Shadows chased each other across the globe’s surface, resolving into the shapes of familiar faces. Cyclops. Phoenix. Iceman. “So,” mused Selene, “I wonder what business the X-Men have with me?”
... the last we heard, said the voice of Phoenix, transmitted by the crystal into Selene’s mind, Selene had taken control in New York.
Selene was Shaw’s Black Queen until recently, said Cyclops. Then: We can’t just assume that Selene has defected. She might be working with Shaw to control both branches. And: Bobby, Jean and I will see what Selene’s up to.
Iceman was next. His words brought a smile to the eavesdropper’s face. If we have to confront that witch Selene in her lair, then I’ll be a lot happier doing it in the full light of day.
She sent the ball back to her inner sanctum, and lost herself in thought. In the cell behind her, Mr. Pemberton began to scream again. Idly, she licked his blood from her lips, and enjoyed its rich, salty taste.
It wasn’t the same, though, she reflected wistfully. Torture was never quite as satisfying when the recipients were willing participants in the process. And indeed, some members of the Hellfire Club paid good fractions of their considerable fortunes for the privilege of enacting their masochistic fantasies. Selene had learned to content herself with the bittersweet mixture of pain and pleasure she could coax from them. She couldn’t afford to draw too much attention, so it was rare that she allowed herself the treat of kidnapping a total innocent-usually a vagrant—and bringing him down here.
Sometimes, of course, she could go a little further than her customers wanted. It didn't stop most of them from coming back for more.
But now, the X-Men were paying her a visit. And, at the very least, this meant that the Black Queen could look forward to an entertaining diversion.
At best, perhaps she would be able to indulge herself after all.
The Hellfire Club’s Pacific Rim headquarters was situated on the south side of Hong Kong Island. The building maintained a dignified distance from the overcrowded, noisy bars and evening markets of the north, while remaining as close as it needed to be to the bustling financial district and to the millionaire’s paradise of Deepwater Bay. Its architects had sited it in the traditional manner, facing towards the sea, its back to the rolling hills. This had once been a peaceful, leafy area-but progress and the city center had encroached upon it, and concrete skyscrapers now grew between the trees.
The building itself was a wide, single-story construction in the classic Chinese style: all overhanging eaves and pillars. A two-story pagoda, housing a rooftop garden, rose from the sloping roof to a pointed spire. A broad flight of steps led up to a narrow plaza in front of the building. They were guarded by a pair of stone dragons on plinths, breathing real fire.
For some time now, Rogue and Nightcrawler had watched from the shadows between this building and the next, as a succession of well-dressed men and women, reeking of affluence, were drawn in by the lights that shone out from the veranda. The population of Hong Kong was 98°/o Asian-but, although the club had welcomed many Chinese guests tonight, it seemed to Rogue that it also attracted more than its fair share of expatriate white Americans and Britons.
A white limousine pulled up, and a woman poured herself out of the back. She was middle-aged and gray-haired, tall and slender, with a fur coat and a diamond necklace that had probably cost more money than Rogue had ever seen. This was obviously not her first port of call tonight. She could hardly stand. She rapped her knuckles on the car roof as a signal to her driver that he was no longer needed. In doing so, she leaned too heavily against the vehicle, and almost fell as it pulled away. She made circling motions with her arms to keep herself upright, then put a hand to her mouth and looked around with wide-eyed, sniggering embarrassment to see if anyone had seen.
“I think it’s time,” said Kurt.
They stepped into the light, Rogue leading the way. She had pinned up her hair, applied more makeup than usual and squeezed her muscular but shapely body into an elegant blue, long-sleeved frock. The result was a total transformation. Rogue didn’t even feel like herself. She hardly dared move, in case her hair fell down or she burst out of her expensive clothing or was tripped by her treacherous high heels. Nevertheless, she managed a clumsy, teetering half-run along the sidewalk towards the drunken woman.
“Dah-ling!” she cried out, trying to soften her broad Southern accent. “Darling, it is you!” The woman, already halfway up the steps, turned and squinted at her myopically, without recognition. Rogue didn’t give her the chance to put her sozzled brain into gear. She put a silk-gloved hand on the woman’s shoulder and steered her back down onto the sidewalk, where her teammate was waiting.
It took more than a change of clothing to disguise the blueskinned, demonic Nightcrawler. However, thanks to an image inducer, he currently wore a handsome face with a pencil-thin moustache, and a tailored suit. Rogue knew that the resemblance to Errol Flynn was deliberate. Between them, the two X-Men certainly looked like any one of the other young, wealthy couples who had passed through the doors of the Hellfire Club in the past hour or two. But there was one thing they still needed: an invitation.
“You’ve met my good friend Kurt, haven’t you?” Rogue continued, guiding the woman along the sidewalk. “Of course you have. So, how are you these days? It’s been so long. You really must let me take you for a drink some time. We have so much to catch up on.”
So far, the woman had allowed herself to be led. But now she resisted, shrugging off Rogue’s hand and coming to a determined, if slightly unsteady, halt. Rogue glanced uneasily over her shoulder. They hadn’t come as far as she would have liked. But the woman, drunk though she was, had clearly begun to realize that she had never met these two strangers in her life. And, with another car already pulling up at the steps, Rogue couldn’t afford to let her cause a scene.
She pulled off her glove, reached for the woman’s face ...
And hesitated.
As soon as Rogue’s bare skin touched that of the woman, she would absorb her memories, her personality, her very self. It was her blessing and her curse. In her younger, wilder days, she had used her ability with abandon, exulting in the fact that she could steal the powers of other mutants and super-powered individuals. Now, though, she was more mature, and more aware of the consequences of her actions, both for her victims and for herself.
She had gone too far once. She had held onto a woman called Carol Danvers-the Avenger called Ms. Marvel-for too long. And something had gone wrong. Badly wrong.
Rogue owed her powers of flight, great strength and nearinvulnerability to Carol. Unlike the other abilities she had absorbed over the years, they showed no signs of fading. But there was a part of Carol in her mind as well; a part that, at first, had railed against the injustice of Rogue’s actions and had waged war upon her from within, almost tearing her psyche apart.
Rogue hated to use her innate ability now, but she couldn’t turn it off. And it had grown even stronger. The only way she could control it now was by wrapping herself in heavy clothing, forever denying herself intimate contact with others. But she felt she had no choice. She knew what the real Carol Danvers had been through, and she wouldn’t wish that kind of suffering upon anyone. And she was also fearful of allowing new voices into her head, of taking the risk that they would stay with her forever, chipping away at her old self until there was nothing left that was truly her at all.
Rogue looked at Kurt, and he must have seen the fear in her eyes because he responded with a reassuring nod. He would be here, if anything too bad happened.
She wished Phoenix could have been here too. Then she wouldn’t have to do this.
There was a painful knot of anxiety in her stomach, and she had to will herself to reach out, slowly, with one finger, towards the inebriated woman’s cheek until she just... brushed... against her skin ... and she was Mrs. Lavinia Smith, widowed but well provided for by her philandering husband Philip, who had been a director of
an arms export business, and she had a taste for hard-centered chocolates but she couldn’t stand dogs, nasty yipping little things, and she was sometimes lonely in that big old house in the hills and once, as a teenager in a West Hollywood school, she had lured Michael Craig from the football team into the stockroom and she reeled with the onslaught of thoughts and memories pouring into her with the impact of a high-pressure hose, and she wanted to scream but she clenched her fists and redirected the sound into a low groan from her stomach, and the world shot out of focus and she hoped she had managed to separate herself from the woman Lavinia, who didn’t like the smell of after-shave and who always tried to put aside one hour in the afternoon to read because she just couldn’t tell.
Slowly, painfully, Rogue climbed back up to the surface of her own mind, relieved to find that she appeared to be intact and in control. Lavinia had collapsed and Kurt had caught her-but the woman still clung to consciousness, murmuring under her breath. Considering the state she had already been in, things had turned out remarkably well. Rogue put her glove back on, and answered Kurt’s concerned look with a nod.
It was the work of only seconds, then, to search Lavinia’s purse for her Hellfire Club membership card, which was exactly where she remembered leaving it. Her name was embossed into the golden square of plastic, below an upturned trident with a short handle. Simultaneously, Kurt scanned the woman’s form into a spare image inducer.
By the time the next taxicab arrived, they were ready to bundle Lavinia Smith into the back, attracting only the briefest of gazes from the young Chinese couple who had arrived in the vehicle, and a world-weary sigh from the driver. “Our friend has had a little too much to drink, I’m afraid,” said Rogue apologetically, before retrieving the woman’s address from her borrowed memories, handing over some money and sending the cab on its way. The driver would probably have to help his customer through her front door, but she would be all right.
Then the two X-Men slipped surreptitiously back into the shadows. When they reemerged, a few minutes later, one of them looked very different.
The Fifth Avenue brownstone headquarters of the Hellfire Club’s New York chapter stood only a few blocks from the home of the Avengers, opposite Central Park. As Scott Summers and Jean Grey climbed the steps that led to the entrance, people wandered past on the sidewalk behind them. It felt odd to be conducting X-Men business out of costume and in such a public place. But Scott was determined not to let the innocuous surroundings lull him into a false sense of security. Selene was a deadly, unpredictable foe. He was well aware that they could find themselves fighting for their lives at any moment.
The main doors were framed by a large, stone archway, into each side of which was set the club’s familiar upturned trident symbol. They were locked, and the tall windows in the front wall were blank and dark. This building only came alive at night.
Jean pressed the bell, and Scott listened to its deep, sonorous tones echoing deep inside the mansion house. The couple exchanged a nervous glance as they awaited a response.
At last, footsteps shuffled down the front hallway, and the door was pulled open. Scott’s eyes widened at the sight of a grotesque demon in the familiar costume of the Hellfire Club’s mercenary agents. He tensed, and raised a hand to his ruby quartz glasses. They didn’t give him the fine control of his visor, but he could lift them and unleash his optic beam if he had to. But the demon simply leered at its two visitors, and beckoned them inside with an expansive sweep of its arm.
Be careful, Jean telesent, not only to her husband but to Iceman and the Beast, who were waiting within telepathic range at the back of the building. Selene might have been expecting us. The sorceress was making a point by flaunting her club’s true nature this way.
They followed the demon along a deep-carpeted passageway, past oak-paneled walls decorated with valuable old paintings, past the familiar ballroom with its grand staircase, and down a narrower, twisting flight of stairs to the first basement level. Selene was waiting beside an open door, leaning against the wall and studying her fingernails with a casualness that was belied by the steel-trap alertness in her deep, green eyes. She was provocatively dressed in a black leather teddy, which left her arms, the tops of her legs and a substantial section of her cleavage exposed. A cape, also black, was draped around her shoulders, and she wore knee-length black boots and long, finger-less gloves.
“Well, well, Mr. and Mrs. Summers,” she greeted the couple, rolling the words on her tongue as if enjoying their taste. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Perhaps you’d like to see how my Hellfire Club is faring under new management?” She pushed herself up from the wall and stalked through the door, beckoning Scott and Jean to follow her with a raised arm and a coiled finger, but not looking to see if they did.
Selene’s office was furnished like a throne room, with gold trim and velvet drapes-and, yes, a large, central throne, upon which she now perched. But there was a dark quality to the decor, with light fittings and ornaments twisted into demonic shapes, framed paintings depicting vistas of various underworlds, and a raised stone dais upon which sat a crystal ball. Candles burnt in the corners of the room, but somehow didn’t light them, and a thin veil of smoke hung over the air.
“I’m sure you are both aware,” Selene told her guests, “that you don’t qualify to become full members of the Hellfire Club in your own rights. Your, ah, financial situations do not permit it. Still-” She waved a hand, magnanimously. “—I am prepared to extend certain ... facilities to you. You are, after all, close associates of at least two of our most valued members.” She smiled, and showed her teeth. “And old friends of mine, of course.”
“We aren’t here to make small talk, Selene,” said Scott, gruffly. “No?” Selene gave him a look of disappointment, but shrugged it off. “I do apologize. If this is a formal visit, then you should have dressed the part.” She made a gesture with both hands—and, before her visitors could react, their clothes came alive, rippling and transforming, changing shape and color, until Scott Summers and Jean Grey found themselves standing in the costumes of Cyclops and Phoenix.
“Nice party trick,” said Phoenix, with false pleasantness. Cyclops was already worrying about how they would get out of here without causing mayhem. He would probably have to ask his wife to cloud the minds of any onlookers, to make them doubt what they saw.
“And you really should have invited your colleagues to join us,” said Selene. She gestured again, and Iceman and the Beast materialized, looking thoroughly confused. “It is sheer bad manners to enter somebody’s home uninvited-and by a rear window, at that.”
“OK, Selene,” said Cyclops, attempting to regain control of the situation, “you win that one. Now, let’s get down to business.”
“You mean your search for your lost friend.” The four X-Men glanced at each other, and Selene took visible delight in having disconcerted them again.
“Then you do know where Moira is,” said Cyclops, bluntly.
“The question is,” she mused, “what kind of a mood am I in today? I might not feel predisposed towards assisting those who have tried to invade my privacy; who have, indeed, upset my plans in the past. Or perhaps I am feeling more ... playful.”
“You might be in the mood for playing games, Selene,” said Cyclops, “but let me warn you now, I’m not!”
“Oh, Cyclops!” Selene was more amused than intimidated. She stood up and swept towards him, her cape trailing across the floor. “Always so earnest, so grim. Give me a few hours with you, and I could really loosen you up. And Iceman ..She caressed Bobby’s chin with her hand. He recoiled from her touch. “Poor, scared little Iceman. You don’t want to be here at all, do you? Unlike Phoenix here, who’s hoping against hope that I’m the person you’re looking for-because, if I’m not, she’ll have to face her past all over again.”
Selene stopped in front of the Beast, who returned her gaze evenly. “Ah, but you, my little blue friend, your eyes tell the most inte
resting story of all. Your wishes conflict with Ms. Grey’s, do they not? You, most of all, are looking for answers, but you’d prefer not to find them here. Your hopes are high, but your fears are still greater.”
“Selene,” growled Cyclops.
She turned her back on them, with a dismissive gesture. “I am bored with you all. But I suppose the easiest way to be rid of you is to reveal what I know about the MacTaggert woman’s whereabouts.” She retook her throne and leaned forwards, with a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes.
“Very well, then. I will tell you.”
Kurt Wagner loitered by the French windows, flashing his Errol Flynn grin at anyone who looked his way, but avoiding too much eye contact, determined not to get drawn into conversation. The Hellfire Club was busy tonight, its ballroom packed with the cream of Hong Kong society. Well-dressed couples swayed on the dance floor to the strains of a classical orchestra, while fat men in business suits sat in plush, leather armchairs, smoked cigars and swapped bawdy jokes.
Kurt was relieved when Rogue finally reappeared from the direction of the restrooms. She had turned off her image inducer, and she looked slightly nervous to be braving the crowd with her own face. She needn’t have worried. She blended in perfectly in her elegant clothes, and she was certainly drawing less attention than she had before. The inducer had been useful for getting the two X-Men past the doormen as Mrs. Lavinia Smith and guest, but the middle-aged widow had proved a little too popular with the club’s clientele. Within minutes, Rogue had been intercepted by three different ‘friends’. She had had to draw upon Lavinia’s fading memories to put on a convincing act, until she could politely excuse herself.
Kurt took two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter, and handed one to his teammate. They drank and smiled, and gazed into each other’s eyes, like lovers who didn’t wish to be disturbed in their quiet corner. But, rather than whispering sweet nothings into Kurt’s ear, Rogue was telling him about the security arrangements she had observed outside the ballroom. Presently, they linked arms, and she guided him casually across the room. There were three sets of interior doors, opposite the front windows, leading deeper into the building. Only one, however-on the far left—stood open.
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 9
