He faded off into the darkness, and I felt my heart rate return to normal. What had I done? Pissed him off was the obvious answer. I needed to find out what he was. What would hurt him.

Swords, I suspected, but I couldn’t just wander around with one. This was so much easier in the movies, when people could apparently do such things. Run around with swords and hammers and spandex and somehow be celebrated for saving the world instead of denigrated and arrested.

I had no illusions about what we would do to Superman. No illusions about what people would do to me.

Sooner or later. I knew I couldn’t stay hidden forever, but maybe after we’d dealt with the cult I could go back to pretending to be normal. Keep my head down.

Yeah.

Right.

That was not going to happen, not with unpleasant shapeshifters, crazy guys…and I wasn’t sure Thea would leave me alone either. She had her own expectations. Not quite for me to turn into her, but for me to acknowledge I wasn’t ordinary. She’d given me the sword.

I didn’t go directly back to the safe house. I took a convoluted route and made sure I was on the Metro for part of it. So I couldn’t be observed from the air. Thea, though, wasn’t there.

I sat on the bed, then picked up the sword. Not my sword. Thea’s sword, for all that she was lending it to me. It wasn’t mine. I knew that with the same kind of deep instinct that showed me how to use it. But it was serviceable and I knew it would be proof against the shapeshifter.

If I could come up with a way to use it without being arrested. It wasn’t legal to carry a sword. Thea wouldn’t care about the morality of it. I didn’t care about the morality of it. Just about not getting caught, and what did that make me?

Somebody who wanted to protect others from a threat I was pretty sure no jail cell could contain. What if he could turn into a much smaller bird to just fly through the bars? Or…yeah. There was no way the cops could hold a monster, especially as none of them would believe it was real.

Or would they? There might be cops who had seen enough to know this was real. The door rattled. It sounded like Thea coming back.

It sounded like her, but I didn’t get up to open it, just in case it wasn’t. I kept the sword across my knees…also just in case it wasn’t. Thea was right. Swords were scary.

They were even scary when you were the one using them.

It wasn’t Thea.