by Greg Cox
Who could be responsible for this? she wondered, her eyes tightly shut, grabbing unsuccessfully at the sound of the flapping wings. The Puppet Master? The Brothers Grimm? There was no time to even try to decipher the mystery. Between the Wolf gnawing on her leg and the Firebird jabbing at her face, she couldn’t begin to think straight, let alone play detective.
The witch’s hut rejoined the fray, clawing at Wanda’s back, and she was grateful that she had chosen to wear the heavy coat instead of her somewhat skimpier gypsy garb. Despite her own peril, she feared for her comrades as well.
The others might be in danger, too, she realized. An attack on one Avenger often meant an assault on the entire team. I need to alert Captain America and the rest. There was a communication device in one of her coat pockets, but how could she get at it when she had to defend herself from these homicidal Pinocchios?
Her face turned downward, eyes squeezed shut, she forced herself to ignore the fangs and the claws and the beak and the flapping wings, putting aside the sharp, jabbing pains so that she could concentrate on a hex. Her fingers instinctively formed the right configuration, the gestures focusing her unique mutant ability to manipulate the laws of probability.
Even after countless efforts and exercises to hone her special gifts, she still had trouble describing what it felt like when she used her birthright. It was like breathing, in a way—you didn’t think about it, you just did it. Wanda visualized the effect she desired, then let the power flow from somewhere deep inside her out to her fingertips, which tingled slightly as they released her mutant magic into the world.
The power manifested first as a shimmering sphere of crimson light that spread outward to enclose both the Scarlet Witch and her attackers. Within that sphere, mathematical probabilities shifted so that the most unlikely of possibilities became not just likely but an absolute certainty.
The Firebird’s crystalline eyes blinked in surprise as an extremely improbable fluctuation in the air currents stole the wind from beneath its wings, causing it to drop like a stone, fortuitously slamming into the wooden Wolf at the very moment that, behind Wanda, Baba Yaga’s ambulatory hut lost its balance and toppled forward. Her foot at last freed from the jaws of the Wolf, the Scarlet Witch deftly evaded the falling marionette so that it landed in a heap upon its fellow puppets.
The odds that three such happy accidents would combine to rid Wanda of her attackers simultaneously were ridiculously small, of course, except within the radius of her hex sphere.
That’s better, she thought. The rose-colored radiance dissipated as she took a deep breath to collect her thoughts before the murderous marionettes regrouped. At last, she had a moment to try to figure out what was happening and why?
Who is behind this? She sensed no sorcerous energies at work, but some force had to have brought the seemingly harmless puppets to life. Telekinesis? Nanotechnology? Her mind grappled for a solution, even as she readied herself for the puppets’ next attack. There were too many possibilities, too many enemies old and new.
These might not even be marionettes at all, she surmised, but cleverly disguised android assassins.
Floodlights mounted into the ceiling called attention to the empty stretches of wall that the puppets had occupied only moments before.
Thank heavens I didn’t go to the Natural History Museum instead. She could just imagine the dinosaur fossils and stuffed mammoths coming to life in place of the puppets.
Her fingers groped through her coat pockets in search of her Avengers I.D. card, which also doubled as a communications device, thanks to the ingenuity of Tony Stark. If she hurried, she could still alert the team before the puppets came at her again. Manicured nails, painted in her trademark shade of red, tapped against the laminated surface of the card, and she had just started to draw it out of the pocket when she heard someone call out in alarm:
“Help! Keep away from me!”
The Scarlet Witch glanced back over her shoulder, where her cape usually was, and saw Janine cornered by puppet replicas of Rasputin and Ivan the Terrible. Blast, Wanda thought. The starstruck fan must have stayed behind to watch her heroine in action. Now, Rasputin and Ivan, brandishing miniature daggers, had backed the college student up against a glass display case on the opposite side of the gallery. Wanda wasn’t sure what frightened the poor girl more: the puppets’ hostile intent and weapons, or the fact that they were alive at all.
Just to complicate matters, a security guard, whom Wanda had seen posted in the lobby earlier, came running around the corner, only to come to an abrupt halt at the bizarre sight that greeted him. Pistol in hand, he froze, uncertain what to do.
Wanda sympathized with his confusion. He was surely hired to protect the exhibits from the patrons, not the other way around!
“Stay back,” she warned him, flashing her I.D. “This is Avengers business. Let me handle it.”
Not waiting to hear his response, she unleashed another hex at the puppets menacing Janine. The floodlights above the predatory marionettes suddenly exploded, showering Ivan and Rasputin with white-hot sparks that nevertheless missed Janine entirely.
Am I good or am I good? the Scarlet Witch thought, smiling with satisfaction as the puppets retreated frantically from the rain of sparks, whiffs of smoke rising from their wooden heads and shoulders. But after all, they’re only puppets, she reminded herself. Maybe she didn’t need any other Avengers after all.
“Get her out of here,” she instructed the security guard, who hurried to comply. This time, Janine seemed perfectly willing to flee the scene. Keeping one eye on the smoldering forms of Ivan and Rasputin, not to mention the tangle of fallen puppets at her feet, Wanda breathed a sigh of relief as both guard and fan exited from sight. She still had no idea what force had animated the marionettes and until she did, she didn’t want to have to worry about innocent bystanders.
I can take care of myself, no matter who is behind this. Ordinary humans are different.
An overwhelming blast of concussive force, striking her at the base of her neck, shattered her confidence and sent her reeling forward. Gray institutional tiles seemed to rush at her face as darkness encroached on the periphery of her vision, casting the stark white walls into shadow. Her I.D. card slipped from her fingers.
Of course, she recalled right before she blacked out. That blasted Doom puppet…!
CHAPTER TWO
HE crouched in the underbrush, sniffing the scent of his prey.
That way, he thought, nodding to himself. Just like I figured.
Most hunters might have never noticed the subtle deer path winding through the trees and bushes ahead of him, but Logan was the best there was at what he did.
The dense wilderness of the Adirondacks surrounded him. Towering pines and spruce trees branched out high above his head to form a verdant canopy that shielded the forest floor from the afternoon sun. A light breeze rustled through the branches, carrying with it a dozen separate aromas, each distinct and recognizable to Logan’s keen sense of smell. Out of sight, but not beyond earshot, a mountain stream rushed through the woods somewhere ahead. Logan could practically taste the cold, clear water.
It doesn’t get much better than this, he thought, a rare smile creasing his rugged yet ageless features. Twin peaks of bristling black hair rose from his scalp, looking like the vee-shaped points of the mask he often wore. Logan savored the primeval sanctity of the untamed wilderness, along with the sense of solitude. Here in the woods of upstate New York, it was easy to fool himself into thinking that he was the only two-legged mammal around for hundreds of miles.
Yeah, I needed this, he decided, breathing in the clean, intoxicating aroma of the trees and loam, so similar to that of the Canadian timberlands he had long ago called home. Even though he was no longer quite the loner he once was, thanks to Professor Charles Xavier and his X-Men, sometimes he still needed to put some distance between himself and other people, mutant or otherwise, and get back to his roots. This is where I really bel
ong. In the wild.
His heightened senses revealed all the secrets of the woods to him. A whiff of wintergreen in the air announced the presence of a stand of yellow birch to the west, while his ears detected squirrels scurrying through the branches overhead. His fingers brushed against the scaly bark of a tall white pine, guessing the tree’s approximate age from the feel of the bark. Probing gray eyes penetrated the shade, spotting the spoor of his prey as it led away to the north.
They were here less than an hour ago, he estimated. I’m gaining on them.
Rising from his crouch, Logan took off through the forest, moving with practiced speed and stealth. His well-worn cowboy boots trod softly upon a carpet of twigs, pine cones, and fallen needles, making little or no sound as he followed the trail. He had left his Wolverine uniform behind in Westchester; a red flannel shirt and faded Levi’s were all he needed for this hunting expedition. Besides, he wouldn’t want to give any stray hikers or forest rangers a heart attack by surprising them in his X-Men gear.
We’re unpopular enough as is, he thought.
The deer path led uphill, toward the peak. Logan came upon the stream he had heard earlier, cutting its way through the sylvan landscape, and paused only long enough to take a couple of deep mouthfuls of the icy water, which was just as refreshing as he had imagined. Like a cool beer on a hot day, he decided. Licking the last drops of moisture from his lips, he waded across the stream, then headed up-country. If his prey had thought that the flowing water would throw him off the trail, they were in for a big surprise.
Scotch pine and aspen gave way to balsam and paper birch as he climbed the mountain, gaining elevation. Snow-white flowers bloomed from the occasional mountain ash growing along the trail, a sure sign of springtime. Logan sniffed the air again and nodded to himself. He was getting closer. Hunching over, his flared nostrils scouting ahead of him, he stalked forward even more quietly than before.
Easy does it, he counseled himself. The last thing he wanted to do was startle his prey as soon as he caught up with them. Retracted for the moment, his claws itched within their metal sheaths.
The timberland opened up before him, exposing an open meadow awash in golden sunshine. Sneaking up to the edge of the glade, Logan knelt behind a fallen log, its rotting carcass covered with moss and mushrooms, and peered with feral satisfaction at the sight of a family of deer—doe, fawn, and even, surprisingly, a buck—grazing upon the wild grass near the center of the clearing.
Gotcha! he thought, eyes narrowing. Almost.
Logan, sometimes known as Wolverine, ached to unsheathe his claws and pounce upon his prey with all the ferocity of his namesake, but more civilized habits prevailed. He seldom hunted to kill anymore, at least where dumb animals were concerned; it was sport enough to track a deer through miles of wilderness, until he came close enough to touch the skittish creature without being detected first. Not as satisfying, perhaps, as indulging his predatory instincts to the full, but enough of a challenge to make it interesting.
’Sides, he thought, what’d Bambi and family ever do to me? These days, he preferred to reserve his claws for those folks that really deserved them, like Magneto, for instance, or the Hellfire Club.
Officially, deer hunting season did not begin until winter, but the law didn’t say anything about just tracking the animals. Logan liked it better this time of year, when he didn’t have to worry about any trigger-happy weekend warriors tramping through the woods, shooting at anything that moved. I’ve got the whole forest to myself, just the way I like it.
This close, the musky scent of the deer was almost overwhelming. Logan started to creep around the lichen-wrapped log, then paused and sniffed once more. A scowl creased his feature; something wasn’t right. The deer smelled like deer, all right, but the pungent odor was almost too pure, like someone had distilled the essence of deer musk and sprayed it on the trio of animals grazing a few yards away. Logan couldn’t smell any evidence of fleas or ticks or even dried deer droppings; it was like all three deer had been raised, or at least painstakingly groomed, in a pristine laboratory environment, instead of the wilds of the Adirondacks.
There was something vaguely wrong about this perfect little domestic tableau—what was the buck doing here, hanging out with his family? Typically, adult male deer went their own way.
Maybe I’m just getting paranoid in my old age, Logan thought, but I don’t like the smell of this. As far as he knew, nobody but nobody knew where he was right now, not even his fellow X-Men; still, he’d made plenty of enemies in his time, and he was too smart to underestimate any of them. There was always a chance that these harmless-looking deer were being used as bait in a trap. Maybe I’ll get a chance to use my claws after all, he thought hopefully, looking forward to a good scrap.
Retreat was not an option. He had tracked this game too far to give up now. More importantly, if this was a trap he wanted to know who was behind it. A frontal assault, even into the jaws of danger, was better than looking back over your shoulder all the time, at least as far as Logan was concerned.
Let’s get on with it, he decided.
Getting down on all fours, his nose only inches from the fragrant soil, he slipped around the overgrown log and into the tall grass. He crept through the clearing on his hands and knees, eating up the distance between him and the grazing deer. His senses and reflexes were geared up to razor-sharp intensity, yet he could detect nothing in the vicinity except a few birds and rodents here and there. If an ambush was in the works, he sure as blazes didn’t know where it could come from; there was nothing here but the deer.
The fawn, its tawny fur still spotted with patches of white, was the closest to Logan. Balancing awkwardly on four spindly limbs, it nibbled on the grass within the protective shadow of its mother and father. So far, none of the animals appeared aware of Logan’s approach, which was just the way he liked it. He came within reach of the baby deer, then stretched his fingers toward the fawn’s flanks.
Here goes nothing, he thought, suspecting that the trap, if any, would be sprung once the deer reacted to his presence.
Before he even touched the unsuspecting animal, however, that unlikely father deer lunged at Logan, his head lowered so that an impressive rack of antlers came straight at the crouching mutant. The deep-throated roar of the attacking buck sounded in Logan’s ears. He was only a heartbeat away from being gored.
“I knew it,” he muttered. Something wasn’t right about that buck.
Snikt. Matching sets of twelve-inch steel claws emerged from the backs of his hands as he swiped out at the oncoming antlers, responding instinctively to the threat. The sharpened edges of his claws sliced off the points of the antlers, sending the bony tips flying off into the scrub. The buck reared up on its hind legs, kicking out at Wolverine with its forward hooves. He threw himself backwards, dodging the blow, and scrambled to his feet; mutant healing factor or not, he didn’t feel like having his adamantium skull slammed by a two-hundred-pound deer.
What’s this about? Logan speculated. Primal aggression from a protective papa or something more sinister? He glanced quickly to each side, but saw no sign of any human attackers—or inhuman, for that matter. Maybe, just maybe, all he had to deal with was some irate wildlife. That would be easy enough to handle. The only tricky part would be resisting the temptation to lash back with deadly force against an animal protecting his family. He clenched his fists, keeping the claws raised in front of him. There were three on each hand, all six poised to strike out at all comers. He had killed more than deer with those claws…
Then, before his startled eyes, the buck’s severed antlers grew back until they were even larger and more lethal-looking than before.
“That cinches it,” Wolverine muttered. This was no ordinary deer and the whole altercation was no isolated incident; hostile agencies were at work. And Bambi’s father wasn’t just bait, either. He was part of the ambush, maybe the most important part.
Lowering his head, the buck charg
ed again at Wolverine, who braced himself for the attack, shining silver claws extended.
“Come and get me,” he growled. “I smell venison on the menu.”
A sudden impact, followed by agonizing pain, caught him by surprise as another set of antlers stabbed him in the back, tearing through the flannel shirt to gouge the skin and muscle below, the bony horns lodging deeply into his flesh, barely missing his spine.
“What the—?” he gasped, glancing backwards to see who or what had gored him.
Impossibly, it was none other than the fawn, now twice its previous size and equipped with antlers fully as large as its apparent father. Only yards away, the doe was also growing a rack of antlers, the bony tines extruding from the female deer’s skull at an unnatural rate.
Kind of like Marrow, he thought instantly, the freakish sight forcibly reminding him of that disagreeable mutant rebel and the bony protuberances that spontaneously erupted through her skin. But since when have there been mutant deer?
Impaled upon the transformed fawn’s horns, Wolverine tried to pull himself free, but the fawn reared up, dragging the hero’s boots off the ground below, making it harder to get any kind of leverage. He gritted his teeth against the shock and pain of the antlers tearing through his flesh; his rapid healing factor couldn’t repair the damage until he got the injured tissue away from the antlers. Meanwhile, bright arterial blood streamed down his back, soaking his shirt, while the original buck came stampeding toward him.
Jaw clenched as tightly as his fists, Wolverine yanked his entire upper body forward, ignoring the stabbing shrieks of pain racing through his nervous system. The convulsive effort ripped him free of the transformed fawn’s antlers and he dropped onto the grass below—just in time to be gored in the chest by the onrushing buck.
