Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (Book 4)
Savage Vengeance (Book 5 - this story)
VIOLENCE WARNING: The two stories in the Savage Gang saga, and especially the second story, involve a gang practicing extreme violence toward everyone — women, the elderly, the protagonist, etc. The stories contain mature sexual content and violence as well. I am placing this warning on all chapters, including those without such violence, so you can choose whether to continue.
CHAPTER 13
Feelings of frustration and helplessness — and of being unworthy — flooded Sapphire Angel’s mind as she crouched on the rooftop of the YMCA in downtown Harrisburg. She brushed her hair back over one ear as she looked out over the slow-moving waters of the Susquehanna River. As Beth Harper, she had seen the news report of the gang’s attack at the police station. Or at least she had seen part of it. Once she had learned of the attack, Beth had rushed downtown, transformed, and made her way to the station, moving from rooftop to rooftop.
Of course she had been too late. By the time she arrived, she found nothing more than a crime scene, with detectives and emergency personnel swarming over the building.
Now she sat atop the rooftop, seven blocks from the police station, her thoughts churning. Stanley didn’t want to meet with her until tomorrow, and the inaction was sapping her soul and sending her thoughts into overdrive.
This would all be over if she hadn’t allowed Savage to escape at the rally. Perhaps her dream was right. You’re a fraud. You’re not worthy. Somebody else wouldn’t have let Savage slip away. Somebody else wouldn’t need Stanley’s help to bring Savage to justice. Perhaps the universe had been wrong to bestow powers upon her.
Stanley would never think similar thoughts about her, would he? But why else would he postpone their meeting? Perhaps he truly wanted to regroup and come up with ideas for dealing with the gang. That made sense. She thought back to how Rocco Lynch and his men had ambushed her outside a parking garage several days earlier, almost defeating her. And during the rally yesterday, Savage’s surprise blow had caused problems, catching her off guard. Yes, that was it. Stanley just wanted to make sure she would have the element of surprise on her side. When she could avoid surprises, she was unbeatable. Not a fraud. Not unworthy.
But the whole thing felt weird, as if Stanley wanted to avoid something. To avoid her. She sighed. Tomorrow would come, and then she would find out. Until then, she was here, killing time on this roof, hoping to chance upon the gang. Or upon something.
The night was more quiet than normal. Perhaps other criminals were in hiding, afraid to tread upon the Savage Gang’s turf. Normally, this would be a good thing, but she needed some action to take her mind off her failures.
With a sigh, she rose, sprinted to the edge of the roof, and leapt. She sailed across an alley behind the building and landed on another rooftop. She repeated the process four times, until she was on a rooftop in a less savory part of town. Sapphire Angel pulled her hair back from her ear and listened.
She stood like a statue for several minutes, holding her glistening blond hair away from her ear, focusing on any disturbances in the night air. Nothing.
She lowered her arm and frowned. This was silly. Did she really expect to find the gang by luck? By standing on a building and listening? Yes, in a way she did. As Stanley had told her, coincidences had followed her ever since she became Sapphire Angel. It was perhaps a mysterious power of hers. But tonight it wasn’t in the cards.
With a grumble, she retraced her steps, moving from rooftop to rooftop, and heading back toward her car. Not Sapphire Angel's Ferrari 488 Spider, but Beth Harper’s Volvo. She would transform when she got closer.
When she was a block away from the vehicle, and on a sloping roof, she heard voices ahead. Voices near her car. She crept forward and looked out over the vacant lot in which she had parked her Volvo. The car sat on the opposite side of the lot, its front end facing toward a building, pointing away from her. Three men gathered around the vehicle. One of them was trying to jam a thin metal strip inside her driver’s side window, standing so she could make out his side profile. The two other men stood a few feet behind him, near the rear driver’s side tire, their backs to her.
They weren’t gangsters — they were big, but not big enough, and they wore torn jeans and baggy coats. She guessed them to be in their twenties, but she didn't have a good view of them. The one at the window had bright red hair and a lanky build, while the other two wore hoods and had pudgy frames under their baggy clothes.
Sapphire Angel sighed. The idiots would set off her car alarm at any moment. She wasn’t in the mood for this. They had picked the wrong car, and the wrong night, for thievery.
The heroine crept to the edge of the roof, leapt, and somersaulted, her booted feet touching down ten yards behind her car. They spun in unison to find the radiant heroine staring at them, hands on her hips and her legs spread. The man by the window left the metal strip sticking halfway into the car.
Sapphire Angel shook her head and said, “Bad move, boys.”
“Oh, shit!” the redhead said.
“It’s Sapphire Angel!” exclaimed one of the pudgy men.
They stared at her, their eyes wide with a mix of fear and awe. They took a step back, along the side of the car, toward the wall of the building.
“Please don’t hurt us!” the closest man pleaded, holding up shaking hands.
Sapphire Angel sighed. “You guys should know I don’t operate that way, unless you choose that path. But I can’t have you breaking into cars.”
“This is our car,” the redhead said. “I just lost my keys.”
Sapphire Angel frowned and gave a shake of her head, still standing with her hands on her hips.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Let’s not make this harder than it has to be.”
The lanky man with red hair chewed his lip and seemed to be deep in thought. His eyes traveled up and down her body, studying her.
“Guys,” he said, “I think we can take her.”
Sapphire Angel rolled her eyes, but said nothing. As her legend had grown, such delusional beliefs had diminished, but she still ran into it occasionally.
“Stan, no fucking way,” the closest man said. “Everybody has seen the videos, and heard the stories. She’s unbeatable. Half the people in the county jail could tell you that.”
“It’s gotta be fake news, dude,” the third man said. “The media will say anything for a story. Look at her. She’s just a little thing. No way she can take all three of us. I think Stan is right.”
Sapphire Angel frowned again and gave another shake of her head. She could see where this was going.
“Let’s get it over with, then,” she said, raising a hand and motioning them toward her.
The men exchanged hesitant looks, before stepping to the rear of the car and fanning out around her. Sapphire Angel waited in a calm pose, arms loose at her side. When the first man lunged, she whirled into action.
The man came with a fist, and she stepped forward, dipping her head and allowing his arm to whip past her face. She grabbed his outstretched arm and swung him like a scythe, slamming him into the other two men. She released her hold, and the men went down in a tangle of limbs.
As they started to rise, she was on them, taking two by the throat, lifting them, and slamming them together. She released her hold and they fell. As they hit the ground, she saw movement to her side. She raised her hand, nonchalantly catching the fist of the third man, who was aiming a punch toward her head.
“Ahhh!” he yelled as she bent his hand back.
As he raised his free hand to grab at her vice-like grip, she drilled her other hand forward into the middle of his face. She measured her punch so as not to cause serious harm, but it was enough to cause his eyes to go dark. He slumped, and she released her hold on his fist, letting him crumple to the ground.
The other two men were on their feet, wobbling. Her hands shot forward, and she seized each man by the front of his jacket, whipping them around like they were dolls and pushing them up against the side of her car.
“You picked the wrong night to make me angry,” she said, gritting her teeth.
They indeed had picked the wrong night. The threat of the Savage Gang hung over the city, and she was stuck dealing with these pathetic goons. As she thought of the gang, she also thought of the nightmare in which Conner died. By his own words, he died because of her — because she wouldn’t let go of her pursuit of the gang. The best way to extinguish the nightmare was to extinguish the gang. Instead, she was wasting time with these losers.
She came back to the present, realizing she still held the two men against the car. They looked at her with wide eyes, but didn’t attempt to break free. She spoke with steel in her voice.
“I might have let you go, because I have bigger fish to fry, but not n—”
Her words were cut off as something solid slammed into the back of her skull, like someone had smashed a crowbar into her head.
“Gnnnh…” she gurgled, as her knees buckled.
She tried to stay on her feet, but her vision wavered and she fell into the two men, whom she had been holding only a moment earlier.
“Woah!” one man exclaimed.
As she slid down their bodies and slumped toward the ground, they each grabbed an arm and spun her, lifting her upright and slamming her against the side of the Volvo. They pinned her arms against the vehicle. Through blurry vision and with her head sagging, she tried to take in her surroundings. The other man still lay on the ground, unmoving, but a fourth man had appeared from nowhere, and did indeed hold a crowbar in his hand.
In the foggy recesses of her mind, she chastised herself. She had let thoughts of the Savage Gang — and of Conner — distract her. The distraction had prevented her extraordinary senses from hearing the man creep up behind her. This new man was the biggest of them all — tall and muscular, with a shock of purple hair on his head, and crooked teeth in his mouth.
He jabbed the end of the crowbar forward into the stomach of the dazed woman.
“Ungggh!” she wheezed, sagging further in the men’s grasp.
“See, I told you!” the man with red hair exclaimed. “She ain’t so tough! We nabbed ourselves a superheroine!”
A moment of silence hung in the air, as if his words made the men realize the enormity of the situation — as if they were processing it. The moment was all Sapphire Angel needed, as her necklace was already starting to restore her. She gritted her teeth. It was time to end this fight.
“Shit!” the man to her right yelled as she started to flex her arms to break free of their grip.
The crowbar slammed into the center of her forehead, bouncing her head straight back into the side of the Volvo. With a soft moan, she sagged in the men’s grasp once again. A swing of the crowbar hit the top of her head, and her surroundings swirled.
“Stay down, bitch,” the big man said, waving the crowbar in front of her. “Unless you want another. About time a real man put you in your place. You ain't so tough.”
She groaned in response, as her head drooped and her hair dangled in front of her face. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. A rush of disbelief and embarrassment flooded her senses at the thought of being taken down by these common criminals, all because she had lost her focus.
“What now?” the redhead holding her arm asked. “What we gonna do with her?”
The big man extended the crowbar, placing one end under Sapphire Angel’s chin, and lifted it to raise her head. He used his other hand to brush the soft tendrils of her blond hair out of her face. A soft whistle came from his lips.
“Damn, you need to ask?” the brute said. “Look at her. As smokin’ as they say, and the crowbar didn’t even leave a mark.”
“What are you saying?” the man to her left asked.
“What do you mean, what am I saying? She’s the hottest piece of ass you’ll ever get near in your entire life. Everybody wants her, and we got her. Let’s get her back to Stan’s place, peel her out of that costume, and have a grand ol’ party. We get to bang the biggest star in the world right now. A real-live superheroine!”
The words triggered an awakening in Sapphire Angel’s mind, as she fought through the fog of the blows to her skull. A surge of anger burned inside her as she remembered a time from her past, when, as Beth, a boyfriend had sexually assaulted her. Never again.
“Aw, man, I don’t know,” the pudgy man holding her said. “Breaking into cars is one thing, but I ain’t no rapist. Even with her.”
“Yea, man,” the redhead said. “She's hot as shit, but I ain’t right with that.”
“Whatya wanna do, let her go?” the big man asked. “I ain’t passing up this chance for the screw of a lifetime.”
As he finished speaking, a police siren sounded in the distance. It was getting closer.
“Fuck, we gotta hurry and get outta here with her!” he said. “Somebody musta heard or seen us and called it in. Put her over my shoulder, quick!”
The big man lowered the crowbar to his side and stepped forward, reaching toward Sapphire Angel with an outstretched hand. He froze as her head lifted and her eyes came to life, glaring at him.
“Oh shit…” he murmured, and he fumbled to adjust his grip on the crowbar
He started to raise the weapon, but her arms burst forward, breaking free of the grips of the other two men. Before the crowbar even got past his waist, the edges of her open hands slammed down onto both sides of his neck, in matching karate chops. His eyes widened for just a moment, before his entire face went slack, his knees gave way, and he sank to the ground.
She whipped each of her elbows back and up, slamming into the chins of the other two men. They bounced off the side of her car and fell forward onto their hands and knees. She stepped to them and came down with chops to the back of their necks, sending them face first into the pavement. They didn’t move.
Sapphire Angel, seething, surveyed the scene as the police siren got closer. Four men lay on the ground, unmoving, including the disgusting big man. Her face burned red, partially with anger, partially with embarrassment. They had gotten the upper hand on her and this had nearly become a nightmare scenario, all because her focus had been elsewhere. On the Savage Gang. And on Conner.
These men weren’t as bad as the gangsters, but deserved whatever was coming to them. She could only hope that whoever had called the police was nearby, and, with any luck, had gotten video of the attempted break in of her car — but not of the men getting the best of her. Or perhaps some of these men had outstanding warrants.
She didn't like relying on such good fortune, but she wasn’t in the mood to stick around and see how the police might react to her presence. She had some allies in the department, but many of the men in blue resented her. And the unfortunate reality of her situation was that she couldn’t press charges, because she couldn’t appear in court to testify, for a host of practical reasons.
With one last glance at the men, Sapphire Angel darted away, heading down an alley. She would find a secluded place to transform, and hope the police wouldn’t take too long to process the men. Then she would get back to her car, head home, and kill time before bed.
Today's fiasco reinforced a simple fact — she couldn't protect the city while the gang remained at large. The gang was lethal on its own, but was distracting her from even petty encounters. And if she exterminated the gang, she could sleep without her nightmare coming back. The one where Conner died. She hoped Stanley could help her tomorrow.
Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (Book 3)
Savage Dawn (Book 4)
Savage Vengeance (Book 5 - this story)
Hey, trading a sequence against the Savage Gang in exchange for a sequence against three random crooks isn’t so bad in my book! As long as we get to see Sapphire in action, that’s cool in my eyes!
I can’t help but feel like this was so different from the other encounters with random goons she’s had, like the ones trying to break into the car in Colorado in the 3rd novel. I kind of wish she’d have landed on the roof of the vehicle again here like she did back then, but then again, it was her car (I think) and I don’t think she’d want to damage it. It was like a reminder that the Savage Gang is hurting her in more ways than one, even though Savage himself technically got away during the first encounter. They’re starting to affect her emotionally, and that—combined with Sapphire’s complications at remaining focused—is what’s causing her to lose concentration even on “normal” outings like these. Heck, these guys weren’t even aligned with the Gang; they were just regular criminals. And they almost wiped the floor with her. Then again, if I had a nightmare where my loved one died (and their body was blaming me for it), I’d have trouble keeping my head as well.
I do know one thing; the universe doesn’t make mistakes, and I’m sure her whole “gaining superpowers” thing from the first novel was no coincidence. It’s just going to take a while for her to see it.
At any rate, I really hope Stanley also hasn’t given up hope on Sapphire, and that he can help her soon. Let’s go!