Steel for 5 (Mags & Nats Book 3) Read online

  Contents

  Author’s Newsletter

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  Keep reading for a preview

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  Continue reading….

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Discover other books by Stephanie Fazio

  STEEL FOR 5

  Copyright 2021 Stephanie Fazio

  Published 2021 by Stephanie Fazio

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  Cover design: Keith Tarrier

  Steel for 5 is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, places, incidents, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Edition License Notes

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  Visit https://stephaniefazio.com/

  ISBN 978-1-951572-18-1 (print)

  ISBN 978-1-951572-19-8 (e-book)

  Epub Edition copyright October 2020 eISBN 9781951572198

  First edition

  Author’s Newsletter

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  To Al and Minnie

  CHAPTER 1

  Calling all units. Backup needed at 522 Bulweather Street. We’ve got a Super Mag Pyro threatenin’ to burn the retirement home down. Fire and paramedics stand by.

  Oh jeez.

  Oh my God.

  Get the hell outta there!

  “The whole place is burning,” Smith reported as he plugged his headphones in, cutting off the police chatter.

  “How many people still inside?” Graysen asked, his voice far cooler and more controlled than any of us were feeling.

  “All of them,” Smith replied grimly. “Residents, plus all the nurses and other staff who were working.”

  Kaira swore.

  “We’ve got this, team,” I assured everyone as I methodically cracked my knuckles. “Can we get some pump-up music going in here?”

  Six groans filled the van when Michael turned on a soft rock station.

  “Why are you smiling?” Smith asked me, his tone laced with suspicion. “You’re about to run into a burning building.”

  “Precisely,” I countered. “This is the most exciting thing I’ve done all day.”

  I gripped the handle on the door as the van careened down the road. We were heading straight toward the plume of orange flames. Even with the windows up, the reek of smoke filled the air and made my eyes water. The rest of the Seven began stripping off their coats and sweaters. I blew on my fists.

  My fingertips began to tingle. Normal flesh took on a silvery hue as the titanium spread up my forearms and encased my bones. The cool metal brought down my body temperature and calmed the furious tempo of my pulse. The nervous tapping of my foot stilled.

  “Stop here,” I ordered Michael, who was driving.

  “Catch ya on the flip side, Bri,” Yutika told me, completely unconcerned by the fact that I was about to race headlong into an inferno.

  She had good reason for her flippancy. There wasn’t much—including fire—that could hurt me. I was a Level 10 Steel.

  As soon as I felt the van beginning to slow, I wrenched open the door.

  “Bri—” Kaira began, but I didn’t wait for her to finish. I didn’t need to be a fire fighter to know there wasn’t a moment to spare.

  I jumped out of the van.

  Sparks shot up as my titanium skin scraped the pavement. I rolled four times before leaping up. There were small divots in the pavement from my fall, but my skin was untouched. I felt nothing except determination as I dashed toward the burning building.

  The fire hoses were already at work. Jets of water were pummeling the building on all sides. Any normal blaze would have been extinguished by now, but this was no ordinary fire. It belonged to a Level 28 Pyrokinetic who could create a ten-alarm fire at the snap of his fingers…and had. Normal Pyros could start a fire or make an already-burning fire more powerful. But a Super Mag Pyro?

  No amount of water was going to make a dent in this blaze. The building was a gonner. All anyone could do now was get out of the way and wait until the fire ran out of fuel.

  I burst past the fire trucks, ambulances, and police cruisers.

  “You can’t go in there,” a fireman exclaimed. “Are you insane?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” I replied, throwing him a wink over my shoulder.

  I’d always had a thing for firemen.

  There was no more time for pleasantries. I raced into the building.

  Flames leapt toward me and died the second they met with my titanium skin. My clothes fared less well. I managed to bat out the fire before my outfit was completely incinerated.

  If tomorrow’s headlines featured a scantily-clad picture of me rescuing people, A.J. would never let me hear the end of it.

  I didn’t bother with doors. Instead, I barreled right through the walls until I found a group of five elderly people huddled beneath a mattress. They were all choking and drenched in sweat, but the mattress was keeping the worst of the flames at bay.

  “Come on!” I pulled the everyone behind me, using my body to shield them.

  It was slow going. I had to hoist one woman onto my hip like an over-large toddler. I used my other hand to yank a man along behind. The man was coughing too hard from the smoke to hold himself up.

  “Stand back,” I warned the people behind me before kicking right through the brick wall.

  Cold October air filled my lungs, which were screaming for oxygen. The sharp odor of burnt plastic and other lovely carcinogenic fumes made my nose sting. Thick, black smoke poured out of the building and disappeared into the night sky.

  I ushered the old people out as fast as I could. As soon as they were surrounded by paramedics, I went back in.

  Realizing the upper floor wouldn’t last much longer, I ran up the stairs. The steps were concrete, but the
magical fire was eating them up the same way normal flames devoured wood. It took some tricky acrobatics, but I made it up to the second floor.

  I screamed myself hoarse as I ran from room to room, searching for survivors. I didn’t let myself linger next to bodies that lay stiff in their beds from smoke inhalation. I raced on until I found people cowering under bedframes or crouching in their tubs.

  I darted down the burning stairs and practically threw the retirees at the waiting firemen.

  “Get outta there!” a fireman called up to me. “This place is about to blow!”

  Just a few more…. I could save a few more people.

  I sprinted out with an unconscious woman slung over my shoulder. We’d barely made it outside when every window in the building exploded. Glass shards sprayed in every direction. Blue-and-purple flames erupted out of the open windows and lit up the sky. The police and firemen dove to the ground. The cop car nearest to the building began to sag as the exterior melted right off its frame.

  There was a crash as the building’s second floor collapsed.

  “No!” One of the retirees reached out a trembling hand toward the building. “My wife’s still in there!”

  My heart sank. No one inside could have survived this kind of heat. Except for the one who had caused it.

  I caught the man around his waist before he could barge back into the building.

  “Debbie!” he yelled. “Debbie, oh God. Debbie!”

  The man crumpled against me, sobbing.

  I’m sorry! I wanted to tell the man. I’m so, so sorry.

  But being sorry wouldn’t bring the man’s wife back. So, I held him more tightly as I stared at all those burned-out windows. I couldn’t stop myself from counting them…and thinking about all those people who would never walk out the front door.

  Before I knew it, I was extricating myself from the old man and going back toward the building.

  “It’s too dangerous!” a fireman shouted, reaching out to stop me.

  I easily slipped out of his grasp. Michael would Whisper to the firemen and cops to make sure no one tried to follow me inside.

  My titanium skin didn’t register temperature, but I could sense how hot it was. Cinders glowed with magical heat. Even though the fire had already devoured most of the building, flames still crackled on the floor’s charred remains. I shielded my eyes against the floating ash.

  There was nothing to see except rubble. In just a few minutes, the blaze had eaten away at everything. My eyes watered as fire turned to smoke. My throat burned. While my exterior was titanium, my insides were still normal.

  I shielded my nose and mouth with my arm as I moved deeper into the building.

  “Help me.”

  The cry was weak, but I’d definitely heard the male voice. Someone was alive.

  “Where are you?” I cried. Hope and panic surged through me.

  I barreled through the remains of a wall that was barely standing. It crashed behind me in a flurry of embers. I hardly noticed. I swiped ash from my hair without slowing as I raced from one burned-out room to another.

  “Where are you?” I called again. With my raspy voice and soot-covered skin, I felt like something out of a nightmare.

  Movement caught my attention. I hurried forward, heedless of the remaining ceiling beams that could come down on my head at any moment.

  I burst through the building’s far wall. Even though I was in some kind of alley lined with dumpsters, the air seemed gloriously clean compared to the noxious fumes within the still-burning building.

  “Please. Help.”

  I came to a screeching halt as I caught sight of the voice’s owner.

  A boy was sitting on the ground. His knees were drawn up to his chin, and his whole body was trembling. He looked up at me through tear-swollen eyes.

  I went still. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought the kid on the ground was an innocent bystander. With his twiggy limbs and the soot smudged across his cheeks, he didn’t look capable of any crime worse than talking back to grown-ups. But I knew better. For the first time, I was grateful Smith had made me memorize every detail of the Super Mags’ files.

  I was standing in front of the Pyro who was responsible for this inferno.

  “You.” I clenched my hands into fists. Power flowed through my veins. I crossed the distance separating us in two leaps. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!”

  I grabbed the back of the boy’s shirt and yanked him to his feet. His head snapped back like a ragdoll.

  I expected the Pyro to hurl flames in my face. Instead, he sagged in my grip. The Pyro hellion didn’t look at me with anger or defiance. His eyes were dull. He seemed broken.

  His shaking hands drew my attention.

  “Shit,” I gasped as acid flooded my mouth.

  The boy’s hands were burned almost beyond recognition. Patches of black, scaly skin were punctuated by oozing red blisters. His hands and forearms looked more like raw meat than human skin.

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  Part of the deal with Pyros was that they couldn’t be harmed by fire. Just like I wouldn’t be able to knock myself out with my own titanium fist. Not that I’d ever put it to the test….

  The boy who had burned down an old age home and killed dozens of people began to sob.

  “It’s gone,” he cried. “It’s gone. It’s gone. It’s gone.”

  “The building?” I asked, staring at the smoldering remains. What the hell did he expect would happen?

  “No.” The boy let out a soft whimper. “My magic’s gone.”

  CHAPTER 2

  We stood within sight of the burnt-down retirement home as emergency personnel flurried around. I calmly gave my statement to the cops, all the while pretending like the anxious fluttering in my stomach wasn’t making me feel like doing a thousand push-ups.

  Twenty-seven people were dead.

  Maybe if I’d moved faster…searched harder….

  “That’s all we need, Ms. Hammond. Thank you for your time.”

  A few words from Michael ensured the Seven of us could stay through the Pyro’s arrest and interrogation. I stood off to the side, trying to be discreet as I bounced on the balls of my feet in abbreviated jumping jacks.

  I excelled at the doing part of things. I still hadn’t mastered the waiting around part.

  “One of the Super Mags cut her leg,” the Pyro told the Mag detective, scowling when his handcuffs clinked against his bandaged hands. “I hadda get a first aid kit, and the old people home seemed like they’d have one.”

  “Did it ever occur to you to go to a store and just buy one?” the detective asked dryly.

  The Pyro glared at the woman. The detective took a step back, but no flames came spouting out of the Pyro’s bandaged fingers.

  “Those nurses shouldn’t have fought back!” the Pyro growled. He looked down at his bandaged hands and seemed to deflate. “I guess I panicked.”

  We all turned to look at the smoldering remains of the retirement home. Blackened beams and sooty ash were all that remained.

  “You’re going to rot in jail for a long time,” the detective told the Pyro with satisfaction. She’d been searching for the Pyro ever since he’d burned down MagLab and escaped with fifty other Super Mags. “You’re barely thirteen, and you’re already a mass murder. The world will be better with you locked away.”

  A sense of righteous justice flared through me. Now, this maniac would never hurt anyone else again.

  “I’d like to know about what happened after the fire,” Graysen told the Pyro.

  The detective stiffened. I wasn’t sure if it was because she felt like Graysen was stepping on her toes or because she didn’t like Nats. Either way, she knew enough to keep her mouth shut.

  “Someone dragged me outta the building.” The Pyro scowled. “I couldn’t see anyone, so I don’t know who it was. I got stuck with something sharp—a needle, I think. And then my magic stopped working.”
His voice broke and his shoulders sagged. In spite of the still-smoking heap of rubble in front of us, I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the kid.

  The Mag paramedics on the scene confirmed that the Pyro had been injected with the Magical Reduction Potion—MRP as we now called it to save syllables.

  The vile potion was developed by Edwardian Remwald’s Alchemists in MagLab, and the different gradations of MRP could take away a Mag’s powers temporarily or permanently.

  The Pyro had been injected with the permanent kind.

  “It’s like the others,” Kaira said in a low voice.

  About a month ago, one of the Super Mags had been playing with her doll in the park when she was injected with the MRP. The same thing had happened to another of the kids a few days later. And now this.

  Someone was injecting the Super Mags with the Magical Reduction Potion. Whoever it was must be incredibly stealthy…and either really smart or really stupid. So far, no one had been able to find out anything about the attacker’s identity, even though the cops and other Super Mags were on the hunt.

  “I’m gonna get that…that magic ripper!” the Pyro snarled as the detective led him to her cruiser. “I’m gonna find that sonuvabitch and burn him down to dust!”

  “Without your magic, you won’t be burning anyone or anything again,” the detective told him as she unceremoniously shoved him into the cruiser.

  The boy’s retort was lost as the detective slammed the door shut.

  “Magic ripper,” Yutika said. “That’s a good name. We should totally use it.”

  “Totally,” A.J. agreed.

  We watched as the righteous detective turned on her siren and sped away with the Pyro.

  It was good the Pyro had lost his magic. The retirement home hadn’t been the first time he’d used his fire to kill. In the process of breaking himself and the other Super Mags out of MagLab, he’d killed dozens of people.

  Yet, the thought of someone stealing away my magic shot so much fear through me that I was left gasping.

  Besides, it wasn’t like the magic ripper had just gone after the Pyro. They had attacked innocent Super Mags, too.

  “We better head home and deal with this,” Kaira said, her mouth twisted in a grim line. “Reporters are already blowing up my phone.”