedroom, we sprawled across the couch. I was already hard, and ground my cock against Carmen's moist crotch. There had been no time to go back for a change of clothes after the fight, so we were both wearing our torn costumes, with some loose-fitting jackets from the Furies' closet draped over them. And, well, seeing Carmen in her form-fitting pink Pixie outfit was not exactly a turnoff.

She seemed intent on not having it on for long, though. Using the kind of dexterity I had seen while we were on patrol together, Carmen slithered out of her costume beneath me, never breaking contact with my lips. I could barely catch a glimpse of her pale skin and her slight breasts before she was working on my suit. I let her do it, and a moment later we were naked together.

This time, there was no foreplay necessary. We needed each other desperately, and we needed to do something physical and emotional and impulsive to prove that we were still human. I thrust into Carmen's small body with a heavy grunt. She was tight, tighter than I had been expecting, and winced a little at the sudden entry. But her eyes pleaded with me to keep going, to fuck her as hard as I could.

My usual bag of size-changing tricks didn't even come to mind. I lay on top of Carmen, forcing her into the couch cushions with hard, frantic strokes. She gasped with each thrust and dug her nails into my back. The spark of pain barely registered in my frenzied mind. She was so warm, and so wet, and so alive. I dug into her again and again, hoping to find something to sate my hunger.

Carmen was obviously in the same mood I was. She wrapped her legs around my waist, urging me on. It wasn't long before her body shook and quivered in orgasm, her cunt clamping down on my cock. With a hoarse cry, I came inside her.

We didn't say anything afterwards. We barely even looked at each other. When I went to the bathroom afterwards, I couldn't help but notice the deep, red marks Carmen had left on my shoulder. It was hard to deny that they looked like something made by an animal.

--

Carmen stayed at my house for the next few days, continuing hiding out from her father. On the news, they said that the daughter of "local developer and community pillar" William Lafferty had gone missing. The police were out searching for her, and viewers were encouraged to call in with any leads. Carmen insisted on watching these reports, and always had a kind of glassy look on her face when she did so.

We didn't talk much over those days, but we fucked quite a bit. I woke up in the morning to find her lips wrapped around my cock, her throat quietly humming. Sometimes we did it in the missionary position, like that first time, but mostly she wanted to be bent over and taken from behind. That way, it was easy not to notice the bite marks on her shoulder, still faintly glowing.

The moon continued its inevitable march across the sky. It went quickly from about half-full to a waxing gibbous. Carmen seemed to grow more fitful, turning and growling in her sleep. She spent long hours in the bathroom, and afterwards I would find the garbage can full of thick brown hair. Eventually, I had enough of waiting helplessly.

I told her after we had fucked up against the bedroom wall. Carmen had braced herself against the wall, tearing up the paint job while I took her from behind. "I'm going to go after the Black Wolf again," I said.

Carmen looked back at me. Out of all the emotions I expected her to have, anger wasn't one of them. "What are you, stupid? He'll kill you for real this time, you know"

"Maybe," I said, trying to act braver than I actually was. "But I have to try. I can't just let you become one of his minions."

"Well, guess what moron," said Carmen. "That's still going to happen after you die. They'll just be two of us lost instead of one. I mean, think about it. He has super strength, speed, heightened senses and an army of fucking werewolves. You can make your dick big."

"Wait a minute," I said. "I think you just gave me an idea."

"What, the dick thing?"

"No, before that..."

--

Everyone knew where to find the Black Wolf. Since those first nights where his pack roamed the city, they had made their home in the abandoned warehouses that had serviced San Alvaro's once-booming shipping industry. The journalists knew it, the cops knew it, and everyone was waiting for the capes to swoop in.

(Incidentally, these warehouses were notorious for housing various villains, and every once in a while, some city councillor proposed tearing them all down before some young, bright-eyed tech developer came forward with a plan to "revitalize the district." Then the tech developer would inevitably turn out to be a supervillain himself, and the cycle would repeat.)

The obvious approach would be to come at day, when the werewolves typically slept and weren't at full power. But I knew that I would have gotten my ass kicked by even a half-strength Black Wolf. For my plan to work, I needed him to be in full fettle.

There were no guards outside the factory. With his senses, the Black Wolf would know anyone who set within a mile of him. Still, I sat perched on a nearby billboard for what felt like an eternity, listening to the werewolves joke and howl in the building below. I could see the Black Wolf through the half-shattered windows, looking over it all impassively. When he left the warehouse floor for a backroom that had likely once served as an office, I knew it was my time to strike.

I swung down with elongated limbs and then hurdled myself through a window into the backroom where the Wolf sat. He snickered as soon as he saw me. "I warned you, whelp. The third time you see me will be your last. And let's see, it's been one... two... three times."

"I hope this is the last time I see you too," I said. It wasn't as cool a comeback as it had seemed in my head.

The Black Wolf let out an ear-piercing whistle. "I'll get a couple pups to tear you apart." But his minions never came. Instead, there was the sound of heads being slammed against walls and werewolves crying out in pain from the other room. They were currently being kept occupied by Arachne, who was more than capable of handling herself.

He chuckled. "So you called in the little spider. But she is not strong enough to defeat me. And you are much weaker than she." And then he lunged at me.

For a moment that felt like an eternity, the Black Wolf was suspended in the air between us, his mouth open, spittle flying off his sharp fangs. I was sure that this was it. That he was going to kill me. But I still had enough self-possession to drop the first of my surprises. It was a traditional weapon, made with ammonia and a little bit of the juice from the bottom of the dumpster. Just like in third grade, I had made a stink bomb.

To a human, the rotten-egg stench was no more than an annoyance. But to a creature with heightened senses like the Black Wolf, it was like being blinded. He jerked away from his trajectory towards me, and uneasily scrambled backwards. The Wolf lost his sense of balance and crashed into one of the rust-laced warehouse walls.

He snarled at me, but the threatening expression was soon broken up with a hacking cough. "You come at me with a childish prank?"

"Not just one prank," I said, before dropping my second surprise.

This one had taken a little bit more scrounging, but with Pixie's help I had been able to fashion a basic sonic grenade. The experience, to me, was like leaning up against an amp at a punk show. Everything went completely silent for a moment, and then a buzzing noise took up residence in my head. For the Black Wolf, with his canine hearing, it was much worse. He slumped against the wall, silently crying out in pain. I had my opportunity.

Growing my hands to the size of frying pans, I closed in on the Black Wolf. He looked up to me, furious and confused. And then I slapped him across the face. It felt good.

The Wolf stumbled, but I knew that I could only catch him off balance for so long. Even deaf and blind, his animal instincts and supernatural strength would be enough to wring my neck. He knew it too. As the ringing in my ears started to fade, I could see his wolfish grin return. I could tell that he was just about to say something threatening and smug about how I had used all my tricks to take one shot and not even hurt him.

The problem was that there was something in his mouth.

"You know that girl you cursed?" I couldn't help the corners of my lips curling up a bit in triumph. "She gets small. And when I slapped her, I slipped her between your big ol' teeth. Now, unless you lift the curse, she's going to get big, and break your skull open in the process."

I hadn't even realized Pixie could get that small, small enough to fit into my pocket. This part of the plan had been her idea. She had fit nicely next to the stink bomb and sonic grenade in the gadget belt that Phil had designed for me. Like the Black Wolf, I liked to do things in threes.

Panicked, the villain attempted to spit out my self-proclaimed sidekick. But Pixie was already growing, big enough to fill his mouth and wrap her hands around his fangs. He hacked and coughed, but he couldn't get her out, and he couldn't bite down on her even with the might of his jaw. And she was getting bigger.

The look in the Black Wolf's eyes turned from fury to amusement, and then finally a kind of serenity. I could feel something pass through the air, like a ripple. A tiny Pixie hopped out of his mouth. I could tell from the expression on her face that she was different now. She was cured.

"You could have lived for centuries as my thrall," said the Black Wolf, turning his eyes on the foot-tall Pixie. "But now you will not even live for another five minutes. A pity."

We had not quite planned this far ahead. I suppose I had thought that, once we had gotten the Black Wolf to lift the curse, he would surrender. Maybe he would do one of those how-interesting monologues that villains always did to make it seem like they were in control. But no, he still wanted to kill us, and he was certainly capable of it.

But the Wolf was once again intercepted, this time by a silky spiderweb flying at great velocity. The web caught the villain and forced him to stumble as it tightened around him. Arachne stood in the doorway, a pile of unconscious werewolves behind her.

"Run!" Arachne shouted. And when a Fury wants to run, you run. I carried the now toddler-sized Pixie on my back as we burst out into the night, are feet pulsing against the pavement. The air was crisp and cool, and as the gibous moon came into sight our fear faded away into joy and exhilaration. We had, despite everything, won.

-

Arachne had an insect's sense of how to quickly get out of sight. She led us down a sequence of alleyways and through at least one tunnel until we emerged in downtown San Alvaro, huffing and panting.