Pride's Rock HF

By Mufasa

Pride’s Rock
Prologue
July 2000: Shortly after the WHC/GHC battle against Darkheart at Area 51 (As told in “The Hunt.”)
The wound should ultimately be fatal. Collapsing lung. Pierced stomach. Severed spinal cord. Internal and external bleeding. Most men would die instantly, but Grover knew Khalid wouldn’t die yet. As Raphael told him earlier, that would ruin the ending. As he absorbed Excalibur back into his skin, Grover knew he already had what he needed to set things into motion – the blood of the Purified. Once he completed the next step, Khalid’s fate would be sealed and Grover would go on to fulfill his own destiny.
Around him was a nice soothing rain that fell to the ground below where it steamed up from the heat stored within the dark soil. After all, it had been well over 100 degrees here and no rain had previously in sight. Elsewhere around the region they were talking about how this was a freak occurrence, but Grover knew it was no accident. She did it. She was the one that had made the rains fall.
Lightning struck through the air in front of him, knocking him backwards and causing him to blink to clear his field of vision. He stood still while he waited for his eyes and ears to recover. Once they did, he could see her floating in front of him in that white dress – that same white dress she was wearing the day she died. The rain didn’t touch her. It was as if she had a shield of her own of some kind that kept it from ruining her beautiful appearance. If she was shielded however, it was one unlike any he had seen. While the wind whipped at her dress and golden hair, the rain had no power at all to mar her beauty. It was as if the very weather itself wanted only to enhance her appearance. The wind and lightning were her fury. The rain was her tears. She reached her hand out to him. “Don’t do this, Michael. Please…”
Grover lifted silently from the ground and flew towards her passing through as if she were illusion.
“Think about what you are doing to yourself. Think about us.”
He continued to fly past, ignoring her plea.
“Think about your, son Christian.”
Grover paused in the air and turned back toward his mother to smile. It wasn’t a smile of pleasure, but one of recognition. His eyes expressed too much of a sincerity – and this fact alone, that he could do this thing of his own free will illustrated just how evil he had become. That was when Carolyn Norris realized that despite the “wrapping”, the creature was not her son, but rather only a part of him. The deepest, darkest side of him that had thrived without the balance of ethics or morality. No compassion. Unfettered hatred. She hardly recognized him. Shocked and hurt, she watched him fly off.
“There was never anything you could do, my dear,” the HellGoat said to her from behind. “He is my puppet, as your father and his father before him and so on.”
“Only a bastard like you could get me to roll around in my grave,” Carolyn spat to him. “What goes around comes around.”
“Unless you are a full-time Elohim and chaos elemental who can manipulate probabilities, which you most assuredly are not,” the HellGoat sneered. “You are just a long-dead psychokinetic that uses her pathetic mutant gifts to give herself some semblance of her vanished life.”
“The mistake you make, Raphael, is that you forget that you aren’t God.” Carolyn said as she faded away.
“Not yet, my dear… not yet…”
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It was chaos. There was no other way to explain what was going on around him, even in his daze. People were talking, screaming, and even crying all around him at once, but whatever they said mixed into an incomprehensible drone. He remembered suddenly the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. The voices were too loud…too foreign to comprehend. The entire assault on his senses was too much. All of them. Their voices. Their heartbeats. Their scents. Too much for him to process too much for him to understand. Why were they all glowing? Why was he picking up bits and pieces of them? Why did he feel so hot? His legs. He couldn’t feel his legs. He was weak.
One of them was familiar, but different. He couldn’t understand what the man said, though. Why was this one familiar?
“Snap out of it, K. Stay awake. Stay with me.”
“//Father?! Is that you?//” (***Translated from the Pharaohan.)
“Shut the fuck up, K… You’re spitting out words. Conserve your breath.”
Were they on a mission? They must be on a mission. Then why is Lord Protector Kailon-Ra speaking in a language he can’t understand? Their scents. Are they on Terra? Why can’t he see anything? Why is it a blur? Why can’t he feel his legs?
“I’m barely keeping him stabilized. His tattoos keep canceling my powers.”
“Mystic shock from Excalibur. He’s subconsciously fighting off everything.”
“I can’t enter his mind. He’s psiblinded himself.”
“We have to keep him awake until we get him to the hospital.”
“It’s a miracle he’s stayed alive this long. Most would have died by now…”
“Shut your fucking mouth before you end up beside him. Don’t speak that way around him.”
“//Beware… the viper… in my den…//”
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Daemon backed away from him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Rune grumble and go on over to see to Byron and Maul who were likewise fighting the effects of Excalibur. Jean was doing what she could to telekinetically keep him stable, even though she was finding that Khalid’s tattoos were interfering with her powers as well. Daemon blinked and wiped some of the blood off of his trenchcoat before he came back. He could still feel the kick of his powers, which was definitely a good sign as far as Khalid went.
“Gabe,” Sharon asked. “You okay?”
“It’ll take more than a little blood to faze me,” he said.
“What did Khalid say?”
“Nothing… don’t worry about it.”
“//…looking to destroy… the seed of immortality…//”
“He’s dying and you are telling me not to worry about it?!”
“It’s NOTHING. Drop it, Sharon.” Snakes. Khalid was talking about snakes. The kind that have two legs, two arms, and walk upright. Scythrans. They believe that to become immortal, you pass on your genetic structure and destroy that of your enemies. As for why Khalid would be concerned with that, he had no idea. That was a story for another time…
End Prologue
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Chapter One
December 2001: Southern Egypt
It had been March of that year when most of the remaining Followers had gone their separate ways. (***Shortly after “Shifting Sands.”) With the Toc-Ra neutralized, the need for Followers had gone with it. Those who chose to blend back into society were able to pick up their lives where they had left them, especially when opportunities were provided through Strong Consultants. Others had chosen to stay behind to help convert the Followers Den into a base of operations for Daemon, a member of the House of Fortis they have sworn to protect.
Once the Crimson Dawn wave and later September 11 arrived, that project had been put on hold as all duties of the servicemen were shifted. Personnel had been moved around to meet the newly determined needs of their king and the Grey Hellfire Court. The minimum personnel possible were left with the remaining Followers to continue the conversion of the Den. This led to much slower progress. As the leader of the Followers, Asima was naturally allowed to help oversee the process of the conversion.
It had been long suspected, though, that there was a “secret” reason Asima was permitted to help oversee the renovation. For the past few months, the woman’s behavior had grown increasingly erratic to where she would only allow fellow Followers to see her inside her chambers. When she ventured out, her protégé Zafirah was always at her side. It was no mistake that the Followers always kept the “psi-blind” operatives away from Asima. There was something that she was hiding. The highest-ranking officers knew the “big secret” because their king had told them personally: Asima was pregnant and was using Zafirah’s powers of illusion to hide it. That was fine with them, because what Asima didn’t know was that they had secrets of their own: they were secretly assigned to protect her from Toc-Ra threats.
On the northern side of the temple is a supply room that had in recent months been converted into a security office. The latest in extraterrestrial technology had been incorporated into the system to keep taps on the hallways, the main meeting hall, and the grounds themselves. All flights to and from the Followers Den are cleared through this room and communications are observed and encoded. As with all of the systems, this is vital to the smooth operation of the base.
At 1000 hours, three servicemen by the name of Jalil, Khadij, and Mjnari regularly man the room. As usual, Jalil and Khadij are exactly on time while their supervisor Mjnari arrives slightly late after going over the logs with the previous shift commander. That way, the three of them would be on top of previous events and maintenance tasks.
“One thing I can already tell,” Khadij said, scrolling through the readouts. “Power efficiency to this room has been slowly trickling down in recent days, in particular to the communications and monitoring systems.” He placed his finger on the screen. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that someone has been making alterations and not going through the proper channels.”
“We better let Mjnari know,” Jalil said. “Fortunately, the security measures are still in place and overseen from here. We’re still in control, but it could make it inconvenient for us later. The last thing we need is the King himself doing a surprise inspection and transferring us to the polar base.”
“Agreed. I’m looking at this reading right here and I think it might have to do with the magnetic relay. I may as well go ahead and get started.” The young Pallan lay on the floor and opened a panel directly underneath the console he was working at. “I can at least get this one fixed in no time. I just can’t understand why these glitches are happening in the first place. These are unnatural…”
“I’ll check the communications systems, just in case it turns out that we need them. According to the schedules, we shouldn’t be expecting any shipments for a couple of weeks.”
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The southern side of the temple…
“Your progress has been outstanding, Zafirah...” Asima said. While she spoke, her hands were at work sewing two sections of fabric, both woven from the finest Egyptian silk. Blue. Royal blue. Her hands pulled the two pieces taut before pushing the needle through again. “Ahmed told me that you had convinced Assad to tutor you.”
“When Assad found out I was learning Pharaohan, he offered personally. He goes to school on Pharaoh for half of the year, you know.” Zafirah scrolled through the palmtop that she had been given a few months ago when the Pallans started renovating and adding the security systems. Between the tutorial program and the entire indexing of the writings of Queen Nefer, she always managed to keep herself busy. “I was thinking about going with him next time he…”
“Mkubwe and I already discussed it a couple of months ago. Both of us agreed that visiting the Military Academy on Pharaoh would be beneficial to your training as a future leader of the Followers. It was an opportunity that I wish I was able to have when I was your age.”
“Oh? But what about… um…”
“By February, I doubt I will be pregnant anymore. And…” she paused. “I will not be raising the child.”
Zafirah dropped the palmtop on the table. THIS was news to her. “Asima?”
“It was a mistake on my part to have conceived him, despite all the precautions we had taken. Once…” she winced as the needle hit her thumb. She should have known better than to be doing something as precarious as sewing when she was talking about something so sensitive. “I am still not ready to be a mother, even after all these months. It has been even harder for me to keep from becoming attached, but that is what I have been determined to…”
“You can’t be serious. The others… We’ve been beyond joy at the arrival. We’ve even been deciding how we are going to juggle our shifts to see that someone is always caring for the…”
“The Sahara Desert is no place for a baby, Zafirah. He will be better off with his father.”
“The First Follower? Him?! You know HE can’t care for the boy. He could not even care for you when…”
“I refused to allow him. That was MY decision, not his. It was my decision to insist to him that there was no baby and to bar him from ever returning to the Den.”
“And he just allowed it? Went along with it? And you want your son to be raised in such weakness?”
“I’m not sure he is doing it so much out of ‘weakness’ as to protect us.”
“From whom?”
---------------------------------
Khadij carefully started removing the chips and wires. In his early days, he had spent many hours working on just these types of technological problems. In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but wonder why the previous shift never noticed this trend or these glitches in the relay. Yes, someone always has to be first, but considering the level of disrepair, he should not have been the first person to notice it. He was, however, the first person to try to fix it.
“What the…” he heard Jalil’s voice from above. “Have you been in the J’nar tonic again? Our security camera just went out.”
“I had nothing to do with that,”
“Are you sure that you are working on the right relay?”
“Don’t insult me, Jalil…”
Khadij heard the door open and Mjnari walk in. He could tell by the quicker sound of the boots against the floor that the situation was far from normal. “Status report.”
“The findings from the initial scan are on my display, Sir,” Khadij said. “Jalil is working on the communications systems while I’m investigating a possible glitch in the magnetic relay. With the nature of the problems involved, I’m suspecting sabotage.”
“Sabotage?” Mjnari said. “We can’t have that. Though, these readings on your screen certainly seem to confirm that.”
“I’ll follow protocol and alert Mkubwe.”
“No need for that, Jalil.”
“Just following protocol, Si… SIR?!”
Khadij blinked. All right… The tone of Jalil’s voice changed abruptly. He pushed himself out from under the console. “Jalil, why are you…”
He pulled his head out from under just in time to see Jalil’s skull explode and bits of brain and bone matter splash out over his own face. Stunned, he looked over at Mjnari who was still standing in the doorway, pointing a smoking plasmoid pistol at him. “I warned Jalil not to get too excited. You always lose your head when you get too excited. Catch!”
Mjnari tossed the pistol toward Khadij. The youth acted out of instinct, catching it. It was only then when he saw Mjnari pulled the glove off and pull a knife out that he realized this was a set up. He aimed and started to fire when the knife hit his shoulder, throwing off his aim. The shot went wild and grazed Mjnari’s ear. Both men moved at once, but Mjnari was the more experienced and least injured. He easily picked up the youth and slapped him down on the console. Khadij writhed at the end of Mjnari’s hands, trying to pry off the grip with his good hand, but his strength soon waned. Mjnari moved both of his arms and broke Khadij’s windpipe so he would suffocate on his own blood.
The next step was rather simple, since a timed device was already planted weeks ago. The security systems would go off line as well as the communications and power supplies for the weaponry. As far as Mjnari was concerned, his transaction with the Illuminati was over. All that was left to do was to ensure that his role in this attack was covered up.
----------------------------
By Terran standards, he was a monster of a man, towering at six foot ten and broad. He remembered his first day at the Citadel when he stepped off the Pallan transport. Between the dark reddish brown skin, the tribal markings on his face, and his naturally fierce expression, the Terran greeter fainted. Daemon knew at that very moment that he was going to like Mkubwe. That was a couple of years ago.
Things have changed significantly since then. The world has changed since then. Mkubwe’s general disposition, on the other hand, has not. He was still just as dark, gritty, and dry as possible.
He watched the servicemen practicing their drills in the courtyard, making careful note of form and accuracy. The officers instructing them knew that Mkubwe was assessing them just as much – if not more – as he was assessing their subordinates. “The third group to the left is allowing their right arms to drag when spinning with the arcblade. Kofi is to have that corrected by the afternoon.”
“Noted…”
“Thabo’s group is performing terribly at the firing range. Perhaps it is time for Thabo to go on vacation…”
“Sir?”
“…to the Antarctic base that is… Sefi, is that a cloud to the East?”
“A cloud?” Sefi looked up at the sky to see what Mkubwe was talking about. Sure enough, it was a cloud. A rather dark storm cloud. “Yes, I think… Perhaps I should have the troops put on their rain gear…”
“RAIN gear? WHAT rain gear? Nevermind. A raincloud such as that in the dessert is suspicious. Have everyone suit up and place the entire base on Red Alert…”
“Sir…”
“And double-check the security system. I don’t want any surprises on the…” Mkubwe blinked. The security field on the perimeter just fell. “Sound the alarm… NOW!”
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“The writings of Queen Nefer are difficult to read here. I suspect that she was confused by her visions herself when she wrote these passages, because the word ‘Demon’ returns time and time again. Sometimes it says ‘the Lion with two Demons’ and other times it says ‘The Lion against two Demons’… and if you look here, it says ‘The Lion as a demon’…”
“It comes up again several times here as well, Asima, this time using the word group ‘Lion Demon’ and here… by the blood of his own…”
The two of them were shocked out of their discussion by the sudden call of the sirens. The palmtop in Zafirah’s hand fell to the floor. Asima’s eyes flashed yellow before she telekinetically pulled herself up. “The defense perimeter fell.”
“Toc-Ra?! But they’ve been disposed of…”
“No… Not Toc-Ra, but someone el…” Asima telekinetically shoved Zafirah into the closet moments before the wall beside her exploded inward. She grabbed the chakram off the stand beside her and the sword off the table.
The sight of the man standing in the hole took her aback. He visually appeared to be more machine than human, though just what kind of machine, Asima was not certain. The parts of him that were human were scarred almost beyond recognition, except for the distinct symbol branded into the side of his neck. “Illuminati…” she hissed.
“Nice to know our reputation has preceded us. You can call me Tighe and…”
Asima did not wait for Tighe to finish his introduction. She swung the sword, cleanly taking his head off.
“Now why did you have to go and do that?” Tighe asked, catching his head. He put it back on grimacing only barely as the technoorganic metal of his body repaired the damage. “Is it because you’re trying to protect the watermelon in your stomach?”
“What does the Illuminati want with us?”
“You’ll find out soon enough…” Tighe backhanded her and threw her back into the wall. Before she crashed into it, Asima threw off her chakram. Tighe reached to catch it, instead finding it pass through his hand and into his chest. “You obviously have not been paying close enough attention or you would have noticed you can’t HARM me with conventional weapons!”
“Whoever said it was conventional?” Asima’s eyes flashed and Tighe’s chest exploded into a ball of lightning, scattering technoorganic remnants everywhere. The chakram landed back in her hand. Before Tighe could pull himself back together, Asima hurled his pieces out through the hole in the wall.
From what she could see of the main battle, it appeared that the Illuminati were planning on taking prisoners. They were capturing everyone alive – not their typical style. She could see Mkubwe in the courtyard deep into a fight and several monster-type fighters at his feet, dead. The only way they took him down was with a blast in the back.
Her view was soon obscured by a rush of wind and a cloud of sand. She tried to telepathically lock onto this new assailant, but instead found the air rushed out of her. Before she could hit the ground, she was already picked up and taken into the center of the maelstrom.
Once the miniature sand storm inside the room calmed down, the closet door flew off its hinges. “Asima!” Zafirah called, as she stumbled out of the closet. Before she could register what was going on, a fist flew out of nowhere and knocked her down.
“This is the last one…” she heard, before they put the collar on her.
“Good… Let’s put her with the others. We only have a couple of hours before he arrives for his inspection…”
End Chapter One
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Chapter Two
December 2001, Genosha
Everyone could see him floating hundreds of feet in the air, looking out across the land. Genosha had a legacy of pain and rage that would have extended for years to come, “had” being the operative word. As of Thanksgiving Day, Genosha was no more. Seventeen million people died that day: mutants, mutates, and “flatscans” alike. According to the news report with video footage smuggled to the American media, it appeared that the culprit was built with sentinel nanotechnology. A single construct. A single monstrous construct that was invisible to nearly all satellite surveillance. A single construct that could sneak up on millions of superpowered mutants and advanced technological security systems on a cool spring morning and wipe them out with no warning except the rantings of a nine-year-old precog.
No words would be enough to describe the carnage. Any hope of finding of survivors had long faded, replaced by hope of finding complete bodies. As far as the eye could see, there were miles and miles of entrails and body parts lying over bulky rubble. Anyone who survived the initial attack was probably shielded by being in the lower levels of the buildings. Trapped with no rescuers in sight, it was a slow painful death by starvation or dehydration. A week ago, one set of investigators were fortunate enough to find a survivor pushed over the edge. Once they sedated the man, they could see just how he survived – by killing and eating his own daughter. That man died that night and no one cared how or why.
Even more disturbing was the scene in American cities shortly after the attack was announced. Cheering and rioting in the streets. Bars and restaurants in Manhattan had thrown half-price parties. Free food was being given out from a grocery-store chain in Tampa. Certain evangelists had proclaimed the attack as an example of God blighting out today’s Sodom and Gomorrah. There was a mixture of reactions through the United States, ranging from glee to horror. The President himself had remained mum on the issue, not sure if he could justify pursuing the perpetrators in his war on terror when the victims in this case used to be known as terrorists themselves. The Joint Chiefs were looking for schematic reports and diagrams. As they pointed out to the president, a weapon like that can be used against any city or country in the world. S.H.I.E.L.D. and X-Force were immediately sent to investigate.
SuperGrover’s reaction was similar to the Joint Chiefs and everyone in the White Court agreed. This sentinel or whatever it was needed to be found and destroyed so nothing like this happens ever again. Even more important was that they needed to find out what happened to Havok, who had been undercover on assignment in Genosha to investigate the Illuminati base in Madagascar. Regardless of affiliation, the general attitude of all the courts were the same – once one of them, always one of them.
Khalid appeared in the air by his side, held aloft by the white portal at his feet. For a split second, Grover remembered the early days when he tried in vain to teach Khalid how to fly. It was just one of those things that would have to wait until Khalid had developed more control. Then again, this wasn’t really flying as much as it was standing on top of a stepping disc hundreds of feet in the air. He must have ripped a page out of Shaman’s book.
“Something’s on your mind.”
“Illuminati, definitely.”
“You think?”
“No, I know. Same warning signs.”
“I figured.”
Khalid’s eyes flashed so that Grover’s energy field was attuned to his. The only energy fields in the immediate vicinity belonged to the White Court and the vultures and vermin swarming around. As quickly as it was locked into place, it shifted back out. “Just like at the World Trade Center. No spiritual residue.”
“A harvest of souls.”
“Exactly.”
“For what?”
Khalid started to answer when he stopped. Something flashed across his face and quickly left. Rage. Intense rage. Reined in. “That is something that we need to find out.”
“Let’s get on it, then,” Grover answered. He grabbed Khalid by the shoulder making sure that he did not move away just yet. “As my Bishop, I’m expecting you to keep me informed on everything. Everything. Not just what you think is important. Understand?”
Khalid nodded and then teleported away. Three years ago, he would have never expected the clumsy newbie to progress so far so quickly. Granted, a lot of it came about just by fixing his “split-personality” problem, but the change was still striking. Admittedly, the thought in Grover’s mind these days was how Khalid moved from being clueless to the one who is hiding something.
He knows something. He knows something about what is going on and he’s not telling anyone. Grover doesn’t like it one bit.
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Khalid appeared on the ground. There were just some things that you had to enjoy about being the man right under the king. His direct subordinate was Diablo, the God of Hell who will just interpret any kind of “order” as an insult. Then, there was Gene who is more likely to offer a lick of his beefy, garlic-scented, unwashed ass than follow any order that Khalid would give him. So, that would leave Gomurr, the Headmaster and the Proctor of the Crimson Dawn who watched Khalid grow up as Mufasa over 5000 years ago.
No wonder Cyclops is the Queen’s Bishop; he gets people he can actually order around! If Khalid starts handing out orders left and right, it is going to become nothing more than a pissing contest. Fortunately, he’s smart enough to know how to be more diplomatic.
“It looks like the dead aren’t going to tell tales in this case,” Khalid said. “Just like at the World Trade Center, their spirits were ripped away.”
“Sounds fortunate in this case,” Gomurr said. “I doubt you could withstand seventeen million screaming souls reaching out to you at once.”
“It’s never been up to you to determine my threshold, HAS it?” Khalid snapped.
“If your lack of one interferes with the duties of the White Court, then it is my responsibility. Not only do I have to protect you, but I have to see after anyone else you might inadvertently…”
“Put a sock in it. Leave the overprotective bit to Grover. He’s better at it. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”
“And as usual, you don’t think of the consequences your actions hold for others.”
“We’ll have that conversation, but not right now. We’ve got more important things to find out.”
“Like what happened?” Gene asked. Khalid could tell he was glad just to put an end to that argument. “The Illuminati built a monstrous sentinel that landed on the beach, turned around, blew chunks out of its ass, and vaporized the island with a stream of noxious gas.”
“No. Last I checked, only you were capable of that feat.” Khalid’s nose crinkled.
“Took instructions from the best, baby.”
I don’t want to hear anymore. We know about the sentinel, but we don’t know how to track it, anything else that was going on, or even how the souls were stolen.”
“If you were a disembodied soul, would you stay around after the most noxious fart of your life?”
Diablo waved his hand in front of his nose and glared at Gene.
“Sounds plausible to me,” Gomurr said. “Though I think what Khalid is getting at is that even after the soul has departed the body, there is a trace residue that he – or I – can link with. At this spot – and at the World Trade Center – there was no spiritual, psychic, or mystic residue. Sentinels are not capable of doing that. He’s right. Those souls were collected. We need to find out how, why, and if they can be set free.”
“And how to destroy that machine.”
“Destroy it? BAH!!! A toy such as that is no match for the God of Hell! I shall rip it apart with my bare hands…”
“Need I remind you, Diablo, that the toy is not like other sentinels. The Illuminati built it. This group released Estophalum on Earth, ambushed the Sorcerer Supreme, and stole over three thousand souls from the World Trade Center without so much as a warning.”
“Yes… These Illuminati ARE amateurs, aren’t they…”
“Jokes aside,” Gomurr said. “Remember that we cannot expect to have all the answers. We’re just here to make observations so we can put them together.” His eyes locked onto Khalid’s. “We need to put everything in its context.”
“Yes we do.” Khalid said. He didn’t like the way Gomurr was staring in his eyes. “Which is going to be harder than we could have ever expected. Even the survivors have had certain memories erased.”
“You mean the survivors we’ve talked to so far.” Gene cracked his knuckles and a fart – upwind, of course. Asshole. “There has to be at least one survivor out there who wouldn’t be affected by a telepathic sweep.” Diablo used his wings to sweep the offending odor back to Gene, much to the delight of everyone else. “The question is just finding him.”
“Or one who just happened to be wearing a psibaffler at the time. Other than Gene’s flatulence, I can’t seem to smell much more than smoke, rubble, and rancid flesh.”
“You’re using the wrong sense, Khalid; that’s why,” Gomurr said. “What were we working on over Thanksgiving?”
“What? You’re talking about energy fields? That’s not exactly something I can turn on and o…” Gomurr raised his hand. “Oh no you don’t! Last time you did that, I ended up running around in two pillow cas…” (***In “Red Morning” *glares at Gomurr*) Gomurr’s eyes flashed and Khalid fell over. Gene caught him before he landed and stood him back up, catatonic.
“Not forcing you on a plane you aren’t familiar with this time,” Gomurr said.
“What’d you do?” Gene asked. “And better yet, how can I do it?” While Gomurr and Diablo were looking away, Gene’s hand traced down Khalid’s braid until it got to the end. He held the end in his hand and rubbed his thumb into it, smiling. A deep breath and he pulled his hand away. Just in time. SuperGrover just landed in front of them.
“He’s accidentally cast himself out of his body before. I just triggered it again. As for how you can do it, it’s not something you want to do,” Gomurr said looking out to the distance. Gene wasn’t trained enough as a mage to see it yet, but Gomurr and Diablo could see the glow of Khalid’s life force. “I can only keep his protection tattoos at bay for a few hours.”
“You didn’t…” Grover said, glaring at Gomurr. “You remember what happened last time.”
“After the way he spoke to me, I was tempted. If we didn’t need him to do this, I would have done it.”
“Done what?” Gene asked from behind, tracing Khalid’s braid again. What they couldn’t see was that this time he was holding a utility knife.
“Cast him out of his body in a way that would have rendered him in a… different state,” Gomurr said.
Grover was more blunt. “Turned him into a big kitten.”
“Sounds fun,” Gene said. His breathing had sped up as he got to the base of the braid. He wanted to do it. He so wanted to do it. All he had to do was one cut… One quick cut… He blinked and put the knife away. “Naaah… Too easy.”
“Gene,” Grover asked, turning around. “Are you okay? It sounds like you are hyperventilating.”
“I’m okay,” Gene answered, hoping Grover wasn’t noticing how Maxwell strained against the protective cup. “Just a little tired from the field missions. So… why did Gomurr cast Khalid out of his body?”
“Sorry… I forget sometimes to explain things to the beginners,” Gomurr said. “I did it so he could use his energy field to ‘sweep’ the area. It’s like a telepathic scan, except he’s not looking for minds or telepaths, but a readout of the living creatures in the area. Then when he gets back…” Khalid’s eyes snapped back open. “He knows where things are.”
“Mighty… interesting…” Gene said.
“Yes… very… creative…” Diablo grinned. He may come in useful when it is time to map Hell…
Khalid blinked his eyes and came to a stand, first running his hand over his head to make sure the braid was still there. He sniffed and then shoved Gene away, growling. Gene sniffed the aloe on his hands and shuddered visibly, mostly to get on Khalid’s nerves.
“No need to thank me for brushing the dirt out of your hair… my pleasure…”
Khalid tried to speak, but only a growl would come out.
“It’s only the third time he’s ever done it,” Gomurr said. “Mind has not yet made the adjustment to doing it, nonetheless when someone else triggers it.”
“I find him less annoying this way.”
GROWL!!!!
“Yes, Mufasa… A definite improvement.” GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! “YOU DARE MAKE THAT OBSCENE GESTURE TO THE GOD OF HELL??!!” Diablo’s eyes flashed and a fireball formed in his hand.
Grover stepped in between them. “Khalid, take your hand off your balls. Excalibur’s sensitive today and the sensation is giving me an erection.”
Leave it to Grover to take it somewhere he shouldn’t have. Khalid growled again and motioned for them to follow. A flash of his eyes and they disappeared a few miles away from their location, closer to where the “flatscan” housing districts used to be. Khalid walked over to one particular house that was slightly more intact than the others. He held up one finger – wait – and went inside. Several seconds later, he came back out carrying a little girl no more than five with ebony skin and tightly woven braids. What surprised the men gathered was that she allowed him to carry her out without so much as a scream.
“K...” Grover said. “Is she…?” He nodded. The girl was okay. He nodded over toward Gomurr, who came and picked up the girl. Khalid tried to speak again, but again nothing.
“What is it, Lassie?” Gene said. “Did Little Timmy fall in the well again?”
“Not now, Gene. He’s still recovering from the spell,” Gomurr said. “And wants to tell us something.”
Khalid’s eyes flashed and Grover’s telekinetic field turned blue for a moment before reverting back to invisible. Grover nodded. “Gotcha,” he said. “One mile north is an area he couldn’t scan. A ‘gray’ area that spans several miles around. That’s the area we need to check out.”
“I’ll take the girl back to the transport,” Gomurr said. “It looks like she had enough food in the house to survive for a few days…” He sniffed. “Or enough cookies! She looks a little dehydrated.”
“We can’t have anyone else know about her until we can get what she knows about what happened.”
“Understandably.”
“K, you take Gene and come in through the far end. Diablo and I will come in through the south. If you run across any survivors, by all means rescue them, but remember that we’re just here to take notes. If it’s the construct, we book. Am I understood?” Everyone nodded in agreement. “Let’s go.”
End Chapter Two
Chapter Three
It was hard to concentrate with both the psionic-based nullification collar around her neck and the drugs coursing through her system. With her being one of the resident psions – even with her telepathy working on a “cursory” level – the Illuminati took few chances with her. She worked to block out the effects of the drugs so she could draw on what little she knew about them. Something…
Oh yeah… Sadistic… twisted… cruel… perverted… Those were all adjectives that Zafirah was trying to remember from the entry on the Illuminati that she browsed at the Pallan database. There was something else about them. A demon? Something about a demon? Yeah… His name was Estophallic… or Estophallus… or something about a penis. She didn’t know. She couldn’t think with these damn drugs.
“Numair… Ahmed… Assad… are any of you there?” she whispered. Her voice was raspy. They must have been imprisoned for hours without water. She could barely raise a sound.
“No TALKING!” she heard before she was backhanded. Her assailant pinched her roughly in the cheek and squeezed her by the neck. “Don’t make me repeat myself, girl. You know what we love to do to women out here…”
“Leave her alone…” another voice growled. Zafirah could tell by the tone. It was Numair, another one of the Followers. She heard him scream out in pain. From the sizzling zap in the air, it sounded like they were using something against him. A taser?
“You shouldn’t TALK, Kitty-cat,” the assailant said before he took it to Numair again. “I might accidentally miss your stomach next time.”
“Only a matter of time…” Numair said. Again, the man shocked him.
“You HAVE no time, Kitty-cat. None of you do. It’s downhill from here on out. You’ll find that there are worse things than being blindfolded and chained by the Illuminati. MUCH worse things.”
“I only need the perfect opportunity…” Numair said. “I know your scent, your voice, and the sound of your heartbeat…” His voice grew more gruff. “And I also know the scent of your fear. I have all I need to find you… and kill you.”
Another zap and another roar from Numair. “You’ve got a big mouth on you for a blind, naked man who is chained to a wall.”
A growl…
“I think maybe I ought to adjust the settings on your collar…” More screams.
“Stop it!” Zafirah rasped out. “You’ve done…”
“Enough? No… not yet… but you’ll wish I had…”
“XEDOS!!! Enough with the prisoners. The Necromancer has ordered that none of them are to be touched until after inspection, when the Vital Soul has been found.”
“Fine…” he snarled back. Zafirah once more felt a backhand to her cheek before the hand grabbed her roughly by the stomach. “Once they find the Vital Soul, you and I have a date.”
“Hell… froze?”
“You bi…”
“NOW, Xedos!”
“I’m coming, already,” he said, releasing her. “It’s only a matter of time, girl.”
“You said… there is no time.”
----------------------------------
Elsewhere on Genosha
A dark figure stumbled forward on the uneasy terrain. From a distance, he was indiscernible from the other survivors on the island of Genosha. He was just another run-of-the-mill man running around with tattered clothing and makeshift bandages on his arms. Even his fingers that tapered at the end to form sharpened points didn’t separate him from the other inhabitants. After all, this island was known as a haven for mutants and mutates all around the world.
On closer inspection, one could see that this man was VERY different from anyone else. His skin was covered with splotches of green moss. Spiked growths pushed through and oozed with a green slime. His pace as he ran was unsteady at best often going from really fast to weak.
“Gotta get… into the sunlight…” he said. He stumbled forward into a car and leaned on the hood. His hand lit up and blasted it away from him with a burst of photovaltic energy. “GAAAAAH!!!!” he called out. He shook his hand and slapped it against his chest. It was burned. Using his photovaltic powers was burning him.
“Give it UP, Breslin!” he heard from behind. Havok pushed forward, this time opting to go furthest in the dark. He couldn’t stay inside the shadows for long, but hopefully they would hide him enough while he continued going forward. Even if this particular Illuminati strike time was not after him, Havok could not afford to stay in one place for too long. “You can’t win.”
“Watch me, motherfucker…” he grumbled to himself.
Shiro Turiyaki teleported in behind him with a kick to the shoulderblades. He fell face-forward into a wall, further crumbling it. Havok turned around just in time to see the mouth on Shiro’s hand attach itself to his forehead. The emplate started to feed on him, but upon sampling the “goods”, ripped his hand back off. That was all the time Havok needed to slap him upside the head with a nearby stone. Shiro stumbled back, throwing up on himself. “Asshole,” he spat. “Almost got my good eye…”
“Just trying to finish what Sharon*** didn’t,” Havok said, this time going for a punch to the eye. (***WAAAAAY back in “Hotwire”) Shiro intercepted it by grabbing his shoulder and kicked his legs out from under him. As Havok fell, he grabbed hold of Shiro’s arm and rolled back to pull him to the ground. The two of them flipped over so that Havok was on top of him ready to punch him. “Little fucknut,” he said. Before he could make contact, a blast crashed into his chest throwing him into a mud puddle a few feet away.
“Kill him,” Hex snapped. The young sorceress shot another mystical blast from her hand, which Havok managed to dash in time. He threw off another photovaltic blast at her, hitting her in the face, before he shoved his hand back inside the mud to ease the burn.
The rest of the Illuminati strike force converged on him, doing their best to take him down. If only he could get into the sunlight, he’d have the advantage over them, but in the shade of the heaps of rubble, he didn’t. He was weak and growing weaker by the minute and dealing with multiple enemies was not helping. His powers – the very powers he took for granted since the day he blew the roof off his parents’ house – were now his greatest liability.
“Don’t allow him to get into the sunlight!”
Sunlight? Where? He spied it about a hundred feet to his left and took off running, dodging blasts and people as he went. It was admittedly a “nothing to lose” situation, because at this point he was fucked anyway.
“Oh no you don’t…” The mercenary known as Lance pulled the harpoon from his backpack. With his ability to increase or decrease the kinetic energy of any moving object, the harpoon shot from his fingers at the speed of two-hundred miles per hour. The force of the impact into Havok’s back picked him off the ground and sent him flying facefirst into the wall in front of him.
“YEEEEAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!” he screamed. His photovaltic powers fired off seemingly of their own accord and broke him off from the wall in front of him. He could feel himself burning as he dropped to his knees and continued crawling toward the sunlight. Another harpoon flew through the air, this time hitting in his back and sticking out just under his ribcage. Blood came gurgling up from his mouth as he finished stumbling forward into the sun and slumped to the ground.
“And now,” Shiro said, taking a sword out of his scabbard. “A little pre…” He stopped, watching as a creature rose out of the ground. “And what is this?”
“ ‘THIS’ is Kafiri, MORTAL,” she said. “And your life will soon come to an end.”
“Well, Kafiri,” Shiro snickered, noting the green slime that dripped from her nose. “I think it is time you got pruned!”
“Arrogance will be your downfall!” she said. With a flick of her hand, vines shot out from the ground below and attacked the group. The fight begun anew.
---------------------------
Khalid and Gene appeared on the far side of the gray area. It wasn’t anything radically different than any other place on the island they had been. Wanton destruction, ruins, and body parts. The usual. The difference here was that Khalid was unable to read any energy fields beyond his range of sight. With his sense of smell being similarly limited – in large part due to the decaying body parts and smoke – Khalid was forced to rely almost strictly on his sense of hearing.
“Got a question for you, K. What do you think of me freeing your neck of that long, heavy braid?”
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!
“So, you’re saying that the idea really excites you?” A photon bolt at Gene’s feet was his answer. Gene just waited for his eyes to clear and then acted like he never even noticed it. One thing that was fun about being the White Bastard was all the fun little buttons he could push with the people in the court. One thing he kind of regretted was not joining until after the separation between Khalid and Mufasa lifted. That REALLY would have been fun. Oh well… He still had Diablo to pick on and even Khalid had his sore spots. “I’m not that kind of guy, K. I only want to fuck your hair.”
The tattoos flared up at soon powered back down again. “Cut all the shit-talk. We’re looking for clues.”
“Glad you’ve returned to the land of the speaking.”
“You should try the trip sometime – and give the rest of us a break.”
“Tired already? I would have figured a raging, hormonal lion-man like you would have more stamina.”
“Your mouth has plenty of stamina, that’s for sure. Nearly as much as your ass on onion rings. Now back to the matter at hand.”
“I think I’ve seen enough of your matter at hand – and the birthmark across it. Granted, Mufasa was in charge, but still…” (*** “The Toothache”… and Gene didn’t see what he thought he saw!)
“Next time we split up, you’re going with Grover or Gomurr.”
“It’s enough to get me cracking up every time I hear you growling. As King Mufasa, you must have had perpetual blueballs. No other reason I can think of for you to be so grouchy all the time.”
“Good thing you didn’t have onion rings today. With all the talking your ass is doing today…”
“Thanks for reminding me.” PBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBT!!!! “I’ve been holding that one for a while.”
Khalid pinched his nose shut. “The people are already dead, Gene. No reason to kill them – or ME – again. At least be humane about it and break my neck or something.”
“You read my file, Khalid. My victims suffer slowly. I’m not making any exceptions for you.”
“And here I thought I was special…”
“Special only in that – unlike my other victims – I take great delight in fucking you over.”
“No, you just want to fuck my hair, not me. You said so yourself.”
“Oh yeah… That’s right. You don’t GET fucked… unless you count what happens to you whenever Grover gets laid…”
“That’s ENOUGH, Gene.” Khalid growled at him. “I TOLD you… That was just a bad case of the HICCUPS.”
“Yeah… Some part of you was hicking up, but not the part you claim.”
“GENE… You win, now cut it out.”
“Since you insist,” Gene said, drawing his katana.
“Not my braid, you fucknut! You know what I mean!”
“Your spleen, right? That’s what I was about to carve out.”
Khalid sighed. Next time, he goes with Diablo. Diablo’s not NEARLY as annoying. “I suppose that all this talking is your way of saying that you don’t see or sense a thing.”
“You’re good at this.”
“I think you’re right,” Khalid said. “The only reason this place even caught my attention was that I couldn’t scan it.”
“My guess is that someone threw a dampening spell over the area. There probably is something here somewhere. The trick is to find it.”
“Like a needle in a haystack.”
“Exactly. The only way to find it is to run it in your bare foot.”
“When dealing with the Illuminati, that will get you killed.”
“Been there, done that. If you want, I can tell you what death is like.” (***It’s true! "Lessons in Vengeance" )
“Why? I know firsthand.” Khalid said.
“What happened those 5000 years between the time you died and the time you were born again?”
“Couldn’t tell you if I knew. Just before I died, I remember feeling like someone had latched onto me and was pulling me away against my will. Fighting… struggling… growing weaker… After that, it’s just blank. And you?”
“I’m not going to talk about it. Shaman came to my aid.”
“Must be nice to have the Sorcerer Supreme to bail you out when you need it.”
“If that were true, I can think of a number of situations that would have turned out differently.”
“Like your being raised by an adoptive family?” Khalid came to a stop. “Footprints. Several of them. Someone was chased through here…”
“Rewind back to the question.”
“About your adoptive family?” Khalid said. “From Wisconsin?”
“Any particular reason you brought that up?”
“Nope.” Khalid traced his hand across one of the prints. “I think Havok’s nearby. Can’t read the energy field here, but the print… well… I just have a feeling.”
“What were you getting at, K? That’s not something you just drop like that.”
“Just interesting that you mention your ‘father’ to the Hellfire Club – and that your ‘father’ mentions you – but that neither of you mention that you were raised by someone else.”
“If you were the Sorcerer Supreme, would you have your child anywhere near you where he could become a target?” Gene asked. “If acknowledging your child would put him in harm’s way, would you do it?”
Outwardly, Khalid seemed normal. On the inside, he felt his stomach clench. Something about what Gene said irritated him, though he couldn’t quite place what it was. “Point taken,” he said. “Ready to track down Ha…” Khalid’s eyes flashed and a growl interrupted the thought. The Cursed Sunblades of Kailon-Ra appeared in his hands.
Before he could turn around, Gene had grabbed him from behind and put him in a headlock. The blade of his knife was pressed against Khalid’s neck, just enough to sting, but not enough to penetrate the skin. “Hello, Khalid. Did you miss me?”
“Release him, now.”
“The way I see it, Purified, you aren’t in any position to be making demands.”
End Chapter Three
-------------------------
Chapter Four
Havok clenched his teeth. For each and all things, no matter how utterly disgusting or revolting it was, there was and would always be a reason. By all means, he should be dead right now. One miniature harpoon was through his stomach and the other one nicked his heart. He grabbed the end sticking out through his stomach and pulled it the rest of the way through, gritting and groaning as he went. As long as he stayed in the light, he had a fighting chance. He just hoped Kafiri could keep them occupied long enough for him to get both harpoons out.
Kafiri initially proved to be a match for them – quick, powerful, and strong. Shiro and Hex were her first targets, both wrapped in poisonous vines and sedated. The rest of the group she tackled herself. Lance was the first one she reached, quickly turned into a blithering idiot with the poison she forced into his system. That opened up Magnum to fire off a few rounds into her, but he soon found her tongue wrapped around his wrist. A twitch of Kafiri’s tongue and the bones in his wrist were shattered and his shoulder was dislocated.
Shiro teleported himself and Hex out of the wines and threw a handful of throwing stars into Kafiri’s back. “Stupid nymph. I already sucked your poisons out of Hex. They are useless on me.”
Kafiri shot off several wooden stakes at them but Hex intercepted them with a hex bolt of her own. With Kafiri distracted, that allowed Xendra to attack with her enchanted blades from behind. Because the blades freeze anything they touch, she proved to be the most decisive person in this battle – until a column of fire hit her in the face.
The King’s Knight, Diablo, hovered in the air with his leathery bat-like wings spread behind him. Hex gasped when she saw him.
“Shiro, you would do well to transport us out of here immediately,” she whispered.
“Not until we get the film from Breslin,” he said. “Leave that to me. I will need for you and the others to keep Diablo busy.”
“ATTACK!!!!” she shrieked as a hex bolt flew from her fingers. The strike team split up, most of them converging on Diablo and the rest to finish off Kafiri.
“I will ensure your death is a quick one,” Xendra said to Kafiri who had finally got back on her knees. Just before her blade connected with Kafiri, several wooden stakes were thrust into her abdomen.
“Kafiri does not need your ‘sympathy’, mortal!”
Nearby, Havok stumbled to his feet with the last harpoon in his hand. Oh yeah. There was an asshole out there named Lance who definitely had the word “dead” across his forehead. Before he could throw the harpoon, Shiro appeared in front of him with a kick to the chin.
“You can tell the delightful Miss Stokes, next time you see her that I’m coming for my EYE.”
Havok ripped the harpoon across Shiro’s cheek. “Why? She’s just going to take your other one…”
Shiro hit Havok in the stomach and brought a knife down on the back of his neck, just above the shoulderblades. While Havok fell down, Shiro got a staff to his face – on his good eye. Grover kicked him out of the way and landed on the ground. “Havok… what the fuck…”
“Get the damn thing… out of my neck… and I’ll explain later…”
“RETREAT!!!!!” Shiro cried out, cradling his eye. “Coward, you attack from nowhere and blind me…”
“You’re right. Not as heroic as a pack of wild dogs chasing a wounded man.”
A wave of Hex’s hand to trigger Shiro’s powers and the strike team faded away.
“Fools! You think to escape the God of Hell! While I should…”
“Let them go,” Grover said. “We’ve got more important things to do. Besides, they left her behind to…”
“She’s not with them,” Havok said. “She’s with me.”
“Then she comes with us. Diablo, pick her up.” Grover helped Havok to his feet. “Glad we found you. I was worried that…”
“You shouldn’t be.” Havok reached down the front of his pants and pulled out a small black case with a square inside of it. “They were after this – surveillance pictures I took of their base and placed in an electromagnetically graded case, provided courtesy of Strong Technologies.”
“Let’s get back to the ship. Gomurr has a child over there who might be able to help us shed some light on what happened and how it did. Hopefully he can explain what happened to you, too.”
While they were talking, Diablo smirked down at Kafiri. Yes… The wood nymph of Madagascar. Havok makes interesting… friends. If Havok had any idea who she was… Well, that would be an interesting development for another day. First, they had to do something about the Illuminati.
Now where were Mufasa and Gene?
------------------------------------------
As usual, she was dressed in the latest fashions wherever she went. Nothing amateur, of course. Just risqué. Always skintight with lots of cleavage. Anything to show off her wondrous curves. With over fifteen thousand years of watching her diet, exercising, and devouring the life forces of those that cross her, she felt she was entitled to indulge herself. It takes a lot of work to look this good at her age.
Malia was originally going to wear body paint today, but instead decided to go conservative and wear a green safari suit. Not the smartest thing to wear in the desert, but once she pulled the bottom of the shirt through the neckline and tied it off, she still looked good. Just one last thing to add – a pair of green elbow-length latex gloves.
Once she was done dressing, she strode out of the makeshift shelter to the center of the encampment, where a special guest was waiting for her. She had seen to it that he was separated from the others, just in case unexpected visitors arrive – even though they would not know where to look. Large men always appealed to Malia over time. They were always more satisfying… especially under her heel.
“Good afternoon, Mkubwe. How are you doing this wonderful day?”
“//Mkubwe… Saharan Detail Supervisor… 4464412//” (***Translated from the Pallan.)
“Yes, yes, yes… Name rank and serial number, sweetie. They’ve been trying that for thousands of years and the most anyone got from it was a slow and painful death. What is this… Day six?”
“//Mkubwe… Saharan Detail Supervisor… 4464412//”
“Just how long do you think you can keep it up, Mkubwe?”
“//Mkubwe… Saharan Detail Supervisor… 4464412//”
“No… Not your penis, Darling, but this name, rank, and serial number business.” Mkubwe blinked. “I guess it IS true what they say about Pallans: they have absolutely no sense of humor.” Mkubwe did not respond. “Over thousands of years, we have devised countless methods of torture. Beatings, starving, poisoning… I was a big fan of the stretch rack and the whipping myself… Hanging you upside down by your ankles isn’t exactly the same thing, Dear, but it has close to the same effect… especially when we cuff your wrists to the ground. You could consider yourself drawn…” She crouched down so she could talk closer to his face, being sure to stay out of biting range. “…but not quartered. Not much for conversation, are you?”
“//Mkubwe… Saharan Detail Supervisor… 4464412.//”
“I’ve always believed the simplest methods are the best. Immobilized – I’ve always loved bondage – and fed through and IV in your leg. Now why would I want to do that?”
“//Mkubwe… Saharan Detail Supervisor… 4464412.//”
“A man like you would consider it an honor to die by starvation, am I right?”
“//Mkubwe… Saha…//”
“That defeats the purpose, though. You see, this is much better. Here, you are open to the elements – the harsh sun that burns and ultimately scars you.”
“//4464412…//”
“Then, when the sun sets, you heal only to be burned again once the next day comes – that is if a sandstorm doesn’t beat your skin. The best part is that we can just sit here and watch you. Don’t you love performing for an audience?”
“//Mkubwe… Saharan Deta…//”
“Yes… a rather large audience… where everyone can watch you whither away… become weak… We can all sit here and watch you and you can wait. Now, what would your king say if he saw you like this?”
Mkubwe stopped.
“You already failed him when your entire camp – and I mean your ENTIRE camp – was captured. What would your outsider King think of the mighty Mkubwe if he saw you like this? Reeking of the smell of his own waste? Would he still regard you with the same esteem? The same respect he has always given you?” She sneered. “Or would he say you are weak? A disgrace to your tribe… UNWORTHY of your rank and stature…”
“No…”
“I wonder what your people would think? Or your family? Perhaps your little Judas was correct when he said your failure would be representative of your tribe’s… inate inferiorities.”
“//Mkubwe… S-Saha-haran…//”
“Are you stuttering, Mkubwe? Just killing you would be putting you out of your misery. Allowing you to live and knowing you have to return is torture enough, isn’t it?”
“//S…Super…visor…//”
“But… that story can change, once we find the Vital Soul. The Mighty Mkubwe fought valiantly against the Illuminati invaders and was only taken down from sheer numbers and left for dead. Loyal to the King of Palla and those under him, Mkubwe courageously charged across the Saharan Desert to free those in his charge and kill the man who betrayed him to the Illuminati.” She allowed it to sink in for a moment. “The one who still hides among his troops right now.”
Mkubwe stopped talking.
“Yes… He framed the others. He is still alive, Mkubwe, and ready to betray again. You can save everyone else and still come out on top. Your image – your name – your honor… All will remain intact. No shame. No pain. No isolation. You just have to do two things. Two things and you save everyone. Neither and you lose it all. You will be the ONLY survivor when everyone in your camp is slaughtered and their souls taken.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Accept the brand of the Illuminated of your own free will.”
“And…?”
“The Purified. Kill him and bring his heart to me. A simple task for a man like you. All you have to do is take him by surprise.”
“That is all?”
“That is all. Now tell me, Mkubwe… Do you accept my offer?”
“My answer is…”
“Yes?”
“//Mkubwe… Saharan Detail Supervisor…4464412…//”
“Foolish… arrogant…” Malia hissed. In her anger, she drew a knife swiftly across his chest. No, she was not going to kill him, but she was going to ruin his life forever. She leapt to her feet and stormed away from him, screaming to herself. The first guard she ran across, she backhanded and threw to the ground. “Fetch me the BRAND, you simpleton!”
“//MKUBWE… SAHARAN DETAIL SUPERVISOR… 4464412…//” he yelled even louder.
“GIVE it to me,” Malia snarled. She ripped the hot brand out of the guard’s hand and slapped him upside the head with it. “NO one laughs at me… NO one… and I don’t need some ignorant buffoon to do my business for me. You like playing GAMES, do you?”
“//MKUBWE… SAHA…//”
“Well, I’ve got a game the two us can play…” She shoved the brand sharply into Mkubwe’s chest. “Let’s see JUST how loud you can scream.”
-------------------------------------------
It had been months since Khalid had been subject to an ass-kicking of this magnitude. He wished he could say that it was because he was doing his best not to hurt Gene or because he was blindsided, but as he would have said 5000 years earlier, neither of those are really excuses. If anything, he should be more ruthless with Gene, seeing as how Gene has the ability to heal himself – a skill which Khalid does NOT share! When it came down to it, what made the difference was that he was facing two opponents at once – two extremely powerful opponents who may as well be gods as far as he was concerned. The one thing Khalid had to be thankful for was that this was Gene he was facing and not Shaman.
As he was thrown backwards by the force of the lightning bolt, Khalid had the presence of mind to reinforce his photon aura. A flash of light and he appeared behind Gene, preparing to bring the blunt end of a sunblade down on Gene’s neck. Not fast enough. One tonfa knocked the blade out of the way and the other cracked against the side of Khalid’s head. Gene’s knee then came crashing into Khalid’s stomach before another tonfa hit the small of his back. Khalid hit the ground facefirst and hit it hard.
So much for sheer experience.
“Just a little reminder in case you ever forget who you belong to…”
“What… You’re my MOTHER, now?” Khalid spat out. He started to crawl away to at least get a little space from Gene to rethink. Gene’s heel came down between Khalid’s shoulderblades and pushed him to the ground once more. “You don’t…”
Gene kicked him in the ribs, the force lifting him into the air and spinning him around a few times before he landed on the ground face-first again. “Not your soul, you insignificant fool, but you… I own YOU.” Khalid pushed himself to his knees. “And I will watch your will slowly wither away as you bow to my feet…”
“Last Diablo mentioned, Hell hasn’t frozen over yet…”
Another kick, this time to the chin. Khalid felt himself do a complete flip in the air before he landed again – facedown yet again. What was this fascination with this demon and his face?! At least his head was still connected with that one. A flash of Khalid’s eyes and the Cursed Sunblades sailed to his hands. His aura picked him up off the ground and he was coming at Gene…
“We are bound by blood, Purified… YOUR blood. The medium of my return.”
“Like HELL I…” He was locked into place, in mid-kick and in mid air. The sunblades disappeared from his hands. The photon aura followed quickly afterwards. Fuck… Mallefus had used Gene to get inside of his head.
Gene laughed. “A taste of things to come. I am returning, Purified, whether you want it or not. You WILL return me to my proper state and serve at my side.”
Khalid’s eyes flashed and the connection was cut off. Fortunately, Mallefus was overextending himself by using Gene to control Khalid’s mind. He was beginning to lose his hold on both of them. Good… Khalid hoped Gene would give the asshole a headache. “I’ll free you all right… so I can turn around and kill your ass dead.”
“You don’t have enough time,” Gene said. “The Illuminati need only one more soul for Estophalum to ascend… and three guesses EXACTLY whose soul that is…”
Khalid blinked. No. It wasn’t HIS soul Estophalum needed to ascend over Mallefus. It was… It was… NO!!!!
It happened too quickly. The short end of the tonfa jabbing him in the stomach. The other end hit the back of his neck. Then, it was Gene’s knee against his stomach. Khalid hit the ground on the side, cracking a couple of ribs. Gene smashed his head into the ground again and again until Khalid was too delirious to fight back. Once he was done, he took out his great-grandfather’s World War I bayonet and cut Khalid’s braid off at the base. “Imagine what I might have to cut off NEXT time…” He jabbed Khalid at the base of the skull with the handle of the bayonet to put him out.
“K?!” Gene said as he felt Mallefus’ hold fade on him. The bayonet and the braid fell from his hands and he checked Khalid’s vital signs. Okay. He’d survive the injuries, but he’d have a hell of a headache and a messed-up face. An Excedrin and a zap of the magic ring ought to take care of that. Fortunately – or maybe unfortunately in Khalid’s case – Gene remembered everything that happened which suddenly put a LOT of things in perspective.
Gene looked up this time to see what appeared to be an image of Khalid laughing. There was a double image. Inside Khalid’s image was that of a grotesque horned-headed creature. A demon. A demon named Mallefus. A name that sounds REALLY familiar to Gene for some reason. If it was what he thought, Khalid was fucked and fucked hard.
End Chapter Four
--------------------------
Chapter Five
The White Court Infirmary: Patient’s quarters
There was a time and place, millennia ago, where the stings and aches of combat were part of everyday life. Growing up as the Crown Prince of Kemet, Mufasa was often subject to what would be hours of rigorous combat training under his personal tutor, Jhakar. While the King would publicly say that he did not want his only son trained to be a weakling, in actuality he was insanely jealous of the boy. Every day, Mufasa would try to excel in some feeble attempt to appease his father, but instead only fed his contempt.
It always seemed that Mufasa would receive a brutal combat lesson two or so days before nobles from the surrounding kingdoms would come to visit. There were many times that Mufasa doesn’t remember, where he was dumped in the early hours of the morning on Akim’s doorway. The amount of time it took for Akim to heal the injuries varied from two days to even a week. During the time, he would have to keep Mufasa either at his place or the servant’s palace where the child would safely be out of sight of the visitors. Ratiki’s explanation for his son’s absence? His son was studying for his lessons.
“Akim” was five lives ago for Gomurr, though he still remembered those days as much as yesterday. He could remember having to cast Mufasa out of his body on more than several occasions to keep him from dying from shock alone. The child was well into his teens before he finally was up to Jhakar’s level enough to keep from being hurt as bad. By then, things had already changed for everyone involved.
“Nothing like working for the Hellfire Club,” Dr. Angelo Torres said. Khalid’s wrist hung limply in his hand while he was checking the pulse. “Plenty of protection… and I never have to worry about being downsized. Pulse is normal. Now to check the lungs.”
“Don’t you need a stethoscope, Doctor?” Gomurr asked.
“No. I threw it out shortly after the latent werewolf gene was activated. My ears nearly burst,” he answered as he wrote down some notes on his clipboard. “Respiration is back to normal. Breathing is not obstructed. Good…”
“I need for you to finish this up.”
“When I’m done and not anytime sooner,” he said. Angelo lifted up one eyelid and then the other, both times checking the dilation of the pupil. “I have a little girl suffering from dehydration to see after, a young man who is turning into a vegetable, and a what’s-it that is doing who knows what.”
“Then you have more important things to be doing than checking on him.”
“With all due respect, his condition was the worst.”
“Which is not the case now,” he said. “Clean bill of health?”
“Other than a mild case of catatonia brought about by your healing spell… Yes, though he might have short term memory loss from the head trauma. May I ask what you are going to do?”
“No, now go see to your other patients.”
“Fine, but if things get out of line, I will ask you to leave.”
“Good bye, Doctor,” Gomurr said. “I have business to attend to.” Once Angelo left, Gomurr ran his hand across Khalid’s forehead. He tipped Khalid’s head over and touched the spot of skin above the base of his neck where Gene had cut away the braid next to the scalp. Six years of hair growth gone in a blink of the eye. A wave of his hand and the mage put a sealing ward across the door and windows. No interruptions. No unexpected visitors. This had to be done quickly to be successful. Gomurr’s eyes flashed.
Khalid jerked awake and started to sit up. While he was still disoriented, Gomurr pinched him sharply beneath the chin and grabbed him by the ear. Khalid grabbed Gomurr’s wrist in front of him and started to pull it away when Gomurr started massaging his ear. Khalid’s eyes rolled upwards and he fell back against the cot, twitching and moaning. Within seconds, a contented and inhuman purring noise filled the room.
“Good morning, Khalid. I hope you had a nice rest.”
“Morning, Gomurr…” he groaned.
“I doubt you remember this from your Egyptian days because you were so young, but your nurse-servant used to massage your ear just like this to keep you from crying while you were teething. Just one ear.” Gomurr slowly released Khalid’s chin and started massaging the other ear as well. Khalid’s muscles tensed sharply and then slacked so they were not twitching any more. His breathing grew deeper and his eyelids lazily closed halfway. The purring noise from his throat grew so loud that the nurses walking around outside the room talked about how their bones were vibrating with each breath. “As you know, massaging both ears has a stronger effect. My assistant Yasmin discovered it by mistake while I was doing your royal tattoo and piercing. Normally, it had been practice for someone to restrain the toddlers while we performed the public ritual, but that wasn’t necessary with you. You just lied back contentedly and let me do it. Your grandfather praised it as a remarkable display of strength and tolerance for a future king of Kemet. I never did tell him the truth because I was afraid he would use it against you.”
“Like you are now…” Khalid said.
“It was an early indication of your heightened senses, Khalid, and how they are linked to the rest of your nervous system. I know you, child, because I watched you grow up the first time. I don’t forget.”
“Let go right now… and I’ll forget it ever happened.”
“You can’t even lift a finger to stop me,” he answered. “You don’t realize it, but there are even worse ‘hotspots’ I know about. One in particular would leave you docile for days. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”
“Get to it already.”
“If you are worried about someone else using this against you, you shouldn’t be. You outgrew the ‘total paralyzation’ reflex shortly after you hit puberty. You can’t fight me off right now because your nervous system is still recovering from the healing spell I cast on you. This is another form of sensory overload.”
“Wait until I shove my sunblade up your…”
“You see, Boy, I know secrets myself. I know secrets about nearly everyone in every court. These are secrets that I can use against the person if I choose. You are stuck here, not because I had to outsmart or overpower you, but because I knew how to make you stay.”
“What do… you want?”
“What’s wrong? You aren’t enjoying it, yet?” Gomurr asked. “It’s probably a safe bet that Grover’s probably having an interesting time trying to concentrate enough in his meeting with Cyclops and Nebula about the construct… if he’s not on the floor…”
“Gomurr,” he said, trying to growl.
“It comes back to considering the effects of your actions on other people, something that you have failed to do time and time again. You believe that you put others ahead of yourself, but your actions don’t say so. Otherwise, maybe those at the World Trade Center and Genosha might still be alive today.”
“Gomurr…” he said. His eyes flashed, but Khalid still could not move.
“I know about your premonitions, Khalid. No one else can see past the black hole but you. I know you’ve foreseen your death. The Illuminati erected this black hole months ago and only in recent weeks has it begun to weaken so others can see through and past it. It didn’t affect you. I want to know why.”
Khalid didn’t answer. His eyes closed.
“Several key events were set into place during that time. The black hole insured that no one could travel to that exact point in time and alter them. Anyone had to go to the beginning and live through it. YOU could see it. What are you hiding, boy?” No answer. “Even now, the multiple timelines become frayed and withered. Two demons are preparing to battle. Estophalum and Mallefus. What do YOU have to do with Mallefus?” No answer. “I KNOW you’ve got a deal with him, Khalid. Gene remembered everything from your fight earlier.”
“I’m not answering.”
“I am NOT going to allow you to harm my friends and loved ones with your antics, Khalid. This is NOT the time for secrets, damn you! Mallefus is so vile and sadistic that he will make Estophalum look like an amateur. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Khalid? Should he ascend, there IS no stopping him. He will be a threat to all of existence. Swallow your PRIDE, damn it, and…”
“You don’t… know what you are talking about…”
“So you know more than the Proctor of the Crimson Dawn?” he snapped. Gomurr clenched his fists tightly around Khalid’s earlobe and dug his fingers sharply into the skin. Khalid roared in pain and his hands made it halfway into the air, jerking with spasms. Blue sparks popped and hissed out of his hands and eyes, but Khalid could not erect his aura. “Your arrogance has turned you into a fool!”
“You DARE play these games with me?!” Khalid snarled, struggling to clench his hands.
“Yes, I DARE. You are NOT the King of Kemet here, Mufasa, but a little boy who thinks he’s a man and plays with matches next to explosives. You know NOTHING of the forces at work… and now are playing with the lives of every man, woman, and child on this planet! If you cared anything for your family, your friends, or ANYTHING, then you would…”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“If your blood is the medium of his return, that means its enchanted properties were used to break the seal. Should that be true, Khalid, every sorcerer, mage, and mystic is going to be after your head once that gets out.”
“If you don’t…”
“He’s messing with you because he is INSIDE of you. Don’t you understand that?! Gene saw Mallefus as he appeared – a visual double of you. The mystic residue all over Gene came from YOU. Mallefus said he owned YOU… and that he would watch YOUR spirit wither away…”
“CLOSE your fucking mouth,” Khalid snarled.
“And YOU plan on releasing him into the world… to unleash his evil on all of existence… using YOUR body… access to YOUR mind.”
“You know nothing. NOTHING…”
“No… It is you who knows nothing. Nothing of what he’s doing to everyone… nothing of what he’s planning on doing to himself. Religious texts speak of him who sits at the Right Hand but forget about him who lays beneath the Left Heel…”
“Gomurr…”
“Mallefus sits like a worm inside your skull working its way to explode out your eye. Despised and hated by all that has life because he is the supreme corruptor, the embodiment of all evil. And nothing is more tempting a target for a creature like that than he who can’t be corrupted. An ignorant simpleton who thinks…” Before Gomurr could finish, a surge of lightning ripped into him. His hold loosened on Khalid and he stumbled to the floor, with streams of blood dripping from his nose and mouth.
A snap of his hand and a stream of plasma rushed out from his hand and slapped into Khalid’s face. Khalid’s eyes flashed and the stream turned back on Gomurr, several times more powerful than before. While the old man was stunned, Khalid backhanded him into a nearby medical cart. “Good one… Turned my energy field back on me… Who taught you that?”
“Your ass had it coming,” Khalid said, reaching for his shirt and vest that lay on the other cot. “And if you ever try anything like that again, I’ll rip out your gall bladder and feed it to you.”
“You’re already being twisted into his image.”
“Shut the fuck up. All that bullshit and you don’t know a DAMN thing. You were just pushing my buttons to see what you could find out.”
“If only that were true, Son… The only reason you got me was because you took me by surprise.”
“Keep your ass out of it.”
“Only one man ever successfully pulled that attack against me, and it wasn’t your grandfather…”
“Fuck off.” Khalid teleported away.
-------------------------------------------------------
Working at the Infirmary at the Hellfire Club was about as fast-paced as you could expect. It was amazing that the Hellfire Club members could manage to come back with bruises and scrapes even just going to the theater. Some people – like Khalid – were in on a revolving basis, though he could never convince him to take the physical. Others such as Diablo were rarely in, which was just fine with him. In recent weeks, Diablo tended to be… volatile.
“What it appears, Mr. Breslin,” Angelo said, carefully scraping a sample of green slime off of Havok’s cheek. “Is that you are being ravaged by an organic biotoxin.”
“You THINK?!” he grumbled.
“Most men would get sick and die slow, miserable, and painful deaths.”
“Angelo, you’ve always had a caring way of putting things.”
“From starvation, that is. Your cellular structure has been changed for the meantime so that it is feeding on your powers.”
Havok blinked. “Using my powers causes my hands to burn…”
“Your hands, which have already healed on their own thanks to the accelerated regeneration of the hybrid tissue. That is made possible because the light from your photovaltic powers is interacting with the chlorophyll to break down the nutrients, water, and carbon dioxide you are pulling from the environment around you.”
“I’m a fucking PLANT?!”
Angelo pointed to the moss growing on Havok’s shoulder. “No… REALLY??!!”
“Why do I get weak out of sunlight?”
“When you’re in the sun, your body gets a reprieve because its main source of food changes from your powers to the sunlight, which has less of an effect on your muscular system. Once it goes in the dark, it goes to back to feeding solely on your powers. You’ve no doubt noticed that you haven’t been hungry…”
“Yes, but I’ve been thirsty…”
“I don’t doubt it. You’ve been pulling water out of the air and whenever you even touch it. Inconvenient in the meantime, but your body makes up for it by repairing more quickly.”
“And how long will this last?”
“I have no idea. While this is toxin that is affecting you like this, I have a feeling this may be more up Gomurr’s alley than mine.”
“Nice words to hear.”
“You haven’t heard all of it yet,” he said. “You remember that lady… er… friend you brought in?”
“She’s not a friend! She’s just… Kafiri…”
“Well, Kafiri… You might want to go see her…”
“She DID this to me!”
“Yes she did, but it wasn’t on purpose… or without cost…”
“What do you mean?”
“Doctor?” a nurse called from the door. “The blood test for the Genosha girl has finished and you might want to…”
“WHAT do you mean?” Havok snarled, cutting off the nurse.
“Her cellular structure is changing. As you are becoming more like her, she’s becoming more like you.”
“What?!”
“Doctor,” the nurse said, handing the medical folder to Angelo. “I REALLY think you should look…”
“Not NOW, damn you,” Havok said, turning Angelo’s attention back toward him. “WHAT is happening to her?!”
“Calm down. Whatever is happening, shouldn’t… shouldn’t…” Angelo blinked as he looked at the medical folder and turned back toward the nurse. “No… Did you run the tests twice?”
“Three times, Doctor.”
“QUIT BLOWING ME OFF, DAMN IT!!!”
Angelo tossed the folder onto the cart and snapped at Havok. “Get off your fucking ass and go see her yourself, then. I have more important things to be doing than putting up with your bullshit.” He stormed out of the room, leaving behind the clipboard and the slime sample he scraped off Havok’s cheek.
Havok and the nurse looked at each other, each with a bit of surprise. Neither of them could remember Angelo ever telling a Hellfire Club member where to go. “What’s his problem?”
The nurse handed the folder to Havok. “Do me a favor, Mr. Breslin. I need to change Toby’s bandages in the next room. Could you deliver that folder to Dr. Torres when you get a chance?” Before he could answer, she left the room.
Havok cracked it open and then understood why Angelo snapped. He left it where Angelo threw it and went to see Kafiri. In everyone’s life, a little heartbreak must fall.
End Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Shaman’s Home: Sierra Nevadas
There was no sound in the room except for the whir of the sewing machine. The Sorcerer Supreme carefully slid the two sections of black leather over the plate. It had been thousands of years since he had even looked at a sewing machine, much less worked one-handed with this particular pattern. There was no point in doing so when he could just transform raw fabric into clothes by looking at them. He had more important things to think about than sewing clothes. So he thought.
Behind him, a newly-made vest lay over the back of a chair. It was tailored to match the pants. Both the vest and the pants he was working on were made from the leather of a translucent gargoyle from Cedrus IV. The boots sitting in the chair itself were made from the skin of the Bat Sorcerer from Bacchus II. Even the black thread he used to make them was a rarity – the small intestines of a suncat on Helos. Those materials were just a few of the items Shaman acquired during his life time.
“Not bad for a one-armed man,” he said. “Once I add the last enchantment – if I ever get my powers back – these will be more than enough for him to take the next step.” He put the assorted clothing in the paperbag at his feet. He’d take them to the Sanctum Sanctorum in a few minutes, after he was finished packing up the sewing machine. This part was going to be a bitch with his arm in a sling. He used his elbow to hold it in place while he undid the latches. Good. Then, he slowly tipped it downward. Once he saw Gene, he let his grip on the Singer slide and it dropped down into the cabinet with a thump, unfortunately mashing his fingers. “GODDAMN!!!!” he screamed before wringing his fingers out.
Gene slapped Khalid’s braid down on top of the cabinet. “We need to talk.”
Shaman’s jaw flexed, much like he was chewing. Gene saw he was staring at the blood all over his clothes. “What the hell did you do? TELL me you didn’t…”
“No, I didn’t kill him.”
“I KNOW you didn’t kill him!” he snapped. “Even without my powers, I’d have known the instant he’d have died. But…” he stopped. “How badly did you beat him… and why?”
“I… didn’t… not really.”
Shaman flexed his fingers back and forth. They were going to be blue tomorrow. He could feel his pulse through the nails. “What happened?”
“We were in Genosha… and he wasn’t matching my wit, as usual… He mentioned how strange it was for you to be my ‘father’…”
“That’s ridiculous. He KNOWS about you. He knew about you when he met you. Same energy field. He also knows about Thanksgiving.”
“He does?”
“As many times as you killed me?” he said. “All right… After that conversation, what happened?”
“A holographic image of Khalid appeared a few feet away. It looked at me and smiled. Next thing I know, it was inside of me and inside my mind and I was beating the shit out of Khalid.”
“Fuck… It’s Mallefus,” Shaman said. “He’s getting stronger.”
“Yes, he’s getting stronger. Khalid’s blood was used to open the seal to his prison.”
“I know…”
“You KNOW?! How long have you known?”
“That’s not the issue. I need to know what Mallefus said… What he was telling Khalid…”
“You fucking idiot, he wants Khalid to release him and bring him back at full strength… and Khalid intends on doing it.”
“He has no choice! Now tell me… WHAT was he telling Khalid?”
“BULLSHIT. You knew he was going to do that and you said nothing?!”
“I can’t interfere. He HAS to do it.”
“He is about to be Mallefus’ bitch for eternity and you were going to let him?!”
“Right THERE is where you are talking out of your ass,” Shaman said. He tossed the braid over to Gene and finished cleaning up around the sewing machine. “You don’t know Khalid as well as you think, otherwise you wouldn’t believe what you just said.”
“Mallefus and Khalid’s mystic residue are one and the same…”
“No they aren’t,” Shaman said matter of factly.
“Don’t you TELL me they aren’t! You didn’t see it! I checked it. GOMURR checked it. Even Diablo…”
“I know they aren’t one and the same because I taught Khalid personally… and the FIRST lesson was how to clean up after himself! Unless he’s leaving a message, he doesn’t LEAVE mystic residue! He’s not that sloppy! How the hell do you think I was able to poke my head around everywhere and no one knew where I was?!”
“Now that you mention it, that IS an awfully ‘me’ thing to do… but still…”
“And all that nonsense about Khalid… Regardless of the circumstances, Khalid would never settle for being ANYONE’s bitch.”
“He settled for being yours for the past twenty-five years.”
“No… he didn’t. I didn’t give him a choice when I used the archangel skins to stop Estophalum from rising the first time. (***No, you didn’t miss a story.) If I had left him alone without teaching him, it would have only been a matter of time before the Illuminati found him.”
“The mind control?”
“To cover my tracks… and keep him safely out of sight of everyone until he was old enough to understand.”
“The split-personality bullshit?”
“Side effect of the mind control. ‘Khalid’ knew little about ‘Mufasa’. I had to adjust it around April when…” he paused.
“When WHAT?”
“Nothing…”
“What happened.”
“The tomb to Mallefus’ seal was broken… and he escaped into a host body where he could recover his strength.”
“You fucking moron. If K’s blood was used to break the seal, who did you THINK was going to be his HOST?!” he snapped. “You told me yourself that his blood was enchanted. Didn’t you think someone could use it to get around his tattoos?!”
“Listen…”
“Shit like this is EXACTLY the reason I’ve got your fucking powers, because you don’t think things through before you act. Because you didn’t open your fucking trap when the shit went down, we have a powder keg here.”
“Mallefus is not getting out until Khalid is good and ready for…”
“Why am I even bothering with you? All this talking and all I’ve learned is that you don’t know anything. I’ll kill myself before I’d ever let myself get this fucked up in the head.” Before Shaman could respond, Gene flew off through the ceiling.
“If only it were as simple as you are making it, Gene.”
---------------------------
The White Court: Infirmary
“The prognosis?” Grover said, coming into the room.
“Other than a little dehydration,” Angelo said shining the light into the little girl’s eye. Apparently the child was enjoying the attention, because she was smiling and giggling. Grover noted that women tended to do that around Angelo, but he was clueless. “Gina’s going to be just fine.”
“Gina?” Grover asked. For some reason, that name stuck in his mind. Why did it stick in his mind?
Angelo reached into a nearby bag and pulled out a stuffed wolf. The girl giggled some more as he set it into her hands. “She’s going to have to lay off the cookies for a while, but she’s going to be okay.” Grover shook his head. He could say something about it, but then again Angelo would remind him that Christian has always slept with a stuffed SuperGrover doll. “Now Gina, I’m going to have to stick this needle in and it might sting a little. I want you to hold onto Lupo, there, and he’ll protect you. All right?”
The little girl nodded, though he could see she was scared. Angelo smiled and started to reach for the IV when Grover held his hand up to intervene. He picked up the IV needle.
“Okay,” Angelo said. “Lupo’s protecting you already. Now, Mr. Grover here is going to put it in himself.”
“Should I wait for you to swab her arm?”
“It’s not necessary. My power kills any pathogens that might have survived around her. Let me find a vein…” Angelo took Gina’s arm and lightly felt around. “Right… here.”
“This might tickle a little,” Grover said, phasing the needle into the skin. Gina started to jerk her arm a little, but Grover held it firm. He slowly pushed it in. “Did it hurt?”
Gina shook her head no. “Lupo protected me…” she said.
“Now, you see this big bag of water? We’re going to drop it right inside of you.”
“The whole bag?”
“Yes, the whole bag.” Angelo hooked up the saline solution and hung it from the rack. “It’s going to make you feel better.” The tone of his voice changed as he called for one of the nurses. “Diane…”
“Yes, Doctor?” she said from the doorway.
“Would you mind taking care of Gina? I have three more patients to see to.”
“I’m afraid that… er… Mr. Hunter left…”
Angelo rolled his eyes. He figured that explained the ultrasonic vibrations. He TOLD Gomurr not to agitate Khalid. “Is the suite still intact?”
“Custodial staff is cleaning up a little broken glass and scattered trays, but other than that, it is fine.”
“Until I stick a foot up Gomurr’s…” Angelo blinked, remembering that there was a child in the room. “…way… in the hallway… to visit him.”
Gina and Grover looked at each other, Grover with a mischievous smile. For some reason, he knew the girl understood what Angelo REALLY meant.
“All right, Sweetie,” Diane said to the little girl. “I think you are going to enjoy it, here. Now, who do you have there?”
“Lupo the Wolf…” she said.
“Lupo? You mean THIS is the famous Lupo? Wow! I LOVE Lupo. In fact, I know a story about Lupo and this little girl. What was her name?”
“Gina…”
“Yes… Gina… a lovely little girl with beautiful dark eyes and tightly braided hair…” Grover watched Diane sit down behind Gina to start combing the girl’s hair. Diane would be good for the girl, he decided. A nice grandmotherly type that will be only too glad to have a little girl to spoil rotten. He was going to watch them a little when Angelo tugged him by the shoulder. Grover followed him out the door to see what he didn’t want to say inside. Once they were down the hall and the door was closed, Angelo finally allowed his face to sink.
“Angelo, what’s wrong?”
“God’s a fucking asshole. THAT’s what’s wrong.”
“Doctor…”
“She survived two weeks on her own, Grover, eating cookies and drinking water from the soda fountain. She had to hide from looters, Illuminati search parties, strange people…”
“Angelo…”
“It would have been more merciful had she just been allowed to die when the sentinel blew up Genosha…”
“ANGELO!!!! What is wrong with Gina?”
“We ran a routine blood test as part of our screening process when she arrived. Gina is HIV positive.”
---------------------------
Shaman’s Home
There is a room near the center of Shaman’s home that resembles more of an eccentric storage room. Most of the things in the room were small doohickeys, small art projects, and other little things that he has collected over the years. An out-of-tune Steinway concert grand sat next to the wall with a dustcover. Nearby was a bookshelf with stacks and stacks of books ranging from “Green Eggs and Ham” to a text on ancient Greek music. Elsewhere in the room, a large floormat was rolled up and placed against the wall. A set of curved blades sat on a rack nearby. What stood out most was the giant Redwood tree in the center that reached toward the ceiling. Most people would guess it was hundreds of years old because of its size and shape, but in actuality it was only 15 years old. It was one of Khalid’s first major projects.
Khalid appeared into the room with a dufflebag over his shoulder. Normally, when he was under the influence of Shaman’s spell, Khalid would not remember any of his dealings with Shaman. That problem was solved once Gene kicked his ass over Thanksgiving. (“Alice’s Thanksgiving Massacre”!!!!) As long as Gene keeps that ring on, Shaman’s powers are down and the suggestion was not in effect.
“SHAMAN!!!” he called out. “I know you’re here.”
No answer. Khalid set the dufflebag down and walked over toward the tree. Even with his powers on the fritz, Shaman HAD to know he was here. “Computer, locate Shaman.”
You are not authorized to that information.
Khalid blinked. “As of when?”
The change was made as of 9:00 A.M. Mountain Standard Time. You have twenty seconds to leave the premises.
“SHAMAN…” he snarled. His aura flared up as he stormed in. “I KNOW you’re here. I can smell you in the room. We need to talk NOW.”
This is your final warning before security measures are ac….
“Shut the fuck up.” Khalid’s eyes flashed and the speakers blew. In response to the assault, the turrets in the walls opened fire on him. Miniature photon bolts shot out of his aura to deflect them as the Cursed Sunblades flashed to his hands. Cords of electricity shot out of the walls to attack him, but he easily dodged them. Then, there were the harpoons he intercepted with the sunblades. “Get OUT here, you fucking asshole. I spent twenty-five fucking years with your ass inside my head. You know I’m going to have everyone hunting me down.” A pack of robot droids swarmed out to defend the room, only to explode soon after. “You fucking PROMISED me…” One of the sunblades spun out of his hands like a disc of light and cut through the redwood tree. After it passed through, it bounced off the wall and crashed back into his hand where Khalid sent it away. “You better hope Eli survives this, Shaman, because if he doesn’t, I will spend every moment of my afterlife screwing you over!”
As he turned away, Khalid didn’t look back at the branches and limbs falling to the ground in the room where many of his lessons with Shaman had been. One of the rifles from above crashed down to the piano, snapping the legs and dropping it to the ground. The smell of smoke filled the room. Not noticing any of it at all, Khalid picked up his dufflebag and teleported away.
Afterward, four jet streams opened up on the walls and sucked the oxygen out of the room. With no air to feed it, the fire quickly died down. Once the air was restored, Shaman stepped through the doorway. He pulled the hood of his enchanted cloak down and phased completely into the plane. As he undid the cloak, his body was no longer hidden by it.
Sound system repaired. Initiating repair of security system and reinforcing structural integrity of the room…
“Leave it as it is.”
Sensors indicate…
“I said leave it as it is. It will get repaired in time,” Shaman said, going into the teleporter closet. “Until then, seal this room to everyone but me. I have other things to deal with.”
End Chapter Six
---------------------------------
Chapter Seven
Strong Towers, Penthouse Suite
Khalid sat in Daemon’s office chair with his hands drumming along the desk. There was no doubt in his mind that Daemon might have issues with his sitting inside his home office like that, but Khalid didn’t care. Daemon was on the other side of the world doing who knows what. Seeing that this was one of the most advanced telecommunications rooms in the world, Khalid knew he could contact nearly anyone in the world over an encrypted fiber optic line. If he wanted, he could just type in a phone number and listen in on calls being made either from or to that line. Gabriel Strong was known to be one of the most thorough people on the planet, trying to account for all possible contingencies. If the general public ever became aware of the resources at Gabe’s disposal, they might attempt to have him deposed from the planet.
While he pondered his options, Khalid rubbed his still tender shoulder from the earlier fight with Gene. There was something that struck him funny that he couldn’t place his finger on. Gene’s energy field was… off. Then again, he supposed that he shouldn’t be worried about it. The White Court is more than capable of taking care of whatever was going on with the White Bastard. He was running out of time.
“Hello, Tracy,” Khalid said to the screen.
Tracy Keenan, also known as Scrib, smiled and her eyes lit up. She was one of the more sociable personalities over at the Grey Court. How in the world someone THAT nice and cordial ever got into the Grey Court rather than the other courts, Khalid would never know. Most of the people in the Grey Court tended to be a bit on the short-tempered, irritable side. No wonder he got along with them so well! “Khalid! How’re ye doing? I’ve been trying to reach ye the entire week! Seti wants to join in the poker game next week and…”
“I won’t be able to make it next week, Tracy. I really need for you to patch me in to Gabe.”
“I cannae do that. He said that he wanted radio silence the entire time he was over there. He even turned off his GCU, which really shocked me, considering all the lectures he watched me give to everyone else about the importance of wearing one…”
“He’s probably still wearing it. Can you remotely activate it?”
“Aye, I could… but would that really be wise? Ye know Gabey tends to have a wee bit of a temper…”
“Gabe? A temper? I don’t believe a word you say…”
“To bother him right now, it would have to be for a really good reason…”
“It doesn’t get much of a better reason than…”
“KHALID!!!” Tracy shouted. “YOU CUT YOUR HAIR??!!”
Khalid blinked a few times. He THOUGHT his head felt weird for some reason! He ran his hand in the back. Oh wait… now he remembers. Gene probably WANTED to do it, but he didn’t really get to do it. Mallefus did it while he was inside of Gene. Good lord… the LAST thing he wanted to think about was what Gene was doing with that braid.
“Well…” Tracy said. “This CERTAINLY qualifies as one of the things Gabey’s going to wanna hear about, though methinks he’s going to crack on your haircut looking like someone hacked at you with a bayonet…”
Yes… Good… lovable… dependable Tracy… being the one he gets along with the best… GRRRRRRRRRRR…
“He’s definitely going to want to hear about it and…” Tracy blinked. “That’s odd.”
“What’s odd?”
“I have a reading on his GCU and where he is, but I can’t remotely activate it from here. There are reports of cell phones and other sorts of electronic communications equipment being blocked throughout Northern Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East…”
“No doubt American military tactics running rampant…”
“Do ye really think the American military could interfere with our signals if they wanted to?”
“Good point,” Khalid said. Illuminati. It HAD to be. No doubt blocking all but their own communications devices. Mallefus was right. “Let me guess… and the Pallan installation in the desert is similarly affected?”
“They aren’t due to hear from us for a couple of days, but… yes… It appears for now that they are isolated.”
“Do me a favor and keep trying to reach Gabe. Let him know that I’m going to be in the area and that I need to meet up with him.”
“What’s going on? He’s gonna want to know.”
“He’s probably closer to knowing than anyone around here. Just… Get him. No matter how.”
“If ye want, I could give ye his coordinates. No one can tap into this line.”
“Don’t bother. Gabe is one man I’m never going to have any trouble tracking down.”
“Whatever ye’re up to, I wish ye luck…”
“Another favor, Tracy. We didn’t have this conversation.”
“No problem, Khalid. I forgot it already… whatever it is, that is…”
“Good. Take care.” Khalid watched as the telecommunications screen blinked off and silence once more returned to the rooms. “Nope… I’ll never have any trouble tracking down Gabe,” Khalid said. “Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to do that just yet.”
-------------------------------
White Court Infirmary; Patient’s Quarters
He sat by her bedside while she slept. Diane did wonders for the girl, brightening her mood and spoiling her rotten. Yes, there were younger nurses that were better suited as a mother figure, but Angelo figured that an older nurse would be better. The girl had just lost her mother and father and a young woman trying to step immediately in the role would have just been painful. Angelo should know. Not six months after his own mother died of breast cancer, his father brought home a similar woman to get to know Angelo. It had not gone well…
While his mutant power killed immediate pathogen outside of the body – and prevented infections in the infirmary – it was not as effective on diseases inside of any body except for his own. It was NOT a power Angelo could turn on and off at will. It was not one he could direct. It was just on “autopilot” and with a victim so tiny, that made him feel more useless than he ever did. As well as he can heal himself and protect his own body from harm, he can’t do anything for this patient. Well… He could do one thing, but it was completely out of the question.
“I want to help you, Gina, but I won’t substitute one curse for another. Sleep well. I won’t let them talk to you until the morning.”
---------------------------------
Lyons Hill, NC
The family cemetery.
Khalid remembered the last time he was here when it stormed. It was shortly after he discovered that the Illuminati had taken his grandfather. No, there was no true way for him to know what was in store for him then, but he was not concerned about that. Khalid was concerned about getting his grandfather back safe and sound. If there was anything that he carried over from his previous life, it was that his own decisions were usually made with other people in mind than himself. Admittedly, this particular one WAS to some extent what most people would call a “selfish” decision, but as far as he was concerned, it was never really a choice. He knew what he was doing… and he knew how to make sure how everything would go down.
“Sorry I had to sneak here in the cover of night, Malik. I don’t want anyone to know I’m here, especially Grandpop. I want to keep him as far away from this as possible.”
There was no answer from the grave, as expected. Khalid sat down on the grass, not really noticing the rain that came down in sheets. The lightning shot across the sky as a column before shooting out and spreading into limbs like a tree branch. Khalid was more centered on the plaque that marked his brother’s grave. They had talked about getting an actual headstone, but it was just something they had never gotten around to. Now, he was about to leave his family with burying yet another son.
“There have been a few changes since last I saw you. No doubt Aunt Carolyn has kept you informed. For a dead woman I never got to meet in person, she’s certainly meddlesome. I guess that means she’s related.”
There was a crack of the thunder across the sky right after that.
“Love you too, Aunt Carrie. I know you’re behind this storm because it sure as hell wasn’t in the forecast. But… Sorry Malik… You know I’m caught in a bind and just right now, I don’t trust anyone. I CAN’T trust anyone. Not really. I can see their opinion going either way. I don’t have a choice on this one. I can’t afford the risk.”
Another flash of lightning.
“Time and time again, I have found myself in shitty situations and pulled through. There was a time where I thought that it would be done in death. I know now that it isn’t the case. Does it ever end? Could it have ever ended? Why is it that external forces who could care less about our better interests are manipulating us from the beginning? Do you always have to be either the manipulated or the manipulator?”
“Only if you play the game.”
Startled, the Cursed Sunblades of Kailon-Ra flashed to his hands. A slight push of a portal, and he was on his feet, ready. Surprised at how high-strung he had become, Khalid relaxed and sent the blades away. As sharp as his senses are, there was no way that his great-Uncle Joseph should have been able to sneak up on him like that. The toll of what was going down was very much beginning to get to him. “Uncle Joe?” he asked.
Although the man looked about Khalid’s age, in actuality he was in his seventies. Between his mutated form of lycanthropy and the talisman he wore around his neck, Joseph Cougar never had to worry about a gray hair or a wrinkle. Khalid could tell that the man had not been out here for too long. “Son, I’m not going to ask what’s going on,” he said, reaching inside of his jacket. “I’m assuming you don’t want your grandfather to know what is going on, otherwise you wouldn’t have snuck here in the middle of the night.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Believe it or not, Boy, I got a letter in the mail just today,” he pulled out a ziplock bag with a book and an envelope inside. “It was from a ‘Red King Nathaniel Daversham.’”
“What the hell? Did Ryan drop dead and we haven’t heard?”
“No… but Daversham dropped dead fifty years ago at a party in Chicago. Fell off a roof. Roy was at that party. Even creepier is that the date on the letter was the day BEFORE he died. The man was a precog.”
“He told you I would be here.”
“He also told me to go on up to your grandpop’s house and pick up the Bible hidden under a slab beneath the fireplace before Roy got back from Zeke’s. He was very specific about my not opening it. He told me to seal it in a plastic bag along with this letter and come out here and give it to you.”
“And you are just doing this?” Khalid asked.
“That letter told me about the curse of the Slayers, Khalid. I know you’ve been spared, but your Grandpop’s soul is still tied to Estophalum along with the other slayers. If delivering this book gives you half a chance of saving it all, then I’m going to give it to you. You don’t have long.”
“I know. What does it say about Grandpop?”
“You leave your Grandpop to me, Son. You’ve got a lot on your plate. Just don’t be going off to wherever it is you are going to go, yet?”
“Oh?”
“If you do, it’s going to come back and hit you right between the legs. The paper got a little blotchy over there, probably because his pen was running out of ink, but I could make out something that said ‘Gene’ and ‘leg’.”
Khalid shook his head. “Don’t get me started on…”
“GEEZE! What the hell happened to your head? It looks like someone took a sword to your…” Khalid snarled at him. “Eheheheh… Sorry… Er… Better get back to Connecticut… and it says don’t kill Nathan when you see him… and don’t count on him.”
“I’ll read it.” Khalid growled. “I can put this off a few days, I suppose…”
(***If you want to know what Khalid was up to, go read Gene’s “Rabid”! It’s down below on the board. Chapter NINE is going to happen a little while after that…)
End Chapter Seven
----------------------------
Chapter Eight
White Court: Conference Room
The good news was that his body had by now adjusted to the changes going on with it. The bad news was that now he looked like the offspring of Swamp Thing and the blond bimbo down the street. Gomurr assured him that between him and Chastity, they would find a cure for it to restore him. Yeah… right… He knew how long dangling plotlines went in the Hellfire Courts. Thankfully, the unstable molecules he was wearing allowed him to breath enough, though it was extremely weird being able to breathe in through his skin as well as his mouth.
“As you guys now, I was asked by Blueboy and Smiley about two months ago to check out the Illuminati base on Madagascar. For cover, they got me cover at the University of Genosha as one of the adjunct Math instructors. Not exactly a high-paying position, but I was never worrying about money.”
“In light of September 11th, all the Hellfire Courts have moved in the direction of counterintelligence. The White Court itself has two specialists with official positions, Gene and Toby, but we’ve also tapped out to our ‘alumni’ and ‘free-agents’. This was all to jump two steps ahead and root out any potential threats before they become threats. SlashR is another one taking part in this project. Go ahead and continue, Breslin, but if you call me Blue Boy…”
“Sorry, King Smurf. Anyway, by using the tricks of the trade and a spy satellite in outerspace, I managed to find the Illuminati base and slip inside their perimeter. Daemon had supplied me with sufficient cloaking technology to keep from being detected. I hiked inward and circled their newest project to take the surveillance photos.” He tapped the keyboard behind him and the individual pictures all lit up on the projector screen. “Because of the number of pictures I had to take to get the whole thing, this isn’t particularly helpful. Then again, it would have been really stupid for me to actually go inside the base and take pictures from the inside. Fortunately, Daemon accounted for this. Keep watching… You’ll love this trick.” He hit another key. “Right now, the computer is downloading the pictures, accounting for approximate distance each time the pictures were taken, as well as analyzing spectrometric readings of everything in the photo. Then, it projects a schematic hologram…” Havok pressed another button so everyone. “That, right there, is the construct that destroyed Genosha.”
The room broke out into a wave of murmurs. According to the holographic display in the center of the conference table, it resembled more of a giant disc than a sentinel, although it was made with the same technology. The base itself was about half a mile wide, using a combination of hydraulics and neural-based technology to operate it. Surrounding the base itself were green orbs that would create an antigravity field beneath it so it could move silently unseen. The armaments themselves were more formidable than anything the Hellfire Club had seen up to that point, made with advanced technology that they couldn’t even pinpoint. In the center was a pyramid with what looked like a large eye in the center.
“How the hell did they get this far on it and we never knew?”
“It’s the Illuminati… That’s what they do,” Grover said. “Havok, did you happen to see it in operation?”
“No I didn’t. After I took the last surveillance photos, Kafiri spotted me and decided to take me down. She assumed that I was a member of the Illuminati, but then learned the truth. After an… exchange, they spotted me and I took off to Genosha to warn whoever I could. I thought there was a window of a few days, but surprisingly enough, that thing came up THAT day and moved silently. I got to the capital city just before it was destroyed. The reason I survived was that Kafiri pulled me under the ground at the last minute.”
“Advanced cloaking technology for sure,” Grover said. “Didn’t show up on radar, sonar, or Doppler…”
“Probably tempered with magic,” Gomurr chimed in. “Maybe even slid into a pocket dimension. No one – except for a few – knew it was happening until it was too late.”
“We have the schematics of this thing, but we really don’t know how it works. The Illuminati were very scrupulous about covering their tracks. No spiritual residue. Any of the survivors that we found were suffering from memory loss, no doubt telepathically induced.”
“All right, then,” Nebula said. “How about the girl? Gina?”
“At this point in time, Angelo has not released her to be interviewed or scanned. He’s concerned because of the trauma and the fragile emotional state.” Grover said. “That is a very sick little girl in there. In the days since we brought her here from Genosha, it appears that her antibody count is rising. Angelo is worried that the stress might be pushing her toward full-blown AIDS.”
“We’re faced between the fate of one girl and what could be the lives of millions,” Havok said. “No brainer. Get a telepath.”
“This is a child we are talking about. We can’t just have someone dive into her mind. The younger the child, the more difficult it is to tell between fact and imagination.”
“We need to figure out something, gentlemen, and real quick.”
---------------------------------------
White Court Infirmary
“Twenty minutes into a grueling battle,” Angelo said. “Gina, the leader of the Genosha Gangsters, faces off against the evil Spin Doctor of Westchester. The score is 75 google to ten. Can she possibly win this one?”
Gina giggled and shuffled the deck of playing cards in her tiny hands. The game had been “war” and the two of them had been playing for twenty minutes. Angelo was down to his final ten cards and Gina was about to wipe him out. As competitive as he can be, he didn’t mind getting whooped. This girl’s presence and enthusiasm was just infectious. He couldn’t think about the disease ravaging her body or the trauma she has already endured. He saw a bright little girl who did not deserve anything that was happening to her. She was truly an innocent.
He put down the King of Diamonds and she put down the King of Hearts. “Oooooh…” The two of them started laying their cards down. “I… de… clare…” A pause. “WAR!” They flipped them over. Two of spades and two of clubs. “Double war…”
“Just don’t let it get to triple,” Angelo said. “I don’t have enough cards.”
“I’ll give you some.”
“It’s okay… I might not need them yet! Here we go! I… de… clare… WAR!” Angelo turned over his card. Three of diamonds. Gina beat him out with a five of hearts. “Ack! You sunk my battle ship!”
“You still have two!” Gina said, collecting the cards.
Angelo looked at them. Yep… a three and a four. “Um… let’s just call this a game. You win.”
“YAAAAAAAAAY!!!!”
“But don’t get used to it,” he sneered. “When Round Two comes up, we’re ON! I’m going to be the winner!”
“Excuse me, Doctor,” a nurse’s voice came from the doorway. “We have an emergency out here that requires your presence immediately.”
“I’ve got to go, Gina. You be good while I’m gone. If you act up, Lupo’s going to tell on you!”
“No he won’t! Lupo won’t tell on me… but I’ll be good.”
Angelo left the room to see what this dire emergency could be that requested his presence. He doubted it was Gene, because the man hated going to doctors. Khalid wouldn’t make his way back here for a while. Grover rarely comes in. Diablo and Rune would probably never come in. That meant… “Christian? What’s wrong?”
“I wanna see Gina… my friend,” the boy said. “I told her I would see her.”
Angelo looked up from Christian to the nurse who called him. Celine shrugged and shook her head in confusion. That wasn’t possible. Gina had never even seen Christian since she was brought in! He also wasn’t sure how the White King would feel about his son demanding to see an HIV positive Genoshan refugee. “Well, Christian… um… I don’t know… Have you asked your father if…”
“No… but you said I could come here anytime I wanted! You promised!”
Angelo sighed. The boy was right. He DID make that promise, shortly after Christian came to live with them. Of course, Christian understood that didn’t apply to when there were delicate operations and medical emergencies to be dealt with. Gina didn’t qualify for either, though. It wasn’t like Christian was going to become HIV positive just by visiting the girl. Still…
“Gina’s very sick, Christian. Before I let you go see her, I need to ask your father if it is okay.”
“You can cure her,” Christian answered. “Your powers…”
“No I can’t, Christian. They don’t work that way. I’m going to ask your Dad if it is okay…” he said. “Computer, place call to the White King.”
The White King is currently in a conference. Place call to King’s Bishop instead?
“No, use my override signal.”
“But you can fix Gina…”
“What’s going on that you can’t call Khalid, Angelo? We’re in the middle of an important conference, here. ”
“Christian has asked me to visit his friend Gina.”
There was a pause before Grover answered. “His friend… GINA?!”
“You heard me. He’d be perfectly safe, Grover, but I still wanted to clear it by you first.”
Another pause. “Let Christian know that he can visit Gina, but that I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Christian tugged on Angelo’s jacket. “Tell Daddy that Gina wants to help him.”
“She does?” Angelo asked.
“Uh huh…” he nodded. “I’ll help him. He needs to help Teacher Gene. His leg hurts.”
“Well, Teacher Gene can drag his a – butt into this infirmary and help himself. Now, let’s go see Gina.”
Angelo picked Christian up and carried him into Gina’s room, where the girl was making Lupo the Wolf dance across her lap. Once she saw Christian, her eyes lit up. Almost automatically, she looked healthier. “Christian!!!!”
“Hello, Gina,” he said. “Angelo can make you better, but he doesn’t know how to.”
Angelo sighed and set Christian at the side of her bed. “That’s enough out of you, Kiddo. Now you two behave. I have my rounds to make.”
“Angelo?” Gina asked. “You forgot the disc.”
“Disc?” he asked.
“Yes…” she looked in her hands. A flash of her eyes and strange red disc that resembled a DVD formed in her hand. “It’s for Christian’s Daddy. Christian said he needed one.”
“Told you,” Christian said.
“What IS it with this generation?” Angelo picked up the disc and started out of the room. “They know everything. They know each other. I feel so useless.”
Grover marched into the infirmary. “Angelo, it’s important. I have to talk to Christian and Gina…”
“They’re in the next room and here’s your damn disc,” he said, handing it to Grover. “I’m taking the rest of the day off. Dr. Morris can handle whatever comes up. And tell Gene that if his leg hurts so fucking badly to quit being so damn tough and drag his ass in here.”
Grover watched the doctor leave the infirmary, still trying to figure out what in the world that was about. Perhaps the White Court members were beginning to rub off on the man, because he rarely showed such irritable behavior. A smart mouth, yes, but not to that level. Once he saw the DVD in his hand, he understood why. Clear as day, it said “Gina’s memories at Genosha.”
“I’m definitely going to have to talk to Christian about that,” he said. He watched the two of them playing cards and laughing. Of course… Gina was the friend he was talking about Thanksgiving Day. THAT was why Khalid felt compelled to track her down and find her. He was definitely going to have to talk to Christian about what he knows and doesn’t know…
--------------------------------------
The White Court; After the review of Gina’s recording
Grover watched the DVD play over and over again after everyone had left the conference room. From what it looked like, Gina had lived in a household where her mother was abusive. Her parents were in the middle of a vicious divorce, including false charges of child molestation against the father. The mother had intended on using the girl as a card against the father. She had even told the girl herself, several times. The mother had found out that Gina was practicing creating psionic discs out of thin air and had punished the girl by locking her in the laundry room.
During those times Gina was locked in the laundry room, she would play pretend and imagine things. One day, a boy she thought she had imagined showed up. A young boy by the name of Christian who was supposed to be asleep at the time. They’d play all sorts of games and Christian would even teach her how to make her psionic discs do things like float in the air and play like holographic images. One of their favorite games was playing “Captain Gabriel and the Evil Snake Monsters.” One of them would climb in the dryer and the other in the washing machine and pretend those were ships. With Christian’s playing along, though, their “pretend” games tended to come across extremely vivid on the recording. Even odder was that “Captain Gabriel” looked an awful lot like someone else he knew…
The day of the attack, Gina’s mother had beaten her and thrown her into the laundry room again. She taunted to girl by saying that her father was in jail where all the perverts belong and that she would never see him again. Gina cried and cried and started to look out the window like she would shortly after sunrise. That was when she saw it in the distance.
No one else could see it, but she could for whatever reason. It was like one of her psionic discs, but much bigger. Spires were stationed around the sides with large green orbs up top. In the center was a giant pyramid with an eye in the center. A large glowing eye that pulsed with evil. It blinked and then a ray of fire shot from it into the ground below. People were screaming and panicking. A cloud of dust shut up below it and around it from all sides. What scared her the most was seeing what happened behind the disc. Thousands and thousands of green strings flying through the air and sweeping along the ground like a broom. Whenever it would snag onto something, she could see a white pulse of light ripped off the ground and sucked up the string, like a cherry through a straw. It had come closer and closer. The fire… Gina became scared. She climbed inside the washing machine and hid from it.
“Watching movies, are you?”
Grover turned the television off. He went ahead and turned the lights back on, although he didn’t need to. He knew that voice all too well. “Don’t you have anything better to do? I don’t have time for the likes of you,” he asked.
“Perhaps that’s a question you should be asking yourself, Blueboy,” the HellGoat said. A bag of popcorn appeared in his hand in a puff of smoke. “Can you rewind back to the part where the green tendrils suck up the souls?”
Grover blinked. “Hold on… Say that again?”
“Oh nevermind. Humans these days,” a wave of HellGoat’s hand and the television came on again on the part where the green strings were sweeping across the ground. “I’m always up for a good soul devouring, but you already knew that.”
“No… Hold on… What did you call those?” Grover asked.
“Oh… Now you have use for me?” the HellGoat asked, clearly amused. “I would think you’d be asking me how you are going to kill your cousin, now that you know there’s a demon in his blood.”
“ANSWER me… What did you call those…”
“If you are going to treat a guest this way, perhaps I have overstayed my welcome. I’ll be leaving, now,” he said, disappearing.
“No you don’t… GET BACK HERE…” The HellGoat faded away. Angrily, Grover slammed his fist into the conference table, cracking it in half. God damn, with the damage that goes on in this room, it was a wonder he even bothered having anything in it. Tendril. Tendril sucking up the souls… or more accurately spirits. “THAT’S why there was no spiritual residue,” Grover said. “TENDRIL devoured them all!” (***Tendril’s a member of the Illuminati who uses intangible ectoplasmic spindles. Now you know how he eats.) They were wasting their time going after this construct. The Illuminati weren’t going to use it for a while!
Grover thought back to what Gene had said in his debriefing with him and Gomurr. Estophalum only needed one more soul to ascend over Mallefus. One particular soul. Khalid knew whose soul that was, but Estophalum didn’t. Now it suddenly made sense. The reason Khalid was being secretive about it all:
Estophalum intends to devour the soul of Khalid’s unborn son.
End Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Prydesville, NY; After the events that took place in “Rabid”
Khalid traced his finger from his ear down to his jawline. It had been years since he had shaven clean, much less had his hair cut down to the scalp. It had never been his intention to do so, but with the way his hair was left after Gene took the bayonet to his braid, he little choice but to cut it the rest of the way off. Taking off the goatee and the sideburns was just something he decided to do. He looked at the scars all over his face and the tip of his ear that was shot off a few years ago. This look was so unnatural for him. It was almost like his head was naked. He almost was about to say he was definitely growing his hair back, but considering that he was due to die in a few days, there was little point in saying that.
After rinsing his face off, he walked back into the bedroom where his dufflebag was. It had been packed since he got into it with Gomurr. He intended to leave THAT DAY, but between Uncle Joe’s delivery and Gene’s problems, his plans were delayed. That time confirmed Shaman’s true colors, though. Twenty-five years, Khalid bought into his bullshit. Now, he saw the Sorcerer Supreme for what he really was. A fucking asshole.
Khalid had been surprised that Nathaniel Daversham’s chronicles had explained everything that was at stake so clearly. So much of the visions were filled in. Khalid finally understood how his blood was used to open the seal and how in general he was set up. This was a cosmic joke and he was the butt. He couldn’t let anyone else find out the details, though. If they did find it out, they’d stop him for sure. He just hoped that Shaman wasn’t going to screw him over and blab his mouth. The book said that wasn’t going to happen, though. Unfortunately, the book left out the details of how it was going to turn out in the end and who was going to be the “Judas” who betrayed him. The one thing that Khalid noticed, though, was that it said Volume One of Two. Somewhere out there was another book. That was the least of his concerns because there would be no way it could help him now. There was no time.
“There’s little point sneaking up on me when I can feel you coming,” Khalid said without turning around. He started to dress, heedless of the man standing in the doorway.
“We’ve already had that talk. I can’t exactly do anything about it.”
“Yeah you can… Try three o’clock in the morning… when I’m HOME… and have no company… Or better yet? How about some sort of warning?!”
“Like YOU gave me before chasing down those two rabbits the other day?! Do you know how embarrassing it is to find out you are snarling at the Senate Majority Leader?!”
“Yeah… probably the same way I felt while going over the library records with Gomurr when I fell to the ground and made all those noises!!! So, don’t get me started!”
“Don’t get YOU started?! YOU started? What the hell were YOU doing to your ears when I was acting up during my meeting with Nebula and Cyclops the other week?!”
“What were YOU doing while I was meeting with the gardener?!”
“That wasn’t you… That was me!”
“Like HELL it wa…”
Khalid’s aura flared up and Grover’s eyes flashed. Both of them fell backwards and hit the floor. Like mirror images, they sat up and rubbed the back of their heads before glaring at each other. Khalid snarled at him and Grover’s eyes sparked. “NOW see what you did?!” they said at once. Khalid and Grover both lifted their hands and could see Excalibur dangling from them. “STOP THAT! NO… YOU STOP THAT! REALLY MATURE… HEY!!!! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!” Khalid and Grover flew off the floor and came at each other. They locked hands in a game of mercy.
Bad move.
Both men crashed to the ground face first as their powers cut off.
“Ouch…” they said. Whatever hostility they felt directed toward each other just as quickly faded away.
“Khalid,” Grover coughed. “What was that?”
“Overload, maybe?” Khalid answered. “God damn that hurts.”
“I can’t move.”
“Neither can I.”
“We’ve got our minds back.”
“Sort of… I feel the shoe that you landed on.”
“I feel the splinter in your elbow. You’re starving, too.”
“Your secret piercing is digging into the flesh and is stinging big time. I think that might be blood.”
“You know… I was going to be good and not bring that up.”
“If I weren’t going to die soon, I’d be really miserable right now.”
“Normally, I think I’d get upset you said that, but I’m getting your sense of humor right now.”
“Just be glad that dirty old man Gomurr isn’t here. He’d be massaging my ear just to see what you would do.”
“So THAT was what happened. He never did tell me what came out of your discussion.”
“That’s odd… and I thought you were the one who told him to do it. Sorry about that.”
“Khalid?”
“Yeah?”
“Is this what it’s going to be like? Is this what’s coming? Have we been doomed to lose what little of our originality and uniqueness is left? Have those dreams we joked about so long… Are we in danger of those becoming a reality where there is no ‘us’ but a single distinct being?” Grover heard a long pause, presumably from Khalid pondering the question.
“Grover?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t ask metaphysical mind-fuck questions while we’re lying face down on the floor. You’re giving me a headache.”
“I know. I can feel it.”
“Besides. I’m going to die… and soon, so it’s pointless to worry about it.”
“Then how come you are worrying about it just as much?”
“No changing the subject.”
“Honestly, K, the idea of your dying bothers me. Whether we like it or not, we’re bound.”
“It looks like we always will be, too. The only way I broke Simambe’s bond with Mjimbe was by burning my life force out to do it.”
“You weren’t bound to it then, either. This is different. I’m not sure you understand, K, but Excalibur doesn’t just bond with your spirit and body. It also bonds with your li…”
“Grover… I know about Excalibur’s bonding. All too well.”
“No you don’t. Not…”
“I have to…”
“Fine… Let’s drop it. I’ve had enough arguing here. If we’re going to talk, then we are going to talk.”
“Fine… We’ll talk… um… as soon as I have the strength to get off the floor.”
“Ditto.”
“Floor’s not bad. I think I’ll take a nap.”
“Ditto.”
---------------------------------------
Interlude: In an unknown place
She gently tapped the brush against the canvas to add the final touches to the painting. She had spent days on this painting, trying to get the character and the shading just right. Once she was finished, she stepped back to admire it. It was a rendition of a man leaping with a sword raised over his head. Not just any man… DarkWolf.
“Aaaaaah… Perfect…” she said to herself as she put the paints away. She turned on the faucet in the sink nearby to wash off her paintbrushes. “Just needs to dry.”
“Bravo, Madame Serafine, yet another masterpiece. Should I set it with the others?”
“No thank you, Bacchus. I’m keeping this around for a little while to… admire it.”
“I find the tone of the piece rather… striking.”
“Do you really? Or are you just saying that to kiss my shapely backside?”
“I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, you blithering idiot,” she snapped. Her lips turned up in a smile. “I know full well that you don’t HAVE a heart.”
“Sure I do. It’s just as black as coal.”
“I stand corrected.” Serafine washed the brushes in the sink, watching the grayish-brown water swirl down the drain. “So, Bacchus. Is there any reason you came to visit me or did my tall, dark, and handsome Greekman just come by to admire my… artwork.” He handed her a towel while tracing his hand down her arm. She slapped his arm away and ripped the towel away. “Hands off the goods,” she said. “That’s the rule.”
“Of course, Madame,” he said, smiling. He turned his attention back toward the paining she had just finished. As if that had been the only topic of their conversation, he pointed toward the central figure. “I find it interesting that you could draw him in this way with that rose in his mouth.”
“Oh… Darkwolf?” Serafine said sourly. “That’s not the first time the fool ever had a rose in his mouth. Makes little difference to me.” She reached onto the table beside her and picked up a knife. “You know, the more I look at this picture, the more impatient I get.” She shoved the knife into the canvas where DarkWolf’s stomach was drawn. “You just WAIT, Justin,” she hissed. “It will be YOU at the end of this knife… and YOUR blood on my hands. Then, you can tell me all about your little spatula while you bleed to death.”
“Soon enough…”
“Have your little cronies finished lacing my weapons as I’ve asked?”
“Of course, Madame…”
“Good,” she said, this time pulling the knife down to divide DarkWolf in half. “You took something very DEAR from me, DarkWolf,” she hissed. “And for that, I’m going to destroy everything you have.” She ripped the canvas in half and threw it into the corner where a mound of other discarded canvases was piled. Other discarded canvases with Darkwolf’s likeness on them. Torn… broken… “EVERYTHING.” She picked a red carnation from the vase and threw it into the pile where it exploded it into flames.
End Interlude
---------------------------------------
Later that day in Prydesville.
Khalid grumbled inside of the shower as he washed. Anybody else comes over, they behave. Sure, there’s a little arguing and probably a little fighting, but nothing major. Most of his guests are at least considerate. Then again, he isn’t bound on four levels to most of his guests either.
“Glad you got Ivory, K,” he heard from the other side of the shower room. “Despite what I say, the maid over at my place always likes to stock the bathroom with Irish Spring.”
“I’m allergic to Irish Spring,” Khalid said, without turning to look. “I break out in hives.”
“Me too.” Grover bit his lip to keep from laughing when he heard Khalid growl. “Do you always snarl like that in the shower? Most people hum or at least sing…”
“…or refuse to have their cousins in the same room…”
“The last time we were in the shower together, we were much closer than this and you were purring like a kitten.” (***Red Morning *glares at Gomurr*)
“Oh shut up…”
“Had my bones vibrating and everything. Excalibur went wild.”
“I wasn’t inside of my body, damn it! Now you are just trying to get under my skin. Since when did it become fashionable for everyone to pick on K?!”
“Um… K… Since you are bound to Excalibur, technically I’m already under your skin.”
“Shut the fuck up and stay on your side of the shower room. There are more than enough showerheads way over where you are.”
“K, you seem a bit upset.”
“You KNEW I’d just come out of the shower. You saw me getting dressed before we got into it. You went and did it anyway!”
“What? You think I’m lucid every time I start dreaming? I can’t control myself anyway. And considering you’re just as much a part of the ‘persona’ as I am, you’re just as much at fault.”
“Bullshit. Quit trying to cop out, there. That dream was ALL you.”
“Including the part about chasing the ‘prey’ down? Nice try, Lion-Boy. And I won’t even get started on why there is an extremely sensitive tail every single dream…”
“Why the hell are you asking me?! You’re the pervert who imagines all this stuff!”
“If we’re the same person in a dream, K, then one of us can’t be a pervert without the other.”
“You see… THAT’s how I can tell you were raised by Gomurr because the longer I know you, the more I realize you’re turning into a dirty old man! And quit washing that area. You’ve given it enough attention!”
“Look… I’ve got a piercing I’m trying to readjust, here,” Grover said. “You’re the one who can’t keep control while I’m doing it! What… you trying to get it infected?!”
“Dude… If it didn’t feel like I had someone else playing with my thing, do you think I would give a damn?”
“Hold on a second… almost… THERE!” Grover said, getting it in place.
“YOUCH!!! GOD DAMN!!!” Khalid fell over on his side, grabbing at the corresponding area on his own body. He cringed and blinked, waiting for the pain to subside. “What the HELL?!”
Grover shut off the showerhead and reached for a nearby towel. Seeing Khalid in that position, he just shook his head. “All the bitching about the wet dream, K, and look at what you are doing in the shower. You do realize I can feel all of that through Excalibur, don’t you?”
GROWL!!!! “I can’t believe you mutilated yourself like that…”
“K… Hang it up. It’s the same place your royal piercing was.”
“And once I could walk, I took the damn thing out! TAKE A HINT!!!”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch… moan, moan, moan.”
“Once the pain goes away, I’m kicking your ass.”
“SURE you will…” Grover went to the intermediate room, where a set of clothes were waiting on a bench. “The same day you explain why a bachelor like you has a complete shower room attached to the bedroom rather than a bathroom like everyone else.” He blinked. “Oh wait… I forgot…”
“I do NOT have a water fetish!”
“Yeah… Whatever. What was that dream again about Echo standing in the rain carrying two banana cream pies?”
GROWL!!!
Grover heard the showerhead in the adjoining room shut off. When Khalid came in, he started to shake his head back and forth and then started licking his shoulders. Grover shrugged and then snapped a towel in his face. Khalid caught it with his teeth and snarled. He started pulling back on it. “Um… K?”
Khalid blinked and then spat the towel out. Then, he blinked some more. “Sorry,” he said scratching his scalp.
“Looks like you went cat again. That definitely explains the day I woke up licking the back of my knee.” Grover snapped the towel someplace else.
GROWL!!!! Khalid fell against the nearby bench, once again cradling that area.
“Er… Sorry K… Forgot my own strength for a moment. Just be thankful it was a dry towel.”
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!
Grover grabbed his shirt and then phased through the wall leading back to the bedroom. While Khalid was dressing in the next room over, he stole a moment to look at the items sitting out on the bed. That Khalid was planning to go on some sort of trip was no secret. Grover heard him talking on the phone with his people the other day. He just wanted to get a feel for what kind of trip Khalid was going on. Considering the amount of hardware and other items he had stashed in the dufflebag, it definitely wasn’t the run of the mill secret mission. Some of the people Khalid was visiting were not going to be alive after the trip was over.
Hoping to keep Khalid’s light mood going – and to hide the fact he was snooping – Grover waited just beside the door that led to the shower/bath.
“Forget it, Grover,” Khalid said as he walked through the doorway. “Not only can I always sense where you are, but I could sense your energy field a mile aw…” Grover grabbed Khalid by the ear as he walked in and started massaging it. Khalid’s eyes rolled upwards and his muscles gave out on him. Grover used his telekinetic field to keep him from falling. Khalid let out a groan and started purring.
“Eeny meeny miny mear. Catch a lion by the ear.”
“I should have never… told you what Gomurr… did…” Khalid said. “You pervert.”
“Testing a theory. Gomurr did it and I’m on the ground. Your senses were shot and you also had a concussion then, if I remember.” A thick stream of drool oozed from Khalid’s mouth all over his shirt. “I’m doing it now, but I’m not affected the same way. It’s like tickling myself. Not going to work.”
“You can let go, now…” Khalid said. His eyes closed.
“You see the only reason it is working on you right now is that because I’m the one making contact, the sensation is increased by Excalibur. It’s like bringing a microphone toward a speaker – it overloads your senses even more.”
“Grover… That’s not something I’d particularly like to… to… to… t… t… test…”
“You see… It is stuff like this that we NEED to be aware of so that in case…” Grover blinked. He let go of Khalid’s ear. “You know, K, you could have just told me.”
Khalid fell to the floor and waited to catch his breath before he answered. “So you can add it to your list of dirty tricks?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? I did NOT molest you while we were over at Cougar’s house!” (***Red Morning.)
“Whatever, you pervert. I jump back in my body and the first thing I see is your hand about to grab me, no doubt to finish whatever you couldn’t accomplish in that shower. You’re just like Gomurr – a dirty, old…”
“K, my hand was on your STOMACH. I was SCRATCHING it. YOU happened to turn into a big kitty cat after Gomurr threw you out of your body. Scratching your stomach was the only way to make you stay put without using Excalibur.”
“Yeah right…”
“Come on, K. Think about it. You scratch a cat; what do they do? They lay back and let you do it. YOU were no different!”
“Bullshit.”
“Fine… Lift up your shirt.”
“WHAT?!”
“I said lift up your shirt!”
“No way!”
“You’re sensitive on your ears. I’m betting you are sensitive on the stomach as well.”
“Forget it! You’ve tested out enough theories today! I’ve got a flight to catch in two hours and…”
“Whatever. You’re the White Bishop, now. I’ll send you to Cairo on my private jet. Now, lift up your shirt.”
“No!”
“What’s wrong? You scared?”
“No, I’m not scared!”
“Then quit stalling and do it!”
“FINE.” Khalid pulled up his shirt to reveal his stomach. “Prove it.”
“Stand still…” Grover said, placing his hand on his back to steady Khalid. He scratched lightly across Khalid’s stomach, but nothing happened. Khalid just stared at him. “Nothing?”
“Not a thing.”
“Dang… Gomurr assured me that was one of the hotspots.”
“AHA!!! You lie… you DID talk to him.”
“You aren’t feeling a thing?”
“No I’m not… and no changing the subject. I should have KNOWN. He put you up to this stuff with Excalibur just to test things out. That dirty little imp. I’m going to...”
“Maybe with the palm rather than the fingertips…”
Khalid choked in midword, changing the sound into a loud demonic groan. A deep breath and Khalid fell over on his back, staring blankly upward. Grover’s eyebrows lifted upward and he looked back down at Khalid who was struggling to speak.
“Well damn,” Grover said. “Guess he was right about that. Now that I think of it, he said to rub the stomach rather than scratch it.” Khalid stumbled back to his feet and started leaving the room. “K… Where are you going?”
“Back to…” he fell to the floor again. “…the shower…”
“You didn’t…”
“This had better never get out…”
“God damn… you did! Guess I DO have the magic touch.”
“Keep your hands to yourself, Midas!” Khalid stumbled the rest of the way into the shower room.
Grover watched Khalid disappear inside and waited for the sound of the shower to kick in. “Spell…”
A flash of light went off around the room. From a portal in the ceiling, Gomurr fell out and landed behind Grover. “Already cast. He can’t hear or sense anything but you and your heartbeat. We can talk safely for about a minute.”
“He’s going after his unborn son, Gomurr. Were you able to track the woman down?”
“No. It appears that the Illuminati already made it to the base. No signs. Nothing I can track. Khalid will have no trouble tracking down the boy, but that defeats the purpose. We need that child and his mother safe before Estophalum finds them.”
“Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place. How long has the base been down?”
“There’s no telling. From what I can tell, there is a lot of Illuminati activity in that area.”
“Estophalum hasn’t found them, so they aren’t there. They’ve got to be hidden somewhere. I stalled Khalid like you wanted me to, but I’m not going to be able to do this much longer without his getting suspicious.”
“He’s probably suspicious already, knowing him,” Gomurr said. “Rubbing his stomach like that should keep him docile even if he decides to show his ass, but…”
“Wait…” Grover looked toward the bed. “Gomurr… When you cast the spell, was there a light discharge?”
“No… Not at all. It’s a simple wave. Why?”
“Khalid’s duffle bag isn’t on the bed.” Grover opened the door to the shower room. Sure enough, it was empty except for the one showerhead going off. “DAMN! He played me for a fool and I fell for it!”
“The boy is definitely further along mystically than he lets on. As usual, no mystical residue. No way to trace him. He must have sensed the spell I had given you to summon me and known there was more to this impromptu visit.”
“I can use Excalibur to track him down… or at least to give him a headache.”
“We need to find him quickly before he does something he’s going to regret. If Estophalum plans on devouring the soul of Khalid’s son in order to ascend over Mallefus…”
“Then in all likelihood, Mallefus intends on killing Khalid’s son to keep Estophalum from getting to him. And with Khalid at his mercy, he may very well do it!”
End Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Saharan Desert, Southern Egypt
He hovered high over the ruins of the Follower’s Den, standing on a dimensional portal. He barely even recognized the place because it was leveled to the ground. Judging by the sand blown over it, it had been this way for a couple of weeks.
DAMN, that fucking pissed him off. They knew. The Grey Court HAD to have known. Maybe not the first couple of days, but after that when they did not hear from them. DAEMON had to have known. Even now, Khalid was mentally going over Daemon’s process. He’d have come here at first sign of the attack and no doubt sifted through the sands and everything for whatever piece of forensic evidence he could find. At the same time, Marvel Girl would be doing a telemetric scan of the area to try to figure out what happened. The Illuminati would have learned their lesson from New Year’s of 2000, though. They wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave any traces in that way.
Still, with this place being tighter than even Fort Knox, the only way the Illuminati could have pulled off a campaign like this was by meticulously planning everything down to the minute. They either had someone infiltrate it – highly unlikely – or they somehow bought off someone on the inside. The lines of communication and the defense grid were taken down first. The electromagnetic field and the astral plane must have been twisted here to cover it up. People were not likely to have a clue something was up for a couple of days. By the time they found out, it was too late.
Daemon KNEW Asima had been taken and KEPT it from him. Deliberately. Before Khalid could get angry, though, he knew why they had done it. As much as they were trying to find Asima before Estophalum did, they were ALSO trying to protect the woman from Khalid himself. Oh yeah… if the Hellfire Club was not good for anything else, it was going behind backs. It doesn’t matter. Estophalum may have the Followers and the Pallans, but he does not have Asima. If he did, Khalid would have already known. Neither the Grey nor the White Courts have Asima. Considering that she had not contacted him herself, that meant that someone else did.
The only energy field here that Khalid could make out was Gomurr’s. The old fool had probably visited here while he had Grover trying to stall Khalid. Even if Gomurr had got here shortly after the base fell, he wouldn’t have picked up anything. The Illuminati always tried to remove all traces of their presence. There was nothing here to track. They were no doubt using mages to block out communications, scans, and the like. Any dimensional residue was long faded and obscured so there was no point in going down there.
End of the line? Not.
If Khalid had wanted to search for forensic evidence or a scent, he would have had to beat the Grey Court here. That didn’t happen and time travel wasn’t listed in his abilities. There were no energy fields here to latch onto… of the Followers or the Pallans, that is. The Illuminati didn’t count on his tattoos, though. They had long adapted to the dampening spell the Illuminati used to interfere with the scans. While he could conceivably concentrate really hard and give himself a headache trying to track Asima’s energy field through this pea soup, there was a more logical point of attack that was not nearly as difficult: the mage who is powering the dampening spell. His energy field rang loud and clear to Khalid.
These fucknuts were SO not ready for him!
-------------------------------------
No one could see it from a distance, because it blended so well against the surrounding sands. Once one drew closer, they might be able to make out the screenhouse. A group of women sat inside gathered at a picnic table. On this campaign, the roster had been pretty much in and out, but in light of recent events – such as the attack against the Follower’s Den – the majority of them had decided to join in. Each of them had their own set of skills to bring to the table and were useful in different ways, but each was valued. There was even the running gag about being “Daemon’s Angels”, but most everyone else knew them by another name – the ladies of the Grey Hellfire Court.
Marvel Girl was their queen and arguably the most powerful of them all, being the resident psitalent. With the psionic static imposed over the area, though, her telepathic abilities were useless. Not a problem with her. She was the queen. She cultivated other skills, including a deadly proficiency with a variety of weapons. (Not to mention that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her powerful telekinetic powers.)
Echo was one of the bishops. Although she had other dreams and endeavors, her late brother had seen to it that much of her life up to this point was combat-oriented. Although she knew how to kill, she chose not to. Her fighting skills were on par with the deadliest mercenaries in the world. These days, it seemed that her other powers – such as the ability to project any sound she hears, the ability to heal herself with these sounds, or just her acute sense of hearing – takes a back seat. Now that she knew her children were safe, (two of them were even here with her) she felt it was time to move on – to build a life of her own.
Scrib was also a member of this party. Although she was one of the least experienced of the group, her wit and charm made up for whatever she might be lacking. Every day, she was finding more uses for her control over air pressure. Even now, she was using her powers to keep the sand from the nearby sandstorm from blowing into camp. Lately, thanks largely to help from Daemon, she has developed more offensive uses for her powers. She was looking forward to trying them out.
Siren has had her share of troubles, most notably discovering that she was the descendent of one of the vilest demons known to exist! (Sorry… Can’t remember the name of the story. Help anyone?) She has the ability to shapeshift into any creature, real or mystical, and use any powers accessible to that creature.
Of everyone out here, Chercheur – known affectionately as Cici – seemed to be the most out of her place, considering that she was primarily Echo’s assistant. She had been the most frustrating for Daemon to work with because of her refusal to train against anyone. Daemon had once assumed it stemmed from her insecurities and distrust of others. He found out the hard way that he was wrong. (*** “Once More, For Old Times’ Sake.”)
“Can you believe them two, gettin' on like that all the time? My God, they're like a pair of rabbits...” Scrib said as she cleaned her plasma rifle.
“Does someone miss her man hunk of burning love?” Siren asked teasingly. “You a little jealous?”
“Jealous? Yeah right. Who wants to go shagging around in the desert all the time? It's hot. There's nothing comfortable for miles around. Sand gets everywhere, and I do mean everywhere...”
“Come on, Scrib. You don’t think they might actually be doing what they say they’re doing? Some recon?”
Scrib turned toward Marvel Girl, who polishing her knives. Marvel Girl looked back with a twisted smirk. Then, both of them turned back toward Siren. Echo and Bobbi – both feeling slightly out of place among the younger women – kept silent. “Siren...ah...see when you were growing up...Did anyone have a wee talk to you about the birds and the bees?”
“Of COURSE I was told about the birds and the bees!”
“Are ye sure ye were told about the birds and the bees?”
“We spent two weeks in Health Class talking about it. Now…”
Scrib let out just a small chuckle. “Right. So you don't know anything about the birds and the bees. They don't tell you the right things in Health Class. They never do...”
“You don’t know what they told me!”
Scrib just grinned and laughed at her red-haired friend.
“Fine, Ms. Keenan. TELL me about the birds and the bees since you know about it so well,” Siren said.
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes. I want to know.”
"The truth is...” all the women leaned in close to see if they could figure out what was coming. “The birds and the bees...had to move or else get earplugs, with the racket those two were making.”
Everyone groaned. Siren covered her face. “Tracy… you’ve done much better…”
She raised an eyebrow. “Who said I was joking?”
“Tracy…”
“I suppose you haven’t noticed that Gabey’s been more of a gentleman than usual, lately. In fact… Watch.” An “accidental” increase in air pressure and the plasma rifle fell into pieces.
“TRACY!!!!” Siren yelled. “Have you lost your mind??!! They’re on their way back!”
“I couldn’t help it,” Scrib said with a smirk. “You know my powers can be unpredictable sometimes.”
The other women, except for Echo, all scooted over to the sides. Echo took a deep breath and then sat down next to Scrib. In the distance, they could see Daemon and Hotwire rolling in on two of Daemon’s new solar-powered hoverboards. With the boards specially designed to propel against the Earth’s electromagnetic field, the two of them were virtually silent as they approached. Once they arrived, a twitch of Hotwire’s powers deactivated them and they settled onto the ground.
Daemon pulled the screenhouse open for Hotwire and came in behind her. Siren looked over to Scrib to see if she showed any signs of nervousness, but nothing really came out.
“Have a good… recon?” Scrib asked.
Hotwire smirked at her. Daemon, who didn’t notice Scrib’s smile, pushed away the miscellaneous items on the table so he could access the flat holographic projector beneath it. “We circled the entire camp once and then flew above it so we could get a feel…”
Marvel Girl and Scrib both started snickering. Once Daemon scowled at them, Scrib shoved two of her knuckles in her mouth and bit down. Beside her, Echo remained silent, but looked away for a moment to blush. Siren, convinced that the other women had dirty minds, glared at them and shook her head.
“…for the guard rotation and whatever defenses they might have. Hotwire?” At Daemon’s prompt, Hotwire electromagnetically uploaded the recon data from the camp to the projector. After a second, a three-dimensional holographic reproduction of the Illuminati base appeared on the table. A few seconds later, the display produced the results of the spectrogram analysis and added them to the side of the screen. “We’ll go in tonight under cover…”
They broke out into scattered laughter.
Daemon continued. “…of darkness. The cue is when Hotwire blows…” Marvel Girl broke out into hysterical laughter. This time, it was Hotwire that scowled. “…the main generator and the lights. I’m going to push…”
A high-pitched giggle slipped out by Scrib’s teeth and she bit down on her knuckles even harder. A nearby water bottle exploded outward.
“…my way through the main gate. Siren and Marvel Girl, I’m counting on the two of you to back me up. The captives aren’t at this base, but we’re going to stop the Illuminati from using it for reinforcements. So feel free to destroy anything to draw attention. Keep an eye out for supplies we might need to get our hands on…”
This time, it was Siren who broke out into a stifled giggle. Once Marvel Girl saw Siren give in, she laughed even louder, slapping her hand against the table. Even Bobbi was blushing.
“Echo, Cici, Scrib… Once we have everyone’s attention, I want you to come in through the rear…”
Another water bottle burst. Scrib let out a wail before giggling. She switched hands and again bit down her knuckles. Her eyes were actually watering, now. Echo had a strained smirk on her face and was shaking her head back and forth.
“You’re looking for computer equipment – just the hard disks. Then, I want you to come straight through and meet us in front. We’ll lay down…”
Marvel Girl started hyperventilating from laughing so hard. Bobbi reached into her satchel and handed her a paper bag. Scrib’s eyes were clenched shut and she was shaking her head back and forth feverishly while wailing. Siren was hysterical now.
“…cover fire so you can get out and we can finish leveling the base to the ground. Once we get back to camp, hit the sack…”
Scrib pulled out her knuckles and started guffawing in the air. Hotwire – who was deep shade of red – went out of the screenhouse.
“I’ll have Hotwire…”
Now she was shrieking with laughter. All of the women were hysterical. Marvel Girl, who had just got her breath back, was already hyperventilating again.
“…read the information off the hard disks… What the hell is going on, here?”
“Oh Gabe,” Marvel Girl coughed out. “Don’t get your panties in a wad…”
Another bout of shrieking.
Hotwire calmed herself down and shook her finger at the crowd. “You girls are very, very wrong…”
“Scrib?! What the fuck happened to your plasma rifle?!” The laughter dropped down immediately as Gabe glared down at the dismantled rifle. “You were supposed to clean it, not dismantle it and drop it in the sand. Give me that…” he said. He snatched the pieces off of the ground and assembled it before Scrib could even answer. He handed it back to her. “Be more careful with it. This is a big gun and there are a lot of p…”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!
“Get your minds out of the gutter! If it had been me, you would all be accusing me of being insensitive.”
“But Gabe,” Marvel Girl said. “You’ll last longer.”
Daemon turned purple from the new round of laughter and stormed out of the screenhouse.
Siren elbowed Scrib and pointed to her rifle. “How does that prove they were… you know. He still noticed!…”
“Aye…” she said. “He did. But you notice he didn’t yell or cuss me out.”
Siren blinked. “Wow… They are… er… serious.”
“Much more than serious, Celeste,” Scrib said, this time nodding toward Hotwire’s left hand and the vargacite ring on it. That was when Siren understood just how serious the two of them were. Vargacite wasn’t native to Earth, but Pharaoh had mines. Hotwire did NOT have that ring earlier that morning.
End Chapter Ten

Pride's Rock *HF*

By Mufasa

Pride's Rock HF