Podcast of a Teenage Super-Villian

Chapter Twenty-One: Welcome Back

Song Choice: Red And Black— Reignwolf. This is my favorite song by far and will likely be included in a couple more chapters, especially because this song can be WALTZED TO. My writer's brain explodes every time I hear it. 

Max. 

"Alright, you...you.., you stupid...." Chip draws in a sharp breath. He has to. He's glaring at me, blocking the moonlight with his shoulders, his fists still shaking. There's blood on his shirt; mine. A dark, blotchy mass that I see against the swirl of colors that makes up his tee shirt. I try to smile up at him; the tape won't let my mouth make the motions, so I half-lid my eyes coolly, like a cat. So he knows that I'm winning, I'm always winning.

We're outside the apartment complex, the car crushed in a sea of junkers. I can tell where we are because of the stagger of buildings across from me, the way sailors used to tell their position by the stars. Chip bares his teeth at me, a flash of white in the moonlight, and the other boys hang back behind him, like mere ghosts, background figures to the two of us. I'm still bound up, still bleeding. Everything hurts and I'm absolutely helpless—or so it seems. the corner of my lip twitches into a kind of attempt at a smile and Chip rips the tape off—hard. The pain stabs my face, this cloying, tearing thing. I bite back a yelp.

"What's the apartment number."

"I'll have to show you," I say, "you'll have to take me with you. If you go in by yourselves, he'll think you're a power harvester. He'll think you're trying to kill him." This is all true, and I try to look up at them, pleading like, all big brown Maxwell Preston eyes. Chip's still glaring, his lip still curled up in that snarl, his eyes still glowing with an angry sort of fire in the waning moonlight. "He's going to be terrified. Please, I know you don't trust me, but for his sake—"

Chip hooks his arms under mine, yanks me out of the car so hard I hit asphalt. I'll have to get used to the feeling of this, the being tossed around by the once-trembling boy I had so easily destroyed in the past.

I should've known this would happen, should've prepared, but at the time it was impossible to believe. Chip Hardwell couldn't raise his hand in class. Chip Hardwell couldn't even tell someone 'no.' The only thing he had ever done to challenge me was the taunting whisper he'd given when I about choked him to death the night he found out who I really am, the Masquerade parts, I mean. I could've never imagined him like this now, could've never imagined his knife in my thigh. The opening of the muscle, the warm blood swirling into the river water. I could never imagine my pain at his hands.

"Max, I swear to God, this better be real. And you better not have hurt him, you better not—" He leans in so close I can feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek, can smell something syrupy sweet on it— "or I swear to fucking God I will kill you." His eyes are blue flames in the pale light, they pin me in them, hold me tighter then the humming ropes around my wrists. The words are angry but his voice is calm, and the effect is ghostly. His softness, his quiet voice, bound up in real violence. It's shit. He's willing to kill me. I can see it, there's nothing I can say to him that will ever make him forget my hands on his throat and my fist in his face. He wants to hurt me. I shrink back, smiling because I don't what else to do aside from maybe shake, or cry. Fuck.

"This is how you're going to sneak me in. Me, a tied-up pretty boy? Yeah, that's not suspicious at all."

Finn, the boy who's head I almost busted open on a cabinet knob a few weeks ago, steps up to him. In the moonlight, they look so similar. Tall, pale, lanky teens with a couple of extra bruises. The only real difference, aside from Finn's glasses, is that Finn is expressionless, and Chip looks like he'd just said he'd kill me, his face all red and twisted up. I draw in a deep breath to steady myself, but my hands are shaking. I can't feel them; I only know they're shaking because I'm looking at them. "We need to be careful. If anyone sees us—"