“Dracula,” I said, dryly. “The Lord of the Vampires.”
“No, Dracula the Prince of Insufficient Light and Lord of Heck. Yes, of course I mean Dracula the vampire!”
I processed that. “Why would this fall upon me? I mean, there’s the Secret Service, the Society of Superheroes, the Texas Guardians, the Shadow Seven—”
“Because the president is the one who gave her over,” David said, disgusted.
Okay, the plot thickened. “I’m not sure that qualifies as kidnapped. Why would Karl Trust arrange for his daughter to be taken by Dracula?”
“Dracula has a bunch on him,” David said. “Tapes of bleeding on vampire prostitutes, money payments, associations with organized crime, the works. She’s been taken as a hostage to ensure his cooperation. At least that’s my theory.”
“Meaning you actually have no idea,” I said.
“I’m a bird detective,” David said. “Knowing and knowing are two different things.”
“By which you mean you don’t know,” I replied.
“No!” David said. “Sheesh. But Karl Trust is rotten.”
I stared at him, looking for duplicity. I didn’t see any, not that I was well-versed in reading beaks. “Agreed. This is why I voted for the other guy.”
“Pfft!” David said. “Like you vote.”
I paused. “I got caught in traffic after a threesome. That is the best excuse ever not to.”
“You could have done a write-in ballot.”
“Those are hard to get!”
If a raven could roll his eyes he would have. “Listen, Curious George, I need an answer if you’re willing to do this. There’s a hidden castle in the swamps down below the city and its full of evil cultists planning to do something nasty to the president’s daughter. We’ve got to go there and kill ’em all.”
I blinked. “You realize this is the plot of Resident Evil 4, right? I’m not sure we’re not going to get sued for this.”
“I don’t know what a resident evil is,” David said. “But I believe in democracy and we can’t let foreign governments, especially Transylvanian ones, impact our foreign policy. So I need you to go down there to kick ass and chew bubblegum.”
“And I’m all out of bubblegum,” I said, nodding at his Roddy Piper quote. “Still, I’m going to say something, here. I appreciate you coming to me first. Not a lot of people believed in me when I decided to become a superhero and even fewer have supported me since it happened.”
The decision to become a superhero had come with a lot of costs too. My best friend, Diabloman, had turned on me to help his late sister Maria Gonzales, aka Spellbinder, try to resurrect herself. I’d ended up banishing her soul to Hell as punishment for impersonating my vampirized wife Mandy (long story). I’d reformed for the sake of my lover Gabrielle, presently off in another part of the galaxy punching Space Nazis, and my two children. None of them seemed to particularly appreciate my actions and it was nice to get a chance to show off.
“Yeah,” David said, looking to one side. “I totally came to you first.”
I raised an eyebrow. “The others turned you down, didn’t they?”
“Not so much turned me down as tried to arrest me,” David admitted. “You’re about fifteenth on the list of people I’ve visited.”
I sighed. “Why, may I ask, did they try to do so?”
David spread out his wings. “I have a gambling problem, okay! It’s an addiction! A sickness! Yes, maybe sometimes I make a few bets that land me in trouble. Maybe I’ve fixed a few sporting events. Maybe I associate with organized crime on a regular basis. Hell, maybe I’m under indictment in fifteen countries for securities fraud. Maybe I took money a few dozen times to look the other way during robberies. That doesn’t make me a bad guy!”
I made a pair of finger guns at him. “I’m starting to see why Cloak never mentioned you.”
“How is Lance anyway?” David asked.
“Dead,” I said.
“I mean aside from that,” David said.
“No, dead-dead,” I replied. “His spirit has moved on.”
“Oh,” David said, looking down. “That blows. I was hoping he could help out on this. He was one of the few people to believe in me, even when the rest of the superhero world forgot they knew me.”
“Yeah, he was,” I said, lowering my head. “I miss him.”
“Yeah,” David said, nodding his head.
“So, out with the money,” I said, rubbing my fingers together.
“What?” David asked. “You’re a hero!”
“For hire!” I said. “Which isn’t copyrighted if you don’t say it all at once. It says CA$H FOR $UPERHEROI$M on the front for a reason.”
Hey? If you’re good at something, never do it for free.
Chapter Two
Facing an Undead Psycho Version of Your Mentor
Yeah, I didn’t need the money, but I wasn’t about to let the talking bird take me for a ride. I also wanted to know how serious he was about this and where animal sidekicks kept their wallets. Honestly, my reputation was so bad with the U.S. government that I’d do it for free. Karl Trust had agreed to not press charges against me for my anti-supervillain acts in exchange for not having him dragged off to Hell by ghosts. But rescuing his daughter could go a long way to reducing my chances of being hit with a drone strike.
“Aren’t you like a billionaire?” David asked.
“No, my sister is a billionaire,” I said, pointing out a technicality. “I gave her all my stock in Omega Corp and bank accounts to keep them safe from the government. Instead, she started a bunch of charities and eco-friendly businesses to solve world problems. Oh and put me on a goddamned allowance! What am I supposed to do with two million dollars a month!”
The answer was to give it away. I really did receive a check from my sister every month and I spent it on trying to rebuild the various shops, homes, and businesses destroyed in Falconcrest City’s various micro-apocalypses. It was slowly—and I do mean slowly—rebuilding the trust I’d lost due to my doppelganger briefly turning it into a fascist state. Goodwill was hard to gain but easily lost, ask any superhero. Indeed, I probably ended up giving away ninety percent of my yearly profits. The rest of my fortune I spent on such necessities as sex, drugs, and death rays. I really needed to put back some of the money to buy a college or two for my kids when they hit adulthood, though. They were smart enough to get into one of the best already before kindergarten, but I hoped to bribe their way into one to show how much I cared. You know, like rich people were supposed to do for their kids.
“Oh you poor baby,” David said, clearly not happy with my one-percenter First World problems. “I’m not going to pay upfront the whole thing.”
“Then you don’t have a hero,” I said, going back to my e-reader. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a knock-off Lara Croft erotica to read. I understand they’re making a movie trilogy out of it. Fifty Tombs in a Tank Top. It’s by Larry Karbowski and that’s not a pen name for anyone I know.”
“Ugh. Fine, I’ll pay you,” David muttered and then turned his head over the side of the desk.
Out from the raven’s mouth popped out tiny bars of gold which proceeded to hit the ground and become regular sized bars of gold. He coughed up a good fourteen on the ground before stopping.
“Keep the change ya filthy animal,” David said.
I reached down and picked up one of the bars of gold, immediately noting it was heavy enough to be the real thing. Then I noted the symbol on the top of the bar before slapping it down on my desk with a loud thump. “Are you frigging serious?”
“What?” David asked.
“Nazi gold?” I asked, barely containing my fury. “You’re paying me in Nazi gold?”
“What’s wrong with Nazi gold? They don’t deserve it,” David said.
“I’m Jewish,” I said, sharply.
“Then you deserve it!” David said, flapping his wings. “Also, really? You don’t look Jewish. More
like one of those pretty boy male models that make me want to throw out my wife’s underwear catalogs. How do you look like that and sound like the computer club kids the jocks beat up in Eighties movies?”
I felt my face and shook my head. “God, I’m going to have to contact my rabbi and cousins in Israel.”
“You have cousins in Israel?” David asked. “Are they superheroes?”
“No, they’re soldiers in the Special Forces, which makes them scarier than me by far,” I muttered. “Fine, I suppose giving the Nazi gold back to its rightful owners is worth rescuing the president’s spoiled daughter from vampires. Man, to think there was a time in my life that was a weird sentence.”
“By rightful owners, we mean Jews, right?” David said. “Not the bird detective who found it in a lake near Count Schattenjaeger’s castle?”
“Yes!” I snapped.
David bowed with his wings out. “Just checking. Don’t get so hot under the collar, Seinfeld.”
I raised an eyebrow. “The monkey jokes are funny. Jewish ones, not so much.”
“Humans all look alike to me,” David said. “Also, I’ll have you know I’m a Jewish raven.”
“Uh huh,” I said, offering my hand. “Well, you’ve hired yourself a superhero.”
David put his wing in it and we shook without me closing my grip. “Glad to hear it. Now just don’t ask why I have two million dollars in stolen Nazi gold but still have significant gambling debts.”
I stared at him. “Well, now that you mention it—”
David pointed at me. “There you are, you’re about to ask!”
“It’s an obvious question!” I said, stretching out my arms.
“Well, don’t ask!” David said. “You wouldn’t like the answer!”
“That just makes me more curious!”
I was about to ask him more when a figure walked in through the front door that I recognized. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in a thick, black, hooded cloak that cast shadows over his face as well as caused his eyes to glow like full moons in a clear night sky. Underneath the cloak was an extensive suit of body armor as well as a belt of wands, tiny magic portion vials, and spell components. It caused me to blink because it was a man whom I’d never seen alive but was unmistakable from his build and the many old pictures I’d seen of him standing with the Society of Superheroes.
“Lancel?” I said, aloud. “Cloak?”
“Boss?” David asked, equally stunned.
It was impossible because Lancelot Warren was, as I’d said, dead-dead. Resurrection was banned in our reality by an ill-fated cosmic wish I’d made. A wish designed to allow the never-ending stalemate between heroes and villains to end. Yet, here he was, right in front of me. Except it wasn’t Lancel Warren. It was a horrific parody of him. An undead abomination that my Reaper’s Cloak told me did not belong in this world. Some undead had souls and were just people walking around in corpses. This was a parody of everything my friend had been. It was the Nightwalker with none of Cloak’s humanity.
Ah hell.
“Karkofsky,” the Nightwalker said, opening his mouth to reveal a mouth full of shark-like teeth before his eyes turned blood red. “I’ve come for your soul!”
Ah hell.
I have had a very weird life. This isn’t me bragging or even overstating things. Even among supervillains (dammit, superheroes), I have a complicated and bizarre history starting with the fact my brother was Stingray: the Underwater Assassin and ending with the fact my daughters occasionally visited me from the future to hang out.
My friend Jane Doe said it was like being friends with an actual comic book character and all his oddball continuity as well as melodrama. I had no idea what she was talking about since comic books in my world were all romances, Westerns, and pirate stories.
So, bear with me, that when I say that seeing my old friend Lancel Warren in front of me and turned into a hideous zombified monster was weird, I wasn’t whistling Dixie. Dead was supposed to mean dead now. That was the whole reason I’d made my wish at the end of the Eternity Tournament. It was a wish that had cost me immensely and was something I bitterly regretted as often as I justified it.
“Holy George Romero!” David said, flapping his wings and jumping on top of my head.
“Please don’t, Lancel,” I said, standing up with the bird on my head. I really hoped he didn’t take a dump there.
It was not one of the smartest moves on my part, doubly so because I’d already survived one zombie apocalypse. Zombies didn’t have souls. They were just corrupt perversions of the person they were in life. Even vampires were closer to the person they were in life and I had extraordinarily strong feelings about nosferatu. The fact I was trying to reason with a zombie despite the fact it was threatening me in a manner of a Deadite didn’t make my decision any smarter.
“I said I will swallow your soul!” the Nightwalker hissed before raising his hands and shooting out blasts of hellfire.
I turned insubstantial and slipped beneath the floor enough that the blasts struck against the back of my business’ wall. The flame spread around the first floor of my building and I could feel the heat lick against the back of my neck. As much as my power had grown, I was still vulnerable to magic and advanced super science—both of which the Nightwalker had loads.
One thing his use of hellfire confirmed, though, was that this wasn’t just any old ordinary zombie. It was able to use magic and that was a sign it was a higher order undead at the very least. Most of my knowledge of monsters may have come from Dungeons and Dragons but that wasn’t an entirely bad source of information. If this creature was casting spells, that meant it had some serious juice behind it, like an archdemon or evil god. It also meant it might really be the Lich King or Ringwraith version of Lancelot Warren. If it came down to a conflict between our shared mastery of sorcery, well, I was a self-trained hedge mage with some overpowered artifacts, and he was once the Supreme Archmage of Earth. In other words, I needed to cheat like hell if I wanted to win this.
“Hot stuff, hot stuff, hot stuff!” David said, flying.
“I’m sorry, Lancel, but I’m going to have to blast you,” I said, apologizing to a zombie corpse.
I proceeded to unleash hand blasts of frost, creating a chilling block of ice around the Nightwalker. No sooner did I freeze him that he burned it all away around him and let out a menacing laugh.
“You are a rank amateur, Karkofsky,” the Nightwalker said. “A minor warlock without a single day of formal training in the Art. I, however, was the Supreme Archmage of Earth!”
“I was just thinking that!” I said. “By the way, how are you not dead-dead?”
“You shall burn!” the Nightwalker hissed, firing a lightning bolt at my head.
“I can see that this is going to be a wonderfully deep conversation,” I said, creating my own lightning bolt that just barely managed to cancel his out.
The Nightwalker gestured to the ground beside him and a pair of flaming hellhounds emerged from the shadows, barking and gnashing as they looked like creatures made of cracked magma. The heat was now pressing on my back as well as front. Both the hellhounds charged at me, only for me to conjure two pistols in my hands and fire into their heads, sending them flying backwards and exploding. My pistols were creations of the Primal Orb of Death and were capable of destroying anything short of a god.
“Imposter!” The Nightwalker hissed. “Cheap imitation!”
“I never claimed to be anything else, Lancel,” I said, dryly. “I also know you’re just an ugly rotting fake. The real Lancel Warren never talked like a supervillain. He was a superhero.”
“Which you never will be,” the Nightwalker hissed as a horde of featureless shadowy figures emerged from the ground, each of them reeking of hellfire and brimstone.
Ghosts. Damned ghosts or what we in the business called lemures. I hated lemures. It was technically my job to send them back to their proper resting place, but I’d mostly cleared out Fa
lconcrest City of them. These seemed directly summoned from Hell, which implied not only was Lancel full of otherworldly juice, but he had access to the Lower Planes too.
The lemures charged at me and I shot each of them with one round, causing them to explode into hellfire as they were disintegrated. As powerful as this version of the Nightwalker was, the stuff I wielded was cosmic. It was time to end this farce.
“I don’t know who created you, but I know Lancelot Warren went to heaven,” I said, only ninety-nine percent sure. “So, I’m going to destroy you and make sure whoever sent you after me follows real soon.”
The Nightwalker laughed, right before he took two bullets in the face, only to regenerate the damage instantly. “I come for the Primal Orbs, Merciless. I will deliver them to my master and undo the horrid mistake you made. The dead will reclaim the Earth.”
Uh oh. The Primal Orbs were pretty much the most powerful objects in the universe but had a “One Ring” clause to them in that they only provided you with as much cosmic power as you could use. You know, like Smeagol turned into Gollum but Galadriel would turn into Sauron 2.0. There were eight of them and together they could make anyone omnipotent. I had two of them, the first being the Death Orb that I was supposed to have according to, well, Death and the Chaos Orb that I’d taken from veteran supervillain Tom Terror.
I was pretty much the worst guy in the universe to have a Primal Orb, let alone two of them, outside of someone like Tom Terror or Hitler. However, I couldn’t think of anyone else who could safely keep them, and the biggest defense of that decision was the fact no one knew I had them. If Lancel Warren’s undead doppelganger here knew then I was screwed. Every cosmic baddie in this universe and several adjoining ones would come for them once they found out. Some of them wouldn’t hesitate to blow up the Earth and sift through the wreckage as fast as you could say Alderaan. I needed to find out where the Nightwalker had found out, who he’d told, and then kill them all. Looks like my brief career as a hero for hire was over.
The Supervillainy Saga (Book 7): The Horror of Supervillainy Page 2
