Sunset Boulevard
West Hollywood, California
December 23/24, 1996
1:38 A.M.

Shane and Jennifer walked together down the sidewalk on Sunset, past ever-shrinking numbers of others as they slowly made their way back toward his car, laughing together with their arms around each other’s waists.
       “Nuh-uh,” she giggled at him.
       “I swear,” he insisted. “Landed right on the principal’s car. It would have been a brilliant move, but he had to go and park his car at the bottom of the stairs. So my head’s like half in the windshield, I’m bleeding from my scalp, I can hear my skateboard just rolling away across the parking lot, and Jerry’s up at the top of the rail with the camcorder still running. All you could hear on the tape was me moaning for like ten seconds and then Jerry’s voice saying, ‘uh, dude?’”
       She laughed harder and squeezed him tighter. “Poor baby.”
       “I still got the scar to prove it.”
       “Really?” she asked, stopping. “Can I see?”
       He stopped with her, and leaned his head down for her and ran his fingers through his hair, clearing the area.
       She put her hands on his head and searched with her eyes, and quickly found the small scar.
       “Awww,” she laughed. She rubbed it with her thumb and then put a soft kiss on it.
       “Hey, chicks do dig scars,” he grinned, turning his face up to her. “What do you know?”
       “No, we’re mostly just amused at the stupid-ass things guys try and the scars they deserve for doing them,” she answered, deciding to kiss his lips, now, instead. Which was just fine with him.
       She made a satisfied sound as they stopped, and hugged him, and they rocked back and forth there in a tuneless slow dance.
       As he smelled her hair he let his eyes drift open, and he saw some movement across the street that caught his gaze.
       There were three guys over there, more of the tattooed L.A. night types, and they were with a girl. The girl caught his attention because it seemed to him she was pretty young. She was in a short skirt and a bright, low-cut top, had long, probably-not-natural red hair, and she struck him as looking high-schoolish, despite trying to dress older. She also looked kind of wasted. Great. How I Spent My Christmas Vacation, by Random High School Cali Girl. A gripping tale of ticking off mom and dad by running the streets in the dead of night with guys she shouldn’t even be meeting at her age. L.A. Definitely a different world than Phoenix. Not necessarily a better one.
       He kept watching, despite the fact that he was supposed to be focused on the girl that was pressed against him, as the four of them stumbled (she was doing most of the stumbling) and laughed. Her stumbling turned into a near-fall, and one of the guys, the one with the black hair, caught her, laughing and asking if she was all right. He didn’t really seem to care that she was all right, only that he’d gotten an excuse to get his hands on her and was now keeping them there. She laughed some more. And Shane felt a sadness inside, realizing he was thinking of Jayne, and what Porter would think if his high school daughter was out like this with guys like that. Was Shane really old enough to be thinking about how girls tried to grow up too fast these days? Maybe Jerry was right, and he had been spending too much time with Porter.
       “I had such an amazing time tonight,” Jennifer purred in his ear.
       “Me, too,” he answered, trying to keep his voice in emotional balance with hers, and trying not to give away that his attention wasn’t totally on her. The black-haired guy was kissing the girl now, while his buddies stood by and seemed to be enjoying the show. It made Shane angry—again, in a thinking-of-Jayne kind of way—but she didn’t seem to be minding. But come on, she was drunk, and clearly underage. What were these idiots thinking? They couldn’t have picked up any of the blatantly skanky club girls he’d been passing the whole walk back from the Viper? Skanks of legal age? He felt he should say something. Or do something. But he could already see how that word turn out. He’d end up with some trust-fund princess, who probably spent every night of her week doing this, looking at him like he was nuts (and clearly from out of town) and making him the bad guy.
       “You know I love everything about you?” Jennifer sighed.
       Oh, great timing. Smack in the middle of a tender moment, one he could really screw up by saying the wrong thing or acting the wrong way, and his mind was on a girl with bad judgment that could probably care less what he thought about her life, instead of the girl turning his world—in a good way—upside down tonight.
       “Everything?” he asked her. “Even the stupid-ass part?”
       “Even that part,” she answered, rubbing her nose on his neck.
       Though that should have been enough to keep him grounded there, he kept looking up, even as he rubbed her back. The guy’s hands were all over the girl, and Shane was starting to get angrier.
       He heard something from over there. The girl’s voice. What had she said? Did she tell him to stop? Or was that just wishful thinking from his overly-chivalrous brain? Regardless, the guy wasn’t stopping. Shane tried to listen closer, but Jennifer’s voice kept him from hearing what the girl said next.
       “Did you mean it? About coming back to L.A.?”
       Wrong question, wrong time! One he needed to answer and answer very carefully. He seemed to get a break as the foursome abruptly started moving again. Thankfully, it was no longer going to be his problem. But they seemed to be moving a little too quickly. And was it his imagination, or did the faux-redhead seem to be moving a little jerkily, like maybe she wasn’t moving by her own choice? Shane squinted and tried to read the whole situation, following them with his eyes.
       “’Jammer?” Jennifer asked, sounding a little worried at his lack of response to her.
       That almost brought him fully back, and he almost spoke, but he saw the four of them quickly leave the sidewalk and cut into an alley. And then, as the last of the guys—the one with the nearly shaved head—disappeared into the darkness, there was a quick flash behind him, a reflection from the nearby street light, down near his hand, which was at his lower back.
       Shane saw it. It was gone in the blink of an eye as the guy vanished into the alley, but it hadn’t been Shane’s imagination. It was a knife.
       Without even thinking, his muscles driven by instinct alone, Shane broke away from Jennifer and ran across Sunset Boulevard.
       “’Jammer!” she yelled after him in surprise and confusion.
       He had to brake momentarily as the headlights of a westbound S.U.V. came rushing up. The car’s horn blared at him as it passed, and he waved it by violently, as if doing so could make it go faster by his will alone. He checked to his right as he did, looking for any other cars, and broke into a run again as soon as he could, headed for the alley.
       He wanted to keep running right down it without pausing, but his mind reconnected with his body and made him stop at the entrance and check first. It reminded him of things, feeding him facts through the rush of adrenalin and instinct. Yes, he had to do something, and right away, but needed to get a read, and had to think. He could almost hear Porter’s now-lost voice telling him that. There were three of them, and all might be packing knives, and he wasn’t a super-hero right now. He was a guy in a silk shirt who knew almost nothing of using his fists (unlike all of them, he was sure), and unless he planned to start whipping out the powers without a mask on, he’d have to come up with a plan.
       He could see them, surrounding the girl, pinning her up against a wall, speaking menacing things to her he couldn’t hear. Another part of his mind quickly asked him, with some shame, why he was actually concerned about protecting his secrets when there was a girl in trouble that needed him.
       “What the hell’s happening?” Jennifer, suddenly behind him, asked quietly but emphatically.
       He acknowledged her with a quick look and then focused back on the scene in the alley. “They just forced that girl down the alley,” he whispered, with his body still telling him to quit screwing around and just get down there right now. “One of them has a knife.”
       “Oh, shit,” Jennifer said, whispering, too, leaning around him and taking in the scene herself.
       “Dangit,” he whispered harshly, with frustration, turning his head and looking down Sunset in the direction they’d been walking. “My costume’s in the car.” The car was parked behind a deli about four blocks down, and there was no way he had the kind of time needed to go get the suit, which would make things so much easier. Aside from the fact that the costume was armored and would protect him from being skewered, it would give him the freedom to act without worrying about consequences.
       He looked back down the alley, realizing what little time he had was being wasted worrying about that. The girl couldn’t wait for him to deal with his issues.
       “Okay,” he said, more to himself than Jennifer, and started piecing together what he could do with the winds without discovery, taking a deep breath. “Just stay back. I think I can—”
       He lost sight of the thugs and the girl as everything went dark all of a sudden. He felt something covering his head and face, and he grabbed at it in confusion and pulled it off.
       It turned out to be Jennifer’s dress.
       He looked down, and found her standing next to him, looking down the alley, readjusting the waistband of the semi-bikini-bottom that made up the lower part of what passed as her white and powder-blue Delight costume.
       She glanced over at him and answered his look. “You said we could go flying later,” she said in explanation. “So I wore it.” Okay, so he hadn’t actually noticed before, but as her costume could basically pass for underwear anyway, there was no reason he should have.
       “I got this,” she told him, looking back down the dark passage and kicking off her shoes.
       “What?” he asked, concerned. “I mean…” He was immediately fearful at the idea of her being in danger, but the other part that he couldn’t—and probably shouldn’t—verbalize was that he was supposed to be the hero here, and this was supposed to be his job. The idea that someone was having to come off the bench for him gave him a little irrational stab to the ego.
       “I got it,” she repeated quickly. “There’s only three of these losers. Won’t be a problem.”
       “Are you sure?” he asked, and there were multiple layers to the question. But his asking it signaled his surrender to the idea, and the necessity for it.
       “Trust me,” she said, looking at him. And then she added, looking into his eyes, “Do you?”
       With only a slight pause, he nodded. There was no time to do anything else but trust her. “Be careful,” he told her.
       She grinned at him briefly, and he wasn’t sure if he was worried by the grin or turned on by it. She left him to ponder that and stepped briskly into the darkness.

       Her very loud whistle pierced the dangerous silence of the dirty alley, and all three of the Hollywood night trash spun around at the sound. The girl, backed up against the wall and crying and frozen with terror, even managed to jerk her head that way.
       The three males stared at the very unexpected sight. At one very hot blonde, wearing next to nothing, sauntering down the alley toward them.
       The near-bald one and the one with the longish, dirty blond hair stepped into the center of the alley, and the latter started a prolonged “woooooo”. Even the black-haired guy pulled his hand back from inside the girl’s shirt, but didn’t move.
       “What the fuck?” the skin guy laughed, confused but clearly aroused.
       Delight kept walking slowly, and calmly, toward them. “Gentlemen,” she said. “What are we up to tonight?”
       The guys in the center kept staring at her, taking in all of her they could.
       “Damn, baby,” the skin said. “What’s up with you?”
       “Oh, shit!” the blonde guy said, looking at her harder, and getting suddenly excited in a different way. “Dude, that’s fuckin’ Delight!”
       “Whaaaat?” his partner said doubtfully, not believing it (but not caring).
       “I’m telling you!”
       Skin guy checked her out with a tilted head. “Nah, it ain’t,” he said. “Baby’s a wannabe. And a niiiiice one.”
       She kept moving toward them, looking like she might yawn, letting them stare. “Yeah, it is,” she said. “And guess what? You managed to piss her off.”
       “Yeah, right,” skin guy said, and as the blonde guy started taking steps toward her, he followed.
       “I think it’s her, man,” the blonde said, smiling hungrily and licking his lips, caressing her with his eyes. “I seen her enough on the net. I know this body.”
       “What’s she doin’ out here, then?” skin asked, still watching her as he walked.
       “I don’t know,” she said, evenly, approaching them still. “Kind of got the urge to stop a bunch of dickless retards from raping a scared little girl.”
       “Oh, you did, huh?” skin said, grinning, still not believing it. Now he was biting his lip as he gawked at her openly. And he kept his hand behind his back.
       She finally stopped as she got almost to them, and stood there, staring them down. The blonde kept on coming and stopped a couple of feet in front of her and eyed her torso.
       “It is you,” he smiled, darkly. “I knew it. I been dreaming about this.”
       “Yeah, I bet you have, spanky,” she said. “But trust me. This isn’t going to have the same ending.”
       “Come on,” he said, turning on his sleazy idea of charm. “Don’t be like that. We could have some fun, baby. Some serious fun. Like you never had.”
       “Wow, really?” she said flatly, her words dripping with about eight gallons of sarcasm. “Gosh, I’m a lucky girl.”
       “You could be,” he said, managing to get his eyes up to her face, finally.
       She turned her eyes upward for a moment, as if to think about it.
       “I’ll tell you what,” she said, her voice suddenly going sultry and a little smile raising her lips. “I’ll make a you deal.”
       “Ooh, I’m all ears, baby.”
       She smiled more, and it was a sexy smile, and she gave him a look that could bring most men under the age of eighty to a sweat.
       “I’ll let you touch me,” she whispered seductively. “Once.”
       He actually swallowed, and pressed his lips together, letting his eyes drop down along the length of her again. He looked like he might actually moan in response to the thought.
       After letting that thought sink in, and looking like she enjoyed the pause, she said. “But…”
       She took a fearless step forward, right up to him, and looked into his eyes.
       “…I am going to have to melt your hand off after.”
       His face started to change, and he looked back in her eyes as some of his excitement started to drain. What he saw there was a look that told him—with a sudden chill—that she was serious.
       “Think I’m worth it?” she asked, whispering again.
       And then her eyes lit up—just slightly, but enough to be very clear in the darkness of the alley—with a white glow.
       He took a quick step back, almost knocking over the skin guy, who was standing close behind him. She didn’t move, but just cocked her head slightly and watched him, letting her eyes glimmer.
       “Okay,” he said, apparently to his two buddies, taking a couple of deep breaths and getting very serious. “We’re out of here.”
       “Actually?” Delight said. “You’re not.”
       She raised her palm, and the whole alley lit up briefly, like someone had just taken a snapshot with the world’s biggest Nikon. The blonde guy flew back down the alley like a truck had hit him, landing twenty feet back and tumbling limply to a stop, where his body did not move.
       The skin had spun his head and upper body to follow the violent flight, seeming unable to do otherwise, and his mouth and eyes gaped wide. He turned back around quickly, bringing his now-revealed knife up.
       The knife was left spinning in the air as an even bigger truck seemed to hit him—a truck that moved at the speed of light—and he tumbled further than the blonde. But with the same result. The knife clattered to the cement and caught reflections of Delight's eyes, which now pulsed instead of glowed.
       Her pulsing eyes found the third guy.
       He was looking down the alley at his unmoving buddies, frozen with dumb shock and shaking. But he quickly turned his head back to her, and his eyes were round with terror.
       She took a step toward him.
       He grabbed the girl harshly—making her let out a yelp of fright—and yanked her in front of him, putting his hand around her neck. She started bawling loudly as he took a step back with her.
       “Back off!” he yelled at Delight, the fear and desperation in his voice betraying any authority.
       “You really think that’s going to happen?” she said, menacingly, continuing to walk slowly toward them.
       “I mean it!” he screamed. “I’ll break her fucking neck!”
       Delight shook her head and sighed. It was a cold sigh.
       She turned her luminous eyes to the crying girl.
       “Close your eyes, hon.”
       The girl eyes stayed open—painfully open—and she looked confused as well as terrified.
       Delight simply nodded to her, calmly.
       The girl squeezed her eyes shut, maybe as much to try and wish the whole thing away as to follow orders.
       Jerky with indecision and incomprehension, the guy looked at the girl, then back at Delight.
       “What—?”
       He screamed and stumbled back as his vision went primal white, and burned like nothing he’d ever known before. He pressed his hands over them as his screaming continued, and the world went black, with ghost spots of personal starlight.
       He lost his feet and went down, still howling, and Delight walked quickly over and grabbed his shirt and yanked him back up. She threw him bodily into the nearby wall, and his head and shoulder cracked against it. Before he could process that pain, her fist was wrapped around his shirt again. With a merciless snarl she pulled back with her free arm as if to throw a punch, but her fist passed his face and her elbow connected, instead, with his nose. It burst into blood that looked black in the low light. She did it again, and his nose broke this time. He was about to collapse, but she grabbed his collar with both hands before he could and drove her knee, with all her strength, into his groin. He lost all his breath and saw a new galaxy of stars, and maybe his shock alone was the thing that somehow kept him from vomiting.
       He went limp and his body tried to find the ground again, but she held him up there against the graffiti-laden wall with surprisingly strong arms as he weakly coughed.
       “When you’re able to see again?” she whispered harshly into his ear, clamping her hand around his throat the way he’d done with the girl. “Start looking over your shoulder for me, bitch.”
       She pulled her arm back again, but did use her fist this time, and her ferocious punch sent one of his teeth flying. This time she let him fall, and he crumpled into a pile of trash on the cold cement, where he stayed. And probably would for a long time.
       She looked down at her work with deep breaths of satisfaction and rubbed her knuckles. But small whimpers made her remember there was still someone else in the alley besides her.
       She turned her head and found the girl squatting with her back to the same wall, and her arms wrapped around her knees. She was trembling with breathy sobs.
       Delight looked at her and, for a moment, was kind of conflicted on how she was supposed to feel. Here was a girl who’d been traumatized, and was afraid, and needed comfort and help. But there was also the part of Jennifer that hated girls like this one—the pampered, soft rich girls whose lives were one big party and got everything they wanted handed to them from birth. The little L.A. heiresses. The ones who knew nothing of loss except when they overspent and their daddies took their charge cards away for a month. That idea of one of them actually finding out what the world outside Rodeo Drive was like should have given her a justifiable sense of cruel pleasure.
       But somehow the tears were keeping her from taking that pleasure.
       Not quite sure what else to say, she looked down at the girl and went with, “You all right?”
       The girl sniffed hard and nodded.
       Back to not knowing what to say, Delight said nothing for a moment. “You want the cops?” she asked, finally. “I can’t be here when they show up, but, you want ‘em?”
       This time the girl shook hear head, not able to take her eyes off the fallen guy by Delight’s bare feet. “I just want go home,” she said in a small voice, wiping her tears with the back of one hand.
       Delight nodded. “You got a ride?” she asked, quietly.
       The girl nodded again. “My friends are back at the Roxy.”
       You come in a limo or daddy’s Mercedes?, Delight wondered, bitterly.
       But she stepped carefully over to the girl and offered her hand. “Go find them,” she said, and not unkindly. “And go home.”
       The girl looked at her hand and seemed to come back to reality. She took it, and Delight helped her to her feet.
       “And stay off Sunset until you’re old enough to know better,” Delight warned her. “Assholes like these are the rule, not the exception. Don’t go thinking you’re—”
       The girl suddenly leapt forward and threw her arms around Delight, and clung to her desperately, weeping and shaking.
       “Thank you,” she blubbered in a cracking voice. “Thank you so much. Thank you so much.”
       Delight held her arms up, not knowing what to do with them, or how to react. She was shocked into immobility by two things. First, her personal space had been violated, and one thing at the core of the girl named Jennifer was that she did not like to be touched, not by anyone she didn’t clearly decide she wanted to be touched by first. Her body wanted to react to this instinct, to quickly reel back and create a safe bubble around it again.
       But the other thing was perhaps more jarring and even more shocking, something she really didn’t have any frame of reference to process.
       Someone actually thanking her for something.
       The girl kept crying, and slowly, against what her muscles wanted, Jennifer let her arms find their way around the girl. She held her and let the moment, alien to her, just happen.
       “You’re okay,” she whispered to the girl, the only words that seemed right, lame but having to do in a pinch. She even managed to get her hand up and rub the back of the girl’s head. “You’re all right. It’s over, okay?”
       Silence fell between them for a few seconds, and Jennifer just let her cry. And actually managed to feel for her, and feel that she deserved the tears. Actually feel sympathy instead of resentment for her.
       Finally, the girl let go and stepped back, sniffing wetly and wiping her face with her hands. Something about the way she did it made her look even younger to Jen. They stared at each other there in the low light, two girls from L.A., yet from completely different worlds.
       “Thank you,” the girl whispered once more, with something that seemed like a smile but couldn’t quite turn into one. She took three steps back, looking at Jennifer with a respect and naked gratitude that melted Jen’s heart even more, and made her feel…she didn’t know what she felt, to tell the truth.
       With a final look, the girl turned and ran back toward the alley opening. Jennifer watched her go, saying nothing, and the girl quickly reached the sidewalk, sprinted right, and vanished.

       Shane, with his back, now, to the building that flanked the alley, let the girl run off without letting her see him—for many reasons, but mainly thinking the last thing she needed right now was to be surprised by some guy she didn’t know. He didn’t want her back alone on the streets, even if it was to flee them, but he was too stunned and touched by the moment to do anything about it.
       He slipped into the alley, carrying Jennifer’s dress and shoes, and walked toward her. There was a strange and contemplative aura around her. Figuring he knew where it came from, he felt it was a good thing.
       He walked up to her, and she looked from the alley opening—as though the girl was still there—to him. And she slowly started to smile. Which made him smile back at her, warmly.
       Without having to say that doing so quickly was probably a smart idea, he handed her her dress to put on. She took it silently, still smiling, and quickly started pulling it on. He helped her, straightening spots she’d missed, and stepped behind her to zip her up. She looked back at him over her shoulder, with a light in her eyes that had nothing to do with her powers. And still the smile. He didn’t think she’d be able to stop smiling now if someone put a gun to her head and ordered her to. His look back at her seemed to make her blush. He handed over her shoes, and watched her slip them on.
       She put her arms around him, with a shy but happy uncertainty on her face as she looked into his eyes.
       “Did I do good?” she asked.
       He folded his arms around her and grinned. Sure, for a moment he was thinking of mentioning she could have handled things with a lot less kind-of-scary violence, but he couldn’t think of three guys who deserved every bit of it more. And with her letting the girl go there were no charges to be pressed, so that ruled out the police, and all the unconscious idiots clearly belonged in jail. But he couldn’t imagine saying anything to spoil what she was feeling.
       “You did good,” he answered. “Really good.”
       She hugged him, and he felt he could actually feel the happiness in her radiating right through her skin. He held her and was proud of her and felt so happy, himself, for her happiness, and where it had come from. She had just found out there was something inside her that he’d always known (known or hoped, did it matter?) was there, and sharing that revelation with her made him start to fall in love with her a little more.
       Maybe more than a little.

Mt. Lee
Los Angeles, California
December 23/24, 1996
3:46 A.M.

       Windjammer and Delight—wearing the costumes they were both quite famous for, though the noticeable difference from those photos and video was that his mask was off at the moment—sat together, leaning on each other, atop a forty-five foot letter “O”.
       They watched the stars, and the twinkling lights of Los Angeles splayed out below the famous sign (a sign that was a couple of shades whiter thanks to its new paint job of a year before), in peaceful and comfortable silence. Shane had chosen the first “O” because it was set furthest forward of the nine letters, maximizing their view, and he only concerned himself mildly with the thought that someone in one of the few houses that dotted to mountainside below might look up and see them. It was unlikely in the dark anyway, but so what if they did? He felt strangely above such concerns, caught up in the freedom that being with Jennifer made him feel.
       Her head was against his arm, and when she spoke, it came out as almost a sigh.
       “You know this is probably the most perfect night of my life?”
       He smiled and put his arm around her shoulders, leaning down and kissing her temple.
       “I’m glad I’m here for it,” he said.
       She reached up and intertwined her fingers with his, and he squeezed them gently.
       After a few moments, she said “So that’s what it feels like to be you, huh?”
       He grinned, having been wondering if her mind was still on the events in the alley. “Sometimes, yeah,” he answered. “On the good days.”
       “It must be nice,” she said, thoughtfully.
       “Yeah,” he agreed, also thoughtful. “It can be. Not everybody says thanks. Sometimes they’re too freaked out to. You don’t do it for the thanks, but it’s nice to get one every once in a while. Makes you feel good. Like you’re doing something right, even though half the time you think you’re just totally screwing up.”
       “I’m sure you don’t screw up a lot.”
       He laughed. “I’m gonna let you think that. You go right on doing it.”
       She laughed, too, and looked up at him. They searched each other’s eyes for a moment before beginning a prolonged, warm kiss that felt suddenly as natural to him as riding the winds.
       He touched her forehead with his, closing his eyes, and softly ran his fingers through her hair. Her hands found his free one and held it.
       When she leaned her head back, she was smiling again.
       “I liked meeting your friends,” she said.
       He grunted a small laugh at the memory. “Yeah, I could tell. Either that or you just liked watching me squirm.”
       “That, too,” she giggled, rubbing his hand. “They seemed nice.”
       “Yeah, they’re pretty cool. Not all the rich kids I knew were. But those two were all right.”
       “I like how they treated us like a couple,” she said, with a different kind of smile.
       He managed to hold his smile, but still felt a minor twist in his heart.
       “They were even trying to get us on a double date,” she added.
       “Hey, we can always ditch Dick Clark if you want to hang with them New Year’s,” Shane offered. “I’m okay with that if you’d rather do the party.”
       “No,” she said, laughing. “I didn’t like them that much.” He laughed with her. “But thank you for asking. You’re sweet.” She leaned up and kissed him again.
       She sighed and hugged his arm and put her head back against it and took in the view. Even at this hour, far down below there were still people running around, living it up, making the most of the holiday season. But up here, where they were, all was silent but for the occasional wind rustling the brush and tiny, ghost-like car alarms periodically calling out from what sounded about a million miles away.
       “I like how they saw me,” she went on.
       “How did they see you?” he asked, curious as to how she thought they were supposed to have seen her.
       “You know, like I was one of you, part of the world you all come from. Like I was just some girl you met at a party or a dinner or at school or something. They didn’t judge me. They just accepted me, because I was with you.”
       “Maybe they accepted you because they liked you,” he offered, kissing the top of her head.
       “Or maybe,” she said, snuggling closer, “they accepted me because they assumed I was your girlfriend.”
       The twist in his heart tightened several quick notches.
       “I like how they thought that. I like how them thinking that made me feel. It felt right. Like they could just tell that you and I were—”
       “Jennifer?” he interrupted.
       Maybe it was him using her real name, maybe it was something in the sound of his voice, but she straightened up and studied his face. His eyes were turned down, not looking at hers.
       “There’s something,” he said, with obvious difficulty, and his eyes finally came up to meet hers, “that we need to talk about.”
       Her face sank dramatically, and the little emotional glow that had been radiating from her most of the night seemed to vanish.
       “Come on, don’t,” she said, her words a tired plea.
       “Don’t what?” he asked, still trying to stoke up his courage.
       “Don’t ruin it. We’re having such a good day. A perfect day. Don’t go spoil it.”
       The fear in her voice hurt him, but he seemed unable to stop himself. Somehow after several days of fighting it, he’d suddenly decided to step right up to the edge, and gravity was trying to pull him over. And he was tired of teetering.
       “We said no more secrets, right?” he asked, feeling a heat inside that was about to make him start sweating.
       “Yeah,” she said, with something that sounded like panicked annoyance. “But not if it’s something that’s going to give you that look. I don’t want to—”
       “There’s someone else,” he blurted out.
       And there it was. He’d said it. It was terrifying and a huge relief at the same time. It had been eating away at him and choking him since the moment he’d called her on the phone. Now that it was out, part of him was already scolding himself for being so stupid and messing with something that was going so well, and couldn’t believe that he’d actually just done that. But he’d done it. He’d just been unable to help himself.
       She closed her eyes and lowered her head, and he sat there, feeling suspended in time, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but watch her and wait and dread the consequences.
       It was a few moments before she raised her eyes to him. He tried to read what was in them.
       “I know,” she said, quietly.
       “You know?” he asked back, and felt a quick stab of paranoia in his chest. Those were not the words he’d been expecting. How could she know? He started getting disturbing, rapid flashes of images, images of her flying around Phoenix, following him and Renee around, of her sitting a few rows behind them in a movie theater in sunglasses and a trenchcoat, of her sitting across from his complex watching through the window as they watched Friends on his couch.
       “It’s the only thing that made any sense,” she said. “Why you’d be holding back, why you won’t do more than kiss me. At first I thought it was just your whole Windjammer good guy/bad girl thing freaking you out, but flying around with me at night doesn’t scare you. Touching me does.”
       He didn’t quite know what to say yet, so he looked past her, at the stars, and said nothing.
       “I know you,” she continued. “I know you’ve got the whole boy scout thing going, which also means you let guilt control you. You also don’t hide guilt very well. I’ve been feeling it, mostly when we’re alone together. When you put up those walls between us and don’t let me all the way in.”
       He wasn’t sure if her words pained him more or the way she said them so flatly, without emotion. Like so many other people had hurt her before that she was just used to it, and he was the latest one in a very long line. He’d never meant to be in that line.
       “And I’ve tried not to push you. Tried to be patient. Because I knew. And I knew sooner or later you’d have to tell me. I just…didn’t want it to be tonight.”
       He got the courage up to turn his gaze back to her. “I wanted to tell you. I really did. But I didn’t know how. I just…I wish that…”
       She suddenly cut him off, taking his hand, looking into his face importantly and speaking with some urgency. “Shane. Yes, I know there’s someone else. And you know what? I don’t care. If that makes me a bitch, fine, then I’m a bitch. I don’t care. Why does she get to have you and I don’t? What, am I supposed to not feel what I feel because she was there first? What makes her so special?”
       Yeah, the happy mood was definitely gone. His chest constricted with the sheer discomfort of the moment. And he had no one but himself to blame. He’d been the one who had to go and open his mouth.
       She huffed an impatient sigh. “Look, I know you’re trying to do the right thing. Be the good guy. It’s what you do. And you know I love that about you. But come on. You think you’re the first person who was ever with someone and then met someone they knew was better for them? It happens every day. It makes you feel bad, but it doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s normal. And that’s just with regular people. We’re not like other people. You said it yourself. What we have is…God, it makes this even more stupid.”
       “It’s not that simple—”
       “It is,” she insisted, getting more desperate and a little more angry by the moment. “We are meant to be together, ‘Jammer. Can’t you see that? The way we met? How it turned into you coming out here? Even your friends showing up tonight. It’s all fate. And I don’t even know if I believe in fate, but since I met you I’m finally starting to see what people are talking about. We are so right. Can you think of any two people that are more obviously made for each other? And you want to ignore that because, what, you’ve got some other girl you’re dating and you don’t want to feel like a dog?”
       Maybe it was because he’d been away from Phoenix too long, but he was finding it hard to ignore the logic in what she was saying. And that scared him to death. As did, too, the fact that the Delight he’d first met seemed to be creeping back into her.
       “I know what you’re saying,” he said, choking out words like they were lodged in his chest. “And I’ve thought all the same things. Especially since I’ve been here. With you. But it’s…complicated. I wish it wasn’t, but…”
       “Does she know?” she demanded, suddenly.
       “Know?” he asked, shaking his head. Know about them? Oh, sure, he’d told Renee all about the girl he was planning to see in L.A. She’d been fine with it and told him to tell Delight she said hi…
       “About this,” she said, reaching down and yanking his mask up from the sign top beneath them, holding it up like an accusation. “About the real you.”
       The idea that the mask represented the “real” him scared him almost as much as this conversation did.
       “No,” he admitted, and with some involuntary shame. “No, I haven’t told her.”
       “’Jammer,” she said, shaking her head at him incredulously (but with a hint of cruel satisfaction), putting the mask back down. “She doesn’t even know who you are. About the most important and biggest part of your life. She doesn’t know what you’re going through. She doesn’t know how it scares you, how much is on your shoulders, how alone and afraid it all makes you feel. And even if she did, how could she possibly understand it?”
       He looked away from her, mostly from feeling guilty that he’d had the same thoughts.
       She reached down and took his hands in hers and gripped them tightly, bringing him back. “I do. I know who you are, Shane. I know what it feels like. To be different. To be confused and scared and wonder why all the other people your age get to worry about grades and spring break and wearing the right goddamn shoes when you’re dealing with secrets and fears that pretty much no one has ever had to deal with before people like us. We get each other. We need each other. I didn’t think I’d ever meet anyone like that, and when I did, it turned out to be you, someone so sweet and so wonderful and perfect that I—”
       She stopped and swallowed, close to tears but managing to hold them back. His heart ached like it had crawled out of his chest while he slept and spent the night down at the gym working the treadmill all on its own.
       “Don’t you feel the same way about me?” she asked, looking at him with timid hope.
       “Of course I do,” he said, squeezing her hands, amazed at how easily, and honestly, those words came out. And amazed at how much of a difference just a handful of days could make in a person’s life.
       “Then be with me,” she said, with both longing and fear. “Be my hero. Let me be yours. We can help each other. I can…help you with what you do. We’d make such a good team. When we’re scared, we can be scared together, and that’ll make it better. We can be happy. I’m so happy when you’re around me. I want to feel like that all the time. I don’t think that makes me selfish. And I don’t care if it does. I deserve it. And you do, too. We deserve each other.”
       Had he just heard wrong, or had the girl he’d once hoped to talk out of criminal activity just talked about becoming a super-hero? For him? Was this fate as well? Was he meant to come into her life to change her, as it seemed he had? And was he now holding the course of her life in his hands, and could undo it all by doing the wrong thing?
       Did he love her? He thought he did. But was it possible to really love two people at once? Did he love Renee? If he did, would he really be here, with Jennifer? Or was it guilt and a sense of responsibility that had brought him to her? Was that the same as love? How was he supposed to know?
       He had never wanted to end up in a situation like this. Never wanted to be one of those guys. When you were with someone, you were with them, and that was it. He’d always felt that way, and lived that way. But this wasn’t that easy. Maybe it was never as easy, for average people, as he liked to think it was, but this… Could he really be expected to use normal standards for what he was going through? Did they apply to him?
       And of course none of that mattered anyway, because he could hide behind that all he wanted, but in the end, someone he cared about was going to be hurt. Because of him. Because he’d let things get this far because he’d let his fears keep him from doing the right thing—whichever thing that was—from the start. It all made him sick. In his stomach, in his head, in his heart.
       She watched him closely, expectantly, as he struggled with these thoughts, not letting go of his hands, not taking her eyes off his face.
       “I wish…” he said, finally, having to stop and start again. “I wish I could give you an answer right now. I do. I wish it was that easy. But…I can’t. Not yet. I hope you can understand that. There’s too much… I just can’t.”
       He watched as her heart sank, and his did with hers. After a moment she looked away from him, and sniffed a cool breath in through her nose as she let his hands go and turned from him to face L.A. instead. She said nothing. He wanted to say something. But hadn’t he already said enough? Maybe he wasn’t the best person to trust with words right now.
       Still looking ahead, she finally spoke.
       “Can’t we just pretend?” she asked, quietly, in a voice that was disturbingly childlike and incredibly sad. “For now? While you’re here? We don’t have that much time left. And it’s Christmas Eve now. Can’t we just…make-believe that it’s just you and me in the world and there’s nobody else? Please?”
       If his heart had been cracking, then it finally broke. Just hearing her voice like that made him think of the tragic little girl that she had been, the one who came home and found her mother dead in their dirty apartment, who’d been left all alone in the world. The girl he had sworn to himself, when he’d learned all that about her, to take care of. The girl he had promised to give her first good Christmas to.
       He was such an idiot.
       He pulled her to him and pressed his lips desperately into hers, and without hesitating, she greedily kissed him back, squeezing him tightly in her arms, like she was afraid if she let go he’d just fly away without her. He felt tears from her cheeks roll onto his own.
       “I’m sorry,” he whispered, between kisses. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin tonight. I just…I’m so stupid.”
       “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered back, and her frantic kisses came with what might have been small groans or sobs through her nose. “Nothing matters. Just that you’re here with me. Just be here with me.”
       And he was, completely. He let himself love her fully, letting the rest of his cares and doubts drift away with the early morning breeze, with nothing mattering more than being her hero, to protect and hold this fragile girl that needed him. They kissed, passionately, for a long time, until the desperation melted into quiet togetherness and peaceful comfort.
       They sat together above L.A. in silence, and watched as the stars began to fade and the sun slowly began to paint the horizon.
       “We don’t have to pretend,” he said to her, quietly, holding her head against him. “There’s nobody else in the world. Not today.”
       Her arms were around his chest, and she pulled him closer, saying, without words, that today was enough. For now.
       He had done it. For better or worse, he had let the secret go. He prayed that it was for the better. Hoped that it had brought them closer, had taken down one of the last of the walls he kept between them.
       That left only one. The one he still couldn’t bring himself to tell her.
       She knew about Terrance Cross, and his offer, and the reason that Shane had been invited to L.A. But she also believed that it was her that had, in the end, made him make the choice to come. And yes, that was true. To a point. He needed her to think that, and didn’t want to take that from her.
       So he couldn’t, especially now, let her know that it was something else that had drawn him. He hadn’t told her about the dreams. About the café. That in the end, that was the real reason he was here with her now.
       But New Year’s Eve was still days away. He would deal with whatever happened then—if anything—when it came. Today, he wouldn’t think of it. He would think of nothing but the girl in his arms, and giving her the one good Christmas she deserved.

Somewhere in Los Angeles, California
December 24, 1996
5:38 A.M.

       He sat alone in complete darkness. He didn’t need to see the first rays of daylight to know that the city was waking. He could hear it. Hear it in his mind.
       He had opened his mind, the most powerful and singularly unique mind in the history of mankind, and was letting the thoughts of countless thousands of Southern Californians come to him. He was able, with concentration at quiet times like these, to sift through them. Men, women and children alike were beginning their days, starting their preparations for the holiday about to begin. There were schedules in their thoughts, agendas, financial concerns, worries and hopes and expectations.
       He sifted further, and singled out the thoughts that mattered most to him. They never took long to find. The ones laced with greed. With apathy. With violence. With dark and terrible secrets. The ones that, to him, represented the city he had now returned to. The city that had taken everything from him.
       It was always in his thoughts that his legacy should begin here. And now that day—the day when history would forever change—was only days away. He was ready for it. The preparations were underway. His followers were gathering. He had nothing to do but wait and savor the expectation of it. Years of planning and patience were about to yield their fruit.
       The knowledge that he was insane didn’t trouble him as it sometimes used to. The time for such concerns was long past, and such concerns were meant for mortals. He was a god. He was not like the insignificant humans whose paltry thoughts drifted through his mind. Their rules did not apply to the divine. He was as far above them as they were to the insects beneath their feet. He listened to their detestable, wordless voices without much disdain. Let them go about their pathetic lives, make their plans, have their fears. None of it would matter for much longer.
       In days, every one of them would be dead.
       And there was nothing, and no one, that could stop it.
       So he listened. And he waited. And he sat alone in the darkness.
       Waiting for the age of Romulus to begin.

TO BE CONTINUED