Dreams of the Golden Age (Golden Age 2)

Smack, another of Lew’s paintballs slammed into him. Teddy’s face twisted as he cringed, right before he went invisible, and reappeared twenty feet over a couple seconds later.

Anna shook her head. Guy was a freaking masochist. “If the school nurse flipped out at your last set of bruises, she’s going to love this.”

Sam called out, “I thought you were supposed to freaking phase out before you get hit.”

“I’m trying, it just happens too fast! You guys are so smart, why don’t you get out here and try not to get hit!”

If the paintballs were too fast for him to let them pass through his phased-out body, bullets would definitely be too fast.

“Ghost, you’d better run!” Lew raised the

paintball gun again. The sadist to go with the masochist, evidently. They had about half an hour before the cops showed up, Anna guessed. When Teddy tried hiding behind a tree, Lew held up a hand, and a fierce gust of tightly focused wind shoved him back in the open. Lew called himself Stormbringer. This time, Teddy turned invisible, and Lew’s next paintball shot missed.

“You are not getting into my car with all that mess on you,” Sam, code name Blaster, stated.

“Don’t worry, I’ll change,” Teddy called between shots.

The two of them seemed to be making this way more difficult than it really needed to be.

“He’s making me dizzy,” Anna said, watching Teddy flicker in and out of visibility.

“I keep telling you, it’s either this or go patrolling for real,” Teia said. They bent their heads together in a conference.

“We’re not ready,” Anna declared.

Teia didn’t argue about that. “So how did your grandparents get started? How much did they practice before they started?”

“I’m not really sure. The biographies kind of gloss over that part.”

“You don’t talk to your grandma about it at all?” Teia said, disbelieving. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Teia had spent enough time with Anna’s family, she knew that nobody talked about it. Suzanne West had gotten rid of her skin-suit uniform twenty years ago and never looked back. These days, she used her power of heat and flame mostly to cook.

“It’s not that easy, okay? The minute I start talking about it, they’ll know something’s up, and I’ll either have to tell them what we’ve been doing or figure out how to lie about it to my dad.”

“Ugh. Yeah, that would be a problem.”

They all understood the need for secrecy, and not just because of tradition. If nothing else, they needed to keep their parents from grounding them until graduation.

The next time Teddy turned visible, Sam cracked his knuckles and flung an arm toward him, pointing with flat fingers. Searing red lights shot out from the gesture, snapping through the air, leaving a trail of steam behind. The laser bolts hit Teddy, popping into his back, knocking him over. Sam had used low-intensity beams this time. They’d sting a little, not burn through, though Sam could do that, too, if he wanted. During one of the small-scale practices, Sam had burned through a steel garbage can in an alley. It had taken awhile, but he’d done it.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Sam said, grinning. Sam could be a bully sometimes.

Teddy cried out in shock and fell, and though he stumbled back to his feet quickly enough, he’d lost his focus and remained visible. He turned on Sam. “Hey! What the hell?”

Sam laughed. “I’m just helping out. Doesn’t do any good when you know Lew’s going to hit you. You need the element of surprise.”

“Code names,” Anna muttered futilely.

A determined frown settled on Teddy’s features, and he clenched his hands at his sides. Anna knew what came next, and sure enough, he vanished, and the scratching of running footsteps on the gravel path followed. Sam stood and ran, but that didn’t stop invisible Teddy from tackling him. From the outside, it looked as if Sam spasmed, leaping a few inches and then smashing into the ground. He writhed, hitting and punching, yelling. A few red bolts flashed from his hands, scattering wildly. Anna, Teia, and Lew scurried behind the tree trunk for shelter.

Sam managed to grab Teddy’s hand the next time Teddy threw a punch, which was the major drawback for an invisible guy trying to fight hand to hand. Anna kept trying to convince him of that, and he kept not listening. The two were locked together now, trying to hit each other one-handed.

Anna moved out from behind the tree and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Ghost, now’s when you’re supposed to phase out!”

There came a grunt of effort, and suddenly Sam was batting at air, his quarry slipped out of his grasp. He sat up and stared at his hands. “Okay, that was weird.”

He fell over, shoved aside by the figure of Teddy, who was once against flashing in and out of visibility like the image on a broken TV. Sam hollered and fired another bolt, which slammed into a tree trunk and left it smoking. Just what they needed, to set the whole park on fire.

“Would you guys stop it!” she shouted, but it didn’t help. They kept wrestling, Sam lunging back at Teddy, who wasn’t invisible and who forgot to phase out again. Maybe because he was amazed it had worked. It was almost funny. They crashed to the ground, landing punches on each other.