Author's Note: I do have permission to use the cover image for this story. It was made by Loui Jover, who is a wonderful artist. Go check out his work.

Phantom Queen

Book One

1.

I was on my laptop, curled up on the checkered blanket on my bed that morning before school, doing two different things at once. In my hands, I was working idly on a project for the high school robotics team I was on. But pulled up on the computer screen was what I considered research. I scanned through the news headlines.

Record Breaking Teen Becomes Fastest Man Alive

Six-year-old Korean boy lifts car off injured father

Why were they all men? Surely women must accomplish feats like this as well. Unconscious bias, perhaps, on the part of the reporters?

The subject was especially close to my heart for a couple of reasons. First, because I was a reporter for my high school newspaper The Torch. I wrote weekly political opinion articles, and held strong views on many school social issues. I was also a feminist and a gay rights supporter and I often went to political rallies in Metropolis, the nearest big city, much to the dismay of my rural conservative father.

But I had a second, bigger reason for caring passionately about what I was seeing on the computer screen, and that was because I was a girl and I could do many of these incredible feats of speed and strength myself.

I called it my mutation. It had appeared early on when I was a child. I could run so fast I was a mere blur and a gust of wind to the regular humans I passed. This supposed world record was to me a bit of a joke. I also had amazing strength - I could weight lift tractors.

No one knew about it except my parents, who accepted me and loved me anyway but had taught me to hide my powers from the outside world. They were afraid that if I was found out, the government would come cart me away to be experimented on in some lab. Or, worse, that the world would alienate me and be frightened of me because of my "gifts." (My Dad's word. Every Thanksgiving, I had to say I was thankful for the powers I was born with. Even if I didn't really mean it.)

Anyone close to me knew this potential fear was ridiculous. I'd been raised a Christian in a small country town, and at heart I was a true farmer's girl. I was shy, somewhat awkward, and very eccentric, but I was no killer. My powers aside, I was just some normal teenage girl. I fought with my parents, I had a crush on a cute guy, I had three best friends and a snotty popular girl who hated my guts.

I was normal on the outside. But sometimes I felt so separated from everybody else that I wished I was normal on the inside, too.

Because of this, unbeknownst to my parents, I had started doing research, trying to find hints of other people with abilities like mine out there in the big wide world. I had turned to the Internet. And so far? A lot of nothing. I sped-read through about ten articles each morning (another weird ability I had) and I had come up with a few men or boys who were unusually strong or fast for normal humans or who had done weird things in fits of adrenaline.

And that was about it.

Were they hiding like I was? Surely I couldn't be the first human born with this mutation, or the only one. The very prospect of such aloneness frightened me.

"Morrigan Autumn Kent, you're going to be late for school!" my mother called up the stairs, startling me. I checked the clock - shit.

"Coming, Mom!" I called, and started gathering my stuff together from around my room, which was decorated in rock band posters and astronomy star charts. I took my electric guitar to school with me, and I stuffed my gameboy and about five different books for extracurricular reading into my bulging black backpack - an eclectic mix of poetry, philosophy, classical literature, contemporary literature, and death and the occult.

And then I was ready. The important things were all there.

Yeah, my name was Morrigan Autumn Kent. Weird name, right? My parents picked it because they'd adopted me from a Metropolis charity when I was three, on a date pretty close to Halloween. Morrigan was alternately an ancient goddess of war who took the form of a crow - our Smallville town symbol - and a monster in female form. That was right, they'd named me after a crow monster, just like any loving parents would. On a cooler note, Morrigan also meant "phantom queen" in Irish Gaelic. Autumn was, of course, similarly Halloween themed.

All complaints aside, I had to admit, it had a certain ring to it. "Morrigan Kent." It fit. It was just bizarre enough to be kind of cool. No one else had that name. I was still coming to terms with the idea that sometimes, even when it came to forced gratefulness over Thanksgiving dinners, my parents did in fact know what they were doing.

I went downstairs into the kitchen - checkered curtains, a hutch full of antique china, honey wood, and sunny yellow and white color shades - and began gathering together the ingredients to make oatmeal with little pieces of cut up fruit put into it.

"What on earth are you wearing?!"

I winced as my Mom's voice came from behind me, and turned slowly around. The question was rhetorical, because my Mom could see plainly what I was wearing. That was the problem. "What are you wearing?" meant "Don't wear that."

I was dressed up in black combat boots, black lacy hose, a tiny dark skirt, and a black blouse that just squeezed past the dress code standards.

I thought the outfit looked good on me. I was tall, slim, rangy, and elegant with pale skin, brunette hair tied up in a clip at the back of my head, and blue eyes. The color black suited me, as did the body revealing clothing. "I thought I looked good," I protested feebly.

"You know that's not the problem. Morrie, you can't wear that to school," said my mother, flabbergasted. "It's inappropriate!"

"But Mom, it makes me look hot," I complained.

"Who are you trying to impress?" My Mom became canny.

"Why do I have to be impressing someone?" I said, straightening and lifting my chin. "Why can't I just want to look nice for me?"

"Honey, a girl only dresses like that for one reason, and it's to impress someone." My Mom's hands were on her hips. "Now fess up. Who is it?"

I glared at her for a moment - and then slumped. "Okay, so there's this boy. His name's Justin. He's an artist. And he's this pretty boy with messy brown hair and beautiful dark eyes, and he's kind of perfect, and - And I really want to look good for him. I want to seem cool," I admitted.

My mother chuckled. "You know, if he's the right guy for you, you shouldn't have to dress up to impress him. That should happen on its own."

"Mom, did you ever even go to highschool?" I asked disbelievingly. "Do you not remember what high school boys are like?"

"I remember all too well. That's why I'm worried," said my mother flatly. She went to the coffee pot. "I warned you to change, so I'm not to be blamed when your father comes in here. Is this why you wanted that waitressing barista job at The Beanery in town? So you could afford to buy clothes like that?"

"... Maybe," I muttered. My mother looked amused. She wasn't the one I had to worry about.

Speaking of which, just as I was sitting down at the table for breakfast, my father came into the farmhouse, dusty and fresh from work in the fields. "Well, good afternoon, sleepyhead -" he began teasingly, and then he stopped, staring at me. "What the hell happened to my little girl?" were the first words out of his mouth.

I winced again. My parents were still living in an age that had ended years ago - the age when I was my mother's little helper cooking and baking in the kitchen, and my father's little tomboy who went on fishing trips with him.

"She grew up and started going to highschool and decided she wanted to impress some boy," said my mother in amusement, handing Dad his morning cup of coffee.

"Morrigan, you are going back up there to change, because you are not dating until you are at least thirty." My Dad pointed at me.

"Dad, that is an overprotective misogynistic view of women as delicate possessions who can't make decisions for themselves and need to be saved from grossly stereotyped men -" I began loudly, and my father rolled his eyes and sat down at the table with his coffee.

"Oh, forget it," he muttered.

"So, I guess this would be a bad time to ask you if I could play roller derby up in Metropolis," I hypothesized.

"You guess right." My father glared at me. "Morrie, you could lose control and hurt someone. We've already have this conversation."

"Alright, alright, I get it," I sighed. Little known to my parents, I had already lied about my age and signed up for adult roller derby up in Metropolis. I lied and said I had extra shifts at work, then speed ran up there and back twice a week after school. I was the Raven Crush.

And I hadn't hurt anybody. My control was perfect. If I could play an instrument without breaking it, I could do roller derby without killing anybody. My parents were just paranoid. There was a frightened lack of trust in my ability to control my own powers there, hidden underneath the surface.

"Now, don't forget, I have class tonight, so you two are on your own," said my mother sternly. She was taking night classes at the local Smallville community college. "Morrigan, make dinner for your father so he doesn't order pizza, okay?" she added despairingly.

"Will do. We might have to eat a little late. I won't be home till after work," I said.

"I can wait," said Dad. "I have some things in the barn I want to finish up anyway."

Suddenly, a horn honked from outside. "You'll be late!" my Mom said, and I grabbed my backpack and ran at low speeds out the front door, to the two cars parked in front of my house. Whitney's held Whitney, Lana, Emily, and Chloe, while Dustin's held Dustin and Pete.

Lana, Emily, and Chloe were my best friends. Whitney, Dustin, and Pete were their respective boyfriends. I was the only one who was still single. Don't even talk to me about how depressing that was.

"Whoa, how did you get that outfit past your parents?" said Chloe, grinning, as I swung myself into the car.

"I pleaded with my Mom for sympathetic mercy and gave my Dad a feminist rant," I said, putting down my stuff and straightening. "Like a pro."

Emily laughed. "Nice, I'm impressed," said Chloe, amused.

"Hey, Kent. When are you going to fix up that hunk of junk and stop hitching rides from me?" Whitney asked from the driver's seat.

"Do not insult my baby!" I said heatedly. I had a broken down old Mustang out near the barn that I was still working on fixing up - also bought in part by my waitressing money. I'd gotten it for cheap from a neighbor who wanted to get rid of it. My ultimate goal was to rid myself of the embarrassment and dependency inherent in someone else having to drive me everywhere. "He is a work in progress!"

"He? You're in love with your car? I thought you were in love with Gaines," said Whitney, as we drove past the corn fields in a cloud of dust toward Smallville's main center.

"I'm in love with both of them," I said firmly. "It's complicated, okay?"

"Isn't all love complicated?" Lana laughed. "I can feel you, Morrigan."

Lana had been my first childhood friend. We were neighbors and we'd discovered that I was allergic to the green meteor rock inside her favorite necklace. Her parents had died in a meteor shower that had hit town twelve years ago, and she'd stopped wearing the necklace she remembered them by just to protect me. Later, we'd had many conversations in front of her parents' graves about what it was like being an orphan.

Still, even with all that, only my parents called me Morrie.

Lana had in turn introduced me to Emily. I'd saved Emily and Lana from drowning one day and that had cemented our friendship. I'd been the one assigned to show Chloe around school when she moved to Smallville in junior high. Chloe had wanted to see my farm because she was a Metropolis City girl and she'd thought she was moving to a town full of Amish people, and we'd discovered at my home that we had too much in common not to become friends.

"I'm just amazed you managed to figure out how to work the thing by yourself," Emily commented, referring to my car.

"Don't congratulate me, my baby doesn't run yet," I said dryly. "After doing mechanical engineering with the robotics team, fixing up a car is not that hard. Especially with my Dad to help me. I mean, he works on tractors all the time, you know? It's something we can do together."

"Guess so," Emily admitted.

We got to school and stood around in front of the main building, talking before homeroom. Pete and Chloe were planning on going vintage to the homecoming dance, Whitney hadn't finished his English paper till two AM the night before it was due, Pete was trying out to become a jock to avoid the yearly Scarecrow freshman boy hazing ritual even though Dustin and Whitney assured him it would never happen to one of their friends.

Dustin and Whitney were both already jocks. Pete was a bit of a nerd. Chloe was Torch editor with a future in investigative reporting, Lana was an artsy cheerleader, and Emily was a science geek.

"Hey, speaking of the homecoming dance…" Chloe pointed behind me. I turned around and there he was: Justin Gaines. He smiled in a friendly sort of way and said hi to someone on his way past them. Messy brown hair fell into dark eyes and he smiled, and there was his slim body underneath his sweatshirt, and everything inside me just tingled.

"Go! Go!" Lana and Whitney were the traitors who pushed me forward, directly into Justin's path. I stumbled in surprise, righting myself.

"Hey, Kent, you okay?" Justin laughed, grabbing me by the shoulders and straightening me.

"Uh - yeah, thanks. Hi, Justin." I could feel the warmth of his hands from over my shirt; he removed them. I curled a strand of hair back behind an ear, clutched my morning schoolbooks, sighed, blushed and smiled. I probably looked like an idiot. "How - how's your latest piece for The Torch coming along?"

It was how we'd met. Justin drew comics for the same school paper I wrote opinion pieces for. He was insanely nice, really artistic, very smart, and he read romance novels. What more could a girl ask for?

"Oh, it's coming. It's not perfect yet." He shrugged, smiling.

"I'm sure it's great," I said, smiling back. "So -?"

Just then, Felice Chandler, head of the drama club, swooshed perfumed blonde hair on her way past us with her posse. "Hey, Kent. Trying to look cool, are we? That's simply adorable," she simpered. "Must be hard for someone as ugly as you." Her posse giggled.

And then she was gone, leaving me humiliated in her wake. The moment with Justin had passed.

The horrible part was, Felice Chandler envied me. Lana had told me once that all the popular girls hated my ability to be my weird, unique self. They got all the guys, but I in turn supposedly had something they could never attain. Felice just handled it worse than the others.

This idea didn't contain very much comfort in the face of daily embarrassment, uncoolness, and fear.

"Hey - don't worry about her," Justin told me as they left. "No one likes Chandler anyway."

I tried to smile. "Thanks," I said.

Then Whitney and Dustin stuck out their legs and tripped her and Felice fell flat on her face on the ground.

"Oops. Trying to walk correctly, are we, Chandler? That's simply adorable. Must be hard for someone as stupid as you," said Chloe. Felice flushed, her eyes narrowing, and she whipped her head back to glare at me. Justin laughed and I smiled despite myself. I would never use my powers against anyone, so it felt good, in some weird way, knowing I had friends who would defend me in the face of Felice.

Just then, the bell rang for homeroom.

"See you later, Morrigan," said Justin, and before I could say anything else, he'd walked away. I opened my mouth stupidly after him. For the hundredth time, I'd missed my chance to hint at the homecoming dance. I was too hesitant and shy. Even had the genders been switched, I was unsure if I'd have had the courage to make a move.

Work at The Beanery in town after school was busy, as usual. I was a good waitress - quiet, always calm even on the busiest nights, with a dry sense of humor, good at remembering orders. It helped that I was already hardworking; growing up on a farm will do that to you.

The Beanery was a combined cafe and coffee place, so I had to take all the coffee orders, then make them myself and bring them back to the tables. I was an all purpose serving girl. The only thing I didn't do was cook the food.

"Morrigan, you really have to let me do your nails again later," said Zoe, my fellow waitress and a community college student with shots of purple in her ponytail of blonde hair, as she was standing making coffee beside me. "And some hair dye wouldn't hurt either."

"I can always count on you, Zoe, to be the friend who makes me feel better about my own appearance." I was kidding. Zoe was the one who had helped me shop for my current outfit, so obviously I listened to her a little more than I let on.

"Just trying to help," said Zoe in a cheerful sing-song voice, and before our manager - who also had dyed hair and was extremely bossy and a little bit fiery - could scold her, she took her coffees over to table six.

It helped to look a little alternative at The Beanery. It was filled with couches, armchairs, poufs, and beanbags set around little tables, and on weekends live local bands played. So the combat boots and lacy black hose underneath my waitressing uniform did not necessarily look out of place.

At the end of my shift, Zoe was just ending hers and heading out to her car, which was parked along Main Street. "You need a lift?" she asked.

"Nah, I have to get to the grocery store to buy the materials for dinner," I said. "Plus I enjoy the walk home. But thanks anyway."

I often wondered, later on, what would have happened if I'd taken Zoe's ride instead.

I took the shortcut through the woods on the edge of town near the Indian reservation, and stopped in the middle of the trees, putting my backpack, guitar, and groceries (chicken, gravy, and mashed potatoes, nothing fancy) beside me, staring from the bridge out over the bubbling crushing river crested with white foam. I was calm and at peace. Except for some homework - always easy for me with my physical and mental speed - and except for dinner, I was done for the day.

I thought about Justin. I thought about my research project into my powers. I thought about my newfound tension with my parents. I thought about Felice's bullying. So many books were still left open for me, but I would work on them. My life had a kind of routine to it, and there was no reason to think that would ever be disrupted.

There was a vroom and a screech of tires and I looked around.

Some city boy in a fancy sports car was driving too fast down a back road known to be littered with debris, staring down at his cell phone as he drove. Just as I looked around, he looked up, saw a piece of debris in the road, swerved to avoid it, drove right over it anyway, the car went out of control, and he hit me where I was standing stunned in the bike lane.

I just saw a shot of his panicked face and blue eyes before I was flung through the railing and into the water below. I had mind enough to gulp a huge breath of air right before I hit the water. I felt the car fall in after me.

I could see it sinking through the murky gloom, bubbles coming out of the unconscious man's mouth, airbags inflated like balloons. It did not occur to me yet that I was unharmed. Only that the man in the driver's seat was about to die, and I could save him.

I swam over to the car, peeled the roof back like the lid of a tin can, broke the seatbelt apart, grabbed the man under his armpits, and swam upward with him until we hit open air. I gasped open wet oxygen into my lungs; the man I was carrying did not.

I swam with him against the current over to the shore, dragging him up onto the muddy embankment. He was a pale, ghostly whitish-blue, unbreathing, a cut in his face where he'd hit the dashboard right before the airbag had inflated. I felt his head gently. There didn't seem to be a fracture or concussion. His neck wasn't broken. He was completely bald, wearing dark casual dress clothes, shiny black shoes, and black leather driving gloves. He was tall, trim, and fit, the kind of well-cared-for that hinted at money.

I pumped his chest and breathed into his mouth, over and over again, applying CPR, trying to get him to breathe again. I'd taken several first aid and CPR classes. Everyone thought I'd go into either mechanical engineering, political journalism, or obscure classical literature, but I'd always wanted to be a nurse. I'd never told anyone because it didn't fit with the kind of persona I tried to give off at all. A country Christian farmer girl who went on to become a nurse; how cliche was that? First time the lessons had ever come in handy. I pushed, breathed into his mouth, pushed, breathed into his mouth. It wasn't working. Dared I push harder, I wondered clinically? I might break a couple of his ribs.

At last, figuring having broken ribs was better than being dead, I gave a determined pound on his chest.

His eyes flew open and he choked up water, gasping for air. He rolled over onto his side, coughing up water, and I rubbed his back soothingly. "Breathe," I said. "You're okay." He rolled over, and I helped him sit up. "Are you dizzy at all? Blurry vision? How do your ribs feel? Can you move around?"

"I - I think I'm fine," he managed. Well, damn. That was a miracle.

Only then did it occur to me how crazy the past few minutes had been. I had reacted so calmly, it was a little strange. Like I'd already done it a million times before - saved people, I mean.

The man looked over at me, and I saw surprise and something else pass across his face. He gave me the up-and-down - my body got the once-over treatment. I was soaking wet and my clothes hadn't left much to the imagination to begin with. He seemed to have a working penis. The problem was, he had to be in his late twenties.

"You saved me," he said, which was obvious by this point. Then: "Didn't I hit you?"

"No, I jumped out of the way in time and then went into the water after you," I lied on reflex. "If you'd hit me, I'd be -" And that was when realization hit me. I looked backward at the gnarled remains of the bridge railing. My back had done that. "I'd be dead," I realized.

I thought of the broken seat-belt, the torn-off roof of the car, the panicked expression on the man's face and the way he realized he'd hit me right before he blacked out. Shit. I was totally unharmed. Shit shit shit shit shit.

A crueler person might have thought that I should have let him die, but despite all my sharp wit and disillusioned observations and budding teenage-ness, that thought didn't occur to me until years later. And even then I didn't really mean it.

"So how old are you and how old are you supposed to be?" I turned back to look at the man, who seemed to have recovered his sense of sarcasm. Right now, at least, he was taking my story at my word, perhaps because it had all happened so fast and he'd hit his head so hard that he didn't really believe in himself. "Because you're either sixteen or you're thirty and I can't tell which."

"Fifteen, twenty-three, in that order," I said brusquely, standing.

"Got it," he said, amused. That seemed to mean to him that I was to be looked at respectfully and was completely hands-off. He stopped staring at my cleavage. So I hadn't saved a total dick.

"You stay here," I said. "I'm going to go get my cell phone and call an ambulance. Your head is still bleeding and I'll be very surprised if I didn't break at least one of your ribs."

"Really?" He seemed surprised.

"You nearly died," I said flatly. "I had to pound on you to wake you up."

"I… felt safe the entire time. Protected," he admitted. He seemed a little dazed. Maybe he did have a concussion.

"Wait here," I commanded, and trudged through the sludge toward my cell phone in the backpack up on the bridge.