We can't win this one, sent Cyclops, kicking aside a fallen demon, which had tried to sink its poisoned teeth into his ankle.
I concur, echoed the thoughts of Phoenix in his mind. Despite the situation, he allowed himself a tiny smile at the telepathic touch of his lover. Selene and Blackheart are content to watch for now—but we’re in no condition to fight them should that change.
That was certainly true. Selene was not only a powerful sorceress and an energy vampire but also a mutant, with powers of telepathy, pyrokinesis and molecular control over inanimate objects. With the son of Mephisto at her side, she would be near impossible to beat even under ideal circumstances.
Which I suspect it soon will, sent Storm. We are gaining the advantage over the demons.
Then I suggest we get out of here! Wolverine’s thoughts manifested themselves in an internal voice as gruff as his external one. Much as I enjoy cutting these critters into shish kabobs, they’re costing us precious time and effort—and I’m sure it’ll be no great sweat for Selene to replace them.
Agreed, returned Cyclops. Time to fall back to the door, people. I’ll take the point. Storm and Rogue, you’re fighting a rearguard action. Nightcrawler, run interference.
Nightcrawler was the X-Men’s resident teleporter. In some people’s eyes-generally those who hadn't experienced his kindness, his generosity and his unstinting chivalry—he also resembled a demon himself, or at best a malevolent goblin. His skin was indigo blue in color, and he tended to disappear in shadows. His eyes, in contrast, were a luminous saffron yellow-and his ears and teeth grew to fine points as did his long, thin tail. As if to complete the effect, he left behind a fierce pop of imploding air and a dark billow of brimstone-scented smoke as he disappeared from Cyclops’s side to reappear in the demons’ midst. He gave them a second to react to his presence before bracing himself against the shoulders of two of them, taking a prodigious leap upward and kicking out with his white-booted, three-toed feet at the faces of the creatures who had inadvertently supported him. Claws sliced through the air, but Nightcrawler tucked his knees into his chest and somersaulted out of their reach. Kurt Wagner had been brought up in a German circus, and the acrobatic skills he had learned there complemented his mutant abilities well.
The demons jostled to escape as he unfolded himself and fell back towards them, feet first. He vanished again as they closed in on the space where he had been. When he reappeared a second later, he was holding a dusty tapestry that he must have wrenched from one of the recesses of the room. He dropped it neatly over six demons and danced on their covered heads until their fellows came too close for comfort, whereupon he teleported three more times in quick succession, keeping them confused and busy.
Sprinting for the door, Cyclops emerged into a corridor that was much as he remembered it: deep-carpeted and wood-paneled, lined with expensive paintings, speaking of a quiet opulence that contrasted with his infernal surroundings of a moment before. At least his geographical position had not changed, then. He counted out his teammates behind him, ushering them towards the stairs that led up to street level. Iceman was first, followed by Phoenix and then Wolverine. The latter was reluctant to disengage from the battle, and Cyclops was relieved when he finally chose to obey orders. Wolverine possessed an accelerated healing factor, which allowed him to shrug off most wounds, but it was not likely to help him against the Legacy Virus should it penetrate his bloodstream.
Next came Sebastian Shaw-and Cyclops was alarmed by the realization that, with so much else to think about, he had lost track of the erstwhile Black King during the melee. To judge by his appearance alone, Shaw had been left untouched by the demon attack. He was unruffled, still holding himself with characteristic confidence, and he made his withdrawal from the throne room seem unhurried. Perhaps it was just that he had the ability to absorb the kinetic energy of any blow directed at him and turn it into power; however, even his green boiler suit displayed no cuts or even stains. Cyclops had noticed before that Shaw seemed to be able to stand aloof, blending into the background as combat raged around him. It was as if he considered it beneath his dignity to dirty his hands, although he certainly wasn’t averse to using his amplified strength when he felt it was required. Scott berated himself inwardly for having taken his eye off his famously treacherous ally: Shaw had worked with Selene more than once in the past, and the X-Men’s leader had been half expecting a betrayal ever since he had grudgingly agreed to accept his assistance. He wished he had seen how Shaw had reacted to the Black Queen’s revelations.
Storm backed out of the throne room next, still using her winds to keep the demons at bay. Those who fought against the ferocious air currents found themselves on the receiving end of Rogue’s sledgehammer fists. Her green costume took several cuts, but the skin beneath it was almost invulnerable and no claws could puncture it.
From the foot of the stairs, Cyclops heard the familiar bamf sound of Nightcrawler’s teleportation, which told him that the German X-Man had joined the evacuation and was indeed now ahead of him. “We’re all out!” he yelled, and Rogue fell back into the corridor and allowed the demons to spill out after her. She and Cyclops fled after their teammates, Scott glancing over his shoulder and delivering another wide-angled burst from his eyes to discourage pursuit.
No other obstacles stood between the X-Men and the main doors of the Hellfire Club’s mansion house. But as they emerged onto New
York’s Fifth Avenue, all eight mutants found themselves brought to a stunned halt.
Cyclops was the first to recover his senses and to check behind him, to be sure that the demons hadn’t followed their prey up the stairs. They hadn’t. Perhaps they were afraid of the daylight, such as it was. More likely, he suspected, Selene had not wanted them to interfere with this moment. She was probably watching now with her crystal ball. She had allowed her foes to escape so that they could witness the full horror of what she had done.
Their surroundings were familiar, and yet at the same time eerily different. The buildings of New York City were still standing, although some had been blackened by fire or daubed with graffiti-but their dirty windows were dark and empty. Deprived of the crowds that had once pumped through them like their lifeblood, the buildings seemed forlorn and bereft of purpose.
A thin late November wind whipped through the overgrown vegetation of Central Park across the street. It blew along the empty road that had once been clogged with taxicabs and tourist buses, and sent a wave of discarded cans and papers clattering and rustling ahead of it. Wolverine wrinkled his nose in distaste, but Cyclops didn’t need his teammate’s enhanced senses to detect the odor of rotting garbage and backed-up sewage: the stench of decay.
The sky was white—but it was an imperfect, dirty white, across which ripples of some darker energy occasionally passed. There were no birds beneath this strange canopy, no songs or beating of wings to distract from the dreadful silence that hung over what had once been one of the noisiest and busiest cities in the world.
“Home sweet home,” said Iceman dryly, but his attempt at black humor was undermined by the dismayed tone of his voice.
“Such defiant spirits,” rumbled Blackheart. “I look forward to breaking them.”
“You will have your chance tomorrow,” Selene promised him, “when they return.”
The Black Queen’s business had gone well, and now it was time for a little recreation. The royal couple were enjoying a stroll around the basement levels of the Hellfire Club building, en route to the catacombs. They had reached the corridor that ran behind the nightmare chambers, and the paneled wall was lined with paintings of some of Selene’s most persistent enemies trapped in a variety of soul-destroying scenarios. Every few seconds, the pictures underwent subtle changes as they updated themselves. She savored the images, knowing that they represented the tortured dreams of the captive minds behind them.
In answer to her Black King’s unspoken question, she continued: “Oh yes, I know my adversaries wel
l, Blackheart, and I have had a long time to prepare for their arrival. They will fall eagerly into the trap set by our Inner Circle: our Black Bishops, our Rook and, most importantly of all, our loyal Black Knight. They will return to this building willingly, under the pathetic delusion that they still have a prayer of defeating us.”
“And they will join their vanquished mentor in eternal torment.” Selene pursed her lips as she followed Blackheart’s gaze to one particular painting. As self-inflicted Hells went, she considered the one dreamed up by the X-Men’s founder, Charles Xavier, quite banal. Still, the pain it caused him was both real and sweet enough. Xavier dreamt of a future in which mutants were branded with numbers. Their identities were recorded in a long row of gray filing cabinets, and any use of their abilities was subject to the conditions of a special license. Any infringement of those conditions was punishable by incarceration in a maximum security prison. Xavier himself did not have to endure the harsh regime of such an institution, but he was forced to watch as those he had once considered his charges, his fellow mutants, suffered in his stead. He had failed them.
“Some of them, perhaps,” purred Selene, thinking that perhaps she would set Xavier free soon, let him see the future that she had made. His nightmares might become more colorful then. “Cyclops, Phoenix, Wolverine, Storm ... those who provide us with good sport. Those with whom we might like to play again some day. The others, we can discard.”
“And Shaw?”
“I have a special fate in store for him.” Selene smiled to herself as she continued along the corridor, passing images of the Scarlet Witch, the mutant from the future known as Cable and Daimon Hell-strom, the man who had once presumed to be her White King. As the son of a powerful demon himself, Hellstrom knew exactly what dire underworlds awaited the blemished soul, and his nightmare scenario was especially edifying.
Confined beside him was one of the world’s most powerful mutants and certainly one of its most arrogant and ruthless, now humbled at last. “Ah, Magneto,” Selene whispered fondly as she caressed the painted face of the master of magnetism with her long fingernails. “You too were a member of our Inner Circle once. Is it foolish of me to harbor the faint hope that you might serve us again?”
“His will is yet strong,” said Blackheart, “but perhaps in time, once he has been worn down by decades spent in the death camps and gas chambers of his mind ..
They walked on in silence for a moment before the demon spoke again. “It is a shame that the X-Men cannot spend a while longer in our city.”
“Their own impatience will force an early showdown,” said Selene. “I have merely ensured that we are aware of the time and place before it happens.”
Blackheart nodded. “They are afraid, perhaps, of how this environment will affect them. The rules of their old world mean nothing here. The X-Men may come to fear for their souls, and rightly so. They have only recently wrestled with their dark sides; they do not know how far they might have to go-how far they are prepared to go—to preserve their lives. I will be interested to learn the answers to those questions.”
“And yet,” said Selene, “they will not leave, although the barrier would not obstruct them.”
“It is the very purity of the hero’s soul that endangers itself,” said Blackheart. “Such has it always been. And I—like you, my Queen— would have it no other way.”
“Selene, it seems, was being truthful with us—about one thing at least.” Storm glided back to her waiting teammates on a gentle air current. She dismissed the tiny pang of reluctance she felt at having to end her communion with the elements so soon and return to a world of gray concrete. “I flew a dozen blocks in each direction, but saw only one young man. He ran from me and took refuge inside a building. The city is almost deserted.”
The very nature of Manhattan made aerial reconnaissance difficult. Storm had had to climb above its highest skyscrapers, far from the streets that she was meant to be searching. When the boy in his ragged clothes had seen her swooping towards him and had taken flight, she had been too far away to stop him, to reassure him that she meant him no harm. She hadn’t followed him: she had been under instructions not to walk into potential danger alone.
“Nobody else?” asked Cyclops glumly.
“There is a fire burning on the far side of Central Park, but I could see nobody through the trees.”
“We should check it out,” said Cyclops. His initial shock at the state of his home town had passed and, as always, he had shut away his feelings behind a mask of grim urgency, determined that they shouldn’t get in the way of his handling of the situation. “OK people, we’ve got a missing year to fill in, which means we need to do a little fact-finding. There are approximately eight hundred mutants in this city, and some of them could be old friends. We need to know who the players are, who’s on our side, and we need to find out as much as we can about Selene’s habits and potential weaknesses. Now there doesn’t seem to be any immediate danger, but that could change at any time. I think we should split up to cover more ground, but only into teams of four, and Jean should keep us linked telepathically.” “We should also investigate Avengers Mansion,” said Phoenix. “Chances are it’s been gutted already, but we might be able to salvage some of their communications equipment and make contact with them-or with one of the other mutant groups.”
“Heck,” said Rogue, “the length of time we’ve been gone, there’s probably a whole new crew of X-Men out there.” She was trying to sound cheerful but she probably realized, as did Storm, that that any such team was bound to have faced Selene already, and lost.
“Worth taking a look down the sewers too,” said Wolverine. “It wouldn’t be the first time our kind has been forced into hiding in those pipes.”
“OK,” said Cyclops. “Phoenix, Nightcrawler, Iceman, you’re with me. We’ll investigate that fire in the park, scout around the Upper West Side and then drop down into the sewers. Storm, you and the others take Avengers Mansion, then continue downtown.”
The X-Men did as they were ordered, dividing into two groups without question. Still, Storm felt a flutter in her stomach as she realized that, along with Wolverine and Rogue, she had been teamed with Shaw. It seemed to her that she had hardly enjoyed a moment away from his scrutiny since she had dined with him on the Kree island.
In the clinical surroundings of his scientific base beneath an island in the North Pacific Ocean, Sebastian Shaw had made Ororo Munroe an offer. She still had no idea whether or not she would accept it. Every time she tried to think about it, her thoughts went round and round in circles until her head hurt. Without meaning to— and despite the fact that there were more important things to con-sider-she found herself dwelling upon the details of the offer again now. She couldn’t deny that it was enticing; perhaps more so than it ought to have been. And perhaps, she thought, that was the problem.
She was aware of Shaw’s intense eyes upon her, almost looking through her as if he knew what she was thinking. She felt as if she had lived with this burden, this unmade decision, for weeks, but in fact her conversation with the Black King had taken place only one day ago.
One year and one day ago, she corrected herself, and this stark reminder of the X-Men’s immediate predicament served to refocus her mind.
The Avengers’ former base was only a few blocks away, down Fifth Avenue. “I’ll fly ahead,” said Storm. “Wolverine, I want you to take the rear and watch out for an attack from behind. Under the circumstances, we have to consider this entire city hostile.”
Shaw, she thought, would just have to wait a little longer for his answer.
CHAPTER 4
0RORO DIDN’T know if she was doing the right thing.
There were no mirrors in the underground Kree base, and the
__metal walls were too dull to hold a reflection. She couldn’t see
low she looked, but she felt like a princess.
She had found the dress waiting for her when she had returned to her room after
her conversation with Shaw on the island’s surface. It had been lying, wrapped in brown paper, on her bed. The accompanying note had simply given her a time: 1900—7:00 p.m. There had been no name attached to it, but Ororo had never doubted the identity of her benefactor.
At first, irritated by Shaw’s presumptuousness, she had left the parcel unopened. But curiosity had got the better of her. Anyway, she had arrived on the island without a single change of clothes, and stayed for far longer than she had intended. She had been wearing her black X-Men costume for a week now-and although she had washed it with a localized rainstorm and dried it with warm air, it still felt dirty and uncomfortable.
The red dress, on the other hand, felt better than it had any right to. The silk slid across her skin like the hand of a lover, flattering the curves of her body without tiying to restrict them. It exposed one rounded shoulder, and made her seem as if she were gliding across the floor when she walked. It made her feel desirable, even sensuous. In her line of work, with her chaotic lifestyle, this was a rare treat indeed.
The dress, with its designer label, probably cost more than any inhabitant of Ororo’s native Kenya could earn in a year-and yet Shaw had paid for it without a thought, and given it to an enemy, as part of a cat and mouse game he had chosen to play today. And for what purpose? Just to keep himself from becoming bored?
She shouldn’t have played his game, but she didn’t think she could help herself.
At precisely seven o’clock, there was a soft tap at her door. She hesitated for a second before opening it, suddenly self-conscious, realizing that she had already compromised herself by putting on the dress. She wondered how she would explain herself if her visitor turned out to be Iceman or Moira MacTaggert, even though that was unlikely.
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 29
