Free Love for the Cold-Blooded by Alex Gabriel Page A

croak.
    Everybody and their grandmother knew that Silver Paladin was built. It wasn’t a secret, seeing as the man’s quantum armor fit like a second skin. So yeah, Pat had known that before; he’d just never particularly cared. But now… well.
    By the time Pat managed to tear his attention away from the square below, where Silver Paladin was rounding up the gathering thrill-seekers, reporters and other idiots and herding them to safety, Ariadne had unraveled an expanding coil of red string. It hovered around her in readiness as she circled for position, sandaled feet treading lightly over the steep roof.
    “Doctor Destiny.” Ariadne’s voice rang with the natural resonance and authority of a born orator. “I should have known it would be you. Give up your wickedness and surrender, foul villain, or prepare to suffer my wrath.”
    “Your wrath?” Doctor Destiny’s grin had grown wicked and sly, eyes narrowing to slits of cyan malice as crackling energy gathered around her raised hands. “As though you could stand against me, you laughable excuse for a —”
    A net of yarn rose up around Doc, as quick as thought. Pat hadn’t even caught on to what was happening when a blinding flare of energy flashed outward from the yarn-obscured form. The force of the blast caught Pat unprepared and dislodged him from his tenuous position. He rolled across the roof in panicked slow motion, scrabbling for purchase on tiles that loosened beneath his desperate grasp. What the fuck, they were supposed to rescue him first!
    “Poor little orphan girl!” Doctor Destiny was booming, “Cast out by your own father! Never good enough —”
    “Look who’s talking!” Pat had never heard the dignified, collected Ariadne’s tone turn so venomous before. “What is this but a pathetic, misguided cry for attention?”
    Under different circumstances, Pat might have been intrigued by how quickly Doc and Ariadne had escalated to personal low blows, but right now he was a little busy trying not to fall off a roof. He’d stopped sliding at the last moment and was perched precariously on the tiny ledge just before the gutter, crouched on his hands and knees. If he raised his gaze from where his fingers were curled white-knuckled into the bronze rainpipe — which he was trying very, very hard not to do — he could look straight down on the stairs leading up to City Hall’s entrance.
    Fuck. City Hall had never seemed so immensely high from below. Pat’s stomach lurched with vertigo, and he had to swallow down bile. He felt sick and terrified. He hadn’t even known he was afraid of heights before.
    A hazy flash of silver appeared in his peripheral vision. Pat caught a confused glimpse of a familiar frown below a mirrored visor, and then large, silver-gloved hands reached out and he found himself picked up and tossed over Silver Paladin’s shoulder.
    Force fields buzzed against his chest and stomach and legs, scrambling Pat’s brains and making his teeth ache. It took him a moment to register that he was now airborne; correction, that they were airborne, City Hall and the fighting challenger and hero retreating until all Pat could see was Silver Paladin’s legs and ass. It was a weird angle, and Pat could have done without the obscuring force fields and the armor in the way, but even so it was a pretty spectacular view.
    By the time they touched down, Pat was giggling uncontrollably.
    Pat found himself set back on his feet with surprising gentleness. A quick look around revealed that they were in front of the small chocolatier Hell liked, right in the middle of the picturesquely ivy-adorned side street leading to the temple square.
    With his visor down and the force fields on, there really wasn’t much of Silver Paladin’s face to see. Even so, Pat imagined he could read surprise in the blurry line of his jaw. “ You? What are you doing —”
    Pat waved a hand to indicate this wasn’t an ideal time to bombard him with dumb questions,