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
