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  Turncoat

  Anti-Heroes Will Continue...

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  TURNCOAT

  ANTI-HEROES | Book One

  Megan Derr

  Dixie is a man adrift, picking away at the evildoings of the Grand Order of Defenders and the DeVine Corporation wherever he's able. But none of it is what he really wants, and what he wants is out of reach.

  Then a notorious thief crosses his path, a man with abilities that might make all the difference. With his help, Dixie can at long last return to face the people that destroyed his whole world and return that destruction tenfold.

  BOOK DETAILS

  Turncoat

  Anti-Heroes 2

  By Megan Derr

  Published by Megan Derr

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Samantha M. Derr

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition March 2016

  Copyright © 2016 by Megan Derr

  Printed in the United States of America

  TURNCOAT

  Dixie scrubbed the towel over his close-shaved hair and wiped water from his face, then let the towel fall to drape over his shoulders as he left the bathroom in a billow of steam. Black boxer briefs clung to his still damp skin as he padded down the hallway following the chirping of his phone.

  He read the text from Matt saying that he and Karl had reached their safehouse without incident. Good. Tell your man to keep you in bed and out of trouble. Matt replied with a smirky emote, and Dixie tossed the phone back on his sofa, smiling faintly.

  The house was quiet—too quiet, even after all these years of being alone. He'd never not be used to the sounds of his mama. The way her TV always had to be on even though she barely paid it any mind while she played whist with all her online buddies, cackling maniacally every now and again. Or the radio while she cooked or cleaned, the sounds of her phone and her laptop, the damned yippie dogs she'd liked to keep underfoot.

  Dixie had always been more of a cat person, but he wasn't dumb enough to try and keep a pet when one, most of his enemies wouldn't hesitate to kill the poor thing just to hurt him; and two, he was probably gonna have to torch everything and run one day. The only person the Grand Order of Defenders wanted more than Dixie was the super hero killer nobody knew anything about, past his dumbass codename: Scones.

  Well, they wanted Byron pretty damned badly, too, but even the G.O.D. knew that was a lost cause.

  In the kitchen, he pulled a longneck out of the fridge and twisted off the cap, took a long swallow before he set the beer on the counter-slash-bar that divided the kitchen from the living room. He stared inside the fridge, considered the options there, then closed it with a sigh and leaned against it a moment before heaving away from it to poke through the cabinets instead.

  Fuck it, maybe he should call for pizza. At the rate he was going, dinner was going to be beer and microwave popcorn. He didn't have the energy for shit all else, and he wasn't much feeling the only options in the house: pasta or rice.

  He crossed the kitchen to the laundry area and dropped his towel in the washer, swung back to grab his beer, then dropped onto his leather sofa and picked up the large tablet lying on the coffee table. It shimmered, chirped softly as it read his fingerprints and scanned his retina, and finally displayed a small box with a vibrating blue line running across the center. "Fox in the henhouse," Dixie said, dropping his soft drawl and reciting the phrase in a perfect, mid-East American accent.

  The tablet chimed and unlocked, displaying a boring wallpaper of a dark blue lake surrounded by evergreens, with a sleepy little cabin and dock far to the left, a tiny rowboat to the right, the only signs of its occupant the feet hanging over the edge and a dangling fishing pole.

  Dixie had always wanted to be that relaxed, so comfortable in his skin and the world that he dozed off fishing in the middle of a lake in fuck nowhere, USA. "Pizza, usual order." The tablet chimed again and immediately the tablet sprang to life, pulling up the pizza website, logging in, loading his usual order, and sending it off.

  He set the tablet aside and finished his beer, deliberated the wisdom of a second.

  Then decided he deserved something after all the damned craziness and terror of the last few months. Even for being one of the most wanted men in the world, that had been a little too adventurous. Though they'd done woken themselves a real super villain. Sure as hell wasn't anything else to call Karl, now alias Countdown. Not much scared Dixie, but he was damned glad that man was on their side.

  Hauling to his feet, he fetched a second beer and finally sat at the bar to go through all the damned mail. He didn't even want to think about all the work that would hit him the moment he opened the garage again. Maintaining it was a hassle, especially as he was gone so often, but he needed it to help maintain his current cover.

  He threw out all the junk, retained the bills, and returned to his couch and beer. He'd just turned on the TV to find something to watch when the pizza showed, and for an hour, Dixie was able to pretend he was really and truly ordinary: a mechanic coming back from a long business trip, who wanted to unwind and sleep hard for several hours.

  But good things and dreams never lasted, and this time they were interrupted by a loud bang, followed by a muffled cry of pain. Coming from his backyard. Hopefully it was just a couple of stupid kids, but Dixie hadn't lived this long by believing in things like luck and coincidence and hopefully. Heading for the back door, he unlocked it, grabbed the slugger he kept next to it, and stepped out into the chilly night.

  Maybe he should have gotten dressed first. Too late now.

  Another pained cry filtered across the backyard, coming from a little pile of shadow by the back gate, which gaped open and clacked as it struck the fence over and over. What in the hell? Still holding tight to the bat, Dixie knelt and found his way through layers of… damned interesting material for a man to be wearing. But beneath it all he found a steady pulse. Drawing back, he gingerly examined the rest of the figure—a man, to judge by the flat chest, though that didn't mean much necessarily—and came across blood when he touched the side of the man's head.

  More and more interesting. Didn't seem to be any other wounds, though, so he set the bat aside and dragged the man fully into the yard, then closed and locked the gate… which had been locked from the inside and wasn't easy to reach even by leaning over the top. Either the man had a really long reach, or he'd unlocked it after climbing over, which made no damn sense. To let someone else through? Dixie looked around, listened carefully, but the man on the ground seemed to be the only one about.

  Dixie retrieved his bat and hefted the little man up in his arms. Poor thing didn't feel like he'd weigh more than ninety pounds soaking wet.

  Back inside, Dixie laid him out on the kitchen floor, closed and locked the door, then pulled out the first aid kit kept on a shelf over the washer and dryer. Some warm water and a soft cloth helped him clean the head wound, which turned out to be a small scratch that bled dramatically but didn't amount to much in the end. Dixie treated it to prevent infection, then put everything away and cleaned up, using peroxide to get rid of any sign of whose blood in particular had been in his kitchen.

  Scooping up his house guest, still dead to the world, Dixie carried him down the hall to his bedroom and laid him out on the bed. He stripped the man's clothes off, frowning all over again as he exam
ined the soft, pliant fabric lined with wires as fine as hair. It was specially made stuff that could work with the unique abilities of most supers. The material couldn't do everything—Matt's suit was unique to him, modified with nanotech to keep up with his ability to go invisible—but the list of stuff it couldn't handle was short.

  Setting it aside on a chair in the corner, Dixie finally gave his guest a good look. If he had to guess, he'd wager the man was half-Latino, half-Asian, but more specific than that—hell if he knew. He had short hair, but getting on toward long like it needed a cut. A long white scar cut down the side of his throat and across the collarbone. That must have hurt like the fires of hell. More scars—burns, cuts, what looked ominously like shrapnel damage—peppered the rest of him. Whoever the man was, he wasn't very good at staying out of trouble. Or ducking.

  He looked even smaller sprawled out on Dixie's massive bed. Maybe a touch over five feet, and Dixie still wouldn't bet much money on him being over a hundred pounds. If he was, it sure wasn't by much. There was a silver hoop in his left nipple. Man was pretty as hell…and looking was turning into gawking so that was enough of that.

  Dimming the bedroom lights, Dixie went to throw out the remains of dinner and double check the house was locked up.

  He stepped into the living room as someone knocked on the door. "Aw, hell." Scrubbing his face, rubbing his eyes so they'd look a bit more on the tired side, he trudged to the door and pulled it open, yawning as he did so. Switching his accent to Middle America, he asked, "Why in the world are a couple of dudes knocking on my door at asscrack o'clock?"

  There were two of them, pale as bone and starched stiffer than their black suits. They wore sunglasses, adding to the douche factor, but Dixie knew G.O.D. snoop glasses when he saw them. Well, they could snoop all they wanted. They wouldn't learn anything about him he didn't want people to know.

  The bigger one, built all brick shithouse like Dixie, said, "Apologies, sir. We're looking for a fugitive—"

  "I don't see a badge," Dixie interrupted.

  Their mouths pinched practically in unison as they pulled out badges that marked them as part of the G.O.D. Peace Force. "We're looking for a fugitive and we're afraid he might have snuck into one of the homes on this street. Have you heard any strange noises tonight? Noticed anything knocked over or moved that you know you didn't move yourself? Anything like that?"

  Dixie shook his head. "Nope. It's just been me, pizza, and bad TV."

  "Would you mind if we looked around?"

  "Not if you come back with a warrant," Dixie replied flatly. "I'm sure you've noticed the garage next to my house. I'm a mechanic, and I was headed to bed. Day always starts too early around here, and I'm late going to bed as it is. I'm not letting a bunch of cops keep me up till dawn unless you've got a warrant that says I have to. With respect, agents."

  The men nodded, but he knew pissed off law enforcement when he saw it. "Thank you for your time."

  "Good luck with your hunt," Dixie said and waited there as they walked away.

  Once they were gone, Dixie whirled around and finally went to put on some damned clothes.

  'Cause he sure as hell wasn't going to get any sleep. If he knew the G.O.D., which he did better than most, they'd be back to do a little breaking and entering. In his room, he looked at his guest, still asleep but muttering now and shifting restlessly. Who the hell was he? A super, but who? Dixie snorted. Supers usually didn't come in pintsize, but he supposed all rules had exceptions.

  Turning away, he pulled on jeans, a black tanktop, a long-sleeved, dark red t-shirt, and a black hoodie. Socks, boots, and then he threw a bunch of shit in a get the fuck out of there bag, including the tablet he'd left on the couch. He sent off a quick text and shoved his phone in his pocket. He retrieved his bat, killed all the lights, and waited.

  He was starting to get bored when he heard the soft crackle-shatter of somebody trying to quietly break glass. Honestly. Five hundred pieces of technology that could have done the job soundlessly and they went old school. Sloppy, but that was the Peace in a nutshell.

  The noise was coming from the garage. So their plan was to break into the office and from there sneak into his house. Not bad as plans went, but not great either. Made his life easier, though.

  Dixie slithered up beside the door that connected his house to his business and hefted the bat.

  The son of a bitch had barely taken a step inside when Dixie slammed the bat into his gut. He grabbed the man's hair, slammed his knee up into the asshole's face, then threw him unconscious to the floor. By then the second one had joined the party. Dixie swung the bat straight into his ribs, damn near heard them break.

  He knocked that one out as firmly as he had the first one.

  Leaving them there, he grabbed up his bag and hauled it to the bedroom to fetch—

  Nothing. The bed was empty. Son of a bitch. No way the wily little runt had gotten by Dixie while he was at the front of the house. He couldn't have snuck through a window; none of them could be opened. And he hadn't broken any of them, not that Dixie saw.

  A super was being hunted by the G.O.D. in the dead of night in the small city Dixie called home. Someone who hadn't needed to break a window or use a door to escape. Someone who had likely come through his back gate and then tried to open it to make it look like he'd gotten through the usual way instead of the highly unusual way he had actually done it. That sure as hell narrowed down the possibilities. Son of a bitch.

  Heading back to the front of the house, Dixie dragged the goons out to the front yard. He pulled out his phone and wirelessly activated the house sprinkler system. The pungent odor of accelerant—his own design, with some input from Matt—stung his nostrils.

  Digging in his escape bag, he pulled out a lighter and a weighted starter. Lighting it, he threw it into the house.

  Once it was well and truly burning, he pulled up his hood and got the hell out of there.

  He walked several blocks southeast, zigzagging and meandering, confusing his path, until he reached a shitty, rundown street full of mangy dogs and people who had nowhere better to be. A sleek, black Mercedes-Benz sat at the nearest corner of an empty intersection.

  Dixie ducked to look in the passenger window. The man behind the wheel was beautiful enough more than a few people had believed he must have super powers related to glamour, but he'd always insisted he had no powers at all, and Dixie had never seen evidence to the contrary. His hair tumbled around his face in a loose, lazy mop of dark mahogany curls, framing his moon-pale skin and eyes as green as new spring. A dark faerie, Dixie had always called him, and Byron had always laughed. Byron was as ordinary as the day was long, but he'd be the first to say ordinary people were the most dangerous thing around. "Howdy. Thanks for coming to get me."

  "You two could have coordinated," Byron grumbled. "Getting two different messages that don't seem aware of each other is seriously confusing."

  Dixie's smile fell. "We two?" He turned his head, could barely see the little scrap of nothing sitting in the backseat. "Aw, hell. I shoulda guessed this is where you ran off." He climbed in the passenger seat, scowling at the passing buildings as Byron pulled into traffic. "I just got home, damn it. And now I'm out of a house, out of a business, out of everything because the most incompetent 'super' villain in history collapsed in my yard. Somebody owes me a damned drink."

  "Screw you," the man in the backseat said. "I'm not the worst super villain in history."

  Dixie snorted, folded his arms across his chest as they drove, ignoring the stares of the other two—hurt from the man in the back, disapproval from the driver. They could stuff it. They weren't the ones who'd wound up homeless. Again.

  Sighing, he settled more comfortably in his seat. "When we get to your place, Byron, I want to know what the hell is going on with pintsize back there. I had to torch my whole damn house and garage because G.O.D. came a-knocking for him, and then they came a-breaking-and-entering."

  "I'll take care of it
," Byron said. "I'm sorry about your home."

  "I'm sorry, too," the man in the back said. "I was trying to get somewhere I wouldn't drag anyone else into my mess. I didn't mean to get your house burned down."

  "Shit happens, and the only one to really blame is those stupid Dogs," Dixie said. "But next time, maybe fall over somewhere else, pintsize."

  "My name isn't pintsize."

  "I don't give a rat's ass what your name is right now," Dixie replied, though he knew the man's alias well enough: Whisker, cat burglar extraordinaire. Where 'extraordinaire' meant 'clumsy, awkward, and prone to almost getting caught every single damned time'. Sometimes Dixie thought they never arrested him because they felt that damned sorry for him. "I'm getting some sleep. I'll deal with this mess when I wake up."

  So saying, he closed his eyes and immediately fell asleep.

  Abrupt silence woke him up a little later—just over an hour, as that was about how long it took to get to Byron's place in normal traffic. Dixie blinked, looked around. "We good?"

  "Yeah, home safe and sound," Byron said. "Come on, I'd just finished making dinner when our mutual friend here called me. A little while later I got your text. I can't wait to hear this story. I'm honestly surprised this is the first time you two are meeting."

  "Why would I have cause to meet a cat burglar who's got more in common with a bull in a china shop?"

  "At least I'm not spaghetti western meets boys in the hood," the man muttered.

  Dixie gave him a look. "Watch it, pintsize."

  "I'm just saying, you look like you bench press Buicks and sound like you're headed for the rodeo."

  "Shut up," Dixie said, but the curt tone he was trying for was ruined by the smile twitching at his mouth.

  The man gave a small smile back, eyes dropping as he pushed back a stray lock of hair. "Thanks for saving me, by the way. I really am sorry about your house and everything. I didn't—"

  "Ain't a thing, darling. I've lost much worse than houses, and houses can be replaced. Don't worry your pintsized head about it." Dixie winked and turned away to head for the elevators and up to Byron's apartment.