Convinced Knight could hold her own for the moment, Logan threw himself into the thick of the assassins. “Heads up, boys, Wolverine’s cornin’ at ya!” he barked with gusto.
They were the best killers in the world—silent, fast, and invariably deadly. Their training, refined for hundreds of years, had been perfect. But nothing could prepare them for a target like Logan. In addition to enhanced senses, his mutant physiology had the ability to heal his wounds very quickly. This gift, in addition to his claws and unbreakable skeleton, had led him to develop a uniquely effective fighting style.
The first swordsman Logan reached scored what should have been an incapacitating strike to the mutant’s side. To the assassin’s amazement, his target kept coming. Logan could, and would, casually sacrifice his body to overcome an opponent—it was all just meat to him. That gave him the edge.
Unprepared for the ferocious abandon of his attack, the assassins fell one after another, until sheer numbers inevitably began to turn the tide. Logan was barely able to block a double overhand sword blow to his head. Metal shrieked and sparked against metal as his claws stopped the blade inches from his face. The big assassin holding the sword bore down heavily on Logan, pushing the mutant’s strength to the limit.
The killer muscled in close, glaring into the eyes of his opponent. As their numbers had been thinned, the assassins were losing their carefully cultivated air of detached professionalism. Honor was on the line. It was getting personal. “You are good, gaijin,” the man whispered in Japanese.
“I’m the best,” Logan hissed back in the same language.
“Not today,” the killer countered, driving the point of a spiked knee pad up into Logan’s thigh. The howl of pain that erupted from the mutant was so startling, so ill-suited to a human being, that it shook even this seasoned killer, and broke his composure. Before he could recover and press his advantage the assassin heard the crack of a gunshot and felt, simultaneously, the hard impact of a bullet in his shoulder spinning him away from his target.
That bullet had come from Knight. Though he was injured in several places and beginning to get tired, Logan was still annoyed that she had taken out his man. The clash with the assassins, murderous though it might be, was just what he needed. A good fight focused him like nothing else, and he craved that kind of focus.
Logan was tempted to change his mind about the holistic benefits of combat as a volley of arrows sliced down at him from the loft. One clipped his arm. Another buried itself in his shoulder. For the second time that night he howled in rage and pain.
Knight reacted to the new attack quickly. Pushing off from the side of the kitchen counter with one foot, she threw herself out into the room, and slid on her back across a section of bare wood floor. As she cleared the overhang of the loft, she pumped rounds from her pistol into the archers above.
Logan lunged over her as Knight rolled behind a couch to reload. He bounced off the bookshelves on the far side of the room and leaped up onto the loft level. He was mad now, and he needed a target.
With practiced speed, Knight thumbed shells into her weapon and snapped the cylinder back into position. Another assassin dropped over the couch at her, sword ready. She turned aside his killing blow with her right arm. But before she could raise her weapon, the assassin was leveled by the falling body of one of the archers. Both landed in a heap at the foot of the couch. They were quickly joined by a second and then a third archer, evicted from the loft by Logan.
Knight rolled sideways and came up on one knee behind the coffee table, pistol ready. This time, though, she had no target; nothing moved in the apartment.
The sudden quiet was broken by the beating of the dove’s wings. Its cage had been smashed and it was lying in a puddle of rain beneath the broken window. Logan saw it struggling to free one blood-flecked wing caught in the twisted bars. He knelt beside it, pulling gently on the bent metal. The bird shook the water off its wings and fluttered unsteadily through the air over the living room, disappearing into the dark recesses of the high ceiling.
Logan watched it go.
After a quick sweep of the apartment to be sure they were alone, Knight brought bandages from the bathroom and began to bind Logan’s arm, leg, and torso.
“You gonna be all right?” she asked.
“I’m used to this kinda thing.” He nodded at her arm. Her shirtsleeve was slashed in several places. “I could ask you the same question.”
She sat back and pulled up the sleeve. There were severe cuts, but no blood. Beneath the tom edges of her smooth, brown skin he could see the glint of metal. Suddenly self-conscious, Knight tugged the sleeve back down and let the arm fall to her side.
“The good Lord made the rest of me, but I have Stark International to thank for the arm.”
“Bionic?”
“Yeah.”
“Line o’ duty?”
“Yeah.” She sighed and looked around the wreckage of the apartment. “I was working the Twelfth Precinct, day shift. There was some kind of disturbance at a bank. I answered the call. This nut throws a satchel—had to be a bomb. I caught the fool thing—instinct I guess. Then, boom. Made a mess out of the place—and my arm.
“I got a commendation and a desk job. That’s not what I joined the force for, so I quit. The boys at Stark heard the story. They had a mechanical arm they wanted to test. I signed up and the rest, as they say, is history.”
“Well, seems like we sorta got somethin’ in common,” Logan said, glancing at the trio of slots on the top of his hand. “I guess we all got a sad story to tell.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “What about the welcome wagon? You way behind on the rent?”
“I wish,” Knight stepped over to the nearest of the assassins and began to search his clothing. “My partner Colleen Wing and I have been working on a case—crimes in New York committed by Japanese gangsters. We traced the jobs back to Japan. Colleen’s working that end of the case now. Looks like it’s all tied in to the emergence of a new figure in the Japanese underworld. I’d say these guys are a not-so-subtle warning that we’re getting too close to whatever’s going on.”
“Yer right there. They’re called the Hand, an ancient society o’ Japanese assassins. I ain’t run into them in a while.”
Knight stood up and kicked the man she’d been searching. He didn’t stir. “Maybe we can persuade one of these jokers to fill in a few details for us when they wake up ”
“I don’t think so, lady® Logan nodded at another of the assassins. A thick stream of vapor was beginning to rise off the man’s body. When he nudged at the assassin with his foot, the body collapsed into a pile of empty clothes. The same transformation was occurring all around them. In a moment, the killers were all gone, reduced to smoke wafting out through the back window. As the last of the strange vapor dissipated, the dove flew down from the loft railing and settled on the floor near what was left of its cage.
“These guy’s ain’t the chatty types. If they miss their target, they’re dust—do or die. The Hand tends to be real strict that way.”
Logan winced at the pain in his side. Now, as the adrenaline rush of the fight subsided, his uneasy mood was returning. It was a mood he was getting sick of. The bird, the trip to the apartment, it was all supposed to be a nice gesture. As if by reaching out, making an honest effort to be kind, he would find some release from the anxiety in his mind—and his heart. Instead, what did he find? Another fight, pain, more death. Like there was no possible action he could take, nowhere on earth that he could run to escape the violence that filled his life.
Knight bent down, pushed aside some broken glass, and picked up a half-crushed pack of Kools from the floor. Leaning against the back of a sofa, she smoothed out one of the cigarettes, lit it, and took a long drag.
After exhaling a slow, gray cloud of smoke, she said, “Since we’re having story time here, why don’t we talk about you for a while?”
“Not exactly a fascinatin’ subject.”
“Let’s start with how long you’ve had a thing for Jean.”
“Yer crazy,” Logan said in a measured voice.
“Don’t try to snow me, Jack. I saw you mooning around her room all dewy eyed, remember? Now, come on, talk to me. I’m trying to be understanding here.”
Logan searched her face for some sign she was mocking him. What he saw instead was a cool compassion that he responded to. As much as a show of earnest sympathy would have put him off, he was drawn in by the forthrightness he saw in Knight’s eyes. Maybe she could understand what had brought him there that night. Besides, he was getting too tired for denials.
“I guess you might have somethin’ there,” he said finally.
“Ain’t like there’s something wrong with liking somebody, Wolverine. Happens to the best of us.”
“Not to me. Not in a long time. I’m pretty much a loner. It suits me just fine—usually.” Logan looked out the broken back window, up into the rain pouring out of the darkness above the building. He searched for words, unaccustomed to verbalizing his feelings.
“When I joined the X-Men—on a whim, really—one o’ the things that kept me around was Jeannie. I could tell she was special. Then she died—”
Knight knew the story. “When the shuttle that brought you all back from the Starcore One space station crashed.”
“Right. But she didn’t really die. She was reborn out o’ that crash as Phoenix. And it was like a part o’ me was reborn then too. Like there was the way I was used to livin’ my life before, and then there’s my life now—with her in it. I haven’t gotten used to the change. It’s a tough thing for a guy like me to live with.”
Knight stubbed out her cigarette thoughtfully. “What about Jean’s boyfriend, Scott? He’s your teammate too.”
“I don’t sweat him. Jeannie and me, I figure we’re a lot alike, got the same kinda nature deep down in our guts, you know? She ain’t got that with Summers.”
Logan had drifted back into the living room and found himself standing close to Knight. He looked up at her as he finished speaking and they were both abruptly aware of the height difference between them. Without acknowledging it, Knight took a few steps back and leaned against the kitchen counter.
“So what’s holding you back? What’s the problem?” she asked. “Look at me. I ain’t exactly Prince Charmin’ here.” It was true— standing there in a bloodstained flannel shirt, bloody, tom jeans, wet from the rain, bandaged in several places, he looked more like a war refugee than someone’s romantic ideal.
“You ain’t really at your best right now. I’ll give you that,” Knight admitted.
“Problem is, this is the real me.” Logan turned away from her and stared into the mirror over the end table. “I’m a scrapper—always have been. There’s just a darkness inside o’ me, something I ain’t got no control over. ’Til recently, the only really strong emotion I ever felt on a regular basis was blind rage. I been tryin’ my whole life to live with that—to live with honor. But what’s honor to a savage? How could a woman like Jeannie love an animal?”
He edged back around and glanced at Knight cautiously, unsure how she would react to his confession. After pouring his heart out, the last thing that Logan was looking for was straight answers, but that was all she had for him.
“It sounds like you have serious issues to work out, Wolverine,” she began, “and I sympathize. But if you really want to do the honorable thing here, you’ve got to get past the noble but unworthy routine. That ain’t gonna cut it.”
Logan winced, like he’d been slapped in the face, but Knight plowed on. “It’s up to Jean to decide if you’re worthy of her, not you. But you don’t even have the respect to let her make that choice. Instead, you’re creeping around, leaving secret gifts, pining away—anything just so you never have to face that moment of truth.
“I’d expect that kind of thing from a kid, Wolverine, not from you. Maybe instead of trying to be less like an animal, you just need to act more like an adult.”
Logan glared at Knight. His face flushed. His emotions were racing so fast he couldn’t react to any one of them. So he stood there fuming, unable to move or say a word until, at last, he got a hold on his temper. His whole body tense, he leaned toward Knight, a finger stabbing out accusingly.
“Listen, lady—”
His retort was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Jean Grey at the door to the apartment. She saw Logan, obviously agitated, squaring off with Knight, then took in the wreckage around the room.
“Oh, Wolverine, not again!” she cried.
At the sound of her voice, Logan turned and saw her framed there in the doorway. She was dressed in a green evening gown, a dark brown overcoat on her arm. Her hair was pinned up, with wispy red strands falling around her face. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold. She looked beautiful.
' “Jeannie, it ain’t what ya think—” he rasped.
The raw emotion in his voice caught Grey by surprise. “What are you—” she began, then stopped short, seeing the anguished look on Logan’s face.
He suddenly felt calm as everything fell away but the two of them. “Never mind that, Jeannie, Nothin’ matters except what I gotta say to you right now.”
Logan knew Grey had never seen him as he stood before her then—open, humbled, reaching out to her as a woman. He could see in her eyes that she was responding, that he had touched a part of her nature that could understand what he felt.
“Jeannie, I—”
The dove suddenly fluttered into the air between them, breaking the intensity of the moment. They both realized too late that something was wrong. Logan would never finish that sentence.
The bird dropped to the floor, pierced by the silvery points of a shuriken. A half-dozen more of the throwing stars cut through the air around them. As one glanced off Knight’s metallic right wrist, Logan threw himself toward Jean. He took stars in his chest and thigh, but was unable to stop a third. The shuriken struck Jean in the shoulder. Her startled expression said it all: Though she possessed powers on a cosmic scale, Jean Grey—Phoenix—was brought down by a tiny, spiked metal disk coated with poison.
Crouched on the ledge outside the empty back window of the apartment, the assassin who had thrown the shuriken surveyed the results of the attack.
“Gotcha,” the slim, dark figure whispered in Japanese.
The front window shattered and fell away as Hand assassins poured in from both ends of the building. In the doorway, Logan was hunched over Jean’s limp body, cradling her gently. Poison burned in both their veins. He would live. He wasn’t sure about her.
Moving in front of them, Knight struck a wide stance, clenched her mechanical right hand into a tight fist, and drew her pistol.
“Let’s do this,” she said grimly.
From behind her came the distinct sound of Logan’s claws extending. He took up a position at her back. The choked, guttural snarl under his breath sent a chill down Knight’s spine. And then the Hand were on them.
Knight emptied her pistol into the rush and then assumed a defensive pose. Three of the assassins dropped down on her simultaneously. She caught the sword hand of the first, crushed it, and hurled the man into his partner. The third killer chopped down at her shoulder, and Knight only just managed to lean far enough over to take the cut metal on metal. Another few inches and she would have lost her mechanical arm. That was exactly what they had in mind, and Knight knew it as she smashed the butt of her pistol into the swordsman’s face.
This time the assassins understood what they were up against. They had been prepared for their targets’ special characteristics. It didn’t matter. All the tactics in the world, all the different weapons, all the poison couldn’t save them as Logan entered the fray. Berserk with rage, he cut them down savagely, relentlessly.
Logan threw himself into a shoulder roll toward Knight. She watched as he came up from the roll and two of the Hand suddenly dropped between them. The mutant’s claws hamstrung both of t
he men neatly before they could hit the ground.
That moment’s distraction cost Knight dearly. A blade slashed deep into her side. Ignoring the pain, she vaulted over the couch. A weighted chain snared her left leg in midair and upended her. She landed hard against the wall next to her desk. The opposite end of the chain was connected to a short, bladed weapon gripped by one of the Hand. He held it in attack position as he sailed over the couch toward her.
“Thanks a lot, chump,” Knight said, ramming her right hand through the side of the heavy oak desk. When she pulled it out there was a forty-five-caliber automatic in her fist. The assassin saw the pistol too late. She jerked the trigger twice, knocking him out of the air.
At that point, Logan’s free-roaming fury had become fixated on the shadowy figure in the back window. He waded into the last of the Hand, determined to carve a path through them to reach the one who had struck Jean down.
As the final assassin standing between Logan and his ultimate target fell, more shots rang out. Three bullets tore away chunks of the window casing as the slim, black form of the shuriken thrower cartwheeled smoothly out onto the ledge.
His enhanced senses were working perfectly now, and Logan was sure he heard the assassin laugh in the face of the gunfire. He bared his teeth and leaped across the room toward the window.
“Wolverine, wait!” Knight yelled after him.
He reached the opening, then hesitated.
“Jean needs our help,” he heard Knight say.
Logan looked out the window. He could just make out a dark figure retreating across the rooftops.
“Call an ambulance,” he grunted. And then he was gone, out into the night, on the hunt.
Legends Page 8
