Erica Hayes - Scarred

ERICA HAYES

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Harper Impulse an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Impulse 2015

Copyright © Erica Hayes 2015

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover design by HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd

Erica Hayes asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International

and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted

the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access

and read the text of this e-book on screen.

No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,

downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or

stored in or introduced into any information storage and

retrieval system, in any form or by any means,

whether electronic or mechanical, now known or

hereinafter invented, without the express

written permission of HarperCollins.

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780007594627

Version 2015-11-23

‘I haven’t read such a good book in a long time…if you’re looking for something gritty, exciting, and fresh with complex and interesting characters, then Scorched is the book for you’

Book Chick City

‘Action packed and riveting’

A World of Books

‘Superherog‌eekaliciou‌sextrabadassocious…if you like superheroes in all their glittery glory, complex heroes and sympathetic villains, then definitely check this book out!’

The Demon Librarian

‘Well written dialogue, atmospheric settings and vivid action make this a gripping read’

Jane Hunt Writer Book Reviews

‘I swear I turned pages on my Kindle so fast smoke was flying off them. I also think that anybody who buys this book to read should be provided with their very own Augmented Superhero costume to wear whilst reading it. Because this book was a FUN RIDE and I wanted some of the action!'

Booklover Catlady Reviews

Once upon a time, in a flaming iron-forged forest, a brave and weary traveler came upon a fork in the road. One trail led to truth and salvation, the other to damnation and lies…

But which?

You were there. You pointed her towards a path. She chose, and strode on through the fire.

Does the story end there? Did she get the prince, or the tiger?

No, don't answer. Let me tell you what you're thinking: did I plan this all along?

Wrong question. Better to ask: did you?

And what if prince and tiger are the same?

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Erica Hayes

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Also by Erica Hayes …

Erica Hayes

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Come out, you dirty rat-fink villain. I know you're in here.

I crouched in a shadowy corner of the museum, lactic acid and impatience eating at my thigh muscles. Moonlight sprinkled through the curved glass clerestory, falling like stardust over shining glass cases filled with jewels, ancient treasures, dusty artifacts of old. In the case beside my hidey-hole, a glittering diamond-studded figurine winked at me, whispering Take me! Take me!

Not me. I'm one of the good guys. Verity Fortune, crime-fighter to the unsubtle, beating holes in things my specialty. I couldn't see the thief I'd come to catch. But I could feel him with my augmented senses, like tiny fairy lights glittering beneath my skin…

There. Across the room, the darkness dipped and swirled. I knew it. My mindmuscle itched, eager to kick some villainous butt.

Still, “villain” is relative in Sapphire City. It wasn't as if this dude was planning genocide or world domination. If my tip-off was for real—and I needed a break, the way things had gone for me lately—this was just a greedy little art heist.

Audacious, all the same. Sapphire City Museum—read “swanky art fortress”—is tricked out with the latest in invisible laser steal-me-and-I'll-fuck-you-up technology. But for the Gallery—the gang of super-powered lunatics who terrorize our city, led by a lurid pyromaniac arch-psycho called Razorfire—the threat of loot and the promise of violent death are just a turn-on. They pride their cruel, lonely asses on doing impossible things.

Bring it, you thieving Gallery turdball. Whoever this guy was, he'd be no match for me.

My nose twitched, and my secret senses tingled with the sherbety spritz of augment … and like a cocky-ass specter, the thief strolled right through the minefield.

Holy crap. He wasn't invisible. Just… un-solid. A glittery, translucent man-shape. His tiny particles danced and shimmered in the silvery moonlight. Glowing with strange inner energy. Eerily beautiful.

For an instant, a foreign gleam knifed through him at waist height. Light scattered in rainbows. The laser system. I winced, bracing for the alarm…

Nothing. No shrieking, no electric shocks, no tiny LED flashing in the corner.

Dude was below the dust threshold. That particle transition dissipated his body heat—which meant no infra-red signature—and reduced his reflective cross-section to negligible. Like a stealth bomber, skipping past radar. The museum's state-of-the-art security system saw nothing but dirty air.

Honestly. How is that fair?

Inwardly, I cursed, sweating inside my shiny gunmetal leather coat. I'm a masked telekinetic crime-fighter, not a Las Vegas stage magician. I'd crawled in here along the ceiling, clinging like a big-ass spider with fingernails and talent, and this dark corner was as far as I could get without alerting security. But this guy could cut to dust any time he wanted and flee, leaving me in laser-surveillance hell.

I couldn't beat him. Could I?

Fact was, I needed this victory. And not only to uphold the law (right, because the law's done so well by me lately) or keep the museum's shiny junk collection intact (rather than spend the money on something useful, like food for poor people) or even just out of principle, because thwarting Gallery villains in their mission of terror and mayhem is what we Fortunes do.

No, I had to prove to Adonis—my righteous prick of a brother and the boss of our crime-fighting outfit, whom I love to death and would happily strangle if it wouldn't prove him right—that I wasn't a liability. That he could trust me again, the way he used to, before… well, before I unwittingly betrayed us all by consorting with our archenemy. If beating some impossibly clever vanishing guy was what it took? Bring it on.