Dr. Jason Creswell gave a nonchalant wave of one hand, dismissing the grateful tears of Mrs. Wycliff as he strode brusquely past her toward the elevators that led out of the Cedar-Sinai ICU Ward.
“Yes, yes, I was happy to help.” Once the wire transfer had been confirmed, he thought with a mental sneer for the sniveling woman. “But you’ll have to excuse me, madame, I have more urgent matters to attend to.”
“Oh, of course doctor!” The pathetic relief and simpering gratitude in her voice as it trailed after him down the corridor made him want to laugh. If only she knew… yes, he’d “miraculously” healed the failing heart of her corpulent slug of an executive leech husband (after a cool ten million was in his numbered Cayman account, of course). But afterward, as she fawned over him in the recovery room, he’d also (equally “miraculously”) planted a small tumor in her pancreas.
Well, to be completely accurate, he’d encouraged an already existing potential for a tumor to actualize and begin growing. That was, after all, the fun of this little game of his, why he played the role of Jason Creswell every so often. To take the money of the desperately sick (and obscenely wealthy), use his gifts to cure them of whatever, and then pull the double-cross – engender a lethal disease in someone near and dear to his “patient.”
That was where the artistry came in, of course, picking just the right person to kill in exchange for the life saved… it wasn’t always the obvious choice, either. Although in this case it had been – the Wycliffs apparently really loved one another! It was a weakness he despised, second only to those who believed his powers were a gift from some hopped up hoo-doo deity, when it was really just science. That was, after all, all that there was – Science!
As he entered the elevator and pressed the button for the roof he let the features of Jason Creswell fade and morph, settling into his true face, that of Kyle Steiner, reclusive CEO of the powerful Steiner Pharmaceutical Cartel. That was the other pleasure of these occasional forays into faux do-gooderdom, being able to step away from the pressures of running a multinational business in the cutthroat modern world.
Not that he didn’t enjoy his day job – after all, he’d killed to get it. His idiot parents would have frittered away the family fortune long before his majority if he hadn’t “fixed” those brakes… and oh, was Grandmother furious!
He’d missed an obvious clue, she pointed out that night, one which would’ve led the police straight back to him – and cost the family a fortune in pay-offs, bribes and assassinations. Not to mention the likelihood of future blackmail by any corrupt cops they couldn’t kill.
She’d helped him cover the mistake, of course, and had forgiven him for the “stupidity of youth.” Three years later, when he was 16, her experiments had given him his superpowers, and his life had really changed!
A pity, of course, that she had decided to finally use her serum on herself, shortly after he turned 18… he would have been content to wait out her remaining years, and let the company come to him in due course. Probably. But who knew how long she might have lived as a meta? He still missed her sometimes…
It was, in fact, the nagging memory of her (and that pillow over her face) that had led him to sell the family estate in upstate New York and move the corporate headquarters to Fort Astoria, Oregon. Well, that had been one of the reasons for the move…
He had reached the roof, and the time for introspection was over. Time to adopt his other secret persona, the one he really reveled in! The air around him rippled with a silver-gray shimmer as he stepped between two massive air conditioner units, and in seconds Kyle Steiner was gone, replaced by the dashing, and impenetrable, gray shell of Quark.
With a wave of his hand a tear in the fabric of space appeared, quickly widening to a circle six feet across, with shimmering gray edges. Five portal jumps and he’d be in Empire City, in plenty of time to meet the others for the big job. The mangy old cats were away, and it was time for the young cats to play… and send a message!
• • •
Jane luxuriated in the warm bubbles of her immense bathtub, tossing down the last of her beer, and feeling the cold brew and the hot water finally start to relax her muscles. It had been a particularly long day at the office, and she needed this – but even more, she needed what was coming up next on her evening’s agenda.
Valentine Security Services was the premiere name in private protection in Fort Astoria, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t work. Her people had been trying to lure Columbia Industries away from Hart-Underhill Management as a client for months now, but its CEO, Anthony Boyle, seemed particularly obtuse. Hijacked trucks, a burned-out warehouse, and even the unfortunate death of his CFO in a tragic home-invasion-gone-wrong hadn’t seemed to make the light bulb go off over his thick head…
They’d finally had to call in the boss, a last resort that would be costing someone in her office dearly. Still, she was confidant that the severed head of his favorite polo horse, which she had personally delivered to Boyle’s bed an hour ago, still dripping, would do the trick. She’d made the delivery in her alternate identity of Hela, Mistress of Shadows, of course, and was just sorry that necessity hadn’t allowed her to wake him up… but the fear and uncertainty created by the mystery of his bypassed security systems were more important to achieving her ends than her own amusement and pleasure.
Those would come soon enough, she thought, as she heard the front door to her penthouse suite open and close. She smiled in anticipation, and laid her head back, sinking up to her chin in the warm bubbles.
“Hey, chica, lookin’ pretty relaxed,” a deep male voice, with a heavy Hispanic accent, said from the doorway. “Never seen da bubbles before… kinky, baby… I like it!”
Jane opened her eyes and gave a languid laugh. Cesár Ramon, Latin Lords gang leader and all-around tough guy, was hopping on one foot as he tried to pull off his left boot, having already shed his leather jacket. She could clearly see that he was anticipating the evening’s expected pleasures… and the look on his face was hungry.
“No, the bubbles are my secret little pleasure,” she said, slowly standing up, the bubbles clinging to her curves as they slid down her body. “In fact, no living person knows about this little peccadillo of mine… now, why don’t you hand me that towel, baby?”
Cesár, who had both boots off and was unbuckling his belt, somehow managed to look both confused and horny. “Hey, I thought we were gonna have some wet, slippery fun, mamacita!” But he handed her the large black towel laying on the counter behind him.
“Actually, I had a different kind of fun in mind tonight, lover,” Jane said, toweling off her long red hair. “Tell me, Cesár, have you enjoyed yourself this past month? Has it been good for you?”
“Oh, baby, you know it! Shit, I didn’t think it could happen, but you taught me things I never –” the lascivious look that had animated his face suddenly vanished as his mouth dropped open in shock.
The brilliant red hair that she had been drying was quickly turning black, and the towel itself seemed to have grown and… changed. It appeared now to be a sheet of utter blackness that wrapped itself around her, forming itself to her body, then flowing up to hood her face and flowing out around her as a great cape. Only her green eyes glowed bright in the darkness that now shadowed her face.
“Madre dios! You- you’re her! You’re Hela!” Cesár’s voice rose an octave as he stumbled back against the counter, his loosened jeans dropping around his knees. He scrabbled to pull them up, all trace of his excitement gone. His face was suddenly pale and his eyes wide with fear. “Please, I didn’t know–”
“Well of course you didn’t know,” Hela’s laugh was predatory. She stepped forward, arms outstretched toward the shaking man, a terrifying parody of a lover’s gesture. “You weren’t meant to know, my little toy, not until now. But it’s the night of the new moon, lover… and my Cloak is hungry!”
On that last word shadows flowed from the blackness of the billowing cape, reaching unerringly for the gang leader. He shrieked in terror as tendrils of shadow wrapped themselves around him and began pulling him toward the woman he’d thought was his. Her smile was cold… like the hungry shadows he struggled wildly against, to no avail…
“No! Jane, please! Please, don’t–”
The shadows seemed to pull him through her and into an infinite darkness beyond. A darkness in which he sensed… a presence. Cesár’s pleading screams faded, as if he were receding very suddenly to a very great distance… and then they were gone.
The energy flowed into her from the Cloak, along with its sense of satisfaction and satiation… it would remain quiescent and obedient for another month, until another sacrifice would be required on the dark of the new moon. After she returned from the job in Empire City tomorrow she’d have to start hunting the clubs and back alleys for a replacement bad boy…
She looked forward to it, truth be told. She’d gotten a bit lazy the last several months, with the almost gift-wrapped boy toys Gideon had been sending her since his own escape. When the Hunter had given her permission, at last, to take out the Phantom (the teleporter no longer being useful to the Round Table), she’d had no trouble seducing the boy.
But she had actually been surprised (a rare occurance!) when, the very day before the new moon and his scheduled date with the infinite void, he’d simply vanished. When he’d popped up six weeks later in Mexico as the new CEO of the Sinaloa Pharmaceutical Cartel, she’d been even more surprised.
She had little doubt Gideon had been behind the mysterious, and gruesome, deaths of the Cartel’s upper management, including CEO Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán himself. Although forced to grudgingly reassess her opinion of the boy, she’d also been prepared to hunt him down on principle – no one defied Hela and lived.
But that very day a package had arrived for her, at her home, not at her offices – a bound, gagged and furious Jesus Guzmán-Salazar. Not quite her type physically, the son of El Chapo had proved to possess that undeserved male arrogance she so savored. She’d led him on for a couple of weeks, letting him believe he’d seduced and turned her to his own goal – which, of course, was revenge for the death of his father and brothers. So banal, so predictable. His shock and despair when the Cloak had eventually consumed him had been a delight.
Each month after that for the past three months, on the day after the new moon, an untraceable communication had arrived from Gideon (now better known in Mexico as El Fantasma), directing her to another macho “bad boy” for her collection. These weren’t exactly gift-wrapped, but they were certainly primed for her… and just exactly what she wanted.
Let Gideon think he’d mollified her – she was immortal, after all, and could afford to wait. Someday, when she finally took him, his surprise and horror would be all the sweeter for having aged in his complacency for so long. So let him bask in his “victory,” for the time being…
But now she had a few hours to kill before she had to meet Astor and transport them both to Empire City, and she was full of new energy. Maybe there was time to start the hunt for her Cloak’s next meal after all… stepping into the shadowed corner of the room (all the rooms in Jane Valentine’s home were kept dimly lit and well shadowed) she vanished into the night…
• • •
John paused in his intense examination of the specimen on the slab before him, pulling the magnifying lenses up to his forehead and stretching his arms over his head. Rubbing his neck, he stared ahead at nothing in particular and said “Nereid, what time is it?”
“It is 05:17, master,” a pleasant female alto replied, from nowhere in particular. “You have two hours and 43 minutes until your scheduled rendezvous with Hela.”
Damn, where had the night gone? No point in trying to get any sleep now, he supposed… besides, he felt sure he was close to a breakthrough on the question of the precise composition of the synthetic RNA in the specimen. He could feel the answer pushing at the back of his brain, he just needed—
“Why.. are you… doing… this?”
The voice was faint, and laced with pain, and John glanced down at the specimen in annoyance. He kept tweaking the nerve blocks to the vocal centers of its brain, but it kept routing around them to pop up with these irritating pleas every few days. Annoying, true, but it was part of what made this creature so fascinating, its amazing capacity for regeneration.
He bent down to make another adjustment to the blocks… maybe he should just burn out the speech centers altogether. But no – even though he thought he’d gotten all he needed from the thing in the first couple of weeks of questioning and testing, one could never be completely sure. Better not to do anything irreversible just yet…
“Please… stop… tormenting me… just… let me… die… please –”
The voice stopped abruptly as the nerve blocks were reinforced, and the creature’s eyes rolled up once more into its head. John pulled the lenses back down over his eyes, picked up the scalpel, and bent back to his work as the micro-waldoes pulled the translucent flesh further apart.
Really, his acquisition late last year of the ZeroPoint Power Corporation had turned out to be a gold mine. He’d originally pursued the hostile takeover as much to annoy the Hunter as anything. ZeroPoint had been a subsidiary company of the Hunter’s pet billionaire, Álvaro de la Vega, and therefore usually a hands-off target. But given its involvement with the alien AI Nemesis and the whole Fort Astoria fiasco last year, he was able to move against it without reprisal from his nominal “boss” on the Round Table.
The Hunter knew perfectly well that Astor had no interest in running their joint criminal enterprise, and was no threat to his own power – unless pushed too far and forced to defend his own freedom. The Hunter had been getting a bit complacent in his authority, however, and it had seemed time to remind him that Captain Astoria was no one’s puppet – he was an ally, yes, but one with his own mind and his own agenda.
The message seemed to have been received, and things had been better between the two armored men in recent months. Which was just the way John wanted it – as long as he was left to pursue his own researches into bio-energy production and battery storage, he was happy to be a part of the Round Table in his armored persona.
In fact, the Hunter had made a bit of a peace offering in the aftermath of the ZeroPoint business, turning over the meta-human Atlantean Nereid for his pet research program. Daughter of the King of Atlantis and, even better, the granddaughter of that bitch Calypso, she’d been a fascinating specimen.
John had dissected many regular Atlanteans over the years, in his on-going quest to harness bio-energy on a mass production scale, and his Apergy Energy Syndicate had profited greatly. But Nereid had been his first meta-human from the hated undersea kingdom, and had proved a real boon to his studies.
He’d taken special pleasure, before he’d finally let her die, in imprinting her engrams onto the latest generation of the neural-organic computer system that ran his offices and acted as his “girl Friday” at home, in the office and in his armored persona of Captain Astoria.
He greatly enjoyed having the willful and stubborn woman as his unwilling servant – he’d made sure the mental template was exact, so that she could continue to suffer even after the death of her body. The physical constraints on “her” computer mind allowed her no freedom of action, but left her fully aware of who and what she had once been.
It was this distraction, however, that had delayed his discovery of just what a treasure he’d gained in the ZeroPoint acquisition until only two months ago. A long lost crate, buried in a remote warehouse, had turned out to contain the uncorrupted corpse of a second creation of Dr. Victor von Frankenstein.
Only not really a corpse, as he’d discovered when he’d pumped a bolt of his own bio-electrical energy into the strange gem embedded in the creature’s chest. It had risen, as alive as such a thing could ever be, and he’d spent several weeks debriefing it of every bit of information it had on its creator and the details of its own making.
When he’d decanted all that he could from its artificial mind, he’d turned to the more physical examination of the thing’s body. The past six weeks of careful vivisection had proved absolutely illuminating, and John was certain he was close to unlocking the key to limitless, eternally regenerating bio-energy.
Apergy was already close to cornering the market on “clean” energy, and with what von Frankenstein’s legacy promised, he’d hold an absolute lock on it. The poorer countries of the world were already hocking what little they had to get his power cells – with this new technology he could own them outright!
Let the Hunter keep his little empire in the Pacific Northwest, John would build his own in Africa, in time. And once he brought those shit-hole countries into the 21st Century, he’d finally have the power base to take his war directly to Atlantis. In twenty years he fully expected to be sitting on the throne of an oceanic-continental empire that —
“Master,” Nereid’s voice interrupted his reverie. “Your rendezvous with Hela is in 15 minutes.”
Ah, yes, time to put his dreams back on the shelf for the moment and deal with the here-and-now. In an hour he’d be in Empire City with the others, on what promised to be a fun little excursion… and profitable, at least for him. Probably for Frostbite, too, which was regrettable, but ultimately of little real consequence…
• • •
Chuck sat at the small table outside the cafe across the street from the First Allied Bank of Empire City, sipping his iced frapuccino and studying their target. He’d arrived the day before, forced to fly commercial (which had royally pissed him off), and been tasked with scouting out the bank.
He knew none of the others would be arriving in such a damn low-class way – Hela would be bringing Captain Astoria and herself in through the shadows, Quark would be arriving from New York City via his own portals, and Tribal would be flying in luxury on a Quinn Cartel private jet.
Only he and Jonny Osaka had been forced to fly commercial – and fucking economy class at that, unless they were willing to pay for an upgrade themselves. At least they hadn’t been forced to travel together. There was absolutely no way he could’ve survived six hours sitting next to that shit-for-brains Yakuza wannabe.
Chuck had actually been a Yakuza enforcer, adopted into the clan as a teenager when he’d impressed the Iron Shogun himself with a daring robbery. Unlike the idiot Osaka kid, who seemed to think being half-Japanese was somehow enough to earn him a spot.
Not that being adopted into the clan had exactly proved to be the solution he’d hoped it would be. As his thirtieth birthday drew closer, Chuck had realized he’d probably risen as high in the organization as he was going to. The first few years, he’d risen fast, sure, reaching mid-level enforcer status by the time he was 23. And there he’d stayed, while others, younger and less talented, had passed him by.
And the one thing they all had in common was that they were all of Japanese ancestry. Unfortunately, by the time this realization hit him, Chuck had burned pretty much all his other bridges behind him… hell, even his own mother wasn’t speaking to him these days.
Unhappy, but uncertain what to do about it (it’s not like you could just quit the Yakuza, after all), things might have gone on like this for years, if fate hadn’t intervened. Even in his current mood, he smiled at the memory.
On the day of the Chaos Storm Chuck had been working on one of his own schemes to carve out some more territory, make another big splash and maybe catch the boss-man’s eye again. He was strong-arming the kids at an ice cream shop, and leaning especially hard on the manager, a not bad looking frill named Tori, when the building was hit by a bolt from the Storm. And so was he.
He was buried for two days, hallucinating some shit about ice giants and Niflheim and a gift of the Jötunn. By the time he came to his senses and began to realize the extent of the changes he’d somehow undergone, Captain Astoria was pulling the rubble off him and “rescuing” him.
It seemed that Hela had pointed the man at his particular pile of rubble, although how she’d known anything about it he could never figure out. When a bunch of Tori’s surviving friends had scrapped a pittance together to “hire” the armored mercenary to rescue her, he’d therefore taken the job, rather than laugh in their faces. The girl was dead, of course, but Chuck was alive, powered, and by law and custom, now in debt to his “savior.”
At first he hadn’t really minded… he’d always rather admired the ruthless armored business man/mercenary, and besides, he had super powers himself now. Taking the name Frostbite, he ended up tendering his resignation to the Yakuza after all, when he helped Captain Astoria and the Hunter take down the Star Chamber.
But he soon realized he’d just traded one second-class citizenship for another. He was under Astor’s thumb now, and until he paid off his debt to the man would always be regarded as a client, not a player. Hell, his seat at the Round Table was still probationary; he was a second fiddle, at best.
Almost all the money he’d made in the last year had gone to service his life-debt (well, he did have a better crib, and a bit more spending cash, but nothing like if it was all his… less the tithe to the Table, of course). But this score in Empire City promised to make him enough to buy out his debt to Astor – and then he’d show them all what he could do, and earn a full seat at the table!
Ugh, and here came that idiot, Jonny. He’d certainly taken his sweet time scouting the surrounding buildings. As the kid took a seat across from him and signaled the waiter, he just prayed he wouldn’t start in again on the beauty of the way of the Bushido…
• • •
Jonny was enjoying his first visit to Empire City immensely. And the fact that his enjoyment seemed to annoy the piss off that tool Chucky was just icing on the cake. He was sure his leisurely stroll around the area had been equally annoying to the dude, and he grinned as he plopped himself down across from him.
Ordering an espresso and a ham and cheese croissant, he’d immediately started in on his continuing campaign to educate the round-eye on Bushido, a topic he knew bored the asshole to tears. Unfortunately, when Chucky grabbed his ear buds and popped them in, turning up the volume on whatever moldy oldies dudes his age listened to, it really took the pleasure out of it.
Settling back with a disgruntled shrug Jonny turned his thoughts to more important matters than his washed-up Yakuza has-been partner. The Hunter had promised that this morning’s job in Empire City would provide him a crucial element in his plan to bring the Iron Shogun to his knees.
Jonny grinned at the thought of seeing his father on his knees, of standing over him as the man of cold metal was forced at last to acknowledge the power and honor of his son. To acknowledge that he was his son, finally!
His pleasure at the vision was short lived, however, as he considered all the other opportunities he’d given the man to admit that Jonny was his son, and to give him a place at his side with his other children.
The first time had been when he was 13 years old, just after he had at last solved the mystery of his parentage. His mother had denied it, of course, but she was honor-bound to do so, he was sure – a promise, no doubt, to the man who had fathered a child on her.
He’d managed to slip past the man’s guards at a restaurant where he was meeting with his lieutenants – everyone knew he didn’t have to eat in his metal form, but his men still did – and kneel before him. He’d flushed when his voice cracked as he explained who he was and how he now knew of his true parentage, but he’d got through it… only to be laughed at and unceremoniously tossed out into the street.
He’d been devastated then, for a time, until he realized, in a flash of insight, that his father must be testing him, making him earn a place at his side. Of course, he must prove that he embodied the 8 Virtues of Bushido before his father could acknowledge him!
The next five years had been spent trying to prove himself. Not wasted, he thought as he took a savage bite out of his croissant, not really. He had learned much, both about himself and his father’s organization. But after a particularly humiliating rejection by the pitying Yakuza enforcers (one them had been that putz Chuck, he reminded himself, eyeing the head-bobbing tool with disfavor), he’d realized he hadn’t yet mastered the final virtue, self-control.
When his mother had given him a ticket to Japan for his 18th birthday, he’d understood that it was a sign – only in the homeland of his true soul could he become what he was meant to be! And if he could be admitted to the Yakuza in Japan, then his father would have to accept him when he returned to Oregon.
It had been going well, he thought, if not as quickly as he’d have liked. The bruises healed, eventually, and he hadn’t gotten himself killed yet… but then his mother had, instead – killed in a robbery in her bistro. Her death had forced him to return home before he was half finished.
But her death had also freed him from the last restraints on his pursuit of his goal. He’d loved her, and because of that he’d not gone all-out in the face of her disapproval of the Yakuza and her continued denial of his father’s identify.
For the three years following her death he’d continued to try and make his way into his father’s organization, and grew increasingly frustrated by his continued failures. He became convinced that if he could just speak directly to the Iron Shogun, something that had happened only once after that first meeting, he could make him understand… perhaps that was the last test…
Then had come his accident at the High Energy Physics Lab on the FAU campus, and shortly after that the Chaos Storm! Suddenly he had true power! At last he could confront his father and demand that he be allowed to take his place at his side!
It had been child’s play to melt his way into the all-but impregnable fortress that was the Iron Shogun’s skyscraper headquarters. Keeping the armed guards at bay with sheets of blue flame, incinerating their bullets with barely a thought, he’d knelt before his father and bowed his head.
“I have mastered the 8 Virtues of Bushido, and the weapons of our homeland, and made of myself a weapon for your hand. Will you not now acknowledge me as your true son, Father?”
The Iron Shogun did not laugh at him this time. No, this time humor was replaced with a cold rage.
“I have humored your delusions for too long – clearly an error,” he had said, his voice low and clipped. “I see now that I should have nipped you in the bud, before you became… whatever you have become.
“I tell you again, Jonny Osaka, and for the last time, that I am not your father. I have never known the woman who was your mother – and I had your claim checked the first time you confronted me with your tale, as a foolish boy. I had known many women in my youth, even gaijin women, but she was not one of them, I promise you.”
“No!” He’d leapt to his feet then, and off them, to float a few feet above the cracked, scorched marble floor. “I have proof! The evidence is –”
“Is the delusion of a twisted, desperate mind! I pitied you in your youth, despite the warnings of those closest to me… warnings I realize now I should have heeded.
“Boy, you are not my son, I am not your father, and you shall never be a member of the Yakuza. Go now, and do not return, if you have any honor or sense of Bushido, as you claim.”
Jonny wasn’t proud of what happened next… but he was hurt, and angry, and… and he had lashed out with his new power, a ball of superheated plasma rushing out from him in all directions. It had engulfed the 23 men who had been in the room, reducing them to charred husks, destroyed all the furniture and artwork, and blew out the windows in pellets of melted slag.
The flames had also engulfed the Iron Shogun, of course, but with no more effect on him beyond causing him to glow cherry red. Whatever organic metal his body was composed of, it certainly wasn’t mere iron.
Without a word, rage radiating along with the heat from his body, the Iron Shogun had drawn his katana and slashed it clear through Jonny’s torso… leaving him completely unaffected. Not being a fool, the man had re-sheathed his blade and stood back to stare at Jonny in silent contempt.
Jonny had turned and flown out of the penthouse, realizing he couldn’t harm his father, even if he’d wanted to, and humiliated at his own loss of control. But he had been denied, again! Why? It was at that moment that he became the Blue Ronin, the warrior without –
He cut the thought off, and tossed back his espresso. He’d not yet figured out why his father had denied him once again… although he suspected the influence of his half-siblings, in his darker moments. And his own actions, then and immediately thereafter, had not helped his case, he knew that…
In grief and rage he’d flown off that day and straight to the brewpub where he had worked until the day before. It was a legitimate front business for the Yakuza, and he’d thought, once, that he might work his way up through the organization by that route.
But that day, maddened as he was, he had burned the place to the ground – along with the businesses around it. He’d never been sure how many he’d killed, nor really cared, although he’d probably known some of them. It certainly wasn’t as many as it could’ve been, he supposed – everything had mostly still been shut down in the aftermath of the Chaos Storm.
But he wasn’t thinking about any of that just then, and he’d flown off to do the same to the HEP Lab at the university. It wasn’t affiliated with the Yakuza, of course, but he’d blamed it for his troubles nonetheless – it had given him these abilities, after all, yet for all his power others still retained the ultimate power – to forever deny him what he most wanted — respect, honor, family, acceptance…
Fortunately the Hunter had confronted him before he could destroy the lab, and managed to talk him down. He’d offered Jonny a position at his new Round Table if he’d join up to overthrow the old order of the Star Chamber – which included the Iron Shogun as a leading member…
In that moment Jonny had had an inspiration! He would help the armored fool bring down the Yakuza in Astoria, and perhaps, when he’d lost everything, his father might finally acknowledge him when he turned on the Hunter and saved his father’s life and his beloved Yakuza…
His obsessive knowledge of the Yakuza had indeed proved useful, and the Hunter had kept his word. The others at the Round Table might still see him as a mere protege, but they were slowly learning to fear and respect him.
Maybe when he finally stood over his father in victory the man would acknowledge him and love him at last…
• • •
“Thanks again Professor Yataákuntz!” the big Chinook linebacker repeated for the third time as he finally stood up to go, hefting his book bag over one broad shoulder. “I think your speaking up for me at the Student Court made all the difference!”
“It was no trouble, Tyler,” Kúng assured the sophomore with a slight smile. “You didn’t start the fight, after all, and were only defending your woman’s honor. As any proper Native man would.”
The young man stood a little straighter at that, and gave him an oddly shy grin as he eased himself out of the absurdly tiny office. Kúng watched him lumber down the hall, his smile becoming a predatory grin.
Besides, We don’t wish you to go anywhere for the next two years. He shivered inwardly with an anticipatory hunger, unconsciously licking his lips. We have a lovely little surprise planned for your graduation, Our beautiful young Warrior.”
Kúng Yataákúntz was not, in fact, a full professor at Fort Astoria University, merely an Associate Professor of Native American Studies. Achak Dyami had been willing to forge him the credentials for the full professorship, and with the power of the Quinn Cartel at his command he’d certainly been capable of it. But while Kúng might be over 200 years old as the Outer World measured time, he still appeared to be around 25 years old.
And besides, the lower rank suited his purposes better, keeping him where he wanted to be without quite so much of the absurd jockeying for position and all the unwanted attention a full professorship would have brought with it. No, this position suited him just fine.
As he locked his office door and made his way out of the George Armstrong Custer Native American Studies Building he realized his encounter with the young Native warrior-boy had got him thinking back to where it all began… just over six years ago for him, but half a century here in this Outer World… time ran so much swifter here.
When Dr. Benjamin Quinn had pierced the mystical barrier that separated and protected the island of Sgang Gwaay Llanagaay from the Outer World, Kúng had been in his late teens, and seething at the restrictions placed on him by the senile old men who ruled there. He’d been secretly delighted when the pale skinned “sci-en-tist” (some sort of shaman, he’d thought then, and he laughed now at the idea) and his white-haired bodyguard had made the old men their bitches and forced them to bend to their will.
It had been an even more eye-opening enlightenment when he’d walked into the longhouse given over to the outsiders use to find the two boys, Quinns golden haired son and more normal looking “ward” doing… quite interesting things to one another. The darker skinned Achak, who to Kúng’s eye looked almost like a real person, was clearly the dominant one, although the younger, strange-looking one, with his hair like summer sun, seemed to enjoy his submissive role…
He had joined them then, and over the next two weeks he he’d learned quite a lot – not least about himself and his own darkest desires. And when the pale-skins and Achak had been preparing to leave the Island two weeks later, it had been easy to force Danny to explain the basic workings of the strange device his father proposed to leave behind… the boy did enjoy the pain, after all.
It had taken him a year to master the strange controls of the alien device, and two more to reach full shaman status, learning all he could from the foolish, womanish old men who ruled his home. It was then that he put his plan into action…
The Quinn device had been designed to strengthen the weakening dimensional barriers that protected the Island, but the American had made it clear it could also take down those barriers altogether if he wished it – and he retained control of it remotely. Now, Kúng demonstrated to the Council that he controlled the device, and if they didn’t give him what he wanted he would open up their refuge to the savage Outer World forever.
In the end they’d given in, crying sacrilege and unholy blasphemy the whole time. They had tattooed all the Great Warrior Beasts onto his body, something never before done in their history… and they had betrayed him in the process! Although he didn’t learn of that until much later.
Perhaps if he hadn’t used his new-found power to kill every last man woman and child on the Island… but no, the curse must surely have been woven into his blood already, nothing could have changed it…
Where was that damn ÜberWaggon? He had a flight to catch; not that it mattered, really, he supposed. He was flying on a private Quinn Cartel Gulfstream, and it would be waiting for him whenever he chose to arrive at Jordan Airfield. Still, it was the principle of the thing – ah, at last!
As he slid into the back seat the young driver smiled at him in the rear-view mirror. Something in that look…
“Jordan Airfield, right sir?” the blond boy asked. His voice, and that tone… yes, something indeed. Kúng smiled and settled back after confirming their destination. He tapped out a brief message on his smart-phone, then returned to his thoughts, his eyes occasionally meeting those of the driver in the mirror.
He’d arrived in the Outer World woefully unprepared, he could ceratinly admit that now. But really, even though Danny and Achak had tried to describe their world to him, he’d had no framework to understand them then. Despite his powers it had been a struggle that first month in Alaska… but by the end of the second month he was starting to find his way. He’d even begun to amass a small following of Haida, men who had lost their way in the White Man’s world and hungered for what he offered them.
And then had come the night of 20 August 2013.
That night was the night of a Blue Moon, the very moon he’d been born under in the timeless realm of the Island… and which now was the harbinger of his curse. He and many of his followers had been sitting around a bonfire as he told them tales of the Great High Days of their people, when they had conquered far and ruled the lesser men. As the full moon had risen over the trees Kúng had felt something stir inside himself… it was the feeling he got when he summoned one of his avatars, the Great Beasts… yet different somehow…
And then the world had turned red. All five of the Great Beasts had taken his body then, at once – an unholy amalgam of Raven, Bear, Wolf, Eagle, Orca and Man shifting hideously, and so excruciatingly painfully, in his skin, different parts of his body possessed by different Beasts, always shifting, in constant flux… and they began to devour him.
He remembered little of that terrible battle, but he had fought, using all his magic, all his cunning… and still he was losing… until Raven had proposed a deal… for if the Avatars destroyed their human host, as they were bound to do by the curse, they would lose their anchor in the Outer World, be banished back to their high dimension. And they wanted to play…
Raven had found a loophole… they had to devour “the warrior, body and soul,” true, and on this night of the Blue Moon. Certainly the intention had been that it be Kúng… but it was not precisely explicit, as such things should be… so Raven said they could accept any Native warrior in Kúng’s place…
Most of Kúng’s followers had fled screaming as his transformation had begun, but one, the strongest and the bravest, Robert Redhawk, had stayed. He had wished to fight, to help his mentor… and in the end, to his not-brief-enough regret, he did.
As soon as Kúng agreed to the deal, Sgwáansang [squaw-ahn-sang], The One, had turned on Redhawk and rent him limb from limb, devouring his flesh and drinking his soul. His death was slow and agonizing, but when it was over and the moon was setting, the Avatars retreated again, leaving a naked, blood-soaked human shivering on the ground.
For all that he tried to forget what little he remembered of that night, Kúng knew with absolute clarity that Sgwáansang would reappear each Blue Moon for the rest of his life, and he would have to provide a Warrior sacrifice, of Native blood, for it/him/them or be consumed himself. And always the smell of Redhawk’s blood, and the taste of his flesh lingered…
Fortunately, the next Blue Moon was not to rise for over two-and-a-half years, and he had time to plan. Forced to leave Alaska in the wake of that terrible night, he had made his way to Seattle, where he had contacted Achak and Danny. Now men in their fifties, they had flown him out to the Rockport, Maine compound at once – and been surprised to see their old companion still so young. Surprised and pleased.
Danny was the face and figurehead of his long-dead father’s business empire, the Quinn Cartel, but Achak was the actual power behind the throne. And he continued to dominate his husband as he had in their youth, in every way, and the three had fallen quickly back into their roles from earlier days.
Kúng wouldn’t have minded staying in Maine, but he feared that his curse required Native men of the Pacific Northwest, not the Northeast, and he wasn’t prepared to gamble on that point. So after much discussion Achak had eventually set him up with legal papers and forged teaching credentials, Danny had secured him the position at FAU, and they had both gifted him with funds enough to make him independent of his paltry teachers salary.
His very first semester he had met Greg Halcyon, a journalism major and student in his Native Studies Class. It had been obvious at first glance that the slightly younger man had much the same proclivities as Danny had – not to mention the same fascinating blond hair – and Kúng had had him tied up and ball-gagged by the end of the first week. They’d been on-and-off ever since.
Kúng knew he’d probably go too far one day in their kinky, violent BDSM games, and kill Greg, as he had so many others over the last three years. Greg knew it too, hell he’d helped get rid of more than one body… but he stuck around anyway, so no one was losing any sleep over it.
In fact, Greg had wanted to come along on this little foray to Empire City, but Kúng had said no. He preferred to keep his sub away from the activities of his hidden identity as Tribal. The fact was, he was a little jealous of how turned on Greg got when one of the Avatars was using him, especially Raven or Bear…
At least he never had to worry about Greg becoming a sacrifice for Sgwáansang, the boy hadn’t a drop of Native blood in him. And just five days after the Chaos Storm he’d learned the curse didn’t require strictly Haida sacrifices – in the confusion of the disaster the college boy he’d been grooming for the job had been killed, and Tribal had been forced to improvise. In the end, the macho young cop he’d devoured on the night of 21 May 2016 had been a full-blood Apache… the curse hadn’t minded.
And if all went well, on the night of the Blue Moon of 18 May 2019 it would be young mister Tyler Todd who would be saving Tribal’s life by becoming Sgwáansang’s next meal…
Ah, they were at the airfield… he looked around… yes, there were the men he’d summoned. The ÜberWaggon driver – Sam was his name – got out to open Kúng’s door for him with a sexy smile, which saved the two goons a bit of trouble. They dropped the black silk bag over the man’s head and were dragging him onto the nearby plane before he knew what was happening.
The third man slipped behind the wheel of the car and drove off to dispose of it somewhere far from the airfield. Kúng found himself whistling in anticipation as he mounted the steps into the aircraft. He’d expected the six hour flight to be tedious, but now it promised to be quite interesting…
• • •
The Hunter sat in his throne-like Control Chair and smiled at the six screens floating in the air before him. The video feeds from his nano-sized spy drones hovering near each of his allies were clear and the audio… well, it was understandable, at least. He didn’t think any of them, not even Astor or Quark, suspected just how closely he kept tabs on them all.
He wore his armor like a second skin, although the helmet currently rested on a table at his right, easily to hand. Not that he was likely to need it, here. Nor the armor itself, really. This was his true base, after all, the underground bastion far beneath the peak of Mt. Defiance, and accessible only by a teleportal keyed to his unique psychic imprint. The base no one else had ever learned of in almost 20,000 years.
Wearing the armor when he was in the Hunter mode was a good habit, however, one that ensured he could never be surprised without it. Even here he only ever removed the helmet, something he’d never do in his public HQ, not even in his private quarters there, high above the city in the AzTech Tower. A quarter of a century now, and he’d managed to keep his current identity, as Àlvaro de la Vega, secret from both his closest allies and his closest enemies. He took no chances in that regard.
Of course many of those enemies were dead or made impotent now… the Chaos Storm had taken them all by surprise, but fortune favors the prepared mind, and he’d been preparing to take down his partners in the Star Chamber for years. The Storm merely provided the impetus.
He put his team together quickly, and while everyone else was still reeling he’d succeeded in wiping out the Russians (Koschei had proved not quite as deathless as advertised) , E.V.A.L. (mostly – no body was ever found for the Cerebellum), the White Tiger Society (Jade Dragon’s death prior to the Storm had helped), and the Chessmen. After that the minor nat ethnic gangs had all fallen into line.
The only one of his former Star Chamber allies to survive relatively intact was the Iron Shogun and his Yakuza clan… but they were greatly weakened and currently no realistic threat.
As the Hunter he’d “seized” the AzTech Tower from himself (as de la Vega) in the weeks after the Storm… a master stroke, if he did say so himself. Forcing one of the richest men in the world to bend the knee, and surrender his shiny new toy, had sealed the Hunter’s victory and his place at the top of the heap in the eyes of the world. It also further insulated the two identities from one another, and left Àlvaro as a plot magnet for his enemies to try and use… to their eventual regret.
Now he sat at the metaphorical head of the Round Table – a useful device for fostering the illusion of equality with his current allies/minions (which of those they were depended entirely upon whose eyes you saw them through). But they were of little threat to him, any more than anyone else on this world… with the exception of his eternal enemy, Nemesis, perhaps.
He again eyed each screen, then focused on Captain Astoria. He long ago judged that Astor had no real interest in ruling, being more interested in the substance over the forms of power. The man’s main interest in power was primarily to see that no one else held it over him. As long as he was allowed to pursue his vivisections of Atlanteans and other pet projects without hindrance he was content. An easy man for an intelligent master to keep happy .
Hela was probably the most dangerous of the lot, but she too preferred the shadows behind the throne to the glare of the spotlight shining on the who sat upon it. Her immortality also made her less likely to confront problems, unless backed into a corner; not when she could simply outlive them. He judged her unlikely to become a rival if he didn’t make her one… and his own immortality trumped hers by an order of magnitude, of course.
Quark was too engaged with his own not-insignificant business empire to be interested in adding another. Frankly, he only played the game at the Round Table for the thrill of it, and as long as de la Vega kept their business interests out of conflict, he was unlikely to become a problem to the Hunter.
Frostbite and Blue Ronin, while individually fairly powerful, were just bit players. Both had limited vision and minimal intelligence, and with their overlapping and competing interests in the Yakuza, it was easy to keep them distracted, divided and distrustful of one another. And one or both might yet prove useful in finally eliminating the annoyance of the Iron Shogun.
Tribal worried him most, in the near term. The man was a powerhouse – and a powder keg, just waiting to go off! Fortunately he was far more likely to destroy himself with his twisted appetites than anyone else (well, aside from his unlucky victims, of course, but they hardly counted). In addition, he had spent considerable time developing continences in case one or all of Tribal’s powerful Avatars were ever to gain control and run amuck.
Life was good, all-in-all. He was solidly, publicly, in control of his part of the country, and secretly in control of much of the planet. Nemesis was contained, his own power base shrinking. Now was time to teach those arrogant bastards in the Protectors a lesson about defying him… and killing his ”son.” He tapped a button on a panel on his left arm, giving his team the signal to go…