The Legacy Quest Trilogy

by Unknown Author

  Somewhere he had been before ...

  NIGHTCRAWLER WAS tiying to run forward, but something held him back. Eveiything around him was black; he couldn’t see

  _where he was going and he didn’t know why, but he knew he

  had to get there. His teammates were around him, but they too were moving as if through treacle. They were picked out in negative like images caught on a strip of film. He had experienced something like this before, but he couldn’t remember when.

  Blackheart had killed him. That much, he did remember. Was this, then, an afterlife? If so, then everything he had believed in was wrong. His chest swelled with dread and the only thought he could hold on to was that none of this could be true, that he had to get through it, had to keep on running until he had torn himself free of this damnable black light...

  And then the colors of the world inverted around him, and he caught his breath and almost tumbled forward as he burst back into reality and found himself in Selene’s throne room. He saw the Beast, unconscious, strung up by his wrists in an alcove, his blood trickling into a glass container, and he saw the Black Queen standing by her throne. A smile of triumph had frozen on her pale face, and a horrified look had begun to dawn in her eyes.

  It took Nightcrawler a second to work out where and when he was, and to adjust to the fact that he was no longer even bruised from his encounter with Blackheart. Even the tears in his costume had vanished, and his teammates also seemed to be in better shape than when he had last seen them. Sebastian Shaw, he noted, was back in his green combat suit rather than his white Hellfire Club attire. He didn’t know what had happened since his ... since he ...

  while he had been asleep, but somehow, thank God, the X-Men had been given a second chance.

  They had been returned to the place and time from which Selene had expelled them, as if they had never left. And evidently, she was surprised to see them. Which was just as well, because Night-crawler’s teammates were eveiy bit as confused and disoriented as he was.

  Wolverine was the first to act, but Selene was only an instant behind him. She brought up her hands, and the air in front of her shimmered. The Canadian X-Man bounced off a transparent but no less solid mystical force field, but by now Rogue and Cyclops were running at their black-clad foe from each side. Selene gestured again, and the flames of a dozen black candles streaked towards her and formed themselves into the shapes of leering demons. Storm took to the air and doused the infernal creatures with a localized but fierce rainstorm; the flames hissed and guttered but were not completely extinguished.

  Even as Nightcrawler leapt forward, Selene pointed over his head; he turned to see that she had animated the door through which he had entered the room. It cracked and squealed as it strained to loose itself from its hinges, reaching out and coiling strands of wood around Iceman, Phoenix and Shaw. It took all of Nightcrawler’s agility to keep himself from becoming similarly trapped. Even entwined, however, the X-Men weren’t helpless. Phoenix’s eyes turned red as she engaged Selene in a psychic struggle, and Iceman unleashed a barrage of snow upon the fire demons.

  Seeing that the tide was turning against her, Selene shrieked three words that sent a chill down Nightcrawler’s spine: “Blackheart-to me!”

  Shaw had already broken his bonds, and Rogue was running to help Iceman and Phoenix. Nightcrawler teleported to the ceiling and looked down on the field of battle, awaiting an opportunity. The room began to shake with the sound of approaching heavy footsteps, and he knew that he only had seconds before Blackheart arrived and all was lost.

  With the fire demons quenched, Cyclops, Wolverine and Storm rushed Selene from three directions at once. She clenched her fists, set her jaw and repulsed her attackers with a wave of pure psycho-kinetic force. While the Black Queen was thus occupied, Nightcrawler dropped onto her shoulders, wrapped his legs around her neck and teleported with her.

  He appeared in the Hellfire Club's ballroom, reeling from the strain of the tandem ’port. He was glad of the fact that he had emptied the room of bystanders, an age ago now it seemed.

  Where are you, Kurt? came the voice of Phoenix in his head.

  One floor straight up, he responded. He had remembered that Blackheart was confined to the lower levels of the building and he knew that, so long as the X-Men could keep Selene up here, she would be denied the support of her deadly ally.

  Even alone, however, the Black Queen was too powerful for him. She let out a howl of rage as she reached up and seized Night-crawler’s legs. At the same time, he felt her cold, baleful presence in his mind, battering down the rudimentaiy psychic defenses that Professor Xavier and Phoenix had helped him to build. He lost his grip on Selene’s neck, and she threw him to the floor. Winded, he was unable to teleport away as she raised her hands, her fingers crooked, and he felt a searing agony inside him as if she had set light to his soul.

  “You dare to challenge me, little goblin?” she shrilled. “I have ruled empires. I have seen civilizations rise and fall. I have preyed on the weak since time immemorial.”

  “Really? I must... say, you don’t look a ... day over...” Nightcrawler grimaced, unable to complete the taunt. He had never felt pain quite like this before, but he refused to surrender to it. He bit down to keep himself from screaming, his fangs cutting into his lower lip. He clung on to his last slender thread of consciousness and forced his trembling hands to reach out, to take Selene by the throat. He couldn’t let her go, couldn’t let her return to the basement and Blackheart, couldn’t let her win this time. He had seen the unholy future that she would build upon such a victory, and he refused to let it happen again.

  Blinded by pain, he almost didn’t notice that the floor was shaking beneath him until at last it erupted in a scarlet haze. The pain ceased abruptly as he and Selene were flung away from each other, and he rolled aside as a black-clad figure hurtled past him.

  There was a jagged hole in the floor, created as Nightcrawler now realized by Cyclops. Storm had already flown up from the throne room below, and Wolverine, Iceman and the team’s leader himself were close .behind her, carried aloft no doubt by Phoenix.

  As the X-Men closed upon their foe, Kurt Wagner allowed himself to pass out at last.

  The throne room was still shaking, and Rogue feared that Blackheart might burst through the wall at any moment. She tried not to think about it, tried not to think about what he had done to both her and Kurt in that terrible future. A friend was in danger, and she had to save him.

  “Hank! Hank!” she shouted, slapping the Beast’s cheeks gently with her gloved hands. “Come on Hank, it’s me, Rogue. Can you hear me? You’ve got to wake up!”

  It was no good. He was well and truly unconscious, still breath-ing-albeit shallowly—but hanging like a dead weight from the wall. Rogue remembered Selene’s boast that she had killed him shortly after the X-Men’s departure. She knew now how it must have happened. She couldn’t remember offhand how much blood there was in the average human body, but the glass container at the Beast’s feet had to have taken most of his fill. It was impossible to tell if his skin was pale beneath his blue fur, but he was certainly looking gaunt.

  Rogue took hold of him around the waist and tried to tear him free from the tendrils that held him and were draining him. She wasn’t sure if this was such a good idea, but she suspected that there wasn’t time to approach the operation more delicately. The tendrils were stubborn, though, and she resorted to feeling for them over the Beast’s shoulder and plucking them out of his back one by one. To her frustration, they squirmed and writhed like snakes and implanted themselves in him again. The blood in the glass container was still rising.

  She was relieved when Phoenix came to her aid: as Rogue wrenched each tendril loose, Jean flattened it against the wall teleki-netically to prevent it from striking again. Finally, the Beast collapsed against Rogue, who hauled him across the room and out of danger.

  “I’m keeping his wounds sealed,” said Phoenix, her face grim with c
oncentration, “but he’s lost a lot of blood already. We’ve got to get him to a hospital.” The room was vibrating so fiercely now that Rogue could hardly hear her, but she caught the gist of her words.

  She bundled her unconscious teammate into Phoenix’s arms. “You go ahead!” she shouted over the shriek of protesting stonework. “I’ve just thought of something I have to do.” Phoenix opened her mouth as if to argue, but there was no time. The door had returned to its original shape after Selene’s departure, but now it collapsed inward with a heavy thud as Blackheart strode into the room.

  He was shorter than when Rogue had last seen him, but no less imposing for his diminished stature. In any case, his petrified hair still scraped the top of the doorway-and as he entered the throne room, he grew to fill its full height. “Jean, get Hank out of here!”

  Rogue yelled, and she rocketed toward the stony-skinned demon. He struck out with blinding speed and knocked her out of the air with a casual sweep of his hand. As she crashed into the debris of the fallen ceiling, the demon leapt at Phoenix, who was levitating herself and the Beast toward the upper floor. Rogue’s distraction had given her a second, but no more; fortunately, it was enough. Blackheart made a swipe at the escaping X-Men, but howled as his fingers slammed into an invisible barrier where the ceiling had once been.

  For a moment, Rogue dared to hope that the demon had forgotten about her. She crawled quickly over to the container that held the Beast’s stolen blood. She picked it up and held it to her chest even as Blackheart rounded on her, his eyes blazing furiously.

  She didn’t pretend to understand half of what the Beast had told her about his work on a Legacy cure-but she knew that, if the Black Queen wanted his blood, then it could only be for one reason. And having seen the future, she knew that this was no false hope: the cure would really work this time. That was what she had come back for. Now, Rogue was holding the means by which mutantkind-perhaps the whole world-could be saved.

  If only she could get it out of this place alive.

  For one devastating instant, Phoenix had felt Blackheart’s rough fingers against her leg, and her heart had plummeted. She had repelled the demon’s hand telekinetically and tried to speed her upward progress, knowing that her mind was no match for his great physical strength. But then, miraculously, she was in the Hellfire Club’s ballroom and he was howling at her from below. She thanked her lucky stars for Daimon Hellstrom and his containment spell, and prayed that Rogue would find similar fortune. She desperately wanted to turn back for her teammate, but there was nothing she could do for her now.

  She could only hope that the same was not true of the Beast. His body felt cold in her arms, and her mental probes detected only the slightest spark of activity in his brain.

  The X-Men had managed to drive Selene away from the hole in the floor, away from the restricted reach of her demonic ally. However, the battle was by no means over. From Jean’s vantage point, it looked as if the whole room had turned against them. The Black Queen was fighting back fiercely, and eveiy molecule of her surroundings had been reshaped and bent to her iron will. A table had reared up to keep Wolverine’s claws away from their target; a bronze bust had come to life and fastened its teeth onto Cyclops’s arm;

  Storm was finding it difficult to remain aloft as her own cloak wrapped itself around her and tried to suffocate her; and Iceman was kept off-balance as the very floorboards at his feet tore through their carpet covering and snatched at his ankles.

  Phoenix started as she realized that Nightcrawler was lying unconscious in a corner; his body had blended in with the shadows, and she hadn’t seen him at first. However, he didn’t appear too badly hurt.

  Her path to the door was blocked, and she had no desire to drag the unconscious Beast into the melee. However, the ballroom’s leaded windows looked directly out onto the street. Jean reached out with her mind and tore the animated bust away from her husband; it had probably been modeled after a famous composer or a politician, but now its metal face was twisted with hatred and unrecognizable. It glared at her in apparent anger as she smashed it through the nearest window and created a new exit for herself.

  It was dark outside, and relatively quiet. Phoenix was confused for a moment, but then she remembered how little time had really passed since the X-Men had stood in Central Park, shortly after midnight, and planned their attack. In fact, there were more people around than she would have expected. She saw clusters of men in evening dress and women in elaborate gowns, and she realized that the Hellfire Club members whom Nightcrawler had scared out of the ballroom had not gone too far. Perhaps they had even been plucking up the courage to return to the building when she had made her appearance.

  The sight of a costumed mutant hovering above the Fifth Avenue sidewalk with her blue-furred companion cradled in her arms was the last straw for many of them. As some people stared agog, others simply turned and ran. A drunken man hollered something about “muties,” and his lady companion hushed him fearfully and dragged him away.

  A distracted driver steered his vehicle into the back of another; a third driver steered around the blockage and onto the opposite sidewalk in his haste to get away; and, upon seeing what lay ahead of her, a fourth stepped on her brakes and threw her car into reverse.

  Phoenix was used to such reactions—she even understood the fear from which they were born—but they still hurt. She tried to ignore them as she hurried southward, her mind bearing most of the Beast’s weight, alarmed and slightly drunk pedestrians scattering before her. She set eyes upon an empty yellow cab, but the cabby saw her too and put his foot down, studiously ignoring her. Phoenix took control of his mind and forced him to stop. She hated using her powers like that—to enforce her will upon another human being, she believed, made her no better than many of the X-Men’s foes—but a life was at stake.

  She floated the Beast into the back seat of the cab and leapt in after him. “This man needs a hospital,” she said, “and fast!” With a modicum of hope, she returned control of the cabby’s mind to him. He shot his seatbelt and made to open the door and flee.

  “If that’s the way it has to be ...” she sighed as, reluctantly, she retook the strings of her puppet.

  A second later, the sound of squealing tires pierced the night air as the cab raced off on its mercy dash.

  Rogue was staring at Blackheart. She couldn’t help it. She was screaming inside, telling herself that she had to move, had to get out of here, but his red eyes filled her world and she couldn't control her muscles, couldn’t turn her head, couldn’t move her arms or legs, couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. She was mesmerized, rooted to the spot by a primal terror that fried her nerve endings and set off a clamor of alarm bells inside her brain.

  He was playing with her emotions again, she realized-and that knowledge, she hoped, would make her able to resist him. She tried to override her feelings with logic, to retake control of herself. If anybody could do it, she told herself sternly, she could. Every time she used her mutant ability, every time she stole the thoughts of another person, she had to fight to assert her own personality. Surely this was little different?

  The demon extended one hand towards her. He was taking his time, enjoying her fear, and that proved to be his mistake. Willing herself with every fiber of her being to move. Rogue took to the air even as Blackheart unleashed a torrent of molten lava from his fingertips. She couldn’t help but look back over her shoulder, her heartbeat quickening as the white-hot fluid hardened into a misshapen lump on the ground.

  She aimed to fly over Blackheart’s shoulder and through the hole in the ceiling, but he was too fast for her. He reared up in front of her again, and she was forced to make a rapid course correction. Stone fingers snapped at Rogue’s heel as she hurtled out of the throne room through the doorway, the heavy glass container of blood still clutched to her chest.

  She rocketed down the basement corridor, her speed turning the wooden panels and paintings on each side of her into p
astel-colored blurs. She didn’t dare look back, but she could neither hear nor sense Blackheart behind her. She had expected to gain a second or two as he reduced himself in size to follow her, but this total disappearance was unnerving.

  She slowed down to round a tight comer, and suddenly he was in front of her again, at the foot of the staircase that would have taken her beyond his reach, hunched up to fit his gargantuan body into the corridor. Briefly, she considered trying to plow through him, but she had tried something similar before with disastrous results. Instead, she pulled up short just as she was about to hit him. She executed a sharp right turn and darted off down an adjoining passageway. But this time, she was too slow.

  Blackheart caught hold of her, his hand encircling both her ankles. He yanked her backwards and slammed her into the wall. It was all she could do to keep hold of her fragile cargo. She tried to pull herself free from his grip, but the demon’s fingers were exerting such pressure that they threatened to crush the bones in her feet to paste. She considered using her power against him as she had against Pierce—but she knew instinctively that she wouldn’t be able to cope with any part of this evil creature inside her. He would overwhelm her.

  And then Blackheart swung Rogue like a baseball bat, and she saw the opposite wall of the corridor coming towards her but she couldn’t stop herself from hitting it face first.

  And the container shattered in her arms.

  She let out a scream of frustration as she tumbled to the floor in a shower of glass and blood. For all she knew, the Beast was probably dead and his life’s work, his hopes and dreams, were soaking into her costume. Blackheart loomed over her, and she wanted to lash out at him, to make him pay for what he had done, but she knew it would do no good. Instead, she picked herself up, her furious eyes fixed upon him as if she were about to attack...

  ... and then she dived between his legs, took flight to avoid a swipe from his tail and flew as fast as she could up the stairway. She emerged onto the ground floor sweating and shaking, her costume plastered to her chest and her legs unsure if they could support her weight. But she thanked her lucky stars that she had made it at all, that her desperate maneuver had apparently taken her demonic foe by surprise.