Making a name for myself as a Villain in
Panopolis is hard work. Six months ago, my boyfriend broke me out of jail. Now
he’s spending most of his time defending our turf against other Villains he
accidentally freed along with me. And my new psychic powers are not only
impossible to control, but they’re also giving me migraines.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. My skills
are improving every day, and Raul—aka the Mad Bombardier—and I have never been
happier. That is, until my first solo job is interrupted by a mysterious woman
who tells me that Raul has been kidnapped by a ruthless new Villain. The only
way to free him is to do a job for Maggot, a man with scary ideas and an even
scarier superpower.
I can’t go to the cops or a Hero for help.
Odds are they wouldn’t listen to me anyway. If I fail, Raul will be killed. If
I succeed, we’ll both be bound to a man who’ll stop at nothing to put Panopolis
on the path to civil war.
It looks like the only way to win is to take
out the competition.
Grab your copy of Where There's Fire now from Riptide!
Excerpt:
Chapter One
SuperTruther here, bringing you the down and dirty on Heroes, Villains, and the people who love them. That last one would be us, guys, your humble blogger included. We’re the gaping maw that gobbles down everything we can get on our Super people. We’re the pushy paparazzi, we’re the Super fans, we’re the ones who buy anything with a pretty girl in a bulletproof leotard on the cover. We’re the fuel that keeps the powers that be churning out Supers, be they Hero or Villain. We aren’t the grist, maybe, and we’re not the guiding hands, but we sure as hell are powering that endless persona mill.
Are you happy, knowing that your conspicuous consumption makes people like the Nightmare? Or the Mad Bombardier? Or hell, look at Edward Dinges, so lately one of us, so quickly one of them. Think about your impact for a moment, people. Think really hard.
***
I’m not your standard, run-of-the-mill, evil-genius Villain.
By many standards I wasn’t a Villain at all, not yet. I didn’t have a pithy crowd-sourced nickname that made people shudder with fear when they heard it in the news—the reporters just called me Edward Dinges. I didn’t have a big, flashy power-slash-mutation-slash-disfigurement that made kids stare and adults avert their eyes. I didn’t carry a weapon. I didn’t run my mouth at the cops and intimidate crowds of people with a single word, or run the heists of the century and not get caught, and I didn’t—I especially didn’t—get into fights with Heroes. That would be asking for more trouble than I could handle, at this point.
But even though I was no Big Bad Villain like my boyfriend didn’t mean I was passive in the face of a problem. And being stalked, to my mind, certainly counted as problematic. This wasn’t the first time I’d been followed in the six months since I’d been broken out of Abbott’s Penitentiary—otherwise known as the Abattoir—in rather dramatic style, but it was certainly one of the most blatant. Fortunately, I wasn’t unprepared for this eventuality. You couldn’t live in this part of Panopolis, far from the glitz and cleanliness and heavily policed presence of downtown, without learning a few tricks.
This was my first stalking without having Raul with me, though, and for all my preparations, I was still nervous. My hands bunched in my pockets, fisting and relaxing as I tried to control my breathing, act casual, act natural. I could do this. I could take care of myself; I didn’t need Raul to rescue me. More importantly, I didn’t have a choice—there was no turning around at this point, no running back home where I could lock myself away. I had a meeting to get to that I couldn’t afford to miss. Not if I wanted to stay sane.
I walked a little farther along the broken sidewalk, head mostly covered by my hoodie as I listened for my stalker’s position. Only three or four meters back, he slowed down, then stopped and ducked aside altogether when I bent over to feign retying my shoe. Yep, he was the real deal. Fortunately, there was nobody else out on the sidewalk at one in the afternoon, all the people who lived in these tenement houses either at work, at school, or inside where it was marginally safer.
I reached into my pocket and then laid a tiny, weblike array of wires with a tiny battery in the center on the ground, before getting up and resuming my steady pace. I waited until I was almost positive my stalker was in the radius of the trap before I triggered it with a button on my key fob.
“Hkt—” There was the telltale sound of someone’s throat closing up, followed closely by a noisy thud. I sighed, then turned around and walked back to where my erstwhile stalker had fallen, his body still convulsing from the effects of the static taser. It was one of Raul’s inventions, notable because he’d worked out a way to get the shock to travel through the insulated sole of a person’s shoe, and because it could be remotely operated. I waited for the shocker’s battery to run out to grab the little taser and put it away. Once I’d made sure the guy was breathing okay, I rolled him onto his stomach and zip-tied his hands together.
“Hey.” I turned him back onto his side so we could see each other’s faces. “Well, this is an awkward way to meet someone for the first time.” My voice shook from the nerves I couldn’t quite get over, but hopefully he was too out of it to notice.
“F—fff—ffuck—”
“Give it a second; sometimes the charge can make fine-motor control a bit wonky.” I could spare a few minutes to figure out who this guy was and whether I should call the cops to take care of him. Not that they’d make it down here in less than an hour: this was a red zone, hot with Villainous activity and too poor to merit rapid attention. And honestly, I wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of leaving another Villain trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey for the cops to come grab. We were bad to each other, but they were worse to us.
Cari Z was a bookworm as a child and remains
one to this day. In an effort to combat her antisocial reading behavior, she
did all sorts of crazy things, from competitive gymnastics to alligator
wresting (who even knew that was legal!) to finally joining the Peace Corps,
which promptly sent her and her husband to the wilds of West Africa, stuck them
in a hut, and said, "See ya!" She also started writing, because some
things she just thought she could do better. She's still climbing that ladder, but
can't stop herself from writing, or from sharing what she creates.
Cari enjoys a wide range of literary genres,
from the classics (get 'im, Ahab) to science fiction and fantasy of all types,
to historical fiction and reference materials (no, seriously, there are so many
great encyclopedias out there). She writes in a wide range of genres as well,
but somehow 90% of what she produces ends up falling into the broad and
exciting category of m/m erotica. There’s a sprinkling of f/m and f/f and even
m/f/m in her repertoire, but her true love is man love. And there's a lot of
love to go around.
Cari has published short stories, novellas,
and novels with numerous print and e-presses, and she also offers up a
tremendous amount of free content on Literotica.com, under the name Carizabeth.
Cari is Riptide's author of the month! Read
her interview on Riptide's website.
The
winner of the Where There's Fire blog tour will work with Cari to name a character in the
next Panopolis novella! Comment on this blog tour to enter in the drawing.
Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on July 18. Contest is NOT restricted
to U.S. Entries. Please leave your email in your comment so we can contact you if
you win!
Sounds like fun.
ReplyDeletedebby236 at gmail dot com
thanks for the chance and great cover
ReplyDeletejmarinich33@aol.com