The Legends of Forever by Barry Lyga (free children's ebooks online .TXT) 📗

Ambush Bug had just teleported to a spot one block east of here. Joe, Wild Dog, Dig, and Black Canary had previously spread out through the city, waiting for a ping from the Bug’s teleport tech. Joe was the lucky/unlucky one to be closest. Where closest was defined as a five-block run.

“Hurry!” Felicity shouted. Joe growled under what was left of his breath and resisted the urge to claw the bud out of his ear and hurl it into a nearby sewer.

Dancing between pedestrians, who glared at him with all the outrage and ire that were hallmarks of the world-famous Star City “charm,” Joe stepped off the curb, bolted between two cars—to horn blares of annoyance and curses shouted from driver’s-side windows—and charged across the street.

“He’s gone,” Felicity said. “Ping shows him near the stadium. Anyone nearby?”

Joe pulled up on the sidewalk outside a bodega. “Hold on. Don’t panic yet.”

A woman came running out of the bodega, shrieking. Joe caught a glimpse of fur, then spun to watch her. A cluster of animals—three of them, he counted—snarled and snapped around her shoulders. The woman stopped just short of running into traffic, howling at the top of her lungs as the critters capered on her.

They were minks, Joe realized. Still catching his breath, he loped over to the woman and knocked one off. The little fur ball hissed as it dropped to the sidewalk, then skittered away down the street.

Managing to sustain only a couple of scratches and scrapes in the process, Joe wrestled the other two minks from the woman’s shoulders. They came loose reluctantly, ripping out ribbons of her shirt, but Joe freed her, tossing the nasty little creatures off to one side, where they scrambled away toward a pile of trash bags.

“Are you OK?” Joe asked. Without waiting for an answer, he moved on to the question he really cared about: “Was it Ambush Bug? Did he do this to you?”

“I was just in there to buy a soda,” she said, gasping, eyes wide. “I heard a pop! sound behind me . . . He . . . he was in green . . . I was wearing my coat with the fur collar . . . It’s fake fur.” She repeated it, grabbing Joe’s lapels. “I don’t get it. He said, Fur is murder! And then . . . And then he said, Fur? Murder? I guess that’s furder! I made up a word! I’m a writer, too, Lyga! And then he stuck out his tongue, ripped off my coat, and dropped those . . . things on me.”

“Let me guess,” Joe said. “Then he just popped away into thin air.”

“Joe,” Felicity said in his ear, “he’s already gone from the stadium. Wild Dog couldn’t get there in time.”

“There’s crazy traffic on Smith Boulevard!” Wild Dog complained. “Ain’t my fault!”

“Hang on,” Joe said. He guided the woman to a nearby bench and helped her sit down. No doubt the Star City cops would be by to take her statement. In the meantime . . .

He slipped into the bodega, opening the door as narrowly as possible and closing it immediately behind him. There were no customers, just an employee at the register. Four rows of snacks, chips, and sundry household goods lay before Joe, ending at a wall of coolers resplendent with a rainbow of soda and juice bottles.

The guy behind the counter wore a plaid flannel shirt, a black cap, and a suspicious expression that relaxed when Joe flashed his police badge. It was the wrong city, sure, but no one ever looked closely.

“Ambush Bug was just here?” he asked.

“Yeah, but he’s gone,” the guy at the register said.

Joe twisted the lock on the front door. “Got any open windows or back doors?”

The man frowned with his eyebrows. “Nothing open. Why?”

Joe shook his head and waved his hand for silence. The bodega was quiet, the only sound the slight hum of street noise from outside.

“Joe, what are you doing?” Felicity asked. He pulled the comms bud out of his ear. He needed nothing obstructing his hearing.

Ambush Bug was gone, yes, but he’d teleported inside a building. There was a chance that the bee he’d used as his teleport target was still in the bodega. If Joe could find it and catch it . . .

A sound caught his attention. Jerking to his left, he spied a black shape cutting the air against a backdrop of yellow laundry detergent boxes. Flailing by reflex, he missed it entirely.

“Are you on something?” the guy behind the counter asked. He didn’t sound overly concerned at the prospect, more amused than anything.

“Quiet!” Joe ordered. Arms held out at an angle, he turned a slow circle, ears pricked up, attendant for the telltale buzz . . .

When Iris and Barry were kids, Joe used to astonish them by catching flies out on the back porch on hot summer nights. Barry had been fascinated by bugs—budding scientist, even in single digits—and Iris had been afraid of anything that crept, crawled, slithered, or flew. So Joe took the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: Snagging a fly out of the air let him examine it with Barry, and seeing it pick careful steps across his fingers without harm demystified the insect for Iris.

It had been a while, but he figured it was like riding a bike—you never really forgot how.

A sound to his right. Joe snapped out his hand. Clenched a fist. Came up with nothing.

“Dude, is this, like, performance art?” the guy at the register asked.

Joe hissed another order to be quiet while still turning in a slow circle. He could hear the muted buzz of the robot bee’s wings as they thrashed the air.

“Because if it is,” the guy went on, “it sorta sucks.”

“Man,” Joe said, exasperated, “what part of be quiet do you not understand?” To emphasize his point, he threw back the tail of his jacket to reveal his holstered weapon.

“Sure thing, Grampa—” the guy started to say, then jumped back in terror as Joe rushed at the counter.

The bee had landed on the edge of