Free I Am Titanium (Pax Black Book 1) by John Patrick Kennedy Page A

seconds, it was going to pop or explode or disappear or something, like a soap bubble. And then the men who kept charging at them would run into Pax. Or worse, her.
    Scarlett looked down at herself.
    Her belly button was almost white-hot in the center. Flakes of ash crumbled off the side and drifted upward with the heat. Flakes of ash were everywhere. Flakes of burnt grass. Flakes of burnt Scarlett.
    The ground was black just from being too close to her.
    She had to get control of herself again.
    But how?
    A horrible little voice in her head whispered that when Pax’s bubble burst, she should start shooting fire at the people attacking them. They were threatening Pax. They deserved whatever she did to them.
    Hotter. She should be hotter .
    She tried to ignore the voice. She’d been ignoring it her whole life. Everybody has those urges. That didn’t mean you had to follow them.
    Not a problem.
    But hotter would be good.
    She could burn them up before they could say wow, that’s fucking hot . They’d look like hot dogs that’d been on the grill too long. They’d smell like burnt meat.
    She could taste them.
    The black tentacles pushed farther into her, and fire drooled down the side of her mouth and splashed on her knees.
    Scarlett curled up around the burning hole in her belly button and started to cry.

    Pax felt the bubble burst deep in his chest.
    It twanged the same way a bubble of mucous rising out of his lungs would have, if he still had lungs and could still get pneumonia.
    But it still left him feeling dizzy and weak. And numb. He couldn’t feel his legs.
    He didn’t feel like a superhero anymore. Right now he was paper.
    His legs bent and dropped him to the ground. He caught himself on his hands and knees. His lungs were burning. He couldn’t feel his heartbeat. It reminded him of being back in his old body. Good times.
    The heat was blasting out from behind him, turning the grass on either side of his hands from bright green to shriveled brown in seconds. Scarlett was getting hotter. Pax dug his hands into the dirt. Get up, Pax. You have to fix this. Get up!
    But he couldn’t. He didn’t have the energy.
    After a few moments of fucking power, he was, once again, too weak.
    The edge of the grass caught on fire.
    Pax coughed. Someone grabbed his shoulder and pulled him to his feet. Suddenly he was staring at the beet-red face of an Irish cop whose white shirt was smudged with ash. The guy opened his mouth to start shouting at Pax. Beads of sweat hatched out of the cop’s forehead, ran down his cheeks, and dried before they hit his chin.
    “Run,” whispered Pax.
    He was being swung through the air and pitched onto greener, cooler grass.
    The cops must be trying to save him from Scarlett. It was almost funny enough to make him laugh.
    Pax rolled with the fall and dragged himself back up on his feet. His energy must be regenerating—but not very quickly. He had to find another source, and fast.
    People had already crowded between him and Scarlett. The Irish cop was shouting and trying to direct people away from the area, but nobody was listening. People in business suits and skirts. Joggers with and without big-wheeled strollers. Hipsters dragging bicycles and wearing black-framed glasses. Senior citizens. Japanese tourists. Everybody was taking pictures of Scarlett on their iPhones.
    Everyone gasped and swore at the same time, and the people in the center tried to take a step back at the same time as the people outside the circle pushed inward and stood on tiptoe with their phones over their heads, trying to see what was going on.
    Sirens were going off; cops were rushing in and shoving people back. Fire trucks were closing in.
    Pax staggered forward, grabbing onto the shoulders of a couple of senior citizens in front of him to keep from falling down again. They both turned around to look at him. They were wearing matching sunglasses and “World’s Best Grandparents” sweatshirts.
    “Move,” he said.