Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Down the steps of my tiny deck, I looked around the yard and didn’t see a thing. I hadn’t imagined the light or the shaking. Had I? I’d always wondered if I’d end up going nuts since I spent so much time by myself, but no, I was too young. And there weren’t active tectonic plates around here; I was pretty sure. I went around the side of the trailer and stopped. Midstep and everything because….
Oh shit.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
Tiny purple fires were scattered across my yard.
Hand already shaking, I lifted my flashlight and aimed it at the center of them.
I gulped.
I turned it off, then turned it back on, thinking I’d imagined it.
I hadn’t.
I fucking hadn’t.
There was a body there. On the ground. In the dirt.
A human body.
A big one.
My hand shook like crazy as the beam of light settled on what looked like a piece of cloth spread out under what I was fairly certain was a male frame from the muscle proportions I could see.
A piece of cloth that looked an awful lot like… like… a cape.
A cape.
Oh shit.
A fucking cape that was torn and tattered, but it was either a tablecloth or that.
And it was attached to a half-bared chest by a wish and a prayer.
My hand shook even more as I took in the color of it.
Oh boy.
Oh no.
It had been years since the last time I’d done the sign of the cross, but I did it right then.
I recognized the color of the suit that was more than half ripped off the body there.
Charcoal.
I knew exactly what shade of blue the cape was too.
The whole world did.
Cobalt fucking blue.
There was only one person who wore a cape and a suit with those colors, and it wasn’t a character from a Shinto Studios movie or comic book.
It was….
It was….
One of the members of the Trinity.
It was….
The Defender.
It was The fucking Defender.
CHAPTER
TWO
Fuck.
Shit.
Oh shit, shit, shitttt.
I opened my mouth to either squeal or scream—later on, I would probably be proud of myself for not straight-up fainting in the first place—when the body lying there started to writhe, then cough.
He coughed?
The figure, who I was 99.99999 percent sure was the being known to the world as The Defender—holy fucking shit—made another hoarse sound that sounded like clear and total pain. His hand extended out to the side, his fingers sifting through the dirt beneath and around him. He moaned. A deep cough rattled through his body, followed by a brutally pained sound.
What in the hell was going on? How the hell had he made it here? Where the hell had he come from?
I tipped my head to the sky again to make sure there was nothing up there, nothing coming after him. Only the clouds were there, at least as far as I could see.
How had this happened? I’d watched The Centurion survive a skyscraper falling on him. It had been all over the news for weeks. The world had witnessed The Primordial walk out of a building that had exploded without a single hair out of place.
I was going to cry.
Maybe throw up.
Maybe both.
The Defender had to have the same kind of invincibility too, shouldn’t he?
All three members of the Trinity were icons of seemingly limitless strength, speed, and a variety of other incredible powers, who remained a mystery even after so many years. That was part of the reason why so many people were obsessed with them. Why any footage of them instantly went viral.
The Primordial had been the first to make her existence known. The film of her carrying a “misfired” nuclear bomb into space was considered the most life-changing moment in history. This incredible, seemingly human woman in a forest green suit had shot through the sky out of nowhere as millions panicked from the ground, wrapped her arms around the weapon, and carried it through the atmosphere and so far out it couldn’t harm anyone or anything. Out of the view of thousands of cameras that had been aimed toward the sky, trying to follow her. There hadn’t even been a pinprick of an explosion visible. All anyone knew was that there hadn’t been mass casualties, as had been expected.
For months, it was all anyone had been able to talk about—the flying woman who had saved the world and disappeared afterward. Had she lived? Had she died? No one knew. But she had flown! She had saved thousands, if not millions.
It was almost a year before she made another appearance, setting off another round of complete disbelief that someone, or something, like her could exist. That she hadn’t been destroyed. My grandpa had told me all about how people had been equally in awe and terrified of her at the time; I’d been too young to really understand how complicated her appearance in the world had been.