Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(19)

The revving of an engine outside the house.

His parents were at a town hall meeting about the proposed stop-and-search law, and he didn’t expect them back for hours. Alarmed, Clark hurried back into his bedroom to look out the window, but he didn’t see anything in the darkness.

Weird, he thought, staring out at the still farm.

When he finally turned away from the window, he looked at his applied physics textbook. It was ruined. He turned one of the charred, blackened pages, and it broke off in his hand.

Had he really just started his textbook on fire with his stare?

Clark shook his head, trying to will away this possible new power. Being able to see through walls seemed mostly like a good thing. Same with his super-hearing. And his speed and strength.

But shooting lasers out of his eyes?

So much for studying, he thought, looking down at the scorched rug near his desk. And how was he going to explain these burn marks to his mom?

She was going to kill him.

He picked up his cell to call Lana. She was in the same applied physics class. Maybe he could borrow her book tomorrow after school. He knew that the information in this chapter would be on the final, and he needed to ace it in order to secure an A in the class. Clark was just about to call Lana when he heard voices outside.

He set down his phone and went to the window again.

Nothing but darkness.

His super-hearing was picking up a conversation a good distance from the house. He slipped on his shoes and hurried outside to investigate.

When he was halfway across the farm, he spotted a man dressed in jeans and a cowboy shirt moving toward the old barn with an ax.

Clark froze. “Hey!” he shouted. “What are you doing here?”

Now he saw two more men, dressed similarly, emerging from the crater in front of the old barn. One was carrying a metal-detector wand. The men looked at Clark, and he looked at them, and for several pregnant seconds, no one moved. Clark felt his heart pounding in his chest.

Intruders were on his property.

And one had an ax.

For the first time in his life, he felt a flicker of legitimate fear. It wasn’t a fear of the men, exactly. That they might hurt him. No, he feared for his parents. What if he were across town right now and his parents were home? What would they do? How would they protect themselves?

An anger swelled inside Clark, and he shouted, “Get off our property! Now!”

As the men scurried, Clark felt another buzzing in his head. A warmth rising, quicker this time. A flash of red filling his vision.

Just as he went to turn his head, another laser shot out from Clark’s eyes, torching the dry grass to his right. A small fire sprang up, and Clark quickly stamped it out.

His powers were out of control at the worst possible time.

Clark jogged toward the hay shed, where his dad kept many of the farm tools, and rummaged around, looking for something to scare the men off with. He emerged with an old, rusty scythe. He perched it on his shoulder and began marching toward them. One of the men was backing up in an old white pickup truck that looked vaguely familiar. The front grille was badly dented, and the driver’s-side door was painted gray.

These guys were burglars, Clark reasoned. They’d come here to steal farm equipment. It was something that occasionally happened in Smallville.

But no one had ever tried to steal from the Kent farm.

“You hear me?” Clark shouted across the dark farm as he closed in on the men. “Get out of here! Before I call the cops!”

One of the men emerged from behind the old barn on a dirt bike and darted directly at Clark, the lone headlight nearly blinding him.

Clark quickly retreated into the hay shed to run through his options. His powers had gone haywire, so he didn’t feel safe using them. Besides, he didn’t want to give himself away. But it was clear these men weren’t going anywhere if he didn’t do something. The one driving the pickup seemed ready for a quick getaway. A second was now hacking at the padlock on the front door of the old barn with an ax. And the man on the dirt bike was waving around a bat as he zipped across the farm. He was clearly trying to buy the other burglars time to steal what they could.

Clark had to think of something fast.

After the guy on the dirt bike had passed by the hay shed a second time, Clark quickly gathered three freshly rolled bales of hay and sent them rolling in the direction of the truck and the man hacking at the lock on the old barn door. As the large bales bore down on Clark’s targets, he raced across the farm toward the small front-end loader his dad had recently purchased.

In a fraction of a second, he had the loader roaring to life and was driving it directly at the man on the dirt bike. The first hay bale exploded against the pickup truck, nearly tipping the vehicle on its side. The second narrowly missed the man with the ax just as he broke through the padlock.

The man panicked and dove into the bed of the truck, which ground into reverse, then shifted forward, clunking over a long, uneven stretch of dead grass and off the Kent property.

The man on the dirt bike noticed the others retreating and swerved back toward the main road. Clark stopped the front-end loader and hopped down to watch the battered pickup and dirt bike speed down the road, out of sight.

The burglars hadn’t been able to steal anything from the farm, but Clark knew something far more important had been lost.

All his life this place had been his escape.

His safe space.