King Of Bad [Super Villian Academy Book 1] (23 page)

A shower of
cold water fell over Jeff, snapping him to his senses.

“
Oci
!”
His crooked smile broke
across his face, momentarily distracting both sides of the fray. To Jeff, she appeared
to be lit from within. A beautiful white aura pulsed around her. It looked as
though she floated.
Suspended in the deepest part of the
ocean.
He moved toward her, oblivious of the fighting around him. “Now I
get it!
You
are my depths.”

He folded his
arms around her and breathed in her sea salt scent. Reflected in her eyes were
his hopes, his love and his desire. “Why didn’t I realize it before?”

“No!” Mystic yelled.

Jeff pressed his lips to Oceanus’ and was swept into
a tide of emotion and need. He imagined himself immersed in a pool of lavender
scented water and wanted to float there forever. He moaned and deepened the
kiss. Oceanus gathered hunks of his shirt in her fists and pulled him against
her tighter.

The room was
suddenly dipped in pitch.
A darkness
so complete that
all movement ceased, all noise was swallowed. All feeling, all senses were
snuffed out. A penetrating cold ushered in a great despair. For a long moment
all was wrong and finished with the world. The world ended.
Killed
by villainy.

Then a light beyond bright burst from Jeff and Oceanus.
It
blinded and pulsed and blotted out all sunlight. Warmth flooded in with a deadly
contentment. For a long moment everything was too right and concluded within
the world. For a second time the world ended.
Completed from
goodness.

Then the world
righted. The world balanced. The world was reborn into a union of good and bad.

Their long kiss
ended. Disoriented and dizzy, Jeff blinked Oceanus into focus.

“I don’t
understand,” he said. “Are you good or bad?”

“I don’t know.”
Her gaze was unfocused and serene. “I guess I’m the complement of you.”

Frank and Sarah
walked up beside them. Sarah held her hand over her heart and placed her other
hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “Are you two okay?”

Jeff saw the
stunned look on his dad’s face and nodded at Mother.

“Jeff, we
suspected you were special at a very early age when you would pull the legs off
of spiders and then carry them around for days afterward and try to feed them.
But a couple of years ago you turned into such a delinquent, setting fires and
dodging law enforcement, and then SVA recruited you.” She shrugged. “We thought
we were wrong.”

Frank scoffed.
“Boy, were we off-base.
Should’ve stuck with our gut, Sarah.”

She looked
across the room at a forlorn Mystic. “She had us believing that she could set
you back on the right path.”

“How did she
even know about me?” Jeff asked.

“Known
Mysty
her whole life,” Sarah said. “Frank recognized her
sham when the two of you returned from your trip to Mexico. If she’d truly been
your equal, she wouldn’t have fallen prey to your charms. She’d let her guise
slip just enough.”

“But then you
disappeared the next morning,” Frank said, jumping in. “When I got back to the
school, Hans told me you’d left. I spent days trying to find you. If only I’d realized
your sister knew where you were all along.”

Sandra blushed.
“If only you and Mom had trusted me enough to fill me in, I’d have trusted you
enough to fill you in too.”

“Wait, wait!”
Jeff interrupted. “I’m confused. Dad, aren’t you a villain?”

Frank smiled
and nodded.

“Mother, you’re
a white hat?”

Sarah nodded
and patted Jeff’s shoulder.

“And you both
knew this the whole time?” Jeff looked between the two of them.

“Yes, dear,”
Sarah said.

“Why all the secrecy?”
Jeff asked.

“We didn’t know
for certain you’d turn out to be anything special or anything at all, for that
matter. Our powers may have canceled each other out and left you kids with
nothing,” Sarah said. “I was worried about Sandra.”

Jeff looked
down at Oceanus. “When did you figure out you were the one?”

“I don’t have
any idea what’s going on here,” Oceanus said. “I’ve just always had a major
thing for you.”

“What about the
‘complement’ comment?” Jeff asked.

Oceanus
laughed. “Not that I’ve kissed a lot of guys before, but none of the other
kisses have stopped the world.”

“Twice,” Sandra
and Source said simultaneously.

“I’m the one
who figured out it was
Oci
.” Source beamed. “You were
always so focused on her and it never made any sense to me. But when the shit
hit the fan and Sandra
fessed
up that we had known
where you were and that we’d seen Mystic take you, well, we all finally shared
everything we knew about you. That’s when I realized that for you, it always
came back to
Oci
. So we invited her to the party.”

“I didn’t know
why. I thought they wanted my awesome skills,” Oceanus said and grimaced.

Jeff looked
over at Mystic, still pouting. “Why isn’t someone containing or restraining
her?”

“Oh, there’s no
need for that,” Frank said.

“We’re all
balanced now,” Sarah said.

“No one is only
good or only bad.” Sandra slugged his arm. “Good job, bro.”

Jeff looked
around the room. Clusters comprised of an odd assortment of people stood around
talking. They compared powers and abilities and asked questions about good or
bad depending on what they hadn’t been before. But everybody treated each other
equally.

Jeff gathered
Oceanus into a hug. “Wow, we did this!”

“That’s pretty
amazing,” she agreed.

Frank snaked
his arm around Sarah. “I like to think we had something to do with it.”

The group
laughed.

Jeff pulled
Oceanus against him. “Now that I finally have you, I’m never going to let you
go.”

She smiled up
at him. “Wild dogs would have to drag me away from you.”

Mystic sneered
across the room at the jolly group and mumbled, “Dogs? Dogs I got.”

Kai Strand writes fiction for kids and teens.
Her debut novel,
The Weaver
, was a finalist in the 2012 EPIC eBook
Awards. As a mother of four young adults, her characters are well researched
and new stories are inspired daily. Kai is a compulsive walker, addicted to
pizza, and a Mozart fan-girl. Visit her website for more information about her
work and to find all her virtual haunts; www.kaistrand.com.

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