It was a horrifying image in a way that couldn’t be put into words to see my daughter lying lifeless there, even knowing it was just a robot that had been programmed to act like her. The fake Mindy had been so lifelike and played me like a fiddle, even if it was just, “Go to this swamp where you nearly die before carrying your incredibly important magical artifacts that the villains want to steal.” The one thing that confused me was why they had it as a backup plan since I was already going there with David. Were there multiple villains at work here or was I just overthinking things? Honestly, this plot felt too confusing as is.
Still, I had to ask, “Is Jane actually real? Is Case?”
“Hey!” Case said. “Not cool.”
“You think I’d replace a robot man with another robot?” Diabloman asked.
“I wouldn’t think you’d have a bizarre plan to gaslight me,” I replied. “Yet here we are.”
“Eh, these big epic crossovers always have twists and turns in them,” David said. “I said we just had to pay you in Nazi gold.”
“You cheated,” Diabloman said. “My plan would have worked.”
“Any plan would have worked with Gary,” Case replied. “Including leaving a trail of Snickers Minis to the castle.”
“That probably wouldn’t work!” I snapped. “Mostly because the chocolate would have been on the floor. Even if it’s still in its wrapping, its unappetizing. Okay, I’m lying. It totally would have worked.”
I didn’t ask the real question that was bugging me: whether the Mandy I’d slept with back at the camp was another one of Diabloman’s robot duplicates. I wasn’t worried about sleeping with a robot, I wasn’t robophobic, but I didn’t think I could get back a semblance of my wife only to have it proved to be a cruel trick.
In that case, I would kill Diabloman. I’d do it with my bare hands if not for the fact he’d tear me limb from limb. I could do it with magic, though, and would. That would be the crueltest act of them all, but I couldn’t figure out a reason why Mandy had changed otherwise. The bird might know but there was no reason to trust anything that came out of his lying beak.
With that, we arrived at the main dining hall of Castle Dracula. There, waiting for me on the other side, was a sight that stunned me. I stared, open-mouthed at the gathering of villains, and realized just how borked I was. I had stood up to Great Beasts, the president of the United States, Entropicus, and multiple archdemons. This? This was more than I could handle.
“I think we’re going to need a bigger boat,” I muttered.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Where I Join the League of Archvillains
The gathering of the villains was beyond impressive. The closest thing I’d ever come to seeing something similar was when I was a captive of the Society of Superheroes on New Avalon in the archvillains wing. I’d be misidentified, to say the least, as a much bigger supervillain than I was and shoved in with the most dangerous people on the planet. To say that this group of people made that look like a preschool would be an exaggeration, mostly because a lot of those people were here tonight, but they were the baddest of the bad and then worse.
The dining room was arranged in a large semicircle with a podium at the end, inhabited by Dracula himself as the chairman of this little get together. The walls had enormous banners behind each of the guests, all customized to their personal heraldry. Everyone was dining on gold plates and goblets, which made me think that Maleficent would find herself at home among the group. Each of the baddies before me was sitting down and looking at me as if they’d been expecting me, which they probably were.
There was the blue-hooded General Venom, the head of the Scorpion terrorist organization and defender of posthuman democracy (to paraphrase Terry Pratchett: “One man, one vote, General Venom being the one man who casts the vote.”). He had different politics than PHANTOM and had picked up the slack since that organization had mostly collapsed.
I saw Helios the Sun King, the aged light-bending Polish Super Supremacist who had the excuse of being a Nazi prisoner to justify exterminating regular humanity. My grandmother had weirdly been a defender of the guy due to sharing, uh, living conditions during WW2. Yeah, there’s nothing funny there.
Professor Skeleton was present, being a top-hat-wearing black man with a skull tattoo on his face who was part-man/ part god. He was not the first Voodoo themed villain I’d faced but significantly more powerful than The Left-Handed Bokor who had been one of his many bastard children. The guy probably wasn’t a fan of me for killing Lefty. I could have really used the help of Mother Brigid or Doctor Houngan right now.
Morgana Le Fey was there, I doubted she needed any introduction. She was Guinevere’s mother and looked like Elizabeth Hurley’s hotter sister. It wasn’t a necessity for superheroines and supervillainesses to both be ridiculously hot, but they tended to be. Only a handful of people on both sides didn’t look like Greek gods but that was mostly cantrips at work.
Contrasting her was the Crone, who was the inspiration for Baba Yaga and every Wicked Witch throughout history. The Crone was the mother of the Hag race and the enemy of all good witches in the world. If you wanted to blame people for the persecution of magic-users, it was ninety percent old sexist dudes, but the remaining ten percent was all her.
The King of Crime was present, being a rotund black man who wore a custom-tailored suit for his egg-like appearance, but actually was more Mark Henry than Biggie Smalls. He wore his literal crown on his head and puffed on a cigar while smiling diamond-studded teeth. He’d outlived Splotch and his father, which was an injustice that bothered me to no end. Many of these villains had personally killed thousands of people but the King of Crime had done much worse for making the lives of the poor worse since the Seventies. He was a New Amsterdam gangster who had forced the drug cartels, camora, and Russian syndicates to answer to him.
Sovi-Ape was far more terrifying as a hyper-evolved ape-man than his name should allow. His brain was several times larger than a normal simian’s, and he’d had multiple cybernetic enhancements added onto it since the days when he was Stalin’s scientific advisor. Sovi-Ape had sprung the dictator from the League of Nations after Ultragod captured him and later was the one to disintegrate Stalin for betraying the Revolution.
I could go on, but you’re starting to get the idea of the two-dozen guests here. It was a collection of history’s greatest monsters and it bothered me that Diabloman had supposedly gathered them from other dimensions and realities. The Society of Superheroes had gone to a lot of effort to seal these people in the Annihilation Zone and the Prison Dimension, barren dead realities where they could do no harm, as well as the Underworld. I’m not sure how putting someone in the latter was different from death but some heroes had a real hang up about killing people.
Obviously, our host for the evening was Dracula and I feel the need to clarify which version we’re talking about. This is not the Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, or even Gary Oldman versions. He was probably closest to the latter in appearance, but this was the bodybuilder version of Oldman that had a practiced habit of spearing people then lifting them up over his head to watch them die.
He was an incredibly powerful wizard, I could feel it from across the room even among the already luminary collection of magicians present. But he was sealed in a suit of dragon scale armor (yes, that was a thing) that had been bound with demonic runes. His sword was also singing with incredible killing strength, begging to be unleashed upon the innocent. In short, this wasn’t so much Dracula as Dracula by way of Darth Vader. A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back version, Return of the Jedi and prequels need not apply. Maybe Rogue One’s hallway scene. Honestly, as impressive as I found William and Nancy, I had a hard time believing they’d managed to kill my world’s Dracula.
“Welcome, Merciless,” Dracula said, his voice booming through the room like he was on speaker, “to the League of Archvillains.”
“Uh hey,” I said, waving. “Nice to be here.”
&n
bsp; It was weird to think I might have matured, God forbid, but it occurred to me that I would have been all over this at the start of my career. I’d been so obsessed with becoming a supervillain that I’d pretty much ignored the fact that most of them were godawful people. Yeah, I know, it’s in the name supervillain but the simple fact was I’d had a very skewered philosophy about how the world worked. Now? Now I was just sick of all these people and their plans to make the world a worse place so they could make themselves better. Who knew evil was actually bad? I guess most people.
“The League of Archvillains was established in the nineteenth century when I came to the British Empire and slowly began taking it over from the inside,” Dracula said. “I turned the richest of society while recruiting ancient magicians, criminal masterminds, mad scientists, and exiled alien warlords. Soon, I was master of an invisible empire stretching itself throughout Europe and eventually the world!”
Morgana rolled her eyes. “One of the masters, Prince Dracula.”
“Of course,” Dracula said, continuing to pontificate. “It was I who brought low ancient kingdoms and peoples to set up a new human race, the engines of commerce and technology as my new tools to reign supreme!”
Dracula droning on and on about how he helped invent colonialism was a sign that the guy didn’t know me very well. Then again, what did you expect from a guy who was most famous for the fact he stalked two teenage girls in Whitby before being killed by a cowboy? Dracula had managed to improve his circumstances in the past hundred years, getting his own country and routinely menacing the world’s supervillains but I wasn’t nearly as impressed as I suspected this gathering was meant to be. I had no chance in hell of beating any of these guys alone—well, maybe Sovi-Ape but this wasn’t my jam. The Illuminati would have to do without my membership. I was pretty sure Jews were banned from that particular heretical offshoot of Freemasonry anyway.
I looked up at the King of Vampires and spoke. “Yes, it’s all very impressive. However, I’m going to have to ask why you think it’s a good idea to invite me now?”
“Ah, he’s being humble,” Sovi-Ape said. “A good quality in a Jew. Much like Karl Marx himself.”
Oh yeah, this was going to be a politically incorrect band of supervillains too. Just great. I should mention that my family ended up fleeing Poland after the Nazis were defeated due to the fact that the Soviet Union had put a bounty on my grandfather’s head. He was a resistance fighter against all tyrants. So I was the rare left-leaning wacko who was also a die-hard not-fan of Marxism. Anarchy meant no rulers and while I sometimes flirted with the idea that I could do a better job than these knuckleheads, I was pretty good at avoiding ruling the world. Yes, that was totally the reason I hadn’t taken it over yet. Honest.
“You have distinguished yourself these last few years, Merciless,” Dracula said. “Your killing of the Extreme, your takeover of Omega Corporation, your killing of the U.S. president, and role in the death of Ultragod.”
I grimaced before forcing a smile. “Yeah, that was me alright.”
Dracula chortled. “That last one would have gotten you membership by itself, but it is tradition that our numbers remain no more and no less than thirty. As such, it was not until you killed Tom Terror that an opening on our illustrious council was made.”
I looked over at Sovi-Ape then Dracula and bit down my tongue about the fact they had a Nazi mad scientist and a Soviet mad scientist on the same team. I also had to wonder why Helios the Sun King hadn’t incinerated both. I was tempted to ask him. Instead, I just said, “Wow, that’s great news! Here, I thought I was a prisoner! What with waking up in a dungeon and all.”
“I also agreed to sponsor you,” Diabloman replied.
David chuckled. “He shouldn’t have. I mean, he really shouldn’t have.”
“I agree,” I said, looking around a bit more. “So this isn’t about the Primal Orbs?”
“Oh yes,” Dracula said. “It is. You are going to remove the ban on resurrection in this reality. We have all lost beloved slaves, pets, minions, concubines, and allies over these past few years. It took Diabloman to free us and gather us together for the first time in a decade to realize how badly things had gotten to.”
“Yes,” Diabloman said, sounding ashamed. “I fell back on many old alliances for this plan.”
“He had an elaborate plan with his familiar to destroy you mentally and physically,” Dracula said.
“Sweet,” I replied. “I take it we’re not doing that now?”
“Oh no,” Dracula said. “Not at all. It is said that the worst plans of supervillains are made when you have multiple masterminds in charge. When you were brought here as a prisoner, I knew that there was a better opportunity than just trying to torture the Primal Orbs out from you—the late Countess de Cobress aside.”
“I really do think that is violating copyright,” I said.
“No, I want to simply offer you the world,” Dracula said.
“The world?” I asked. “I thought you all would want that.”
Dracula snorted. “No, I could never share the rulership of the world with you or any other archvillain. Which is why this is so perfect.”
Dracula pointed at me. “Once we have all the Primal Orbs in our possession and you are bound to make the proper wishes, we shall have no limits to our ability to achieve our ends. Why not start with dominion over the multiverse!”
I was now confused. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m still suffering a concussion at the hands of my wife. What now?”
“Banded together from remote galaxies are thirteen of the most sinister villains of all time: the Legion of Doom,” Case whispered. “Dedicated to a single objective: the conquest of the universe.”
“I think only a couple of them are not from Earth,” I replied, softly. “Also, the universe is pretty ridiculous to conquer. A single galaxy should keep you occupied for eternity. Keeps your ambitions realistic is what I always say. I don’t know what these people are thinking wanting to take over the multiverse.”
“Each one of us shall have his or her own world!” Dracula said. “You inspired us by recreating Merciful’s homeworld and putting it in counter-position to the Earth across the sun. We can forge a new cluster of solar systems with the domination of living beings all dictated to our tastes. A world of vampires for me, an eternal Mordred-ruled Camelot for Morgana Le Fey, a Stalinist Soviet Earth for our simian associate, and so on.”
“And you want me to do this?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” Dracula said. “Our original plan would have been to break you mentally and emotionally, but you seem remarkably resistant to that. I was most disappointed we couldn’t bring you here after witnessing the death of your loved ones at the hands of our undead horde. Sheriff Injustice and his daughter are dead as well?”
“As a doornail,” I said. “Not understanding how that phrase came to exist.”
Dracula narrowed his cold dead eyes. “A pity. Not because you succeeded in destroying him, but I had a wager he would win.”
“What a shame,” I replied.
The Crone cackled. She then narrowed her eyes and spoke, her voice raspy and not too dissimilar to the Wicked Witch of the West’s. “You are all fools. You pretend to think you are fooling him with this banquet and offer of knighthood, but he is not nearly as stupid as he appears.”
“No one could be,” Helios the Sun King said.
“But you have all forgotten the old heroes. You have all become so used to fighting demigods and kings that you don’t remember older archetypes. Merciless is a clever peasant boy.”
“I object to the term boy, Grandmother,” I said, strangely feeling the need to call her that. Something about my actual grandmother’s tales that you should always be respectful to the fae, even if you were fairly sure they planned to eat you. Especially if they intended to eat you.
“The Jew, the Golem, and the Strongman are not ones who will match you fist to fist but with cunning,” the Cro
ne said, getting up. “You have let doom in through the front door and acknowledged him as a guest. If you’d been smarter, Little Vlad, you would have crushed his head in with a rock the moment they brought him. However, I suppose we all have our roles to play.”
The Crone transformed into a dragon right in the middle of the dining hall before disappearing in a ball of green fire. I half expected “Night on Bald Mountain” or Maleficent’s theme from Sleeping Beauty to start playing. This despite the fact the Crone was no Angelina Jolie.
I had to admit that managed to rattle my cage. I’d been to alien worlds, with archdemons, and met with the Lady of the Underworld on a regular basis. However, there was something about the Crone that terrified me. I was rapidly realizing that there were people out there who could brute force their way past all my magic and others who managed to see right through my idiot-hero disguise. Well, as much as it was a disguise and not just being way over my head.
“Well, she had to mess things up, didn’t she?” David muttered.
That was when it occurred to me that everyone was looking uneasily at me. I suppose that when an old witch spouts prophecy that you’re a danger and they’ve severely underestimated you, most archvillains are inclined to believe her. I suspected in the next few seconds that I was about to blasted to pieces, turned into a toad, or turned into a toad then blasted to pieces.
Dracula looked down at me, a bored expression on his face. “What an interesting display. Tell me, Merciless, do you intend to betray us all? Is it a better idea to kill you before you manage to pull off some miracle that allows you to defeat the greatest alliance of evil in the world?”
Wow, the dude described himself as evil. Somehow, despite being born in 1496, the guy was a full-on edge count. Everyone looked at me, including Case and Diabloman, with the implication that my next words would decide our fate. The only one who didn’t look concerned was David and that’s because he seemed to actually know what the hell was going on.
The Supervillainy Saga (Book 7): The Horror of Supervillainy Page 21
