Christopher Golden

by Codename Wolverine X-men

  Yet it would be long years before he would discover the second half of that tragedy—that Maeve had borne him a daughter, a daughter who had been spirited away from her home when her father did not return to Cassidy Keep. A daughter who was raised by his cousin, Tom—the only decent thing Tom Cassidy had done since the day Sean and Maeve took their vows.

  Sean Cassidy’s heart had grown cold. His new, darker attitude was not appreciated by his Interpol superiors, and though he continued as an agent for a brief period, it was clear he was not going to last—not with the bitterness that haunted his every step.

  Eventually, there was nothing more for him in Ireland. America beckoned, and he spent time there on both sides of the law. And in all that time, he’d never really thought about what it meant to be a mutant. Until Charles Xavier had asked him to become one of the X-Men, showed him how divided the world had become over the question of genetic identity.

  Sean Cassidy, or Banshee, as he was christened for his ear-shattering sonic scream, had always been a loner, and never more so than after his wife’s death. In truth, he liked the name partially because of what it represented: a banshee was a fairy spirit whose shrill, wailing cry was meant to mark the death of a member of the old Irish families. After her death, his cry had always been for Maeve.

  A loner, without question. That was part of what drove him out of Interpol. They didn’t need any gunslingers in their tidy little agency. But with the X-Men, he’d found both family and purpose. Years later, though he’d spent time with and away from the team, he found himself in a position he never would have imagined: Teacher. Instructor. Mentor.

  What Charles Xavier had been to dozens of mutants over the years, Sean Cassidy and Emma Frost had become to a small group of young men and women whose only desire was to learn to cope with a world that hated them for an accident of their birth. In a way, he’d become a father again. And to his great fortune, when he had finally been reunited with his daughter Theresa, she had forgiven him.

  Not at first. And not easily. But forgive him she had, and Sean thanked the good Lord for that. He didn’t deserve it. Theresa was all grown up now, and out on her own with a team of mutant youngsters called X-Force. A warrior in her own right. He ached to find time to spend with her, quiet time between father and daughter. To learn what she believed in, what she thought of the world. So far, there had been precious little such time; they both had responsibilities.

  But soon, he vowed. Very soon.

  For now—well, he had papers to grade that night, but for now, for the two or three hours that Emma and the students would be gone, Sean wanted to stop. Stop working, stop fighting, stop teaching, stop worrying.

  In a ragged gray Boston Celtics T-shirt, faded jeans, and thick gray socks with holes in their heels, the man sometimes called Banshee settled into his favorite chair. He picked up Lonesome Dove, a book he’d started to read weeks earlier, and hadn’t so much as glanced at since.

  For just a moment, a glorious moment, all was right with the world.

  Robert Crain sat high in a tree on the grounds of Xavier’s School. He was wrapped in dark Kevlar, but wore no mask to hide his identity. The men and women of Team Alpha didn’t have to worry about witnesses. They never left any.

  Crain peered down the scope of his sniper rifle. Satisfied with what he saw, he pulled the cell phone from his belt and pressed the star key.

  “Colburn,” a voice answered gruffly.

  “He’s ours, Steve,” Crain said quietly. “He read for about ten minutes, but he’s out cold now. Taking a little nap. This’ll be a cakewalk.”

  “You think?” Colburn replied, his voice crackling slightly over the phone. “You read this guy’s dossier?”

  “He’s an old man,” Crain sneered. “For God’s sake, he’s sleeping!”

  “All right, we’re coming in,” Colburn said. “Give us ninety seconds to get in position, then take him down.”

  Crain slipped the phone back onto his belt and settled into the tree branches again. He sighted along the rifle again, peered into the scope. The target was still there, off in dreamland. The book had slipped off his lap and he hadn’t even woken up.

  Wistfully, Crain regretted that the rounds in his weapon were only tranquilizers. He didn’t often get such an easy shot on target when it came to live kills. Still, orders were orders.

  Ninety seconds had ticked by. He squeezed the trigger. With a nearly silent pop, the trank fired from the rifle. The arched window shattered, and the target fell over in his chair, slumped to the floor, out of sight.

  As Crain watched, Colburn led the rest of Team Alpha out of the trees and up to the main school building. The doors were opened by force, and several windows shattered, as the team poured into the house. Crain didn’t understand what their hurry was.

  Cassidy was bagged and tagged.

  Sean had always been a light sleeper. He’d honed his reflexes when he first joined Interpol nearly twenty years earlier, and he’d kept them sharp. The window shattered, he rolled, felt something tug at the short cotton sleeve of his Celtics T-shirt, just under his left arm. As he lay on the floor, heart racing with adrenaline, he reached carefully under his arm and plucked the trank dart from the cloth.

  He stared at it for a single heartbeat, curled his fingers around it, and began to crawl across the floor, avoiding broken glass as best he could. Banshee had learned a valuable piece of information from that dart.

  They wanted to take him alive.

  That was all he needed to know.

  On the first floor, the doors crashed open and several windows shattered. Sean moved fast, rising to his feet out of sight of the windows and slipping quickly into the hallway. Already, he heard pounding on the steps. Somebody’s private little army, it sounded like. Acting rashly, running to collect a target before anyone’s confirmed the target is down.

  Scratch that, he thought. They’d taken out the school’s security system before the trank dart was even fired. That was a professional job. So if there were armed grunts running up the stairs, they wouldn’t be the only members of the team. Just the obvious ones.

  Sean faded back into Paige Guthrie’s room—perfectly kept as always—and left the door slightly ajar. The first of his attackers jogged past a moment later, male and female, which meant they weren’t in any kind of regular American military unit. Women didn’t get that much play in any conspicuous way in the armed forces. Not yet.

  But they acted like soldiers, covering one another and moving in a sweep down the hall. Still, they only vaguely glanced into the other rooms. Either they weren’t as good as he’d guessed, or they were better. He thought the latter. They knew he was the only one in the house. Still, they ought to have played it safe, just in case he hadn’t been tagged by that sniper.

  Which meant the sniper was cocky. Commanding officer probably was, too. Two other pieces of information Sean could use.

  Shouting began from his own bedroom. They’d realized he wasn’t as unconscious as they’d planned. Feet pounded the hardwood once more, and bedroom doors began to open and shut. He’d left Paige’s door open just for that purpose. Logic would suggest he ought to have closed it. The room would be searched, certainly, but whoever came into the room wouldn’t be expecting him to be inside a room whose door was open.

  He stood just behind the door. When the Kevlar-clad gunman slid into the room, Sean knew his first move would be to check behind the door. Only a rank amateur wouldn’t do just that. Which was fine.

  One hand on his gun, one hand on the door, the gunman began to shut the door to Paige’s room. His eyes lit up when he saw Sean, but Banshee was already on him. Swiftly and silently, he ratcheted the gunman’s weapon arm up behind him, gun falling to the throw rug Paige’s mother had made for her. He slammed his left forearm up into the soldier’s throat, cutting off his air and his voice, and held the man’s right arm close to the breaking point.

  The gunman didn’t make a sound.

  “Ye’re a sm
art lad, then, aye?” Sean whispered. “Your employer and your mission, now. Y’interrupted my nap, boyo. T’weren’t very neighborly of ye. So speak up, ‘fore I get truly angry.”

  “You’re a dead man, Cassidy,” the gunman croaked.

  “Aye, perhaps,” Banshee replied. “But ye’ll not be around to see it.”

  He choked the man, then, but Sean Cassidy was no killer. As soon as the gunman lost consciousness, Sean lowered him slowly to the floor and picked up the weapon he’d dropped. Assault taser, he realized. Meant to zap him good, knock him unconscious. Not meant to kill.

  If these guys were as professional as he thought, they’d have come prepared for his sonic scream. Some kind of ear filters, he assumed. So unless he had to give himself away, it was best to keep his location to himself for as long as possible.

  With a quick glance into the hallway, he moved to the back of the room, keeping to the shadows. There was a door that connected Paige and Jubilee’s rooms, and he opened that door now as quietly as he could. There was a short wall to his right, built to accomodate the long closets that all the girls had begged for in this old house. Sean was grateful now for their lust for wardrobe. Undoubtedly, there was someone searching Jubilee’s room, and that three feet of blank wall kept him hidden for the moment.

  He took a step into the room. Sharp pain lanced into his foot, and he looked down to see that he’d stepped on some kind of barrette or other girl’s hair accoutrement. Banshee rolled his eyes. Fighting without shoes lacked a certain dignity.

  But it helped him keep quiet.

  Banshee stepped out into Jubilee’s room and fired the taser at the woman in black who stood at the center of the room. Her mouth opened in a surprised “o,” then her eyes rolled up as her muscles spasmed and she fell to the floor.

  “Shipman?” a hushed voice asked from the hallway.

  The door opened several inches, and Sean had a moment to decide. Duck back behind the wall and hope the new arrival would be green enough to rush to the fallen woman’s aid, or make the presumption of professionalism—that the soldier would know better—and just attack.

  Better, he thought, to be on the offensive.

  He stood his ground as the door opened. A dark face appeared, and Banshee caught him in the side of the head with the taser. He could only guess how badly such an attack would hurt, but he didn’t flinch. This fight wasn’t his idea.

  The man crumpled to the floor, but Sean was already striding past him into the hallway. He could see the top of the stairs—a woman stood there staring at him in astonishment. He wasn’t behaving according to their expectations, and it bought him half a second. Half a second to reach up to his ear, where the trank dart that had been meant for him was lodged like a carpenter’s pencil. He threw it unerringly, and it lodged in her chest even as she shouted for backup.

  Should have used the taser, he thought.

  Then doors opened and feet pounded the stairs and weapons ratcheted, and he saw that not all of them carried tasers. Some had projectile weapons, maybe with live rounds. So maybe keeping him alive was only Plan A. If there was a Plan B, he didn’t intend to stick around and find out about it.

  “Drop the weapon, Cassidy, you don’t stand a chance,” a tall, black woman said grimly.

  Sean took her down with the taser.

  Then he opened his mouth, and he screamed.

  His sonic scream ought to have thrown them all backwards, clutching their ears in pain. It should have, but it didn’t. He didn’t have time to think about the tech involved, as the sound was somehow turned back on him. Sonic refractor, or something like that, he thought. He’d have to ask Hank McCoy how it was done, if he lived long enough.

  His own power threw him back into Jubilee’s room where he crashed painfully to the hardwood amidst dozens of plastic CD jewel boxes. He rolled, ignoring the pain of what he thought might be a dislocated shoulder—gritting his teeth, roaring through it, his sonic scream tearing from him to shatter the tall pair of windows in Jubilee’s room.

  They were coming in after him. Silently. No cries of “mutie” or curses about his genetic heritage. This wasn’t that kind of attack, obviously.

  Banshee opened his mouth and began to wail again, this time using his control over his powers to warp the air around behind him, propelling him forward on waves of sound. A framed poster of Sheryl Crow shuddered off its nail and fell to shatter on the floor of Jubilee’s room.

  Then he was out. From the ground, weapons fire started to erupt, and he looked down to see the backup he’d expected. He could fly off, he thought. Just take off and come back later, try and figure out what these guys wanted in the first place. But that wasn’t his style. Especially when the answers were right here, in the minds and mouths of his attackers.

  He dove, riding the air and the sonic waves that swirled around his body at his mental command. Banshee flew quickly around the house, downing with his fists the soldiers who were shooting at him, bucking and weaving to avoid being hit. One by one, they fell.

  The last one didn’t even raise his weapon. But he didn’t look alarmed in any way. The commander, Banshee thought. He dropped to the ground just in front of the man, and the commander swung the butt of his weapon at Banshee’s head. Sean ducked inside the attack and clipped the commander hard on the jaw. He went down.

  “Ye’ve made a horrible mistake, boyo,” he rasped, his voice a bit hoarse as it often was after using his powers. “Ye’ll not find me an easy mark.”

  “I never expected to,” the commander said, rubbing his chin. “But nobody can remember everything. And it’s been a long time since you had to do any of the cloak-and-dagger stuff. That’s what I was counting on.”

  Banshee frowned, confused.

  Then the dart hit him in the back of the neck. He clapped a hand to it as if to swat a mosquito, but already his legs were growing weak. He crumpled to the lawn; the commander walked over to look down at him.

  Idiot! Sean chided himself. Forgot the sniper!

  “You’re good, Cassidy,” the commander said. “But Team Alpha is better.”

  As he lost consciousness, Sean realized that the other man was right. His squad, whoever they were, had been better. But they wanted him alive, and so he knew he would get another chance.

  Next time, he’d make it count.

  * * *

  It was a rare day in London. The sky was as blue as ice, with thin clouds trailing like cracks through the firmament. The temperature was warm, near eighty, with a cool breeze that was just enough to stop any complaints about the heat. Which was a good thing, since a perfect day like this didn’t come around very often. It wouldn’t do to curse it.

  Wouldn’t do at all, Piers thought.

  Piers Locke sat on the steps in front of the fountain in the middle of Piccadilly Circus and enjoyed the weather along with his coffee. The coffee paled by comparison. It was dreadful really, but Piers wasn’t about to give it up. His friends and co-workers, his wife and children, they all thought it beastly that he’d eschewed the pleasures of tea for the less refined beverage. But he’d always hated tea.

  It was a bit too warm outside for coffee, but Piers sipped from his cup just the same. People passed by on foot and bicycle, and went round the circus in their autos, and none of them paid him any notice at all. Piers Locke was a very nondescript man. For more than thirty years, he’d been paid to be nondescript. For the last six, he’d been bureau chief at Interpol’s London branch. But the stout, balding man rinsing his china cup in the fountain drew not the slightest attention, despite the oddity of his behavior.

  It was an art, really.

  Oh, Piers was no spy. He was a detective, really. But if he’d ever wanted to become a spy, Interpol would have prepared him quite well indeed for that career choice. You didn’t rise in the ranks of the organization without knowing how to conduct a discreet investigation.

  Piers watched the front of the building across the fountain carefully, but not because he was on a c
ase. The bureau chief didn’t handle cases directly anymore. He stared at the whitewashed building’s front steps and rounded edges, the tiny second-story balcony and the alabaster lady crowning the rounded corner of the roof above, and wondered what he would do with his time come the following Monday.

  Piers Locke was about to retire.

  Meanwhile, he had Cassidy to deal with.

  The bureau chief had only just sat down in his leather chair when a ruckus began in the hallway outside his office. The opaque glass set into his office door seemed to bulge inward, but it was mainly illusion. There was shouting, cursing, and then a heavy knock on the door.

  “Come,” he said.

  The door swung in, and the red, nervous face of Andrew Chapman, his deputy chief, popped around the edge of the door.

  “Sorry, sir,” Chapman said anxiously. “But it’s Cassidy. Insists on seeing you, he does.”

  Piers took a deep breath, sat back in his chair without shame for his expansive belly, and nodded sagely, as if resolved to the burdens of his position. At least for another week.

  “Send him in, then, Andrew,” Piers said.

  “Very good, sir,” Chapman replied, then stammered out an affronted, “See here!” as Cassidy shoved past him into the bureau chief’s office.

  Agent Cassidy looked wild. His reddish-blond hair was wild, face unshaven even beyond the ragged sideburns he’d always worn. He was a young man, far younger than most senior agents within Interpol. But Cassidy had always been very devoted to his work, to becoming the best the agency had to offer.

  Up until last month.

  “Ye’ll forgive me, sir, but I had to see you,” Agent Cassidy said. “Brigadier McBride’s me section chief, as ye probably know, but I can’t get any answers out of him, nor from Mr. Lipton.”