Chapter One Taranis
Chapter One
Taranis
Three months later
I stare down at the front page of the London Champions Daily with my back teeth clenched and lightning skittering along my temples. I know he can see it.
Frederick Yu’s face gets redder and redder. The color creeps up from the collar of his starched shirt to his weak jaw. Never trust a man with a weak jaw. I should have fucking known better. Freddie here’s been nothing but a disappointment from the start.
“Sir, with all due respect, it’s been three weeks . . .”
“Three weeks that I haven’t seen one front page with my name on it. You have to scroll for a full minute on any news app to find the first mention of a Champion that isn’t the fucking Wyvern!”
Freddie hesitantly approaches my desk. I work from home, though the areas where I live and work are separated by thick concrete walls and a biometrically coded entrance.
Nobody comes into my office without my permission.
And nobody goes into the livable areas of my home ever.
Not that I use the space to relax. I don’t relax.
I amass power, and I can’t do that if people stop taking my calls because I can’t out-fucking-smile the goddamn pink monster and his fucking fiancée!
Freddie shuffles his feet, holding his tablet against his chest in a white-knuckle grip.
He looks at me as if he’d like nothing more than to bash me over the skull with it.
It’s a look I know well by now, but only one of the thirty or so idiots I’ve fired in the past year has actually had the stones—well, the tits—to swing.
My designer at the time tried to slam her laptop over my head after I asked her if she’d developed spontaneous color blindness when she designed my new uniform.
As she lifted the device, I exploded it in her hands, which caused a jagged piece to tear through one of her palms. She needed thirty stitches and a couple bones reset, but that didn’t stop her from trying to sock me good with her other arm.
She missed, in any case, then accepted the settlement my COE lawyers shoved down her throat, and moved on.
I watch Freddie, hoping he’ll make the same mistake. My desire to take my aggression out on his stupid face is impossible to think past. I crack my neck.
Instead, the fucker takes half a step back. He shakes his head and cards his fingers through his short black hair, causing it to stick up straight. “We are the best PR firm in the country—”
“You were the best PR firm in the country.” I drag the Business section of yesterday’s paper to the top of the pile.
Hot for PR: An Analysis on the Power of Public Relations from Rising Industry Powerhouse The Riot Creative.
That’s Vanessa Theriot’s firm. The headline makes me want to explode the power grid for the goddamn city, starting with the COE headquarters, which is where that puny little multimillion-dollar marketing agency keeps their offices.
They’re supposed to be boutique, for fuck’s sake.
Not absconding with every decent headline, plastering the Wyvern’s face across every front page.
Getting her fiancé every fucking brand endorsement I have and then some.
He models underwear now. He’s a goddamn pink monster!
“You aren’t going to be able to do better than us,” Freddie blusters, his bright cheeks pink, his narrow eyes doing their best impression of a threat.
Electricity crackles along my skin. I can feel it pulse through my temples like a budding migraine before seeping into my eyes, where it undoubtedly glows, turning my irises from purple to red, a warning to Freddie that he may leave this room not only fired, but electrocuted as well.
If only I could simply . . . explode him, I think with a frown. My powers do have their limitations.
I can control electricity. Cell phones and machines using electrical power, for example, I can turn on and off and operate, to a certain extent.
I can also generate electrical currents, forming balls of energy and launching them at my enemies.
What I can’t do—and what I really wish I could do at present—is generate an electrical current within a person. Or being.
I’ve seen the Marduk do this, not with electricity but with wind.
Felt it. The swelling of my lungs; the threat that he could explode them, tearing me apart, if he wanted.
That happened the first time I battled him, over a decade ago now, and was the first moment it occurred to me that even though my face was a creation that could bring humans to their knees, I was truly the one enchained, caught in a perpetual act of genuflection.
These pathetic humans love my face, my gifts, my body, and so they’ve bound my limbs with these fetid, feral contracts requiring me to perform good acts for their benefit.
And in exchange, what do I get? Money? Things?
Human toys to act for my pleasure? Fame?
No. None of these things are what I really want.
In meeting and battling the Marduk that very first time, seeing the way he carried himself, untethered by contracts and unburdened by the desire to please these pesky little human creatures, I understood for the first time that power is the ultimate goal.
The Marduk may head the VNA, running and ruling his villains, but the Champions are all still governed by humans.
Why is that, when we are the power holders?
I want the power the Marduk possesses—but I want it over the COE, who’s held my leash for so long. So I’m going to take it.
While I amass what I need to coup in the shadows, however, I still have to play the part of shimmering, shining hero. And I need these useless humans working for me to keep and hold my place in the hierarchy in the meantime. To best amass power, I need the humans to view me as irreplaceable.
But in the past four months, I’ve been effectively replaced by a pink goon and his stumbling, shy idiot—an idiot whose PR firm is making me the even greater fool.
Snarling, I hold Freddie’s gaze for longer than I’m used to staring at most humans.
I find their faces repulsive. So much sweat on their skin.
Nervous tics and flinches. They exude uncertain energy at all times—uncertain about their standing among other humans, even less certain about me—and I find it exhausting.
I may share the same skin they do for now, but once I get new skin, access to the full array of my potential powers, and my weapon, I will ensure I no longer have direct face-to-face dealings with humans going forward. Unless they get in my way.
I hiss between my teeth, “I’m not sure I can do worse.”
Freddie’s lips press together so tight, they disappear into his mouth. I cock my head toward the door.
“Simone, Simon,” I bark, and my assistants open it automatically.
Freddie glances over his shoulder at the pair, and I watch with a sick sort of satisfaction as his ego deflates.
It makes me happy, watching egos get crushed like this.
One of the few things that brings me any genuine pleasure these days.
“My mother always said, ‘Even if you are caught in the mouth of a tiger, you will survive if you keep your calm.’ But you are the tiger, Taranis.”
“Thank you.” I offer him my most indifferent grin, no idea what he’s talking about.
“Mark my words, Taranis: You will one day try to swallow the wrong person, and you will choke to death.” He points his tablet in my direction, and I short the device for the simple spite of it. He won’t notice it no longer works until he’s long gone.
“Simon will escort you out,” I say, waving my hand dismissively at the blond boy on the left side of the doorway.
Simon nods once and says in his usual soft, pliant voice, “Right this way, Mr. Yu.”
He steers Freddie toward the door Simone holds propped open.
It’s heavy, but she doesn’t falter, even though I can see her skinny arm shake.
I grin—well, as close as I ever get to it.
My lips are peeled back and my front teeth are bared; my back teeth are clenched.
I watch the back of Freddie’s head as he’s escorted into the foyer, where Simon hands him his coat and takes him to the waiting elevator. The two men disappear.
“That’s enough, Simone.”
She closes the door and steps into my office fully. I don’t miss the way she exhales and rolls out her shoulders.
“Who’s next on the list?” I ask her—a question I should have probably found an answer to before firing my current PR director.
Simone diligently approaches and withdraws a piece of paper from the portfolio under her arm.
She sweeps her short loc’d bangs out of her face.
She keeps her locs tight and dyed a caramel color, styled in a bun on the back of her head.
It contrasts nicely with her dark complexion.
Inoffensive, not distracting, professional in every way.
Outside of the goons assigned to me by the COE, she’s the employee who’s been with me the longest. Approximately eight months and counting.
I wonder if she’ll last the year. None of my other assistants ever have.
I take the paper she slides across my desk, which is made of concrete. The paper is mostly blank. I frown. “What is this?”
“This is the list of available PR firms that are COE approved that we could reach out to today to take on your contract.”
COE approved. Because I need their fucking approval for everything. I snarl.
She hands me a second sheet with many more words scrawled down it in a list. Ninety percent of them are in red or orange.
“What’s this?”
“The ones listed in orange are available firms with good reputations that are large enough to take on your contract but aren’t approved by the COE . . .”
“And how long does approval take?”