Unable to take it anymore, I slipped his grasp and made another grab for the rolled up parchment tucked into his inner coat lining. Atticus rolled to his feet, and I followed, stumbling much less gracefully to mine. He deftly avoided each and every one of my attempts to frisk him, light on his feet. What he couldn't avoid, he stopped in it's tracks. Larger hands closed over my own, folding them into fists and stilling them from further assault, so I utilized my knees as a distraction, intending to force him to release me, only it didn't work out as planned.
He twisted my whole body until somehow he ended up behind me with my arms forced into a cross over my chest, positioning himself safely out of kneeing range.
"Why are you fighting me?" he said, a low, tired sigh.
"Give it back!"
I kicked back into his shins, and the startled hiss of breath against the shell of my ear let me know not only that it landed, but that it hurt, and I was very, very vindictively pleased to hear that, until his own leg hooked around my ankles. I dropped like a ton of bricks faced down atop the cushioned mat and sleeping bag Atticus had been sleeping atop of minutes prior. Despite the added padding, air fled my lungs in one sudden burst. When I tried to get up, I found I couldn't.
"I stole that file, fair and square," I snapped, straining my neck to glare at him, even as he kept his palm planted firmly on my back keeping me down.
"And I stole it from you. Fair. And. Square." He came across as frustratingly calm. It made me want to become a nuisance, to break through his eternal veneer of outward indifference.
"Why do you need it?" I demanded. "It's about you! I doubt there's anything in there you don't already know!"
"I don't need it," he admitted, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I just don't want you to have it. If you want to know something, you need only ask, and, presuming I'm feeling charitable, I might even tell you."
Unable to think of a proper retort to his very valid criticism, I opted to do the mature thing and muttered a string of unflattering things under my breath, only stopping upon eventually remembering that I, too, had a valid rebuttal, gleaned only recently from Shadow's file. "You stole my grandfather's powers. That should give me some right to information."
His hold faltered. "Your grandfather?"
His weight between my shoulder blades vanished and I found myself being flipped onto my back, a pressure still holding my legs in placeHe examined my face, his expression for once open, searching.
"Would you stop moving me around like I'm a doll?" I said at the midway point between annoyed and pissed to all hell.
"You're not the Constable's granddaughter," he murmured mostly to himself, oblivious to the way I was contemplating breaking his perfect nose.
"You stole his powers, too?" I asked, momentarily surprised out of my irritation.
In the flicking gas lamp light providing meager illumination to the space around us, one by one every loose item in the enclosed space, from clothes, to food, to the debris rose off the ground with shaky tremors and began swirling kaleidoscopically around us. Planets encircling their sun.
"The Constable's powers are mine and mine alone, now. No one has seen him use his telekinesis in years, have they? He's powerless. A pathetic man putting on a grandiose facade by pretending he is something that he is not."
I'd wanted to faze him. I'd wanted a peak beneath the mask, but the genuine bitterness in his tone took me aback.
"How?" I whispered, not even attempting to buck him off my thighs anymore. "Mimics don't steal powers. They imitate them. Everyone knows that."
YOU ARE READING
Super•Villainous
Fantasy"I've been looking for you." There was an unexpected rasp to his voice, a hint of desperation. He stretched out one hand, as if to brush it across my cheek, or perhaps wrap it around my throat. Oddly enough, I didn't know which option frightened me...
